Early Christianity

What did early Christians believe? Not what the sixteenth-century Reformers say. What the men who personally knew the Apostles say. One of the most repeated objections of Protestantism is that the Catholic Church departed from the original Gospel - that the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the papacy, apostolic succession, and the authority of Tradition are medieval inventions added centuries after "pure Christianity." It is a powerful claim... for those who have never read the documents of early Christianity. Because the Apostolic Fathers and the first Apologists - writers who lived in the first and second centuries, several of them direct disciples of the Apostles or their immediate successors - left a written record of what the Church believed and practiced before any medieval council, before Constantine, before the Middle Ages. Their words leave little room for doubt. In Early Christianity you will find the testimony of twelve documentary sources from the first centuries:

• The Didache and The Epistle of Barnabas - the oldest non-canonical Christian documents, written while the Apostles were still alive
• Clement of Rome - third successor of Peter, writing from Rome with authority over other churches
• Ignatius of Antioch - direct disciple of the Apostle John, testifying about the Eucharist and the monarchical episcopate on his way to martyrdom
• Polycarp of Smyrna and Papias of Hierapolis - the last living links to the Apostles
• The Shepherd of Hermas and The Epistle to Diognetus - two remarkable early witnesses to Christian life and doctrine
• Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage - the great Apologists who articulated the faith against paganism and the first heresies