Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight I want to address a question that is asked of me quite often. That question is, how do we know that the early Christian writings haven't been tampered with? I mean, here I've written several books about the early Christians, what they believed and how they lived. I've recorded around 50 different messages on what the early Christians believed on specific subjects like salvation, baptism, war, and things like that. But what if it turns out that their writings have been altered?
Or what if their writings are totally spurious? Well, that would change things a bit, wouldn't it? The implication when people ask me this question is usually that perhaps the Roman Catholics changed the early Christian writings, portraying these writers as saying something different from what they had originally expressed. Or maybe some Roman Catholic person living in the Middle Ages pretended to be a person named Justin Martyr and created spurious writings under that name.
I notice that the Roman Catholic Church is usually the presumed villain. Why? Because the Roman Catholic Church was the only entity in a position to alter these writings, or at least that's what people assume, and because the early Christian writings completely contradict the Protestant Reformers. So the Reformers certainly didn't do any doctoring. Normally, I give a very brief answer to this question of whether or not the writings have been tampered with.
First, I normally point out that there are thousands of scholars from both Catholic and non-Catholic backgrounds who study the early Christians and their writings. Yet I don't know of a single one of those scholars who questions their authenticity. And it's not as though those scholars believe the same things the early Christians did. In fact, nearly none of them do. In truth, most scholars don't like what the early Christians say.
So it would be the natural thing for these scholars to dismiss the early Christian writings as being spurious or to claim that they've been tampered with. But again, I don't know of any scholar who questions either their authenticity or their trustworthiness. Second, I usually point out that once you read the early Christian writings, it's obvious that what they're saying fits into no other era. Their writings certainly fit neither the medieval Roman Catholic Church nor the Reformation churches.
So if someone changed these writings, who was it? And usually I've left it at that. That's because I've noticed that no one who has actually read the early Christian writings or a substantial part of them, say at least a whole volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, such readers rarely question whether these writings are authentic and unadulterated.
It's obvious to such a reader that what the early Christians are saying comes from a wholly different era, an era different from ours today, and an era different from medieval Roman Catholicism. It's also an era different from the Reformation state churches. In fact, the pre-Nicene era is decidedly different than any other period of church history. The spirit of the early church is unique in two important respects.
First, their lack of dogmatic tone, and two, the non-technical language used in their theological writings. Incidentally, when I use the term early Christians in this message, I'm referring to the Christians who lived from around AD 100 up to the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. When I say that the early Christian writings don't have a dogmatic tone, I'm referring to issues about which the church was later very dogmatic. Some examples are the Trinity, communion, salvation, and life after death.
On the other hand, when the early Christians are writing against the Gnostics, they are very dogmatic that Jesus came in the flesh and that the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New. That's because these are basic, clear New Testament teachings. If a person doesn't believe that the Son of God came in the flesh and that his Father is the God of both the Old and New Testaments, well, he simply doesn't believe the New Testament.
Now, you need to understand that after the Council of Nicaea, the Gnostics were no longer the major issue on anyone's plate. So if someone in the post-Nicene church were faking these writings, producing spurious writings, why would they have had the early Christians focusing on issues that were essentially dead issues after Nicaea?
If imposters were creating spurious works in the names of the pre-Nicene Christians, they certainly would have had the early Christian writers dogmatically addressing issues that were relevant to later periods of the church. Otherwise, what's the point of faking their writings? For example, no issue was more prominent in the fourth and fifth centuries than the Trinity. First, there was the issue of the nature of Jesus' divinity and his relationship with the Father. Next came the issue of the Holy Spirit.
Who is he and what is the nature of his divinity? Then came the issue of Jesus' nature while he was on earth. In other words, exactly how the incarnation worked. Was Jesus both divine and human when he was on earth, or had he temporarily divested himself of his deity? Well, then came the issue of the role that Mary played in the incarnation. Well, when you read the writings of the post-Nicene Christians, you find that they are very dogmatic when they talk about the Trinity and Christology.
They have precise answers to the questions that I've just listed. In contrast, the pre-Nicene Christians aren't dogmatic about these topics. I mean, they talk a lot about the Trinity, particularly the Father and the Son, but rarely in a dogmatic tone. An even bigger contrast between the pre-Nicene era and the post-Nicene era is the highly technical, precise theological language that writers use after Nicaea, in contrast to the imprecise language used before Nicaea.
Please understand that the early Christians' lack of precise formal theological language is not because of any spiritual deficiency or ignorance on their part. Their language is non-technical because the language of the New Testament is non-technical. Orthodoxy in the pre-Nicene church didn't turn on using this word instead of that word. That's because Orthodoxy in the New Testament doesn't turn on using this word instead of that word.
In marked contrast, Orthodoxy after the Council of Nicaea turned on using specific theological language, language that isn't even found in the New Testament oftentimes. For example, the Nicene Creed turns on a particular Greek word, homoousion, to describe the relationship of the Father and the Son. It means that the Father and the Son are of the same substance or same nature. After Nicaea, a person wasn't free to use any other word to describe the nature of the Father and the Son.
Unfortunately, this word isn't used anywhere in the Bible. In other words, after Nicaea, Christians had to use an unbiblical term in order to be considered Orthodox. What's more, none of the first or second-century early Christian writers use homoousion either. And at most, only one or two of the third and fourth-century pre-Nicene writers use the term, and even those uses are disputed. Accordingly, just on this one issue alone, it's quite easy to distinguish most post-Nicene writings from pre-Nicene writings.
The post-Nicene writer is dogmatic and insists on using precise, theologically technical language when talking about the Father and the Son, even though such precise language cannot be found anywhere in scripture. He also insists that to use any other language is nothing short of blasphemy. Not only that, the post-Nicene Christian writer imagines that all heaven and earth and Christianity itself turns on having the "correct," i.e., post-Nicene understanding of the Father and the Son.
In contrast, when speaking about the Father and the Son, the pre-Nicene writer usually doesn't go beyond the language of scripture. He will use words and expressions that were later condemned as being heretical, even though the Bible itself uses those very words and phrases.
Furthermore, the pre-Nicene Christian typically discusses the Trinity in a non-dogmatic tone and will frequently acknowledge that the interrelationship of the Father and the Son is beyond our ability to comprehend, and that therefore it is unimportant that we fully understand it. Even though the pre-Nicene Christians all believed essentially the same things about the Trinity, each writer expresses himself a little differently.
In contrast, the post-Nicene Christians all have an artificially uniform narrative when talking about the Father and Son, as though the Bible lays out everything in an easy, undiversified, unambiguous manner. The only difference among the post-Nicene writers themselves is that beginning with Augustine around AD 400, the Western writers take a different tack than the East.
The Western writers essentially obliterate any distinction in order between the persons of the Trinity, practically turning these three persons into three brothers. This takes the Western writers that much further from the pre-Nicene Christians. This issue alone eliminates the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church tampered with the pre-Nicene writings. That's because Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity makes the early Christians heretics.
And all Western writers bought into Augustine's erroneous understanding of the Trinity. No Western writer after Augustine would have dared say the things the early Christians did, despite the fact that everything the early Christians said is perfectly scriptural. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about.
John 14:28, "If you loved me, you would rejoice because I said, 'I am going to the Father, for my Father is greater than I.'" Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only." 1 Corinthians 11:3, "I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." And final one, John 5:19, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do.
For whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner." Before Nicaea, Christians accepted and believed each of those verses on face value. They saw no need to explain them away or give them a special interpretation. They quoted them frequently and saw no theological problems with any of them.
However, after Nicaea, writers didn't quote those verses anymore, at least not without a discussion of "why they don't mean what they seem to say." As a result, the contrast between pre-Nicene and post-Nicene writings is striking in passages where those verses are quoted. If someone had tampered with the pre-Nicene writers, you can be certain that he would have altered what the early Christians said about those verses. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.
The following quotation is from Irenaeus, a bishop in the city of Lyons. He wrote around the year 170 or 180, and he said this, "Even the Lord, the very Son of God, acknowledged that the Father alone knows the very day and hour of judgment.
For he plainly declares, 'But of that day and that hour, no man knows, neither the Son but the Father only.' If then the Son was not ashamed to ascribe the knowledge of that day to the Father only, but declared what was true regarding that matter, neither let us be ashamed to reserve for God those greater questions that may occur to us.
For if anyone asks about the reason why the Father, who has fellowship with the Son in all things, has been declared by the Lord alone to know the hour and the day, he will find it present no more suitable, becoming, or safe reason than this, that we may learn through him that the Father is above all things. For he says, 'The Father is greater than I.' The Father therefore has been declared by our Lord to excel with respect to knowledge." That's in volume one, pages 401 and 402 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
Now, after Nicaea, no Orthodox Christian would make those kind of statements that Irenaeus did for fear of being called a heretic and facing severe consequences. Yet quotes like the one I just read you abound in the pre-Nicene writings. There are hundreds of passages that became heretical or at least suspect after the Council of Nicaea. But please understand that the pre-Nicene Christians weren't Arians.
They also quoted the favorite Trinitarian verses of the New Testament without having to explain them away either.
I'm referring to verses such as John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Or John 10:30, "I and my Father are one." Or Colossians 2:9, "For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form." Or Hebrews 1:8, "But to the Son he says, 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.'" If you're wondering how the early Christians could believe all of those verses, taking them at face value and not explaining any of them away, I encourage you to listen to my CD on what the
early Christians believed about the Trinity or the one on what the early Christians believed about the Father and the Son.
In a nutshell, the problem is that because of the Arian dispute, the post-Nicene Christians confused nature and order. It had always been believed that the Father and the Son are of the same nature. At the same time, it also had always been believed that the Father is the head of Christ and that he is greater than the Son. In other words, the Father and Son are equal in nature, but they are not equal in order. The New Testament is clear on this. But Arius confused these two things.
So he mistakenly believed that since Jesus is subordinate to the Father as to order, he must also possess a subordinate nature. And of course, that's wrong reasoning. Well, Arius's opponents adopted his error, but they turned it the other way. They said, "Since the Son is equal to the Father in nature, he must also be equal in order." Now, eventually, the Eastern churches came back to the original understanding that the church had. However, as a result of Augustine, the Western churches never did.
Now, if all of that discussion of nature and order sounds strange to you, it just further illustrates my point. You're a product of the post-Nicene church, and you aren't used to the Trinity being explained in those terms. Obviously then, no post-Nicene Christian tampered with the early Christian writings, or else their understanding of the Trinity wouldn't sound so foreign to our post-Nicene ears. Now, I want to talk a minute about the word create.
One of the words that particularly distinguishes the pre-Nicene Christians from the post-Nicene ones is the use of the word create or creation when referring to the begetting of the Son of God. Pre-Nicene Christians use the word without any hesitation or explanation, while post-Nicene Christians never use the word with relation to the Son of God. You may be wondering, well, why would the early Christians want to use the word create when they're talking about the begetting of the Son? Well, the answer is simple.
The reason is that the scriptures use that word when speaking about Jesus. For example, Colossians 1:15 says, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." Or Proverbs 8:23, which in the Septuagint reads, "The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works." In fact, Proverbs 8:23 is quoted numerous times by the early Christians, and they all understand it to be applying to the begetting of Jesus. Now, let me quickly put your mind at ease.
Actually, the pre-Nicene Christians believed essentially the same things about the eternal begetting of the Son, as did the post-Nicene church. The difference is that originally the word create was understood as a broad term that encompassed both beget and to make out of nothing. The early Christians, of course, understood the word to mean beget when used with reference to the Son of God.
However, during the Arian disputes of the fourth century, both sides gave the word create the narrow definition of to make out of nothing. As a result, after the Nicene Council, no Orthodox Christian dared use the word create when referring to the begetting of Jesus. In fact, they had to start claiming that Proverbs 8:23 isn't even talking about the Son of God, something that Christians had always believed from the beginning.
So again, if someone had tampered with the pre-Nicene writings, you can be sure that they would have taken out all references to the word create being used with regard to the Son of God. They would have taken out the references about Proverbs 8:23. Now, perhaps you're imagining that the issue of the Father and the Son, their inner relationship and the begetting of the Son, you might think, well, that would only affect a handful of the early Christian writings. Not at all.
The vast majority of their writings discuss this topic. Why? Well, first, about a third of the early Christian writings that we have are apologetic writings explaining Christianity to the Jews and to the pagans. Now, you can hardly explain Christianity without explaining who Jesus is. Another third of their works are writings against heretics, usually the Gnostics. As I've mentioned, one of the major heresies of the Gnostics was that Jesus did not come in the flesh.
As a result, in defending Christianity against the Gnostics, the early Christian writers invariably discuss who Jesus is. Even the rest of the early Christian writings, works on miscellaneous subjects, there typically are some references to the nature of the Son and his relationship to the Father. In summary, the vast majority of the early Christian writings discuss the Father and the Son, and they do so with language that wasn't used after the Council of Nicaea.
This fact alone is perhaps our strongest evidence that no one tampered with these writings. And please don't imagine that the Arians tampered with the early Christian writings. That's because, as I said, the early Christian beliefs about the Trinity don't fit the Arians either. Actually, the early Christians believed in essence what the Nicene Creed says. They just used different language than the post-Nicene Christians, and they said things in a different spirit.
Furthermore, the Arians never had the ecclesiastical or political power to collect together all the copies of the pre-Nicene writings and change them. We can safely exclude that possibility. The Trinity is not the only subject that changed after Nicaea. The subject of Mary is another one.
The Council of Nicaea didn't specifically address the subject of Mary, but in post-Nicene Christianity, it became religiously incorrect to state that Mary was a sinner or that she did not remain a virgin her whole life or that her faith was lacking during much of Jesus's ministry. For example, you don't find any post-Nicene Christian saying things like Tertullian said in his treatise against Marcion.
In that work, he said that Jesus corrected those who said, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts you have sucked." He also said, "There is a lack of evidence of his mother's adherence to him" during his preaching ministry. Tertullian even contrasted the faith and support given Jesus by Martha and by the other Marys with the lack of faith and attention given by Mary, the mother of Jesus. You never find anyone saying anything like that after Nicaea.
As you may be aware, the institutional churches all eventually drifted into Mariolatry. It didn't happen all at once. It began with religious correctness in the fourth century, and it really took off after the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451. That council gave Mary the title of Theotokos, which was translated in the West as Mother of God. When you read Christian works written after that council, you find that they are typically filled with glorious and exalted references to Mary.
In contrast, in the pre-Nicene writings, there are not many discussions of Mary at all, other than brief references stating that Jesus was born from the Virgin Mary. Beliefs about the Trinity and Mary are not the only things that changed in the post-Nicene era. In the fourth century, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. So the doctrine of the two kingdoms was discarded in the fourth century. Soon Christians embraced war, and so the pre-Nicene teaching of non-resistance was also dropped.
It is not until centuries later in the writings of the Waldensians and Anabaptists that we find Christians again embracing the doctrine of the two kingdoms and non-resistance. So the teachings on these two subjects distinguish the writings of the pre-Nicene church from those of the post-Nicene state church. For example, Cyprian wrote in the year 250, "Wars are scattered all over the earth with the bloody horror of camps.
The whole world is wet with mutual blood, and murder, which is admitted to be a crime in the case of an individual, is called a virtue when it is committed wholesale.
Impunity is claimed for the wicked deeds not because they are guiltless, but because the cruelty is perpetrated on a grand scale." In the early part of the fourth century, but before Nicaea, Lactantius wrote, "How can a man be just who hates, who despoils, who puts to death, and those who strive to be serviceable to their country do all those things?" Again, you will not find Christian writers making statements like that after Christianity became the state religion in the fourth century.
After Christianity became the state religion, the institutional church embraced much of the pomp and ceremony that had characterized the pagan state religion. The Christian clergy began wearing the distinctive vestments of the Roman patricians. The state built ornate church buildings to worship in, and incense became a part of Sunday worship.
Yet the early Christians are very vocal in saying that they do not use incense in their worship, and they criticize the special vestments that the pagan priests wear, as well as the ornate temples they build to their gods. Now, why would anyone in the post-Nicene church who was creating fake copies of the early Christian writings make statements like that? And even bigger change is with regard to oaths. The pre-Nicene Christians are adamant that they don't take oaths.
There are numerous quotations in their writings to that effect. However, once Christianity became the state religion in the fourth century, the prohibition on oaths ended. Augustine said that what Jesus meant is that we shouldn't have to give oaths, but if the officials demand it, then we must comply. So surely, if someone were tampering with the early Christian writings, he would have removed all of these passages that were an indictment against post-Nicene Christianity.
Inasmuch as things began rapidly changing after Nicaea, the fourth-century church was left in an embarrassing situation with regards to the pre-Nicene writings. What do they do with them? The dilemma was that the post-Nicene church was claiming that it was teaching the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. So it could hardly launch a public campaign to locate and destroy all pre-Nicene writings or to locate them all and tamper with them all.
That would have made it obvious to the post-Nicene Christians that the church was changing the original faith. On the other hand, anyone who read the pre-Nicene writings would be able to see that the faith was changing. So what was the way out? Well, the way out was to claim that although the church was upholding the faith that had always been taught, God was now giving the church new light. With Constantine, God was ushering in a new era.
The prophecy of Revelation had now been fulfilled, where it says, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." That's Revelation 11:15. The church proclaimed that the creed ushered in at Nicaea was inspired of God and that it stood on the same level as scripture. Well, this enabled the church to maintain that it was upholding the original apostolic faith while ignoring the pre-Nicene writings.
The post-Nicene church said that the early Christians didn't have the full understanding of the faith that God had granted the church in this new era. At the same time, the early Christians weren't heretics. They simply didn't have the full light that God had given in later centuries. Now, taking that position was, of course, a bad turn for Christianity, but it was good for the integrity of the pre-Nicene writings. There was no need to alter them.
The church could simply ignore them or else brush off the pre-Nicene writers as not being fully enlightened yet. It's for that reason why the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox do not include any of the pre-Nicene Christians among their great church fathers. Instead, the great early church fathers for the Roman Catholic Church are Ambrose and Augustine, and particularly Augustine. For the Eastern Orthodox Church, the great fathers are Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom.
The great church father of the Coptic Church is Athanasius. And all of these men were post-Nicene church leaders. Now, please don't misunderstand me. All of those churches would refer to the pre-Nicene writers as church fathers, and they all quote from them. It's just that when the post-Nicene fathers contradict the pre-Nicene fathers, which Augustine does quite often, well, the church views the post-Nicene fathers as having it correct. They say, "Well, the post-Nicene fathers had more light.
God had revealed more by that time." Interestingly, the reformers didn't change any of this. Their doctrines didn't fit the early Christians either. In fact, in many respects, their gospel was further removed from the early Christians than that of the Roman Catholics. So they followed the same path taken by the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The early Christians were well-meaning but "primitive" in their understanding of scripture. Augustine understood the scriptures better than did the pre-Nicene Christians.
And of course, the reformers understood the Bible better than Augustine. That's the narrative that they put out. And that's still the narrative being put forward today. Every church, and I know of no exceptions, always feels that they have more light, that they better understand the scriptures than did the early Christians. So generally speaking, people don't tamper with the early Christian writings. They just ignore them.
But let's suppose for a minute that someone wanted to tamper with the early Christian writings. For example, let's pretend that the early Christians taught the doctrine of salvation by faith alone. And some Catholic monk living in the Middle Ages decided to tamper with one of the early Christian writings to make it look as though the early Christians believe that after we've been saved, it's necessary to obediently follow Christ throughout our lives.
He wants to go back to a really early time, so he decides he's going to doctor up Justin Martyr's First Apology, which was written about the year 150 or 160 AD. Well, let's imagine he ends up adding the following passage to Justin Martyr, a passage that you'll find in his work today.
It says this: "We hasten to confess our faith, persuaded and convinced as we are, that those who have proved to God by their works that they followed him and love to abide with him where there is no sin to cause disturbance can obtain these things. If men by their works show themselves worthy of his design, they are deemed worthy of reigning in company with him, being delivered from corruption and suffering. This is what we have received.
Those who choose what is pleasing to him are on account of their choice deemed worthy of incorruption and of fellowship with him." Okay, so let's imagine that that passage was added to Justin Martyr by a Roman Catholic monk in the Middle Ages. Well, that may seem easy enough, but hold on. There are at least 12 different passages in Justin Martyr's First Apology that talk about salvation.
So if you're going to add something there or change one of them, you're going to have to go and change all 12 passages, and you're going to have to do it in Greek in a style that matches Justin's style of writing. All right, let's imagine our monk has the ability to do that. So he changes all of the passages in Justin Martyr that talk about salvation and makes them all indicate that obedience is essential for salvation. So is he done now? Not in the least.
I say that because Justin's First Apology contains the statement, "We who formerly murdered one another now refrain from making war even upon our enemies." Hmm, that's not going to go over very well with the Roman Catholic authorities, is it? So our monk is going to need to delete that statement. But then he discovers another problem statement.
It says, "God has no need of streams of blood, libations, and incense." This presents a problem because the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages uses incense in its worship. So if he's wanting to doctor up Justin Martyr so he can show it to others, well, he's going to need to take that statement out because that's going to offend people and it's going to defeat his purpose. Okay, so he takes that out as well.
But then he noticed that Justin Martyr also says this, "And with regard to our not swearing at all and always speaking the truth, he," that's Jesus, "commanded as follows, swear not at all." Uh-oh, that's a big problem. During the Middle Ages, government, commerce, and society in general all turn on the use of oaths. This monk dare not raise the thought that swearing oaths might be wrong. So he's going to need to take that statement out as well. Well, is he finally home free after making all of those changes?
No, he still has the biggest hurdle ahead of him. Because he now realizes after going through the First Apology that there are over 20 passages in it where Justin discusses the deity of Christ and his relationship to the Father. Some of these passages would be acceptable to the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but not most of them.
For example, in one passage, Justin writes this, "We reasonably worship him," talking about Jesus, "having learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, and hold him in the second place, and the prophetic spirit in the third. They that talk about the pagans proclaim our madness to consist in this, that we give to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the creator of all." Ouch. That statement would get you burned at the stake during the Middle Ages.
Now, Justin is not talking about three levels of divinity, but rather three levels of order within the Trinity. The Father is the head, Jesus is second, and the Holy Spirit obeys both the Father and the Son. However, Augustine had completely confused nature and order, as I've mentioned, so he taught that there is no hierarchy of order in the Trinity, even though the Bible explicitly says that there is. And the Roman Catholic Church had adopted Augustine's misunderstanding of the Trinity.
So this monk is going to need to go through Justin's Apology and whitewash statement after statement. He is literally facing death if he doesn't do that. Well, in reality, Justin's First Apology, as we have it today, contains all of the statements I've just read to you. If a Roman Catholic monk had tampered with this work, surely we wouldn't find all of those statements in it because they go against Roman Catholic medieval theology.
What would be the point of changing a sentence here or there if in the end you would be afraid of making your doctored-up work public? Because it would get you in trouble. So the very text of Justin Martyr's First Apology, and it's the same with all of the pre-Nicene writings, they bear witness to themselves that they were written before the Council of Nicaea. That is not to say that nobody tried to tamper with the pre-Nicene writings. In fact, attempts were made.
During the Arian controversy in the fourth century, both before and after the Council of Nicaea, both sides brought forward passages from various pre-Nicene writers to bolster their views. Now, up to an extent, both sides could do that simply by cherry-picking various quotes from the pre-Nicene writings. However, not satisfied with that, they eventually began to manufacture fake passages from the pre-Nicene Christians.
Right after I read all of the extant works of the early Christian writers back in 1985, I immediately began reading the writings of the post-Nicene Christians. One of the first post-Nicene writers I read was Athanasius. As I was reading him, I noticed he was presenting quotations from the pre-Nicene writers that didn't sound anything like them.
In his quotations, the pre-Nicene Christians are very dogmatic and use highly technical theological language, carefully avoiding any terms that were religiously incorrect in the post-Nicene world. I was very suspicious, so I decided to look up his passages in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Well, guess what? They're nowhere to be found there.
To be sure, many of the early Christian writings are missing today, but it seems odd to me that the very writings in which some of the pre-Nicene Christians supposedly expressed themselves in the same language and spirit as the post-Nicene Church, that these writings would disappear. Why, those are the very writings that the post-Nicene Church would have wanted to preserve. It was all too obvious to me that Athanasius was using fake passages. Now, I'm not accusing him of creating these spurious quotes.
He may well have thought that they were genuine, but they weren't authentic. And to the best of my knowledge, every patristic scholar recognizes these passages as being spurious. I surmise that Arius used fake passages as well, but since his writings were destroyed by the state church, we'll never know. Well, after that initial attempt to try to create spurious passages from the early Christians, the post-Nicene Church seems to have given up on the idea.
Because there were so many different copies floating around, it was impossible to tamper with all of them, so the forgeries became rather apparent. After a while, the post-Nicene Church simply chose to ignore the pre-Nicene writers rarely quoting from them. Now, Origen was the exception. By the time of the Nicene Council, he had been dead for about 75 years. However, he was so famous as an early Christian teacher that both sides wanted to claim him as their own.
Furthermore, even after the Arian controversy settled, various Christians wanted to read his writings and circulate them, not for argumentative purposes, but just for their general insights on the scriptures. In other words, they didn't want Origen's writings to be forgotten and ignored the way the other writings were. One such person who appreciated Origen's writings was the fourth-century scholar, historian, and translator, Rufinus of Aquileia.
Rufinus wanted to preserve Origen's writings and to translate them into Latin because by the late fourth century, very few people in the western part of the Roman Empire were still reading Greek. Most of them read Latin only. But translating Origen's works presented a problem. Neither Origen nor any of the other pre-Nicene writers fit into the post-Nicene mold when it comes to the Trinity. What all of the pre-Nicene Christians say about the Father and Son was religiously incorrect soon after the Council of Nicaea.
So scholars today suspect that Rufinus tampered with Origen's writings a bit to make Origen appear religiously correct by fourth-century standards. In fact, a contemporary of Rufinus, Jerome, he accused Rufinus of doing that very thing too. Unfortunately, almost all of the Greek copies of Origen's works have disappeared. So the vast majority of Origen's writings we have today are from Rufinus' Latin translations.
Yet when Greek manuscripts of Origen have surfaced, we find that Rufinus was in general a very faithful translator. The only passages that are suspect are those in which Origen discusses the Father and Son in language that fits in with post-Nicene theology. Perhaps Rufinus tampered a bit with Origen to make him acceptable to the fourth-century Church. We don't know for sure. We can't say either Origen made contradictory statements about the Father and Son, or else Rufinus has made some modifications.
Nevertheless, with the exceptions I've mentioned, what forgers did was to produce totally new spurious works rather than to try to tamper with the authentic ones. And there are quite a number of spurious works in existence that pretend to be pre-Nicene writings. But these are all noted in the set of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. For example, someone in perhaps the fifth or sixth century created eight spurious letters of Ignatius. These were lost for many centuries, as were the genuine letters of Ignatius.
But when they were discovered, it was pretty obvious to everyone that these eight letters were fake. I'll read to you a short excerpt from one of them. This is from a supposed letter from Ignatius to the Apostle John. "Hasten then to come, for we believe that it is expedient.
There are also many of our women here who are desirous to see Mary of Jesus and wish day by day to run off from us to you that they may meet with her and touch those breasts of hers which nourish the Lord Jesus and may inquire of her respecting some rather secret matters. But Salome also, whom you love, who stayed with her five months at Jerusalem, and some other well-known persons, relayed that she is full of all graces and all virtues after the manner of a virgin.
She is the lady of our new religion and repentance and the handmaid among the faithful of all works of piety. We are informed by those who are worthy of credit there is in Mary, the mother of Jesus, an angelic purity of nature allied with the nature of humanity." Well, unfortunately, the impostor who attempted to pawn these letters off as works of Ignatius was apparently unfamiliar with the pre-Nicene writings from the time of Ignatius.
Or if he was familiar with them, he was apparently hoping that his readers wouldn't be. That's because none of the writers during the period of Ignatius ever talk about Mary's personal spiritual life, just as the scriptures never talk about her after the day of Pentecost. Mary certainly wasn't an object of adoration by the early Christians. It's not until the fifth century that you start getting this type of adulation of Mary. Other attempts to produce fake ante-Nicene writings have been even less successful.
Because the pre-Nicene Church lived in such a unique era, writings from that period are pretty hard to forge without sticking out like a sore thumb. The clumsy attempts that have been made give us that much more confidence that what we have is authentic and unadulterated. Let's return to the issue of the Roman Catholic Church. Most Protestants and evangelicals assume that the teachings of Martin Luther and the other magisterial reformers is the original pure gospel.
So when they hear about the writings of the early Christians, some of whom were companions of the apostles, they naturally expect that these writers will be teaching the same things as the reformers. When they discover that this isn't the case, then they immediately suspect that the Roman Catholics must have altered the pre-Nicene writings. But is that even logistically possible?
The Roman Catholic Church that we know today is the continuation of the Western institutional church that began to diverge from the East in the fifth century, which was the time when the Roman Empire was collapsing, at least in the West. Two things that particularly contrast the Western Roman Catholic Church with the Eastern Church is the heavy influence of Augustine on Western theology and also the fact that the Western Church, the Roman Catholic Church, was using Latin when the Eastern one was still using Greek.
Although the Roman Catholic Church came to have enormous power in the West, it never controlled the entire Christian world. In fact, it never even came close to it. Neither the Roman Catholic Church nor any other church ever had custody and control of all of the manuscripts of the early Christian writings. The manuscripts we have today were sheltered in a variety of geographical places, from Western Europe to Africa, from the Mideast to Russia.
Furthermore, these manuscripts have been preserved in a variety of languages: Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Amharic, Georgian, and Slavic. It simply wasn't humanly possible for the Roman Catholic Church to tamper with all of those manuscripts. Furthermore, next to the scriptures themselves, few ancient writings are better attested to than the early Christian writings. For example, the oldest Greek manuscript we have of the entire New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus. It dates back to the fourth century.
That Codex not only contains our New Testament, but it also contains two of the pre-Nicene writings: the Epistle of Barnabas and a portion of the Shepherd of Hermas. Now, this manuscript wasn't discovered until the 19th century. It had been stored away and forgotten in an Eastern Orthodox monastery on Mount Sinai. The Roman Catholic Church never knew anything about it, let alone having had custody of it.
Actually, archaeologists have uncovered papyri manuscripts that contain portions of the Shepherd of Hermas that date all the way back to about the year 290, several decades before the Council of Nicaea. Another early Bible manuscript, Codex Alexandrinus, contains the letter of Clement of Rome, as well as an early Christian sermon known as Second Clement. This manuscript dates back to the fifth century, and it was under the control of the Coptic Church in Egypt until the 1700s.
At that time, it was given to the King of England, and it resides now in the British Library. In fact, I've seen a copy of it. Again, the Roman Catholic Church never had custody or control over it, and again, it didn't even know of its existence. So you shouldn't imagine that the pre-Nicene writings were kept together in one place.
No, they were scattered throughout the ancient world, and many of them exist in several different manuscripts in various languages, all of which made it difficult to tamper with these writings without it being obvious. Another reason we can have confidence in the integrity of the pre-Nicene writings is the external corroboration given by the church historian Eusebius. He has played a major role in helping us to identify and verify the early Christian writings.
As the Roman Empire crumbled, the early Christian writings ended up in various parts of what had formerly been the Roman Empire. From there, copies were taken to distant places like Russia and translated into the language of these other countries. As I've said, no single person, no single church, and no single government had control over all of them.
Thankfully, in his History of the Church, which was probably written just before the Council of Nicaea, Eusebius talks about most of the pre-Nicene Christian writers from the time of the apostles to his day in detail, and he lists the names of their works. Not only that, he describes the contents of these works, and he often quotes lengthy passages from them. As a result, we know the names and authors of practically all the pre-Nicene writings, including many that are still lost.
We also know their subject matter, and we have sample passages from many of them. This has made it very easy to spot spurious works and to verify the ones that are authentic. Let me give you an example. In describing Ignatius' journey to Rome as a prisoner, and Ignatius was a bishop who had known the apostle John, and he was taken to Rome where he was martyred.
Anyway, in talking about these events, Eusebius writes this: "So when he came to Smyrna, where Polycarp was, he wrote an epistle to the church of Ephesus in which he mentions Onesimus, its pastor, and another to the church of Magnesia, situated upon the Maeander, in which he makes mention again of Bishop Domus. And finally, one to the church of Trallus, whose bishop he states was at that time Polybius.
In addition to these, he wrote also to the church of Rome entreating them not to secure his release for martyrdom and thus rob him of his earnest hope. In confirmation of what has been said, it is proper to quote briefly from this epistle." And now, Eusebius quotes—I'm not going to read you the entire passage. I'll just read to you part of it.
He writes as follows: "From Syria even unto Rome, I fight with wild beasts by land and by sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, that is, a company of soldiers who only become worse when they are well treated." And ends his quotation, or at least the part of it I'm going to read to you from Ignatius. Continuing on with Eusebius, he continues: "These things he wrote from the above-mentioned city to the churches referred to.
And when he had left Smyrna, he wrote again from Troas to the Philadelphians and to the church of Smyrna, and particularly to Polycarp, who presided over the last church. And since he knew him well as an apostolic man, he commended to him like a true and good shepherd the flock at Antioch and besought him to care diligently for it." So Eusebius tells us that Ignatius wrote seven letters. Those were to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Trallus, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, plus a letter to Polycarp.
Well, as a result, when fifteen letters of Ignatius eventually surfaced, scholars knew that eight of them were fakes. And it was easy to identify those fakes because they were addressed to people like Mary and the Apostle John, to whom the real Ignatius never wrote letters. And as I mentioned earlier, the contents of these spurious letters also made them stand out from the genuine ones, even if we didn't have Eusebius' list, but his list helps to corroborate things.
Plus, his quotations from the letters that Ignatius wrote to Rome and to Smyrna help scholars to know that for sure they had his genuine letters once they found them because they could go into these letters and look, aha, here's the passage that Eusebius quoted. It's right here, word for word in this letter. And it's not just the letters of Ignatius that Eusebius has helped us to verify. He quotes from the letter that Polycarp had written and from many other early Christians like Clement of Rome.
And so because of his quotations, we can be quite confident we have the genuine works because they contain those quotations. Even when he doesn't quote from a particular work, he often gives a synopsis of what it says. In other words, he's essentially furnished us with a roadmap to the early Christian writings that has helped scholars to find, identify, and verify the authenticity of the pre-Nicene writings. In conclusion, let's go over the points that we've been discussing.
First, we have the testimony of patristic scholars who all accept the writings in the Ante-Nicene Father set, with the exception of two or three works, as being authentic, unadulterated pre-Nicene writings, except for the works that in that set are labeled as being spurious. Second, we talked about the fact that the spirit and the tenor of the pre-Nicene writings demonstrate that they are from an era that was different from any period of church history since. There's a strong internal witness.
One of the characteristics of the pre-Nicene era is that Christians weren't dogmatic on various issues that the church was later very dogmatic about. Also, the pre-Nicene Christians didn't use the technical theological language that characterized the church after Nicaea. Third, we talked about the fact that after the Council of Nicaea, the church changed what Christians had always believed about the Father and the Son.
Now, in the East, the change wasn't enormous as to substance, but the change was still considerable when it came to the dogmatic spirit and the terminology used. But in the West, with Augustine, the change in the doctrine of the Trinity was not only a change in spirit and in terminology, but also a change in substance.
And as a result of these changes about the Trinity, it's very easy to identify about three-fourths of the early Christian writings based merely on what they say about the Father and the Son, because no one would have said those same things if they were writing from a different time period. Fourth, we talked about the fact that the early Christians used words and phrases that later became spiritually incorrect, even though those words and phrases are completely biblical.
One example is Jesus' statement, "The Father is greater than I." The early Christians took that simply on face value. But after Nicaea, no one quotes that verse without adding an explanation saying that Jesus really didn't mean what he seemed to be saying here. Another example of a term that became spiritually incorrect after Nicaea is the word "create" in reference to the begetting of the Son.
As used in the New Testament, that term has a broad meaning, including "beget." But after Nicaea, the theologians defined the word "create" very narrowly as only meaning to make out of nothing. So no one dared to use that word after Nicaea, and they even avoided scriptures that use that word in reference to Jesus.
So if someone in the post-Nicene world had been tampering with the pre-Nicene writings, they would have surely deleted the word "create" out of their writings when referring to the eternal begetting of the Son. Fifth, we talked about other doctrines or practices that changed during the century after Nicaea. Among these were the teachings about Mary, on the two kingdoms, non-resistance, and the use of incense and vestments in worship.
Those changes help us to distinguish pre-Nicene writings from post-Nicene writings. Next, we discussed the fact that instead of trying to alter all of the pre-Nicene writings, after the Council of Nicaea, the church proclaimed that it now had more light than the first Christians had. This allowed the church to simply ignore the earlier Christian writings as simply not having enough light. We also noted that the few attempts that were made to produce forgeries have been easily detected.
In fact, no single church or government had control over all of the early Christian manuscripts, so there was no human way to doctor so many manuscripts written and translated into so many different languages. Finally, we talked about the role of Eusebius, the church historian.
In his History of the Church, written just before the Council of Nicaea, he discussed all of the Christian writers up to his time, listing the names of their writings, describing the contents of their works, and often quoting long passages from them. This provides us with both a roadmap and a verification check for the pre-Nicene writings. In short, next to the scriptures, there are no ancient works that are better attested to than the pre-Nicene Christian writings.
The internal evidence of the writings set them apart from anything else written throughout church history. And the external testimony of Eusebius' roadmap provides us with an extra corroboration. However, the fact that we can trust the writings will do none of us any good unless we take advantage of this wonderful gift left to us from the church of so long ago. Reading their writings changed my entire life and opened up my eyes to the kingdom of God and to the plain language of scripture.
They can do the same for you.