Answer for yourself: Have you ever stopped and considered the competency of the early Church Fathers especially in light of the fact they you trust them today to have selected and preserved the Word of God in the New Testament for you which you are staking your eternal life upon? Have you ever studied out what they wrote or said in their writings? Were they competent for the task? Can we see the Holy Spirit in what they said and did?
Answer for yourself: Have you ever invested your time to personally inquire into these issues, or have you like most just taken the New Testament as handed down from these men for millennia and accepted it without question because of "church tradition?"
Most likely you haven't. Few have I find out as most Christians have implicitly been taught to accept that the Holy Spirit led these men in the selection of the books in the Christian New Testament. Maybe you are beginning to doubt somewhat; especially since reading these articles you have seen that most likely the apostles of Jesus had little if anything to do with the writing of the Gospels which carry their names.
It never ceases to amaze me how the Protestant, who refused to be a Catholic and disbelieves Catholic dogma and doctrine, readily accepts the Catholic Bible as it was these same men who were given these "doctrines" supposedly by the Holy Spirit who put together, added to, and deleted from the New Testament supposedly by the same Holy Spirit. Thank goodness that the New Testament is correct but the doctrines of the men who put it together are wrong. It just seem ridiculous does it not?
Since the early Christian Fathers originated the theory that the books of the New Testament are inspired, the question arises, "Where they competent to do so?" The popular idea is that they were learned, profound, venerable men, worthy of the highest respect; and so vigorously has this been enforced, that one of the charges on which Servetus was burned to death by John Calvin was that he had spoken disrespectfully of the Fathers ("Servetus and Calvin," by R.Willis, M.D., London, 1877, p. 308). The facts are quite the reverse. The early Christian Fathers were extremely ignorant and superstitious; and they were singularly incompetent to deal with the supernatural. The men who laid the foundation of the canon were Irenaeus (200 A.D.), Clement of Alexandria (210 A.D.), and Tertullian (220 A.D.)., and of them Prof. Davidson says:
"The infancy of the canon was cradled in an uncritical age, and rocked with traditional ease. Conscientious care was not directed from the first to the well-authenticated testimony of eye-witnesses. Of the three Fathers who contributed most to its early growth, Irenaeus was credulous and blundering. Tertullian passionate and one-sided, and Clement of Alexandria, imbued with the treasure of Greek wisdom, was mainly occupied with ecclesiastical ethics….(Their) assertions show both ignorance and exaggeration" (The Canon of the Bible, 155).
Some citations will illustrate for you the mental characteristics and competency of those who selected and chose for you a "new" Bible that replaced the one Jesus used.
You should be familiar with the fable of the phoenix, which was said to renew its life every five hundred years.
Clement of Rome (100 A.D.) thought it had an actual existence, and he asserted that it was typical of the resurrection (Ep. Ad Corinth, xxv. P. 123). Tertullian believed the same thing (De Resurrect., 13, vol. 2., p 236). Celsus, the noted anti-Christian writer, used this fact to illustrate the credulity of the early Christians, and Origen defended the fable rather than accept the just criticism (Contra Celsum, iv. 98). The writer of the Epistle of Barnabas believed an ancient superstition that the hyena changed its sex every year, being alternately male and female (Ep. Barnabas, ch. x), that a hare had as many young as it was years old, that a weasel conceived with its mouth, that the reason why men should eat only animals with a cloven hoof was because the righteous people lived in this world, but had expectations in the next through reincarnation (Ep. Barnabas, ch. x). Justin Martyr (150 A.D.) believed in demons. He said that they were the offspring of angels who loved the daughters of men (Apol. ii, 5), that insane people (demoniacs) were possessed and tortured by the souls of the wicked who had died in their sins (Ibid., i. 18), and that this was a proof of the immortality of the soul.
Answer for yourself: Did you catch that? For Justin Martyr, one of the most important of the Greek philosopher-Apologists in the early church, whose writings represent the first positive encounter of Christian revelation with Greek philosophy and laid the basis for a theology which we have been taught today, believed that mental illness was proof of the immortality of the soul?
And we accept the religious doctrines and replacement religion set forth by this man without question Sunday after Sunday. It look like his judgment is off quite considerably to me.
He even said angels eat manna (Dial., 57). Has he ever had lunch with them?
Athenagoras (168 A.D.) declared that the strong belief of Christians that angels have been distributed by the Logos throughout the universe, and that they were kept busy regulating the whole (Legatio pro Christ., x). Some of the angels loved the daughters of men, and fell, and thus were begotten giants, or demons (Ibid., xxiv). These last roamed about the world, performing the evil deeds peculiar to their natures (Ibid., xxv.).
Theophilus (180 A.D.) said that the pains of women in child-birth and the fact that serpents crawl on their bellies were proofs that the account of the fall, as given in Genesis, was true (Ad Autol., ii 23).
Tertullian believed that the hyena changed its sex (De Pallio, 3), and that the stag renewed its youth by eating poisonous snakes (Ad Scap., 3), and that eclipses and comets were signs of God's anger and forerunners of national disasters (Ad Scap., 3), and that volcanoes were openings into hell (De Penitentia, 12), and that the volcanic condition was a punishment inflicted on the mountains to serve as a warning to the wicked (De Penitentia, 12), that demons sent diseases upon the bodies of men (Apol., 22), blighted apples and grain (Apol., 22), and produced accidents and untimely death (De Anima, 57). He said that a corpse in a cemetery once kindly moved to make room for another corpse to be placed beside it (Ibid., 51).
Answer for yourself: Did you catch the above? We have been talking about the "big shots" in the history of early Christianity and it seems they were highly steeped in superstition more than truth. I don't know about you but how can you trust such a one with such judgment and beliefs for anything of a spiritual nature? This sounds more like X-files than the Holy Spirit.
Clement of Alexandria (220 A.D.) said that hail storms, tempests, and plagues were caused by demons (Strom., vi. 3), that credulity was necessary to render faith easy (Strom., ii. 6), and that events in the life of Abraham were typical and prophetical of arithmetic and astronomy (Ibid., vi 11). He kindly allowed that Jews and Gentile would have the gospel preached to them in hell thus accepting another sun-myth (Strom., vi. 6). Clement's imagination was naturally lascivious. His chapter on the immodesty of Pagan women in the bath (Paedag., iii. 5) betrays his hatred for the upper classes and shows that if a bishop in the Church could use such language, the early Christians of Alexandria must have been from the very lowest grades of society. While this indignant at the supposed wickedness of the heathen, he wrote a book so unseemly (Strom., iii) that the English editors did not venture to translate it, and in it he quotes probably more from the Bible than in any of his other books.
Origen (254 A.D.) said that the sun, moon, and stars were living creatures, endowed with reason and free will, and occasionally inclined to sin (De Princip., i. 7). He was not certain if the celestial orbs and their "souls" were created at the same time as their initial creation. The light emitted by them was not the reflection of the sun, but light from knowledge and wisdom as reflected from the Eternal light. He maintained the stars and planets had "free will" and that they were rational creatures because they moved in the sky (De Princip., i. 7). The sun, moon, and stars, according to him, were "subject to vanity" (De Princip., i. 7), and they prayed to God through his only begotten Son (Contra Celsum, v. 11).
Answer for yourself: Did you catch that? Again, I don't know about you but how can you trust such a one with such judgment and beliefs for anything of a spiritual nature? This sounds more like X-files than the Holy Spirit.
Famine, the blighting of vines and fruit trees, and the destruction of beasts and men, were all the work of demons (Contra Celsum, viii. 31).
Lactantius (325 A.D.) believed that demons entered men and injured them through the viscera, producing diseases and mental distempters (Epitome of the Divine Institutes, 28), but that the sign of the cross (from sun worship) would drive them away (Divine Institutes, vi. 27). Well, that makes me feel better.
Cyril of Jerusalem (386 A.D.). quoted from Clement the story of the phoenix, and declared that God had created the bird expressly to enable men to believe in the resurrection (Catech., xviii. 8). He said it was a wonderful bird; and yet it was irrational-it did not sing psalms to God, and it knew nothing of His only begotten Son (Ibid., 244).
Answer for yourself: Did you catch that? Again, I don't know about you but how can you trust such a one with such judgment and beliefs for anything of a spiritual nature? Of course the bird would not know of the Son of God had it existed in the first place; it was a bird in the first place!
St. Chrysostom (407 A.D.) believed the air was filled with angels (In Ascens., J.C.). Jerome (430 A.D.) believed just the opposite; that the air was filled with demons (Epis. To Ephes., iii.6).
St. Augustine's (430 A.D.) New Testament was the same as ours today. Now we begin to see conformity of New Testament texts after the influence of St. Augustine. The influence of St. Augustine in establishing the Bible was greater probably than any other Father or than any council. People now attribute to God what was really the work of one man. But when we really study the man his judgment is not to be trusted in anything let alone the selection of the canon or the creation of Christian doctrine of which he is credited. Just read this and think.
The incredible and very ridiculous stories related by Christian Fathers and ecclesiastical historians, on whom we are obliged to rely for information on the most important of subjects, show us how untrustworthy these men were. We have, for instance, the story related by St. Augustine, who is styled 'the greatest of the Latin Fathers,' of his preaching the Gospel to people without heads. In his 33d Sermon he says: 'I was already Bishop of Hippo, when I went into Ethiopia with some servants of Christ there to preach the Gospel. In this country we saw many men and women without heads, who had two great eyes in their breasts; and in countless still more southly, we saw people who had but one eye in their foreheads'" (Taylor, Syntagma, p. 52).
Answer for yourself: How can you trust such a man to determine for you what books are to be in your New Testament let alone the Bible? Did the Holy Spirit have an off day when St. Augustine preached to people with one-eye in each breast or when he preached to people without heads or who had only one eye in their foreheads, but yet led St. Augustine into all truth concerning the canon for us today? Is this man trustworthy and what about the vast other stuff he said, or does this information impugn every thing he ever said and wrote?
St. Augustine (430 A.D.) likewise believed in demons. They tried to deceive men by persuading them that they were g-ds (De Civit. Del., viii. 22). They were called demons from the Greek "daimones" on account of their knowledge. To the early Fathers exact learning was devilish. Reading this web-page would make you a candidate for being declared "possessed."
Answer for yourself: Can you imagine that after reading what you just read?
St. Augustine also believed that there was also a class of satyrs and fauns called "Incubi," to whose lascivious attacks and sexual rape women were constantly subject. Hollywood would have loved this and in fact has made several movies about this phenomena. As if that was not enough he also believed that demons termed by the Gauls "Dusii" perpetrated daily the same uncleanness. He maintained that there was so much trustworthy evidence that to deny it was an impertinence (Ibid., xv. 23). So real and so universal was the belief in these lewd spirits that, in 1894, Innocent VIII issued a Papal bull against these spirits. Incredible!
The erroneous and grotesque beliefs of the Christian Fathers could be quoted until they filled a large volume, but these few will illustrate the intellectual condition of the ages which originated and transmitted the New Testament to us. It will be said that the Fathers were as good as their times. That can not be maintained. They were not even as good. In short, the sum of the charge against the Fathers is that they were not competent to tell what was evidence of a fact and what was not. They cited as evidence of a theory things which are not in the slightest degree such, and they would look directly into the face of evidence which established theories they did not endorse, and would still be unable to see that it was evidence. Now, if the Fathers were great scholars, like you have been led to believe, they would not have been so persistently in the wrong. They should have see the truth at least as easily as the others did; like the Jewish scholars and Rabbis for instance. What has become of the names and the memories of the men in those day who had the truth and stood up for the truth against such absurdity? Are they even yet called great? The Christian Church has been honoring the wrong persons.
Admitting, for the sake of argument, that these Christian Fathers were as great as their time, I deny that they or their age were competent to form a Bible for their age.
But one apology has ever been made for these remarkable errors of the Fathers, and that is "spiritual insight." Christian defenders say that, while the Fathers were ignorant, stupid, limited in intelligence, and even superstitious, they were yet "gifted with great spiritual insight." This term signifies the possibility of perceiving something which does not exist and where it does not exist. It is synonymous with "unlimited credulity."
Not alone in nature, but also in literature, the Fathers were ignorant and unscholarly. Jerome and Origen were the only ones who could read Hebrew (Davidson, On The Canon, of the Bible, p. 170). Justin Martyr quotes from Jeremiah and calls it Isaiah (Apol. i. 54). Clement of Alexandria quotes as Scripture passages which are not in the Bible at all (Strom., ii 6). He quotes as Paul's, words which are not in Paul (Strom., vi. 5). In quoting from an opponent he would insert words not in the original (Strom., ii. 4), and he even does the same in quoting from the Bible (On Chastity, vii). Tertullian quotes as in Leviticus a passage not in that book (On Monogamy, vi.). He misquotes history (Strom., iv. 26). Tertullian cites as Isaiah a passage not in that book, but in Revelation (On Modesty, vi). Besides that he is frequently inaccurate in a great number of his quotations.
The Gospel writers, supposedly under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, committed the same blunders. The man who wrote the Gospel of Matthew attributes to Jeremiah (Matt. 27:9) a passage which is in Zechariah (Zech. 11:12-13). The writer of the Gospel of Mark attributes to Isaiah (Mark. 1:2) a passage which is in Malachi (Mal. 3:1). The early manuscripts insert the name of Isaiah as the authority but the later ones omitted it because it was such a clear error.
One curious illustration of this, and of how sacred books are formed, is seen in the excess of the Catholic over the Protestant Bible. The former has quite a number of books which are not in the latter; such as the two of Maccabees and the Song of the Three Children-which Protestants call the apocryphal Old Testament, but which Catholics consider as much the word of God as any other books. The ancient Jews did not consider these authoritative, and the Palestinian Jews did not include them in the sacred collection. The Greek Jews, however, thought more of them, and the Alexandrian Jews placed them in an appendix to the Greek canons as the end of their Bibles, the same as they used to be printed in our old Bibles. The early Christians of Africa could not read Hebrew; they had to use the Greek manuscripts, and as they saw the apocryphal books in the collection, they supposed they were a part of it. The result was that the early Bible-makers in the African church included the apocryphal books because they were not intelligent enough to leave them out (Davidson, On The Canon of the Bible, p. 83). St. Augustine included them because he found them there, and the Catholic Church retained them because St. Augustine did.
So, there you have a rather quick over-view on the competency of those who chose the books for the New Testament, added and subtracted books, added to them as well as took from them, edited them, and were responsible for the New Testament as we have it today. Honestly, these accounts do not foster confidence. The years of study invested by me has shown me the utter unreliability of the New Testament for one's faith and practice of such faith; let alone a plan of salvation for the world to come. It is my hope after your examination of our other web-sites where we detail the multiple errors, the purposeful misquotations, mistranslations, and verses lifted out of context from the Old Testament and show you how they where used completely in a different way in the New Testament along with supposed prophetic authority, that you are coming to see how the faith of Jesus was perverted by the early Gentile Church. This article is just another puzzle part for surely after reading this you should have many doubts about the competency of those who chose for you what was and was not God's Word, and those affiliated with the movements these men represented. Hopefully you are becoming more serious in your study into why we were given a New Testament in the first place; let alone be given a Bible that replaced the one Jesus read. Shalom.