‍The Alleged Protestantism of the Early Church

‍Were the teachings of the early Church Protestant or Catholic?

  Gary Hoge  ·  October 21, 2026

‍Introduction

‍Some Christians believe that the Catholic Church originated with the Roman emperor Constantine, following the Edict of Milan in 313, which granted Christianity legal recognition and religious freedom. According to this view, the Church gradually abandoned the pure Christianity of the apostles and adopted doctrines and practices borrowed from paganism. The Protestant Reformation was therefore a restoration of the original Christian faith.

‍This view is expressed by Protestant author Loraine Boettner in his book Roman Catholicism:

‍Thousands of people who still were pagans pressed into the church in order to gain special advantages and favors that went with such membership. They came in in far greater numbers than could be instructed or assimilated. Having been used to the more elaborate pagan rituals, they were not satisfied with the simple Christian worship but began to introduce their heathen beliefs and practices. Gradually, through the neglect of the Bible and the ignorance of the people, more and more heathen ideas were introduced until the church became more heathen than Christian.¹

‍Other Protestant writers place the beginning of Catholicism somewhat later. Fritz Ridenour, for example, identifies the fifth-century papacy of Leo I as a turning point:

‍In the middle of the fifth century, Leo, bishop of Rome, commanded, through an edict from the emperor, that all should obey the Bishop of Rome because he held the “Primacy of St. Peter.” Through the Pope, as Peter's successor, Peter would continue to minister as one who held the “keys to the Kingdom.” Leo's claim was widely disputed, particularly by the eastern wing of the church (centered around Constantinople) . . . As the Western church grew, it began to add certain doctrines that were not in the Bible. Not everyone agreed with these new teachings primarily because they were not supported by Scripture.²

‍There is an interesting problem with the first of these theories. The contents of the New Testament we have today were not universally settled until well after Constantine. Those books had already been written, of course, but Christians did not agree about which books belonged in the New Testament. Some questioned books such as James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation, while others accepted writings such as The Shepherd of Hermas as Scripture.

‍The fourth-century councils that recognized the New Testament canon operated within the very Church that Boettner describes as having become “more heathen than Christian.” If that Church had already abandoned the apostolic faith, why should we trust its judgment about which books belong in the New Testament?

‍Even Martin Luther acknowledged that Protestants had received the Word of God from the Catholic Church, and that without the Church they would have no knowledge of it at all.³

‍But there is a more fundamental problem with the theory of a primitive Protestant Church that gradually became Catholic: It doesn't agree with what the earliest Christians actually believed.

‍We have a substantial body of Christian literature from the first three centuries, written by men who lived long before Constantine. Some of these men knew the apostles personally, while others were taught by their successors. Their writings tell us a great deal about what Christians believed and how they worshiped.

‍And what we find is remarkable. These early Christians taught many of the very doctrines that some Protestants regard as later Catholic inventions.

‍My purpose here is not to prove these doctrines from Scripture. It is to determine whether they were later additions to Christianity. If the Catholic Church invented them centuries after the apostles, we should not find them being taught by Christians who lived during the first, second, and third centuries.

‍But we do.

‍The name “Catholic”

‍The word Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning “universal.” It was used to designate the Christian Church long before Constantine.

‍The earliest surviving use of the term in Christian literature appears in a letter written by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, around 110. Ignatius was a contemporary of the apostolic generation and wrote while being taken to Rome for martyrdom. In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, he declared:

‍Let no one do anything of concern to the Church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop or by one whom he ordains. Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.⁴

‍Only a few decades later, the account of Polycarp's martyrdom, written by Christians at Smyrna, described him as:

‍The wonderful martyr Polycarp, who in our days was an apostolic and prophetic teacher, bishop of the Catholic Church in Smyrna.⁵

‍By the beginning of the fourth century, Lactantius was using the term to distinguish the true Church from heretical groups. In his Divine Institutes, he wrote:

‍It is, therefore, the Catholic Church alone which retains true worship. This is the fountain of truth; this, the domicile of faith; this, the temple of God. Whoever does not enter there or whoever does not go out from there, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation.⁶

‍Many Protestants today understand the “holy catholic church” of the ancient creeds as an invisible fellowship of all true believers. But that is not generally how the early Christians used the expression.

‍Protestant historian J. N. D. Kelly explains the early Christian understanding of the term in his Early Christian Doctrines:

‍As regards “Catholic” . . . in the latter half of the second century at latest, we find it conveying the suggestion that the Catholic is the true Church as distinct from heretical congregations. . . . What these early fathers were envisaging was almost always the empirical, visible society; they had little or no inkling of the distinction which was later to become important between a visible and an invisible Church.⁷

‍The Catholic Church, understood as a visible community distinguished from heretical congregations, was not an invention of Constantine. It existed centuries before him.

‍Church authority and apostolic succession

‍Catholics believe that Jesus entrusted authority to his apostles, who passed that authority to their successors. This is the doctrine of apostolic succession. Catholics also believe that the bishop of Rome, as Peter's successor, possesses a special responsibility for the unity of the Church.

‍Were these ideas invented centuries after the apostles?

‍Around the end of the first century, Clement, bishop of Rome, wrote to the Christians at Corinth concerning a dispute in which some of their legitimate leaders had been removed. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, he explained that the apostles had made provision for their successors:

‍Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.⁸

‍In the same letter, Clement warned the Corinthians about disobeying his instructions:

‍If anyone disobey the things which have been said by him [God] through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and in no small danger.⁹

‍Notice what is happening here. The Church of Rome is intervening in the internal affairs of another apostolic church, hundreds of miles away, and doing so in remarkably authoritative language. Clement does not merely offer an opinion. He warns that disobedience carries serious spiritual consequences.

‍A few years later, Ignatius of Antioch described the authority of bishops, priests, and deacons in his Letter to the Trallians:

‍In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church.¹⁰

‍Toward the end of the second century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, appealed explicitly to apostolic succession as a means of distinguishing authentic Christian teaching from heresy. In Against Heresies, he wrote:

‍[I]t is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the infallible charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father.¹¹

‍In the same work, Irenaeus singled out the Roman Church:

‍With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition.¹²

‍Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, writing in the middle of the third century, spoke of Peter's special place among the apostles in his treatise On the Unity of the Catholic Church:

‍Although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair, and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were also what Peter was, but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair.¹³

‍These writers did not understand the Church as a collection of independent congregations, each free to determine Christian doctrine for itself. They understood it as a visible, authoritative institution governed by successors of the apostles.

‍Whatever disagreements Christians may have about the precise extent of papal authority, apostolic succession, episcopal government, and the special significance of the Roman Church were clearly not medieval inventions.

‍Baptism

‍Many Protestants today regard baptism primarily as a symbolic testimony of faith. Catholics, along with Eastern Orthodox Christians and many Protestants, believe that baptism is ordinarily the means by which God forgives sins and brings about spiritual regeneration.

‍Baptismal regeneration

‍Around the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr described Christian baptism in his First Apology:

‍Then they are brought by us where there is water and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father . . . and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water.¹⁴

‍Near the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria described baptism in his Instructor as:

‍A washing by which we are cleansed of sins, a gift of grace by which the punishments due our sins are remitted, an illumination by which we behold that holy light of salvation.¹⁵

‍Writing in the early third century, Tertullian was equally explicit in his treatise On Baptism:

‍Baptism itself is a corporal act by which we are plunged into the water, while its effect is spiritual, in that we are freed from our sins.¹⁶

‍These writers did not regard baptism as merely an outward symbol of something that had already happened. They believed that God actually accomplished something through it.

‍Infant baptism

‍Some Protestants baptize infants, while others insist that baptism should be reserved for those old enough to make a personal profession of faith.

‍But infant baptism was practiced centuries before Constantine.

‍Origen, writing in the third century, explained in his Homilies on Leviticus:

‍In the Church baptism is given for the remission of sins, and, according to the usage of the Church, baptism is given even to infants. If there were nothing in infants which required the remission of sins and nothing in them pertinent to forgiveness, the grace of baptism would seem superfluous.¹⁷

‍More significantly, Origen expressly attributed the practice to the apostles in his Commentary on Romans:

‍The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants.¹⁸

‍Whether one accepts Origen's claim of apostolic origin or not, his testimony establishes that infant baptism was already an established Christian practice long before Constantine.

‍Confession and serious sin

‍Catholics believe that Christ gave his Church authority to forgive sins and that Christians can forfeit their salvation through serious, unrepented sin.

‍These ideas, too, appear in the earliest Christian literature.

‍Confession of sins

‍The Didache, an early Christian manual of instruction and worship dating from the late first or early second century, commands:

‍Confess your sins in church, and do not go up to your prayer with an evil conscience.¹⁹

‍By the third century, Christian writers explicitly described confession to priests. Origen, in his Homilies on Leviticus, wrote:

‍[A final method of forgiveness], albeit hard and laborious, [is] the remission of sins through penance, when the sinner . . . does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord and from seeking medicine.²⁰

‍Cyprian of Carthage similarly urged Christians in his treatise On the Lapsed to:

‍Confess their sins to the priests of God in a straightforward manner and in sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience.²¹

‍The precise form of sacramental confession developed over the centuries, but the belief that forgiveness and reconciliation involved the ministry of the Church was present long before the Middle Ages.

‍Mortal sin and the loss of salvation

‍Some Protestants believe that a person who has genuinely been saved can never lose his salvation. Others believe that salvation can be forfeited through apostasy or serious sin.

‍What did the early Christians believe?

‍The Shepherd of Hermas, a widely read early Christian work from the second century, warns:

‍As many as do not repent at all, but abide in their deeds, shall utterly perish. . . . But if any one relapse into strife, he will be cast out of the tower [the Church], and will lose his life.²²

‍Toward the end of the second century, Irenaeus described eternal life as God's gift to those who persevered. In Against Heresies, he wrote:

‍[He] may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian life], and others from [the date of] their penance.²³

‍The early Christians took seriously the biblical warnings about falling away from the faith. They did not teach that a Christian's subsequent conduct was irrelevant to his final salvation.

‍Prayer to the saints and for the dead

‍Catholics believe that the saints in heaven intercede for Christians on earth, that we may ask for their prayers, and that our prayers can benefit the faithful departed.

‍These beliefs also have ancient roots.

‍The intercession of the saints

‍Clement of Alexandria, writing around the beginning of the third century, described the Christian at prayer in his Stromata:

‍He also prays in the society of angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him.²⁴

‍Origen was even more explicit in his treatise On Prayer:

‍But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels . . . as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep.²⁵

‍Cyprian, writing to another bishop in the middle of the third century, expressed the hope that their mutual intercession would continue after death:

‍Let us on both sides always pray for one another. . . . If one of us . . . shall go hence the first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father's mercy.²⁶

‍These passages establish that early Christians believed the faithful departed continued to pray for those still on earth. The practice of directly asking departed saints for their intercession is attested more explicitly in later Christian sources.

‍Prayer for the dead

‍The practice of praying for the dead is also ancient.

‍The epitaph of Abercius, a Christian bishop of the late second century, concludes with a request for prayer:

‍May everyone who is in accord with this and who understands it pray for Abercius.²⁷

‍Writing in the early third century, Tertullian described a Christian widow who prayed for her deceased husband in his treatise On Monogamy:

‍A woman, after the death of her husband . . . prays for his soul and asks that he may, while waiting, find rest; and that he may share in the first resurrection. And each year, on the anniversary of his death, she offers the sacrifice.²⁸

‍Prayer for the dead fits naturally with the Catholic belief that those who die in God's grace may still undergo a final purification before entering heaven.

‍The full theological explanation of purgatory developed over time, but the practice of praying for the departed was not a medieval innovation. It was part of Christian life centuries before Constantine.

‍The Eucharist

‍Catholics believe that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ and that the Mass makes present his one sacrifice on Calvary.

‍Both beliefs are found in the writings of the early Christians.

‍The Real Presence

‍Around 110, Ignatius of Antioch condemned certain heretics because:

‍They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again.²⁹

‍Notice that Ignatius regarded denial of the Eucharist as Christ's flesh as a mark of heresy.

‍Justin Martyr described the Eucharist about forty years later:

‍For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer . . . is both the flesh and blood of that Incarnated Jesus.³⁰

‍The belief that the Eucharist is truly Christ's body and blood was therefore being taught within living memory of the apostles. Ignatius and Justin did not present it as a new doctrine, but as the faith Christians had received.

‍The sacrifice of the Mass

‍Catholics believe that the Mass makes present Christ's one sacrifice on Calvary, not that Christ dies or is sacrificed again. But did the early Christians understand the Eucharist as a sacrifice, or merely as a commemorative meal?

‍The Didache, written in the late first or early second century, instructed Christians:

‍Assemble on the Lord's day, and break bread and offer the Eucharist; but first make confession of your faults, so that your sacrifice may be a pure one.³¹

‍Ignatius of Antioch referred to the Eucharist in explicitly sacrificial language:

‍Make certain, therefore, that you all observe one common Eucharist; for there is but one Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and but one cup of union with his Blood, and one single altar of sacrifice.³²

‍Justin Martyr identified the Eucharist with the pure offering foretold by the prophet Malachi:

‍He then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us [Christians] who in every place offer sacrifices to him, that is, the bread of the Eucharist and also the cup of the Eucharist.³³

‍Irenaeus made the same connection:

‍He taught the new sacrifice of the new covenant, of which Malachi, one of the twelve [minor] prophets, had signified beforehand.³⁴

‍The evidence is striking. Within the first two centuries of Christianity, we find the Eucharist described as Christ's body and blood, celebrated at an altar, and explicitly identified as the sacrifice of the New Covenant.

‍These were not medieval additions to Christian worship. They were already part of the faith and practice of the ancient Church.

‍Scripture and Tradition

‍One of the defining principles of the Protestant Reformation was *sola Scriptura*, the belief that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of Christian faith.

‍Catholics, on the other hand, believe that the apostles transmitted their teachings both in writing and orally, and that the Church preserves this apostolic Tradition alongside Scripture.

‍Which approach did the early Christians follow?

‍Irenaeus, writing toward the end of the second century, appealed to the Tradition preserved in the churches founded by the apostles:

‍What if the Apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of Tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches?³⁵

‍Origen likewise described the Church's teaching as something received through an unbroken succession:

‍The teaching of the Church has indeed been handed down through an order of succession from the Apostles and remains in the churches even to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and Apostolic Tradition.³⁶

‍More than a century later, Basil the Great expressed the relationship between Scripture and Tradition in unmistakable terms:

‍Of the dogmas and messages preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching and others we receive from the Tradition of the Apostles, handed on to us in mystery. In respect to piety both are of the same force.³⁷

‍These Christians did not regard the written Scriptures as the only authoritative means by which apostolic teaching was transmitted. They also appealed to the teachings handed down through the churches established by the apostles.

‍The early Church certainly revered Scripture as the inspired Word of God. But the idea that Christians should disregard unwritten apostolic Tradition in favor of Scripture alone is not what we find in these ancient witnesses.

‍Conclusion: Restoration or distortion?

‍What have we discovered?

‍Long before Constantine, Christians called their Church Catholic. They believed in apostolic succession, episcopal authority, baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, confession of sins, the intercession of the saints, prayer for the dead, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the authority of apostolic Tradition.

‍These beliefs were not confined to one isolated community. We find them in the writings of Christians living in different centuries and in different parts of the ancient world.

‍And these writers did not present their teachings as innovations. They believed they were preserving the faith handed down by the apostles.

‍This presents a serious problem for the claim that the Protestant Reformation restored the original Christian faith.

‍Consider the doctrine of forensic justification, the Reformation teaching that God justifies sinners by crediting Christ's righteousness to them. Protestant apologist Norman Geisler acknowledged:

‍[T]hese valuable insights into the doctrine of justification had been largely lost throughout much of Christian history, and it was the Reformers who recovered this biblical truth . . . During the patristic, and especially the later medieval periods, forensic justification was largely lost. . . . One can be saved without believing that imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) is an essential part of the true gospel. Otherwise, few people were saved between the time of the apostle Paul and the Reformation, since scarcely anyone taught imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) during that period!³⁸

‍Think about what this means. For the Reformers, justification by faith alone was at the very heart of the gospel. Yet Geisler acknowledges that their understanding of justification was scarcely taught during much of Christian history. Maybe this should have been a clue that it was a novelty and not part of the faith once delivered to the saints, much less its very heart.

‍And the problem is not limited to justification. If the Reformers were right about the doctrines they rejected, then the Christians who inherited their faith from the apostles must have misunderstood some of the most fundamental teachings of Christianity.

‍Catholic author and former Protestant Mark Shea illustrates the difficulty of believing this theory:

‍It meant that for sixty years of blood, sweat, and toil, the apostles made thousands of disciples so stupid that they could not grasp the most elementary teachings of their faith. It meant believing that their churches—all of them in north, south, east, and west—paganized Christianity (and paganized it everywhere in the same way) the instant the apostles died. It meant believing that these churches, together with their overseers who had been handpicked by the apostles, were constantly engaged in a schizophrenic campaign of deliberate pagan perversion of the Faith while simultaneously dying in droves for the purity of that Faith. … It meant believing that in some fantastic fashion quite unparalleled in history, this outburst of amnesia, heresy, and schizophrenia (beginning well before the death of the Apostle John and spanning the length and breadth of the Roman Empire) managed to completely pervert the Faith once given to the saints without one of those saints taking any notice at all—the very same saints who were willing to be burned alive for Christ rather than offer a tiny pinch of incense to Caesar.³⁹

‍But there's an even more fundamental problem. Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church (Matthew 16:18). He promised to remain with his followers always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). And Paul called the Church—not the Bible—the “pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

‍How can those promises be reconciled with the idea that the Church almost immediately abandoned the true gospel and did not recover it until the sixteenth century?

‍That is not to say that the Church in Luther's day was without problems. It certainly needed reform, particularly in its moral and disciplinary practices. But reforming abuses is one thing; replacing doctrines inherited from the earliest centuries of Christianity is quite another.

‍The historical evidence points to a conclusion very different from the one offered by those who believe Constantine or some later pope invented Catholicism.

‍The early Church was recognizably Catholic, both in name and in doctrine. Its beliefs and practices did not suddenly appear in the fourth or fifth century. They were already present when Christianity was still a persecuted religion, long before it enjoyed the favor of Roman emperors.

‍If we are looking for the origins of the Catholic Church, there is no convincing historical reason to begin with Constantine, Leo I, or any other later figure.

‍We must go back to the apostles themselves.

‍And if the Reformation rejected doctrines that Christians had believed and practiced since the earliest centuries, then the question is unavoidable: Was the Reformation really a return to primitive Christianity, or was it a distortion of it?

‍__________

^‍1 Loraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1962), 11. https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/boettner/Roman%20Catholicism%20-%20Loraine%20Boettner.pdf

^‍2 Fritz Ridenour, So What's the Difference? (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1967), 29.

^‍3 Martin Luther, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, Chapters 14–16, in Luther's Works, vol. 24, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1961), 304. https://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2006/11/luther-infallible-church-declared.html

^‍4 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8.2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm

^‍5 The Martyrdom of Polycarp, 16.2. https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/martyrdompolycarp-roberts.html

^‍6 Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 4.30. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07014.htm

^‍7 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 190, discussion of the Catholic Church and its visible character. 

^‍8 Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians, 44. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm

^‍9 Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians, 59. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm

^‍10 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, 3.1. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0106.htm

^‍11 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 4.26.2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103426.htm

^‍12 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.3.2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm

^‍13 Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 4. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050701.htm

^‍14 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 61. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm

^‍15 Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 1.6. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02091.htm

^‍16 Tertullian, On Baptism, 7. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm

^‍17 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, 8.3. https://www.churchfathers.org/infant-baptism?utm_source=chatgpt.com

^‍18 Origen, Commentary on Romans, 5.9. https://www.thetbs.org/study-materials/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Commentary-on-the-Epistle-to-the-Romans-by-Origen-z-lib.org_.pdf

^‍19 Didache, 4.14. https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html

^‍20 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, 2.4. https://www.ldysinger.com/%40texts/0250_origen/04_hom2_on_lev.htm

^‍21 Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lapsed, 28. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050703.htm

^‍22 The Shepherd of Hermas, passages concerning repentance and exclusion from the tower. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0201.htm

^‍23 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 1.10.1. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103110.htm

^‍24 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 7.12. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02107.htm

^‍25 Origen, On Prayer, 11. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/origen/prayer.vii.html

^‍26 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 57 (numbering varies by edition), 5. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050656.htm

^‍27 Epitaph of Abercius, late second century. https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/lapidario-cristiano/abercio/cippo-di-albercio.html

^‍28 Tertullian, On Monogamy, 10. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0406.htm

^‍29 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 7.1. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm

^‍30 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm

^‍31 Didache, 14.1. https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html

^‍32 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Philadelphians, 4. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0108.htm

^‍33 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 41. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01283.htm

^‍34 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 4.17.5. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103417.htm

^‍35 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.4.1. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103304.htm

^‍36 Origen, On First Principles, preface, 2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04120.htm

^‍37 Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 27.66. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm

^‍38 Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), 247–248, 503. See also their discussion of forensic justification in [“What Think Ye of Rome? Part Five”](https://www.equip.org/articles/what-think-ye-of-rome-part-5-the-catholic-protestant-debate-on-justification/). [Exact book quotation and page ranges remain unverified.]

^‍39 Mark Shea, By What Authority? (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1996), 157.