We conclude this week with our response to Mr. Joshua T. Charles’ claim that he had found “profoundly [Roman] Catholic doctrine” in Ignatius of Antioch’s seven letters from 107 AD. Joshua claimed to have found “point by point” the tenets of Roman Catholicism in Ignatius’ letters to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrna, and to bishop Polycarp. We have now covered all ten — the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the Real Presence of Christ in Part 2, the New Testament priesthood, Episcopal Succession and Episcopal Authority in Part 3, Roman Primacy in Part 4, Baptismal Regeneration and Losing Salvation in Part 5 and Heresy, Schism and “Big ‘C’ Catholicism” in Part 6. Mr. Charles never ceases to comment on the divisions and denominations that occur under the umbrella of Protestantism. He claims that he finally found stable relief for his tossed and wearied soul when he discovered the pacific seas and verdant pastures of an undivided Roman religion — free of all the contradictory interpretations, confusion, disagreements and lack of apostolic roots.

In our series thus far we have responded to the “ten points” of Roman Catholicism that he thought he had found in Ignatius, and today we shall briefly summarize our responses to them. But as we move forward, we shall also consider Mr. Charles’ utter lack of self-awareness in his triumphalistic analysis of a peaceful, undivided, unified Roman epistemology vis-a-vis the divisive, schismatic and hopelessly indefinite Protestant epistemology he abandoned. What he has done is abandon the Rock upon which Christ built His church, in order to embrace an epistemology of sand. In his perusal of “tens of thousands of pages” of the Early Church Fathers, he has not found ancient Roman Catholicism in their writings. Rather he has merely engaged in Roman Catholicism’s longstanding practice of shadow puppetry, casting medieval shadows upon an ancient patristic backdrop, obscuring rather than illuminating their original works. In truth, neither the early church, nor modern Rome, is any more free of divisions than what is observed within the “Protestant” tent. The difference is not between unity and division, but rather what the respective parties are divided about.

In our introduction to the series we evaluated three illustrative examples of the implicit flaws of Mr. Charles’ approach to the early writers. We reviewed his use of Ambrose to support Roman Primacy, Ignatius to support episcopal apostolic succession, and Athanasius to support devotion to Mary. In the case of Ambrose, Joshua focused on Ambrose’s description of the preëminence of the city of Rome, while playing down John Chrysostom’s  similar contemporary claims regarding the city of Antioch. In an effort to minimize the discrepant data, Mr. Charles insisted that Chrysostom must have only believed Antioch was “equivalent to the whole world” because Peter was there, even though Chrysostom had stated explicitly that Antioch was preëminent before Peter’s arrival, that Peter was sent there because it was preëminent, and that it remained preëminent after his departure. Mr. Charles also used Ignatius of Antioch to support a New Testament sacrificial priesthood, but relied upon the longer Greek recension of Ignatius’ letters, a recension that even the Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges did not originate from Ignatius, and post-dates him by nearly 300 years. Were the longer recension truly from Ignatius, he would have wrongly cited Jesus’ words of Luke 10:16 — “He that heareth you heareth me” — as if Jesus had spoken them to the Apostles, when in fact Luke has them addressed to the Seventy.  Finally, Mr. Charles appealed to Athanasius’ unseemly and Mariolatrous Homily of the Papyrus of Turin, which is easily shown to be of dubious origin and completely incompatible with Athanasius’ own Mariological expressions: he believed that it was necessary for Jesus to receive a “mortal and corruptible” body from “mortal Mary” so that “He may transfer our origin into Himself” (Athanasius, Discourse III), because she was, as we are, “under penalty of the corruption of death” (On the Incarnation of the Word, 8). Of such a woman, Athanasius would not also have written, “truly you are greater than any other greatness,” as the Homily alleges.

Summary Assessment

It was important to visit Mr. Charles’ handling of the ancient data so that we may better understand his futile attempt to find Roman Catholicism, “point by point,” in Ignatius’s letters. He can only find his new religion in Ignatius by relying on a recension that is known to be incorrect, by dismissing discrepant data and by preferentially interpreting the data to confirm his bias.

Did the the early church offer the Eucharistic sacrifice (Point 3)? It surely did. But in the early church “the Eucharist” offering was what Protestants today call “the tithe” or “the offertory,” and it was not an offering of the body and blood of Christ. Did the ancient church “confess” that “the Eucharist” is the Body of Christ (Point 1)? It surely did, but in Mr. Charles’ anachronistic and medieval misreading of the data, he could not understand what Ignatius had written. In the ancient liturgy, the minister takes bread and wine from the Eucharist tithe offering for use in the Supper, and consecrates them by “confessing” Jesus’ words over them. According to Irenæus, at the Supper Jesus confessed (confitebatur) “the bread to be His body” (Against Heresies IV.33.2 (Migne, PG 7, 1073), and “the cup likewise … He confessed (confessus) to be His blood” (Against Heresies, IV.17.5 (Migne, PG 7, 1023)).  To “confess” Jesus’ original words of institution — “this is My body” — over bread taken from the Eucharistic offering was simply the ancient consecration. Thus, when Ignatius speaks of heretics who do not “confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of Christ,” he refers to their unwillingness to consecrate the bread taken from the offertory for the Supper, because to do so is to acknowledge He had a body. Ignatius was not referring to a confession that consecrated bread had been transubstantiated into the flesh of Christ. And importantly, the Eucharist offering of the ancient church occurred before the consecration, and the Supper occurred after the consecration and was not offered. Thus, there was no Eucharistic Sacrifice of Jesus’ Body and Blood in Ignatius’s letters, and no “confession” of the Real Presence of Christ.

Of a New Testament ministerial priesthood (Point 2), Mr. Charles’ evidence comes from the longer recension, which is known to be an unreliable redaction by a late fourth century author, and not originally from Ignatius in the early second century. In the letters that are confidently ascribed to Ignatius (the shorter recension), he has little to say of a New Testament ministerial priesthood, except that the Old Testament “priests indeed are good,” but the new “High Priest is better” (to the Philadelphians, 9). Mr. Charles claimed that Ignatius’ letters confirm apostolic succession because “[a]uthority in the Church is exercised by bishops” who are successors of the Apostles (Point 6). Yet Ignatius repeatedly claims that authority in the Church is also exercised by the deacons, who “are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ” (to the Magnesians 6), and who minister “the mysteries of Jesus Christ” (to the Trallians 2). Why did Joshua not also insist that Authority in the church is also exercised by the deacons, a point to which Ignatius repeatedly returns in his letters? Since Jesus’ ministry was both prophetic and sacrificial, ought we not also search through “tens of thousands of pages” to discover the successors to the original Seven Deacons (Acts 6:3) that we may listen to their preaching and obtain the merits of their sacrifices? Of course not. What Mr. Charles has missed in his assessment of Ignatius is that he was responding to the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter that claimed “bishops” and “deacons” had not really received their authority from God, and that the sheep would eventually rise up and cast them off. A reasonable response to such nonsense was to insist that bishops and deacons had indeed come upon their authority honestly, and the sheep must not rebel against them. Such context takes the teeth out of Mr. Charles’ interpretation of Ignatius, i.e., that “authority in the Church is exercised by bishops,” and that lay Christians “must be under a successor of the Apostle’s authority” (Point 7). That was hardly the issue Ignatius was addressing, and Mr. Charles is negligent when he interprets Ignatius apart from that context. In truth, Ignatius knew well enough that “succession from the apostles” was no guarantee of orthodoxy and truth. Indeed, echoing Jesus’ approval of the Ephesian church which “hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars” (Revelation 2:2), Ignatius had also “heard of some who have passed on from this to you, having false doctrine, whom you did not allow to sow among you, but stopped your ears, that you might not receive those things which were sown by them” (Ignatius, to the Ephesians 9). Many people in that day claimed “apostolic succession,” and were rebuffed or ignored based on the Scriptures.

Brief Sidebar on “Apostolic Succession”

In reality, the early church placed much, much less emphasis on the authority of apostolic succession than Mr. Charles imagines. It would require a separate post to detail just how genuinely unimpressed they were with chest-thumping claims of “apostolic succession,” but it is worth a quick sidebar to illustrate our point. When Anicetus of Rome claimed to have a Eucharistic tradition from his predecessors in Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna was unimpressed, preferring to stick with what he had learned from John “and the other apostles.” Anicetus was equally unimpressed with the tradition Polycarp had received from the Apostles, preferring instead to stick with what he had received from his predecessors:

“For neither could Anicetus persuade Polycarp not to observe what he had always observed with John the disciple of our Lord, and the other apostles with whom he had associated; neither could Polycarp persuade Anicetus to observe it as he said that he ought to follow the customs of the presbyters that had preceded him.” (Eusebius, Church History V.24.7).

Why did two “successors” of the apostles reject each other’s claims of “apostolic succession”? Polycarp knew the Apostles personally, and Anicetus did not care. Anicetus was bishop of Rome, and Polycarp did not care. We are not inclined to see Anicetus and Polycarp as exceptional in this regard. Rather, based on the evidence available to us, this appears to have been the norm.

When Victor of Rome attempted to force the Asian churches to celebrate the Resurrection on the same date that he did, Polycrates of Ephesus and “a great multitude” of Asian bishops with him were equally unimpressed. They responded that they had “met with the brethren throughout the world” and had “gone through every Holy Scripture,” and were “not affrighted” by Victor’s “terrifying words” (Eusebius, Church History V.24.7). How could the opinions of “the brethren throughout the world” and “every Holy Scripture” trump Victor’s claims of “apostolic succession” if apostolic succession was the standard of truth?

When Stephen of Rome insisted that baptisms performed by heretics were to be considered valid, Firmilian of Cæsarea responded that “they who are at Rome do not observe those things in all cases which are handed down from the beginning, and vainly pretend the authority of the apostles” (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 74.6) — which is to say, Stephen vainly claimed “apostolic succession.” Dionysius of Alexandria also challenged Stephen’s claim, insisting that we are to hold to the Scriptures, but “as to things which were written afterwards and which are until now still found [i.e., Stephen’s vain prattling], they are ignored by us; and let them be ignored, no matter what they are.” No matter what they are? That is a remarkably terse dismissal of Stephen’s claims of authoritative “apostolic succession.”

Cyprian likewise demanded to know where in the Scriptures Stephen’s novel practice could be found:

“‘Let nothing be innovated,’ says [Stephen], ‘nothing maintained, except what has been handed down.’ Whence is that tradition? Whether does it descend from the authority of the Lord and of the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and the epistles of the apostles? For that those things which are written must be done.” (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 73.6)

No, Cyprian, Dionysius and Firmilian were galactically unimpressed with what Stephen thought “has been handed down” to him from the Apostles. His “apostolic succession” was just a ruse to pass off novelty as antiquity.

Just think about this brief compilation of “apostolic successors”: Polycarp of Smyrna, and Anicetus, Victor and Stephen of Rome. To a man, they claimed the authority of “apostolic succession,” and Polycarp even knew the Apostles personally, but these men could not even convince each other, much less the other bishops around the world, to abide by what they claimed to have received from the apostles unless it had been written down by the apostles. It is safe to say that the Early Church was not nearly as impressed with “apostolic succession” as Mr. Charles wants us to be. A great many men claimed to have the truth from the apostles, and their claims were perfunctorily dismissed and ignored! We are not left guessing as to Ignatius’ actual opinion on the matter for he lauds the Ephesians, as Jesus had, for rejecting similar claims. Mr. Charles has not found in Ignatius the support for “apostolic succession” he thinks he has.

Returning now to Mr. Charles’ next claim — that Ignatius’ letters exhibit evidence of a belief in Roman Primacy (Point 8) — we showed that we could prove the primacy of any church we wanted using Mr. Charles’ rubric: “Ignatius speaks to X in a way that he never speaks to Y. Therefore, he must have thought X held the primacy.” Using that measuring stick, Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia and Smyrna also held the primacy, and in fact exceeded Rome in their discernment, prayer, primacy, stability and holiness, for Ignatius accused the Romans of “helping … the prince of this world” in their prayers (Ignatius, to the Romans, 7). He made that accusation of no other church!

As for the claim that Ignatius’ taught baptismal regeneration (Point 4), Mr. Charles bases his claim on a single reference to baptism in Ignatius: “let your baptism endure as your arms” (Ignatius, to Polycarp, 6). At this point in his letter to Polycarp, Ignatius is clearly imitating Paul’s “whole armor of God” narrative from Ephesians 6. There is nothing here to suggest baptismal regeneration at all, and certainly not from a highly metaphorical call to arms, and an admonition to press on to final victory.

As for the claim that Ignatius taught that Christians could lose their salvation (Point 5), we found that Ignatius rather warned the congregations not to stumble into error lest they demonstrate that they had never been Christian at all (to the Magnesians, 8). “Mere profession” was not sufficient, but rather “that a man be found continuing in the power of faith to the end” (to the Ephesians, 14). It was not sufficient to “merely be called a Christian, but really be found to be one” (to the Romans, 3). His soteriology rather appears to reflect a sense that saving faith perseveres, and that which does not persevere is not saving faith. Those are not the convictions of a man who believed the fallen had lost their salvation, but rather that they had never truly believed in the first place.

As for his claim that “schism and heresy from the one true Church” is always unacceptable (Point 9), it is important to clarify that Ignatius only mentioned them once each, and in these cases he was referring to the very specific “schism” (to the Philadelphians, 3) and “heresy” (to the Trallians, 6) of denying the Gospel, as the Gnostics had. More often, Ignatius objected to “division,” by which he also referred to the error of the Gnostics. We agree with Ignatius here: denying the Gospel is evidence of reprobation and separates one from the Church, and the division that results when a false gospel takes root is catastrophic. But Mr. Charles takes Ignatius’ very specific objections to gnostic heresy, and lumps all schism, error and division into a single heading as if merely to disagree with the Roman church is to fall into damnation. By this reasoning, he claims that Ignatius would have condemned Protestantism. We suggest Mr. Charles spend some time investigating error, division and heresy in the early church and get back to us when he has. When error, division and heresy arose, it was not the Bishop of Rome who resolved it, for he was often the cause. Popes Eleutherius (174 – 189 AD), Victor (189 – 199 AD), Zephyrinus (199 – 218 AD), Callistus (218 -223 AD) and Stephen (254-257 AD) were all accused of maintaining and advancing error, division and heresy. The surrounding congregations corrected such nonsense by their application of the Scriptures, for adherence to Scripture was the ultimate measure of truth. The Arians, after all, were not excommunicated for speaking contrary to Rome, but because “the novelties they have invented and put forth [were] contrary to the Scriptures” (Deposition of Arius, 2). When it came to other manifestations of division and disagreement in the early church unrelated to heresy, it was often tolerated or at least dealt with collegially and fraternally, leading to excommunications when necessary, but deference and tolerance when possible. Irenæus attested to the “variety [of] observance” (Eusebius, Church History, Book 5.24.12-13), and Firmilian attested to the “diversities … concerning many other sacraments of divine matters” (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 74.6) and Justin demonstrated exceptional deference toward Christians who maintained some vestigial form of Judaism, not for righteousness sake, but for reverence. There were some Christians who withheld fellowship on that account, “but I do not agree with them,” he said (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho Chapter 47). The Council of Nicæa, by way of further illustration, “was moved to incline towards mildness” in its verdict on Meletius, even though “his inveterate seditiousness and his mercurial and rash disposition” deserved far worse. Mr. Charles’ use of Ignatius therefore falls flat when Ignatius is understood in his context, and when the dynamic, collegial and even hostile controversies of the early church are understood in theirs. Disagreements were many, varied and diverse, and the severest responses (like that of Victor toward the Asians) were themselves reprimanded for being too harsh, as would Mr. Charles’ assessments of Protestantism, were the council to consider his rash judgments against us.

When it came to identifying the Church as “Big ‘C’ Catholic” (Point 10), we found that for three hundred years the church identified as a “small ‘c’” catholic “everywhere” church made up of Christians. Only with the rise of Roman Catholicism in the latter half of the fourth century was the Church identified as a global conglomerate of “Big ‘C’” Catholics who possessed “power without limit over the whole world.” Until then the Church was catholic in the same way the four winds are “catholic,” general revelation is “catholic,” the resurrection of the damned is “catholic,” and God’s providence toward both the just and the unjust is “catholic.” The Church had always been “small ‘c’” catholic until the rise of the Fifth Empire of Daniel’s visions.

The “Blue Pill” Effect of Presumption

When Mr. Charles summarized the ten points of Ignatius that “red-pilled” him into the truth, he concluded that Roman Catholicism was the true Church, and “protestantism …  was a complete departure from it.” Yet upon inspection we find the opposite to be true. In fact, with its unseemly posturing, carnal ambition, geographic overreach, grotesque novelties and repeated errors, Roman Catholicism itself is a late fourth century departure from the true Church, and as Paul foresaw (2 Thessalonians 2:3), the vast majority of the professing Christian world fell away into her error with her. We are confident that Ignatius of Antioch would not have recognized her. We are also confident that there is always “a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5), and sure enough, in the latter half of the fourth century, a noble Protestant Resistance arose to resist her, and continued in an obscure and remote but identifiable and sustained thread of faithful orthodoxy throughout the intervening centuries.

But to the point at hand, Ignatius did not really “red-pill” Mr. Charles. Mr. Charles’ own gullibility, naïvete and ignorance “blue-pilled” him into error. It is that “strong delusion” — the Presumption of Apostolic Continuity — that led Mr. Charles to imagine his “ten points” of Romanism in Ignatius’ letters, because he had been led to “believe a lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11). Strong delusions from God are as irresistible as His grace, so we do not expect Mr. Charles to return to Christianity any time soon. But perhaps we may encourage a wavering Protestant or two, lest in his vain jangling Mr. Charles “discourage … the heart of the children of Israel” (Numbers 32:7).

The Empty Promise of a Teaching Church

That said, we are nonetheless intrigued by Mr. Charles’ reason for “Why I am Catholic today.” He says it is because of the “interminable, unresolvable debates where the best any of us had was our best guess” (June 13, 2023). The solace he found in Rome was that “Christ established … an infallible mode of resolving disputes” (May 1, 2023), but in Protestantism, “No one could say ‘thus saith the Lord’ as to which one was right” (June 4, 2023). But his days of interminable Protestant debates and divisions finally came to an end! No more guessing! No more arguing and debating about the truth! All disputes are easily resolved now by the Church!

At least, that is what he was led to believe.

But Mr. Charles has recently arrived at a more sober realization: divisions and debates continue, and “best guess” theology is the order of the day even among the most studied Roman Catholics. In fact hardly a week goes by now that Mr. Charles does not complain about the divisions, the “inter-Catholic squabbles,” the “scandalous behavior,” the “crisis” and the constant “bickering” in Rome. It turns out the grass was not as green on the other side of the fence as he thought, and now he comforts his fellow Roman Catholics with this tepid solace — at least we’re not as bad as Protestants:

“As much chaos as there is in the Church these days, I have to constantly remind fellow-Catholics, having come from a protestant background, that they still have no idea how good we have it, overall.” (June 24, 2023)

Why then is Rome still a better place, even with all the bickering, squabbles, chaos and division? Because “Jesus Christ provided us with a means to do accurate exegesis,” and “Christ instituted a Church with His authority to teach” because “most people are not capable of understanding Scripture” without a “divinely appointed teacher to teach them.” So sayeth Joshua T. Charles.

But Mr. Charles will soon find out that nobody can teach him with any certainty at all because, in the words of one trained Roman Catholic philosopher and apologist, “No one really knows what’s in the Magisterium” (Timothy Gordon, Pope Promotes Pervert, July 1, 2023, (23:00)). Indeed, we have been shouting this very thing from the rooftops for years. Nobody really knows what the Roman Catholic Church teaches, and therefore no one can really say “thus saith the Lord,” and nobody can finally resolve a dispute. This is because the Magisterium is unable to settle some of the simplest doctrinal disputes, cannot define the boundaries of special revelation, has never formally interpreted a single Bible verse in all of its “2000” years and has lost track of the very “oral apostolic tradition” of which it claims to be the sole custodian.

Mr. Charles believes “Jesus Christ provided us with a means to do accurate exegesis,” through a “divinely appointed teacher.” But the best and brightest minds of the Roman Catholic religion know better. Rome is unable to teach definitively because Rome has no sure way of defining the limits of Revelation, no certain way of knowing if what it has said is actually true and no way of determining the boundaries of its own infallible teaching authority.

And this is not the mere prattling of a disaffected Protestant. Rather it is the consensus opinion of the brightest minds in Rome.

We shall dwell more thoroughly upon that fact next time.