Strange Teachings in the Early Church Fathers

While the early church fathers are to be revered for their commitment to Jesus Christ, we must never exalt any Christian leader or council above the infallible testimony of Scripture. In the writings of the early church fathers, many strange and unbiblical beliefs can be found. Here is a sampling of some of them:

Papias

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, said that Judas did not die by hanging, but by being run over by a chariot according to a citation of him from Oecumenius:

“Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out” (Fragments of Papias, Fragment 3, ANF 1:153).

Michael Holmes in his work The Apostolic Fathers provides a different account from Papias as cited by Apollinaris of Laodicaea about Judas:

“Papias, the disciple of John, recounts this more clearly in the fourth book of the Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, as follows: ‘Judas was a terrible, walking example of ungodliness in this world, his flesh so bloated that he was not able to pass through a place where a wagon passes easily, not even his bloated head by itself. For his eyelids, they say, were so swollen that he could not see the light at all, and his eyes could not be seen, even by a doctor using an optical instrument, so far had they sunk below the outer surface. His genitals appeared more loathsome and larger than anyone else’s, and when he relieved himself there passed through it pus and worms from every part of his body, much to his shame. After much agony and punishment, they say, he finally died in his own place, and because of the stench the area is deserted and uninhabitable even now; in fact, to this day one cannot pass that place without holding one’s nose, so great was the discharge from his body, and so far did it spread over the ground'” (Fragments of Papias, Fragment 18).

Papias claimed to have an oral teaching from Jesus that is not found in the four Gospels. However, his citation of Jesus is actually a quote from the pseudepigraphical work 2 Baruch 29:5 and it is also similar to 1 Enoch 10:19:

“[As the elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord remembered that they had heard from him how the Lord taught in regard to those times, and said]: ‘The days will come in which vines shall grow, having each ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give twenty-five metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, ‘I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.’ In like manner, [He said] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear would have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and that apples, and seeds, and grass would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals, feeding then only on the productions of the earth, would become peaceable and harmonious, and be in perfect subjection to man’” (Fragments of Papias, Fragment 4, ANF 1:153-154).

Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr taught that God created all things out of unformed matter rather than out of nothing:

“And we have been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man’s sake, create all things out of unformed matter” (First Apology, Chapter 10).

Here Justin is following the apocryphal book Wisdom 11:17: “For thy all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears, or bold lions.”

Irenaeus

Irenaeus believed that Jesus was almost 50 years old when he died on the cross and he claimed the authority of the Apostle John for this tradition:

“Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that this extends onwards to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information. And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan. Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the very same account from them, and bear testimony as to the [validity of] the statement. Whom then should we rather believe?” (Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 22, Section 5).

“But, besides this, those very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ have most clearly indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad,’ they answered Him, ‘Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?’ Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period” (Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 22, Section 6).

Irenaeus quoted the second-century work The Shepherd of Hermas as Scripture. His quotation is from Mandate 1 1:1:

“Truly, then, the Scripture declared, which says, ‘First of all believe that there is one God, who has established all things, and completed them, and having caused that from what had no being, all things should come into existence’” (Against Heresies, Book 4, Chapter 20, Section 2).

Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria believed that the sin of Adam and Eve was sexual in nature. Following Philo of Alexandria, he believed the serpent was just a metaphor for pleasure:

“The first man, when in Paradise, sported free, because he was the child of God; but when he succumbed to pleasure (for the serpent allegorically signifies pleasure crawling on its belly, earthly wickedness nourished for fuel to the flames), was as a child seduced by lusts, and grew old in disobedience; and by disobeying his Father, dishonored God. Such was the influence of pleasure” (Exhortation to the Heathen, Chapter 11).

He believed that the second-century work The Epistle of Barnabas was an authentic work of the Apostle Barnabas:

“And how we say that the powers of the devil, and the unclean spirits, sow into the sinner’s soul, requires no more words from me, on adducing as a witness the apostolic Barnabas (and he was one of the seventy, and a fellow-worker of Paul), who speaks in these words: ‘Before we believed in God, the dwelling-place of our heart was unstable, truly a temple built with hands. For it was full of idolatry, and was a house of demons, through doing what was opposed to God’” (Stromata, Book 2, Chapter 20).

He also believed that the second-century Protoevangelium of James was a historical account of the birth of Jesus:

“But, as appears, many even down to our own time regard Mary, on account of the birth of her child, as having been in the puerperal state, although she was not. For some say that, after she brought forth, she was found, when examined, to be a virgin” (Stromata, Book 7, Chapter 16)

He said that the Apostle Paul was married even though Paul himself said that he was not (1 Cor 7:8):

“Even Paul did not hesitate in one letter to address his consort. The only reason why he did not take her about with him was that it would have been an inconvenience for his ministry. Accordingly he says in a letter: ‘Have we not a right to take about with us a wife that is a sister like the other apostles?’ But the latter, in accordance with their particular ministry, devoted themselves to preaching without any distraction, and took their wives with them not as women with whom they had marriage relations, but as sisters, that they might be their fellow-ministers in dealing with housewives” (Stromata, Book 3, Chapter 6, Section 53).

Tertullian

Tertullian believed that those who are unmarried should postpone their baptism until they are married because of the difficulty of obtaining forgiveness of sins after baptism:

“For no less cause must the unwedded also be deferred — in whom the ground of temptation is prepared, alike in such as never were wedded by means of their maturity, and in the widowed by means of their freedom — until they either marry, or else be more fully strengthened for continence. If any understand the weighty import of baptism, they will fear its reception more than its delay: sound faith is secure of salvation” (On Baptism, Chapter 18).

Origen

Origen believed in a whole host of unbiblical things such as the pre-existence of the soul (Commentary on John, 2.24), the existence of eternal creatures (On First Principles, 1.2.10), and that Jesus offered himself up as a ransom to Satan (Commentary on Matthew, 16.8). Together with Gregory of Nyssa, he believed in universalism (On First Principles, 3.6.6) for which he was condemned as a heretic at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Surprisingly, Origen believed that the Holy Spirit was a created being (Commentary on John, 2.6). And he believed that priests should never have sexual relations with their wives (Homily 23 on Numbers). This law of continence became the dominant position in the Western church and led to the practice of mandatory clerical celibacy.

Eusebius of Caesarea

Like Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea also believed that the Holy Spirit was a created being:

“Since the Son has been honored with the paternal divinity, he would be the maker and fashioner of all created things, both visible and invisible, and surely also of the very existence of the Counseling Spirit. For ‘all things were made through him, and without him not one thing was made,’ and ‘in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.’ . . . But the Counseling Spirit would be neither God nor Son, since he himself has not also received his generation from the Father as the Son has, but is one of those things brought into existence through the Son, because ‘all things were made through him, and without him not one thing was made’” (On Ecclesiastical Theology, 3.6. As cited in Eusebius of Caesarea: Against Marcellus and On Ecclesiastical Theology, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 135, ed. Kelley McCarthy Spoerl and Markus Vinzent p. 313-314).

Hilary of Poitiers

Hilary of Poitiers believed that Jesus’ physical body was incapable of experiencing pain because he was also God. While Hilary was not a docetist, his position borders on docetism as a result of overreacting to the arguments of Arians who used the painful sufferings of Christ to argue against his divinity:

“The passion of Christ was undergone by him voluntarily, to make an acknowledgment that pains were due; not that he that suffered was at all pained by them” (Commentary on Psalm 53).

“Christ is thought to have felt pain, because he suffered; but he was really free from all pain, because he is God” [Putatur dolere, quia patitur; caret vero doloribus ipse, quia Deus est] (Commentary on Psalm 138).

“But when, in this humanity, He was struck with blows, or smitten with wounds, or bound with ropes, or lifted on high, He felt the force of suffering, but without its pain. Thus a dart passing through water, or piercing a flame, or wounding the air, inflicts all that it is its nature to do: it passes through, it pierces, it wounds; but all this is without effect on the thing it strikes; since it is against the order of nature to make a hole in water, or pierce flame, or wound the air, though it is the nature of a dart to make holes, to pierce and to wound. So our Lord Jesus Christ suffered blows, hanging, crucifixion and death: but the suffering which attacked the body of the Lord, without ceasing to be suffering, had not the natural effect of suffering. It exercised its function of punishment with all its violence; but the body of Christ by its virtue suffered the violence of the punishment, without its consciousness” (On the Trinity, Book 10, Chapter 23).

“Do they contend that He felt the pain of the wounds in His flesh? But He shewed, when He restored the wounded flesh of the ear, that, though He was flesh, He did not feel the pain of fleshly wounds. The hand which touched the wounded ear belonged to His body: yet that hand created an ear out of a wound: how then can that be the hand of a body which was subject to weakness?” (On the Trinity, Book 10, Chapter 32).

“We have now seen the power that lay in the acts and words of Christ. We have incontestably proved that His body did not share the infirmity of a natural body, because its power could expel the infirmities of the body that when He suffered, suffering laid hold of His body, but did not inflict upon it the nature of pain” (On the Trinity, Book 10, Chapter 35).

John Chrysostom

John Chrysostom believed that we should pray for those who are in hell for God to ease their suffering:

“Weep for the unbelievers; weep for those who differ in nowise from them, those who depart hence without the illumination, without the seal! they indeed deserve our wailing, they deserve our groans; they are outside the Palace, with the culprits, with the condemned: for, ‘Verily I say unto you, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.’ Mourn for those who have died in wealth, and did not from their wealth think of any solace for their soul, who had power to wash away their sins and would not. Let us all weep for these in private and in public, but with propriety, with gravity, not so as to make exhibitions of ourselves; let us weep for these, not one day, or two, but all our life. Such tears spring not from senseless passion, but from true affection. The other sort are of senseless passion. For this cause they are quickly quenched, whereas if they spring from the fear of God, they always abide with us. Let us weep for these; let us assist them according to our power; let us think of some assistance for them, small though it be, yet still let us assist them. How and in what way? By praying and entreating others to make prayers for them, by continually giving to the poor on their behalf. This deed hath some consolation” (Homilies on Philippians, Homily 3, on Philippians 1:18-20).