The First 500 Years: The Fathers, Councils, and Doctrines of the Early Church

The Fathers were the immediate inheritors of the teachings of Christ through the Apostles; we study them because they laid down the very foundation of the Church.

The earliest period of Church history was shaped by persecution, which led at least one Father to comment, "The blood of Christ's martyrs is the seed of the Church."

The Church survived external persecutions, only to face the internal threats of Novatian's rigorism which deprived sinners of absolution, and Arianism's denial of Christ's divinity.

Sts. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus preserved the mystery of relationship and union in the Trinity at the Council of Constantinople.

At the Council of Ephesus, the Church emphatically and definitively declared that Mary is truly the Mother of God; she is the Mother and Model to All Christians.

Next to the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine of Hippo is perhaps most responsible for helping the Church formulate doctrines on grace, the sacraments, and how God works in the human soul.

As the successor of Peter, Pope Leo the Great presided over the Council of Chalcedon which declared Christ's human and divine natures are without confusion, change, division, and separation.

All the Church's doctrines are rooted in the Patristic Era; today, we are all recipients of the organic development begun by the Fathers' theological insights and conciliar decisions.