They dispute and negate facts simply because they are facts, because they do not want facts to be facts, and they try with all their might to transform facts into hypotheses, into illusions, into fictions.
Justin Popovich.
When I visited the monastery of Fr. Jonah for the first time, now Bishop of Texas, I was overwhelmed when the monks presented me with a book of letters from the 1st century. Expanding upon where Paul had left off, the letters of St. Ignatious and St. Polycarp offer a window into early Christian practice and make frequent references to ¨the wisdom and blessing of the glorified Paul…who, when among you, accurately and stedfastly taught the word of truth.¨
Why was it I had never heard of these letters written so soon after the passing of Paul? I felt cheated. I had been around Christian bookstores all my life, around bible studies and deep thinking Christian people and yet the modus apparandi was to treat Christian history as if it stopped after the book of Revelation. I´ve often wondered if the ideology of solo-scriptura had anything to do with this ommission. St. Ignatious and St. Polycarp´s strong injunctions to follow the Bishops in the Catholic church, to avoid Hebrew/Jewish customs, along with their belief in the Eucharist as the real presense, would not have sat comfortably with many I´m afraid.
Here is a quote from a letter by St. Ignatious.
Every kind of wound is not healed with the same plaster. Mitigate violent attacks of disease by gentle applications…For this purpose you are composed of both flesh and spirit, that you may deal tenderly with those evils that present themselves visibly before you. And as respects those that are not seen, pray that God would reveal them unto you, in order that you may be wanting in nothing, but may abound in every gift. The times call for you, as pilots do for the winds, and as one tossed with tempest seeks for the haven, so that both you, and those under your care, may attain to God. Be sober as an athlete of God: the prize set before you is immortality and eternal life, of which you are also persuaded. In all things may my soul be for yours, and my bonds also, which you have loved.
