Commentary / Podcasts
Top 10 from Way of the Fathers for All Time
In the aftermath of the persecutions, controversies arose over the sacraments, which required clarification of the Church’s sacramental theology. Out of those controversies, new schisms emerged which had a correct...
Novatian of Rome is an extremely important, but conflicted, character in the early Church. On the one hand, he clarified and helped define the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, preparing the Church for the ecumenical...
The heresy of docetism evolved into a complicated web of schools of mythology, which we lump together under the name of gnosticism. These all still denied the real humanity of Christ, though in two distinct ways. Docetic...
I am honored to be taking up The Way of the Fathers podcast where my good friend, Mike Aquilina, left off. In season 4 of The Way of the Fathers, we’ll be looking at the heresies of the early Church, and how the Church fathers confronted...
Is Jesus Christ God? Is he a man? Is he both? Spoiler alert: the mainstream Church answered with the both/and, but the factions on the fringes tended to choose one or the other. For our first heresy, we take a look at the...
In the first episode on St. Gregory of Narek (c. 945-1003), Dr. Papandrea introduces one of the newest additions to the list of Doctors of the Church. Gregory was an Armenian monk, scholar, poet, and saint, who was praised...
Arianism was the fourth century evolution of adoptionism, in which Arius made a concession to the mainstream by accepting a quasi-divinity in Jesus Christ. But this was an acquired divinity, an earned divinity, and a...
Modalism denies the distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity, so that God is presented as, not a Trinity at all, but rather a monad with three names. Modalism can be expressed chronologically (the Father became...
St. Gregory of Narek (c. 945-1003), was an Armenian saint—a monk, scholar, poet, and hymn writer. Praised as a saint by Pope St. John Paul II, who called by him the “great Marian doctor of the Armenian...
Pelagius was so optimistic about human nature and the freedom of the will that he went so far as to deny the reality of original sin and the need for infant baptism. Saint Augustine corrected Pelagius and his followers, but...
