Intro
I'm so grateful that I was able to do my undergraduate work
at a Christian university. It was there that I truly developed a love for the
Scriptures and a passion to impact the world for Christ. I'm also thankful for
being able to graduate from Seminary, and for the many practical ministerial
lessons I learned there.
However, even though I was blessed with a wonderful
traditional Christian education and graced with many brilliant professors, I
feel like the writings of the earliest Christians have deepened my faith far
more than anything I was exposed to in the classroom.
To be fair, we did learn about a few of the major Gnostic
heresies during the Ante-Nicene period (basically the first 300 years of
Christendom) such as Marcionism, Valentinianism, and Manichaeism.
However, it was basically implied that real orthodox Christianity began
to take root with the teachings of St. Augustine, who grew up as a Manichaean.
I have encountered many believers who experienced the same carefully
shaped version of Christian history in Bible college or seminary as I did. We
were informed of the heresies the earliest Christians stood against, but
despite the vast amount of Ante-Nicene writings available to be studied, we
were neither exposed to them, nor taught what the earliest Christians actually
stood for. Therefore, it is the mission of this podcast to reveal what these
Christians believed about the core issues facing us today.
