Opening Remarks on 'The Early Church was the Catholic Church'

Some general comments at the head of a coming multi-part critique series of Joe Heschmeyer's "The Early Church was the Catholic Church".

I recently purchased Joe Heschmeyer's "The Early Church was the Catholic Church", wherein he attempts to demonstrate 3 key Catholic beliefs within the first 2 centuries of the Church, as well as refute common Protestant attempts to prove that the early church could or did err. The focus on these earliest sources is what interested me, since I believe the claims of Rome and the East live or die on those first centuries, and Heschmeyer appears to believe this too. The three doctrines he attempts to demonstrate are "Baptismal Rebirth" (i.e. baptismal regeneration), "The Eucharist and the Mass" (real presence & sacrifice of the Mass), "Do Nothing Without the Bishop" (the structure of the local church and the monepiscopacy), and - not strictly a doctrine - the authorship of the Gospels ("The Four Gospels").

One of my general issues is with Heschmeyer's premises, some of which he explicitly notes and defends, which I appreciate, though the unacknowledged premises will be a target of later critiques. One major premise which he defends is the alleged theological conservatism of the early Church (under subheading "Problem #1: Early Christianity Was Theologically Conservative"). Throughout this section he presents the ideals of the early Church as conservative in thought, and gives (very) brief examples of how they rejected certain teachings, because they arose after and apart from Christ and the Apostles. At most, this forces us to not default to claiming that the earliest believers corrupted something, which I totally grant; we should not - unlike atheist apologists - disregard their witness unless we have good reason to the contrary (and, in contrast with a Roman Catholic, I don't discount the possibility of such), and it is clear that the earliest believers laboured hard to keep the Church free of false novelties. 

But the problem with how Heschmeyer utilises this premise is twofold. First, to say (in crude summary) that the teachings of Rome are not novel because the novel teachings of the Gnostics were rejected is to ignore the magnitude of difference between them. The latter were so manifestly unChristian as to often include claims that the Apostles got things wrong or their writings were thoroughly corrupted, which runs antithetical to the shared premise of both Catholics and Protestants. With this in mind, the assertion of (intelligent) Protestants is that Roman doctrine, working in the milieu of Christian thought (but with accretions from the surrounding cultural thought), subtly took hold of many believers through Christian thought and language, often (but not always) undetected; it "crept in", as Heschmeyer says. Yet this is not comparable to the clashing symbols of Gnostic doctrine, which even a novice low-church youth pastor could see through. 

And this is the second problem with Heschmeyer's premise. From this section and into the rest of this work, he relies on the reader accepting that because the earliest Christians would not *purposefully* accept novel doctrine, that they therefore could not do so *accidentally*. And this isn't to say that some early bishop slipped on a banana peel, knocked his head on the pavement, and then affirmed the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Rather, it could be as subtle as, say, importing the assumed cultural categories of the day into the text (e.g. Aristotelean or Platonic metaphysics) and coming to a conclusion different to that of the author, even if only slightly so. And this is by no means the only way doctrinal evolution can occur.

Another issue with this book affects the whole work to the core. He aims to show that the early Church was the "Catholic" Church; that is, the present institution under the authority of the Bishop of Rome.  But his case does not strictly demonstrate this, since almost every doctrine he argues for - bar perhaps the "sacrifice" of the Mass - is affirmed by High-Church Protestant traditions today like Lutherans and Anglicans. So, even granting a vast majority of Heschmeyer's case would not demonstrate that the early Church is the Catholic Church headed by the Bishop of Rome. So I believe the way the book presents itself is misleading. What sets Rome apart from Protestantism and Orthodoxy at heart is the Papacy; to demonstrate that would be to demonstrate that the early Church really was the Catholic Church.

These are some preliminary issues, and there may be one or two others that I will deal with, either before or in the main series of critiques. Sub to the blog with your email if you want to be notified immediately, and/or join my Discord community: https://discord.gg/QzM4KMtqkm