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Just a point of order here...this is not ‘my pastor’. In fact when I was saving the document you posted, I tried to save it as a Word document with the name “early church fathers” and discovered I already had a doc by that name. When I read it again, I felt it added some information to the topic we were discussing. I still think that and the knee-jerk reaction to what is being said without noting that this author uses “sourced” material - not just his own thoughts - is quite telling. We are fussed at because we don’t read up on the history and opposing views, and then, the very same ‘fussers’ do the very same thing.

We are fussed at because we don’t read up on the history and opposing views, and then, the very same ‘fussers’ do the very same thing.

The best thing I could say about that thing you pasted in was that I did not notice any spelling errors. Oh, and that he denounced the TULIP Calvinists for following the teaching of Augustine. That was awesome.

Actually no -- you asked me, if there was a definitive list of Church Fathers. I gave it to you. You then looked up some website that gave some guy's personal opinion on them.

If you do not wish to read them, that's fine -- that's your free choice. However, to understand the life and times of early Christians, you should read them. You can also read the works of Josephus or any of the secular writers (many of whom disliked Christianity) and you will still find descriptions of a Church in organisation and practise that resembles the Catholic/Orthodox/Oriental/Assyrian Church and not any one of the various Presbyterian/Baptist/Pentecostal/Fundamentalist etc. groups (the Lutheran and High Anglican Mass will resemble orthodoxy).

Next, if you ask what were the belief systems followed by the early Christians, you go to the Church Fathers -- or, even better, go to the writings of Babai the Great and the other priests of the Assyrian Church. This Church was separated from the rest of Christendom because it was in the Parthian/Persian Empire who did not want their Christians getting along with Roman Empire Christians. This Church expanded east -- to India, China and even Mongolia (one Mongol tribe, the Naimans who are the predecessors of modern day Kazakhs, WAS Christian until the 14th - 16th centuries)