The Catholic Brothers

This episode explores the fascinating historiography of the rise of Christianity, focusing on Gibbon and Stark's influential works. It examines secondary causes, growth models, and early material culture, providing a comprehensive understanding of early Christian expansion. This episode explores the sociological and historical factors behind the rise of Christianity, emphasizing the role of el...

Did the earliest Christians believe that Christ would establish a temporary, earthly kingdom on earth for a millennium prior to the general judgement? Did the 4th century Church suddenly abandon that belief due to the influence of Christian Platonism? In this episode, we explore chiliasm—the belief in a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on earth—as it appears in the writings of the Church Fath...

Discover the rise and fall of the Montanist movement, an early Christian sect led by Montanus in the 2nd century AD. Branded a heresy by the early church, Montanism emphasized ecstatic prophecy, strict morality, and the imminent return of Christ. In this video, we explore the origins of Montanism, its teachings, key figures like Priscilla and Maximilla, and the reasons the mainstream church ultima...

In this episode we smoke and review Chesterton Cigars and have an open dialogue about the new pope and our hopes for the future. To purchase a FABULOUS Catholic cigar, go to Chestertoncigars.com and pre-order for August 2025. HURRY, the cigars are going fast! Also be sure to follow Chesterton Cigars on Instagram at @chesterton_cigars SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL AND GIVE US A LIKE! 0:01 Chesterton Cig...

Why did early Christians argue over the date of Easter? In this video, we explore the Quartodeciman Controversy, a major theological debate in the 2nd century that split early Christian communities. On one side were the Quartodecimans, who celebrated Easter on the 14th of Nisan—regardless of the day of the week—following Jewish Passover tradition. On the other were those like the Roman church, who...

In this episode, the brothers discuss the rise of Christian philosophy in the second century among a group of writers known as “The Apologists.” While the Apostles were very successful in bringing both Jews, God fearers, and lower class pagans into the Christian movement, they were not able to significantly penetrate the philosophical classes of Greco Roman society. The Apologists of the second ce...

In this episode we discuss one of proto-orthodoxy’s most formidable challenges: the rise of the Gnostics. We often hear the word “Gnosticism,” and we think we know what it refers to, but here we dive into the Gnostic worldview and explain why these teachers were worthy of so much apologetic ink in the second century.

In this installment of the First 500 Years series, the brothers take a journey through the life and thought of the church’s first major Heresiarch: Marcion of Pontus. Along the way, they propose fresh ways of understanding the origins of his doctrine and explain why he proved a formidable enemy for the earliest apologists as they began their struggle to preserve apostolic tradition.

Why did God become a man? We’re used to hearing what Christ’s incarnation/death/resurrection did for us, but we don’t often hear what His work did to the demonic powers. We’re used to answering the question solely with reference to matters of substitution, satisfaction, debts (of honor, wrath, or obedience?), so we can lose sight of the ancient Christian worldview and the entire cosmic drama at wo...

We’ve all seen him in action—debating Protestants and Orthodox, writing incredible books, or podcasting on his own channel, Classical Christian Thought—but we rarely get to hear about his personal journey of faith. In this special episode, we sit down with our friend Erick Ybarra to explore his story and all of the reasons why, in the final analysis, he ended up in the arms of the Catholic Church....

In this episode we have a most interesting chat with Ben Bollinger, a theology blogger and a bright apologist for the Christian faith, whose journey began with atheism and progressed into Eastern Orthodoxy. However, in 2023, he made a shocking, final move into the Roman Catholic Church, and here we explore his intellectual and spiritual journey. This is a fascinating dialogue that you WILL NOT wan...

A Superstition? Funerary society? Guild? A philosophical school? What the heck is this “Christian” thing? In this episode, we complete our discussion of the vitality of Roman Religion and then analyze various ways in which Roman writers politically and culturally tried to classify the novel Christian movement throughout the second century. How Christians were politically classified by various Roma...

In Part One of this episode, we flip the table a bit and try to understand Rome’s relationship to her gods *from the inside out* so that we can paint a fuller picture of the religious landscape of Christianity’s rise in Late Antiquity. Heretofore, many scholars have argued that early Christianity was able to spread so rapidly because the religion(s) of the Roman Empire had increasingly lost vitali...

In this episode we address the topic of exorcism in the early church, particularly from the lens of Hebrew cosmology and Christian mission to a pagan world from the second century onward. Connecting the dots between research on exorcism in Late Antiquity and Divine Council Scholarship, we explain why Christian exorcism became a major force for the conversion of the Roman Empire.

In this episode on Liturgy in the second century, we resume our journey of reconstructing and envisioning early Christian worship.

In this episode on Liturgy in the second century, we resume our journey of reconstructing and envisioning early Christian worship. In Part 1, we focus on change and continuity with regard to the (1) location, (2) timing, and the (3) “shape” that the Eucharistic gathering is taking in this post apostolic era. You won’t want to miss this one!

In this second part of our episode on women in early Christian communities we address the question of whether or not females served as presbyters. A timely topic, to be sure, as modern events like the Synod on Synodality continue to see this question bubble up to the top of the debates.  But putting aside modern preoccupations and concerns, as historians, let’s really take a good look at the...

Here we offer our response to Dr. Gavin Ortlund’s recent video in which he argues against the decisions of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, asserting that the veneration of images/icons is not a proper development of doctrine, but instead represents an illegitimate accretion which contradicts the unanimous consent of the Church Fathers and the commandments in Scripture.   Leave us your...

Our personal evaluation of Pope Benedict XVI, especially with regard to his impact on culture, the Church, and our own journey from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Did the early Christian movement have women in prominent leadership roles? What sorts of functions did women perform within the communities? Who are some influential women of the first and second centuries? These questions and more are tackled in part 1 of our episode on women in the early church.

Join us for a quick discussion about how early stories of martyrdom reveal what the first Christians believed about the Eucharist. Are the seeds of later Catholic theology to be found here?

Is the religion of the Old Testament strictly monotheistic, or was monotheism an innovation of a much later era in the history of religion? Is the Christian Trinity an amalgamation of paganism and Judaism, or is Trinitarianism thoroughly rooted in the tradition of Israelite religion?  In this episode we first examine the foundations for Divine “Plurality” in the history of Israelite thought,...

If Christianity began as a Jewish sect, then when did Judaism and Christianity become distinct religions? What drove the separation? Does “Judaism”— as we know it today— really predate Christianity? In this intriguing discussion, the Brothers address these questions and more. You won’t want to miss this one!

The scholarly consensus, by far, is that the Roman Church in the early second century *did not* have a single bishop but was ruled by a collection of presbyteral bodies. This would seem to undercut the Catholic Church’s claim that the pope is the successor of St Peter, let alone Vatican 1’s teaching on papal infallibility.   Drawing upon their work in previous episodes, and a careful exa...

Christians have always worshipped on Sunday morning, right?  In this episode, the Brothers tackle a fascinating, and often baffling, question about the earliest Christians: when did they celebrate the Eucharist each week? Did they observe the Sabbath? If so, when did Christians start worshipping on Sunday, and why? Answering these questions reveals A LOT about the character and theology of th...