Reading the Bible Literally with the Church Fathers

By John Bergsma 

Dr. John Bergsma is Professor of Theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. A former Protestant pastor, he is the author of several books on Scripture and the Catholic faith.

I went into reading the Apostolic Fathers convinced that they were going to show that the early Church was Calvinist, which was my theological background, but they let me down in a big way. But what they showed me instead was so beautiful: the fullness of truth in the Catholic faith.

Reading St. Ignatius of Antioch, I realized that the way he interpreted the Scriptures was not the way that Protestants approached them. I saw that St. Ignatius, for example, took the Lord’s words in earnest when the Lord spoke of eating His very Body and Blood. This was a literal interpretation that I as a Protestant never took, even though I prided myself on being a literal interpreter of Scripture.

Soaking myself in the earliest of the Church Fathers, I realized that I needed to become Catholic myself, and that brought me to the Church, and on February 21, 2001, I had my confirmation, eighteen months after reading the Church Fathers and observing how they interpreted the Scriptures.