The Catholic Brothers

Jan 26 2025 60 ep. 46 mins 8
The Catholic Brothers Podcast artwork

After 15 years of Protestantism and almost a decade of early Christian studies in academia, these two brothers and reverts to the Catholic faith make the Bible, History, and Theology entertaining, educational, and accessible for a general audience.

  Religion & Spirituality
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The Apologists: Christianity as Philosophy

Jan 26 2025 117 mins  
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 Apologi

What is Gnostic Christianity?

Oct 01 2024 96 mins  
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.

Marcionism and the Rule of Faith

May 11 2024 96 mins  
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 traditi

Why God Became Man and What It Did to Demons

Mar 30 2024 54 mins  
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 e

Erick Ybarra's Conversion Story

Mar 23 2024 106 mins  
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 o

Orthodox Christian Blogger Converts to Catholicism!

Feb 19 2024 91 mins  
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

Roman Views of Christianity

Jan 12 2024 80 mins  
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 cla

What was Roman Religion Like?

Dec 13 2023 34 mins  
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 in

Exorcism in the Early Church

Aug 02 2023 84 mins  
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.

A Second Century Liturgy (Part 2)

May 29 2023 53 mins  
In this episode on Liturgy in the second century, we resume our journey of reconstructing and envisioning early Christian worship.