Garrett Ham — Faith. Service. Law.

The Catechism names its sources and its readers: bishops first, then everyone.

The Catechism’s first three paragraphs explain why God made us, why Christ sent the apostles, and how the faith is handed on.

Four years of Greek and Hebrew at a Baptist college taught me the opposite of what I expected.

A Catholic convert's gratitude for the Southern Baptist faith that raised him—the Bible under his arm, the casseroles, the cost, the hymn verse he never sang.

A sophomore apologetics assignment on Justin Martyr's First Apology cost me the church I was raised in.

A Catholic exegesis of Matthew 13:44–52: the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, the dragnet, and the scribe who brings out the new and the old.

A former evangelical's comprehensive assessment of John MacArthur: the scholarship claimed for him, his documented exegetical errors, and his record.

The Didache may be older than the last books of the New Testament, yet no Bible ever carried it.

Quoted as Scripture in Alexandria and bound into Codex Sinaiticus, the Epistle of Barnabas bore an apostle's name—yet the New Testament closed without it.

1 Clement was read as Scripture at Corinth and bound into Codex Alexandrinus.

A Catholic exegesis of Matthew 13:24–43: the parables of the weeds, mustard seed, and leaven, the Psalm 78 citation, and Augustine’s corpus permixtum.

Miltiades, the thirty-second pope (311–314), lived from the last persecution into Constantine's peace, received the Lateran, and judged the first Donatist trial.

Marcellus I, the thirtieth pope (308–309), rebuilt Rome's Church after the Great Persecution and was exiled by Maxentius for making the lapsed do penance.

Marcellinus, the twenty-ninth pope (296–304), was accused of sacrificing to idols, erased from Rome's oldest calendars, and defended by a council that never met.

Eutychian, the twenty-seventh pope (275–283): a reign Eusebius counts in months and Rome in years, legends of beans and buried martyrs, and one true stone.

Eusebius, the thirty-first pope (309 or 310), reigned four months before the emperor Maxentius exiled him—and his rival Heraclius—over the fate of the lapsed.

Caius, or Gaius, the twenty-eighth pope (283–296), governed in the long peace before Diocletian's storm—a confessor, not a martyr, whose gravestone survives.

Zephyrinus is the fifteenth pope (c. 199–217), known chiefly through the hostile pen of Hippolytus.

Victor I is the fourteenth pope (c. 189–199)—the African who threatened to cut off the churches of Asia over Easter, cut off Theodotus the cobbler for heresy, and marks the papacy's turn to command.

Urban I is the seventeenth pope (c. 222–230).

Stephen I is the twenty-third pope (254–257): the rebaptism war with Cyprian, the first surviving papal appeal to the succession of Peter, and a martyrdom the earliest records do not support.

Soter is the twelfth pope (c. 166–175), known almost entirely through a letter from Corinth praising Roman charity.

Sixtus II, the twenty-fourth pope (257–258): the peacemaker who healed the rebaptism schism, then died under Valerian's sword—a martyrdom Rome wrote down.

Pontian is the eighteenth pope (230–235): the first pope to abdicate, exiled with Hippolytus to the mines of Sardinia—where pope and antipope were reconciled.

Lucius I is the twenty-second pope (253–254): an eight-month reign spent partly in exile, and a confessor the oldest Roman calendar declines to call a martyr.

Felix I is the twenty-sixth pope (269–274): a martyr's crown he never earned and a famous letter on Christ he never wrote—both forgeries over one solid fact.

Fabian is the twentieth pope (236–250): a layman chosen when a dove settled on his head, the organizer of Christian Rome, and the first pope whose martyrdom is documented history.

Eleutherius is the thirteenth pope (c. 175–189)—the deacon who became pope, correspondent of the martyrs of Lyons, and the pope a medieval legend made converter of Britain.

Dionysius, the twenty-fifth pope (259–268): the first pope not venerated as a martyr, who rebuilt Rome after persecution and defined the Trinity before Nicaea.

Cornelius, the twenty-first pope (251–253), faced the rigorist antipope Novatian—and staked the Church's authority on its power to forgive the lapsed after penance.

Callixtus I is the sixteenth pope (c. 217–222): a former slave, convict, and cemetery administrator whose policy of readmitting grave sinners after penance scandalized the rigorists—and won.

Anterus is the nineteenth pope (235–236): a forty-day reign, probably the first pope laid in the Crypt of the Popes, and a broken Greek epitaph that calls him bishop, not martyr.

The Letter to Philemon: Paul, the runaway slave Onesimus, and 'no longer a slave but a brother.'

The First Letter of John gives us “God is love,” the antichrists, and the Bible’s most famous fake verse.

The Letter to Titus: church order on Crete, 'our great God and savior,' the bath of rebirth.

2 Timothy is Paul's farewell: 'all Scripture is inspired,' guard the deposit, the good fight.

1 Timothy built the Church's offices — bishops, deacons, the pillar of truth.

2 Thessalonians warns against a forged letter — and is itself one of Paul's disputed letters.

Philippians was never doubted—yet Polycarp spoke of 'letters,' critics cut it in three, and its hymn built Christology.

Ephesians was never doubted—yet its address may be a blank, Marcion called it 'Laodiceans,' and modern critics doubt Paul.

Paul never saw Colossae and an earthquake soon wrecked it—yet its letter was never doubted, and it spawned a forged 'Laodiceans' that haunted the Bible for centuries.

Galatians was never doubted—yet Marcion put it first, the church fought over it, and Luther called it his own.

A Catholic on 2 Corinthians — Paul's most personal letter, its power-in-weakness gospel, and the integrity debate behind a book the Church never doubted.

A Catholic on 1 Corinthians — the quarrelsome church whose letter preserves the oldest creed and the earliest Eucharist in the New Testament, and its road into the canon.

John's is the highest Christology in the New Testament — the Gospel the Gnostics loved and a few of the orthodox feared.

A presbyter in Asia forged the Acts of Paul 'out of love for Paul'—and was deposed for it.

The Third Letter of John is the shortest book in the Bible, never names Jesus, and records a real first-century church quarrel over hospitality.

A Catholic reading of Revelation: who wrote it and when, why the Christian East nearly rejected it, and the four ways Christians have read its visions.

Luke's second volume tells how the Church went from an upper room in Jerusalem to the heart of Rome.

1 Thessalonians is most likely the oldest surviving Christian writing.