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This unit concerns patristics, which is the study of the Church Fathers. There are some good books out there which deal with the Church Fathers,[2] yet often they have very intimidating lists of authors with longer or shorter biographies next to them, perhaps some textual cites of their works. More intimidating still is the entire shelves of books in Catholic libraries with works of the Church Fathers.

A list of a couple hundred Church Fathers is of no use to us at this point. Rather, this unit strives to present a synoptic view of some of the most important Church Fathers, leaving leads and trails for us to follow, an outline upon which we can attach what we learn and know about them and their works, and a reference point to use when we want to read some of the original works of the Fathers in our spiritual reading.

Let it further be remembered that there are many great and famous Catholic preachers and apologetics in our time, many of whom came to Catholicism from Protestant denominations because of their readings of the works of the Fathers. For example: David Reynolds[3] or St. John Henry Newman, and many others popular for their testimonies on EWTN.

We will also use a document from 1990 about patristics that was published by the Holy See.[4]

The goal of this unit is to make some friends among the saintly Fathers of the Church, to assimilate their spirit.[5] Furthermore, the Gentle Reader will get to know some of the Church Fathers, acquire a context in which to situate the most prominent ones, get a sampling of how to read and work on their writings, and consider how certain theological themes have developed in the history of the Church.

Therefore this unit is a complementary one to the previous unit regarding the history of the ancient Church. It is recommended that the Church Fathers be read and studied in the midst of their historical context, in the perspective than our previous unit offered, and even in a wider perspective that the Reader may acquire by continuous reading of trustworthy sources of Church History.

Fathers of the Church: “Father” is used to describe the one who is teacher, has authority, and governs with love, all in one.[6] The Church Fathers are those first teachers and governors of the Christian communities. They generally possess common features, such as holiness of life, integrity of teaching, and typically the authority of an Episcopal or Papal office. In fact, the term is applied very widely and never strictly.

“The study of the Fathers, which is of great use to everyone, is absolutely necessary for those who care about the theological, pastoral and spiritual renewal promoted by the Council and wish to cooperate in it. In them, in fact, are all the constant factors that are at the basis of any authentic renewal.”[7]

We live in an era which threatens to turn its back on the past. Even in theology, there are strains of thought that tend to study dogmas[8] abstracted from the real historical humus from which they sprang.[9]

More modern forms of biblical exegesis do not apply the methods or premises of the Church Fathers, and often go far astray in interpretations that are alien to the Christian faith. Since modern exegetes dedicates themselves far more to historical and literary criticism, and much of their exegesis is infested with the heresy of modernism, the spiritual richness and content of the scriptures never seems to manifest itself in their work.[10] Since “Patristic thought is Christ centered,” and they have a “theology matured in contact with the problems of pastoral ministry,”[11] they are not centered on social ideologies, heresies, or useless discourses.

Furthermore, we live in a period wrought with “distorted concepts of Tradition.”[12] Tradition is not the “repetition of past models,”[13] but “a practice of life and doctrine,”[14] which “demonstrates unity in variety and continuity in progress,”[15] Tradition “guards from an exaggerated individualism by guaranteeing objectivity of thought.”[16]

“The words of the Holy Fathers witness to the living presence of this tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church.”[17] And as we want to understand what the Church offers us both in Sacred Tradition and in Sacred Scripture, the Fathers offer us an authoritative guide and example to follow. This is why the Church invites us to draw the living meaning of Sacred Scripture and Tradition “first of all form the works of the Holy Fathers.” Knowing the Fathers, what they wrote and what they said, can be one of the most effective ways of cracking open the shell of Scripture to acquire the riches that lie within it.[18] The Fathers are “primarily and essentially commentators on Sacred Scripture.”[19] They had a truly religious and specifically Catholic approach to Scripture, a disposition which every student of theology needs to assimilate. Veneration and fidelity to tradition and to scripture go together. This was only possible for them, because of their deep prayer lives, their unity to grace, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.[20]

The genetic method of studying dogma, “to know how a question has been brought up and sought out through history,”[21] takes interest in that “historical humus” we spoke of earlier. It is essential when studying Tradition, therefore, to look at the Fathers, whose work focuses so much of the thought and labor of the early Church, and builds the blocks upon which all later centuries would build, both in content and in method. Indeed, even great thinkers such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, in later centuries, turned often to the Fathers.

About the Fathers and Sacred Tradition, St. Augustine says, “What they found in the Church they kept; what they learned they taught; what they learned from their Fathers they transmitted to their children.”[22] Thus all the Fathers saw “tradition as normative.”[23]

The Fathers lived in a special few centuries where some huge building blocks of the Catholic Faith were chiseled out. They composed the first professions of faith, they defined the deposit of faith,[24] they laid the foundations of canonical discipline, they gelled the first forms of liturgical celebration according to what the Apostles handed on to them more directly than to us, the formed the first reflection or theology based on Scripture, and were exemplary when they became the first great Christian catechists.[25]

They had the massive and impressive task of developing Catholic teaching, faithful to the teachings of the Apostles, in a pagan world. As models of all theological study,

2. they were aware of the originality of Christianity but recognized the truths contained in pagan culture (hence, experts in expressing the faith in terms the pagans could understand, even pagan intellectuals, yet rejecting wisely their grave errors)[26];

3. they defended the faith as the supreme good and continually developed the understanding of the content Revelation;

2. They have passed down to us a theological method that is both enlightened and reliable;

3. Their writings offer cultural, spiritual and apostolic richness that makes them great teachers of the Church yesterday and today.

There are probably infinite numbers of ways to organize the massive body of patristic hagiography[30] and writings. One way is, for example, to use the first seven ecumenical councils as hooks upon which to hand the various stories of the lives of the Fathers, their relationships to each other, their works, etc.

Here we will offer a different outline, however, since the first ecumenical council happened in 325, and there was much patristic labor before that time. I wish to offer this simple outline, not the only one possible of course, so that we can place the Fathers in some reasonable context.

Let’s now read and converse about some of the texts of the Church Fathers, to expose ourselves a little to their great work. To proceed, we will now read six texts, with discussion questions to get the conversation going after we read them, one by one. The texts are selected so as to cover the historical gambit of the Patristic age, but in fact no other criterion is used than that they are very interesting to read and profitable for group discussion.

Reflection text 1. The Didache. This was an ancient text discovered in a monastery in Constantinople, and published in Nicomedia, a city in Northwest Asia Minor (now in Turkey), around 1883, in Greek. The actual content of it was mostly found in another work that scholars already knew, called the Apostolic Constitutions. It originated probably in the first and second century.

[1] There are two ways, one of life and one of death: and great is the difference between the two ways. [2] The way of life is this: first, you shall love God, who created you; second, your neighbor as yourself. Whatever you would not wish to be done to you, do not do to another. [3] The teaching of these words is this. Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies: fast for those who persecute you. For what kindness is it, if you love those who love you? Do not even the pagans do this? Love those who hate you, and you will not have an enemy.

[4] Abstain from carnal and bodily desires. If anyone strike you on the right cheek, turn the other to him, and you will be perfect. […]

[1] The second commandment of the teaching: [2] You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magi. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure abortion, nor destroy a new-born child. [3] You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods. You shall not perjure yourself. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not speak evil. You shall not bear malice. […]

[3] In the last days, then, false prophets and corrupters will be multiplied. Sheep will be turned into wolves and charity will be turned into hate. [4] As lawlessness increases, men will hate one another and persecute and betray; and then will appear the deceiver of the world as a Son of God. He will work signs and wonders and the world will be given over into his hands. He will do such wicked deeds as have not been done since the world began. [5] Then will all created men come to the fire of judgment and many will be scandalized and will be lost; but those who persevere in their faith will be saved out from under the accursed thing itself.

[6] And then will appear the signs of the truth. First, the sign spread out in the heavens; second, the sign of the sound of the trumpet; and third, the resurrection of the dead. Not the resurrection of all men, but, as it was said: “The Lord will come, and all His saints with him.”[31] Then the world will see the Lord coming on the clouds of heaven.[32]

Reflection text 2: Tertullian, The Resurrection of the Dead. (155/160-240/250) Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was an African by birth, like St. Augustine. His parents were pagan, and he himself became Christian around 193, after he started a brilliant career as a lawyer. St. Jerome says he was a priest, but that’s the only hard historical evidence we have of the fact, even though we have many of his writings. He wrote theology from 197-220. From 206 to 212 he flirted with Montanism,[33] to which he eventually went in 207, and by 212 all of his works were very Montanist. It’s curious to see that the Church today still cites his works in official Magisterial documents,[34] even though he died a heretic; it is a witness to the love the Catholic Church has towards the truth.

The following text is from The Resurrection of the Dead, written around 210 a.d. as a follow up to another work of his called The Flesh of Christ.

[8,2] No soul whatever is able to obtain salvation, unless it has believed whil it was in the flesh. Indeed, the flesh is the hinge of salvation. In that regard, when the soul is deputed to something by God, it is the flesh which makes it able to carry out the commission which god has given it. [3] The flesh, then, is washed, so that the soul may be made clean. The flesh is anointed, so that the soul may be dedicated to holiness. The flesh is signed, so that the soul too may be fortified. The flesh is shaded by the imposition of hands, so that the soul too may be illuminated by the Spirit. The flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ, so that the soul too may fatten on God. They cannot, then be separated in their reward, when they are united in their works.

[11.6] […] Some persons […] would have it as the philosophers say, that the universe was made by Him from some matter already pre-existing… [9] If God produced all things out of nothing, He will also be able to draw forth from nothing the flesh which has fallen into nothing; or, if He shaped other things out of matter, He will also be able to call forth the flesh from something else, from wherever it has been swallowed up. [10] And surely He that created is competent to re-create, since it is a much greater thing to produce than it is to re-produce, and to give a beginning than to maintain in existence. […][35]

Gregory was the brother of St. Basil of Caesarea (“the Great”), another saint and Father of the Church. They, with their friend St. Gregory of Nazianz (yet another Father) form a trio called “The Cappadocians.” Our Gregory wasn’t as gifted an orator, but was perhaps far more gifted for theological insight. He wasn’t to keen on the idea of being consecrated bishop of Nyssa, but his brother, already Bishop, did it anyway. He was involved in the Council of Constantinople (379) and confronted the Arians both theologically and politically.[37]

The Life of Moses is a book written to a young friend, Caesarius, who inquired as to the perfect life. For Gregory, it was clear: the life of Moses formed a pattern of the life of Jesus Christ himself, and in turn played out as an allegory to the ideal conduct of life for a follower of the Lord.

The mind goes on ahead and, through ever greater and more perfect attention, it achieves an understanding of the truly intelligible, thereby drawing closer to the vision by which it may better discern the indiscernibility of the divine nature… In this matter true vision belongs to Him who is sought; and in this matter, not seeing is itself the seeing.[38]

Reflection text 4: St. Ambrose of Milan, The Mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation. (ca. 333 or 339 – 397). His is the amazing story of being the son of the Pretorian Prefect of Gaul, who, trained in rhetoric and law, attempted to settle a dispute about the succeeding Bishop of Milan while he was still a catechumen, not even baptized; then the disputing parties surprised him by wanting him to be bishop, for which, after some resistance, he was baptized, then a week later made Bishop of Milan. He was the great mind to whom St. Augustine listened while he was still on his long, hard road of conversion, and who helped convinced Augustine of the truth of Catholicism.

This work was written in 382 a.d. He confronted the Apollonarist notion that Jesus Christ did not have a rational soul, its place being supplied by the divine Verbum, which is in fact a heresy.

There are not enough hours in the day for me to recite even the names of all the various sects of heretics. But what is contrary to all of them is the general belief that Christ is the Son of God, eternally from the Father, and born of the Virgin Mary… Since God must ever be eternal, He receives the mysteries[39] of the Incarnation not as divided but as one: for both are one, and He is one in both, that is, in His divinity and in His body. He is not one from the Father and another from the Virgin, but the same, in one way from the Father and in a different way from the Virgin. [36] Generation is not prejudicial to generation, nor flesh to divinity… [37] For that reason too He died in accord with His reception of our nature; and He did not die in accordance with the substance of eternal life. He suffered in accord with His reception of a body, so that His having truly received a body might be believed; and He did not suffer, in accord with the Word’s divinity which could not be acted upon from without, and to which all pain is foreign.

Therefore He accepted from us what it were proper for him to offer for us in order to redeem us by means of what is ours… The sacrifice is of ours, the reward is of His own; and you will find many things in Him both in accord with nature and beyond nature. According to the condition of the body He was in the womb, He nursed at His mother’s breast, He lay in the manger; but superior to that condition, the Virgin conceived and the Virgin bore, so that you might believe that He was God who restored nature, though He was man who, in accord with nature, was born of a human being… [56] You have learned, therefore, that He offered in sacrifice what was of ours. What reason was there for the Incarnation, except that flesh, which had sinned, might be by flesh redeemed? It was what sinned, therefore, that has been redeemed. [40]

2. In light of this, how could we answer the objection, “You Catholics say God doesn’t change, but look at Jesus, whom you call God: he was born, changed as he grew, learned, his emotional states changed, etc. Your philosophy of an unchanging God is simply wrong.”

He was born of St. Monica and a pagan father, Patrick (Patricius) who converted only shortly before his death. He was not baptized as a child, a popular custom of the day. When 17 years old, in 371, he went to Carthage to advanced rhetorical studies; rhetoric was essential for political careers. He fathered an child from a concubine a year later, Adeodatus. In 374 he joined the Manichean sect, turning his back on Christ and the Catholic Church; nine years later, when he met the “great” Manichean teacher Faustus of Milevis, his disillusionment was so profound he abandoned Manichaeism. In 383 he moved to Italy, as a professor of Rhetoric near the imperial court of Milan in the north. There he met and heard St. Ambrose, who baptized him in 387. His Mother and his son had come to Italy the year before; when the family went back to Africa in 387, his mother died of illness on the way. His son died within the next three years. He lived in Africa for three years as a monk, then was ordained a priest for the diocese of Hippo by Bishop Valerius. This same bishop ordained him bishop in 395 before he died, and Augustine inherited the See. He died of sickness when he was 76, three months into an eighteen month siege the Arian Vandals had laid upon Hippo. He is beyond a shadow of a doubt the greatest of all the Fathers of the Church, of east and west. He is outstanding for his erudition, theological insight, huge corpus, and powerful qualities of expression.

Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new covenant, all belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a new song and will belong to the new covenant.

There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. The psalms to not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us… What this source is you may learn more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us…

Now it is your unquestioned desire to sing of him whom you love, but you ask me how to sing his praises. You have heard the words: Sing to the Lord a new song, and you wish to know what praises to sing. The answer is: His praise is in the assembly of the saints; it is in the singers themselves. If you desire to praise him, then live what you express. Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise.[41]

1. How does Augustine’s version of love contrast with the way the world today understand love?

3. How does he bring these verses of the Psalms into the practical stuff of the daily lives of the readers? Where does he start, how does he proceed, and what conclusions does he draw?

Gregory was born of a wealthy family, and had a brilliant career stretching out before him. As he lived in the City of the World, he felt challenged by the evangelical councils (poverty, chastity and obedience) and abandoned everything to become a citizen of the City of God. He sold all he had, built seven monasteries on family properties, and gave the rest to the poor. The monasteries followed the rule of St. Benedict (c. 480-543).[42] Gregory later went on to be his best biographer. He was so austere that he destroyed his health and nearly died. Pope Benedict I (574-578) called him to serve as a regional deacon shortly thereafter. He became a sort of Papal ambassador to Constantinople, and in 585 returned to his monastery where he was made abbot. But he was called upon again, this time to be Pope, in 590. Only he and Leo I bear the name “the Great.”[43] He strengthened the bonds of unity between the local Churches spread about the nascent Europe. Under him the codification of sacred music, known as Gregorian Chant after his own name, began taking shape. He offered much to the form and reform of the liturgy. He was the first to take upon himself the title servus servorum Dei.[44]

The following text is taken from Moral Teachings on Job, known in Latin as Moralia Job, Moralia, Moralium libri or Expositio in librum Iob. This was a project he started in 578 while in Constantinople, but he didn’t finish and publicize until easily five years into his Papacy. It was the first ever text of moral and ascetical theology.

Since in this life there is with us a distinction of works, in that other life there will undoubtedly be a distinction of honors, so that, because here one surpasses another in merit, there one will transcend another in reward. Hence Truth tells u in the Gospel: “In My Father’s house there are many mansions.”[45] But in those same many mansions the very diversity of rewards will be in some way harmonious, because in that peace so great a strength will unite us that a man will rejoice because another has received even what he did not himself receive. Whence also those not laboring equally in the vineyard will all be paid equally a denarius.[46] It is true that with the Father there are many mansions; but it is true also that unequal laborers will receive the same denarius; for joyful beatitude will be one and the same for all, although the sublimity of their existence will not be one and the same for all.[47]

4. How can this text be a stimulus to work hard to progress in the spiritual life?

Vatican II: Ad gentes (Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity)[48] 1-14; or either 1-9 or 10-14.

[1] St. Augustine, Confessions, X, 27.

[2] For example, William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 vol., The Liturgical Press, (Collegeville, MN: 1979); or the praiseworthy German author’s book, Berthold Altaner, Patrology, out of print and admittedly hard to find in English.

[3] http://www.chnetwork.org/drconv.htm.

[4] Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on the Study of the Fathers of the Church in the Formation of Priests, 10 November 1989, published in L'Osservatore Romano (English edition), 15 January 1990.

[5] Cf. Congregation of Catholic Education (CCE), Instruction on the Study of the Fathers of the Church in the Formation of Priests, USCC (Washington, D.C., 1989), 59; November 10, 1989. Hereafter, this document will be referred to as the ISFC.

[6] E.g., St. Paul’s usage, as in 1 Cor 4: 15,16; or Gal 4:19.

[7] Paul VI, Letter to His Eminence Cardinal Michele Pellegrino fro the Centenary of the Death of J.P. Migne, May 10, 1975; AAS 67 (1975), p. 471.

[8] A more appropriate plural would be “dogmata,” given the ancient-Greek nature of this word.

[9] ISFC 8.

[10] ISFC 9.

[11] ISFC 16.

[12] ISFC 10.

[13] Ibid.

[14] ISFC 22.

[15] ISFC 21.

[16] CCE, The Theological Formation of Future Priests, 49.

[17] DV 8.

[18] ISFC 15.

[19] ISFC 26; cf. Augustine, De lib. Arb., III, 21, 59; De Trin. II, 1, 2; PL 32, 1300; 42, 845.

[20] Cf. ISFC 37.

[21] Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, A Time of Desert for Theology: Ressourcement Versus Models of the Church, Conference to the Heads of Seminaries in Rome, cf. http://www.cjd.org/paper/desert.html of 4/1/05.

[22] St. Agustine, Contra Iul., 2, 10, 34; PL 44, 698.

[23] ISFC 23, italics added.

[24] After which this course is named.

[25] ISFC 18.

[26] ISFC, 30, 31.

[27] ISFC, 25.

[28] Cf. ISFC 17.

[29] Most of this section is drawn from personal reflections upon the book: Berthold Altaner, Patrología, Espasa-Calpe, S.A., Madrid, 1962, pp. 565, tr. De la 5ª ed. Alem, de Herder, Freiburg of Breisgau, by Eusebio Cuevas y Ursicino Dominquez-del Val.

[30] A term referring to the biographical and spiritual narration of the lives of the saints.

[31] Zach. 14:5.

[32] From William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, Collegeville, MN (The Liturgical Press: 1970), 1-4 passim.

[33] “Schismatics of the second century, first known as Phrygians, or "those among the Phrygians" (oi kata Phrygas), then as Montanists, Pepuzians, and (in the West) Cataphrygians. The sect was founded by a prophet, Montanus, and two prophetesses, Maximilla and Prisca, sometimes called Priscilla…” From http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10521a.htm, April 16, 2005. “Prophecy was, indeed, the most prominent feature of the new movement. Ecstatic visions, announcing the approach of the second advent of Christ, and the establishment of the heavenly Jerusalem at Pepuza in Phrygia, and inculcating the severest asceticism and the most rigorous penitential discipline, were set forth as divine revelations, of which the prophet was only the bearer.” From http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/montanism.html. They also forbade second marriage, forgiveness of sins after baptism; they denied the supernatural origin of the Church and promoted less hierarchy in favor of more charisms. Some say that Pentecostalism is the contemporary version of Montanism.

[34] One example among many: Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), March 25, 1995, n. 61.

[35] Jurgens, op. cit., vol. 1, 149.

[36] See Plato, Timaeus, especially 28a-29b, 29d-30c. It can be found in English and Greek at http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plato-creator.asp. There is also a link to the whole on-line text of the Timaeus.

[37] Arians: Arius (ca. 256-336) is one of the most famous heretics. He was a priest of Alexandria. The Arians held that the Son was inferior to the Father, there was a time when the Son was not, and that Jesus Christ was not divine.

[38] Jurgens, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 45.

[39] He uses the Latin word “sacramenta.”

[40] Jurgens, op cit., vol. 2, pp. 158-159.

[41] Sermo 34, 1-3; 5-6, passim; cf. CCL 41, 424-426. Text and translation taken from US English Breviary, vol. 2, p. 712-713; 3^rd week of Easter, Tuesday, Office of Readings.

[42] Written some time between 530 and 560.

[43] It is the humble opinion of this author that the Pope that just died, John Paul II, should and will be known to history as “the Great” as well.

[44] Latin for, “Servant of the servants of God.”

[45] Cf. Jn 14:2.

[46] Cf. Mt. 20:10.

[47] Jurgens, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 315.

[48] Dec. 7, 1965. Flannery translation, New Revised Edition, pp. 813-829.

[49] St. Ephrem (306-373), Prayer of Saint Ephrem the Syrian. From James W. Watkins, Manual of Prayers, Pontifical North American College (Rome: 1998), p335.