Patrology — Topic 1
1.1 The importance of studying the works of the Holy Fathers
The subject of study of Patrology is the works of the Holy Fathers or, more precisely, the texts of ancient Church literature. The need for the study of Ancient Church literature has its deepest foundation in the Orthodox understanding of the Christian Church, in the ways of preserving and disseminating Christian doctrine and morals, in the revelation and clarification of the inner life of the Church. The Church, at its very foundation, accepted the word of God in all its fullness salutary for all mankind; it receives no new revelations, and its task is not to invent new teachings, but to preserve and pass on the Revelation of Christ from generation to generation, gradually to reveal its inexhaustible content, to introduce it into the minds and lives of people, assimilating salvation completed by Christ to everyone in that form which suits their personal character.
Therefore, in all moments of the historical existence of the Church we see a constant reference to the past, mainly the original history of the Church, in order to comprehend the spirit of ancient Church life, invariably preserved in it from the Divine Founder, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Apostles, for a correct assessment of the present reality of the Church and to determine the normal which is consistent with the spirit and objectives of the true Church, structure of Church life under present conditions.
Regarding ancient Church life in its various manifestations, the fullest and most directly tangible reflection of it must be sought in the surviving texts of ancient Church writers, especially those whom the Church itself recognizes as the primary witnesses and exponents of its teaching, calling them “the Fathers of the Church”. They were the first successors of the apostles, continuers of their work, imitators of their zeal, builders of the universal Church in the first centuries.
This reveals that careful attention to the monuments of ancient Church writings is essential, constantly obligatory for anyone who wants to understand the teaching of the Church and penetrate into her inner life: the history of the Church and her teaching cannot be grasped and correctly evaluated without knowing their bearers - the ancient Church writers and their works.
Like in any science it is necessary to refer to its sources and original bearers, so an Orthodox student of Theology must study the sources of theological knowledge, among which, after the Holy Scripture, the works of ancient Church writers have the predominating significance - the “classics of the Church”. The literary treasures of the ancient Church contain continuous proof of the existence of the Church itself and of the Christian culture it disseminates, the faithful testimony to its teaching and its assimilation by the faithful, the cult, the order of life, and the management of its inexhaustible source of defense.
In the life of Christianity during the dawn of faith, in the pure and fresh youth of Christianity, one has always sought encouraging examples, teaching for personal salvation and for the solution of common contemporary religious and moral tasks, instructions as to where, in what and how one should find and realize the eternal truth of God.
The veneration in front of the works of the Fathers, the search for guiding instruction in them, has its deepest foundation in the fact that the ways and means of religious striving and experience in Christianity remain similar in their innermost essence. Outer forms and historical context change, but the psychology of the Christian spiritual process, its foundations, the inner Christian spiritual life remain the same.
Reference to ancient Church writings should not be expressed in the arbitrary extraction of passages from it desirable for one reason or another; ancient Church writers should not be attributed works that do not really belong to them, or teachings that they did not expound.
In addition to careful and thoughtful reading of ancient Church works, we need a serious and responsible study of them, which would determine the actual scope of the true ancient Church literature, would clarify the historical situation of its origin, its gradual development and the organic connection and continuity of the content of its main works.
Such a study of the monuments of the ancient Church’s writings is the task of the theological discipline called “Patrology” (literally, “study of Fathers”).
1.2 The Concept of the “Fathers of the Church”
The main and most extensive part of the literature of the ancient Church is
composed of the works of those Christians to whom the honorary title of “Fathers of the Church” is applied.
Even in ancient times the title of Father was given to mentors and teachers of truth, and by this they wished to express more than mere esteem.
This ancient custom of comparing the relationship between teacher and disciple with that between father and son is also reflected in the Old Testament Scriptures, where the name “father” is used not only to designate a parent in the flesh, but also a teacher and leader in life:
- Elisha calls the prophet Elijah his father (4 Kings 2:12);
- “sons” are called prophetic disciples (4 Kings 2:3-5).
’Fathers’ in the New Testament
But in the New Testament the name “father” is especially widely used in this sense. Here it refers first of all to the teacher to whom one owes his or her conversion to Christianity.
- The Apostle Paul calls the Corinthians his beloved children: “I do not write this to shame you, but I exhort you as my beloved children. For though you have a thousand instructors in Christ, yet not my fathers; I have begotten you in Christ Jesus by the Gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:14-15).
- He goes on (v. 17) to call Timothy, who was sent to teach the Corinthians the way of life, his “beloved son”.
- In his Epistle to the Galatians the same apostle writes: “My children, whom I bring forth again, until Christ is manifested in you” (Gal. 4:19).
Term ‘Fathers’ in the Ante-Nicene Period
This expression became common in later times.
- St. Justin calls “father” the venerable elder who showed him the way to Christianity in Ephesus (Dial. 3).
- By the end of the second century Irenaeus says, “He who is taught by someone is called the son of him who teaches, and he is called his father” (Adv. haer. IV, 41.2).
- A little later Clement of Alexandria writes: “We call those who have instructed directly ‘fathers’”; “A son is anyone who learns with obedience to the teacher” (Strom. I, 1.1; I, 1.2).
- In a letter to Origen, Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, says this about Pantaenus and Clement, the common teachers of the writer and the addressee: “As fathers we revere those blessed ones who have preceded us” (Euseb., Hist. eccl. VI, 14.9).
- Some of the letters to Cyprian of Carthage bear the inscription: “Cypriano papae, Cypriano papati”. The Latin name “papa” in its original sense means “father”; as an ecclesiastical title it was reserved for bishops, and later for the first bishop (the Pope) of Rome and Alexandria.
From the Fourth Century On
Since the fourth century, especially in dogmatical disputes, reference to “Fathers,” “Holy Fathers,” was made much more frequently - they are pointed to as the true representatives of the Church’s Tradition in the area of doctrine.
- “We accept no new faith,” says St. Basil the Great, “which is written for us by others, nor do we ourselves dare proclaim the results of our reflections, lest we give away human wisdom as provisions of religion, but what the Holy Fathers have taught us, we inform those who ask us” (Epist. 140, PG 32. Col. 588).
- Gregory the Theologian emphatically points out to his adversaries that he holds firmly to the doctrine which he himself has heard in the word of God, which he learned from the Holy Fathers (Orat. XXXIII).
- Cyril of Alexandria says that in his struggle against Nestorianism he has always followed the teaching of the Holy Fathers, especially the blessed and all-honorable Father Athanasius (Epist. 39, ad Joann. Antioch., PG 77. Col. 180).
Councils
The Councils referred with particular affection to the authority of the Fathers. The First Ecumenical Council defined the relation of God the Son to the Father on the basis of the testimony of the Fathers (Athanas., Epist. ad Afros episcopos).
The Second Ecumenical Council explicitly required heretics to make an open declaration whether or not they wished to hold to the judgment of the Fathers, who flourished before the modern heresies (Socrates [Hist. eccl. V, 10] and Sozomen [Hist. eccl. VII, 12]).
At the first session of the Third Ecumenical Council (431) the testimonies from the writings of the most holy and God-fearing fathers and bishops and martyrs were read (Mansi. SS. Concil. Coll. IV, 1184) so that on the basis of their agreement and decision the confession of the ancient teaching (Vincentius Lirin., Commonitorium 29) was correctly and solemnly confirmed.
The members of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon (451), insisting on reading the letter of Leo the Great to Flavian of Constantinople, exclaimed: “This is the faith of the fathers, this is the faith of the apostles!” (Concil. Chalced. Act. II: Mansi, 1. p. VI, 972); they settled the question of the true faith by “following the holy fathers” (Act. V, Mansi, 1. p. VII, 116), and condemned those who perverted the teaching of the fathers (Alloc. ad Marcian. imperat., Mansi, 1. p. VII, 465).
The Seventh Ecumenical Council bases its definition on the teachings of the holy and divine Fathers and the Tradition of the universal Church, which has its source in the Holy Spirit who dwells in the Church (Acts V and VII).
The “Fathers” are thus recognized as the most reliable representatives of the Church’s Tradition in doctrine, witnesses and judges of the true Christian faith. They form a definite and firmly circumscribed group of teachers of the faith preceding this or that council, and the name “Fathers” indicates not so much the antiquity as the ecclesiological significance of its bearers. References to “Fathers” always mean those predecessors who witness to and represent the faith of the Church, who are the rightful bearers of the Church’s teaching.
The history of the Church bears witness to the fact that most, and moreover the most important, of the Church’s writers have also held the episcopal chair; but on the other hand, Church writers of earlier times who did not have the episcopal dignity can give a perfectly reliable testimony of the faith of the Church of their time.
Hence the title of “Father of the Church” is assigned without any limitation, for example, to St. Ephrem the Syrian, though he was only a deacon, to the presbyter and monk John Damascene, and to St. Theodore Studite.
1.3 Periodization
A. The ante-Nicene period (before the Council of Nicaea of 325):
The first three centuries:
- The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, i.e., those authors who were disciples of the Apostles: Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna.
- the Early Christian Apologists;
- Church authors against Gnostics; St Irenaeus of Lyon
- beginnings of the Alexandrian catechetical and theological school (Clement of Alexandria, Origen)
- Early Latin (Italian and North African) authors: Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, Novatianus
B. The Golden age of Patristic literature. Great trinitarian and christological debates: mid-4th - mid-5th cent.
- The Cappadocian Fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa;
- Antiochian tradition (including Constantinople and Jerusalem branches); homilists - Cyril of Jerusalem, John of Constantinople (called Chrysostom)
- beginnings of the monastic literature: Antony the Great, Pachomius and his disciples, Macarius of Egypt, Evagrius Ponticus, Mark the Monk, Apophthegms
- Western Fathers: Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, St. Augustine of Hippo, homilists - Chromatius of Aquileia, Maximus of Turin; Leo the Great
- Syriac Fathers: Ephraim the Syrian.
C. Late Antiquity. “After Chalcedon”: late 5th - late 8th cent.
- Corpus of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite,
- Sophronius of Jerusalem, Maximus the Confessor, Anastasius of Sinai.
- Seventh-century ascetic writings: St. Barsanuphius and St. John, Dorotheus of Gaza, John Moschus, John the Climacus, Isaac the Syrian.
- Latin writers: St. Benedict of Nursia, Pope Gregory the Great.
D. Fathers of the High and Late Middle Ages, 9th - 15th centuries.
- John of Damascus,
- ascetic monastic literature Theodore the Studite, Simeon the New Theologian, Peter Damascene, Gregory of Sinai,
- Hesychast authors: St Gregory Palamas, Nicholas Kavasila, Callistos and Ignatius Xanphopouloi,
- contacts with Christian West: Marcus of Ephesus, Gennadios Scholarios.
A. The ante-Nicene period (before the Council of Nicaea of 325):
The first three centuries:
- the Early Christian Apologists;
- Church authors against Gnostics; St Irenaeus of Lyon
- Syriac Fathers: Ephraim the Syrian.
- Corpus of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite,
- John of Damascus,
- 1.1 The importance of studying the works of the Holy Fathers
- 1.2 The Concept of the “Fathers of the Church”
- 1.3 Periodization
The main and most extensive part of the literature of the ancient Church is
composed of the works of those Christians to whom the honorary title of “Fathers of the Church” is applied.
- “sons” are called prophetic disciples (4 Kings 2:3-5).
’Fathers’ in the New Testament
Term ‘Fathers’ in the Ante-Nicene Period
This expression became common in later times.
From the Fourth Century On
Councils
Introduction
General concepts of Patrology/Patristics
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