FATHERS OF THE CHURCH

ik 1. The term ‘Fathers.’ This term, 397 FATHERS OF THE CHURCH 294 FATHERS OF THE CHURCH as used in the sense of spiritual parents | of the Christian faith and life, appears to have become current in the fourth century. It was so used by Christian teachers, who cited as authoritative the great teachers and guides who were their predece ors. By the ‘fathers’ they meant, specifically, the earlier writers who carried on the work of instruction which was begun by Peter and John and the rest of the Apostles. As employed nowadays, the term has a great fluidity of meaning. In the widest sense it signifies all ecclesiastical writers (i.e. all writers within the Christian Church who treat of matters of Christian belief and practice) belonging to the older post Apostolic period. In the narrower and more frequent sense it signifies only those ecclesiastical writers of the older Fathers of the Church, St, Jerome post-Apostolic period who conform, more or le , to the Catholic tradition. As St. Vincent of Lérins lays it down, “Those alone should be named ‘Fathers’ who have been staunch in the communion and faith of the Ono Catholic Church, and have received ecclesiastical approbation as teachers.” 2. Fathers and Doctors. To such among the Fathers as were regarded as the most eminent the distinguishing title of ‘Teachers’ (doctores) was given. Thus in the Western Church Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory I were the four great Teachers or Doctors; while in the Kastern Church a similar position was a igned to A than as i us, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Chrysostom. But others also have been acknowledged as Doctors, as Hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus, and our one English Father (born out of due season) the Venerable Bede—not to speak of the application of the term to some of the medieval Schoolmen, 3. The Pairistic Period. While it is universally agreed that the Apostolic Age is succeeded by the Age of the Fathers, there is a difference of view as to when the Age of the Fathers terminates. Gregory I (the Great) is usually regarded as the last of the Latin or Western Fathers and the first of the Schoolmen, and John of Damascus as the last of the Greek or Wastern Fathers. But where the term ‘Fathers’ is broadly used to designate the older Church writers in general, the tendency is—and it is logically defensible—to extend the Patristic period far beyond the Age of the Great Fathers (325-451), and to include among the later Fathers many médieval writers. Thus the Abbé Migne, who in the middle of last century i ued a@ monumental edition of the original Greek and Latin texts of the Fathers, carried the Latin Fathers as far as Innocent III in the be ginn tins of the thirteenth century, and the Greek Fathers down to the Council of Florence and the fall of Constartinople in the middle of the fifteenth century. 4. Division and Cla ification. The broadest division of the Fathers is according to locality, and is into Hastern and Western. To this the division according to Janguage, into Greek and Latin, largely corresponds. But it is to be remembered that in the early Patristic Age, or before Tertullian, Latin was not used by eeclesiastieal writers. It is also to be remembered that among the Eastern Fathers there were writers in Syriae, Armenian, and Coptic, as well as Greek. Another broad and general division is into ante-Nicene, Nicene, and postNicene; which is according to the principle that the Council of Nicsea (A.D. 320) marks the transition from a simple and unsystematized to a unified doctrinal testimony. But it is usual in Church history, while observing the aforesaid general divisions, to arrange tue Fathers in certain historical groups, representing for the most part distinct schools of thought. There are, however, great names that cannot be conveniently treated under any historical group, such names as Irenseus, A than as i us, Jerome, Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great. Keeping this in view, we might cla ify the athers in accordance with the following scheme (1) the Apostolic Fathers (the best known of whom are Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp), who received their title not only as being younger contemporaries and perhaps personal disciples of Apostles, but also for their nearne and faithfulne to the Apos 398 FATHERS OF THE CHURCH 395 tolic tradition; (2) the Greek _4polo gists (the most notable of whom is Justin Martyr), who sovght to defend Christian truth cn raticnal and philosophical grounds against both Jew and pagan; (3) the Alexandrians (outstanding among whom are Clement and Origen), who greatly furthered the development of Christian theology in general, but whose names are specially a ociated with the allegorical and mystical type of Scriptural interpretation; (4) the North African School (to which Tertullian and Cyprian belong), who shaped Christian Latinity, as well as_ the theology and ecclesiastical polity of the West; (5) the Cappadocians (in which group the most prominent members are Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Ny a), who caught up the theology of A than as i us, providing it with well-defined terms, and so laying broad the foundations of the Greek orthodoxy; (6) the Aniiockians (among whom Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theoderet are the greatest), who were opposed to the Alexandrian mysticism and held by the literal and historical mode of Scriptural interpretation; (7) the Western Nicene Group (counting in their number eminent teachers like Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose), who fcllowed the Alexandrians in their exegetical method, and in their dogmatic theology A than as i us and the Cappadocians; (8) the School of Augustine, in which the Western theological tradition set by TertulHan and Cyprian culminated; (9) the School of Lérins (leading members of which are Hilary of Arles and Vincent i us), which attempted to mitigate the extreme August in i an doctrines of sin and grace. 5, Value of Patristic Study. Among the Fathers are many great thinkers and ywriters (not to say _ orators, organizers, and statesmen) who should be studied for their own sake, and for the influence they have wielded. We would only indicate here some of the various uses of patristic study. (1) The student of the Bible turns to the Fathers, and especially the earlier of them, for light upon the problem of the true or original text of the Bible— although very few of the Fathers knew the Hebrew tongue, and only Origen and Jerome can throw direct light upon the Old Testament text. To the Fathers also, especially great exegetes like Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine, the Biblical student turns for light upon the meaning of the sacred text, and for knowledge of the history of its interpretation. (2) The student of Church history finds first-hand material in the Fathers for the older post-Apostolic period. This material is supplied in the tractates and letters FATIGUE of the Fathers generally. But patristic writers from Eusebius downwards furnish us also with formal histories of the Church of both a general and special character. Patristic histories, as indeed all histories, are to be used with critical caution. And not only do the Fathers inform us as to the course of events; we are dependent upon them for our knowledge of the development of creed and liturgy, ritual and order, and other Christian institutions. (3) The siudent of ecclesiastical dogma and Christian theology in general cannot dispense with the study of the Fathers. The patristic was the formative and, in a sense, conclusive period of Christian theology. In the ancient Greek theology the idea of God was developed, and in the so-called Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ respectively received their final Greek dogmatic expre ion. Landmarks in the history of this dogmatic development are the names of Origen, A than as i us, Basil and the Gregories, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Leo the Great. In the ancient Latin theology, in accordance with the more practical genius of the Westerns, the doctrine of man was developed, and of sin and grace. With this anthropological or soteriological, as distinguished from the other more strictly theological movement, the names of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine are principally a ociated. It was left to the media val theologians to work out the doctrine of the Work of Christ.—Br1s1ioGRAPHY: F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers; E. Loigh-Bennett, and book of the Early Christian F athers;S.P.C.K., The Fathers for English Readers (a series of biographies); also Harly Church Cla ics (a series of translations); H. B. Swete, Patristic Study (1902; an excellent introduction to the field of patristic learning, with useful bibliographies); W. Bright, The Age of the Fathers. 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