Fathers of the Church

The Appeal to the Fathers

Classification of Patristic Writings

Apostolic Fathers and the Second Century

Third Century

Fourth Century

Fifth Century

Sixth Century

Characteristics of Patristic Writings

Commentaries

Preachers

Writers

East and West

Theology

Discipline, Liturgy, Ascetics

Historical Materials

Patristic Study

The word Father is used in the New Testament to mean a teacher of spiritual

things, by whose means the soul of man is born again into the likeness of Christ:

"For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in

Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you. Wherefore I beseech you, be

ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ" (I Cor., iv, 15, 16; cf. Gal., iv, 19). The

first teachers of Christianity seem to be collectively spoken of as "the Fathers" (II

Peter, iii, 4).

Thus St. Irenaeus defines that a teacher is a father, and a disciple is a son (iv,

41,2), and so says Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I, i, 1). A bishop is

emphatically a "father in Christ", both because it was he, in early times, who

baptized all his flock, and because he is the chief teacher of his church. But he

is also regarded by the early Fathers, such as Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and

Tertullian as the recipient of the tradition of his predecessors in the see, and

consequently as the witness and representative of the faith of his Church before

Catholicity and the world. Hence the expression "the Fathers" comes naturally to

be applied to the holy bishops of a preceding age, whether of the last generation

or further back, since they are the parents at whose knee the Church of today

was taught her belief. It is also applicable in an eminent way to bishops sitting in

council, "the Fathers of Nicaea", "the Fathers of Trent". Thus Fathers have learnt

from Fathers, and in the last resort from the Apostles, who are sometimes called

Fathers in this sense: "They are your Fathers", says St. Leo, of the Princes of

the Apostles, speaking to the Romans; St. Hilary of Aries calls them sancti

patres; Clement of Alexandria says that his teachers, from Greece, Ionia,

Coele-Syria, Egypt, the Orient, Assyria, Palestine, respectively, had handed on

to him the tradition of blessed teaching from Peter, and James, and John, and

Paul, receiving it "as son from father".

It follows that, as our own Fathers are the predecessors who have taught us, so

the Fathers of the whole Church are especially the earlier teachers, who

instructed her in the teaching of the Apostles, during her infancy and first growth.

It is difficult to define the first age of the Church, or the age of the Fathers. It is a

common habit to stop the study of the early Church at the Council of Chalcedon

in 451. "The Fathers" must undoubtedly include, in the West, St. Gregory the

Great (d. 604), and in the East, St. John Damascene (d. about 754). It is

frequently said that St. Bernard (d. 1153) was the last of the Fathers, and

Migne's "Patrologia Latina" extends to Innocent III, halting only on the verge of

the thirteenth century, while his "Patrologia Graeca" goes as far as the Council of

Florence (1438-9). These limits are evidently too wide, It will be best to consider

that the great merit of St. Bernard as a writer lies in his resemblance in style and

matter to the greatest among the Fathers, in spite of the difference of period. St.

Isidore of Seville (d. 636) and the Venerable Bede (d. 735) are to be classed

among the Fathers, but they may be said to have been born out of due time, as

St. Theodore the Studite was in the East.

I. THE APPEAL TO THE FATHERS

Thus the use of the term Fathers has been continuous, yet it could not at first he

employed in precisely the modern sense of Fathers of the Church. In early days

the expression referred to writers who were then quite recent. It is still applied to

those writers who are to us the ancients, but no longer in the same way to

writers who are now recent. Appeals to the Fathers are a subdivision of appeals

to tradition. In the first half of the second century begin the appeals to the

sub-Apostolic age: Papias appeals to the presbyters, and through them to the

Apostles. Half a century later St. Irenaeus supplements this method by an

appeal to the tradition handed down in every Church by the succession of its

bishops (Adv. Haer., III, i-iii), and Tertullian clinches this argument by the

observation that as all the Churches agree, their tradition is secure, for they

could not all have strayed by chance into the same error (Praescr., xxviii). The

appeal is thus to Churches and their bishops, none but bishops being the

authoritative exponents of the doctrine of their Churches. As late as 341 the

bishops of the Dedication Council at Antioch declared: "We are not followers of

Arius; for how could we, who are bishops, be disciples of a priest?"

Yet slowly, as the appeals to the presbyters died out, there was arising by the

side of appeals to the Churches a third method: the custom of appealing to

Christian teachers who were not necessarily bishops. While, without the Church,

Gnostic schools were substituted for churches, within the Church, Catholic

schools were growing up. Philosophers like Justin and most of the numerous

second-century apologists were reasoning about religion, and the great

catechetical school of Alexandria was gathering renown. Great bishops and

saints like Dionysius of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus of Pontus, Firmilian

of Cappadocia, and Alexander of Jerusalem were proud to be disciples of the

priest Origen. The Bishop Cyprian called daily for the works of the priest

Tertullian with the words "Give me the master". The Patriarch Athanasius refers

for the ancient use of the word homoousios, not merely to the two Dionysii, but

to the priest Theognostus. Yet these priest-teachers are not yet called Fathers,

and the greatest among them, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, Hippolytus, Novatian,

Lucian, happen to be tinged with heresy; two became antipopes; one is the

father of Arianism; another was condemned by a general council. In each case

we might apply the words used by St. Hilary of Tertullian: "Sequenti errore

detraxit scriptis probabilibus auctoritatem" (Comm. in Matt., v, 1, cited by

Vincent of Lérins, 2.4).

A fourth form of appeal was better founded and of enduring value. Eventually it

appeared that bishops as well as priests were fallible. In the second century the

bishops were orthodox. In the third they were often found wanting. in the fourth

they were the leaders of schisms, and heresies, in the Meletian and Donatist

troubles and in the long Arian struggle, in which few were found to stand firm

against the insidious persecution of Constantius. It came to be seen that the true

Fathers of the Church are those Catholic teachers who have persevered in her

communion, and whose teaching has been recognized as orthodox. So it came

to pass that out of the four "Latin Doctors" one is not a bishop. Two other

Fathers who were not bishops have been declared to be Doctors of the Church,

Bede and John Damascene, while among the Doctors outside the patristic period

we find two more priests, the incomparable St. Bernard and the greatest of all

theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas. Nay, few writers had such great authority in

the Schools of the middle ages as the layman Boethius, many of whose

definitions are still commonplaces of theology.

Similarly (we may notice in passing) the name "Father", which originally

belonged to bishops, has been as it were delegated to priests, especially as

ministers of the Sacrament of Penance. it is now a form of address to all priests

in Spain, in Ireland, and, of recent years, in England and the United States.

Papas or Pappas, Pope, was a term of respect for eminent bishops (e.g. in

letters to St. Cyprian and to St. Augustine -- neither of these writers seems to

use it in addressing other bishops, except when St. Augustine writes to Rome).

Eventually the term was reserved to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria; yet in

the East to-day every priest is a "pope". The Aramaic abbe was used from early

times for the superiors of religious houses. But through the abuse of granting

abbeys in commendam to seculars, it has become a polite title for all secular

clerics, even seminarists in Italy, and especially in France, whereas all religious

who are priests are addressed as "Father".

We receive only, says St. Basil, what we have been taught by the holy Fathers;

and he adds that in his Church of Caesarea the faith of the holy Fathers of

Nicaea has long been implanted (Ep. cxl, 2). St. Gregory Nazianzen declares

that he holds fast the teaching which he heard from the holy Oracles, and was

taught by the holy Fathers. These Cappadocian saints seem to be the first to

appeal to a real catena of Fathers. The appeal to one or two was already

common enough; but not even the learned Eusebius had thought of a long string

of authorities. St. Basil, for example (De Spir. S., ii, 29), cites for the formula

"with the Holy Ghost" in the doxology, the example of Irenaeus, Clement and

Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius of Rome, Eusebius of Caesarea, Origen,

Africanus, the preces lucerariae said at the lighting of lamps, Athenagoras,

Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, Meletius. In the fifth century this method

became a stereotyped custom. St. Jerome is perhaps the first writer to try to

establish his interpretation of a text by a string of exegetes (Ep. cxii, ad Aug.).

Paulinus, the deacon and biographer of St. Ambrose, in the libellus he presented

against the Pelagians to Pope Zosimus in 417, quotes Cyprian, Ambrose,

Gregory Nazianzen, and the decrees of the late Pope Innocent. In 420 St.

Augustine quotes Cyprian and Ambrose against the same heretics (C. duas Epp.

Pel., iv). Julian of Eclanum quoted Chrysostom and Basil; St. Augustine replies

to him in 421 (Contra Julianum, i ) with Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius,

Hilary, Ambrose, the decrees of African councils, and above all Popes Innocent

and Zosimus. In a celebrated passage he argues that these Western writers are

more than sufficient, but as Julian had appealed to the East, to the East, he shall

go, and the saint adds Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Synod of Diospolis,

Chrysostom. To these he adds Jerome (c. xxxiv): "Nor should you think Jerome,

because he was a priest, is to be despised", and adds a eulogy. This is

amusing, when we remember that Jerome in a fit of irritation, fifteen before, had

written to Augustine (Ep. cxlii) "Do not excite against me the silly crowd of the

ignorant, who venerate you as a bishop, and receive you with the honour due to a

prelate when you declaim in the Church, whereas they think little of me, an old

man, nearly decrepit, in my monastery in the solitude of the country."

In the second book "Contra Julianum", St. Augustine again cites Ambrose

frequently, and Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary, Chrysostom; in ii, 37, he

recapitulates the nine names (omitting councils and popes), adding (iii, 32)

Innocent and Jerome. A few years later the Semipelagians of Southern Gaul, who

were led by St. Hilary of Arles, St. Vincent of Lérins, and Bl. Cassian, refuse to

accept St. Augustine's severe view of predestination because "contrarium putant

patrum opinioni et ecclesiastico sensui". Their opponent St. Prosper, who was

trying to convert them to Augustinianism, complains: "Obstinationem suam

vetustate defendunt" (Ep. inter Atig. ccxxv, 2), and they said that no

ecclesiastical writer had ever before interpreted Romans quite as St. Augustine

did -- which was probably true enough. The interest of this attitude lies in the fact

that it was, if not new at least more definite than any earlier appeal to antiquity.

Through most of the fourth century, the controversy with the Arians had turned

upon Scripture, and appeals to past authority were few. But the appeal to the

Fathers was never the most imposing locus theologicus, for they could not easily

be assembled so as to form an absolutely conclusive test. On the other hand up

to the end of the fourth century, there were practically no infallible definitions

available, except condemnations of heresies, chiefly by popes. By the time that

the Arian reaction under Valens caused the Eastern conservatives to draw

towards the orthodox, and prepared the restoration of orthodoxy to power by

Theodosius, the Nicene decisions were beginning to be looked upon as

sacrosanct, and that council to be preferred to a unique position above all others.

By 430, the date we have reached, the Creed we now say at Mass was revered

in the East, whether rightly or wrongly, as the work of the 150 Fathers of

Constantinople in 381, and there were also new papal decisions, especially the

tractoria of Pope Zosimus, which in 418 had been sent to all the bishops of the

world to be signed.

It is to living authority, the idea of which had thus come to the fore, that St.

Prosper was appealing in his controversy with the Lerinese school. When he

went to Gaul, in 431, as papal envoy, just after St. Augustine's death, he replied

to their difficulties, not by reiterating that saint's hardest arguments, but by taking

with him a letter from Pope St. Celestine, in which St. Augustine is extolled as

having been held by the pope's predecessors to be "inter magistros optimos". No

one is to be allowed to depreciate him, but it is not said that every word of his is

to be followed. The disturbers had appealed to the Holy See, and the reply is

"Desinat incessere novitas vetustatem" (Let novelty cease to attack antiquity!).

An appendix is added, not of the opinions of ancient Fathers, but of recent

popes, since the very same monks who thought St. Augustine went too far,

professed (says the appendix) "that they followed and approved only what the

most holy See of the Blessed Apostle Peter sanctioned and taught by the

ministry of its prelates". A list therefore follows of "the judgments of the rulers of

the Roman Church", to which are added some sentences of African councils,

"which indeed the Apostolic bishops made their own when they approved them".

To these inviolabiles sanctiones (we might roughly render "infallible utterances")

prayers used in the sacraments are appended "ut legem credendi lex statuat

supplicandi" -- a frequently misquoted phrase -- and in conclusion, it is declared

that these testimonies of the Apostolic See are sufficient, "so that we consider

not to be Catholic at all whatever shall appear to be contrary to the decisions we

have cited". Thus the decisions of the Apostolic See are put on a very different

level from the views of St. Augustine, just as that saint always drew a sharp

distinction between the resolutions of African councils or the extracts from the

Fathers, on the one hand, and the decrees of Popes Innocent and Zosimus on

the other.

Three years later a famous document on tradition and its use emanated from the

Lerinese school, the "Commonitorium" of St. Vincent. He whole-heartedly

accepted the letter of Pope Celestine, and he quoted it as an authoritative and

irresistible witness to his own doctrine that where quod ubique, or universitas, is

uncertain, we must turn to quod semper, or antiquitas. Nothing could be more to

his purpose than the pope's: "Desinat incessere novitas vetustatem" The

oecumenical Council of Ephesus had been held in the same year that Celestine

wrote. Its Acts were before St. Vincent, and it is clear that he looked upon both

pope and council as decisive authorities. It was necessary to establish this,

before turning to his famous canon, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab

omnibus otherwise universitas, antiquitas, consensio. It was not a new criterion,

else it would have committed suicide by its very expression. But never had the

doctrine been so admirably phrased, so limpidly explained, so adequately

exemplified. Even the law of the evolution of dogma is defined by Vincent in

language which can hardly be surpassed for exactness and vigour. St. Vincent's

triple test is wholly misunderstood if it is taken to be the ordinary rule of faith.

Like all Catholics he took the ordinary rule to be the living magisterium of the

Church, and he assumes that the formal decision in cases of doubt lies with the

Apostolic See, or with a general council. But cases of doubt arise when no such

decision is forthcoming. Then it is that the three tests are to be applied, not

simultaneously, but, if necessary, in succession.

When an error is found in one corner of the Church, then the first test,

universitas, quod ubique, is an unanswerable refutation, nor is there any need to

examine further (iii, 7, 8). But if an error attacks the whole Church, then

antiquitas, quod semper is to be appealed to, that is, a consensus existing

before the novelty arose. Still, in the previous period one or two teachers, even

men of great fame, may have erred. Then we betake ourselves to quod ab

omnibus, consensio, to the many against the few (if possible to a general

council; if not, to an examination of writings). Those few are a trial of faith "ut

tentet vos Dominus Deus vester" (Deut., xiii, 1 sqq.). So Tertullian was a magna

tentatio; so was Origen -- indeed the greatest temptation of all. We must know

that whenever what is new or unheard before is introduced by one man beyond or

against all the saints, it pertains not to religion but to temptation (xx, 49). Who

are the "Saints" to whom we appeal? The reply is a definition of "Fathers of the

Church" given with all St. Vincent's inimitable accuracy: "Inter se majorem

consulat interrogetque sententias, eorum dumtaxat qui, diversis licet temporibus

et locis, in unius tamen ecclesiae Catholicae communione et fide permanentes,

magistri probabiles exstiterunt; et quicquid non unus aut duo tantum, sed omnes

pariter uno eodemque consensu aperte, frequenter, perseveranter tenuisse,

scripsisse, docuisse cognoverit, id sibi quoque intelligat absque ulla dubitatione

credendum" (iii, 8). This unambiguous sentence defines for us what is the right

way of appealing to the Fathers, and the italicized words perfectly explain what is

a "Father": "Those alone who, though in diverse times and places, yet

persevering in time communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, have been

approved teachers."

The same result is obtained by modern theologians, in their definitions; e.g.

Fessler thus defines what constitutes a "Father":

1.orthodox doctrine and learning;

2.holiness of life;

3.(at the present day) a certain antiquity.

The criteria by which we judge whether a writer is a "Father" or not are:

1.citation by a general council, or

2.in public Acts of popes addressed to the Church or concerning Faith;

3.encomium in the Roman Martyrology as "sanctitate et doctrina insignis";

4.public reading in Churches in early centuries;

5.citations, with praise, as an authority as to the Faith by some of the more

celebrated Fathers.

Early authors, though belonging to the Church, who fail to reach this standard are

simply ecclesiastical writers ("Patrologia", ed. Jungmann, ch. i, #11). On the

other hand, where the appeal is not to the authority of the writer, but his

testimony is merely required to the belief of his time, one writer is as good as

another, and if a Father is cited for this purpose, it is not as a Father that he is

cited, but merely as a witness to facts well known to him. For the history of

dogma, therefore, the works of ecclesiastical writers who are not only not

approved, but even heretical, are often just as valuable as those of the Fathers.

On the other hand, the witness of one Father is occasionally of great weight for

doctrine when taken singly, if he is teaching a subject on which he is recognized

by the Church as an especial authority, e.g., St. Athanasius on the Divinity of the

Son, St. Augustine on the Holy Trinity, etc. There are a few cases in which a

general council has given approbation to the work of a Father, the most important

being the two letters of St. Cyril of Alexandria which were read at the Council of

Ephesus. But the authority of single Fathers considered in itself, says Franzelin

(De traditione, thesis xv), "is not infallible or peremptory; though piety and sound

reason agree that the theological opinions of such individuals should not be

treated lightly, and should not without great caution be interpreted in a sense

which clashes with the common doctrine of other Fathers." The reason is plain

enough; they were holy men, who are not to be presumed to have intended to

stray from the doctrine of the Church, and their doubtful utterances are therefore

to be taken in the best sense of which they are capable. If they cannot be

explained in an orthodox sense, we have to admit that not the greatest is

immune from ignorance or accidental error or obscurity. But on the use of the

Fathers in theological questions, the article TRADITION and the ordinary dogmatic

treatises on that subject must be consulted, as it is proper here only to deal with

the historical development of their use. The subject was never treated as a part of

dogmatic theology until the rise of what is now commonly called "Theologia

fundamentalis", in the sixteenth century, the founders of which are Melchior

Canus and Bellarmine. The former has a discussion of the use of the Fathers in

deciding questions of faith (De locis theologicis, vii). The Protestant Reformers

attacked the authority of the Fathers. The most famous of these opponents is

Dalbeus (Jean Daillé, 1594-1670, "Traité de l'emploi des saints Pères", 1632; in

Latin "De usu Patrum", 1656). But their objections are long since forgotten.