On the right use of the Fathers 1

In the summer I witnessed a scene at the Oxford Patristics Conference, at a session for evangelicals, of some confusion of mind about just how Christians today should make use of the Fathers.  At the time I said that I thought someone needed to write something about this.  I thought that I would start to think about this issue here.

When I encounter people who are interested in the Fathers, most of them fall into two groups, holding quite different views about how we should look at the Fathers.  The first of these views we might call the “secular view”; the second the “catholic view”.  What is missing from this, of course, is what might once have been called the “protestant view”.

The secular view is simple enough.  Christianity, it believes, is not true.  The bible is not true and the account that it gives of Christian origins is not true.  The preaching of Jesus of Nazareth is not true, in its most essential parts; those whom he instructed were likewise wrong in the key points that they preached; and the teaching of the New Testament, that Christ died for our sins and rose again from the dead, is not true either.  Likewise it believes that the early Christians were similarly wrong; that the writers of that group were mistaken about the matters of most interest to them; and that the Fathers are merely the most outstanding examples of a group which is throughly mistaken.  I do not speak here of atheists, as such; so much as normal unbelievers of our day.

It is perfectly possible to hold these views, and still find early Christian history interesting, and to look at the works of all these writers — I mean the Fathers — as being historically interesting.  This approach is the one adopted by unbelievers who, for some reason, find themselves working in this field.

The Catholic view is not quite so simple.  Obviously the bible is true, and the Christian teaching is true.  But what about the writers after the New Testament?

The Catholic view, as I understand it, is that a select group of these writers are to some extent inspired, in a similar but lesser way than the bible; or rather, are a witness to the teaching of God the Holy Spirit.  Others are less reliable, being merely human; others still are plain mistaken.  The “select group” alone truly deserve the name of “Fathers of the Church”, although the term is used more loosely than that.

Which of the early Christian writers comprise the “select group”?  For this, I turn to volume 1 of Johannes Quasten’s Patrology.

Patrology is that part of the history of Christian literature which deals with the theological authors of Christian antiquity. It comprises both the orthodox and the heretical writers, although it treats with preference those authors who represent the traditional ecclesiastical doctrine, the so-called Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Thus, Patrology can be defined as the science of the Fathers of the Church. It includes, in the West, all Christian authors up to Gregory the Great (d. 604) or Isidore of Seville (d. 636), and, in the East, it extends usually to John Damascene (d. 749)·[1]

We are accustomed to call the authors of early Christian writings ‘Fathers of the Church’. In ancient times the word ‘Father’ was applied to a teacher; for in biblical and early Christian usage, teachers are the fathers of their students. …

In Christian antiquity, the teaching office was the bishop’s. Thus the title ‘Father’ was first applied to him. Doctrinal controversies of the fourth century brought about further development. The use of the term ‘Father’ became more comprehensive; it was now extended to ecclesiastical writers in so far as they were accepted as representatives of the tradition of the Church. Thus St. Augustine numbers St. Jerome among the witnesses to the traditional doctrine of original sin, although he was not a bishop…

Vincent of Lerins, in his Commonitory of 434 applies the term ‘Father’ to all ecclesiastical writers without distinction of hierarchical grade:

If some new question should arise on which no such decision has been given, they should then have recourse to the opinions of the holy Fathers, of those, at least, who, each in his own time and place, remaining in the unity of communion and the faith, were accepted as approved masters; and whatsoever these may be found to have held, with one mind and one consent, this ought to be accounted the true and catholic doctrine ofth.e Church, without any doubt or scruple (Chapter 41). — Nothing ought to be believed by posterity save what the sacred antiquity of the holy Fathers consentient in Christ has held (Chapter 43) .

Today only those are to be regarded as ‘Fathers of the Church’ who combine these four necessary qualifications: orthodoxy of doctrine, holiness of life, ecclesiastical approval, and antiquity. All other theological writers are known as “ecclesiae scriptores” or “scriptores ecclesiastici”, a term whIch St. Jerome coined (De viris Ill., Prol.; Ep. 112, 3). The title ‘Doctor of the Church’ is not identical with ‘Father of the Church’, because some of those known as Doctors of the Church lack the distinction of ‘antiquity’,…

Although the Fathers of the Church hold an important position in the history of Hellenistic and Roman literature, their authority in the Catholic Church is based on entirely different grounds. It is the ecclesiastical doctrine of Tradition as a source of faith which makes the writings and opinions of the Fathers so important. The Church regards the “unanimis consensus patrum” as infallible, if it concerns the interpretation of Scripture (Vatic. sess. 3, c. 2).[2]

These select writers all express views which shaped the subsequent course of church history in the middle ages, and created medieval Catholicism.  They treat the church itself as a possible source of authority, and are “ecclesiastical” in a way that few modern Christians are.

The attitude of Catholics towards the other early Christian writers is to treat them as interesting but not authoritative.  This is close to what we might call the “protestant view”.  Unfortunately no-one today uses the term “protestant” for themselves; today those who are the intellectual heirs of the protest of the evangelical princes at the Reformation are generally known as simply Christians or (under protest) Evangelicals.  I will use the former term, although I am well aware that some Catholics are Christians.

Christians believe that the bible is true, and that the teaching of Christ and his apostles is true.  But few Christians know much about Christian writers after the New Testament.  Those who do take the line that all of these writers were fallible human beings, and that they could be unduly influenced by the times in which they lived, just as we are.  They broadly accept the Nicene creed, and have no ideological objection to Chalcedon, because  they don’t really know much about it, and are not disposed to disagree with something handed down which does not seem obviously wrong.

But they do believe that God acts in history.  They do believe that Christians today are working with the Holy Spirit, and that, therefore, Christians of past times were doing so likewise.  While wary of anything like a cult of “Saints”, people like John Wesley or C. S. Lewis or Martin Luther will receive interest and approval, albeit not unqualified.  To the extent that Christians are aware of the early Christian writers, they will read them primarily for historical interest, as the “secular view” people do, but also looking for signs of spiritual kinship, as Catholics do.  They will find fewer links than Catholics do, however, because most of the surviving patristic literature exists precisely because it was copied by Catholics.  But they will tend to feel that these are brothers in Christ living in past times.

This approach is very similar to the attitude that Catholics take to early Christian writers who are not in the magic circle, who are not Doctors or Fathers of the Church.  It is, in truth, a halfway house between the “secular view” and the “catholic view”, as might be expected, although rather closer to the latter.  But always there is awareness that “Churchianity” can eclipse the message of the Gospel.

I confess that it seems an entirely wholesome way to look at things to me!

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  1. [1]Vol. 1, p.1
  2. [2]Quasten vol. 1, p.9-11.

Ibn Abi Usaibia update

I’ve just finished proofing the OCR for page 900.  I think there is only another 50 pages to go.  There may be some pages of footnotes after that, but not very many.

UPDATE: Page 946 complete, which is the end of the main text, although it ends suddenly and without any colophon which makes me suspicious that we don’t have it all.  There are 62 pages of notes to follow, which seem to annotate the first 100 pages of the text.  I’ll start in on these.

UPDATE: The notes pages are proving very difficult to proof.  Not sure why.  Drat!

UPDATE: I think I’ve got it, by setting the text box zoom size in Abbyy Finereader 10 to rather smaller than I was using before, and the text font size somewhat larger.  Why I should need to do this, for what is essentially the same images, I don’t know.

I’ve done a couple of pages.  Let’s hope it will be possible to tie these notes back to the main text.  Interestingly it looks as if Kopf, the translator, made pencil alterations to quite a few of the notes.  Unfortunately they are almost entirely illegible.

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An amusing OCR error

While working through the output of my scan of Ibn Abi Usaibia, I have just come across a mildly amusing OCR error.  It’s caused by the fact that “ī” is often read as “f” or “r”.

Thus I have just seen a reference to “Ibn Barrf‘s defence of al-Harfrf”.  It should, of course, be “Ibn Barrī’s defence of …”.

Ibn Barrf sounds like such a good name, tho!

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From my diary

Up to page 840 with correcting the OCR of Ibn Abi Usaibia.

I also got my Christmas cards done and posted today, complete with financial enclosures for teenage nephews.  The latter is important — an uncle is not expected to send goodies, but to relieve the financial strain.

It took me three goes before I was happy with my circular letter.  It’s a hard thing to write, as you mustn’t just regurgitate whatever you did with last year.

Obviously it’s probably best to omit things like the period under observation in Broadmoor, that you were sacked recently for being useless at your job, or your recent exciting discovery that you like Barry Manilow’s music.  People don’t need to know these things.  “Restraining order” can be such an unpleasant phrase.  So humour them.

You know it will be read at Christmas, so it ought to be positive.  Do you want to be thought of as the chap whose letter is left until last?

You know it may be read by people facing difficulties themselves, so you probably don’t want to remind them of things they may also face, and which may worry them — like whether any of us will ever be able to afford to retire.

You know that some of those reading it may be suffering financially — which means you don’t moan about (e.g.) how difficult you find it to park your new Ferrari in the garage.  Nor, I should add, do you advise them helpfully that getting the butler to do it is the answer.  Why provoke resentment among the ever-shrinking number of people who will send you a card at Christmas?

No, be bright, be positive, and try to leave people with a smile!

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Romanian patristics sites

A correspondent has drawn my attention to a couple of sites with Romanian translations of the Fathers on them:

As for [patristic literature in] Rumanian (i.e. translations from Fathers) I might estimate that there are some 50-60 volumes of PG authors and 5-10 PL authors translated, from 1700 up to our own days.

There are also internet sites with works of the three Holy Hierarchs:

However, I don’t know a page linking all these sites.

You may be asking why we care.  Well, I tried the last site.  I don’t know any Romanian, so I used Google translate.  I found that it really worked quite well.  In particular I found this translation of Chrysostom against Jews and Gentiles that Christ is God here.  At points I had to rub my eyes and check that it was not in English to start with.

So I think there are treasures to be found there.

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From my diary

Reached page 800 of Ibn Abi Usaibia today.  Only another 150 to  go!  I shall be glad when this load is off my shoulders, that’s for sure.

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Access to the CIMRM – hurray!

Thanks to the kindness of a correspondent, it looks as if I am going to acquire access to Vermaseren’s collection of Mithraic monuments, the two volume CIMRM!  I am very pleased, as you may imagine!

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A new device for photographing manuscripts?

A correspondent writes with an interesting query about a novel book cradle for copying manuscripts.

Most used are the copy stands, and I found an Austrian system called “Traveller’s copy stand”.

But last year I saw in Athos someone using a portable device with 2 glass windows and a system allowing the camera to change position for taking pictures of both pages of an opened manuscript.

Do you happen to know the name of this device? I would like to get more info on it, but I don’t know what to look for.

Copying manuscripts is the very devil to do.  You can’t open the thing flat, so it ends up in a book rest open at 45 degrees.  You want the camera facing each page at 90 degrees.  So you have to take one side of the book, turning the pages; and then flip the book around and do the other side.  It’s a faff.

I think the “Austrian travellers’ copy stand” is mentioned here.  A description at a vendor site is here.  I wonder what it costs?

But does anyone recognise the description above?  If so, info very welcome!

UPDATE: From the comments, it seems to be the Ion Book Saver.  I want one!

UPDATE: There’s a very poor demo of it on YouTube here, but it gives an idea.  It also states that UK price will be 129 GBP.  A comment on the video says release was postponed to December 2011.

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From my diary

A major, major answer to prayer came through today.  It was something that affects my ability to get work, so it could make quite a difference to the Pearse household finances over the next few months.   The diet coke will flow tonight!

When my mobile rang with the news, I was walking on a path through a churchyard in Norwich city centre, and I found it hard to refrain from a jig of joy.  (Passers-by, however, no doubt edged noticeably away from this capering, heavily muffled, manically grinning figure.)

I’d written this prayer off, you know.  I’d written “rejected” against it.  Literally written, in fact.

You see, I have a notepad by my bed, in case I think of something that I want to remember, and the prayer was on that.  I’d realised that I needed to pray for it one evening when in bed, and scribbled it in there.   Because there’s nothing worse than trying to fall asleep while trying to make sure you remember something, and many of my best ideas come to me in bed, or in the middle of the night, and I think of things  that I need to pray about.

After all, God does not answer all our prayers.  I didn’t hold it against Him, of course.  In many cases the things that we ask for would be bad for us.

But on this one, little did I know that matters were in hand.  Tonight I shall cross out “rejected” and write “fulfilled”.

I think that it is a good habit to write down what we have prayed for, and to tick them off as they are answered. God answers many more of our prayers than we realise, yet how many of us fire off a prayer and never think of Him again in that respect?  It builds confidence, once we realise that God is listening, and doing, much more for us than we might otherwise notice.

When the news came through, I promised two people on the other end a bottle of something as a solid form of thanks.  This led me to think that I need to thank God also.  Which means a donation to some useful charity.  There’s always the Salvation Army, or the London City Mission.

But I wish that I knew of a charity that helps people like me, rather than the poverty-stricken working class types.  The latter have many charities to help  them.  But I fear that a goodly number of university educated people need help and find it not.

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Less of a YODEL, more of a scream

I do wish Amazon wouldn’t use courier company YODEL to deliver books.  I ordered two on Wednesday.  Neither arrived; instead I came home today to find a snippy little card inviting me to negotiate with a robot at the YODEL site for delivery, and sit at home and wait.  I’ve just cancelled both orders, and placed one with BookDepository instead.  The other might conceivably arrive tomorrow; if it does, I’ll accept it, and ring up and pay again; if it doesn’t, BD will get my order.

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