Patristics for Protestants

PATRISTICS

FOR

PROTESTANTS

Introduction

Christians of the twenty-first century stand upon a millenia-old foundation of blood and blood-earnest struggles unlike any other movement in history. Every other idea, philosophy, or religion of humanity that in its time once captivated the most fervent spirits and wrested into its service thesharpest intellects of humankind has soon disappeared as suddenly as it came. Not so with Christianity:from that first day in which, according to his promise, the resurrected Christ poured out his Spirit uponthe twelve apostles, there has been an unbroken succession of men and women devoted to theunchanging gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with an intensity of commitment unexplainable by any whohave not likewise known the soul-entrancing beauty of the Good News of Christ, the God-Man.What rivers of blood have poured from the veins of old men and young boys, tender youngwomen and stooped-over grandmothers, those bold in personality and those timid and shrinking bynature, and all because, having once devoted themselves to this Savior of men, they could never againturn aside, no matter what the cost! What brilliant thinkers have poured out all the energies of their youth and old age alike into their pursuit of the unsearchable depths of the person and work of thisSavior, and never exhausted the subject! What golden-tongued preachers and orators have stirred upmasses of ordinary people to acts and lives of good works and piety unthinkable to those who have notthe same spirit! What fiery polemicists have torn and rent every skulking wolf of heresy, stripped them bare, knocked out all their lying teeth, for the preservation of the flock of God!Seeing that these things are so, and knowing but the merest fraction of the earnest and devotedlives and works of so many generations before us, who in dependence upon the same Spirit of Godhave sought the unchanging truth of the Gospel, it is beyond argument that the historic myopia plaguing much of modern Christianity, particularly among the various denominations and branches of Protestantism, is utterly at odds with the nature of Christianity – which is, after all, a religion foundedupon nothing but the solid, historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, and thereafter built upthrough its generations in real history, by real men and women, who really did and thought and believed those things they considered to be in continuity with the apostolic teachings and traditions, asrecorded in the inspired Word of God.To ignore or despise the witness of the Church in the first several centuries after the ascensionof Christ, therefore, is foolish at best, and may render one susceptible to damning heresies, at worst.Today, as with the early Church, there are heresies afoot which do despite to the Gospel of God's freeand sovereign grace, and overturn the only sure foundation of our eternal salvation. But many of theseheresies have already been soundly refuted, some two thousand years ago – and yet, people perish for alittle ignorance of history!But not only have the church fathers something very relevant and very profound to say to theever recurring heresies concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ; they also may havemuch more to say to the Roman-Protestant controversies than many Protestants have sometimes beenaware. Rome has a long history of earnest interaction with these fathers – so much so, in fact, that tomany Protestants, the church fathers are simply “Catholic” authors, not in the appropriate sense of theterm (that is, by virtue of the fact that they speak with the approval of and in essential agreement withthe acknowledged, universal Church, as it existed and thought and taught up to their period of history); but rather, in that common sense of the term which would see them in agreement with the dogma of theVatican – that is, in the sense that would view them as “Catholic” in opposition to and mutualdistinction from “Protestant”.

Of course, this is anachronistic: many of the doctrines of the Vatican did not develop until manycenturies after these church fathers lived and died; and while isolated statements and passages mayevince the seed-form of ideas, practices, or doctrines that have since become the entrenched dogma of Roman Catholicism, yet the whole tenor and mindset of all their writings may often be utterly opposedin principle to the ways in which those ideas have since developed. Many early writers, considering anunrelated subject, have said things unclearly or unwisely which later generations, combating newheresies, have found necessary to clear up. In such cases, it is never a legitimate method of argumentation to wrest those miscontextualized snippets into service in a doctrinal battle that had notyet arisen in their own day.But the sword cuts in both directions: if it is not allowable to Rome, neither is it allowable toProtestants to use the fathers in historically insensitive ways. But given the nature of the debate, whichis over concerns that have largely arisen long after the fathers died, this is often a difficult principle to put into practice. It is much easier to take a phrase or paragraph and exuberantly claim, “See, this father is saying precisely what we are saying!”. In some cases, perhaps, this may be true; but in most cases, itis simply not the case, for the fathers in question are addressing altogether different issues. What theysay may and probably does have some bearing on the question; but it is not a direct answer to thequestion. Rather than reading them, therefore, as though they were addressing the questions of asixteenth-century debate, we ought to read them, first and foremost, on their own terms; and only then bring those principles which they themselves teach to bear upon a later, related debate. This is muchmore difficult a process; but ultimately, it is the only honest and helpful way of proceeding

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.Before you read a line of this anthology, therefore, and especially if you are a Protestant seekingammunition for polemics against Roman theology (not that this is wrong in and of itself), and not justsomeone with no firm convictions as yet, or a wavering Protestant who is thinking of turning to Romeand wondering if the Vatican has a real case for its claim to be the true Catholic Church, in apostolicsuccession from the first twelve, I have a caution for you, from Alexander Pope: “A little learning is adangerous thing”! This anthology, by its very nature, is prone to being misused. If I did not believe the potential benefits to outweigh the risks, I would not even publish it; but given the equally dangerousand much more pervasive problem of historical naivety, I have decided that these risks are lesssubstantial than the possible help it may afford many persons, who are genuinely struggling with theseissues and who have rightly realized that if, in the first seven centuries of Church history, nobody ever said the things that Protestants have claimed are central to the gospel, then Protestantism mustnecessarily be on very shaky ground. That is just what certain Roman apologists would have you believe; but any honest and careful searching of the evidence reveals a much different and morenuanced reality. This compendium of the fathers will give no one a full-orbed understanding of whattheir struggles were and why they expressed themselves the way they did; but I think it will prove beyond cavil that the fathers were not generally opposed to the core Protestant doctrines, but on thecontrary often expressed themselves in ways that, if not directly in support of, are at least verycompatible with those doctrines which a new era and a new controversy drove the Reformers toformulate in precise terms, just as a millennium before, other controversies drove the fathers toformulate orthodox trinitarian theology in precise and unequivocal terms.So much for the introductory vindication of the project's validity and cautions against itsmisuse; it now remains only to describe it in short. In essence, this is a categorized and lightlyannotated selection of usually brief quotations from the church fathers on topics which are either of importance to the debate between Rome and Protestantism, or else enlightening with respect to somecurrently popular understanding of the atonement or any other theological topic, which is at odds withthe historic Protestant understanding. The editor and compiler of these quotations believes the historicReformed faith to be a basically scriptural and catholic (i.e., in continuity with the teachings of the

1I am thankful to Dr. Richard Bishop for wisely impressing some of these principles upon me.

universal Church from the days of the apostles to the modern era) system of doctrine; and that, whilemany of the fathers may have had weaknesses and blind spots, as theologians of every age are prone to,which led them in some superficial respects to have some things in common with the modern RomanChurch, yet, in reality, the gist of their beliefs are more alike in spirit to the Reformers than the Romanapologists. To use the words of the great Genevan Reformer, John Calvin, “I know that the old writers[i.e., the church fathers] sometimes speak rather harshly; and, as I have just said, I do not deny that theyhave perhaps erred; but those of their writings that were marred with a few spots here and there becomeutterly defiled when they are handled by these men's unwashed hands [i.e., the hands of the medievalschoolmen, who were instrumental in developing many of the doctrines of the Roman Church inCalvin's day]”.In addition to the categorized quotations and annotations, there will also be a very brief introduction to each of the major headings under consideration, in which it will be attempted to give anexplanation of the history and controversies surrounding the production of the works there excerpted,in order to preclude, inasmuch as possible, any misuse of the fathers due to a wrongly anachronisticreading of them. It should be remembered, however, that for a proper evaluation of the doctrine of thefathers, it is necessary both to be well-acquainted with their history and to read in total entire works and bodies of works, and not just a few short selections alone. If this list only proves that Rome's presumption to have the fathers' on their side is not so cut-and-dry as some like to make out, and thusdrives some questioner to a more rigorous examination of early church theology, which goes far beyond the bounds of this volume, it will have accomplished its intended purpose.A few final points: one issue upon which the fathers spoke with unanimous consent, and towhich we would do well to listen carefully, is the way in which they approached the Old Testamentscriptures as a thoroughly Christian document, which everywhere and in every way testified of Christ.The fathers' hermeneutic, although it has sometimes (regrettably) been made the subject of muchdisdain, was in reality quite as variegated as Protestant hermeneutics today; and yet, in the variousways in which they approached the scriptures, they all sought the same end of seeing Christ and hiswork in the entire corpus of Old Testament writings – a goal which they had in common both withChrist and the apostles who wrote the New Testament scriptures. Because I believe there is much wemight learn from them in this respect, I have included a few discussions of hermeneutics, as well as afew examples of Old Testament exegesis, and a selective list of passages in which the fathers saw either direct prophecies or types of Christ in the Old Testament.It being a very loosely valid suggestion that the earlier fathers had a lesser distance from theapostles, and thus an inroad to addressing and bringing out apostolic concerns without the weight andcomplications of many controversies which followed the death of the first twelve, I have considered itadvantageous to distinguish the fathers who lived and wrote before the Nicene Council from those wholived during and afterwards; which I have done by giving the names only of the Ante-Nicene fathers inall capital letters; and furthermore, unless some specific reason drove me to do otherwise, I have listedthe selection of quotations in a basically chronological order.Finally, the quotations provided are usually taken from the series of Ante-Nicene Fathers (ed. byAlexander Roberts and James Donaldson); the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (ed. byPhilip Schaff); and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, (ed. by Philip Schaff and HenryWace). Occasionally, when a quotation I have employed is not included in these series, I have providedmy own translation from the Migne Patrologia Graeca or the Migne Patrologia Latina; these rareexceptions I have indicated in the footnotes.I do not need to remind the reader that the issues here touched upon and the outcomes whichtheir belief or rejection may effect are eternal in duration and vast beyond all expression in their importance and gravity. Heaven and hell hang in the balance; and what's more, the very glory of theMost High God, which we with our lips profess to defend, we may be found out on the Day of Judgment rather to have blasphemed and despised, if we prove to be in error on these, some of the most