I FIRST fell in love with the Fathers when I read an eighth-century defense of icons by St. John of Damascus. St. Athanasius’s
On the Incarnation came next, followed by the writings of St. Irenaeus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the ApostolicFathers. From there, my reading list of patristic texts grew and grew. So did my burgeoning library, much to my wife’s chagrin. (I solved that problem long ago by moving my library to EDI’s headquarters at The Ladder…no limits now!) AndI never stopped reading them. In fact, over twenty years later I’m more enamored with them than ever.
And now I’m a man on a mission. From the very beginning, my love for the Fathers has animated the work of Eighth Day Institute. It’s why the Hall ofMen and Sisters of Sophia have been foundational to our work, presenting heroes of the faith on almost a weekly basis for over a decade. It’s why the Feast ofSt. Patrick and the Symposium’s Festal Banquet are so vitally important to our mission. It’s why the
Patristic Word blog has published over 400 passages from the Fathers. It’s why every single issue of
Synaxis contains a complete section of patristic texts. It’s why we started publishing
A Word from the Fathers back in 2013; and it’s why I’m so excited about the evolution of that project as it has reemerged today.
The title of the publication is borrowed directly from theFathers. As Christian monasticism took shape in the Egyptian desert during the third and fourth centuries, an oral tradition of passing on the faith emerged.When a monk or disciple encountered a spiritual master, it was common practice fort he disciple to make a request: “Give me a word of salvation, Father.” The responses or “words of salvation” were typically tales and teachings that were short and pithy so the disciple could remember them and continue meditating upon them long after the encounter.
From the very first issue,
A Word from the Fathers has been inspired by that desert tradition. The teachings of the Fathers are indeed living words of salvation. And we have more access to them today than ever before. For over two thousand years now, the living voices of holy men and women—Fathers and Mothers of the Church—have been offering us “words of salvation.” And they are waiting to be heard, patiently waiting for you to ask them: “Give me a word of salvation.” That is precisely the mission of this publication: to curate living words from the Fathers and Mothers of the Church for the renewal of soul and city.
If you are like many people with whom I speak, you are intimidated by the writings of the Church Fathers. This is a bit perplexing to me. C. S. Lewis expressed a similar sort of puzzlement in his introduction to an English translation of St. Athanasius the Great’s
On the Incarnation. There he noted the “strange idea … that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals…” He went on to characterize this notion as a humble error, motivated by the reader’s sense of inadequacy before a great philosopher such as Plato, intimidated to meet him face to face for fear of not being able to understand him. On the contrary, Lewis argues, “The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what” ancient philosophers like Plato have to say. Based on this conviction, one of Lewis’s primary goals as a teacher was, in his words, “to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”
I completely agree with Lewis. And I believe the same applies to reading the early Church Fathers. Reading the actual words of the Fathers is far superior to reading books about them. And they usually are easier and more delightful to read. But not always.
“Usually” is a key word in Lewis’s argument that the ancients are "easier and more delightful." I believe that word is even more important today, for at least three reasons. First, I realize that sometimes the early Fathers do seem strange and perplexing. They did in fact live over 1,000 years ago, in a world altogether different from ours (despite legitimate comparisons that can be made). Second, I readily admit that at times the Fathers can be just plain difficult to understand, especially the deeper you go into the technical aspects of the Trinitarian and Christological controversies; the more technical the language gets the more difficult the reading becomes. And third, as a manifestation of a dying educational system, there has been a dramatic decline in culture over recent years. This should come as no surprise since it is the function of education to develop a common world of moral and intellectual values by passing them down from generation to generation, thereby creating a common memory by which a culture can maintain itself. To further complicate matters, I could give a diatribe on the deleterious impact of digital media upon contemporary culture and education (i.e., television, internet, video games, social networks, smart phones, text messages, et al). But I need not do so here. Even non-Christian commentators are now worried about this.
So, while I am fully persuaded by Lewis that first-hand knowledge of the Fathers is more valuable than second-hand knowledge—hence the monthly publication of
A Word from the Fathers—and I am completely convinced that it is
usually easier and more delightful to read the Fathers, I am fully cognizant of the difficulties enumerated above and summarized below:
- The Fathers can be strange and perplexing. That’s why familiarity with their cultural and historical context is helpful.
- The Fathers do get theologically technical and can thus be difficult reading. Understanding the terminology and the theological background to these controversies is therefore necessary to make sense of certain texts.
- Let’s just be honest and own the cause of our cultural decline by admitting that the level of education possessed by the average person today—that includes you and me—is abysmally and demonstrably lower than our forebears, especially in terms of theology, history, philosophy, literature, and ancient languages. This is precisely why we need a Catechetical Academy, a resource to begin restoring education as a means of cultural renewal, by which I mean re-communicating our common Christian heritage to renew the process of Christian enculturation.
All of the aforementioned is a long-winded way to say two things about the renewed publication of
A Word from the Fathers . First, it is a tangible step forward to fulfilling my original vision for a Catechetical Academy. As such,
Word will continue to do what it has done from its very beginning six years ago: introduce the common Tradition of the early Church by offering brief words of salvation from the Fathers through their homilies, treatises, hymns, letters, poems, and biblical commentaries. Second, it will be different in two ways: 1) to be more intentionally catechetical, we’ll be emending and amplifying the original form by adding introductory material, patristic notes, study questions, and ancient prayers; and 2) instead of an occasional publication it will be issued in print quarterly.
Eighth Day Members at the “Patron” level and above will automatically receive them.
You can join the community of members here to begin receiving them.
My hope, then, for this project is threefold: 1) that it will help you overcome any sense of intimidation or inadequacy before the Fathers; 2) that you will actually read them and fall in love with them...they are the great cloud of witnesses who should be inspiring us to throw off entangling sin so we can run the race of faith (Heb. 12.1); and 3) that you will discuss them with your friends or, heck, maybe even start a patristics reading group to discuss them each month. In doing so, together we will begin to fulfill Fr. Florovsky’s vision of overcoming divided Christendom by returning to our common heritage. We'll be creating a common vocabulary by which we can overcome our differences and more effectively engage our secular age. Or, as the new tagline for
Word puts it, we'll be "awakening the modern Church to the ancient Faith" for the life of the world.
On that note, as is often my custom, I’ll end with a word from the Fathers, this time a much more recent Father from the twentieth century (see
A Word from the Fathers Number 2 for an explanation of how there can be a twentieth-century Father). It's a word that makes all of this applicable to your daily life, a call for you to be a true theologian—one who prays—and a witness to the world:
We are summoned to theology precisely because we are already in this apocalyptical struggle. With great attention and care, a firm and responsible confession of the truth of Christ must be opposed to the contagious and enveloping outlook of atheism and theomachy…. Theology is called upon not to judge but to heal. One must enter the world of doubts, subterfuges, and self-deceptions in order to respond to doubts and reproaches. But one must enter this unsettled world with the sign of the cross in one’s heart and the prayer of Jesus in one’s mind, for this is a world of dizzying mysteries where everything is double, crumbling in a certain play of reflections, as if surrounded by mirrors. The theologian is called to testify in the world. ~Fr. Georges Florovksy,
Ways of Russian Theology
Erin Doom
is the founder and director of Eighth Day Institute. He lives in Wichita, KS with his wife Christiane and their four children, Caleb Michael, Hannah Elizabeth, Elijah Blaise, and Esther Ruth.
