International Catholic University
As this course is a combination of Patrology and Patristics, we will look at some of the Church Fathers as living persons, saints, members of the mystical body of Christ, and then look at the thought of the Church Fathers with regard to the major dogmas concerning the Trinity, Christ, the Sacraments and the Church. Before beginning the more Patristic part of the course, let us introduce the Church Fathers, their names, when they lived and where they lived. In a course as short as this it is impossible to go into much detail on all of the Church Fathers.
We categorize the Church Fathers into the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, the Fathers of the Third Century, the Great Golden Age of the Fourth and early Fifth Centuries, and then the Later Church Fathers. The Apostolic Fathers are those who would have known the Apostles and the Disciples of Christ personally. The three chief Apostolic Fathers are Clement of Rome, who was the Bishop of Rome and one of the early successors of Saint Peter. The date of his death was either in the 80s or possibly the year 96. We are quite certain that he died before the end of the First Century. Clement is particularly important for a letter he wrote to the Church of Corinth, in which he reaffirmed the primacy of the Bishop of Rome for his leadership in matters of Church order and for the instructions that he gave to the Church in Corinth.
Saint Ignatius of Antioch is one of the great spiritual writers of the first and second centuries. He wrote a series of seven letters to the Churches as he was taken in captivity from Antioch in Syria to Rome. His great spiritual classic is his letter to the Romans. He knew he was being led towards martyrdom and that the Christians of Rome had some influence over his fate. His concern was they might arrange for his freedom rather than allowing him to be martyred. So he wrote to them expressing his desire to be martyred, so he could be one with Christ. In the letter he uses the image of wheat, saying he wants to be ground in the teeth of the wild beasts, to be the wheat that is ground into the Eucharistic bread. This is a wonderful example of martyrdom, of one who wants to be identified in body with the suffering and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Saint Polycarp was martyred when he was over 80 years of age and was another great witness to the life of the early Church.
The second group of Church Fathers we call the Apologists. Justin Martyr wrote an apology to the pagans of Rome, that is a description of the conviction of his belief and the firm foundation of our Christian way of life. In it he made a case for the authenticity of the Christian way of life, to alleviate some of the fears and prejudices resulting from the calumnies that circulated about the Christian community at that time. Saint Irenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons, also a martyr, led the charge against the Gnostic heresies of the Second and Third Centuries.
In the Third Century, in both the West and the East, there were important Fathers who laid the foundation for the growth and development of Catholic theology. In the West, much of the terminology that has become a part of our Roman Catholic heritage comes from Tertullian. Hippolytus left us with the Church Order, a wonderful testimony of the celebration of the sacraments in the third century. Saint Cyprian, the great Bishop of Carthage, wrote a work on the unity of the Church which expresses much of the ecclesiological belief of our Catholic faith. In the East, Saint Clement of Alexandria began a catechetical school which his successor, Origin, developed into a great center of Christian learning.
In the fourth and early fifth centuries, often referred to as the Golden Age of the Fathers of the Church, the Pax Romana, the Peace of the Church, was in place. This was a time when the resources and the environment fostered great growth in theological thought and discourse, and in development of the liturgy. Saint Leo the Great, a Pope who together with Pope Gregory inherited the name "Great," lived at the time of the important Christological question of how in the one Divine Person of Christ, there could be both a human nature and a Divine nature. He wrote a letter which was used by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and was most influential in the development of our Christological statements. Saint Hilary of Poitiers wrote his wonderful work on the Trinity. He was succeeded by Saint Augustine, who wrote a definitive work on the Trinity, incorporating much of Hilary's thought. Saint Ambrose was a great moralist in the Church, a pastor and Bishop of Milan. Saint Jerome is noted for his tireless Biblical studies and scholarship. Saint Jerome is owed a great debt of gratitude for translating much of the New Testament into Latin, which is known as the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, and has remained normative for the Catholic Church in the West. Saints Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Gregory the Great are known as the four great Western Church Fathers.
With respect to the East, during the Golden Age of the fourth and early fifth centuries, there is Saint Athanasius. He was a young deacon at the time of the Council of Nicaea. He led the battle in the East against the insidious heresy of Arius and his followers. The Arian heresy, which denied the Divinity of Christ, was one of the biggest threats to the Christian Church in the early centuries. Saint Athanasius carried the banner for the Orthodox Christian belief. He was exiled from his See at Alexandria seven times and had to take refuge in the desert where he became good friends with Saint Anthony of the Desert. Saint Athanasius wrote one of the spiritual classics of all time, The Biography of Saint Anthony of the Desert. Saint Cyril of Alexandria, together with Pope Leo the Great, were most instrumental in giving us the Chalcedon definition of the hypostatic union, which was very important in the Church's development of and deeper understanding of the relationship of the two natures in the one Divine Person of Christ. The three great Cappadocian Fathers are Saint Basil, nicknamed the Great, his brother Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil's good friend, Gregory Nazianzus. They developed our Trinitarian theology, articulating the distinction of the three Persons in one Trinity. They introduced the concept of relations. While there is one essence, one God, there are three Persons that are distinct only in their relation to one another. The Son is begotten by the Father and the Father is the one who begets. They reaffirm the divinity of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
One of the great works on the Holy Spirit is that of Saint Basil. After Saint Athanasius successfully turned back the tide of the Arian heresy, there were some who tried to deny the Divinity of the Holy Spirit. It was Saint Basil, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and Saint Gregory Nazianzus who led and held the banner for the orthodoxy of the Trinitarian belief in the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Gregory of Nyssa was one of the truly great mystics of the Patristic era, and his writings are jewels in the mystical inheritance that we have from the Church Fathers.
Finally, Saint John Chrysostom wrote a short work on the priesthood, which was then prayed and handed down to priests and to seminarians generation after generation. He talked about the sense of the mystery, the great privilege of standing at the Holy Altar and consecrating the bread into the body of Christ and the wine into the blood of Christ. Chrysostom, whose name means the "golden mouth," was one of the greatest preachers of all time. His sermons are a treasure in the inheritance of the Patristic age.
The Later Fathers of the Church in the West include Saint Gregory the Great. Gregorian Chant, which has been such an integral part of our Catholic liturgy, is attributed either directly or indirectly to Saint Gregory the Great. Many refer to him as the first of the great Mediaeval Popes. By the early 600s the ability of the Roman Emperor of the East to defend or to be a spokesperson for the city of Rome was pretty much gone. The people of the city looked to the Holy Father not only for spiritual leadership and guidance but to be an inspiration and a defender of the public order as well. In the West, some consider the end of the Patristic era to be with Gregory; others would extend it to Saint Isidore who died in Spain in 636; others would extend it to the great English author and historian, Saint Bede, who died in 735.
In the East a wonderful mystical work on the assent of the spiritual life was written by an unknown author who called himself Dionysius. He was referring to the young man that Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. It was common at the time, although we might consider it dishonest, to attribute authorship of a text to a New Testament figure, thus giving the text more authority. This became a classic work of Greek spirituality. It was translated into Latin and then became a classic of Western spiritual life. Finally there is Saint John Damascene, who died in 749, whom most consider the last of the Patristic Fathers in the East. This gives the scope and framework of the chief Fathers of the Church.
Now we begin to develop the thought of the Church Fathers. In considering the teachings of the Church Fathers, we will begin with the Trinitarian God as understood by the Fathers. This is at the very heart and center, together with Christology, of our Catholic faith and our Catholic Creed. God as Trinity was the first concept with which the Church had to struggle after the Apostolic era. The question was: how can there be one God, and yet in Sacred Scripture we hear mentioned the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Jesus identified himself with the Father, saying, "The Father and I are one." (John 10/30) Jesus also made mention of the Holy Spirit very explicitly, saying, "It is for your own good that I am going because unless I go he Advocate will not come to you; . . ." (John 16/7) The issue was, how, within the strong Jewish doctrine and inheritance of monotheism, and in light of the polytheism found in the Roman empire in the state religions, could a doctrine of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not be misunderstood as either a denial of the monotheism of the Old Testament or identified with the polytheism of the great pagan Roman world.
A particularly difficult heresy that had to be faced fairly early was that of Marcion, a Christian heretic who opposed the creator God of the Hebrew Scripture and the loving God of the Christian Scripture. He viewed the God of the Old Testament as distinct, and in fact in opposition to, the God of the New Testament. That is, he thought there were two distinct gods. He forced upon the Church the question of the canon of Scripture since he rejected the Hebrew Scriptures and accepted only certain books of the Christian Scriptures. The Fathers reacted by affirming the unity and identity of God throughout history. One of Marcion's motives was to exonerate God from evil in the world.
There was another group called the Manichees, who accepted a principle of evil, a god responsible for evil over and against the God who was responsible for good. The Fathers had to fight against this.
There was also a strong Greek doctrine of fate, which argued for the determination of human actions, as opposed to free will. This made of God or the gods someone who removed all human freedom, initiative, and causality. The Church Fathers ceaselessly affirmed free will because they saw in this a defense of the true notion of God in whose image man is made precisely because he is free.
Saint Irenaeus argued against the Gnostics, who believed men are by creation made as pneumatics (i.e., spirit people), sure of salvation; somatics (i.e., earthly people), who cannot be saved; and psychics, who are in between the two and may be eligible for salvation if they attain the secret knowledge, or gnosis.
Before going into further detail on the specific development of Trinitarian thought in the Church Fathers it may be helpful to articulate clearly what became the Orthodox Patristic teaching and therefore the Orthodox Catholic Faith as expressed in the Council of Nicaea in 325 and in the First Council of Constantinople in 381. With regard to the one divine essence, substance, or nature of God, with three distinct Persons, the Church Fathers say this.
First, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not merely three names, three forms, three evolutions or three modes of the Divine Being, but three Persons really distinct from each other before the mind's consideration of them. One of the early heresies was that of Modalism, which argued that the distinction found in Sacred Scripture between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit reflected three ways of our understanding God. That is, there is only one Person, but we understand this one Person in three modes or ways, first as Father, then as Son, then as Holy Spirit. The Church Fathers clearly affirm the real distinction of three Persons independent of the human mind's consideration of them.
Second, the Fathers affirm that each person is co-essential, or consubstantial. The Greek word homo-ousios, means there are three Persons consubstantial with each of the others and so equal to each of the others. Each possesses the true entire numerically one divine essence or substance, without division or separation, and each possesses all of the Divine attributes. We can say, for example, that God the Father is all-powerful, God the Son is all-powerful, God the Holy Spirit is all-powerful. All three Persons embody the fullness of wisdom, goodness, justice, mercy and eternity.
The third aspect of Trinitarian Patristic Doctrine is that there is a certain order of origin among the three Divine Persons that is without priority in time, and without superiority or inferiority in being. The Father has no source or principle, but is principle or source of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son, also called Word, proceeds from the Father by way of generation. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but not by way of generation. And finally, the Church Fathers affirm that each person, although really distinct from each of the other two by origin, is the one God, the one absolute reality of God. These basic principals came to be the common teaching of the Church Fathers and remain the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church today.
How did the Church Fathers form this Nicene-Constantinople way of thinking? The faith of the first Christians in the mystery of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit was expressed in a pre-scientific, or what we might call a pre-theological way, always based on Sacred Scripture. This pre-scientific manner means they used metaphors and symbols, concrete examples and common sense arguments, more than abstract concepts and closely reasoned arguments. Scripture was used in liturgical services and was read with veneration. The Church Fathers are essentially commentators on Sacred Scripture and the Scripture was gradually gathered together in its official corpus called the canon of Scripture.
With respect to the Trinity, the New Testament writings speak of God, of the Father, of the Son, who is also the Wisdom of God, the Image of God or the Image of the Father. This Son is proclaimed Lord, Kyrios, which is the Greek equivalent of the sacred name of God venerated by the Jews. In the Gospel of John, the Second Person of the Trinity is referred to as the Logos, or as the Word of God. Saint Paul referred to him as the Wisdom of God, of the Son, Jesus Christ. In Saint Paul's writings, there are many triadic or triple formulae, God, Son, Spirit (e.g., Galatians 4/4-6; I Corinthians 12/4-6). Paul writes of God, Lord and Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is clearly presented as a distinct Paraclete or Advocate. The Church Fathers built on these many references of the Trinity in Sacred Scripture.
In addition to the Scriptural basis of developing Trinitarian thought, early catechetical instructions proved to be very important because the rule of faith handed on to the neophytes was always in relation to faith in the Father, in the Son, that is the Word, Christ Our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. The early creeds were developed out of this catechetical instruction and the creeds used at Baptism showed that those to be baptized professed their belief in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Scripture scholars suggest that Matthew 28/19, "Go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", reflects the liturgical practice and formulae of the early Church. It reveals clearly an explicit belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who were considered on an equal level. The Didache, which is one of the earliest extant post New Testament writings is often referred to as the Instruction of the Twelve Apostles. It directs that Baptism be administered as follows,
After first explaining all these points baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in running water. But if you have neither, baptize in other water; and if you cannot in cold, then in warm. But if you have neither, pour water on the head three times in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
So the early creed, the early baptismal formulae clearly affirm the belief in the profession of faith in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The early prayers of these sacred liturgies also demonstrate this faith in the Trinity, summed up in the oft quoted dictum , "Lex orandi est lex credendi," or, what we believe is indeed what we pray. One of the ways of discerning the faith of the early Church is to carefully examine her prayers. Clearly present is the belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three equal Persons in one God. Saint Justin, in his First Apology, states "Glory to the Father of all things in the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." And Saint Polycarp, the great Apostolic Father who was martyred said, "I glorify thee through the everlasting and heavenly high priest, Jesus Christ, thy beloved Son, and through the Holy Spirit." These sources show the simple direct faith of the early Christians in the reality of the mystery of the most Holy Trinity.
Often this faith expressed belief in each Person in relation to some particular work or function of that Person in the Church. As Christians began to think about the faith and try to express it, they sought some further understanding as difficulties arose. They needed to be able to articulate their faith for one another and for those whom they were evangelizing, for the society around them questioning them. For all these reasons they had to better understand how to relate to each of these three persons and yet at the same time to profess their belief in one God. The Christians indeed were steeped in the Jewish Scripture and Jewish traditions. Monotheism was their dividing line, the line in the sand, between the pagan polytheism and the Gnostic heresy which surrounded them. At the same time they knew and had proclaimed to them, and embraced Jesus Christ as Lord, that is as Kyrios, as God himself. Their belief in monotheism and their proclamation of Jesus as Lord, as Kyrios, raised two questions.
First, how is God one if Jesus Christ is Son of God the Father, and so distinct from God the Father, and yet is God? This is referred to as the Trinitarian problem. The Holy Spirit's place was not closely studied until the problem about the Son was settled. Saint Athanasius, the great Eastern Father of the Fourth Century, led the fight against Arius and those who would deny the Divinity of Christ. Arius would say Christ is a begotten son, and no son can be equal to the Father. As great as Christ may be as a human person, we cannot affirm his divinity. It was Athanasius, in his works against the heretics and his work on the Incarnation, who established our Orthodox belief that Christ as Lord, as Kyrios, is equal to the Father in every way. Athanasius addressed that first question of the relationship of the Father and of the Son, and once that was settled, it fell upon the Cappadocian Fathers to reaffirm the Divinity and equality of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit. They did that through the development of the distinction of the three Persons in relation to one another. This is the first great problem that the Church Fathers faced, the Trinitarian problem.
The second great question raised in seeking to understand more completely our Catholic doctrines and the deposit of our faith is what might be called the Christological question. How can Jesus Christ, who has been affirmed as God, as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, be both God and man, and still somehow remain one? This is the problem of the Incarnation, or as it later came to be called the Hypostatic Union, and although it was already present earlier, the problem came to the fore in the Fifth Century. Saint Leo the Great and Saint Cyril of Alexandria were key in formulating the Church's teaching on the Hypostatic Union. One of the ways the Church Fathers came to their clear understanding of Trinitarian and Christological dogma was in response to the early heresies of the Church. Saint Augustine comments that the heretics did us a favor because they forced us to think more deeply, and to become more precise, in our articulation of the great doctrines of our faith. With regard to the question of how God is one if Jesus Christ is the Son of God and yet is God, an early solution that appealed to the monotheistic Jews was to say that Jesus was the Messiah but not God, that is, that he was an ordinary man with an extraordinary mission. Many held that at the Baptism in the Jordan, He was invested with His Messianic mission and given a Heavenly Spirit, that He was adopted as Son of God at that moment. Hence the term Adoptionism is given to this early Christological heresy.
The Gnostics emphasized the transcendence and oneness of the highest god in their pantheon. They thought that an eon, a spiritual being between this supreme God and matter, entered Jesus and made him a Savior. Two Christian Apologists of the Second Century, Justin and especially Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, reacted to these doctrines by stressing the divinity of Jesus Christ. They developed a doctrine of the divine Logos or the divine Word of God. Johannine writings, drawing on the background of Jewish Scriptures concerning Wisdom and Word, had spoken of Christ the Son as the Logos or Word of God. Justin, as well as Tertullian and others, took this biblical notion of the Word and combined it with developments from Philo, a Jewish thinker living in Alexandria and thus in touch with Hellenic culture. Greek philosophy was added to describe the relation of Christ to God the Father. Taking the best pagan wisdom of Greek philosophy and building upon that, being faithful to the Scriptural tradition of Christ as Logos, they developed this Christian Logos as a way of understanding more fully the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. They said Christ pre-existed creation as the Father's thought. Justin said, "The Father of the universe has a Son, who is Word, first born of God, and God." As manifested in creation, Christ is the expression, or the speaking, of the Father's thought. He is to be adored equally with the Father. In this way, the Church Fathers linked the generation of the Word in the being of the Father with the becoming or with this moment of understanding Jesus as Logos or as Word made flesh.
As for the Holy Spirit, much less was said about this Person until the Christological question was raised and resolved. However, the liturgy and piety of the Church continued to profess belief in the Spirit and his saving activity on a par with the Father and Son.
A few words about Tertullian. Tertullian was very important in the development of the Church's Trinitarian and Christological thinking, because he introduced a terminology that resonated with the culture around him and yet was faithful to the Scriptural basis of our understanding of the most Holy Trinity. Tertullian speaks clearly of the one substance of God and of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity which he numbered as three. He also speaks of the property of each Person, it being the characteristic of each by which each is distinguished from the others. In Tertullian we have the basis, the beginnings of a terminology that would come to fruition in the ecumenical councils of the Patristic era. His theology of the Word who is in God, but distinct from the Father, proved to be very important.
In the East, as we have already mentioned, the great threat to the Catholic faith was Arianism. This teaching was first introduced by the Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, and was picked up and forcefully promulgated by a priest of Alexandria by the name of Arius. It denied the divinity of Christ which would result in the whole transcendent dimension of our life in Him being leveled out. Christianity would be reduced to a rational philosophy. In 325, the Emperor Constantine convoked a gathering of Bishops in which he hoped to settle the Arian affair. In 325, over three hundred Bishops met at Nicaea, a town in Asia Minor. There the Bishops fashioned a new Creed declaring that the Son is from the substance of the Father, that He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made. The key word was homo-ousios, meaning of one essence or substance forever with the Father. One might have hoped that the work of the Council would have ended the question, but it only initiated further dispute. Arius rejected the Nicene Creed, and for the next fifty years, until the time of his death, Saint Athanasius dedicated his life to combating the errors of Arius. Finally the Orthodox teaching of the West triumphed in the Council of Constantinople in 381.
It took all of the first century to defeat the threat of the Arian heresy. After the Council in 381, the question of the Holy Spirit's divinity arose. The Cappadocian Fathers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, affirmed his divinity. They appealed to the practice of the Church in paying equal honor to the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. They demonstrated and by reminded us that the Church has always prayed to Him equally. They showed that the Sacred Scripture presents the Holy Spirit as giving divine life by participation. They argued He must be divine if He shares or participates in divinity; He could not give others a share in divine life if He does not possess it Himself. When the fourth century came to a close, the Creed first proposed by Nicaea in 325 was reaffirmed by the First Council of Constantinople. The consubstantiality, the common substance or essence or nature of the three distinct Persons of the Blessed Trinity, had been clearly affirmed and reaffirmed and handed down to all of us as recipients of the deposit of faith.
The Creed professes faith that the Holy Spirit is God and it avoids the two extremes of a Monarchianism or a Modalism on one hand, which would have dissolved the real distinction of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and on the other hand, the extreme of a Subordinationism that would have destroyed the equality and the consubstantiality of the three Persons. The Church gradually perfected the doctrine of the three Persons; it gradually reaffirmed its own expression and formulation of what it has always believed from the beginning and lived in its liturgy and prayer. The Fathers of the Church reaffirmed the Scriptural teachings, the catechetical instruction, and the basic Baptismal creeds, in a way that develops and sustains the rituals, and continues to nourish our Trinitarian faith and belief.
These review topics are to help you understand the lecture and prepare for the final exam; they are not a written assignment.
Describe the categorization of the Fathers into Apostolic, Apologists, Third Century, Golden Age, and Later Fathers.
Describe the major aspects of the Trinitarian thought of the Church Fathers.
Describe the problem of the Hypostatic Union.
Read articles in The New Catholic Encyclopedia on Modalism, Adoptionism, Monarchianism, Subordinationism, and the Arian Heresy.
Read Jurgens, William.