Why Study the Church Fathers?

Reformation 21 (the online magazine of Alliance of Confession Evangelicals) recently released their latest issue which asks the question, “Why Study the Church Fathers?”  Dr. Michael Haykin has written the feature article as well as a test case entitled “Basil of Caesarea on Abortion.”  I became a huge fan of reading the Church Fathers after my Intro to Church History class with Dr. Tom Nettles where we were required to read four selections from the early patristics.  After the semester, I invested in the Church Fathers set and found it to be one of the best and (I believe) wisest purchases I have ever made. 

Yesterday, Carl Trueman and and Phil Ryken chimed in as well, offering more incentives for reading the Church Fathers.  Here are their reasons:

Carl Trueman:

1. The doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are basically hammered out in the early church.  By tracing the controversies, we can learn how and why the creedal formulations of these doctrines is important.

2. The pre-Constantinian context of much patristic theology offers a paradigm of how Christians can operate as a minority in a hostile or indifferent society.  I am often struck by the difference between the early church apologists approach to the Roman Empire (`don’t persecute us because Christians actually make the best citizens’) with the modern approach of `don’t mess with us, we’re Christians’ where Christianity can sometimes look like little more than a cultural idiom for protesting Communism, secularism etc.

3. The very alien nature of the world in which the Fathers operated challenges us to think more critically about oruselves in our own context.  We may not, for example, sympathise much with radically ascetic monasticism; but when we understand it as a fourth century answer to the age old question of what a committed Christian looks like at a time when it is starting to be easy and respectable, we can at least use it as an anvil on which to hammer out our own contemporary response to such a question.

4. As Protestants, we cannot claim to understand the historical development of our own tradition unless we come to terms with patristic theology: Luther, Calvin, Owen and company were deeply read and heavily influenced by patristic writings.

If I had my time over again, I would have studied patristics rather than Reformation; the evangelical Protestant world has a dearth of good patristic scholars.  Michael Haykin and Don Fairbairn are notable exceptions; but we have not done well in this field as a whole; and we have neglected it to our own impoverishment. 

Phil Ryken:

1. The Church Fathers have a more constant concern for the poor — an emphasis sometimes lacking in contemporary evangelicalism.

2. The Church Fathers placed a prominent emphasis on the resurrection — not just Good Friday, but also Easter — not just the cross, but also the empty tomb.  This too is is sometimes missing in the church today.

3. The Church Fathers remind us how far the church has come in some areas of theology and exegesis.  Their frequent flights of allegorical fancy (with some notable exceptions, including Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom) make us more than grateful for a more method that is more rooted in the best traditions of grammatical-historical exegesis.

I typically try to read at least one patristic source for any sermon series I am preaching, a practice greatly helped, I must say by the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. 
 

Now, I am not going to pretend to be an expert in the Patristics, but I would like to add one other very important reason why you should read the Church Fathers.  You should read them because almost every modern heresy and threat to the gospel will attempt to appeal to one or more Church Fathers as an authority and means of legitimizing their position or appeal for orthodoxy.  For universalists, they would turn to Origen; for inclusivists, Irenaus and Justin Martyr’s Logos Christology; for Open Theists, Tertullian.  I could go on, but you get the point.  Furthermore, if you go here you will see that the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions in their defense of penal substitutionary atonement mined deep into the Patristics, and even have provided some texts on their website.

You may be thinking, “Well, I am not a full-time seminary student, especially not a church historian.”  That’s precisely my point.  The Church Fathers should not belong to academia but on the front shelves of your church library and accessible for Sunday School material, teaching preparation, and personal edification.  I am not a church historian and am not where I would like to be in my studies of the Church Fathers.  But I am beginning – and learning – and appreciating how the Holy Spirit has directed the Church, how Christ has built His Church, and how the Father has providentially worked in the Church for His glory throughout all generations, not the least of which are those who were immediate successors of the apostolic age. 

So I conclude with a desire of some feedback.  For those of you who have read any of the Church Fathers, let me ask:

1.  Who is your favorite Church Father?
2.  What is your favorite work?
3.  In your own opinion, why should other Christians read the Church Fathers?

BONUS: Can you guess what Church Father this is?

In a day where chronological snobbery is so rampant and novelty appraised for assumed relevance, we need Christians who will take the challenge to learn from the Church Fathers and more importantly how Christ through His Church has changed the world.