The Roman Catholic Church, always striving for precise definitions, proposes the following formulation: the Father of the Church must meet three conditions: antiquity, holiness, and correctness of teaching. The Roman tradition especially emphasizes the presence of chronological boundaries: the Holy Fathers existed only up to and including the eighth century; the last father was St. John of Damascus. All outstanding theologians after Damascene are called by Catholics teachers of the Church, and not fathers.

In the light of the Orthodox understanding of Holy Tradition, such an approach is unacceptable. Our Church teaches that divine revelation is not limited by Holy Scripture, and Holy Tradition is not limited by any chronological framework. The Holy Spirit acts through people of all times, and the Church "recognizes" in people her "holy fathers" not because of antiquity, but guided by her inner intuition, on the basis of which Tradition is formed. Thus, for example, the father of the 1st century St. Gregory Palamas was proclaimed a saint: a few years after his death.

The basic and decisive condition in determining the truth of the teaching of a particular Church Father is the apostolic faith: it should always be remembered that the Church defines herself as an apostolic Church, not a patristic Church. A holy father is one who interprets the apostolic faith for his contemporaries in correct terms. Such a person clearly sees the problems of his time and preaches Christianity in such a way as to solve these problems, answer questions, and resist errors. A clear "legal" formulation in this case is impossible: the whole Church, the whole Tradition serves as a criterion. This lack of clear definitions is in a sense a great inconvenience - people like to be guided, guided, told how to act and what to think. The rise of the papacy can be seen to some extent as a manifestation of this universal desire for clear rules, external criteria, and recipes for truth.

Another Roman Catholic criterion of the Holy Fathers is the sanctity of life. This criterion is acceptable to us as well, with only one clarification: it does not mean that the Holy Fathers were absolutely sinless - only the Lord God can do this. The Church has never considered sinlessness to be a condition for recognizing someone as a saint. In antiquity, the concept of holiness was used much more widely than in our time, and there was no formal process of canonization. Half of all the medieval Byzantine patriarchs - those who were not formally condemned for heresy - were canonized by the Church. The final decision always belongs to the Church herself, and she alone knows whether the "candidate" satisfies certain internal requirements that are difficult to define, but nevertheless undoubtedly exist, reflecting the logic of the development of Tradition on the one hand and forming Tradition on the other.

If we consider the writings of the Holy Fathers of the Church to be a witness to the truth, we should be in spiritual continuity with them. This does not mean that we should blindly repeat everything that is written in Sts. Rather, it presupposes the assimilation of a certain internal logic, intuition, and the sequence of the development of patristic thought. On this free path there is always a danger of falling into heresy, but it must not be forgotten that no man, simply by virtue of his human limitations, is free from such a danger, and that, on the other hand, only the devil is completely heretic, who once and for all said "no" to God.

Like all people, the Fathers of the Church lived in a specific historical and cultural situation, and their writings were answers to certain questions addressed to specific individuals. All this is of great importance for the correct understanding of the works of the Holy Fathers. In order to really penetrate into the world of the Holy Fathers, to feel their thoughts, to find out why they spoke the way they did, and what all this means for us, the bearers of a different mentality, living many centuries later, in a different culture, we need to study history.

History is inseparably linked with Holy Tradition, but at the same time a distinction must be made between them. Accordingly, it is impossible to identify patristic literature with the history of Christian literature. Thus, as already noted, in the early Christian period there were many apocryphal writings that the Church did not recognize as "its own", divinely inspired, but which nevertheless are of great value for researchers of the early Christian, both historians and theologians.

Another example is Origen. His teaching had a great influence on all subsequent theology, but despite this, the Church condemned him and his writings as heretical. As for heresy, let us repeat once again: in our fallen world, there is no complete freedom from error, and in a sense people even "have the right" to error. Heretical statements can be found in any Holy Father. But there is no such thing as a complete absolute heretic: in the teaching of Origen there are many deep and important truths. Only the faith of the Church as a whole, as a community of believers united and led by one Spirit, can "identify" heresy, draw a line between truth and error, and ensure the continuity and constancy of Christian thought in time and space, which constitute the essence of Church Tradition.

Such a dynamic understanding of Tradition inevitably escapes the gaze of an outside observer. Secular scholars of Christian literature refuse to acknowledge the existence of this unifying principle. On the contrary, Protestant fundamentalists recognize the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture alone, while reserving the freedom to understand and interpret it as they please, ignoring the entire history of Christian thought. For Roman Catholics, the only criterion of truth is infallible papal authority. In the Orthodox Church, the view "from within" allows us to discern or, perhaps, even "feel" a constant line of succession in Christian literature, which becomes especially evident when we become more closely acquainted with patristic writing. This continuity is dynamic and elusive, and is inseparably linked with the miracle and mystery of the Church's own existence through the ages.

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Отцы Церкви писали в основном по-гречески, по-латыни, а также на сирийском языке. Довольно большое количество святоотеческих писаний сохранилось в переводах на языки грузинский, коптский, армянский, эфиопский и др. В раннехристианскую эпоху и в средние века они распространялись в рукописной форме. Массовое печатание святоотеческой литературы началось в XVI веке на Западе. Восточная часть христианского мира в эпоху изобретения книгопечатания была завоевана турками, и интеллектуального развития там фактически не происходило. На Западе большинство рукописей было издано мавринианами (Mauristes) - так называлось ученое сообщество бенедиктинских монахов во Франции, живших в пригороде Парижа в монастыре св. Мавра, одного из учеников св. Бенедикта. На свое издание бенедиктинцы получили крупную субсидию от французского короля Людовика XIV. Людовик заинтересовался греческими отцами, узнав, что они жили в эпоху, когда не существовало папского абсолютизма. Король стоял за свою независимость от папы ("галликанство") и поэтому покровительствовал деятельности мавриниан. Монахами были собраны и изданы рукописи сочинений свв. Афанасия Великого, Григория Назианзена, Кирилла Иерусалимского, Иоанна Златоуста, блаженного Августина и многих других. И по сей день почти вся доступная нам святоотеческая литература существует благодаря их очень полным (хотя и не критическим) изданиям.

Позднее, в XVII-XVIII вв., кое-что было напечатано и на Востоке. И 1675 году в Яссах (находящаяся в Румынии колония греков - выходцев с Фанара, управлявшаяся греческим князем) было опубликовано большое собрание святоотеческих писаний, составленное патриархом иерусалимским Досифеем и имевшее, в основном, антикатолическую направленность. В 1782 году в Венеции, где также существовала греческая колония, было издано "Добротолюбие" ("Филокалия") - собрание духовных писаний, составленное св. Никодимом Святогорцем. Возможность этих публикаций, по-видимому, объясняется тем, что в Яссах и в Венеции, находившихся на окраинах Оттоманской империи, существовала б`ольшая интеллектуальная свобода, нежели в других частях православного мира, покоренных турками. В XIX веке французский священник Ж.П. Минь (J.Р. Migne: 1800-1875) предпринял грандиозное издание святоотеческих творений. Толчком к этому, как и в эпоху Людовика XIV, послужило неудовольствие французских католиков догматом о непогрешимости папы. Для работы над изданием Минь нанимал всех, кто только соглашался помогать ему: среди его "сотрудников" были попы-расстриги, бродячие монахи и прочий странный люд. Издание Миня не было ни критическим, ни научным. Помимо впервые публикуемых материалов в нем перепечатывались многие произведения, уже изданные мавринианами. Результатом усилий Миня явились две монументальные серии: 217-томная "Латинская патрология", охватывающая период до папы Иннокентия III (XII-XIII вв.), и 162-томная "Греческая патрология", охватывающая период до 1453 года. Такая хронология подразумевает, что, по мнению Миня, латинское предание кончилось в ХIII веке а греческое - с турецким завоеванием на два века позже.