Who are the Church Fathers?

In the divine service of the Sunday of Orthodoxy, our faith is defined as faith Apostolic, patristic faith, Orthodox faith1. And St. Athanasius of Alexandria speaks of the "original Tradition" and of the "The faith of the Universal Church, which the Lord imparted, was preached by the Apostles, preserved by the Fathers"2. Such Thus, the patristic heritage is thought of as a direct continuation of the teaching of Christ and the writings of the Fathers are an integral part of the Orthodox Lore. But what is patristic theology and who are the Fathers of the Church?

In textbooks on patrology, compiled by Russian authors of the XIX century, one can find an indication of three main features by which one should distinguish Church Father from an ordinary theologian: holiness of life, correctness of teaching and antiquity. All these three criteria are borrowed from traditional Catholic patristics.

With regard to the first criterion, it should be said that in the Orthodox tradition The sanctity of life has always been considered an indispensable characteristic of any authentic theologian: the idea of theology as an armchair science, detached from the real spiritual life, is deeply alien to Orthodoxy. At the same time, it is obvious that Personal holiness does not always ensure theological impeccability judgments of this or that author. The history of the Church knows many cases when The authors of theological works, canonized as saints, expressed dubious or even erroneous opinions. In connection with the canonization of the host of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the Council of Bishops of 2000 even made a special clarification on this matter, stressing that the very fact The canonization of this or that new martyr does not necessarily mean the indispensable elevation of a all that he wrote and said to the rank of patristic theology.

As for the correctness of the teaching, here, again, clarifications are necessary. The Fathers of the Church were the exponents of Church Tradition, and in this sense their writings are a kind of standard, "an accurate exposition of the Orthodox faith": on their We orient ourselves with the teaching, we compare our views and judgments with it. However, in the patristic writings should distinguish between what was said by their authors on behalf of the Church, and that expresses the general teaching of the Church, from particular theological opinions (the so-called theologoumenes). Private opinions should not be cut off in order to create a certain simplified "sum of theology" in order to derive a certain "common denominator" Orthodox dogmatic teaching. At the same time, private opinion, authority which is based on the name of a person recognized by the Church as the Father, and is not sanctified by the conciliar reception of the ecclesiastical mind, and therefore cannot be put on the same level as the opinions that have passed such a reception. Quotient opinion, inso far as it has been expressed by the Father of the Church and not condemned conciliarly, is included in the within the boundaries of the permissible and possible, but cannot be considered generally binding for Orthodox believers.

As for the criterion of antiquity, it must be disputed.3 For the Orthodox Christian, the Father Equally appears to the Church as the Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons, who lived in II century, so did St. Theophan the Recluse, who lived in the XIX century (under the however, we cannot consider all the judgments of these authors without exception absolutely irreproachable in the theological sense). Now, unfortunately, and in In the Orthodox environment, there is a very widespread opinion that the Holy Fathers — These are the theologians of the past. The past itself is dated in different ways. Estimated The patristic era ended in the eighth century, when St. John Damascene wrote "An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith", summing up several centuries of theological disputes. According to others, it ended in XI century, when there was a final break between the first and second Rome, or in the middle of the fifteenth century, when the "second Rome" – Constantinople – fell, or in 1917, when the "Third Rome" fell – Moscow as the capital Orthodox Empire. Accordingly, a return to the patristic sources is understood precisely as an appeal to the past and the restoration of either the VIII or the XV, or the XIX century.

Such a view, however, is unacceptable. According to the archpriest According to St. George Florovsky, "The Church now has no less authority than in the past centuries, for the Holy Spirit lives it no less than in former times," therefore, it is impossible to limit the "age of the Fathers" to any time in the past.4 And the famous modern theologian, bishop Diocleia's Kallistos (Ware) says: "An Orthodox Christian should not just to know the Fathers and to quote them: he must enter into their spirit and acquire "patristic mind". He must consider the Fathers not only as an inheritance of the past, but as living witnesses and contemporaries." Bishop Kallistos believes that the epoch of the Holy Fathers did not end in the fifth or eighth century; Patristic epoch in the Orthodox Church continues to this day: "It is very dangerous to look at the The Fathers as a complete corpus of writings wholly related to the past. Perhaps our age cannot produce new Basil or Athanasius? To say that The Holy Fathers can no longer exist, it means to assert that the Holy Spirit left the Church."5

In contrast to the Catholic idea of antiquity as necessary attribute of every Father of the Church, another could be put forward — about the actuality of the patristic theology in any era. The Fathers of the Church were the spokesmen Christian faith for their contemporaries: they wrote in the language of their era, used a conceptual apparatus accessible to their environment, but at the same time they expressed those truths that never become obsolete, shared the experience that is always relevant. Many who today come into contact with the works of the former Fathers centuries, it is amazing how modern they are. Archaic can be the language of one or the other Church Father, certain scientific views on the which he relied on, but the basic message of patristic theology, his the spiritual system, its dogmatic and moral core — all this remains equally relevant for our contemporaries and for the man of antiquity.

The modern reader is also struck by something else in patristic theology: how broadly the Church Fathers viewed the world. In patristic theology, there is no There was nothing of that blinkeredness, stagnation, that – I am not afraid of it obscurantism, which distinguishes other contemporary authors who give out for theologians and guardians of the faith of the fathers. The Spirit of Sectarianism Breathed the works of some of today's guardians of the purity of Orthodoxy, was to the Fathers He is deeply alien to the Church. Such authors as Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom and many others were people of great horizons, encyclopedic knowledge, which respected not only the ecclesiastical, but also to secular sciences.

The boldness of the Holy Fathers and their boldness are also striking: they were not afraid to put the most difficult questions and look for answers to them. The Fathers of the Church have always relied on their predecessors, but never limited themselves to thoughtless repetition what they inherited from past centuries. Even if it was brought up for discussion An issue that has been discussed many times in the past, an issue on which there was a conciliar judgment of the Church, the Fathers were ready in every epoch to consider it in a new way, from a different point of view, and sometimes they were given to it A new answer. The opinions of some Fathers were clarified by other Fathers: it was a continuous creative process, an integral part of which was theological daring.

The Holy Fathers feared falling into heresy more than any sin, but this fear did not fetter them at all. There were many theologians who were balancing on the brink heresies or stepped over this line, but remained outside the threshold of the Church, as rule, only those who consciously opposed their opinion to the conciliar reason Church. But if the theologian, in obedience to the voice of the Church, admitted his mistakes, The Church returned to him the fullness of its trust. Therefore, fearing heresy, the Fathers The churches were not afraid of error, knowing that infallibilitas (infallibility) was not is peculiar to no one but the Church herself in all her fullness, and that the Church herself He will correct every mistake they have made up for, and will make up for every incompleteness.

Thus, we can say that the Father of the Church is the theologian who who, while possessing personal holiness and remaining faithful to the Tradition of the Church, at the same time time speaks a language accessible to its contemporaries, not afraid to respond to burning questions of our time. The Father of the Church all his theological judgments compares with the opinion of the Church, focusing on Church Tradition as the main the criterion of truth. Faithfulness to Tradition, however, does not mean blind copying what has already been said before: on the contrary, the Father of the Church often you have to consider problems that have not been considered by anyone before him, but he solves them on the basis of the spirit of Orthodox Tradition.

Metropolitan Anthony as an Exponent of the Patristic Tradition

It is not easy to talk about the patristic context of Metropolitan Anthony's theology. In his conversations and sermons, he quite often refers to the Fathers of the Church, sometimes calling them by name, sometimes simply mentioning "one of the Fathers", but We do not make any systematic study of the patristic heritage in him Find. He approaches the sayings and thoughts of the Fathers of the Church so freely that Sometimes it is impossible to establish the source of the quotation: it seems that at some point somewhere Vladyka Anthony read this or that patristic thought, and then in for many years he lived with it, comprehended it and refined it in the furnace their own spiritual experience; what came into being as a result of this process, is as much the thought of the Father of the Church as it belongs to the Vladyka Anthony himself.