Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20170115

Athanasius the Great

After spending a great deal of time presenting the ideas of our Greek Church Fathers, I realized that I have to answer this question for my readers: Why should we spend the time and effort to learn theology with the Church Fathers? Truly indeed, many of our modern Christian religions disregard the writings of the Fathers as unimportant and “out of date.”

For one thing, the Fathers can help us to understand what it means to be a Christian and how the early stages and models of Christian worship, practice and reflection have shaped Christian perspectives and practices throughout the Church’s history. The Fathers were formative figures in the formulation and modeling of Christian faith and practice and can be a healthy antidote for the theological and ethical faddism and foolishness that marks too much of the modern Christian world. The Fathers will consistently remind us that the content of Christian belief and its lived practice in worship, prayer and the many relationships of life must always remain one piece. They can help us understand what it means to be a true Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ and not the follower of charismatic, modern-day preachers.

Further, the Fathers can help us to understand what the writers of the New Testament (NT) really meant since they lived closer to the source. I have found that frequently modern-day interpretations of the NT are skewed by what is happening in our non-Christian society.

In fact, the Fathers insist that it is in the womb of worship and the experience of God’s redemptive act in Christ that theology is born, nourished and developed. Athanasius’ response to his Arian opponents was largely based on the Arians’ inability to make sense of Christian worship. How, Athanasius asks, can the Arians deny the full divinity of Christ and yet still worship Christ? To do so is to worship a creature, however highly elevated in status, as God. Surely, Athanasius will argue, something is wrong here.

Not only were the Fathers key figures in the formulation of Christian faith, but they were much nearer, as I said, to the apostolic writers than we are. Their ability to interpret what the writers of the NT meant is much more accurate than all of our present-day biblical scholars. They, because they wrote in the same language, were much more aware of various nuances in the language the NT writers used.

More to follow.

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