Questions about the sources and norms of Christian teaching accompanied doctrinal deliberations in the churches from the start. From the early Middle Ages, certainly, it was taken for granted that the ‘‘Fathers’’ had some role to play in theological discourse, even if the actual weight given to their testimony in practice varied widely in different authors and at different times. In the sixteenth century, humanism and the Reformation brought the underlying question of theological norms and methods into sharper relief. For Erasmus, the ancient Church could provide models for necessary reform, and the texts of the Fathers offered guidance for the exposition of Scripture. Martin Luther, on the other hand, argued that the theology of the Fathers, far from being an exegetical or doctrinal yardstick, needed critical examination against the sole norm of Holy Scripture. As a reaction to the Reformation, the Council of Trent claimed the continuous tradition and the consensus patrum exclusively for the Roman Church. The following century saw intense controversy, between Protestant and Roman theologians on the one hand, and among Protestants themselves, whether Lutheran or Calvinist, on the other; all sides made polemical use of the Fathers. At the same time, more conciliatory-minded theologians repeatedly propagated the consensus of the Fathers as a sufficient basis for renewed communion between the denominations. However, the extent and very existence of such a doctrinal consensus in more distant periods was disputed, and fundamental disagreement over the norms of theological judgment remained insurmountable (Merkt2001).
Today, many hopes are again placed in the common heritage of the Fathers, especially in modern ecumenical dialogues. Yet here, as in academia and the churches more widely, renewed contemporary interest in the heritage of the Fathers often lacks a considered hermeneutic of what exactly the nature and purpose of a recourse to the Fathers might be. Even the very concept of ‘‘the Fathers’’ frequently remains vague. Scholars commonly use the term ‘‘the Fathers’’ roughly as an equivalent to early Christian writers, or sometimes even more loosely as shorthand for the influential
A Companion to Late Antiquity. Edited by Philip Rousseau © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-11980-1
Christian figures of the period. The notion of the Fathers no longer carries necessarily a specific sense of dignity and authority that sets them apart from other writers and thinkers. Yet in some Christian traditions, evoking the Fathers is still an iconic expression of a strong sense of ecclesiastical and cultural identity. Accordingly, participants in ecumenical dialogue need to be mindful of both the connection and the difference between, on the one hand, statements of identity and, on the other, assertions of normative truth claiming the support of the Fathers. Only then, as one attempts to identify either common ground or real difference, can a resort to the Fathers be more than ornamental, for many such deliberations are ultimately based on other principles.
The underlying difficulty in delineating the role and potential authority of the Fathers in theological discourse, and specifically in doctrinal definition, is shared, as we shall see, with the formation process of the notion in antiquity itself. A sense of Patristic authority emerged alongside a number of other newly developing forms of theological argumentation and decision-making in the fourth and fifth centuries; from the outset, it served as much to mark identity as to guide theological reasoning. The early evolution of the notion of Fathers and their role in theological discourse illustrates perfectly the intersection of, on the one hand, highly technical debates over norms and standards of doctrinal decision-making and, on the other, the quest for symbolic, unifying expressions of a common church identity (or, conversely, of the demarcation of internal boundaries).
As a consequence, future research in the reconstruction of Christian dogma and intellectual history of Late Antiquity will have to pay closer attention to the mechanisms, forms, and methods of theological discourse, and to its unspoken presuppositions. Disputes over the Fathers show that, as early as the fourth century, theological reasoning rested on, among other elements, received views of the history of the Church and its eminent representatives. Equally, elements of common piety, everyday assumptions about authority, the conditions for transmission of knowledge, and the circulation of documents, all played a role in what might seem purely doctrinal matters. And theologians of the time made deliberate use of received, often symbolic, images of their predecessors and the history of the Church, in order to bolster their authority or validate their thinking. In my view, this also means that neat distinctions between sources relating to the social history of the Church and sources of a primarily intellectual import are counterproductive. I want to move toward a deliberate and permanent historicizing of the concept of the Fathers - that is, to present in a historical light both the late antique rationales and purposes behind the very notion of the Fathers and the corpus of texts upon which it relies. Such an approach might also provide an antidote to the resolutely ahistorical - even antihistorical - readings of the Fathers that have become fashionable in some quarters.
Observations about the less formal and less technical expressions of Christian piety and belief need to be integrated into the task of construing a history of theological ideas, of identifying the main artery of doctrinal development and definition. This is in particular true of the ascetic and monastic traditions (see Caner, ch. 39). A stronger emphasis on their interaction with, and interest in, theology has only recently begun.
Cyril’s exploration of patterns of authority in an address to monks (see below), deliberately echoing their present experience and the history of the ascetic movement, should alert us to the task of investigating more closely the possible resonance of those traditions in doctrinal writing. Equally, we need to take more strongly into account the role of other literature and public speech acts - homilies, exegetical exposition, and exhortation - in disseminating and popularizing technical discussion and in forging common identity as much as doctrinal allegiance.
World History
