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- The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6
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In early days the expression of me, as I also am of Christ" I Cor. It is cf. The first teachers of Christianity still applied to those writers who are to us the an- seem to be collectively spoken of as "the Fathers" cients, but no longer in the same way to writers who II Peter, iii, 4. Irena;us defines that a are now recent. Appeals to the Fathers are a sub- teacher is a father, and a disciple is a son iv, 41,2 , and division of appeals to tradition. In the first half of so says Clement of Alexandria Strom. A the second century begin the appeals to the sub-Apos- bishop is emphatically a "father in Christ", both be- tolic age: Papias appeals to the presbyters, and cause it was he, in early times, who baptized all his through them to the Apostles.
Half a century later flock, and because he is the chief teacher of his church. Irena;us supplements this method by an appeal to But he is also regarded by the early Fathers, such as the tradition handed down in every Church by the suc- Hegesippus, Iiena'us, and TertuUian, as the recipient cession of its bishops Adv. The appeal is thus to to be applied to the holy bishops of a preceding age, Churches andtheirbishops, none but bishops being the whether of the last generation or further back, since authoritative exponents of the doctrine of their they are the parents at whose knee the Church of to- Churches.
As late as the bishops of the Dedica- day was taught her belief. It is also applicable in an tion Council at Antioch declared: " We are not follow- eminent way to bishops sitting in council, " the Fathers ers of Arius; for how could we, who are bishops, be of Niccea", " the Fathers of Trent". Thus Fathers have disciples of a priest? Leo, of the Churches a third method: the custom of appealing to Princes of the Apostles, speaking to the Romans; St. Christian teachers who were not necessarily bishops.
Hilary of Aries calls them sartcti patres; Clement of While, without the Church, Gnostic schools were sub- Alexandria says that his teachers, from Greece, Ionia, stituted for churches, within the Church, Catholic Coele-Syria, Egypt, the Orient, Assyria, Palestine, re- schools were growing up. Philosophers like Justin spectively, had handed on to him the tradition of and most of the numerous second-century apologists blessed teaching from Peter, and James, and John, were reasoning about religion, and the great catecheti- and Paul, receiving it "as son from father".
Great It follows that, as our own Fathers are the predeces- bishops and saints like Dionysius of Alexandria, sors who have taught us, so the Fathers of the whole Gregory Thaumaturgus of Pontus, Firmilian of Cappa- Church are especially the earlier teachers, who in- docia, and Alexander of Jerusalem were proud to be structed her in the teaching of the Apostles, during disciples of the priest Origen. The Bishop Cyprian her infancy and first growth. It is difficult to define called daily for the works of the priest TertuUian with the first age of the Church, or the age of the Fathers. The Patriarch It is a common habit to stop the study of the early Athanasius refers for the ancient use of the word Church at the Council of Chalcedon in Yet these priest-teachers are Gregory the Great d.
John not yet called Fathers, and the greatest among them, Damascene d. Bernard d. Hilary of Ter- cil of Florence S These limits are evidently tuUian: "Sequenti errore detraxit scriptis probabili- too wide. It will be best to consider that the great bus auctoritatem" Comm. Bernard as a writer lies in his resemblance Vincent of Lerins, Isidore of enduring value.
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Eventually it appeared that bishops Seville d. In the second century VI. In the third they were we remember that Jerome in a fit of irritation, fifteen often found wanting. In the fourth they were the years before, had written to Augustine Ep. It came to be seen the Church, whereas they think little of me, an old that the true Fathers of the Church are those Catholic man, nearly decrepit, in my monastery in the solitude teachers who have persevered in her communion, and of the country.
So In the second book "Contra Julianum", St. Augus- it came to pass that out of the four " Latin Doctors" tine again cites Ambrose frequently, and Cyprian, one is not a bishop.
Two other Fathers who were not Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary, Chrysostom; in ii, 37, he bishops have been declared to be Doctors of the recapitulates the nine names omitting councils and Church, Bede and John Damascene, while among the popes , adding iii, 32 Innocent and Jerome. A few Doctors outside the patristic period we find two more years later the Semipelagians of Southern Gaul, who priests, the incomparable St.
Bernard and the great- were led by St. Hilary of Aries, St. Vincent of Li5rins, est of all theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas.
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Nay, few and Bl. Cassian, refuse to accept St. Augustine's writers had such great authority in the Schools of the severe view of predestination because "contrarium middle ages as the layman Boethius, many of whose putant patrum opinioni et ecclesiastico sensui". Their opponent St. Prosper, who was trying to convert Similarly we may notice in passing the name them to Augustinianism, complains: " Obstinationem "Father", which originally belonged to bishops, has suamvetustate defendunt" Ep.
It is now a form before interpreted Romans quite as St. Augustine of address to all priests in Spain, in Ireland, and, of re- — did which was probably true enough. The interest cent years, in England and the United States. Cyprian and to St. Through most of the fourth century, the — Augustine, neither of these writers seems to use it in controversy with the Arians had turned upon Scrip- addressing other bishops, except when St. Augustine ture, and appeals to past authority were few. But writes to Rome.
Eventually the term was reserved the appeal to the Fathers was never the most imposing to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria; yet in the locus theologiciis, for they coukl not easily be assembled East to-day every priest is a "pope". The Aramaic so as to form an absolutely conclusive test.
On the abba was used from early times for the superiors of other hand up to the end of the fourth century, there religious houses. But through the abuse of granting were practically no infallible definitions available, abbeys in commendam to seculars, it has become a po- except condemnations of heresies, chiefly by popes.
Basil, what we have been to power by Theodosius, the Nicene decisions were taught by the Holy Fathers; and he adds that in his beginning to be looked upon as sacrosanct, and that Church of Caesarea the faith of the holy Fathers of council to be preferred to a unique position above all Nicaea has long been implanted Ep. By , the date we have reached, the Creed Gregory Nazianzen declares that he holds fast the we now say at Mass was revered in the East, whether teaching which he heard from the holy Oracles, and rightly or wrongly, as the work of the Fathers of was taught by the holy Fathers.
These Cappadocian Constantinople in , and there were also new papal saints seem to be the first to appeal to a real catena of decisions, especially the tractoria of Pope Zosimus, Fathers. The appeal to one or two was already com- which in had been sent to all the bishops of the mon enough but not even the learned Eusebius had ; world to be signed. Basil, for It is to living authority, the idea of which had thus example DeSpir. Prosper was appealing in his the Holy Ghost" in the doxology, the example of Ire- controversy with the Lerinese school.
Augus- of Rome, Eusebius of Cajsarea, Origen, Africanus, tine's death, he replied to their difficulties, not by re- the preces lucernarice said at the lighting of lamps, iterating that saint's hardest arguments, but by tak- Athenagoras, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, ing with him a letter from Pope St. Celestine, in which Meletius. In the fifth century this method became a St. Augustine is extolled as having been held by the stereotyped custom. Jerome is perhaps the first pope's predecessors to be " inter magistros optimos". Paulinus, the said that every word of his is to be followed.
The dis- deacon and biographer of St. Ambrose, in the libellua turbers had appealed to the Holy See, and the reply is he presented against the Pelagians to Pope Zosimus in "Desinat incessere novitas vetustatem" Let novelty , quotes Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzen, cease to attack antiquity! An appendix is added, not and the decrees of the late Pope Innocent.
In St. Augustine same heretics C. Julian of Ec- went too far, professed says the appendix " that they lanum quoted Chrysostom and Basil; St. Augustine followed and approved only what the most holy See of replies to him in Contra Julianum, i with the Blessed Apostle Peter sanctioned and taught by Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Am- the ministry of its prelates".
A list therefore follows brose, the decrees of African councils, and above all of " the j udgments of the rulers of the Ronrian Church ", Popes Innocent and Zosimus. In a celebrated pas- to which are added some sentences of African councils, sage he argues that these Western writers are more " which indeed the Apostolic bishops made their own than sufficient, but as Julian had appealed to the East, when they approved them".
To these inmolabiles to the East he shall go, and the saint adds Gregory sanctiones we might roughly render " infallible utter- Nazianzen, Basil, Synod of Diospolis, Chrysostom. Fessler thus defines what cisions we have cited". Thus the decisions of the constitutes a "Father": 1 orthodo.
Augustine, just as that saint always drew day a certain antiquity. The criteria by which we a sharp distinction between the resolutions of African judge whether a writer is a "Father" or not are: 1 councils or the extracts from the Fathers, on the one citation by a general council, or 2 in public Acts of hand, and the decrees of Popes Innocent and Zosimus popes addressed to the Church or concerning Faith;.
He whole- as an authority as to the Faith by one of the more heartedly accepted tlie letter of Pope Celestine, and he celebrated Fathers. Early authors, though belonging quoted it as an authoritative and irresistible witness to to the Church, who fail to reach this standard are his own doctrine that where quod ubique, or universi- simply ecclesiastical writers "Patrologia", ed.
Jung- tas, is uncertain, we must turn to quod semper, or an- mann, ch. On the other hand, where the tiquitas.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6
Nothing could be more to his purpose than appeal is not to the authority of the writer, but his the pope's: " Desinat inces. Its Acts were be- cited for this purpose, it is not as a Father that he is fore St. Vincent, and it is clear that he looked upon cited, but merely as a witness to facts well known to both pope and council as decisive authorities.
It him. For the history of dogma, therefore, the works of was necessary to establish this, before turning to ecclesiastical WTiters who are not only not approved, his famous canon, quod ubique, quod semper, quod but even heretical, are often just as valuable as those — ah omnibus otherwise universitas, anliquilas, con- of the Fathers.
On the other hand, the witness of sensio. It was not a new criterion, else it would have one Father is occasionally of great weight for doctrine committed suicide by its very expression. But never when taken singly, if he is teaching a subject on which had the doctrine been so admirably phrased, so limp- he is recognized by the Church as an especial author- idly explained, so adequately exemplified. Even the ity, e. Athanasius on the Divinity of the Son, St. There are a few language which can hardly be surpassed for exactness cases in which a general council has given approba- and vigour.
Vincent's triple test is wholly mis- tion to the work of a Father, the most important being understood if it is taken to be the ordinary rule of the two letters of St. Cyril of Alexandria which were faith. Like all Catholics he took the ordinary rule to read at the Council of Ephesus. But " the authority be the living magisterium of the Church, antl he as- of single Fathers considered in itself", says Franzelin sumes that the formal decision in cases of doubt lies De Traditione, thesis xv , "is not infallible or per- with the Apostolic See, or with a general council. Then it is that the three tests are to be ap- not be treated lightly, and should not without plied, not simultaneously, but, if necessary, in succes- great caution be interpreted in a sen.
But if an error attacks the whole ances are therefore to be taken in the best sense of Church, then antiquitas, quod semper is to be appealed which they are capable. If they cannot be explained to, that is, a consensus existing before the novelty in an orthodox sense, we have to admit that not the arose. Still, in the previous period one or two teach- greatest is immune from ignorance or accidental error ers, even men of great fame, may have erred.
Then or obscurity. But on the use of the Fathers in theolo- we betake ourselves to quod ah omnihus, consensio, to gical questions, the article Tradition and the ordinary the many against the few if possible to a general dogmatic treatises on that subject must be consulted, council; if not, to an examination of writings.
The subject was never Deus vester" Deut. So TertuUian was a treated as a part of dogmatic theology until the rise — magna tentaiio; so was Origen indeed the greatest of what is now commonly called " Theologia funda- temptation of all. We must know that whenever what mentalis", in the sixteenth century, the founders of is new or unheard before is introduced by one man which are Melchior Canus and Bellarmino. The for- beyond or against all the saints, it pertains not to re- mer has a discussion of the use of the Fathers in ligion but to temptation xx, Who are the deciding questions of faith De locis theologicis, vii.
The reply is a defini- The Protestant Reformers attacked the authority of tion of "Fathers of the Church" given with all St. The most famous of these opponents is Vincent's inimitable accuracy: "Inter se majorem Dalla-us Jean Daill 5, , "TraitC- de I'emploi consulat interrogetque sententias, eorum dumlaxat des saints Peres", ; in Latin "De usu Patrum", qui, diversis licet temporibus et locis, in unius tamen ec- But their obj ections are long since forgotten.
We saw that, in , it was possible for gat absque dubitatione credendum" iii, 8.
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Vincent in a book which has been most unreason- "This unambiguous sentencedefines for us what is the ably taken to be a mere polemic against St. Augustine right way of appealing to the Fathers, and the itali- — a notion which is amply refuted by the use made in cized words perfectly explain what is a "Father": it of St. Celestine's letter to define the meaning and "Those alone who, though in diverse times and method of patristic appeals. From that time onward places, yet persevering in the communion and faith they are very common. Vincent points out, St. Cyril presented a teachers. Florilegia which were read on the motion of Flavian, Bishop of fifth century onwards.
They are mostly anonymous, Phihppi. On aria" attributed to Walafrid Strabo. The "Catena the other hand Eutyches, when tried at Constanti- aurea" of St. Thomas Aquinas is still in use. See nople by St. Flavian, in , refused to accept either Catenae, and the valuable matter collected by Turner Fathers or councils as authorities, confining himself to in Hastings, Diet, of the Bible, V, Holy Scripture, a position which horrified his judges St. Augustine was early recognized as the first of see Eutyches. In the following year St. Leo sent the Western Fathers, with St. Ambrose and St.
Gregory the Great was added, with a list of testimonies from Hilary, Athanasius, and these four became " the Latin Doctors". They both on account of the paucity of his WTitings, and by were signed in that citjr, but were not produced at the the fact that his letters had a far higher authority as Council of Chalcedon m the following year.
Thence- papal utterances. In the East St. John Chrysostom forward the custom is fixed, and it is unnecessary to has always been the most popular, as he is the most give examples. However, that of the sixth council voluminous, of the Fathers.
Basil, in is important: Pope St. Agatho sent a long the father of monachism, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, series of extracts from Rome, and the leader of the famous for the purity of his faith, he made up the Monothelites, Macarius of Antioch, presented another. Athanasius the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and sealed.
