The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics

Ken Parry

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118438701
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

This comprehensive volume brings together a team of distinguished scholars to create a wide-ranging introduction to patristic authors and their contributions to not only theology and spirituality, but to philosophy, ecclesiology, linguistics, hagiography, liturgics, homiletics, iconology, and other fields.

• Challenges accepted definitions of patristics and the patristic period – in particular questioning the Western framework in which the field has traditionally been constructed
• Includes the work of authors who wrote in languages other than Latin and Greek, including those within the Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, and Arabic Christian traditions
• Examines the reception history of prominent as well as lesser-known figures, debating the role of each, and exploring why many have undergone periods of revived interest
• Offers synthetic accounts of a number of topics central to patristic studies, including scripture, scholasticism, and the Reformation
• Demonstrates the continuing role of these writings in enriching and inspiring our understanding of Christianity

Part I
Introduction

CHAPTER 1
The Nature and Scope of Patristics

Ken Parry

The Companion to Patristics is not another patrology and is not intended to be. There are many excellent and respected patrologies (Chapter 3), as well as monographs devoted to individual Fathers, some of which are referenced within this volume. The Companion has a different aim. It focuses on the reception history of a selection of Fathers in order to show how their writings and their reputations were viewed down the centuries. There is a common assumption that the works of the Fathers were always there to be consulted, but the history of their reception tells a different story. By looking at this history we can better understand why some names and texts are more familiar to us than others and the circumstances that have contributed to this. In addition to the reception histories, the Companion to Patristics offers a number of studies pertaining to topics that were important to patristic authors and their literary output.

The Patristic Age

There has been something of a resurgence of interest in the writings of the Fathers in the last 30 years or so. While this can be seen as a continuation of movements within the Catholic and Orthodox communities, it has also been due to the promotion of Late Antiquity as a historical period and the contribution made to it by patristic authors. For a long time this period suffered, together with the study of Byzantium, from indifference and neglect, being of no interest to traditional classicists who focused on Greece and Rome. Today, most of that has changed, so that now both Late Antiquity and Byzantium are flourishing fields of research and teaching. The literature written by Christian authors during these periods was composed not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic. The diversity of languages and cultures embraced by the Fathers was instrumental in the formation of medieval European and Middle Eastern civilization.

The language barriers that prevented these oriental Christian texts from being accessible to a western readership are gradually being removed. The situation is improving as new editions and translations into English and other modern languages become more widely available. This is happening along with a revival of interest is learning Syriac, Coptic, and other ancient Christian languages, in addition to Greek and Latin. In the Companion to Patristics we have included a Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian Father (Chapters 8, 12, and 19), as well as an assessment of the Fathers in Arabic (Chapter 30), but this hardly does justice to the large body of patristic writings in these languages. There is still some way to go before we have a complete library of patristic literature from these traditions in critical editions and translations.

The old Latin and Greek parameters defining the study of patristics did not allow for this diversity of languages and geographical spread. It was not only the linguistic parameters that defined the patristic age, but also the confessional base that many scholars brought to their study of the Fathers, carrying with them doctrinal positions that determined their perception and acceptance of which Fathers to study. Today, we take a more inclusive approach to the study of church history and who owns that history in line with the ecumenical spirit of our times. This has brought a fresh interest in the transmission of early Christianity to regions beyond the traditional geographical and cultural boundaries (Tabbernee 2014). At the same time, there have been advances in our knowledge of the contribution made by women, as well as the application of a feminist approach to the study of patristics (Levine and Robbins 2008).

Patristics has been defined as the study of the writings of the Fathers of the Church; while this definition may still suffice, we might want to ask which Fathers are meant and which church is being referred to. This is because we are conscious that the early church was fractured and divided along fault lines that are still visible. There is now a clearer understanding of the divisions left behind by the early councils and the subsequent history of Christian communities outside the Rome–Constantinople axis. This, in turn, has led to a less confessional reading of the Fathers and the role they played across the Christological spectrum, irrespective of the process that made some Fathers saints in one church and heretics in another. While the confessional approach has its place, the study of patristics is no longer the prerogative of theological faculties and seminaries.

Certainly, the western definition of the patristic age can be challenged from a variety of viewpoints, especially when looked at from outside a European perspective, where the parameters defining the western time-frame do not apply. The eighth-century terminus traditionally concluded with Venerable Bede in the Latin west and with John of Damascus in the Greek east. The fact that there were Fathers in the Byzantine tradition after John of Damascus, such as Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas (Chapter 20), as well as in the Oriental Orthodox churches, was seldom mentioned, let alone discussed. This was because the western interpretation of the patristic period was applied to the rest of the Christian world without considering what might have been happening there.

Patristic Literature

Patristic literature covers a wide range of genres, including not only theology, spirituality, and apologetics, but also philosophy, ecclesiology, hagiography (Chapter 25), homiletics, liturgics (Chapter 26), epistolography, hymnography, and poetry. The corpus of writings of an individual Father may embrace only two or three of these, while our interest in them may be from a variety of disciplines and points of view. Generally speaking, patristic literature is retrospective in orientation; that is, it takes its inspiration from the past. However, this does not mean the Fathers were disinterested in the future or indifferent to the present. We know that many of them were personally involved in the political and religious controversies of their times. Some of their writings stem directly from their involvement in such events, for which they suffered persecution and exile, and in some cases imprisonment and torture. Most were canonized by their respective churches as a result of bearing witness to the truth or for their contribution as bishops and church leaders.

It goes without saying that we read patristic literature differently from the way it was read in the past. Many changes have contributed to this. In the age before printing, the writings of the Fathers were known largely through florilegia and collections consisting of thematic excerpts (Chapter 2). Copying manuscripts was time consuming and labor intensive, although the invention of new writing systems, such as the minuscule script, helped to speed things up. Some works owe their existence to the work of stenographers, while others survive as a result of serendipity. Nowadays, the Fathers are benefiting from the digital age, giving us easier access to their writings than previous generations; but whether we are better equipped to understand them is another question. In the case of patristic authors, it may not be what we find as individuals that matters, but what we share with others from earlier generations who also admired them. It is the ability of the Fathers to speak to us across the generations in mainly dead languages that paradoxically keeps them alive.

Many of the writings of the Fathers are highly stylized and rhetorical. They were written at a time when language imitated classical models (Chapters 31 and 32), and in doing so they may appear more focused on eloquence than substance. That being said, patristic literature can convey a dimension beyond the immediate text that obliges us to meditate upon the meaning of what we have read. The words may inspire us to go beyond the literal sense to a level of reflection that is not easy to define, and perhaps impossible to define, given the mystical nature of the message being conveyed. Just as the Fathers contemplated scripture and absorbed it to become living exponents and witnesses to its meaning, so in turn they imbued their own writings with multiple layers of meaning, compelling us to explore more fully the implications of their words. The fact that the Fathers continue to attract our attention shows the power of their message to engage us.

A Major Modern Father

By tracing the reception history of a number of Fathers the Companion to Patristics shows the peaks and troughs to which some of them have been subjected. While the names of many Fathers are known to us, just as many have been forgotten or neglected. An example of the latter was the Greek theologian of the seventh century, Maximos the Confessor (Chapter 17). The rediscovery of Maximos’ writings in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been nothing less than phenomenal. Through translations and studies his work has been brought to a new generation of readers who were barely aware of his existence, let alone the role he played in the ecclesiastical politics of his time. He is now appreciated as a key figure in the Christological disputes of the seventh century and a major theologian in the history of Christian thought (von Balthasar 1961; Thunberg 1965).

In the case of Maximos it was the general neglect of the seventh century that hid his contribution from us. He continued to be known in the Eastern Orthodox world, but due to historical circumstances this knowledge was confined mainly to monastic circles. It was as a result of being given the lion’s share of extracts in the Philokali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Collecting the Fathers
• Part III: Studies in Reception History I: Individual Fathers
• Part IV: Studies in Reception History II: Collective Fathers
• Part V: Studies in the Fathers
• Index
• End User License Agreement