3. WHO ARE THE FATHERS AND WHY DO WE NEED THEM?

I mentioned that revelation trumps reason in my last post.  Unfortunately, I kept mentioning the Fathers without explaining who they are.  Who are the Fathers and why do we need them?

Anyone who reads early church history will find that a select group of men are constantly referred to as “the Fathers.”  At the very sketchiest, we may say that they are the movers and shakers of the Orthodox faith. 

Less sketchily, the Fathers are those men who “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).  On one front, they defend the faith against heretical tampering and so “guard the deposit” (I Tim. 6:20); on another front, they “make money” (Luke 19:13), i.e., define or amplify the deposit.  Many were bishops, others were respected for their learning and piety.  This definition is by no means airtight, but it captures most of the men who are so called.   

Most people know about the Fathers only when their feasts are celebrated on a Sunday, with the result that we see the Fathers as fairly doomed to be victorious pillars of the faith.  In fact, they often had to maintain or define the faith against errant bishops, emperors, tsars and dictators; a lot of the Fathers were therefore persecuted in some way.  St. Athanasius, the hero of Nicaea, probably did not feel victorious during his several exiles.  St. John Chrysostom, whose liturgy we use every week outside Lent, cannot have felt much like a pillar as he was walked to his death in Central Asia.  St. Maximus the Confessor was tortured, had his right hand and tongue amputated, and was exiled to the Caucasus; if he felt abandoned, he had every right to do so when “no protests came either from Rome or from any other part of the Christian world.”¹ 

One amazing thing about the Fathers is that their writings rise so easily above the controversies and details of their day.  For example, I have seen people with no academic training bowled over by St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letters.  They responded immediately because he, like most Fathers, speaks directly to the reader and only about the essentials of the faith. 

This effect is obtained largely because the Fathers knew what was important and wasted no time with what the learned pagans of any day value—showing off their learning, observing the social and literary conventions of the day, making ironic inside jokes.  When we read the Fathers centuries later, they are as accessible and vivid as they were when the ink was wet. 

A broader use of the expression “the Fathers” is often used to include men and women who were simply influential in the church, often monastics who were not learned.  The Desert Fathers are the prime example.  Many of them only survive in sayings recorded in the various collections, like the Anonymous or Alphabetical collections. 

The Elders of medieval and modern times are the heirs of the Desert Fathers.  The authors of their lives often refer to the wastelands they typically sought out for solitude as “deserts,” their log cabins as “cells” and so forth. 

The Elders of, say, Russia and Greece, are rarely illiterate; many of them (like St. Theophan the Recluse) wrote books or letters, but others (like St. Leonid of Optina) survive like the Desert Fathers in the testimonies of their disciples or admirers. 

Elders typically do not weigh in on dogmatic or political issues; they console, instruct, correct or enlighten their pilgrims.  I say typically, since St. Seraphim of Sarov’s conversations with Motovilov are nothing if not an amplification of the faith, and his letter to Tsar-Martyr Nicholas counts as political involvement.

Since the Elders emphasize the practical aspects of the faith, many people find it easier to read the Elders than the Fathers.  Of course, the lives of the saints are for most of us more important than anything else.

An important role played by the Fathers and Elders is that they effectively define the Orthodox unity of faith.  People can read the Bible and walk away with the most amazing variety of opinions—from Unitarian Universalism to Calvinism—so the Bible is no guarantee of the unity of faith.  The unity of faith can only come from the Holy Spirit, not the Bible.  If the Bible were sufficient for the unity of faith, Christ would have not talked about the Holy Spirit leading us into all truth (Jo. 16:13); he would have said the Scriptures would lead us into all truth. 

Anyone who reads the Fathers is guided toward that unity of faith; if we are guided by the Fathers, we may hope to enjoy, however distantly, the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we read the Bible, say our prayers and live our lives.

ENDNOTES

1.  John Meyendorff, ed., Church History (Crestwood, New York:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), vol. 2, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions:  The Church 450-680 A.D., 369.