The Church Fathers

Extracts from works I'm reading by and about the Church Fathers + Early Christianity. Not a Priest or a Theologian.

[earlychristianity]

The work of salvation is a work of God, but it could not be carried out without the cooperation of human beings. After Mary heard the word of the angels she said, "Let it be done to me according to your word." This fiat, this "let it be done," made possible the Incarnation of the eternal Son in the womb of the Virgin. Maximus proposes that there is another fiat in the gospels, another "let it be done," the agony of the man Christ, in which Christ, by accepting his suffering and death, wills the salvation of mankind. Just as the plan of salvation required Mary's "yes," so it also needed Christ's "yes," for it was only through Christ's passion and death that the world's salvation could be accomplished.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

In Maximus's hands Christ's act of will became a decisive moment in the history of salvation. It had long been affirmed, following the Scriptures (God "wills all men to be saved" [1 Tim. 2:4]), that the eternal Son of God, in concert with the Father and the Holy Spirit, had willed the salvation of human-kind. But Maximus now discerns that at the moment of his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ the man willed the salvation of the world.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

If one is to be faithful to the Council of Chalcedon, Maximus argued, Christ had to have had a human will as well as a divine will: "The Word himself shows clearly that he has a human will just as by nature he has a divine will. For when he became man for our sake, he pleaded to be spared death, saying 'Father, if it be possible, let the cup pass from me' (Matt 26:39). In his way he displayed the weakness of his own flesh. Those who saw him recognized that his flesh was not imaginary, but in fact he was a genuine human being." Of course Maximus does not suggest that Christ's human will could have been set in opposition to the will of the Father. Yet he gives full weight to both parts of his petition, the request that the cup be removed and the decision to drink the cup and act in accord with the will of the Father. So fully did Christ's will conform to the divine that his will can be said to be godlike:  "It tis clear that his human will is wholly deified, in that it is in harmony with the divine will, for it is always moved and formed by it. His human will is in perfect conformity with the will of his father when as a man he says: 'Let not my will but thine be done'.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

Schooled by the fourth evangelist, Cyril realized that suffering was not an unfortunate interlude in the life of Jesus. It is an integral part of God's plan and the necessary fulfilment of the Incarnation. Commenting on "the house has come for the Son of man to be glorified," he says that after Christ had preached the gospel and done everything to bring men to faith he "desired to pass to the very crowning point of hope, namely the destruction of death. This could not be brought about in any other way than by life undergoing death for the sake of all men so that in him we all may have life. For this reason Christ says that he is glorified in death [...] His cross was the beginning of his being glorified upon earth.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

What does it mean to find the one God, Father, Son and Holy spirit? The answer is not so obvious. Finding means more than simply getting things straight or discovering the most appropriate analogy in human experience for the Triune God. There can be no finding without a change in the seeker. Our minds, Augustine says, must be purified, and we must be made fit and capable of receiving what is sought. We can cleave to God and see the Holy Trinity only when we burn with love.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

The terms used by Thomas, Lord and God, are significant, and they allow Hilary to drive home his point. "Lord" and "God" are the terms that occur in the Sh'ma, yet here they are used not of God the creator of the world and king of the universe, but of Christ. Because of the Resurrection Thomas recognized that the one he knew, who had lived among them, was not just an extraordinary human being but the living God.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

The first Christians, Hilary observes, were observant Jews who every morning recited the Sh'ma, the ancient prayer of the Jewish people: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut. 6:4). As faithful Jews the apostles believed that God is one. Because this is so, as the Sh'ma bears witness, what, asks Hilary are we to make of Thomas's confession: "My Lord and my God"? How could Thomas have confessed Jesus, a human being, as "Lord" and "God," and at the same time continue to pray the Sh'ma? The Sh'ma clearly affirms belief in one God, yet Thomas addresses Christ as God. According to the gospels, says Hilary, Thomas had often heard Jesus say things such as "I and the Father are one" and "All things that the Father has are mine". Yet during Christ's lifetime these words apparently made little impact on him. It was only when Thomas knew the resurrected Christ he grasped the meaning of what Jesus had said earlier.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

We must allow the reality of God to stretch our thoughts so that they become worthy of the God we seek, befitting God, rather than limit God by imposing on him arbitrary standards of our own making. This is why, says [Hilary of Poitiers, "God can only be known in devotion." The form of knowledge that is appropriate to God, he writes, is "thinking with understanding formed by piety," approaching God with a devout mind. Theology requires the "warmth of faith."

[earlychristianity]

What the Scriptures teach, says [Hilary of Poitiers], is that in seeking to know and understand God, we discover that God is always "prior to our thinking."

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

Early in the second decade of the second century, an outside observer, Pliny, the Roman governor of Bithynia, reported that Christians were in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before it was light to "recite a hymn to Christ as to a god." Christians were baptized "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," the early rules of faith, or creeds, were tripartite, and trinitarian formulas are sprinkled throughout the New Testament.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

You will progress in understanding the Holy Scripture only to the degree that you yourself have made progress through contact with them.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

For early Christian thinkers the Bible, finally, was a book about how to live. God's Word is not something to be looked at, but acted on.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

"No Christian," said Augustine in the first paragraph of his Literal Commentary on Genesis, "would dare say that the [words of the Scripture] are not to be taken figuratively." As authority he cites Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians, where he said that the things that happened of old to the Israelites were said "as figures" (1 Cor. 10:11), and in Ephesians, where the phrase "and the two shall become one flesh" is called a mystery that refers "to Christ and the Church" (Eph. 5:31-32). Even John Chrysostom whose exegesis is always firmly rooted in the familiar praised Abraham because he "preferred the less obvious to the more obvious." Figurative speech is the natural clothing of religious thought.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

Christ is the goal, the end of all striving, the one who alone can satisfy human longing.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

For now treat the Scripture of God as the face of God. Melt in its presence.

Saint Augustine

[earlychristianity]

In the ancient versions of Psalm 138 the first verse read, "In the presence of the angels I will sing a psalm to you." In an interjection in one of his writings Gregory the Great asked, "Can any of the faithful doubt hat at the hour of the Eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus Christ the choirs of angels are present, the heights joined to the depths, earth linked with heaven, the visible united with the invisible." Gregory was not a solitary voice. Centuries earlier Origen had said, "I do not doubt that angels are even present in our assembly." There is "a double church present, one of men, the other of angels."

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken

[earlychristianity]

When the people of God lifted their voices to worship the Triune God they joined the hymn that was being sung by the heavenly host. This is made explicit in the prayer leading up to the singing of the "Holy, holy, holy," immediately prior to the great prayer of thanksgiving over the gifts of bread an wine: "You are attended by thousands upon thousands, and myriads upon myriads of angels and archangels, of thrones and dominions, of principalities and powers. Beside you stand the two august Seraphim with six wings; two to cover their face, two to cover their feet, two with which to fly. They sing your holiness. With their praise, accept also our acclamations of your holiness: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Saboath! Heaven and earth are filled with your glory. The heaven is filled, the earth is filled with your wonderful glory!"

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Professor Robert Louis Wilken