“Getting to know the church fathers” by bryan M Litfin

“Getting to know the church fathers” by bryan M Litfin

Introduction

Litfin begins his book with a story of a small boy named Billy. As a child, Billy spent much of his time at his grandmother's house, but as he grew and become more independent, he spent less time there. It was only after his grandmother died that he went back and discovered in the attic the remarkable legacy of his grandparents and his family and he regretted all the years he had lost. The intent of the story is, of course, to put in perspective how Evangelicals (and Protestants in general) today often view the church fathers.

In contrast to Billy's digging through his grandmother's hope chest, the typical way we hear about the church fathers is more often in a proof-texting manner to prove that such-in-such theological point is orthodox or unorthodox. Litfin rightly states, “Such an approach is unfair to authors who never intended that their writings be excerpted out of their whole corpus to serve as ammunition in a modern-day war of words” (15). But this misfortune of this fact is doubled. Because the writings of the fathers are abused in theological arguments outside of their historical context, Evangelicals today miss out on the rich stories about the fathers (and mothers) of the Christian faith and their lives. If our faith is to be understood as one grounded in history, then that history ought to be cherished beyond simply the doctrinal ideas .

Discussion

With this in mind Litfin sets out to correct three important misconceptions about the church fathers, their lives and beliefs. For one, many evangelical Christians are under the impression that the church fathers were not biblical. This is seen especially among the most conservative evangelicals and seems to have developed from the protestant view of the Roman Catholic Church with its emphasis on tradition. “Patristic teachings and creeds are sometimes referred to as 'the doctrines of men,' as opposed to the divine revelation given in scripture” (20). Litfin rightly observes that such a statement reveals a profound ignorance of the fact that while the church fathers were not always correct in what they wrote, in general, their beliefs fall very much in line with those of scripture. In fact, their writings are full of scriptural citations in every paragraph. Typical evangelicals also tend to be unaware of the fact that especially the Apostolic Fathers, such as Ignatius, lived within a generation or two of the Apostles themselves.

A second, but related misconception that Litfin has run across in evangelicalism is the idea that the church fathers were Roman Catholic. Ironically, while the previous misconception resulted from attempts to avoid Roman Catholic doctrines, this confusion is caused from hearing and believing what the Roman Catholic Church says about itself. The bishop of Rome may very well go all the way back to Peter, but the authority he claims today did not exist until the Western half of the ...