RELIGIOUS BOOKS
Father Figures
The Fathers Without Theology. By Marjorie Strachey. (Kimber, 25s.) A New Eusebius. Edited by J. Stevenson. (S.P.C.K., 21s.) The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, The Epistles and Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, The Fragments of Papias, The Epistle to Diognetus.
The Wisdom of the Fathers. By Erik Routley. (S.C.M. Press, 8s. 6d.)
heard names of the early Fathers can still be and at the font today; others sound unfamiliar 411d slightly exotic, like Fabian Bishop of Rome, or St. Perpetua and her Companions, the Carth- aginian martyrs. These strange names .can be found in the Church's calendar, tucked away in small type at the beginning of the Prayer Book and sandwiched between those intriguing tables of Vigils, Golden Numbers and Dominical Letters. This calendar contains the birthday book of the Church, when heroes of the past are com- memorated on the day of their death. Some Black Letter days recall mediaeval saints,.but there are also many flashbacks to the great personalities of the primitive Church.
Such names are only a selection—and an un- representative one at that—from the great age of the Fathers which began in the second century AD and which continued for the first 500 years of the Church's life. These were tumultuous times when the great Christian doctrines were first formulated and when the Catholic Church emerged from small groups of believers. There was heroic self- sacrifice, missionary expansion and intellectual ferment. Yet 'the' evil be ever mingled with the good,' and the early Church, like the Church in every age, became a school for sinners rather than a home for saints. The history of the patristic age is a paradoxical thixture of wiliness and wisdom, selfishness and sanctity, apostasy and martyrdom, ecclesiastical politics and pastoral concern. If the 'orthodox' oscillated between genuine apostolicity and conventional smugness, the 'heretics' combined theological juggling with divine discontent. And yet, in spite of persecution and schism, the Church grew in size and influence. It was a beam of light in a dying world.
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There is a natural tendency to idealise the past. Most members of the early Church were mediocre Christians and many of the Fathers could not Measure up to their calling. Others towered above their contemporaries; bishops like Irenmus and Cyprian, scholars such as Origen and Augustine, apologists like Justin, heretics like Marcion, his- torians like Eusebius. By any standard there is a magnificent heroism about the singleminded Athanasius contesting for the truth 'contra man- dum, and the unyielding Polycarp dying for his faith : 'For eighty and six years I have served Him,' he confessed. 'How can I now revile my King?' The fascination of the patristic age lies in the Fathers themselves, and their own writings are far more interesting than the learned tomes that have been written about them.
They have found surprising devotees. When Dr. Thirlwall visited the agnostic Lord Melbourne to be interviewed for a vacant bishopric, he found him still in bed surrounded by heaps of patristic folios. 'I take great interest in theological ques- tions and I have read a good deal of these old fel- lows,' he said, pointing to the folio editions of the Fathers. 'They are excellent reading and very amusing.' Amusing : Miss Strachey, in The Fathers Without Theology, would agree with that epithet, although she carefully eschews the 'theological questions.' Her method is to sum- marise apocryphal gospels, retell in her own words those passages from the early Fathers which have the.minimum of theological content and the maxi- mum of general interest, not forgetting the juicier tit-bits. Her story is mainly accurate, but occa- sionally she embroiders the tale and misses her opportunities : the Montanists, for example, are portrayed as a vanished sect of ecstatics (can she have. read Monsignor Knox on 'Enthusiasm'?) with 'the political and social aspects of the move- ment ignored. Her suggestion that St. Thomas was Jesus's identical twin is as bizarre as the apocry- phal sources from which she constructs this fantasy. The Fathers were certainly as eminent as the great Victorians, but Miss Strachey lacks her brother's distinction, and, in any case, rathers without theology are rather like Gordon without Khartoum or Florence Nightingale without the Crimea.
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A far better insight into the early Church is given by Mr. Stevenson's collection of early documents, A New Eusebius. Based upon Kidd's earlier selection, this compilation of some 300 extracts will not only be indispensable for the student, but will also make splendid reading for the ordinary reader. There is just enough judicious annotation for the uninitiated to make sense of these snippets and to whet his appetite for more. Extracts from a source, however, can never be the same as complete works, and the appearance of J. A. Kleist's good, glossy-covered translation of some early Fathers is a welcome innovation.
Throughout the contemporary Church interest in the Fathers has been reawakened. Publishers are producing whole new series of patristic trans- lations. Yet another International Conference on Patristic Studies is planned for Oxford in 1959, the third in seven years. In Oxford, too, the Dic- tionary of Patristic Greek is nearing completion. It is no coincidence that Oxford should be the focus of this renewed interest : for, although Newman's secession to the Roman Church was occasioned by his patristic studies, Anglicans since the Oxford Movement have looked back to the writings of the Fathers with renewed respect. Appeal to the authority of the primitive, undivided Church lacks cogency today, for the Church is now seen to have been in schism from its earliest days. Nevertheless, the writings of the early Fathers are still important, for they lived near to the events of the Gospels and as Dr. Routley has shown in his stimulating little book, The Wic- dont of the Fathers, they discuss issues of con- temporary relevance. For Anglicans they have a' peculiar importance; for while every Church in Christendom' can find support for its own beliefs in the- writings of some Father or other, the diversity of belief and practice in the early Church gives support to the Anglican ideal of a compre- hensive Church.
Protestantism since the Reformers has tended to leap from the first to the sixteenth century, as though there was a void of 1,500 years; but today Protestants also have been affected by. the patristic' revival. Thus Professor John Knox, in his recent book on the primitive Church, writes some strik-‘ ing words : 'I for one have no hesitancy in ascrib- ing the same status to episcopacy as to canon or. creed, whatever that status should be called.' If. . Roman Catholics maintain their Biblical re-: vival, and if Protestant scholars go on reading the Fathers, who can tell what the outcome will be?
HUGH MONTEF1ORE'
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