There is a quip in the Greek Orthodox Church that goes, “We don’t read Bibles; we only kiss them.”

We might as well add another one, “We don’t read the Fathers; we only praise them.”

Such is the mentality of many Orthodox Christians with the Church Fathers. For them, the Fathers are this abstract standard to which we must appeal to show that we are really Orthodox, but if we are not familiar with many things that they modeled for us, then we are Orthodox by name and not by practice. This is because the Fathers communicate for us the mind and heart of the early Church.

Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles

by Duccio di Buoninsegna

between 1308-1311

There are four types of attitudes to approaching the Church Fathers.

First, there are some that speak highly of the Fathers like the peasant statement mentioned above, but never read them. This can be either the traditionally Orthodox or converts of the sort who are commonly called hyperdox. Most are familiar with the hyperdox as being overly zealous converts from Protestant churches. Yet the hyperdox have not converted to the Orthodox Christian ethos because they do with the Fathers what they did with the Bible in their former churches; they proof-text from them which means they take passages from them to claim support for their own views. The difference is that they have a much larger group of texts to select from. Yet proof-texting is not discovering the mind and heart of the Fathers, but simply engaging in confirmation bias of your own pre-existing attitudes. Both the traditional and hyperdox in this group are especially guilty of patrolatry, which is the over-praise and even what one might call worship of the Church Fathers. The way to fix this wrong attitude is by reading the Church Fathers in their own contexts and drawing out their central ideas. This will lead us to discover the mind and heart of the early Church.

A second attitude belongs to those who see the Fathers as outdated and as such worthless. Most Protestant Christians fall into this category. Such an attitude develops only due to a lack of imagination. They lack imagination because they have never seriously engaged with the writings of the Church Fathers.

A third attitude belongs to those that don’t care. This group thinks that the Fathers are a preference. One time, a person who read my blog commented saying, “I noticed that unless you have the willpower to try to understand [them], [they] will make no sense. Seeking the church fathers is something you must do on your own.” Another wrote to me, “Your issue seems to be that he [a certain person] does not quote Church Fathers or content from the Early Church enough to your liking. It is not clear how this is harmful or why your barometer of what is Orthodox enough is the one we should all follow.” Regrettably, both of these comments came from self-professed Orthodox Christians. What they did not understand, to no fault of their own but more to their shepherds, is that the Church Fathers are not a preference, but they are the heritage of the Orthodox Church. We would not know Orthodox Christianity if it were not for the Fathers explaining it and handing it to us.

Lastly, there are those that hold the Fathers as extremely valuable and for this reason read them.

When we read the Fathers as a matter of habit, then we will begin to discern the mind and heart of the early Church. That mind is very different than the Christianity most people are familiar with today. The mind of the early Church is fresh, is infused with meaning, offers powerful explanations of what we can know about God, ourselves, and the world, and its spirituality is much deeper and transformative than what we know now.

The Mind of the Fathers

What are the characteristics of the mind of the early Church?

1. Christ-centeredness

The most defining characteristic of the mind of the early Church is its Christ-centeredness. This Christ-centeredness most clearly appears in the interpretation of the Bible. To the early Church, the Scriptures appear to be like a treasure chest and Christ is the key who unlocks it to reveal all the treasures the chest contains.

Also, to them the Scriptures are like a Well and Christ is the water drawn out from it. The Fathers model how to draw water out of this well, and if we follow their teaching, we too will learn how to effectively draw Him out from this Well.

We are aware that many Prophecies are clearly centered on Christ. For example, the Four Servant Songs in Isaiah (Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52-53).

Yet in the early Church, the whole of the Bible was read centered on Christ. For example, the Psalms were read in Christ-centered fashion. An example is Psalm 7:6-7

“Rise up, O Lord, in your anger
—be exalted in the borders of my enemies.
—and awake, O my God, with the ordinance you commanded.
And a congregation of people will surround you,
—and above this return on high.” (Psalm 7:7-8 LXX)

St. Basil the Great, in his Homily on Psalm 7, which can be found in the collection of his sermons titled Exegetic Homilies published in the Fathers of the Church series by Catholic University of America, interprets this verse as prophesying the Resurrection. Indeed, in Greek both the words “exalted” and “awake” use terms associated with the Resurrection in the New Testament. It then becomes clear that “the congregation of people” is the Church that Christ will establish after His Resurrection. The beauty and implications of St. Basil’s Christ-centered interpretation are too rich to discuss in detail here, and I highly recommend that you read these homilies on the Psalms in your devotions.

Moreover, this Christ-centeredness went beyond the Scriptures to view the world in the light of Christ. An example of this is the early Christian book Physiologus which interprets many different animals, trees, and stones as symbols for Christ. These symbols then were used in Christian art to raise the mind of the beholder to see Christ in everything.

The Christ-centeredness of the early Church is best exemplified in the prayer known as Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, which near the end reads,

“Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ when lying down, Christ in sitting,
Christ in rising up.

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me” (Saint Patrick’s Breastplate VIII-IX).

This prayer is worthy of meditation and repetition because it will transform how we view ourselves, others, and our way in the world in the light of Christ.

2. The Focus on God and Humanity

Another characteristic of the mind of the early Church is the centrality of the Incarnation of the Son of God. This leads to the focus and emphasis on God and Humanity because God Himself has become Human.

The first and foremost implication of all this is the holiness of the body and living in the present since this is what God did by becoming human in our Lord Jesus Christ. Most ancient religions were escapist, which means they longed to leave this world. Modern Christianity seems to be this way too, but in ancient Christianity this was not the case. Certainly, the early Christians looked to the end of the age, but not as an escape, but rather as a preparation for how we should live our lives in the present. To use an analogy that the Church Fathers themselves often used, it is like how a good student looks to the end of his or her education as culminating in a lifelong career, and when this is taken in mind, it affects how they work in school for the entirety of their time as students. It will produce highly motivated, hard-working, and well-behaved students. The same was true for the early Church in their hope for the age to come; while they looked to the end of the age, it meant that it had an effect on the present way of living. The age to come was a natural outgrowth of what we prepared for here. The present age was like a school to prepare us for the life of the age to come.

3. Prayer

Following from Christ-centeredness and the focus on God and humanity, the way of prayer of the early Christians was unique. This is best understood by comparing it to the mentality on prayer in our times.

In modern times, prayer is seen as a way to get what you ask for especially if you have strong faith.  Also, modern Christians often pray before beginning some type of task, project, or over things like job offers.  They do this for guidance.  But these types of praying often times leads to judging one’s faith as either being strong or weak based on answered prayers. This is an extremely simplified understanding of what prayer is and is far removed from what prayer meant in the early Church. In the early Church, there is an emphasis on Providence, which is God’s plan for us in the context of all other believers and the universe itself. This is why sometimes when we pray for certain things, our prayers are not answered because in the course of time, we will learn by reflection that if these unanswered prayers of ours were answered, they would have led to our harm. This understanding comes from strong reflection and a deep faith in God. This reflection too is prayer.

Most of all, prayer was seen as a way to grow in the likeness of Christ, and by growing in the likeness of Christ, we impart Him into the world. This is why the early Christians prayed the Psalms, because these were the prayers Christ Himself, as a Jew, prayed. This memorization and repetition indeed seems tedious and unnecessary to modern Christians who only think of prayer as asking God for things or for guidance. Yet, the goal of prayer is union with God and transformation into the likeness of His Son Jesus Christ. This is why the early Christians prayed the Psalms.

4. The Engagement with the World

Culminating in these defining characteristics, the early Church also heavily engaged with the world.

Unfortunately, Christians today give off the vibe of an “us vs. them” mentality, which to be fair is generally true of every single group that makes a claim to truth and justice today. Yet, this was not the attitude of the early Christians. Rather, they saw Christians and their relationship with the world as being analogous to the relationship of the soul with the body. In one of the earliest Christian documents outside of the New Testament, The Epistle to Diognetus, it describes this relationship saying:

“In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, which is invisible, is confirmed in the body, which is visible; in the same way, Christians are recognized as being in the world, and yet their religion remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wages war against it, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is hindered from indulging in its pleasures; so also the world hates the Christians, even though it has suffered no wrong, because they set themselves against its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and its members, and Christians love those who hate them. The soul is locked up in the body, but it holds the body together; and though Christians are detained in the world as if in a prison, they in fact hold the world together. The soul, which is immortal, lives in a mortal dwelling; similarly Christians live as strangers amid perishable things, while waiting for the imperishable in heaven. The soul, when poorly treated with respect to food and drink, becomes all the better; and so Christians when punished daily increase more and more. Such is the important position to which God has appointed them, and it is not right for them to decline it” (The Epistle to Diognetus 6.1-9).

Such an attitude naturally leads to a high engagement with the world. This is why early Christians engaged the arts, culture, and philosophy bringing their own insights on the human condition to the forefront in this engagement. The result was that it made Christianity much more understandable and compelling and led to the conversion of people from all sorts of backgrounds, most of note, intellectuals. This is something we have lost in modernity because what often happens is that there is no engagement but a dismissal of all learning in favor of “alternative explanations” for reality. Further, Christians today create a counterculture that is based on parody as opposed to fresh development according to the principles of Christianity within the context of our cultures today. I have written about this sad phenomenon in my article “The Cultured and the Uncultured.”

Learning to Think According to the Mind of the Early Church

So what do we make of all this?

What we saw above are examples of the mindset of the early Church and their practical applications to our way of life. This mindset led to the spread of Christianity in the ancient world. This spread is the reason most of our churches exist especially if we are of Middle Eastern, European, or North African backgrounds.

Yet, what so often happens in our churches is that if we are exposed to the Fathers, it is usually in the form of short quotes on a topic similar to the way that we use inspirational quotes by motivational speakers when having a discussion or giving a presentation. Yet, short quotes do not communicate the mind of the early Church. To discover and think along the mind of the early Church bringing in new applications and getting fresh insight into new areas of learning in modernity would require us to read texts and to read many texts and consider them together.

More practically, this would be done by being in a church where the priests have done this and communicate all this to their congregations in their sermons, Bible studies, and Sunday school classes.

Yet, in a time where so many of us are well educated and with some effort under the guidance of our churches have the ability to read the Fathers to the benefit of deepening of our way of life in Christ both in mind and in heart, more of us should read them directly and not only depend on the priests in the same way that we should also read the Bible under the guidance of the Church.

To help make the early Christian writings more accessible, I am starting a podcast entitled The Mind of the Early Church which will focus on many different issues of modernity and view them through the lens of these early Christian writings by comparing today’s issues to the contexts of the early Church and examining how the insights of the early Church can be validly applied to these modern issues. It will then move into spiritual application for us, and then consider ways to engage the world once again on all levels from art, to culture, to the humanities and the sciences.

If you are interested, sign up to my mailing list or follow me on Facebook for news on when this podcast will premiere and where you can listen to it.

Pray for me.