Constructing Modern Theological Thinking: What can we learn from the Early Church?
It is just over a century since H B Swete published a small book called Patristic Study (Longmans,1904), one of a number of volumes in a series entitled Handbooks for the Clergy. The aim of his little book, wrote Swete, was ‘to draw the attention of the younger clergy of the Church of England to the vast store of wisdom which has been bequeathed to them by the ancient Catholic Church.’
Reading the Fathers, Swete tells us, is not only stimulating but also of great practical value, for ‘the parish priest of the twentieth century will find in the greater writers of the Ancient Church much direct help for his daily work; sermons, catechises, pastoral intercourse, personal life will be enriched by converse with the pastors and teachers of other times.’ Indeed, he tells us, ‘There are few departments of theological research in which the Fathers can fail to render valuable help to those who know how to make yield up their treasure’, and he gives as examples biblical textual criticism, the history of the canon, the history of biblical interpretation, the progress of Christian thought and the study of liturgy.
‘Nor’, he continues, ‘is it only to students in the stricter sense that the Fathers can render service; they may be turned to practical account by the working parish priest. The preacher will find in their pages the grand models of ancient pulpit oratory; the pastor may look to them for guidance in problems which are common to all ages of the Church.’ Thus the benefits of patristic study to which Swete directs his readers are practical as well as academic, if such a distinction may be sustained: ‘If a knowledge of the Fathers may be of value to the clergy in forming an opinion on disputed points of ritual and Church order, it will help them even more surely on the side of pastoralia -- the practical conduct of the parish priest’s life and work. The majority of the Fathers were not only writers and preachers, but diligent and experienced guides of souls.’
Swete’s basic point, that the Christian Church in one age should learn from the wisdom (and, we might add, the mistakes) of those who have gone before, can hardly be disputed. Neither does it seem possible to underestimate the particular importance of learning from our predecessors from those early centuries in which the canon of Scripture was formed, the Catholic Creeds were formulated, and the core Christian doctrines of God, Christ and salvation assumed much of the content and shape that they retain today. Yet much has changed since Swete wrote, and those who would echo his message today must do so in the face not only of even greater ignorance of the history of the early church than Swete encountered, but also of great changes in how that history is studied today, not to mention the even greater changes in our understanding of the world and the place of the human race within it.
Perhaps nowhere may such changes be seen more clearly than in the title and contents of the recently published Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (eds. Susan Ashbrook Harvey & David G. Hunter, OUP 2008). For if ‘patristics’ may be defined as systematic reflection upon Christian theology, as propounded by early theologians whose teachings are considered authoritative and binding, its nature as a distinctly theological and ecclesiastical enterprise becomes clear, and the difference between it and the contemporary academic discipline of early Christian Studies may be clearly seen.
Elizabeth Clark explains the difference in her important and programmatic opening essay, ‘From Patristics to Early Christian Studies’. The term ‘patristics’, notes Clark, fell increasingly into disuse in the late twentieth century, as did the way in which its subject matter was conceived. Not only was the word rejected as a sign of ecclesiasticism, maleness and notions of orthodoxy from which some scholars wished to dissociate themselves, but the subject matter to which it referred came to be taught increasingly in the Humanities departments of secular universities and colleges. There the relevance of religious belief was less significant than it had been when the subject was taught in confessional contexts, and its concerns were less encumbered by contemporary theological disputes. There too it was taught often by those whose training was in Classics and ancient history, not theology or religious studies, which meant that it was conceptualised less often as a branch of church history (or, we might add, theology) than as an aspect of late ancient history and literature. Thus authors who once were treated as repositories of theological wisdom that might be mined in order to inform theological thinking today came instead to be interrogated and understood by means of the same questions and methodological approaches as were used by scholars working on other ancient authors. Hence they were approached not as theologians writing for posterity, but as historical figures operating in particular historical contexts in which their writings must be understood.
This is the dominant situation in research-lead universities today, and it raises important questions that need to be addressed if the contemporary Church is to continue to draw with profit on the riches of its past. No longer is it possible to claim with integrity that the way in which we hold and understand our faith today is precisely the same as the way in which Christians always and everywhere have held it before us. Detailed historical study shows us how each of us sees things differently, and how each of us is shaped by the particular historical context in which we live. Nor can we so easily silence the voices of those whom the orthodox considered heretical as our forebears sometimes did. Recent discoveries of texts long lost let us read the words of those whose voices had been lost, and raise questions about how the particular stream of early Christianity that emerged in the different churches that we know today related to other forms of Christianity with which it was in dialogue and competition from the earliest days of its history. Once again, we cannot simply claim that we believe is precisely what Christians have believed everywhere and always.
Yet, important as such questions are, they need not rule out the ongoing value of patristics in something like the way in which it has traditionally been understood, provided that Christian theologians and patristic scholars are clear about what they are doing and why, and clear about how their context and their task is both similar and dissimilar to that of the theologians of earlier ages.
Certainly those whose interest in the early church is primarily theological should be informed by and aware of the questions that early Christian studies raises in its historically-focussed way, and certainly those studies present challenges with which they must engage. But they can respond, quite properly, that neither an informed awareness of the historical context in which early Christian theologians wrote, nor an awareness that there were always Christians with different views than those distilled and encapsulated in the Catholic Creeds, need mean that theologians cannot discriminate between those beliefs that they wish to uphold and those that they wish to reject.
Thus, in principle, there seems no good reason why as Christians we cannot continue to give more weight to the teaching of those whom the Church has deemed to be faithful exponents of its beliefs than to those whose views it has rejected. If it is our intention to reflect on and grow in understanding of the faith into which we were baptised, then there seems no reason not to draw on the work of those who have shared that faith before us, albeit in different ways, at different times, and in different places.
Certainly we must engage with questions and challenges that arise from our post-Enlightenment historical and scientific understanding of the world, an understanding that is far removed from that of the early Church in which our creeds and doctrines were formed and in which our Scriptures were written and collected together. But although this means that we must approach critically all that the early Church has entrusted to us, it need not mean that we must reject it out of hand. Theology, history and science are different disciplines, but there need be no contradiction between them, provided that we remain clear what we are doing, and how and why we do it.
© Andrew Gregory, 2009
The Revd Dr Andrew Gregory is Chaplain and Fellow of University College, Oxford.