Why Read Early Christian Writers?

Why Read Early Christian Writers?

I grew up a Baptist, before later on converting to the Catholic Church. As such, one of the many gifts I received from my Baptist upbringing was acquiring a deep love for the written word of God, the Bible. From a young age, I developed the habit of constantly reading Scripture (one that I have since kept). Since it is writing inspired of God, and absolutely inerrant in all that it asserts, all Christians should be familiar with its contents. As St. Jerome put it, "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." Therefore, I cannot thank my Baptist teachers enough for such a blessing. It was, in fact, my reading of Scripture that led me to build on the many truths I was taught as a Baptist by embracing the fullness of truth I have found as a Catholic.

But while my Baptist church did a marvelous job instilling into me a knowledge and appreciation for Scripture, unfortunately, I was not so blessed in another respect. I had absolutely no notion of church history. One of the results was that I was completely unaware, for instance, of the many volumes of writings that we have which were written by the Christian writers of the first few centuries (who are generally called "the early church fathers", though some are referred to simply as ecclesiastical writers.) As I started investigating the Catholic Church, one of the great joys I experienced was to learn of such a treasure. Discovering that we can know what the earliest Christians after the Apostles thought and taught is something I had been unaware of before. As such, since discovering them, I have started to read them, especially some of their major works, to take advantage of such wisdom.

For some Christians, however, they wonder what advantages there are to reading them. We have the Bible, after all, and such early Christian writings, interesting as they may be, are nevertheless not Scripture. Given that they are not inspired, why invest the time and effort to read them instead of, say, more contemporary Christian authors that may be more "relevant" to our day and age? What benefit is there?

Plenty, actually.

First of all, if there were no better reasons, then precisely by their not being "relevant" to our day and age, they would be performing a great service to us. For to be "relevant" in that sense simply means to echo back to us all of the thoughts and assumptions of our modern age, which we already embrace. But that is exactly what we need to be shaken from, insofar as we rely solely on such assumptions. For modern Christians, whatever insights they can provide (and I do not deny there are many) are nevertheless only one out of many generations of believers. Yet we need to embrace the wisdom of the ages, not just our own age.

This is the case especially, of course, on matters of faith and morals. Contemporary Christians were not the first to pick up the Bible and ponder its contents. Christians have been guided by the Holy Spirit for two thousand years, and it would be worth our while to get fresh insights from other generations. The writings of past ages are able to provide us insights that we have overlooked, as well as expose the fallacies of errors we may be prone to today, for error is often resurrected. It would serve us well, then, to explore the writings of all generations of Christians.

But while all generations have much to share with us, the writings of the earliest Christians provide unique advantages found nowhere else. For these are the writers who lived closest in time to the age of the Apostles. Some of them (such as Ignatius and Polycarp) were in fact taught by the Apostles themselves. But, in any case, all of them were much closer in time to the Apostolic age than we are today. They lived in an environment which was archconservative to the core (and to the extent anybody would occasionally put forth an innovation that contradicted the teachings of the apostles, fierce protests from all quarters of the church would be sure to be forthcoming.)  In other words, we can be confident that their teaching (and understanding of Scripture) would generally speaking reflect that of the Apostles, and therefore of Jesus. That being the case, would it not be interesting to know what they taught about many of the controversial issues that divide Christians today? And that is in addition to, of course, the more general wisdom they can share with us for our own spiritual lives.

Thankfully, in the age of the Internet, many of these writings are widely available. One good site that contains many of them would be www.newadvent.org/fathers. (Of course, not all of them are available online in English, but that site contains a little over three dozen volumes worth.)  And so I would highly recommend reading them. Why miss out on such an opportunity?