Patrology, Part 1: What Is the Study of the Church Fathers?

Watch: Lecture 1 of 8 by Fr Tadros Yacoub Malaty, recorded in English for St Shenouda Press.

What patrology is

“Patrology” comes from the Latin pater, father. It is the study of the Fathers of the Church: their lives, their writings and their thought. Fr Tadros opens the series by insisting that we do not study the Fathers as scholars collecting opinions. We study them to come into contact with their lives, and through their lives to recognise the work of the Holy Trinity in them and in the early Church. The one theme that runs through every doctrine, canon and teaching of the Church, he says, is this: we are meant to attain and enjoy the work of the Trinity in every part of our lives.

Why the Fathers matter today

After the divisions of the fifth century, confusion about doctrine spread among believers. Churches and scholars went back to the roots to see what the earliest churches held. They found that Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, Constantinople and Cappadocia shared almost the same traditions and the same understanding of the faith. The Fathers are the record of that shared mind.

Three dimensions of the study

  1. Lives and biographies: to understand a saying, first understand the life and the circumstances of the one who said it.
  2. Acts of the Fathers: their writings, homilies and sayings, and what we learn from them.
  3. Thoughts of the Fathers: how they conducted themselves in different situations, which shows what they actually believed.

What you gain

By the end of the series the student has met every major stream of early theology, can recognise the heresies and the Church's answers to them, and sees the role that laypeople, women, children and young people played in the early Church.

Key points

  • Patrology is contact with the Fathers' lives, not an academic exercise.
  • The early churches shared one faith across five great centres.
  • Study the life, the writings and the thought together.
  • Part 1 of an 8-part series; continue with Part 2 on the Apostolic Fathers.

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