What to Do When We Disagree with an Early Church Father? - Kyle Stoltzfus

Yeah, to recognize that these are men who face challenges that required heroic amounts of faithfulness and fidelity and just hard work, but at the same time not to elevate them up, especially over the one who they're giving their testimony to, that's Jesus Christ. Not to elevate them over the written witness, and that'd be the words of Scripture, particularly the New Testament. And I think that's the best honor that we can show them. You just kind of keep them in their place beneath the Lordship of Jesus and to find inspiration from them to structure our thinking following their footsteps. But if we really honor a Church Father, I think we honor Jesus.

So, Kyle, you spent a lot of time studying church history. You use that to inform some of the classes you teach here at Faith Builders. You did some work on Irenaeus specifically, and over the years we've done a number of various episodes on the early church writers and things that they taught and so forth.

But we've also received a lot of feedback from listeners, like in comments and things, about some of the things we've said about the early church fathers, and some of it positive, some of it saying, "Oh, you're misrepresenting this. That's wrong. They didn't actually teach this or that or whatever." So let's start broad, and then we'll pull it in a little closer. But starting broad, how should we go about engaging with the writings of the early church? Like really broad stroke, give us some foundational guidelines. When we're talking, reading early church writings, I'm thinking the first few hundred years after the time of Christ, you know, the Ananiasian fathers, the patristics.

What are some things we should be keeping in mind? Because it feels like we could pretty easily skew this different directions based on our own opinions and belief systems. So talk to me about that. Yeah, I'd start by saying I'm excited. If anybody's interested in church history, that makes me excited. We need more people who are interested in church history, I think.

And the church fathers specifically, we're looking at them. It's an era of church history in which some of the structures hadn't been quite so formalized yet, especially as they are later on in the Roman Catholic tradition. But there's still a need for people to guide, to clarify, to kind of offer themselves in ways that help the early church, especially through some really difficult times when there was leadership needed.

So these are men, the early church fathers, who were working and struggling and believing in a time when the church was just beginning. Okay, so that may be a first thing to appreciate about them as a guideline is that they had a historical context. Okay, that is to say that their thinking was emerging and reflecting on historical challenges that they were facing, historical opportunities that they had. And so it can be easy to misrepresent an author or a church father when we've only partially understood them or when we failed to appreciate their historical context.

Another dimension of that is their literary context, we'd say, where, say, for Irenaeus, he's most known for his Against the Heresies, but he also wrote some other things too. We've got some letters from him, but it's important to read as much of it as you can.

We've got this tendency to proof text where if you've already arrived at a conclusion, like, well, who can I find to support that? Let's say a church father. They seem kind of important. We search for a quote from them which seems to support our position, and you can kind of trot that out, failing to appreciate the entirety of the work of that author. It's a quick way to kind of misinterpret or misconstrue what they had in mind. So these are men. They're responding to and reflecting on, with the very best of their resources and the aid of the Holy Spirit frequently, the challenges, the opportunities that they have. I'd also, and this may identify me as an Anabaptist, they are men.

Okay, so even though they deserve a level of authority in our interpretation, they deserve a level of authority in our theological reflection. Not everything about them is whole or complete, and even their theological reflection reflects some of their personality, their biases, their projects, sometimes even their hang-ups and quirks and idiosyncrasies.

So for me, reading them, you can get to know them as men who've had a significant shaping force on the history of the church, and they need to be respected. They are the big men in the room. You approach a big man in the room. You don't do so cavalierly or indifferently.

It's worth respecting them, but you do recognize after a while they got limitations too. I think that might be one of the pieces here because it is really easy to just say, "Oh, what early church father wrote about this?" and put it in an AI search engine or something, and it'll pull up, "Oh, okay, great. That was exactly what I'm looking for," and then fail to look into the context that they were writing within, right? Like as a whole, like within the church, within the culture maybe that they were coming from and so forth. Yeah, right. I think there it can be helpful in addition to reading, which I would encourage you, you know, read the church fathers, but also get to know what their context is.

And for them, they didn't need to talk about that because sometimes they're writing epistles, sometimes they're writing treatises. They understood what the context was, and they assumed that those receiving their writing also understood what that context was. We don't because we're removed from that historically. So taking some time and using some secondary materials in addition to your primary work, taking some secondary materials and saying, "Okay, what was the situation here? What might have prompted him to write this? What were the issues that were afloat that which could help me understand more clearly why it is he's writing these things?"

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so we're going to zoom way in now. So really broad, I go way in. We did some pieces on infant baptism. Not much, just a little bit there. And we got a lot of comments about that.

And different comments, I don't think I read the whole thing, but basically they're using the case when the New Testament, you know, we see everyone converting. And so then they get baptized, but when it comes to a household, it says they were all baptized together. Okay, well, that would mean children, infants, whatever would be baptized as well. He goes on to say, John Chrysostom says a lot about this, and he very much agreed with it, talking about infant baptism.

And he says Irenaeus as well, and so forth. And there's more to the quote. What do you say to that, to give a specific example there of those two church fathers that would disagree with what we had said in that previous episode?

The first thing I would say is I think it's okay to acknowledge differences. I think, yeah, Chrysostom being an example there, that he did promote infant baptism. He did. So there are some differences there. I think the case could be made for Irenaeus. I don't think it's quite as strong.

But to acknowledge that, again, these are humans. They're reflecting as best they know how and in contexts which require them of them certain things. That's another part that I would also suggest if you run across this. Frequently, these men are writing with intent.

Okay, that is to say that they usually write to accomplish something. Okay, and they frequently write not just to describe things. They're trying to accomplish something. So just as important as asking, why did Chrysostom seem to condone infant baptism? Ask why.

Why is he doing that? Another factor I think I'd put in there, and this is just acknowledging a cultural difference, is that in their times, okay, in their times, societies were much more collectivist. Okay, so to make an argument based on saying, you know, and forgive me for being a little bit, just a little bit cheeky in saying is, you know, their times were a little bit different. But I think for the fathers, it can't apply. It was a more collectivist culture.

You're going to expect baptism to be applied in ways that may not be exactly the same as what we'd expect in our culture. So be careful of the hasty equivocation because Chrysostom's day, he said that therefore, boom, one-to-one equivalent. That's how things ought to be. He might have been being permissive, okay, in ways that we think he's being declarative.

You have to be careful of his intent. Yeah, that makes sense.

I think it's easy to forget the span of time that stands between us, between these writers and us, and the difference of the world that they lived in. Like it's a cross-cultural experience almost when you're reading these guys, right? Because they're just a different world. Okay, but isn't it the tendency to say, "Oh, all these church fathers agree with our position, and so that's great." So that verifies like what we believe. Like, isn't that the really easy thing to do? That's kind of like proof texting, I guess. Yeah.

Importantly there, the impulse there that that's what feels good about that is you are looking for consensus among them. And when you have a number of human witnesses like these church fathers who are offering their best testimony and they're saying, "I think this is what's right and good. This is what we want to embrace." When you see a lot of them agreeing about something, chances are it's going to be very important. Hang on to that.

That's a good way to read, is to look for the patterns of consensus. Okay, and where you find consensus, chances are it's a pretty significant issue. The same way, the same way we say the church fathers as if they're a unified voice, they don't all see eye to eye. Okay, so yeah, you could reach back and say, "I found one person who agrees with me and that adds credibility to my position." Well, that's possible. That's good.

You also have to be looking at the collective voice. Another thing that I enjoy or appreciate about the church fathers and why I think there's enthusiasm for them right now, there's a lot of interest in them, is they have a sense of scale. Okay, so sure, yes, they may talk about baptism in ways which suggest infant baptism, but they're probably talking about other things, about formation. They're going to care about perhaps discipline formats of church life. They're going to care about the new creation in ways that if you're not sensitive, if you're not aware of everything they write, you say, "Oh, look, he agreed with me on that point." Okay, but we have to be willing to also sit down and listen long enough to say, "But what's his broader project?"

And have we appreciated the whole? So for my need, say, to defend infant baptism, I could say I'm going to rally some church fathers, find places where they agree, ignore the rest of the scale of their argument, and I've got it now. Have we really? Or are we just being dogmatic and kind of preoccupied with our own need to be right while actually silencing them on the matter?

So another example here, just to continue on that thread, someone else said, "Irenaeus clearly talks about ordination when he says the list from this apostle has come to this person, and he gives a specific apostolic succession. And if you can't figure that out, I'll pray for you," says this person in their comment. Because we had said some things about, or one of the guests had said some things about apostolic succession. Maybe tackle now on a little bit too. Is this another case study where we can pull some helpful pieces from? Apostolic succession, it's not an unambiguous term, meaning that, you know, it's freighted with a lot of different meanings. And depending on what that commenter means, things would take a different direction.

So they don't have the favor of being involved here. For Irenaeus, it is significant for him that there's a connection of testimony, of witness, you might say, back to that original stream. It's in a lot of ways, and this is what the apostles recommended. When John and his communities are facing challenges, he appeals to what you've heard, right? What's been given to you with Paul. It's the tradition to Timothy.

It's staying in continuity with this chain of witnesses, and that's how the faith is passed. So that is an important issue.

What it can tend to mean apostolic succession later on, after Irenaeus comes to be associated with a more formalized structure of bishops and authority and eventually cardinals and eventually a pope and popes that kind of chain down and hand down this authority. Okay, I don't think that that's what Irenaeus is referring to because there was no pope. There was a bishop of Rome.

He seemed to be on pretty good terms with him. In his career, he had to make some appeals to the bishop of Rome because the bishop of Rome was mistreating some people from his regions, he felt. And in some ways, it seems like Irenaeus castigates him a little bit and says, "You're getting a little high here. You're taking a little bit too much authority to yourself." And he makes it his mission to set things right, to act on justice. And something Irenaeus was known for was his temperance and a sense of justice.

So I don't think that's what he's referring to is what it comes to mean later on of this kind of Roman Catholic idea of apostolic succession, starting with Peter, and then there's popes coming after that line because it didn't exist for him. So this is a case of saying, when you read this early church writer, yeah, really pay attention to the context that they're coming from. And maybe, yeah, they're using words that we recognize, but they meant something different 1800 years ago than they do in the context we have now. Yes. Right. So you're making a real strong argument here for context is a big deal. Context and also our own thirst for anachronism. You know, we can take our context.

Define anachronism. Yeah, no, I'll do that. It's a great word. Everybody should know anachronism. Okay. This is partly just fun to say, but anachronism is this kind of undisciplined approach to history where we just take our context as being determining what a word or a phrase means in all contexts.

So for that example of apostolic succession, it's saying, well, apostolic succession meant for Irenaeus what it means for the Roman Catholic Church. Whereas in fact, you know, the Roman Catholic Church, they've established and they're refined what that's meant through the years and carried it forward in a way that may or may not be recognizable or intended by Irenaeus.

But when you read it back onto him, we're kind of saddling with him with that and saying, this is what you meant. And in fact, it might be something somewhat different. You're loading, or it'd be easy to load meaning into a word that's used that that meaning wasn't even there originally. It wasn't even present. Sometimes we'll say things like, you know, when Paul says dunamos, what he meant was dynamite. Well, no, he meant power, more generally, but probably not the explosive. Yeah, because he didn't have that. Yeah, that's a great point. So a thing to keep in mind here then, maybe the temptation is to label some church fathers as a bad influence because they disagree with our beliefs or practice.

Yeah, that would be, I guess, the same thing you're saying, just going the other direction. It's like, oh, well, we don't like that church father because they disagree with what I say. Yeah. And there's where I'd agree that certain church fathers on certain points, they lose that sense of scale. They get out of touch with the consensus that's emerging. And where they do that, they should be called out.

Again, some of their limitations as humans and sometimes their sinfulness comes out. And would it be worthwhile to perhaps, you know, not consult certain fathers on certain people? Absolutely. Maybe a bad idea. But I think also we might be just acknowledging here that the tendency of humans and of these men too, as great of leaders as they were, it is tremendous pressure they were under. Okay. And the human possibility of capitulating, of surrendering, really important things sometimes when they're faced with alternatives.

So that's also a possibility for some of these men that sometimes they do have a history of capitulation on important points. And we have to be aware of that too. But to be a church father means that to take the average, they were faithful men. And hear me right, commendable in a way that we could only aspire to measure up to.

Okay, so clearly there are lots of different groups and denominations and so forth that point to the early church fathers to help, you know, to as reference points, say, for their belief system and things that all of this starts getting really complicated and kind of confusing because you have really diverse groups pointing back to, oh, it's in the patristics, the early church writings, that this and this and this, and then a different group that says the opposite thing says the same, points back. Like it gets really confusing.

So the question is, is it still worth reading your early church writings? And if so, like why should we care? And like where should we start if we want to start reading this stuff? Because I've started to and it's really overwhelming. I mean, there's so much there. You know, where do I start? And it's easy for this stuff to get kind of hijacked by different denominations and schools of thought and so forth. Anyway, speaking to that. And the main point there being of him hearing you right, that if you're hoping to make a unified church out of reading the fathers, that may not be the best solution.

It can actually be divisive. Well, yeah, or maybe just confusing is the word that comes to my mind because I see it and use, I mean, you're seeing this in the comments that we're getting, right? You know, oh, well, clearly you should believe in infant baptism if you read the early church. Whereas the next person that I might talk to says, oh no, clearly not. If you read the early church writings, it starts getting really confusing. And so then it's just like, I don't even know where to start. I'm not even going to read these because it's just too much to untangle. And that can discourage people from ever engaging with these writings to begin with.

So I guess what I'm saying is make a case for like, why should we care about these writings and why you think people should read them? Yeah. Well, I hope in saying this that I don't diminish them too much, the fathers.

But I could have first maybe seen this in terms of encounter. And in my work with Irenaeus, it started off, I just wanted to engage his ideas because I had a project. But toward the end of it, I got to know him a bit more as a person, as a man who turned himself in to some really challenging times in church history, especially with his work with the Valentinian Gnostics.

And I began to appreciate him and admire him and hope to learn from him in the same way that I would from somebody that I appreciate because of the kind of life, you know, that they've lived out. So maybe that's a starting point to move through that confusion. Say, who were these men? How did they respond? Because all of them had a story to tell. All of them had a life for the fathers that included adversity and difficulty. And there's usually something there that's worth imitating.

Now, the second thing I might just suggest is, again, watch for their intent. Part of why they're recognized as a church father frequently isn't just because they are really sharp, which they were, are really capable and competent, which they tended to be.

It's also because they loved the church and they loved Jesus. Okay. So our response to them, our response to them, if we're going to be willing to cherry pick just to add a little padding to our argument, that might be exactly violating their intention.

Okay. Yeah. You've got to look past, not just, you know, not just mine them for my own historicist project, but also to see toward their heart a little bit, which again, is not unmixed. These men live lives of repentance frequently.

But to ask the question, you know, how is it? Like Paul would suggest for us, how is this expedient for the building of Christ's body? And that becomes the primary question.

So practically speaking, if someone wants to start, you have a recommendation of where in the church fathers they should start reading? Yeah. Oh, wow. There's a lot of options to choose from, so. Yeah.

I mean, I think you should all start with Irenaeus.

Okay. And he still won my heart in some ways. But I do, there's a lot to appreciate. There's some that are more philosophically or dogmatically inclined. They tend to be harder reads and a real slog. You know, Gregory of Nassau, a origin, some of them, a lot of appreciation.

But I wouldn't recommend starting there necessarily unless that's your bet.

Some like Clement, Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, I'm just drawing from memory. In my experience, have been a little bit more approachable and maybe don't need quite so much explaining either.

But do start. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the one piece. If people take something away from this podcast is to actually go and engage with these writings themselves instead of the, like you've been saying, the cherry picking, not paying attention to the context of what these men were facing as they're writing these things. What were the issues that they were having to wrestle with? What was the context of the society and culture and language and all of these things that, I mean, these works were not written in a vacuum, obviously. Yeah, and keeping all of that in mind, I think that's some important principles to leave people with. Yeah. And I hope I should say here too, as we wrap up, by emphasizing history, by emphasizing the humanity of these men, it could feel like I'm diminishing them.

That's not my intention. That can frequently happen where as soon as you start to look at context, you start to historicize. That is to say, oh, you belittle them and then you can just kind of do more cherry picking.

He didn't really understand what he was doing here, but here are some things that I feel mattered as a historian. No, I don't think that's quite right. The invitation here is to look at them as men, as limited and sometimes as broken as they were, who added leadership and who added thoughtful ways of looking at the world to the church. But neither to elevate them too highly, okay?

And especially not to give them priority, say, over the New Testament or over Jesus. And I think that's one of the things, not lift these writings more highly than they are, but yet also give them the due respect and honor that they do deserve, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, to recognize that these are men who faced challenges that required heroic amounts of faithfulness and fidelity and just hard work.

But at the same time, not to elevate them up, especially over the one who they're giving their testimony to, that's Jesus Christ. Not to elevate them over the written witness. That'd be words of scripture, particularly the New Testament. And I think that's the best honor that we can show them. You just kind of keep them in their place beneath the Lordship of Jesus and to find inspiration from them to structure our thinking following their footsteps. But if we really want to honor a church father, I think we honor Jesus.

Yeah, that's an important piece. Well, thanks for describing this. Hopefully, some of the people who add these comments and feedback for us can listen to this and maybe you'll give them some more pieces to work with. I think that's important. And in the end, so that people listening to this will say, oh, maybe I should pick up some of these early church writings and give them a read. I think that's the one piece that I hope that comes out of this. Yeah.

I'm so glad for the questions too. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Thanks for sharing, Kyle. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode with Kyle. If you found this interesting, you may want to check out our other project called Anabaptist Origins, which is a documentary series about the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement. You can find more information on the other website we have called AnabaptistOrigins.org. It's also its own YouTube channel, which you can find linked down below. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you in the next episode.