Do Not Proof Text the Holy Fathers
“Proof texting”
is a well known problem, especially when it comes to interpreting Holy
Scripture. Some people develop whole theologies around a narrow interpretation
of a few scattered verses (or even isolated books of the Bible), ignoring what
the Church Father’s called the skopos: the overall purpose or ultimate meaning
of the apostolic message about God’s self-revelation in history and in the
person and work of Jesus Christ.
Yet, just
as it is possible to proof text the Bible, it is also possible to proof text the
writings of the Holy Fathers — and it’s not a new problem. St. Photios the
Great, who lived and served the Church as Patriarch of Constantinople in the
9th century, addressed the question of how to read and interpret the Holy
Fathers in his famous “Letter to the Patriarch of Aquileia.” He writes:
Who is it that offends the Fathers? Is it not
those who, enclosing the whole piety of those few Fathers in a few words and
placing them in contradiction to councils, prefer them to the numberless rank?
Or is it those who choose as their defenders the many Fathers? Who offends holy
Augustine, Jerome and Ambrose? Is it not he who forces them to contradict the
common Master and Teacher, or is it he who, doing nothing of the sort, desires
that all should follow the decree of the common Master?
St.
Photios continues, explaining that the Holy Fathers at times spoke imprecisely,
and even at times made theological errors on individual questions. Yet these
errors do not necessarily mean they are any less holy or worthy of our embrace.
Have there not been complicated conditions
which have forced many Fathers in part to express themselves imprecisely, in
part to speak with adaptation to circumstances under the attacks of enemies,
and at times out of human ignorance to which they also were subject? … If some
have spoken imprecisely, or for some reason not known to us, even deviated from
the right path, but no question was put to them nor did anyone challenge them
to learn the truth – we admit them to the list of Fathers, just as if they had
not said it, because of their righteousness of life and distinguished virtue
and their faith, faultless in other respects. We do not, however, follow their
teaching in which they stray from the path of truth … We, though, who know that
some of our Holy Fathers and teachers strayed from the faith of true dogmas, do
not take as doctrine those areas in which they strayed, but we embrace the men.
… we do not admit what is opposed to the word of the Lord, but we do not cast
them out from the rank of the Fathers.
The
challenge, then, is not merely to read or quote the Holy Fathers, but to
interpret them. Doing so is not an easy task, nor is it an individual one: it
can only be accomplished from within the life of the Church Herself.
Source: http://myocn.net/st-photios-great-dont-prooftext-holy-fathers/
