Christopher A. Hall - Learning Theology with the Church Fathers

Learning Theology with the Church Fathers is the second volume of a projected three-volume set: Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (patristic biblical interpretation); Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (patristic reflection on key theological topics and issues: Scripture, Christ, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, sin and salvation, providence, the church and the resurrection); and a book provisionally titled Praying with the Church Fathers (patristic reflection and practice in the spectrum of Christian spirituality: prayer, worship, the Eucharist, baptism, Christian witness and service to the poor).

Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, the first volume of the series, is a basic introduction to the manner and content of patristic biblical interpretation. In it I focus on the eight great doctors of the churchAthanasius, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus in the East; Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great in the Westusing these masters of the faith as examples of how the fathers read and interpreted the Bible. I also provide basic biographical and bibliographical background for those who want to explore patristic hermeneutics further.

When I had finished writing Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers I knew there were still vast areas of patristic wisdom and insight that I had yet to touch. What, for example, of the thoughts of the fathers on key theological topics such as the authority of Scripture, tradition, the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son, the Holy Spirit, sin, grace, redemption, suffering and evil, providence, the church and the resurrection of the dead? These subjects in themselves called for a second book. Hence, the volume you now find in your hands, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers.

I acknowledge readily and immediately that the fathers never split theology off from spirituality, as though theology was an academic, mental exercise best practiced in ones study, while Christian spirituality was more appropriately focused on the heart and centered in a church sanctuary. Any split between mind and heart, theology and spirituality, study and sanctuary would have met with scant toleration from the fathers.

For the fathers, as for at least one of the three great ecclesiastical communions of the Christian worldEastern Orthodoxytheology and spirituality, the Christian mind and heart, worship and reflection are an inseparable whole. The fathers continually remind us that theology is at best broken speech about the transcendent, mysterious God who draws near to us in the incarnation of the Son and the presence of the Spirit. Within the context of worship, whether through the proclamation of the Word from the pages of Scripture or in the celebration of the sacraments, God draws near to us. Here we learn what we can and cannot know and speak within the inherent limitations of human language as we attempt to understand and express faithfully the wonder of who God is and what God is up to in human history. Our thoughts and words about God will always and inevitably fall short in their attempt to capture and explain Gods nature and actions.

Anthony Ugolnik chides the Wests tendency to avoid the essentially mysterious nature of Christianity rather than [to] adore it. He writes:

We [Christians in the West] confess to doctrines profoundly mysterious by their naturethat a man should be God, that one God should be at the same time three persons, that we of corruptible flesh should also be temples of the living God. So we believe, but so we cannot comfortably think. For as thoughts, these are in essence mystery. Mystery is what many contemporary minds are hungry for; it is what they seek far afield, in the non-Christian realms and such Eastern, Asiatic sources as the Bhagavad Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. We Christians in the West have not shared what we possess. We have mystery in plenty, yet our discourse averts it, avoids it as if in embarrassment. For mystery is what we have been taught through our education to extinguish.

Ugolnik is not arguing that all speech about God is necessarily impossible and unproductive. Thinking and speaking about God is surely a possible and praiseworthy endeavor, if our reflection and speech are formed and informed within the context of worship. For it is within worship, the fathers insist, that we encounter the mystery of God and Gods acts on our behalf and learn to think, speak and reverently respond to divine realitiesall the while acknowledging that our words fall far short of the wonder they are feebly attempting to encompass and describe.

Daniel Clendenin, an evangelical theologian, explains that Eastern Orthodox theology, a theology deeply rooted in the fathers, is far removed from the theological abstractions common in the West. Adoration, contemplation, and vision, not rational intellection, characterize the Eastern tradition. For instance, Clendenin directs us to the christological formulations of the Chalcedonian Creed as an example of how Eastern fathers went about their work.

The fathers describe the union of the divine and human natures of Christ by employing a series of four negative words: the two natures of Christ exist without confusion, change, division, or separation. That is, as Clendenin explains, the creed states the fact of the union of Christs two natures in one person and does so in such a way that we avoid theological error, but it resists any temptation to provide a rational explanation of how this can be.

In this vein, John Climacus (A.D. 579-649) writes that the word spoken by the theologian remains hollow if not grounded in personal experience in worship:

Do you imagine plain words can precisely or truly or appropriately describe the love of the Lord and assurance of the heart? Do you imagine that