"We think we are being Patristic when we are being the most zealous and unbending, taking up, say, the great diatribes of St Cyril against Nestorius, but we neglect that current within the patristic legacy (found in the same St Cyril in his later years) which was peacemaking, open to reconsideration and reformulation, for the sake of the truth and for the unity of the Church."
+ Peter Bouteneff, “Chalcedonians and Non Chalcedonians: Realizing Unity,” St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 42 (1998): 168.
When we sometimes quote the fathers we can potentially use them out of context or in isolation. We risk falling into the same principles of 'sola-scriptura' and read anything we want into and out of the writings of the ancient and modern commentaries.
Another fallacy is to put one father as infallible or in a position of greater authority then the rest, or to only hearken to a particular patristic era in isolation from the living reality of the Church. Hopefully it's more important for readers to realize that the fathers are guided by the Holy Spirit and His work in the present day reader is just as active.
So it is not the work or word of a single father, but the Truth (ie. Christ Crucified and Resurrected and in our midst) speaking in symphony within all the fathers, within Scripture in Tradition, within our Liturgical life and the lived theology of the Church that must be understood and encountered when we as Christians participate in the Church's life according to the mind of the fathers, the mind of the Church, ultimately the mind and body of Christ.
Or as Fr Alexander Schmemann writes:
"The "patristic revival” of our time would miss completely its purpose if it were to result in a rigid “ patristic system” which in reality never existed. It is indeed the eternal merit of the Fathers that they showed the dynamic and not static nature of Christian theology, its power always to be "contemporary” without reduction to any "contemporaneousness,” open to all human aspirations without being determined by any of them. If the return to the Fathers were to mean a purely formal repetition of their terms and formulations, it would be as wrong and as useless as the discarding of the Fathers by "modern” theology because of their presumably "antiquated” world view."
+ Fr. Alexander Schmemann, For Life of the World (New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1963) 146.
Forgive me and pray for me if I ever misquote or misunderstand the fathers, the Church and the Holy Scripture in Tradition.
Glory to God for all things.
