Church Writings

geomike

How do you interest yourself in the writings of the church fathers?

minatasgeel

[quote author=geomike link=topic=8144.msg104377#msg104377 date=1246501844]
How do you interest yourself in the writings of the church fathers?


welll.....READ THEM!!! you'll understand MANY things and you'll become curios about thinks you never you knew before and you'd want to know more and more. it's like you are a new swimmer and you'll begin to swim in a new clean and nice part of the sea. sooner or latter you'll be far away from the shore.

f753789

[quote author=minagir link=topic=8144.msg104378#msg104378 date=1246505503]
[quote author=geomike link=topic=8144.msg104377#msg104377 date=1246501844]
How do you interest yourself in the writings of the church fathers?


welll.....READ THEM!!! you'll understand MANY things and you'll become curios about thinks you never you knew before and you'd want to know more and more. it's like you are a new swimmer and you'll begin to swim in a new clean and nice part of the sea. sooner or latter you'll be far away from the shore.

I second that, you WILL get addicted, no doubt in that...

please pray for me
-sister in Christ 

geomike

what webiste do you suggest that i read from, and whose writings do i read?






God Bless You So Much, and i hope that i can also be addicted,

Your Basone (Brother) in CHRIST

minatasgeel

[quote author=geomike link=topic=8144.msg104426#msg104426 date=1246650804]
what webiste do you suggest that i read from, and whose writings do i read?






God Bless You So Much, and i hope that i can also be addicted,

Your Basone (Brother) in CHRIST


for as much as i myself use the web, try to trust books more if you are serious about this.

peterfarrington

One thing you could easily do is take the commentary by St John Chrysostom on the Gospel of St Matthew and read it along with your devotional reading of that Gospel.

You can find a selection of his writings in English here and download a pdf...

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.html

and all of the Fathers in this collection can be found here ..

http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html

You can also find material by St Cyril and St Severus and other of our Fathers here..

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers

I would recommend starting with one of St John Chrysostom's Commentaries on a Gospel.

God bless

Father Peter

user00

And of course there is the great masterpiece of St. Athanasius, "On the Incarnation". This is a book I can recommend with confidence, being one of the few writings of the fathers that I have actually read in its entirety. It's very deep and St. Athanasius uses logic to make a case of why Christ had to do what He did for us to be saved. When I read it, I wondered why every human on the earth isn't Christian.

rpm

     
      Congratulations on your desire to read the Church Writings. Once you are hooked onto it, it can be a fantastic journey of discovery. However, it can be hard for some of us to grasp the contexts and subtleties of the Fathers’ writings as they were written at an age long past. For many of us who’ve grown up watching Western movies and soaps, it can be hard to visualize daily life of middle-eastern society.

      Back then, matters relating to family, occupation and worship were often intertwined. A simple matter like sharing a meal was a leisurely activity that included prayers and deliberations in informal settings. Likewise, occasions like wedding feasts, mourning for departed souls, various ceremonies were community-oriented events, participated in by the extended family members.

          As a supplement to reading, watching movies like The Ten Commandments, Jesus of Nazareth, Ben-Hur and others of that genre, set in the old times could be of help in visualizing lifestyle, context and body language of the people portrayed. It also helps if one has a taste for history. Best wishes.

God bless you,
R

mabsoota

a question for the scholars among us,
didn't tertullian become a heretic at some stage? if so, should we read any of his earlier writings? is there a danger of us following his train of thought to the point of heresy if we do?
i am no expert in this, but it seems to me best to read the writings of the fathers who we know defended the true faith to the grave. however, i am really interested in the opinion of father peter and others on this.
also are there any other church fathers we should read with caution?
i personally have read a lot of amazing stuff by john chrysostom, but i have hesitated to read the other church fathers, because i don't know that much about them (except athanasius, who was obviously very sound).
thanks for putting up with my ignorance  :)

aiernovi

Its always best to read more than one church father especially when you run into something that you feel does not coincide with the teachings of the Church. Someone like Origen had many very valuable writings. However, he had many writings that are incorrect. We can take the good and learn from it. Our reference is the teaching of the Church and the consensus of the fathers.

mabsoota

thanks for your answer, aiernovi, but as a non-priest  ;) i am reading the church fathers in order to get to know what are the 'teachings of the church'!
i have heard many good sermons in many good churches (orthodox, protestant and catholic) over many years, however, i want to study more about the answers given by the early fathers of our church, so that i know what is the orthodox answer to questions put by friends and colleagues.
so far, it something seems right and proper i label it 'orthodox' (my protestant friends have learnt that this a compliment!) but i want to learn more, so i can be more discerning.
so i would really appreciate some guidance about which writings are recommended, at least to start with. i stopped reading quotes from origen a while back as i heard somewhere else that some of his writings were not accepted by the church and i really don't want to confuse myself!

gr

Hi Mabsoota,

Perhaps this intro to the Fathers from Heg. Fr. Athanasius Iskander might help answer your question (full article available through here: http://stmaryscopticorthodox.ca/publications/articles/fathers/fathers.html )

Reading the Fathers is essential but can be very confusing. Some
claim that reading the Bible is enough. Sola Scriptura is the creed of
most Protestants, and yet, they read Luther and Calvin and a host of
others. The problem with Sola Scriptura is in the interpretation of the
scriptures. All of the heretics were very well versed in the scriptures and
they used them very effectively to spread their heresies. The problem
was that they misinterpreted the scriptures. The Fathers of the Church
took on those heretics and fought them by showing the proper
interpretation of the scriptures, and herein lies the importance of the
writings of the Fathers.
But as we said, reading the fathers can be confusing, since
sometimes they contradict each others and sometimes they even
contradict themselves. So, where do we go from here? The first thing
is that we have to realize that the fathers are not infallible, and that
some are more fallible than others. So, it is in the consensus of their
views that we can find the truth.
How do we know which Fathers are more to be trusted than the
rest? In our own Coptic Orthodox Church, we can find this out from
our Liturgical Tradition. In the Absolution said after the Prayer of
Thanksgiving, the priest says:

May Thy servants, ministers of this ..., be absolved from the
mouth of the All-Holy Trinity)the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit; and from the mouth of the One, Only, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church; and from the mouths of the
twelve Apostles; and from the mouth of the Beholder of God,
Saint Mark the Evangelist, the Apostle and martyr; the
patriarch Saint Severus, our teacher Dioscorus, Saint
Athanasius the Apostolic, Saint Peter the martyr among the
priests and the high priest, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint
Cyril, Saint Basil, and Saint Gregory; and from the mouths of
the three hundred and eighteen assembled at Nicea, the one
hundred and fifty at Constantinople, and the two hundred at
Ephesus 
The fathers from whose mouth we ask the absolution are those whom
we should put in a place of pre-eminence among the rest. These are:
1. Saint Severus
2. Saint Dioscorus
3. Saint Athanasius the Apostolic
4. Saint Peter the martyr among the priests
5. Saint John Chrysostom
6. Saint Cyril the Pillar of the Faith
7. Saint Basil
8. Saint Gregory the Theologian
9. The Fathers of the three ecumenical councils acknowledged by our
Church.
This is what I call “The Safe Fathers List”
The other fathers who are not on the “List” have to be measured
by the writings of these pre-eminent Fathers. If there is a disagreement
with these pre-eminent fathers, the writings of the latter should take
precedence.
There is also another measure by which we can evaluate the
writings of any of the Fathers; the agreement between their writings and
the Liturgy. And by the Liturgy I mean the Liturgy of the Baptism, that
of matrimony in addition of course to the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
The purpose of this series is to present the most important of the
writings of those fathers, with a view of reading them critically;
accepting those writings that are deemed orthodox as determined by
the criteria we st above, and rejecting the others as either non orthodox
or controversial.

mabsoota

dear gr,
thanks so much for your answer, of course we say this every week in the liturgy, and i was thinking this week about why these particular fathers were chosen for this passage (as opposed to the longer list in the commemoration of the saints), but i didn't make the link between this and the answer to my question!  ::)
thanks for showing me this, may God bless you    :D

Ioannes

i suggest St. Athanasius, St. John Chrysosotm, St. Basil, St. Gregory. i got a program called "The Early Church Fathers" and it is loaded with almost every single early church fathers writings. if you would like to i could get it to you somehow.

mabsoota

hey thanks, bro,
i will pm you my email.
:)