Exploring the Relevance of Patristics in Today’s World
The period known as Patristics, approximately from the 1st to the 6th centuries, the golden age of faith and the Church, studied by the theological science of Patrology, among other reasons, is largely relevant today due to the Petrine ministry of the new Pope Leo XIV. As is well known, the Pope is influenced by and referenced by Saint Augustine, the most significant Holy Father of the Church of that era and, along with Saint Thomas Aquinas, the entire history of faith and the Church, of theology and thought in general. One could even mention the name of Saint Leo the Great in this connection with our current Pope.
Patristics, with Saint Augustine or Saint Leo the Great, which forms the Tradition of Catholic Christianity and has been highlighted (among others) by J. Ratzinger and Benedict XVI, is essential in this life of faith and Church, as it was the one that cared for, protected, and deepened the truth revealed by God in Jesus Christ. This is reflected in the legacy of all these holy fathers, who contributed to the Councils such as Nicaea, which we are now commemorating for its 1,700th anniversary. In this era of the holy fathers and their Councils, such as Nicaea, faith and Church, in this cooperation with the truth, had to confront errors, deviations, and other ideologizations of God’s Revelation.
In this sense, these Holy Fathers and (many of them) Doctors of the Church opposed those who denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son who, with the Father and the Spirit, reveals to us the Trinitarian God (cf. St. Augustine’s De Trinitae), as was the case with Arianism. Thus, the mystery and central truth of the Incarnation is consolidated. Jesus Christ, of the same Divine nature as the Father, reveals to us the humanized, humble, and poor God (cf. St. Augustine, Sermon 239. PL 38, 1128). He is the living and true God who fraternally embraces, with his compassionate mercy and solidarity, all human reality, the sufferings, evils, and injustices that humanity endures, in order to save and liberate us integrally.
In this regard, later continued in the Tradition of Faith and the Church, Saint Augustine, with his spirituality and ethics, highlights the substantial importance of the affections, of the heart, of love (eros-agape), which is expressed in charity, inseparable from justice. The Confessions, surely the best-known work of the saint of Hippo and, as it were, the first treatise on a true psychology inspired by faith, exemplifies very well what this whole reason and cordial intelligence would be; that knowledge and love that mutually feed off each other, along with the inseparable unity of belief and understanding, in opposition to all fideism and empirical-positivist rationalism. “You see the Trinity if you see love,” wrote Saint Augustine (Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est 19).
Along these lines, as Francis has emphasized, these biases and ideologizations of faith that these holy fathers confronted remain in force. Such as Gnosticism or Docetism, with their Manichaean or later Cathar-Albigensian variants, which, with their negative anthropology in that dualism that pits the material corporeal (evil) against the spiritual or soul (good), deny this Incarnation of God in Christ. In the Gnostic case, as can be seen, they rather reject the humanity of Jesus, a true human being and God with his dual human-divine nature.
Hence, Patristics conveyed how God in Jesus had humanized (lowered) himself to divinize us, to reveal to us our identity as the image and likeness and children of God; with this principle that what is not assumed in solidarity, as Christ the Incarnate Word does, cannot be saved. God in Jesus, with his full brotherhood and solidarity, shares our flesh, our constitutive material, physical, and bodily dimension, certainly affected or wounded by sin, but constituted by the goodness, the goodness, and the love that God the Father, the Creator, through his Word (the Logos Christ), originally imprinted on all his creation, on the entire universe.
God in Jesus is present throughout the cosmos and, in a unique way, in every human being, especially in the poor, the victims and crucified of the earth who, united with the Eucharist, are real sacraments (presences) of the incarnate Christ, humble, poor, and crucified (Mt 25:31-46). This is a constant teaching of the Holy Fathers, for example, in Saint Leo the Great (cf. Sermons VI, IX, and X. PL 54, 157, 162, 165-166). From all these theological or theological foundations, equally opposed to Pelagianism, with Saint Augustine and other Fathers, the supernatural meaning of God’s Grace is emphasized, which brings us universal and integral salvation.
This Grace, with its theological gifts and virtues of love and charity, faith and hope revealed and incarnated in Jesus; with the Gift of the Kingdom and its justice, its salvific (liberating) life and history from all evil, sin, and injustice. This Gift (Grace) of God poured out by Christ incarnate and crucified and resurrected for his Kingdom, with all that we have said so far, we emphasize that these are the pillars that underlie (enable) the life and action of faith, missionary, evangelizing, moral, and social action.
Indeed, here we have another of the treasures bequeathed by the Holy Fathers with Saint Augustine: his social teaching (patrology), which is unknown, hidden, or even distorted, key to what will later continue to be transmitted by what is known as the Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC). From this theological foundation that constitutes faith-inspired humanism, the Holy Fathers will demonstrate, protect, and defend this sacred and inviolable life and dignity of persons, of peoples, and, preferably, of the poor or victims.
In this patristic era, from its earliest writings or origins, such as the Didache (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), these essential and non-negotiable keys and values or principles emerge, and are communicated today by the DSI in its integral ecology with a global bioethics. That is, the respect and care that protects all human life, from fertilization and conception to natural death, the poor, the family, shaped by that fruitful and faithful love of man for his wife and children (cf. Saint Augustine’s De coniugiis adulterinis), and every created being.
Social patrology emphasizes that these social realities, such as the family or the economy (the market), and the political state with its authorities (laws), must be at the service of this entire moral, natural, and spiritual law that cares for and respects this integral human nature (anthropology). And when these social and historical realities, intrinsic to the human due to its inherent sociability, do not serve the life and dignity of the person, the common good, and justice for the poor, they become immoral, unjust, and anti-evangelical—anti-Kingdom. Therefore, they should not be obeyed; on the contrary, they must be resisted, opposed, and transformed so that they may conform to the Kingdom of God with its gifts of life, peace, and liberating justice.
In this regard, Saint Augustine was a precursor to this entire philosophy and theology of history or politics, where the Grace of God’s Love, with its liberating and integral salvation, confronts sin, the selfishness and injustice that harm or oppress historical reality. As the Doctor of Grace explains in his famous work dealing with these issues, The City of God, “a state that is not governed according to justice would be reduced to a great band of robbers (De Civitate Dei, IV, 4),” Augustine once said (Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 28).
In this way, these social, political, and economic realities must serve the needs, capacities, and integral human development of individuals, peoples, and the poor. Thus, the principle of the universal destiny of goods, which God created and destined for all humanity, takes priority over property, which always possesses this inescapable social and solidarity-based, yet personal, character (cf. St. Leo the Great, Sermon XX. PL 54, 189). This is well taught by the Social Sciences through Popes such as St. Paul VI, St. John Paul II, and Francis. “Christian tradition has never upheld the right to property as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood it in the broader context of the common right of all to use the goods of all creation: the right to private property as subordinate to the right to common use, to the universal destiny of goods” (Laborem exercens 14; cf. Fratelli tutti 120).
For all this, exercising their vital prophetic ministry, the Holy Fathers, with Saint Augustine, made visible and denounced the evil, sin, theft, and injustice of riches—being rich, these idolatries of possessing and owning that are placed above being, which cause all these inequalities and social injustices. As Saint Augustine, along with the other Holy Fathers, affirms, “Riches are unjust (Luke 14:9) either because you acquired them unjustly, or because they themselves are injustice, since you have and another does not, you abound and another lives in misery… The other goods that are superfluous to you are necessary to others. The superfluous goods of the rich are necessary to the poor. And whenever you possess something superfluous, you possess something that belongs to another” (Saint Augustine, PL 36, 552).
Clearly, the Second Vatican Council teaches, “This is the sentiment of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who taught that men are obliged to assist the poor, and certainly not only with superfluous goods. Whoever finds himself in extreme need has the right to take from the wealth of others what he needs for himself. Since so many are oppressed by hunger in the world today, the Holy Council urges all, individuals and authorities, recalling the saying of the Fathers, ‘Feed the hungry, for if you do not feed them, you kill them,’ to the extent of their own means, to truly share and offer their goods. First of all, helping the poor, both individuals and peoples, so that they may help and develop themselves” (Gaudium et Spes 69).
In this vein, Saint Paul VI continues to communicate to us the Word of God along with all this Tradition with the Holy Fathers: “If someone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how can the love of God dwell in him?” (1 Jn 3:17). It is well known how firmly the Church Fathers have clarified what the attitude of those who possess should be toward those in need: “What you give to the poor is not yours,” says St. Ambrose, “but what you give to the poor belongs to them. For what has been given for the use of all, you appropriate for yourself. The earth has been given for everyone, not just for the rich.” That is to say, private property does not constitute an unconditional and absolute right for anyone. There is no reason to reserve for exclusive use what transcends one’s own need when others lack what is necessary. In a word, “the right of property must never be exercised to the detriment of the common good, according to the traditional doctrine of the Church Fathers and the great theologians.” If a conflict arises “between acquired private rights and the primordial demands of the community,” it is up to the public authorities “to seek a solution with the active participation of individuals and social groups.” (Populorum Progressio 23).
To conclude this social patrology, as Francis continues, all of this “is summarized by Saint John Chrysostom, who said that ‘not sharing one’s goods with the poor is to rob them and take their lives. The goods we have are not ours, but theirs’; or, in the words of Saint Gregory the Great: ‘When we give the poor indispensable things, we do not give them our things, but we give them back what is theirs’… I once again make my own and propose to everyone some words of Saint John Paul II, the forcefulness of which has perhaps not been noticed: ‘God has given the earth to the whole human race so that it may sustain all its inhabitants, excluding no one and privileging no one’” (Fratelli tutti 119).
