Kevin Edgecomb at Biblicalia, the Bombaxo blog, just posted a remarkable passage from John Chryssavgis’s book The Way of the Fathers (a book I have not read). The post ends with this lovely line: “To become famili-arized with the Church Fathers and Mothers is to belong to the same family (cf. Matt. 12:49-50) in our own culture and age.” Read the whole thing.

Oxonian Kyle Potter, aka Captain Sacrament, has entirely too much fun with those who attempt a low-church reading of the Fathers.

Some years ago I had a desperate need for St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on John. It’s among his most frequently cited works, but it’s extremely hard to find. As far as I know, there’s been only one edition in English, published in the Oxford Library of the Fathers series in 1870s and ’80s. Few copies survive, and those that do are usually kept in the inaccessible, protected vaults of university and monastery libraries. But I finally finagled a copy through interlibrary loan — and it arrived with its pages still uncut! It’s spine was brittle and papers crumbling, but it had never been opened, never been read, in more than a century of life on a library shelf. It took an entire day, but I managed to cut the papers and photocopy both enormous volumes without destroying them. I read the commentary hungrily, and I still go back to it often. Cyril is an Alexandrian somewhat allergic to allegory, yet keen to examine the types of Christ in the Old Testament. His is a theological exegesis, and he pays special mind to the Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments, and the divinization of man.

I’m thrilled today to note that volume 2 of the Commentary is now available online at The Tertullian Project’s own library of the Early Church Fathers. TTP is a knockout of a site for the Tertullian-obsessed, but it is also home to transcriptions of rare editions of Origen, Eusebius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Pseudo-Dionysius, not to mention many lesser-known ecclesiastical writers — and the most notorious of the anti-Christian writers, like Porphyry and Julian. While there are countless online transcriptions of the famous Edinburgh edition of the Fathers — and in endless varieties of format — The Tertullian Project has turned its attention to the older series, the unusual series, and the odd translations and studies that were not part of any series.

Where I live, it’s a cold, gloomy, rainy day today — a perfect day to spend browsing The Tertullian Project. But even if you spend a sunny day on this site, it’ll be a day well spent.

A correspondent points out what should be obvious. This so-called “news” (about the Gospel of Judas) should hardly be “exploding myths,” especially for tenured professors at Princeton. As Dr. Pagels herself points out, Irenaeus duly recorded the document in the late second century. And many, many Fathers were eager to note the wild diversity of heresy. A short list of those who published exhaustive catalogs of the polymorphous perversity of the Gnostics: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Ephiphanius, and John of Damascus. All of their works have been in print, in English, in multiple translations, since the end of the nineteenth century. And they’re all online, too.

Maybe the Gospel of Judas is different, though, in that it really does take the matter to the omega point, overturning everything once and for all. The Orwellian summary might be: Judas is Peter. As freedom is slavery, and war is peace.

How far out of the mainstream these nuts were is clear from the first lines of the document, where Jesus laughs out loud at the Apostles as they said Mass. This is certainly not the Church of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Irenaeus. Nor is it the Church of the Abitina martyrs, who said, “We cannot live without the Mass.”

This is not your Fathers’ oldsmobile. The Gnostics were trying to distance themselves from historic Christianity, and they did it by mocking the one unmistakable sign of the Great Church: the Eucharist. We should wish them, once again, all the success they enjoyed the first time around.

I’m amazed — and heartened — by the popularity of pictorial paleochristianity. I posted some days ago “The Hottest Desktops of the 4th Century”, and the suggested sites got swamped. Here’s another beautiful source of “windows to the other world” — and to the world of the Fathers. Some of these go way back.

I was pleased to receive several emails in response to the post on John Henry Newman. I’d mentioned that Newman’s enduring appeal for people like me is his ability to tell a story. He explains the role Athanasius played in the development of Christian doctrine, and he does it not by weaving a chain of quotations, but by writing an international thriller on the Alexandrian’s action-packed life. And he does the same for lots of others: Ambrose, Basil, Gregory, Augustine…

So one Newman fan asked me: Who’s doing that kind of writing today? Who’s teaching the doctrine of the Fathers in an intellectually serious way, by telling stories drawn from the real histories of Christianity’s earliest saints and scholars?

A short answer: David Scott is. His most recent book, The Catholic Passion: Rediscovering the Power and Beauty of the Faith, provides a beautiful retrieval of the Fathers’ understanding of Catholic faith. Scott takes the words of the Fathers and applies them to our lives. Some people teach patristics by re-packaging the theology of antiquity; Scott, like Newman before him, does it by telling riveting tales. And The Catholic Passion is NOT just a roundup of the usual suspects. Yes, we meet celebrities like Augustine, Ignatius, Justin, and Origen, but we also meet Origen’s father Leonides. We meet Didymus the Blind, Synesius of Cyrene, and Romanos the Melodist. Chapters run the range of Catholic doctrine. And every sentence is the purest of poetry.

It’s complete, scriptural, and readable enough to serve as an adult catechism. I think it’s the perfect text for RCIA or parish adult-education groups. Get to know David by visiting him here.

Got this from a devout visitor to the site:

“I love it! if Hunter S. Thompson had a soul and was a really inspired scholar of the Fathers of the Church, this is what he would write.”

I can’t help but imagine the old guy in the ruins of an Egyptian monastery, dipping hallucinogenic locusts in wild honey and reading Origen aloud to the snakes. Fear and Trembling on the Pilgrim Trail.

If the Patristics Movement were a body, John Henry Newman would be the adrenal gland — the source of its energy and drive. Or maybe he would be the pituitary, since he personally accounts for much of its early growth.

With the works of Newman (who was then an Anglican), patrology made the transition from an academic hobbyhorse to a popular fascination. He knew how to tell a story, and his stories delivered his doctrinal and ascetical points rather painlessly. I’m thinking here particularly of his early books The Church of the Fathers and The Arians of the Fourth Century — and, of course, his novel Callista: A Tale of the Third Century.

Newman’s Fathers are real men, sometimes difficult, enduring heartbreak, quarreling with one another. He doesn’t sugar-coat Jerome or Cyril, for example; they don’t hold the glaze very well anyway. His telling of the up-and-down friendship of Basil and Gregory (in The Church of the Fathers) really tugs at the heartstrings, even as it expands the Christian mind.

All this is a prelude to my expression of gratitude to Father Drew Morgan (like Newman, an Oratorian) for the work of his National Institute for Newman Studies. Based in Pittsburgh, the Institute hosts an enormous Newman research library, publishes a fine journal, and promotes the work of scholars. (I encourage you to donate to the cause. Your money will be put to good use.) The Institute also hosts one of the cleanest, best-kept, and most easily searchable databases on the Web — The Newman Reader — which holds all the collected works of Newman, plus the major biographies. Thus, with just a few keystrokes, you can round up everything Newman ever had to say about Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Anthony … And he did have plenty to say.

Visit the Institute’s websites today. Visit the library if you’re ever in Pittsburgh. And pray for their good work. When God blesses Father Drew Morgan, He blesses all of us who love the Fathers.

I’ll end with a quote from St. Francis de Sales, which I pulled from a letter of Newman indexed at The Newman Reader: “The ancient Fathers … spoke from the heart to the heart, like good fathers to their children.”

I hear that my book The Mass of the Early Christians will be featured on Catholic Answers Book Club this Friday, April 7, at 7 p.m. (Eastern Time). The host is the ever-entertaining Bob Lockwood — the very man, in fact, who urged me to write my first book on the Fathers. For information on how to listen in, see “Catholic Answers LIVE.”

I just had the privilege of traveling overseas in the company of my renowned, esteemed, and brilliant colleague, Rob Corzine. We shared a hotel room, a penance Rob bore with a smile as his Lenten cross. When my snoring didn’t keep him awake, my uncontrollable laughter did. I had made the delightful mistake of taking Evelyn Waugh’s novel Helena with me, to keep me sane through the inevitable insomnia.

The book is out in a new edition, as part of Loyola Press’s lovely Loyola Classics series (edited by Amy Welborn), which was recently praised by no less a critic than Terry Teachout in no less a paper than the Wall Street Journal. People often ask me the best way to enter imaginatively into the world of the Fathers. I can’t think of a more enjoyable way than reading this novel. It’s well researched, artfully evocative, and full of fun nudges and winks at us latter-day observers.

Inside you’ll meet Constantine, the emperor and Eastern saint. You’ll meet his mum, St. Helena, the proto-archeologist who unearthed the true cross. You’ll meet Pope St. Sylvester, who is an endearing chap. And they’ll all make you laugh — either with them or at them.

My hat’s off to Waugh for bringing these characters so vividly alive. Few authors could make a fourth-century saint so approachable, humorous, and even sexy. He manages to pull this last one off in the most chaste way. Take my word. This book’s a miracle of hilarity and warmth.

The new edition has a nice introduction by George Weigel and good biographical material on Waugh, who has split my sides more times than it’s healthy to remember.

I’ve listed some other good patristic fiction here (scroll way down the page). All of it’s good, in different ways and for different purposes. Waugh’s Helena, though, is in a class by herself.

Rob Corzine, alas, couldn’t sleep through my jet-lagged laughter. But he got the last laugh. He started the book as soon as I finished it.

The last of the Western Fathers, St. Isidore of Seville, has often been proposed as patron saint of the Internet. On today, Isidore’s memorial, Jeff Ziegler of the Ziegler A List points us to these online resources:

— The Catholic Encyclopedia.
— St. Isidore’s Etymologies (or Origins), Latin text.

People occasionally ask if there are any good books on the Fathers for kids. I usually respond with a blank stare. If you know of any, please tell me, so I’ll look somewhat sentient next time.

The only book I’ve been able to recommend is St. Jude: A Friend in Hard Times, by my son and webmaster, Michael Aquilina III. It’s not exactly about a Church Father; it’s about an apostle. But he put to use some good patristic research — citing Eusebius as well as the obscure Labubna of Edessa. It’s sumptuously illustrated, as beautiful as an illuminated manuscript. And it has a foreword from the illustrious Scott Hahn. Can you tell I’m proud of the kid?