Who Are the Church Fathers, and Why Do They Matter?

All Christians accept that God is active within creation, within and throughout human history.

We believe that God’s greatest and most significant act in history is the Incarnation—in the conception, birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the person of Jesus, the Divine entered history—and entered humanity—by becoming one of us. For Christians, then, history matters.

Ours is not a religion based on mythical events that happened in some hazy “time before time,” or on the top of Mount Olympus; ours is a religion based on recorded historical events, in which God has revealed to humanity something about himself—definitively in the person of Jesus Christ.

We further believe that Jesus founded a fellowship that he called his Church, and that the men and women who were his first followers, and whom he chose to succeed him in the mission of his Church, were real people who laid the foundation for our religion on their faith in him and his teachings.

Any religion is, by definition, conservative. In other words, it “conserves,” or preserves, a tradition by handing it on from one generation to the next. Even the apostle Paul admitted that he had received something from the other apostles who had been eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry.

Therefore, Christianity is a faith tradition that was founded by Jesus and the apostles, and the mission of the Church is to faithfully hand on what was started by them, in terms of both its teaching and ministry.

The First Stewards of Tradition

The author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote, “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us, while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:1-2).

“Cloud of witnesses” is a way of talking about the “communion of saints,” which includes all Christians who have ever lived. It means that in a way, all those who went before us in the Faith—indeed all those who participated in handing on the Faith to us—are cheering us on in this marathon that is the Christian journey. They are our ancestors in the Faith—all those who lived (and many who died) to give it to us.

Of course, most of those people didn’t write books or documents that we can read today or leave any other tangible legacy. But some did. And the earliest of these we call the Fathers of the Church.

The Fathers were not simply theologians speculating in ancient ivory towers. They were pastors, preachers, and teachers, often more concerned with instructing and guiding the people of their churches than writing for fellow scholars.

In fact, when it came to teaching the laity, they were usually more interested in how to live as a Christian than how to think as a Christian. Of course, they did write books on theology—a lot of them—and we are blessed by that gift because in those books they interpret and help us understand the meaning of God’s revelation, especially in Scripture.

The successors of the apostles are the bishops of the Church, and many of the first bishops were handpicked by the apostles themselves. But not all the Church Fathers were bishops.

Some were lay catechists and theologians. Others were priests, but not bishops. These theologians supported the work of the bishops and submitted their own work to the bishops for the Church’s official affirmation.

Therefore, the early Fathers of the Church are those who received what was handed on to them from Jesus and the apostles, and faithfully transmitted it to the Christians of their day—and through their writings, to the Christians of future generations.

Looking to learn more about the early Church? Pick up your copy of Handed Down: The Catholic Faith of the Early Christians today!