Who are the Doctors of the Church?

It is truly sorrowful to reflect on the many and serious mistakes, or rather positive errors, of the great doctors, or early fathers as they are usually called. We know of nothing more grave and solemn than the fact, that they greatly misled the people then, and that by their writings they have been misleading the professing church ever since. Who can estimate the evil consequences of such teaching for the last fourteen hundred years at least? The misinterpretation or the misapplication of the word of God is evidently the rule with these leaders, to teach sound doctrine, the exception. And still they are the boast and the alleged authority of a large portion of Christendom even until now.

Plato teaches the pre-existence of the soul (Phaedo, 923) and transmigration. Only true saints, who had kept alone from every snare of corporate existence, went, it is suggested, to God: so did Pythagoras. Philo, the Jew, held the pre-existence of the soul, as Plato, and that the air is full of demons up to the moon; and the lower, or inferior class, were disposed to be earthly, and came into bodies. This came from Indian or Egyptian heathenism. Why do I speak of these things? Because the great early doctors of the church, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, were educated in Platonism. Origen, too, embraced the whole system — transmigration, and the renewal of the whole series of the soul's history in another earth. Jerome and Ruffinus (Latins), and even, in part, Ambrose followed Origen in a great deal, as did Gregory of Nyssa, and many others in the East.

I add a few passages as to the exclusive authority of scripture. Athanasius against the heathen says, "For the holy and inspired scriptures are sufficient for the promulgation of all truth." (Oratio contra Gentes, Ben. 1.) So Ambrose, "How can we adopt these things which we do not find in the holy scriptures?" So Gregory of Nyssa, quoted by Euthymius, "As that is not supported by scripture, we reject it as false." So Jerome, "As those things which are written we do not deny, so those which are not written we refuse." (Contra Helvid. 19, 2, 226, Veron. ed.) So Augustine, "In those things which are specially laid down in scripture, all those things are found which contain faith and the morals of life." (De Doctr. Chris. 2, 9.) And again, "I owe my consent without any refusal to the canonical scriptures alone." (De Nat. et Grat.) And similar quotations might be multiplied. So even as to councils, "Neither ought I to object the Council of Nice to you, nor you that of Ariminum (an Arian council of some eight hundred bishops) to me; by the authority of scripture let us weigh matter with matter, cause with cause, reason with reason." (Contra Maxim. 3, 14.) So in contrast with the doctors of the church (that is, the Fathers), "For we should not consent to Catholic bishops if they by chance are deceived, and have opinions contrary to the canonical scriptures of God." (De Unit. Eccl. 11, Ben. 9, 355.) And so in his Epistles and other writings he says, over and over again, he has liberty to differ from them, and is bound only by the scriptures. Now either I am to receive these passages as right, and then, if the Fathers are consistent, consider this to be their doctrine; or if you can quote passages from them contradictory of these, then you make their authority to be simply and totally void.

I thought a plain history of the facts would be the best means of dispelling the mists and halo which surround the word "Fathers." The earliest, Tertullian, "a most ancient writer, and a man of great erudition," according to the author, speaks of it as a part of baptism done in imitation of Judaism. Gradually this part was reserved to the bishops, for order's sake, but declared by Jerome not to be essential, but a matter of order, and got established gradually, like other superstitious corruptions of early practices, as it is now used. St. Jerome, "that most learned Father and doctor of the church," is unfortunate, for he very satisfactorily refutes on the point what the pope had laid down. Indeed, as I have said, you may prove anything but the truth by the Fathers. They said what suited them in their controversies.

The reader will remember that I am not speaking of souls and their personal faith, but of doctors. None are more untrustworthy on every fundamental subject than the mass of primitive Fathers.

I have not cited the Fathers, nor gone into their doctrines. While I do not doubt that the truly pious among them were guarded in the faith; yet, as doctors, nothing can be more uncertain; as moralists, scarce anything more objectionable. God has preserved truth in and for His church, blessed be His name! but the Fathers are the expression, not of orthodox truth, but of a mass of mental efforts on divine subjects, of heavings to and fro on subjects which escaped their grasp; of the efforts, too, of minds, for the most part, seriously corrupted by Platonic philosophy, and shrinking from the attacks of Pagans on the point of the unity of the Godhead, which they feared to compromise by the doctrine of the eternal Sonship and divinity of Christ. Save Jerome and Origen, they did riot understand Hebrew, and could only use the Septuagint version; valuable, no doubt, as testimony, but most imperfect as representing the meaning of scripture, and sometimes any meaning at all.

First of all, I admit that there is not in the Church a charge of teacher. In the word, the teacher is presented as a gift. It is only those who will have doctors of theology like Mr. Wolff, who think that doctorship is a charge. Mr. Wolff, who denies (p. 45) that doctorship is a charge, says (p. 49), that a professor of theology ought to consider himself as a functionary in the Church.

All that Mr. Wolff says on the subject presents such confusion, that it is impossible to get clear of it; for he makes the teacher to be a sort of quality which pervades every charge; but in the passages already quoted, the word of God presents to us the doctorship as a gift. It is not only a doma, but a charisma; and, according to Mr. Wolff, gifts have absolutely ceased in the Church.

41 But I return to the history of the doctrine. The Fathers may be divided into three classes, Apostolic, Grecian, and Western. We may also distinguish the Alexandrian, though they write in Greek; but they hardly enter into the sphere of our enquiry, though one considered such comes under the class Apostolic, Barnabas, who, however, affords us no light on the subject of enquiry. He, with Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Hermas, constitute, what are commonly called, the Apostolic Fathers; but, since the publication of the canon of Muratori, Origen's supposition that the latter was the Hermas mentioned by Paul is maintained by none; I shall speak of him, therefore, after Justin. Justin and Irenaeus will give us those next succeeding the post-apostolic age. Tertullian, Cyprian, and, later, Jerome and St. Augustine, may furnish us the doctrine of the Latins; and Chrysostom, instar omnium, the views of the later Eastern churches; Origen and Clement of Alexandria, philosophical Christianity; Leo and Gregory the Great, Roman views of the matter.

N*. Well, M., we will take your own subject up next. It is fair you should have your turn; but for the present I think we have had enough. The Lord willing, we will take that up when we meet again; only remember, as far as we have gone, we have had all your friend, Dr. Milner, has to say for your doctrine. It is not taking a person who cannot be expected to know much of the Fathers, and seeking to confound him. I can add, that I have looked into a more famous man still of your party, and that is Bellarmine; but it is the same in substance, and I do not see that he adds anything material. He says St. Chrysostom is quite wrong in his view of 1 Corinthians 3, for on this interpretation all would be saved. I do not know how he manages about the consent of the Fathers. I suppose he was not thinking of it just then, yet this is their pet text on the subject. Bellarmine prefers Gregory, which I have given you. For my own part, what I see is this — the real source of purgatory is heathenism and Judaism, which were associated at Alexandria, where the first great doctors of the church lived. At first it took the shape of purifying all completely in eternal fire. Still this was not generally accepted. It then took the form of prayers for all, because they had not fully the sense of Christ's having so atoned for believers' sins, that they were white as snow for God. They apportioned, therefore, to all some punishment — at the least the punishment of loss, not seeing God; or at any rate were uncertain, and prayed for all, even for the Virgin Mary, with a view to their speedily seeing the face of God; but the idea of the purging process survived through, and in Augustine's time was a question as to which he doubted — Jerome speaking with such uncertainty that he is accused of denying eternal punishment. This was in the fifth century: in the end of the sixth Gregory specifies the purifying very light sins, but doubts still. With schoolmen it was like other things formed into an elaborate system; but all this last part was only in Western Christendom. Greek or Eastern Christendom has never received the doctrine.