Who Were the Church Fathers?

By Gerald Bray

Who were the church fathers? The term “church fathers” describes the men who led the church in the first few centuries after the death of the apostles. Jesus entrusted the mission of preaching the gospel to his disciples, most of whom became missionaries (or apostles, as we call them) after he ascended into heaven. 

Not all the New Testament writers were apostles, but the others worked in close association with them and transmitted their message. By AD 100, the apostles and their associates had passed away, and a new generation had taken over the leadership of the church. 

They carried on the teaching of the apostles, guarding it and interpreting it to the growing number of people who were becoming Christians. Today these men are grouped together as church fathers: those who interpreted the Bible and formulated the main doctrines of Christianity as we know it today.  

What Did the Church Fathers Do? 

The first and most important thing that the church fathers did was collect and codify Christian teaching as it had been handed down to them by the apostles. The New Testament writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they were not conscious of the fact that they were writing canonical Scripture. Their Bible was the Old Testament, which they had inherited from the Jews and which Jesus had used as the authority for his teaching and mission. It was only later that the Gospels and Epistles that they wrote and that we now regard as Scripture were acknowledged as having the same level of authority in the church as the Hebrew Bible had. This did not happen because anybody decreed it but because the books that form our New Testament virtually imposed themselves on Christian congregations that heard God speaking in and through them. 

The church fathers also worked out what the basic teaching of the Bible was and how it should be presented to the church at large. Their legacy is known to us today mainly through the creeds. The most well-known of them is the Apostles’ Creed, so called not because it was written by the apostles but because it reflects apostolic teaching as the church fathers understood it. 

The second major creed is usually called the Nicene Creed. It is more detailed than the Apostles’ Creed and was composed by church fathers and defended by them against all challengers, making it the most widely accepted confession of faith in the Christian world today. If you want to know what orthodoxy is (as opposed to heresy), this is the place to start—and we have the church fathers to thank for it. 

Why Do the Church Fathers Matter? 

The church fathers were not directly inspired by God, as the writers of the New Testament were, and so they do not enjoy the same authority. They occasionally contradict each other (and even themselves!), they are sometimes mistaken in what they say, and there are a lot of questions that they never addressed in the way we would expect a modern theologian to do. While they may not have understood the Scriptures completely, chances are they had a better perspective than we have today because they shared much the same mentality and assumptions. 

The fathers are also responsible for the broad outline of Christian doctrine that we teach and preach today. The line between orthodoxy and heresy is drawn according to the way the church fathers defined it. 

How Should We Approach the Church Fathers Today? 

We do not share their culture, we do not speak their languages, and we often do not appreciate their priorities. But we do share their principles, we speak (and listen!) to the same God they did, and we agree with them that our preaching and teaching should be determined and directed by the Word of God. 

Ultimately this is why the church fathers matter to us and why we have to be ready to hear their voices. We may disagree with them on many things, just as we disagree among ourselves, but they are our brothers in the faith that we share, and we believe that they have gone before us to a place where we all shall spend eternity. We should therefore get acquainted with at least some of them as we wait to join them around the throne of glory in praise of the one God who is the Lord and Savior of us all. 

This article has been adapted from Gerald Bray’s book Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers, published by Baker Books. It’s a compelling and readable introduction to how these early Christians read, preached, and understood the Bible.

Gerald Bray (MLitt, DLitt, University of Paris-Sorbonne) is research professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School. He has authored or edited numerous books, including A History of Christian Theology, Augustine on the Christian Life, and The History of Christianity in Britain and Ireland.