New Advent defintions of Church Fathers defintion (and my own explanation)


I've been a big fan of the Catholic web site New Advent.org and tend to use it for lots of different kinds of Church reasearch, because it has such an nice handy compilation of Church fathers writings and a great search engine full of articles on various church history and biblical topics.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/


In the area of the Church Fathers it is really important to define how we look at them. Because while some Church Fathers are considered great shining saints, others are considered more like king Solomon (very bright people, who made great contributions, but basically "back slid" later in life).


or as New Advent more precisely describes three requirements for "Church Fathers"

1) orthodox doctrine and learning;
2) holiness of life;
3) (at the present day) a certain antiquity.


But it has been recognized that there have been certain people that have made great great contributions to Christianity, and didn't exactly fit this strict criteria perfectly at least. So the Church has generally made a distinction between "saints". People who have fit the criteria. And others who have made contributions but basically left the faith, by joining a heretical sect, such as Montanism, Manicheanism, the Donatists. etc.


And when reading the Church Fathers it is really easy to tell which person is regaded as saintly figure, vs. those who are just regarded as being very learned, insightful, and so on.

Typically the saintly ones are given a title. i.e - St. Gregory the Illuminator, Clement of Alexandria, ...

While the ones that are just considered learned people who made a contribution to Church doctrine and so on are just called by their name with no title. i.e. - Origen, Irenaus, Tertullian, Tatian...


Ok we finally will talk about Clement of Alexandria he is one of these saints that is a "Category buster", we consider him a saintly father, but Catholics have removed him from that category (way back in the 900s I believe), and I don't know how he stands with the EO.


http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml