The Fathers in English

Nearly everything an English-speaking reader knows of the Fathers arrives through five translation projects: the Victorian ANF and NPNF sets, still free and everywhere; the mid-century Ancient Christian Writers and Fathers of the Church series; and the Orthodox-edited Popular Patristics Series. This file maps them, shows with concrete examples why translation is always interpretation, and ends with the practical question a reference guide owes its reader: where does one actually start reading the Fathers?

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Victorian Foundation: ANF and NPNF

The English-speaking world reads the Fathers, first of all, through two nineteenth-century monuments. The Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1867–1873, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson) was reorganized in America as the Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF, 10 vols., 1885–1887, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace followed with the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF) in two series of fourteen volumes each (1886–1900): the first series wholly Augustine and Chrysostom, the second the great Greek and Latin Fathers from Eusebius to John of Damascus (the series’ history in the publishers’ prefaces; conveniently surveyed in Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, Utrecht/Westminster: Spectrum/Newman, 1950, on translations). Their virtues are real: enormous coverage, serious (for their day) introductions, and — decisively — public domain: the whole corpus is free online, which is why this repository uses ANF/NPNF as its standard verification anchor for patristic quotations (METHODOLOGY §2.1). Their limits are equally real: Victorian idiom that renders fourth-century directness as fog; underlying texts that predate the critical editions; occasional bowdlerizing; and confessional framing — the editors were Protestant, and prefaces sometimes read the Fathers against Rome in ways no side today would write (the limitations acknowledged in every modern series preface; cf. the Popular Patristics prefaces’ stated rationale of retranslation).

The Mid-Century Series: ACW and FC

Two Roman Catholic projects re-founded English patristics on critical texts. Ancient Christian Writers (ACW; Westminster, MD/New York: Newman/Paulist, 1946–), founded by Johannes Quasten and Joseph Plumpe — the same Quasten whose Patrology anchors this guide — offers scholarly annotated translations; its volumes (Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes, trans. Ramsey, ACW 57–58, are instances used in this collection) remain standard (the series’ founding stated on its volumes; Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, on translations). The Fathers of the Church (FC; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947–) has passed one hundred forty volumes of complete works in sober modern English — the workhorse for reading a Father whole rather than in excerpts (e.g., Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith, trans. Wickes, FC 130, 2015, cited in Section 04). Alongside them stand the bilingual research instruments — the Loeb Apostolic Fathers (Ehrman, 2003), Oxford Early Christian Texts, and the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library for Byzantine texts — and the one-volume Classics of Western Spirituality series, whose patristic volumes (the Ladder, the Triads, Nyssa’s Life of Moses) serve readers of the mystical tradition (volumes cited throughout this collection; see the References).

St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press’s Popular Patristics Series (PPS) is the significant Orthodox contribution: compact volumes, fresh translations from the best texts, introductions written from within the tradition, at prices meant for parishioners rather than libraries — the series now numbers well over sixty volumes, from Behr’s On the Incarnation (PPS 44a, 2011, with its famous prefatory essay by C. S. Lewis reprinted) to Louth’s Three Treatises on the Divine Images (PPS 24, 2003) and the Theological Orations as On God and Christ (PPS 23, 2002) (the volumes as cited throughout this collection; on the series’ character, the publisher’s prefaces). The existence of PPS is itself a datum in this guide’s story: it is the neopatristic movement (see Section 09) become a bookshelf — Florovsky’s “return to the Fathers” issuing, two generations later, in the Fathers on a parish book table.

Translation as Interpretation

No translation is neutral, and patristic Greek is a minefield of load-bearing words. Three standing examples:

  • Hypostasis: rendered “person,” it imports modern connotations of consciousness and individuality; rendered “subsistence,” it is opaque. Every Trinitarian translation legislates, silently, between Cappadocian meaning and Cartesian association (the problem classically stated in Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957, ch. 3; cf. The Cappadocian Settlement).
  • Nous: “mind” in most translations, but the Fathers’ nous is the perceptive organ of the heart that knows God directly, not discursive reason (dianoia); the Philokalia translators devote a glossary entry to refusing “intellect = reasoning” precisely because English “mind” flattens the anthropology (The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware, London: Faber, 1979, glossary, s.v. “intellect”).
  • Eros: Dionysius and Maximus dare to call God eros — “yearning” — and squeamish translation as “love” erases a deliberate patristic scandal the authors themselves defended (Dionysius, Divine Names IV.11–12, with the defense of the word; trans. Luibheid, CWS, New York: Paulist, 1987).

Older translations also silently “corrected” theology: Victorian renderings soften deification language (“made god” becoming “made godly”), and the KJV-idiom of NPNF can make every Father sound like one homogeneous pulpit (on deification language and its Western embarrassment, Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, introduction). The rule for the serious reader mirrors the citation rule of the previous file: read a modern translation made from a critical text where one exists; when a claim turns on a single word, check a second translation or the original; and treat every rendering of hypostasis, nous, energeia, eros, and theosis as an interpretive decision, not a datum (see Manuscripts, Migne, and the Critical Editions).

How to Actually Start Reading

A reference guide owes its reader a door, not only a map. A tested path, assembled from the standing advice of Orthodox teachers (Ware’s counsel that Orthodoxy is learned by prayer and reading the sources, The Orthodox Church, London: Penguin, 1993, final chapter; the reading programs implicit in the PPS series itself):

  1. Begin short, narrative, and apostolic: the seven letters of Ignatius and the Martyrdom of Polycarp (an afternoon each, in Holmes’ translation) — the Church of the martyrs in her own voice (see Section 02).
  2. Then one perfect treatise: Athanasius, On the Incarnation (PPS 44a) — the classic entry, with Lewis’s preface on why old books first.
  3. Then the faith taught: Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures (selectively) or the Damascene’s Exact Exposition for the systematic-minded.
  4. Then the heart: the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Ward), read slowly; then Climacus in Lent, as the Church herself appoints.
  5. Then a Father whole, with a guide: Chrysostom’s homilies on a Gospel you are reading, or Basil’s On the Holy Spirit — ideally alongside the corresponding collection in this repository and, better, under the counsel of a priest.

Two cautions frame the path. Read the Fathers within the Church’s life — liturgy, prayer, fasting — or they become a private library of opinions; this is the phronema point of Section 01 (Florovsky, “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972). And read them in season: the ascetical maximalism of the desert was written for monks, and its transposition to lay life is exactly the kind of question for a spiritual father, not a footnote (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; cf. The Consensus Patrum Rightly Understood on patristic fundamentalism).

See Also

References

  • Roberts, Alexander, and James Donaldson, eds. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. American ed., 10 vols., ed. A. Cleveland Coxe. Buffalo/New York, 1885–1887. Schaff, Philip, and Henry Wace, eds. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Series I, 14 vols. (1886–1889); Series II, 14 vols. (1890–1900). (The Victorian sets.)
  • Quasten, Johannes. Patrology. Vol. 1. Utrecht/Westminster, MD: Spectrum/Newman Press, 1950. (Surveys of editions and translations; Quasten as ACW co-founder.)
  • Ancient Christian Writers (ACW). Westminster, MD/New York: Newman/Paulist, 1946–. (Founded by Quasten and Plumpe; e.g., Cassian, trans. Ramsey, ACW 57–58, 1997–2000.)
  • The Fathers of the Church (FC). Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947–. (E.g., Wickes, trans., The Hymns on Faith, FC 130, 2015.)
  • Popular Patristics Series (PPS). Crestwood/Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. (E.g., Behr, trans., On the Incarnation, PPS 44a, 2011; Louth, trans., Three Treatises on the Divine Images, PPS 24, 2003; Williams and Wickham, trans., On God and Christ, PPS 23, 2002.)
  • Ehrman, Bart D., ed. The Apostolic Fathers. LCL 24–25. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Holmes, Michael W. The Apostolic Fathers. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
  • Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957. (Ch. 3: the hypostasis problem.)
  • The Philokalia. Vol. 1. Trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1979. (Glossary, s.v. “intellect.”)
  • Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. Trans. Colm Luibheid. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1987. (Divine Names IV.11–12: divine eros.)
  • Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (Deification language and its translations.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (Reading the sources within the Church’s life.)
  • Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1975.
  • Florovsky, Georges. Bible, Church, Tradition. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972. (The phronema of reading.)