Faith of Our Fathers

Faith of our fathers, holy faith,

We will be true to Thee till death.

                    — Frederick W. Faber, 1826

   While being interviewed several years ago on the Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club, I was asked the question, "Whom should we look to today for responsible manly models?"

   I found myself taken by surprise and was unable to respond quickly to the question. In split seconds, my mind raced hopelessly through some seemingly worthy men, knowing full well that none of us can count on any other to remain a faithful model to the end of life. I had just recently, with some other Christian brothers, counted nearly one hundred well-known evangelical and charismatic leaders who had committed adultery or abandoned their wives and children for other women. And many of them never missed a beat on the ministry circuit. The truth is, the only adequate models to look to are those saints who have finished the race, rather than those presently in the running.

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   Some time ago, I entered a large church where photographs of over fifty missionaries were displayed in the narthex. However, I noticed that inside the huge sanctuary the walls were barren of any kind of Christian image. There was not even a rendering of Christ on the Cross. In the corners up front were an American flag and a Christian flag.

   I asked the pastor why he displayed all the photos of contemporary believers in the narthex (knowing full well he was vehemently opposed to the use of icons of Christian saints from centuries ago). He responded, "These are special servants of God, and our people need to be reminded of them so they can pray for them and support them."

   I responded by asking whether these people were being set up as spiritual models. "And, if so," I said, "what happens when one of these missionaries gets divorced or commits adultery? It is going to happen you know."

   "We'll just take his picture down," replied the pastor.

   The historic Church instructed her believers to make heroes only of those who had "finished the race" — especially those having the "Amen" of the Church for their sanctity of life. These holy martyrs (those who have died because they served Christ) and confessors (those who have suffered for the sake of the Gospel) stand out as lights in the world and are examples for us to know and follow. They are the true heroes of the Faith.

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Our Turn

   Now it is these same witnesses that are spoken of in the Holy Scriptures:

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls (Hebrews 12:1-3).

   Notice how these witnesses play such an important part in our running of the race: they are present, surrounding us, supporting us. And among the witnesses referred to here, no contemporary believers are included. Every one of those who were singled out as witnesses in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews had completed his or her earthly journey in faithful holiness and had been enrolled in heaven. Similarly, in the ancient Church, no living person was ever canonized as a saint. From the time of the early Christians, godly heroes were designated only from the ranks of those who had finished their pilgrimage on earth successfully.

   Today it seems we put more emphasis on the way

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we start the race than on how we finish. We speak of being "born again" as a moment or event in time when everything is finished, rather than when everything begins. In its proper spiritual perspective, our "born-again" experience merely puts us in the "starting blocks." From there we begin our race by taking up our cross and following Christ. We do as the Scriptures say, and "work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). This is called the "path to salvation." And this path embraces struggle.

   This struggle is not positional, not mental, not symbolic. It is as real as life itself! You and I are set apart to God for the purpose of running with endurance the race set before us and crossing the line at the end! No one will be hustled into God's eternal Kingdom or made to become a saint against his will. The marathon is ours to run.

   Is this attainable? Of course it is. Do not forget, as a baptized Christian, one comes by faith into living union with the One who is the Author and Perfector (Finisher) of the race. Our Lord Jesus Christ not only conceived and designed the course we run in His Church, but in His glorified humanity He completed it and gives us His strength to do the same.

   When He prayed, "I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do" (John 17:4), He stood before His father as victor. His work was completed here on earth, and beyond the Cross, the tomb, the Resurrection, and the Ascension was Coronation Day at the throne of God.

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   It is in His victory that we enter the competition ourselves. The One from whom we draw our life is already in the winners' circle! And St. Paul, the "first of all sinners," was able to humbly proclaim before he received the "crown of righteousness" in his martyrdom in Rome:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing (2 Timothy 4:7-8).

   I am troubled by the unbalanced emphasis today on getting people to make a one-time decision for Christ. I was once a staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ, where we "hit the beaches" in the summer and persuaded people to receive Jesus Christ into their hearts by saying a prayer, after which we promised them salvation. I know we inadvertently implied to thousands of young people that simply saying "yes" once would, in and of itself, see them through.

   In an era when holiness has become a forgotten theme and "churches" are reduced to entertainment — "feel-good" arenas for uncommitted spectators — the Christian life is too often described as a prosperous, problem-free, celestial cake-walk. But St. Paul, who knew the raging battle of Kingdom against kingdom, called his pilgrimage with Christ a "good fight."

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   This idea of struggle was expressed by Jesus Himself when He said, "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12). The ancient patristic interpretation of these words was that courageous people, like the saints and martyrs of old, take hold of the Kingdom aggressively. Whoever is a hearer and lover of God takes the Kingdom "by force," attempting in all earnestness and with great desire and effort to enter the reality of the Kingdom. For this martyrs shed their blood. For this they make a "spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men" (1 Corinthians 4:9). The Kingdom of heaven belongs not to the sleeping or lazy. Rather, the violent "take it by force."

   Only the historic Church calls us to this kind of discipline through her worship, fasts, prayers, and battle with the evil passions. This struggle results in being crowned with virtue. Not only does the Church call us to that kind of vigorous pursuit of holiness, but she also gives us examples to follow.

   The historic Church has, from the beginning, pointed to the stories of the lives of her spiritual athletes for the inspiration and communion of the soul. These Fathers of the Church are real men who were not only made in the "image" of God, but who struggled to conform their lives to the "likeness" of God. Every member of Christ's Body is called to this way of life on the earth.

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   We are not called to follow present-day televangelists, athletes, entertainers, and politicians who keep failing us. We do need to rediscover and restore the Fathers of the Church to our memory.

Who Are Our Fathers?

   But this attempt raises a question: "Who are these Fathers?" Most of us do not know. Those of us coming from the North American Protestant experience would be hard-pressed to name any of the men who carried the Church through two hundred more years of intense persecution after the Apostle John died on the Island of Patmos.

   The men whom the Church affectionately refers to as the Church Fathers were those who faithfully carried on the holy tradition of the Church after the Apostles had passed from this life. The Apostle Paul wrote, "Brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15). The Fathers were the men who were faithful in fulfilling St. Paul's directive.

   Elsewhere, the Apostle writes, "The things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). These spiritual children of the Apostles, who in time were referred to as the "Fathers of the Church," were uniquely trusted with the guardianship of the most important aspects of the Christian Faith — Church government, worship, and doctrine. Even the very formation, collection, and transmission

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of the Books of the New Testament were entrusted to the spiritual integrity of these men. (That's right, the New Testament came out of the Church, not the other way around!)

   The Church Fathers include great theologians and pastors of souls such as Ignatius of Lyons, Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus, as well as ascetics and spiritual fathers such as Anthony of Egypt, Macarius of Egypt, John of the Ladder, Isaac of Syria, Ephraim of Syria, and many others.

   My point is this: In retrospect, when the interviewer on the 700 Club asked me where to look for manly models, I should have said, "For us to do well in the Christian life, we need flesh and blood examples — men who, through the purity and perseverance of their lives, show us how we should live. Though they are unknown to most Christian men in America, the Church Fathers are examples par excellence of Christian manhood. These men who have finished the race and gone on before us to their rest are much more reliable models than anyone who is still in the running."

   The curse of our land stems not only from the escalating alienation of biological fathers from their children. It is also the result of our disconnection and separation from our spiritual fathers, those who make up our Christian ancestry. Filled with the arrogance of

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modernism, we have limited our scope of godly men to the Christians of the first century, and then relied unfairly on our contemporary flash-in-the-pan leaders who have scarcely begun to fight the good fight.

   Even though our Lord clearly stated that he would be with His Church until the end of the age, we have chosen to disregard the majority of all those faithful Christians who have lived and died for Christ throughout the history of His Church. This kind of shortsightedness has not only cut us off from our spiritual roots, it has left us in a major crisis of spiritual ignorance. We have come to believe, intentionally or inadvertently, that the Apostles did such a poor job of discipleship that the Church fell apart or was "taken over" by pagan influence immediately following the death of the Apostle John. Today, we are reaping the fruit of disconnecting ourselves from our heritage.

   This situation reminds me of the prophecy that Hosea gave when the kingdom of Israel was in the darkest hour of her entire history. The land was polluted by greed, oppression, robbery, falsehood, adultery, and murder. The fathers of the nation had failed in their responsibility. Sound familiar? Hosea summed up the tragic situation this way: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children" (Hosea 4:6, italics added).

   American society has divorced itself from heaven because American fathers have ceased to pattern their

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behavior after the Fatherhood of God and the Fathers of the Church. Without them, we cannot fully recover and experience how true Christian men should look and act. If we men were to begin to imitate the saints of God who have gone on before us, there would be a new reservoir of hope, both for our families and for our nation.

   To our encouragement, the same Prophet Hosea who warned of God forgetting the children of those who reject the knowledge of Him later declared, "Come, and let us return to the LORD; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD" (Hosea 6:1-3).

   If we are going to win the battle for the family in America, we must become people who are determined to know God the Father. We must commit ourselves to call our nation boldly back to Him and the model of fatherhood He provides for us in the Fathers of the Faith. It is time for us as Christian men not just to sing about the "faith of our fathers," but to get to know them and model our lives after them.

   Although the Church Fathers have left this world to take their place in that "great cloud of witnesses" revealed in the Scriptures, they still speak to us.

The Mind of the Church Fathers

   How important are the writings of the Fathers? One man who studied their writings said it well:

When on a clear autumn night I gaze at the clear sky, sown with numberless stars, so diverse in size yet shedding a single light, then I say to myself: "such are the writings of the Fathers!" When on a summer day I gaze at the vast sea, covered with a multitude of diverse vessels with their unfurled sails racing under a single wind to a single goal, to a single harbor, I say to myself: "such are the writings of the Fathers!" When I hear a harmonious, many-voiced choir, in which diverse voices in elegant harmony sing a single Divine song, then I say to myself: "such are the writings of the Fathers!"¹

   If these men are so important, why have we lost touch with them? We must go back to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation to find the answer. In an attempt to cleanse the Roman Church of her errors, the leaders of the Reformation — Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli — began a movement which eventually dumped the Fathers of the Church overboard. And in losing these guides of the Church, we lost the stars, the ships, the voices which securely pointed us to the True Faith. Without them, Western man has suffered the fruit of believing something more or something less than that which united the Church for her first thousand years.

   In the last two verses of the Old Testament, the Prophet Malachi cries out, saying, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of

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the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:5-6).

   This mission of leading back the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, does not refer to biological families, or to a restoration of peace between parents and children. Not at all. The great sin of Israel at the time of the Prophet Malachi was estrangement from God and the Fathers of Israel — the patriarchs, spiritual forefathers such as King David, and godly men throughout their history. This was a clarion call to a rediscovery of spiritual fatherhood.

   Elijah comes to bridge the gaping chasm between Israel and her patriarchs. The important issue that we must not miss here is that the turning of the heart of the fathers to the children does not mean merely directing the love of the fathers to the sons once more, but also restoring the heart of the fathers in the sons — giving to the sons the fathers' mind and affections.

   The sons of Israel were not ready for the coming of the Messiah for one central reason: they had rejected their fathers. Similarly, modern believers are missing the call of God back to the ancient Church and the fullness of the Faith because they have rejected their Fathers, the progenitors of the Church.

   But fortunately, all across North America the spirit of Elijah is continuing to call us "sons" back to the Fathers, and many are finding ears to hear. Having been total strangers to the Church Fathers, thousands upon thousands are beginning to make their way back home.

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Like the prodigal son, we rootless American males can return to the Father's house and join the celebration of rediscovering Church and family life, and true manhood. We can come to know those saints who have held true to the life and doctrines of the Faith, and we can learn to think, feel, and look at things as they did. We can reconnect ourselves to the two-thousand-year continuity of Christian experience which our Lord promised through the Holy Spirit, assuring us His eternal presence with His Church. And by that, we can know what a real man is as he sacramentally partakes of the mystery of the fullness of Christ.

   Men, our lives and the lives of our families are at stake. This is not the time for experimentation or delay. We men must be willing to lay aside that which is false and novel and, as G.K. Chesterton said, "give our ancestors a vote." All the men's rallies and books on manhood, as encouraging as they may be, will be but a passing fad if we do not become rooted deeply in the "faith of our Fathers." 

Chapter 11  ||  Table of Contents

1. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, as quoted by Monk Damascene Christensen, Not of This World (Forestville, CA: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1993), p. 455.