Patristics and Catholic Social Thought: Hermeneutical Models for a Dialogue

List of Tables

1 I N T R O D U C T I O N Ever tried to place one ball on top of another? How about three balls, one on top of the other? Nearly impossible. This study attempts just such a feat in what some have deemed, well, if not altogether impossible , perhaps rather unnecessary or even inappropriate. Each of the three balls for this study represents a world of inquiry that seems to have nothing in common with the other two. One ball is the field of patristic studies. A second ball is the field of Christian social ethics. A third ball is the field of hermeneutics. Perhaps one may say that the first and third balls have something in common, for they share a concern with how to approach ancient texts. Likewise, perhaps the second and third balls have something in common. Each shares a concern with how to get out of those texts ideas with an impetus for action. Yet, can these three balls be stacked one on top of the other? Indeed, I think they can be. What is more, I am not the first to try. The Catholic Church’s social teaching documents have tried. These documents have tried to balance themselves on top of earlier Christian teaching on social ethics, including the writings of the Church Fathers. Yet, I argue, the Catholic Church has largely failed in its endeavor to appropriate these ancient sources for the benefit of 2 Patristics and Catholic Social Thought audiences today. This is because the drafters of the social teaching documents never figured out how to position the third ball properly between themselves and the world of the Fathers. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY This attempt to bring into dialogue with one another three worlds of scholarly inquiry began a few years ago with the recognition that the documents comprising Catholic social teaching (hereafter CST) had failed adequately to appropriate the voices of the Church Fathers on topics of socioethical concern.1 For that matter, it may be argued they also failed to adequately appropriate the views of Scholastic writers, including Thomas Aquinas whom they quote with great interest and with relatively greater frequency compared to the Church Fathers. A summary of my research on this matter of CST’s use of the Fathers comprises the first chapter of this study. However, the purpose there shall not be to highlight failure for its own sake; rather, I suggest that sins of omission, rather than commission, are responsible. Indeed, this study investigates several ways for Christian social thought in our day fruitfully to engage the social thought of Christians in late antiquity. A complementary publication to this earlier study is a volume of essays from an expert seminar held in 2007 in Leuven on the theme of reading patristic texts for the benefit of Christian social thought.2 The essays raise a variety of, for lack of a better phrase, “red flags” in reading patristic texts. Chief among these flags is the cultural dissonance between the world of late antiquity and the world of today. One cannot avoid the fact that patristic texts too often frame their arguments with an acceptance of the status quo of Greco-Roman social , economic, and political life. The changes patristic texts advocate are at the margins (e.g., encouraging the wealthy to cultivate a mindset of love for the poor). No patristic text proposes an alternative political scheme or a progressive tax scheme or the creation of a state welfare system. By the fourth century, few, if any, are the voices call- Introduction 3 ing for a retreat from military endeavors despite the great strain it placed on the imperial treasury. By contrast, we live in a world in which individuals are not only free, but encouraged, to protest the actions of their governments and to cry out for justice. The patristic voices will be quite foreign in this regard. The other red flags are similarly daunting. While scholars of Christianity in late antiquity have some degree of confidence about the authorship and date for many texts, it would be safe to say the majority of patristic texts cannot be safely dated, and many anonymous and pseudepigraphal texts are extant. Even for those texts whose authorship and date are known, it is not always entirely clear where or for whom they were written. This complicates enormously the task of applying hermeneutical models that...