Quotes about Church Fathers

For all its newness, we can understand the Reformation as a Renaissance phenomenon. It is antiquarian in the sense that it returns ad fontes, to the Scriptures and the older church fathers, particularly Augustine, bypassing much, but not all, of medieval scholasticism. It is humanistic in that it is concerned in a fresh way with the individual's relation to God.

I'm now reading Tertullian, Cyprian, and others of the church fathers with great interest. In some ways they are more relevant to our time than the Reformers, and at the same time they provide a basis for talks between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

One of the old Church fathers said that we cannot better understand the Trinity than as a revelation of divine love—the Father, the loving One, the Fountain of love; the Son, the beloved one, the Reservoir of love, in whom the love was poured out; and the Spirit, the living love that united both and then overflowed into this world. The Spirit of Pentecost, the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son, is love.