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The Future of Patristics

My original title was "Good-bye, Patristics." The idea was to invite you to join me in my own exciting journey out of the past five decades of European patristics. Although friendly mentors advised me to avoid the paradoxical or even shocking overtones of that original title, I still think that such an invitation au voyage makes sense. Let me begin by explaining how I understand these past fifty years of patristics, for any scholar who invests energy in the patristic enterprise today will benefit greatly from a better understanding of our discipline's recent past. Developments in patristics since the late thirties specifically determine our own work in process. And I believe that only a critical awareness of the developments of the past five decades will enable us correctly to identify the nature of the cultural shifts which are shaping the future for our discipline. As we contemplate the progress of patristic studies from 1940 to 1990, what we discover is essentially a European phenomenon. Far be it from me to ignore the authentic patristic achievements that have come from beyond Europe, in particular from North America; but I would nevertheless single out the European mainstream as characteristic of these five decades. During the second half of the 20th century, the post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment cultures of Europe experienced, among many other revivals, a patristic revival—one comparable only with the Jansenist revival and the Benedictine patristic revival, both in the 17th century, or with the monastic developments accompanying the so-called Carolingian renaissance of the 9th century. Characterizing this 20th-century patristic revival are two main features: the sheer comprehensiveness of the discipline, and its expanded social dimension. The first feature, comprehensiveness, allowed scholars to define patristics in a new way marked essentially by academic professionalism. The second feature, social extension, involved patristics breaking out of its former clerical and theological ghetto and extending its appeal to new categories of scholars. It entered into collaboration with other disciplines and achieved recognition in secular universities.