Through the Church Fathers
by C. Michael Patton
Join Through the Church Fathers, a year-long journey into the writings of the early Church Fathers, thoughtfully curated by C. Michael Patton. Each episode features daily readings from key figures like Clement, Augustine, and Aquinas, accompanied by insightful commentary to help you engage with the foundational truths of the Christian faith. Join Our Community: Read along and engage with others on this journey through the Church Fathers. Visit our website. Support the Podcast: Help sustain this work and gain access to exclusive content by supporting C. Michael Patton on Patreon at patreon.com/cmichaelpatton. Dive Deeper into Theology: Explore high-quality courses taught by
Episodes
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Through the Church Fathers: November 6
The prophet passes from one Israel to the other without a change of name, and the eternal will does not take up a new act. Augustine says the species is not always overstepped. When Ezekiel has spoken of the house that defiled the land and was scattered, and then promises a new heart and clean...
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Through the Church Fathers: November 5
Faith itself is a gift, and a part is sometimes named when the whole is meant. Augustine says the third rule of Tichonius, the promises and the law, the spirit and the letter, is a great question rather than a key to other questions. Tichonius gave works to God and left faith to us. He had not…
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Through the Church Fathers: November 4
Seven rules are keys, not the whole lock, and two creatures stand outside the compass of time. Augustine says Tichonius the Donatist wrote a book of rules, and claimed too much for them. They assist. They do not open every obscure place, and the book is to be read with caution, because the author...
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Through the Church Fathers: November 3
The same words may bear more than one true sense, and formlessness cannot make a day. Augustine says that if two interpretations of a passage both agree with the truth, and each can be shown from another place in Scripture, the reader is not to be blamed for missing the writer’s own intention.…
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Through the Church Fathers: November 2
A word does not keep one meaning wherever it appears, and a house that clings to God is not stretched into times. Augustine says the sins of great men are written so that no one who thinks he stands may despise another. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. The first question about...
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Through the Church Fathers: November 1
Lust cannot imagine temperance, and a creature can cling to God so as not to be extended into times. Augustine says the man who exceeds with one wife does not believe that the fathers used many wives with temperance, looking only to the duty of those times. Such men measure the saints by...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 31
Charity is the rule that decides when a command is a figure, and eternity is a will that does not change. Augustine says a figurative expression is to be turned until it establishes the reign of love, and if the literal sense already does that, it is not a figure. A command that seems to enjoin a...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 30
What looks like a sin in a holy man may be a sign, and a custom is not yet a law. Augustine says the deeds ascribed to God and the saints, which seem wicked to the inexperienced, are figurative, and the kernel is charity. It is not the use of a thing that is blamed, but the lust of the user. The...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 29
A man can be free while he is still under a sign, and a creature can share eternity without being eternal. Augustine says bondage to a sign is the use of it without knowing what it signifies. The patriarchs were spiritual and free even while the signs were still imposed, because they honored what...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 28
To take a sign for the thing it signifies is a kind of slavery, and a world can be shaped only out of what is almost nothing. Augustine warns that the letter kills when a figurative word is read as if it were proper. Sabbath and sacrifice then stay on the day and the victim, and the mind never...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 27
A question can be asked so that the answer is already No, and a world can be made only if it is not made out of God. Augustine takes the ambiguities of pronunciation next. The rule of faith will not let “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” be read as if God and Christ were the...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 26
A mark in the wrong place can make the Word something other than God, and a mind full of pictures can fail to think what has no picture. Augustine opens the third book of On Christian Doctrine by sending the prepared reader to the ambiguities of Scripture. Where the words themselves are unclear,...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 25
What the heathen said truly was never theirs to keep, and what has no form cannot be pictured by a mind that wants a picture. Augustine tells the Christian to take the gold and silver of pagan learning, the true things and the useful precepts, and turn them to the preaching of the gospel, as…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 24
A man can learn the rules of argument and still miss the truth they serve, and a word can name what has no shape of its own. Augustine warns the studious not to mistake dialectic, rhetoric, or the science of number for the secret of a happy life. The rules are true, and number was discovered…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 23
A valid argument can still land on a false conclusion, and a true opinion can be joined by a bad one. Augustine draws that line in On Christian Doctrine, then turns it on definition and eloquence: the rules stay true even when poets, heretics, or a clever speaker put them to a false use. In the...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 22
Today we move from reasoning, to creation, to disciplined Christian life. In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine explains why Christians should know something of the mechanical arts and especially logic: reasoning can help us understand Scripture, but it must never become an exercise in sophistry…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 21
Olympiads and consuls are not baptism, but they can keep a reader from making Christ forty-six years old because the temple took forty-six years to build. Augustine will use profane history that way, and he will let Ambrose use it to unmask the slander that Jesus learned His words from Plato.…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 20
Letters, coins, and the names of months are not pacts with demons. They are agreements men make so they can live together. Augustine will take what is necessary for intercourse and reading, and leave the theatre’s private code and the luxury that feeds on lies. What men have found by…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 19
A true omen would still be a bad friendship. Augustine will not spare divination because Samuel’s ghost spoke truly, or because a spirit in Acts said the apostles’ names. If it happens, do not hearken. Signs like that mean what a prior pact has taught them to mean—like X to a Greek and to a...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 18
The stars keep their courses. They do not keep our lives. Augustine will let a man chart a birthday and still refuse to sell him to Mars. Jacob’s hand was on Esau’s heel. The chart could not tell them apart. The Scriptures could. The Confessions then names what time does to a soul: life is a...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 17
Truth is not pagan property. Augustine will take music, letters, even a heathen report about the Muses, and then refuse the idols, the amulets, and the fear that mice in the boots mean tomorrow’s ruin. Cato already knew the difference. The Confessions then recites a psalm. Before the first line,...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 16
Forty days, ten strings, a hundred and fifty-three fish: Augustine will not let a reader shrug at numbers as decoration. They are one of the keys that open figures—and music is another, even if the nine Muses were only three artists and three kinds of sound. The Confessions then names the three...
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Through the Church Fathers: November 16
True eloquence in teaching consists in making clear what was obscure, and a wooden key that opens the lock is better than a golden one that does not. Augustine recalls Cicero’s three aims of the orator—to teach, to delight, and to persuade—and insists that teaching is the necessity. The hearer…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 15
Unknown words stop a reader. Augustine’s remedy is not guesswork: ask a speaker of the tongue, learn the tongue, compare translators, and correct the copies before you interpret them. He prefers the Itala among Latin versions and the Septuagint among the Greek, and he will use Hebrew…
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Special message from Michael Patton concerning October 12:
The reading posted for October 12 has been corrected. Please go back and read the updated version now. Explore the Project: Through the Church Fathers – https://www.throughthechurchfathers.com Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/cmichaelpatton Credo Courses – https://www.credocourses.com Credo...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 14
A translator can turn “swift” into “sharp” and never notice he has left the writer behind. Augustine says that is not an obscure reading. It is a false one—and false texts are to be corrected, not interpreted. Greek and Hebrew, or a tighter Latin, exist so the sense can be recovered; a solecism...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 13
First read the plain places. Then let them light the dark ones. Augustine will not let a man hunt figures before he knows the books, or treat an ox as only an ox when the apostle has already said what the ox means. Hebrew and Greek are not ornaments. They are the remedy when Latin translators...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 12
Fear of God is the first step; wisdom is the last. Between them nAugustine sets a climb that ends in a single eye—one that will not put neighbor, or self, before the truth. Then he comes back down to the third step and names the books: the canon judged by the churches, forty-four of the Old, and...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 11
Today’s Readings Podcast Description Scripture left one language so that it could enter every language. Readers hunt the mind of the writers only to find the will of God. Then the dark places arrive. Augustine will not call them accidents. Pride is worn down by toil; the mind that finds too…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 10
Smoke means fire whether anyone meant it to. A word means fire only because someone meant to say so. Augustine opens Book 2 of On Christian Doctrine by turning from things to signs: natural and conventional, nod and trumpet, sacrament and speech—and then writing, born because sound dies on the…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 9
If the reading builds up love of God and neighbor, Augustine will not call the mistake a lie—but he still wants the man back on the road. Love of one’s own opinion can turn the reader against Scripture; and if faith totters, love grows cold. Faith and hope will one day give way to sight. Love…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 8
God does not use us the way we use a road. He uses us for our good, because He is good—and the holy man, like the holy angel, will not let us make camp in him. On Christian Doctrine sums the whole discussion of things: Scripture ends in love of the Good to be enjoyed, and love of the neighbor who...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 7
Who is my neighbor? Augustine will not let the word shrink. Enemy, stranger, even the holy angels who have shown us mercy—and Christ Himself under the figure of the man who stopped on the road. God does not enjoy us as if He needed our glitter. He uses us for our good, that we may enjoy Him, and...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 6
The two great commandments do not forget the self. Augustine says we already love our own life the way the beasts do; what had to be commanded is God above us and the neighbor beside us—and then the whole current of that love, even love of enemies, is to run toward the one Good no one who finds…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 5
No one hates his own flesh—not even the man who starves it. Augustine says the war is not against the body, but against a habit that has grown into it; the spirit wants a better peace, not a missing limb. Then he turns from the body to the morning sky. Dawn is present. Sunrise is not. We do not…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 4
Augustine will not let us enjoy one another as if a human life were the happy ending. In On Christian Doctrine God alone is to be enjoyed; neighbor, self, and even the body are to be loved for His sake, and the soul that lords it over its equals has already begun to hate itself. Then in The...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 3
The Word did not empty Himself into sound and vanish. Augustine says the thought stays whole while it becomes speech—and so the Divine Word became flesh without change of nature, healer and medicine in one. Pride had wounded us; humility bound the wound. On Christian Doctrine then follows that...
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Through the Church Fathers: October 2
Men already know, even when they worship the wrong things, that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought—and Augustine will not stop until that God is unchangeable Wisdom, then the Way who came in flesh. On Christian Doctrine takes us from the name “God” to the Incarnation: Wisdom…
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Through the Church Fathers: October 1
Augustine opens On Christian Doctrine by splitting the whole work of Christian teaching in two: find what Scripture means, then give that meaning away—and he will not let the Church rest in the world as if the road were home. The same mind then turns inward in The Confessions and takes the…
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Introduction to Augustine's On Christian Doctrine
A new bishop starts a handbook for teachers. An old bishop finishes it almost 30 years later. In between, Augustine of Hippo preaches, argues, rereads Scripture, and learns how much he still has to correct. On Christian Doctrine is not a systematic theology. It is Augustine asking how Christian...
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Introduction to The Theologians
Explore the Project: Through the Church Fathers – https://www.throughthechurchfathers.com Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/cmichaelpatton Credo Courses – https://www.credocourses.com Credo Ministries – https://www.credoministries.org #ThroughTheChurchFathers #ChurchFathers #Augustine...
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Through the Church Fathers: September 29
Today’s Readings Podcast Description How do we distinguish the true voice of Scripture from those who twist it, and how do we hold both firm judgment and restrained passion in the same heart? In today’s readings, Vincent of Lérins shows that heretics always appeal to the Bible, wrapping their...
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Through the Church Fathers: September 28
Today’s Readings Podcast Description What happens when even the most gifted teachers fall into error? In these chapters of the Commonitory, Vincent of Lérins holds up Tertullian as a sobering example and then lays down the marks of a true Catholic: one who loves the Church more than any…
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Through the Church Fathers: September 27
Today’s Readings Podcast Description How carefully must the Church confess the unity of Christ’s Person from the very moment of His conception? In these chapters of the Commonitory, Vincent of Lérins defends the title Theotokos—Mother of God—and sets the Catholic faith against the errors of...
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Through the Church Fathers: September 26
Today’s Readings Podcast Description How does the Church confess one Christ in two natures without falling into the errors that divide Him or diminish Him? In these chapters of the Commonitory, Vincent of Lérins carefully sets forth the Catholic faith against Photinus, Apollinaris, and Nestorius,...
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Through the Church Fathers: September 25
Today’s Readings Podcast Description Paul’s warning still stands for every age: if anyone preaches a gospel other than the one already received, let him be accursed. In these chapters of the Commonitory, Vincent of Lérins presses the point home—neither time, nor place, nor the reputation of a...
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Through the Church Fathers: September 24
Today’s Readings Podcast Description When novelty rises in the Church, what must we do? Vincent of Lérins shows us the steadfast example of Pope Stephen, who answered the push for rebaptism with a simple rule: “Let there be no innovation—only what has been handed down.” In these chapters he…
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Through the Church Fathers: September 23
Today’s Readings Podcast Description How do we hold the faith when new teachings press in from every side? Vincent of Lérins gives us a clear and enduring rule: what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. In these opening chapters of the Commonitory, he shows why Scripture must be read...
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Introduction to the Commonitorium
Today’s Readings Podcast Description How do we know what the Church has always believed when new teachings arise? In this introduction to Vincent of Lérins’ Commonitorium, we meet a fifth-century monk who wrote a short, clear handbook for testing doctrine against the long memory of the faith....
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Through the Church Fathers: September 22
Today’s Readings Podcast Description Temperance is the virtue that keeps the strongest bodily desires under the rule of reason. In these questions from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, he shows why the pleasures of food, drink, and sexual union need a special virtue to moderate them. Temperance...
About this show
Join Through the Church Fathers, a year-long journey into the writings of the early Church Fathers, thoughtfully curated by C. Michael Patton. Each episode features daily readings from key figures like Clement, Augustine, and Aquinas, accompanied by insightful commentary to help you engage with the foundational truths of the Christian faith.
Join Our Community: Read along and engage with others on this journey through the Church Fathers. Visit our website.
Support the Podcast: Help sustain this work and gain access to exclusive content by supporting C. Michael Patton on Patreon at patreon.com/cmichaelpatton.
Dive Deeper into Theology: Explore high-quality courses taught by
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