For some, the the study of the Church Fathers is simply a dispassionate field of study which they call the Patristics. It's a science, a method upon which much historical criticism must be applied. It's a fascinating field of study, but nothing more. Even if something was to be got from the study of the Church Fathers, it is to be done with utmost selectivity.

For some others, the Church Fathers are not even worth paying attention to. In fact, the Christian era prior to the sixteenth century constituted religious corruption at its apex. Nothing is worth remembering about it. Everything prior to the sixteenth century constituted abominable corruption, abhorring abuse, crusading zealousness and everything else other than true Christianity. The age of the Church Fathers was just not as enlightened as it should have been... until the sixteenth century came.

This is where I beg to differ and have chosen an entirely different direction. I believe that no Christian can study theology with adequate honesty whilst choosing to study Scriptures and yet disregarding the Church Fathers as people who were the earliest passers down of paradosis (tradition). It is unfortunate that they should have been regarded as those who were merely trying to figure out what the Christian faith was all about and were gravely mistaken about much of the faith (unlike us, who know better).

I believe we are the ones who are lost in our search upon conceding to the folly of truncating Christian theology into something that begins in purity only from the sixteenth century. In thinking that searching the Scriptures for ourselves would help us derive infallible interpretations for our readings, we have discarded the readings of the Fathers of the Church who lived learning to interpret Scriptures the way Jesus had taught the Apostles.

No theologian who has studied the Church Fathers with utter seriousness can disregard that the Christian way of life for many today is much, much less than what it should be. People have come to assimilate into their life systems the bits and pieces of the Christian way of life that fascinate them, whilst disregarding the others. And their interpretations of the Scriptures do not rebuke or correct them anymore because the Church Fathers have been silenced; so hermeneutics in all shapes, sizes, and theological inclinations is free for the taking.

Without paying due regard to the Church Fathers, there cannot be a concrete embodiment of tradition. And without a concrete embodiment of tradition, they cannot point to anything except some concepts and texts whose interpretation is anybody's guess. But they'd just go ahead and think that their right to private interpretation is infallible anyway.

A faith claiming to have infallible Scriptures but not possessing infallible interpretations for those infallible Scriptures: that's the faith by which many live today. To each his own.