Did the reformers have access to all writings of the Pre Nicene Fathers?

[zoidar]

The answer is, some. It depends a lot on who. Augustine's writings are and were very accessible. The well-known ones, obviously. Even now, we don't have some writings of a lot of them.

Ok, but Augustine was not ante-nicene.

 

[Root of Jesse]

Ok, but Augustine was not ante-nicene.

true.

 

[JM]

Well, yes, the Reformers did read the fathers. East, West, Apostolic and Ante Nience fathers.

If anyone has read Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion he cites the early church fathers everyone other page. The single volume is a cheaper edition but the two volume edition contains all of the footnotes and translations from the Latin. The entire institutes follows the same theological pattern of the Apostles Creed! On the doctrine of the Holy Trinity Calvin remains in line with the early church and was declared "orthodox" on this doctrine by a Roman Catholic Bishop no less. Calvin departs from St. Thomas Aquinas and his view of divine simplicity, preferring the thought and method of the Cappadocian Fathers. On this doctrine alone he cites Justin, Ignatius, Basil, the Council of Nicaea, Augustine, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hilary, Cyril of Alexandrea, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nazianzus. I'm sure they are more but that's all I have written down in my notes.

If one looks at the work of Calvin you just can't deny he read the church fathers and used their work to build upon. Check out the Lutheran Confessions as well, their Reformation was much, much more conservative, they cite the fathers more liberally. Prosper of Aquitaine comes to mind.

Yours in the Lord,

jm
PS: There is an entire book titled, "John Calvin Student of the Church Fathers" by Lane

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Did they?

Great question! Yes Ignatius of Antioch may have differed with Luther on the episcopacy. Putting aside all the excesses of corrupt bishops etc.

 

[hedrick]

In one Reformation history (I think maybe by McGrath) I remember reading that once Luther was involved in an argument about what Augustine had said, and they had to go to another city to find a copy of his works. It's true that Calvin cites lots of authors, but that doesn't mean that he had access to all of them, nor that his access was easy.

 

[JM]

In one Reformation history (I think maybe by McGrath) I remember reading that once Luther was involved in an argument about what Augustine had said, and they had to go to another city to find a copy of his works. It's true that Calvin cites lots of authors, but that doesn't mean that he had access to all of them, nor that his access was easy.

Speculation.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[hedrick]

MacCulloch's work on the Reformation has a bit of information, though it's not enough to fully answer the OP. During the 15th Cent, two things happened to make texts more accessible: because of the Turk's occupation of the East, Christians fled to the West, bringing manuscripts with them. The second thing was printing. I agree that it's speculation, but I think it's a fair guess that the answer to the OP was changing during the period of the Reformation, with printed editions appearing during that timeframe.

Here's a work reviewing Calvin's use: John Calvin and the Church Fathers It says "it may be first remarked that, during Calvin's lifetime, nearly all the important patristic texts had become available in printed editions. Above all, this work was carried out by Erasmus, but important work was also done by other Christian humanists like Faber Stapulensis, Beatus Rhenanus, Pirckheimer, Clichtoveus, Beraldus, Gerbellius, and by contemporary Reformers such as Pellikan, Oecolampadius and Musculus. Next to their editions of the various texts (at first the Greek Fathers were usually published in Latin translations), editions of the general Church councils and of the councils of Africa were also available. Calvin, for instance, made frequent use of Petrus Crabbe's two volumes
Concilia omnia, tamgeneralia, quam particularia...(Coloniae, 1538)." It goes on to note that it's not clear whether he consulted manuscripts personally. He might well have found everything he needed in published form, particularly for the later editions of the Institutes.

The works I see listed in that paper are all "orthodox." It's less likely that he had access to recently published unorthodox works such as the Gnostics, Nestorius, etc. He probably wouldn't have used them anyway.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I think it's safe to say that very few people have had access to all the writings of the fathers at any given time in history. If anything, we are living in an unprecedented time where access to their writings is at an all time high, given the sheer number of translated works online (and also untranslated works online). That said, even today it's not always possible to have access, because certain works haven't been translated and digitized online yet.

It's also the case that some works were considered lost (or at least seemed to be lost to some or many) until more recent textual discoveries. I believe that, for a long time, the unedited shorter recension of the Ignatian epistles were unknown in the West until discovered only the past few centuries. In the case of the Didache, this work which had been very important in the early centuries of the Church, as the archetypal church manual, had been lost for centuries until rediscovered in modern times.

-CryptoLutheran