But in the early years of Christianity, the new religion rapidly became the foremost cultural element, in a way hard for us to grasp, in our culture where all claimed morality is Christian, or pseudo-Christian, but the religion itself is mostly ignored or, increasingly, once again persecuted. Not a one of the cities in which they lived, and which in some cases they dominated with their force of will, has more than a small Christian presence today. The eastern Fathers all lived in a small area, the eastern Mediterranean. But most of all what comes through in this book is the different feel of Orthodoxy, even though doctrinally, really, Orthodoxy differs little from Catholic, Roman, Christianity. As Payne says, by contrast “In the West there is the need for hard outlines and clear definitions: the long straight Roman roads still haunt our minds.” This is not to say that Western Christianity does not draw on the eastern Fathers Saint Thomas Aquinas, for example, relied heavily on them, and even John Donne, Payne tells us, frequently quoted from them. These feelings are missing in Western, that is, Roman Catholic, practice. In its nature, such a goal is impossible for us to truly understand, which lends both a numinous feel to Orthodoxy, and a feeling of some ambiguity.
Payne is at frequent pains to emphasize how Orthodoxy stresses “the imitation of divine nature,” and therefore the ultimate goal of theosis, divinization, union with the energies of God, the “fire” of God. And we do not and will not solicit you we neither need nor accept money. If you subscribe will get a notification of all new writings by email. In these days of massive censorship, this is wise, even if you normally consume The Worthy House on some other platform. You can subscribe to writings published in The Worthy House. Vladimir’s changed the original subtitle of the book, to remove “Fathers” and to incorrectly claim that this is a general history of the early Church, which it is not, except as discussed through the lives of the ten men profiled here.) But the former is, perhaps, always part of popular history the latter understandable given that Payne was not Orthodox, and as Hopko says, when he wrote, “books in English about the Orthodox Church, and Eastern Christianity generally, scarcely could fill a shelf in one small seminary bookcase.” (Although, I should note, it is suspicious that St. Vladimir’s by the late Father Thomas Hopko (himself a popular and prolific author), takes some care to point this out, gently criticizing the book for both (minor) factual and (more major) theological errors. Regardless, Payne’s book is an outstanding introduction to Orthodoxy in historical context, which is, no doubt, why St.
Popular history in 1957 is not comparable to popular history in 2023, however, so this book reads like what might be an advanced college text today, if colleges studied anything worthwhile. The Holy Fire, first published in 1957, when Eastern Orthodoxy had zero presence in the religious consciousness of most of America, is a beautifully-written popular history of ten towering eastern Fathers of the Church. It’s Lent, so let’s spend a little time away from politics.
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