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Author Topic: Who was the last Church Father?  (Read 1283 times)

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Offline Cryptinox

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Who was the last Church Father?
« on: January 08, 2022, 08:02:39 PM »
Originally I had thought that the last Church Father came before St. Augustine or Ephesus but there are a lot of various opinions. Some even say St. Bernard was "Last of the Fathers,"  including Pius XII in an encyclical but I am not sure if that title is literal. Does the Church have a list of Fathers? 


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Offline DigitalLogos

Re: Who was the last Church Father?
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2022, 08:07:06 PM »
St. John Damascene is typically noted as the last Church Father.
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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Who was the last Church Father?
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2022, 10:30:54 PM »
Quote from: DigitalLogos on January 08, 2022, 08:07:06 PM
St. John Damascene is typically noted as the last Church Father.

That seems a bit late to me.  There has to be a bit closer proximity to the Apostles than 600 years.  I would end it at the successors if St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, so perhaps a St. Fulgentius.
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Offline SeanJohnson

Re: Who was the last Church Father?
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2022, 06:13:16 AM »
“Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical on St. Bernard, Doctor Mellifluus, subtitled “On St. Bernard, the Last of the Fathers,” in which he quotes the editor of St. Bernard’s complete works, the 17th-century abbot Dom Jean Mabillon, who called St. Bernard “the last of the Fathers, but certainly not inferior to the earlier ones.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/aleteia.org/2018/08/19/was-this-saint-the-last-of-the-church-fathers/amp 
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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Who was the last Church Father?
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2022, 06:39:57 AM »
I don’t think anyone buys that St. Bernard is a “Church Father”.  Why not St. Thomas Aquinas then?  Pius XII wrote lots of things.  One of the definitions of a Father is being a secondary witness to Revelation due to proximity in time with the Apostles.  If you’re just a couple generations removed from the Apostles then you can be sure to have some information about what Our Lord taught the Apostles that isn’t recorded in Scripture.  St. Bernard was famously asked about BoD and responded basically that, whether right or wrong, he would go with Augustine.  He had no independent pipeline, as it were, to Apostolic teaching.

Everything written about St. Bernard in that article could just as easily be applied to St. Thomas Aquinas.  Calling him a Church Father is just pious (or Pius) hyperbole.
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