Curious Evangelical Visitor

[Loveolivia]

http://www.castoffdebt.comlol

 

[ByzCathCantor]

Okay, perhaps I didn’t read most of them if you want to include all the ones that nobody reads and very few have heard of. But I read major parts of many/most of the major ones, from Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and John Chrysostom (an anti-Semite if I recall correctly)

FYI - as you are posting in the Eastern Catholic forum, we would share and hope you know that, among other things, many of the Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox who frequent this sub-forum regularly celebrate the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (SJC). He is certainly not an obscure saint in the Eastern Christian world, even today, as a consequence of the usage of liturgical prayers and forms still attributed to him in our primary form of Eucharistic worship (Byzantine Rite).

While it would be intellectually dishonest for anyone knowledgeable to suggest that an attribution of anti-semitism to SJC is unheard of, at the same time it can be best understood and reasonably and honestly dismissed with an examination of the historical context and setting in which any seemingly anti-semitic comments were made and recorded. Concerns of anti-semitic tones in certain prayers, hymns and the like used even in modern worship still arise, but again must be understood in historical context. Today they are certainly not used to inflame anti-semitic sentiment, but rather to portray historical context of Scriptural accounts.

One cannot speculate as to why you chose to offer that parathetical characterization, other than perhaps to emphasize your point about the validity of the thoughts of the Early Church Fathers, an opinion to which you are certainly entitled. It might be best to make it without disparaging any one or all of the Early Church Fathers on such grounds, as such should be substantiated at any rate and that discussion would surely derail this thread significantly.