Review on: Jean-Claude Larcher "On the Principles of the Proper Use of Patristic Research in Orthodox Theology"

Abstract

In his article Jean-Claude Larcher formulates the pertinent question of the place of patristics in contemporary humanities scholarship. There is no denying that patristics today has been deprived of the position it occupied for most of the last century (as well as in more distant times). At the time of the first International Patristic Conference in Oxford in 1951, the main intention of its organiser, Canon Frank Cross, was to create a forum for the study of the patristic heritage. This process, as Cross envisioned, was to be carried out through collaboration between Christian scholars belonging to different ecclesial traditions. Patristics was seen as the foundation of any truly traditional Christian theology.