Thursday 1 July 2010

My vocation: Patristics nerd

Lest anyone think that I've given up on God, Christianity or Theology, don't be fooled by this blog's inactivity. I still read dozens of other blogs, pray for those of you who I know personally, and continue to waste huge amounts of time and money on reading a variety of theological/ecclesiological/devotional bits and pieces.


In doing so, I have discovered my true vocation in life, a calling (if you will forgive the comic hyperbole) higher than marriage, the priesthood, public life or indeed anything else on God's green earth. I was born to be a Patristics nerd.


How do I know this? Today I received, fresh from the vast crypt of Blackwell's Oxford, a copy of Irenaeus's On the Apostolic Preaching. As I received my new reading matter, a gloriously geeky grin of delight spread across my face. Perhaps it's the minimalist icon on the front cover. Perhaps it's the classical aura second century literature. Perhaps it's the sheer eccentric joy of reading something "translated from the Armenian". Who knows?

At this point, I realised this is part of a growing trend, in fact I even own another book in the same Popular Patristics Series from the SVS Press, a series which I would recommend to any potential early-church anorak. Perhaps Calvin is right about the whole predestination malarkey. Obviously some of us are predestined to be Patristics nerds.


So there we have it. A Patristics nerd. Prententious? Probably. Edifying? Hopefully. Immense fun? Definitely.

2 comments:

madame evangelista said...

I love the fact the series is called 'Popular' Patristics... have fun!

Mark said...

Being a patristics nerd is a very good thing to be.

The Church needs patristics nerds.

The word "tradition" as used by Catholics all too often refers to the Catholicism of the first half of the twentieth century.

Patristics nerds are needed to remind people that there's so much more to "tradition" than this.