Why do we need the Church Fathers?
This is one of those deep questions that can be taken in an almost infinite number of directions, but I will propose a response grounded in the importance of history in shaping the present. Arguments between Roman Catholics and Protestants often get hung up on the nature of the early Church. Were bishops, priests, deacons, and the rest of the ecclesiastical hierarchy there from the beginning? Did they celebrate Mass and other liturgical practices in a structured, ordered way? What sacraments did they practice and what meaning did those acts hold for the persons participating in them?
Reading the Fathers helps clarify these questions, as understanding how the men who were so central in forming the early Church thought about these issues keeps us from drifting off into vain intellectualizing. The Fathers lived in the Church before she was riven by the splits between East and West, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, that so shape modern theological discourse. In a sense, they do not hold positions in these fights given that they were not around to engage in the particulars of these debates. They show us a fundamentally different way to think about the faith, one that exists outside of recent controversies and inside the deeper mysteries of our faith that were so important for the early Church to clarify.
The Fathers are especially necessary for those of us in sacramental Churches as they were the men most responsible for guarding and handing on the teachings of Christ and his Apostles. They form the initial chain of being between those men who knew Christ in the flesh and us two thousand years later. They were so close to Christ and those who knew him that it makes utter sense for us to look to their theological orientation to help us better inhabit the mind of the Church.
In sum, the Fathers are necessary because Sacred Tradition is necessary.
