They are reconciled to the supreme indifference of the Church at large to their work because, in their unshakable self-righteousness, they put the blame on the anti-intellectualism of the clergy and laity. What they do not seem to realize, however, is that this “anti-intellectualism” is in a way a direct result of their own exclusive “intellectualism,” of their quasi-manichean contempt for the “practical” needs of the Church, for their reduction of theology to a harmless intellectual game of “interesting points of view” and scientifically impeccable footnotes. And the sad irony of the situation is that, ignored by the Church, they are not truly accepted by the so-called “intellectual community” either, for which, in spite of all their efforts ad captatiam benevolentiae, they remain non-objective and non-scientific “mystics.” And as long as such is the state and the inner orientation of our theology, the hope that it will fulfill its pastoral function and respond to the crying needs of our situation is, of course, vain.

But it is at this point, maybe, that we can turn our eyes to those whom we always claim to be our examples and teachers, the Holy Fathers of the Church, and look a little deeper into their understanding of theological task. Most certainly they were not less intellectual. And yet, there is one decisive difference between them and the modern theological scholars. To all of them that which we call “practical” and virtually exclude from our academic concerns meant nothing else but the unique and indeed very practical concern of Christianity: the eternal salvation of man.

Words and ideas were for them directly related not simply to Truth and Error, but to the Truth that saves and to the error that brings with it death and damnation. And it is their constant, truly “existential” preoccupation with, and their total commitment to, salvation of real, concrete men that makes every line they wrote so ultimately serious and their theology so vital and so precisely pastoral.