Can the Church Fathers Disagree? How Orthodoxy Tells Doctrine From Opinion

Anyone who reads the early Christian writers for long meets a surprise. The men the Orthodox Church calls "holy fathers" do not always agree, and a few of them taught things the Church later declined to follow. St Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr, insisted that converts from schismatic groups be baptized again; Rome disagreed, and on the main point Rome's practice prevailed. St Gregory of Nyssa, a pillar of the doctrine of the Trinity, wrote that in the end even the devil would be healed. St Augustine, who is commemorated in the Orthodox calendar, taught that infants who die unbaptized share in the condemnation of Adam, a view the Orthodox Church has never adopted.

So inquirers ask a fair question. If the Fathers can be wrong, why keep appealing to them? And how does anyone tell the faith of the Church from one bishop's private opinion? This article sets out the tools the tradition uses for that sorting and tests them against four real cases. (For an orientation to who the Fathers were, see the Church Fathers explorer.)

The honest answer is not tidy. The tools are old and real, but they cannot be run like a formula, and in a few cases the evidence is less convenient than Orthodox apologetics sometimes suggests.

In brief

Yes, the Church Fathers can disagree, and individual Fathers can be wrong. The Orthodox Church has never claimed that any single Father is infallible. It distinguishes dogma (what the whole Church confesses in the Creed and the councils), theological opinion (sometimes called a theologoumenon), and error. The classic test is Vincent of Lérins's rule, written about 434: hold "that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all." Vincent said a teaching held by one Father "other than all, or contrary to all" is "a private fancy of his own," even if its author was a martyr. In practice the sorting happened through councils and their long reception. Cyprian's view on baptism was set aside but partly kept in Eastern canon law. Gregory of Nyssa's hope for universal restoration was never adopted, though how firmly the Church condemned it depends on a disputed set of anathemas. Augustine's account of inherited guilt was not received in the East. Origen, the most brilliant of them, was condemned by name.

Thesis: The Orthodox Church honors the Fathers as witnesses to one faith rather than as individually infallible authorities, and it distinguishes their common, conciliar witness from their private opinions; that distinction is real and ancient, but it is applied by the Church's discernment over time, not by a mechanical test.

Dogma, opinion and error

When the councils defined doctrine, they did not claim to invent it. The Council of Chalcedon (451) introduced its definition of Christ's two natures with the words "Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice."¹ The Second Council of Nicaea (787) said it was "Following the Divinely inspired teaching of the Holy Fathers and the Tradition of the Catholic Church."² That is the first category: dogma, the faith the Church confesses together and has, where necessary, defined. The Nicene Creed is its clearest summary.

The Fathers themselves knew that not every question was settled at that level. St Gregory the Theologian, in the first of his Theological Orations, told the clever disputants of Constantinople where speculation was safe: "Philosophize about the world or worlds; about matter; about soul; about natures endowed with reason, good or bad; about resurrection, about judgment, about reward, or the Sufferings of Christ. For in these subjects to hit the mark is not useless, and to miss it is not dangerous."³ He did not mean those doctrines were doubtful, only that many details around them are open.

Modern Orthodox theology has a name for this middle zone. The Russian church historian Vasily Bolotov, in theses on the Filioque published in 1898, distinguished dogmas, theologoumena and private theological opinions.⁴ A theologoumenon in his sense is a view of respected Fathers of the undivided Church that carries weight but is not binding; in Bolotov's words as quoted in English by the Orthodox writer John Sanidopoulos, "The content of a dogma is truth: the content of a theologoumenon is only what is probable." It is a modern academic category: Vladimir Lossky faulted Bolotov for treating the Filioque as one, and many conservative Orthodox avoid the term as too liberal.⁵

The third category is error: a teaching that contradicts what the Church confesses. The Fathers knew their own writings could fall into it. St Augustine told St Jerome that he trusted only the canonical Scriptures without condition: "As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them."⁶

Vincent of Lérins and the "consensus of the Fathers"

The most quoted attempt to state the rule comes from Vincent, a monk of the island monastery of Lérins off the coast of Gaul. He wrote his Commonitorium about 434, mentioning the Council of Ephesus as held "some three years ago." Scripture is sufficient, he says, yet it must be read with the Church because "all do not accept it in one and the same sense."⁷ Then comes the famous sentence: "in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all." He names three tests: universality, antiquity and consent.⁸

Vincent immediately faces the obvious problem. What if, even in antiquity, "two or three men" erred? His answer has two steps. First, prefer "the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few." Second, where no council has spoken, compare the ancient teachers who stayed in the communion of the Church, and believe what was taught "not by one or two of these only, but by all, equally, with one consent, openly, frequently, persistently."⁹ Later he states the negative side sharply:

But whatsoever a teacher holds, other than all, or contrary to all, be he holy and learned, be he a bishop, be he a Confessor, be he a martyr, let that be regarded as a private fancy of his own, and be separated from the authority of common, public, general persuasion.¹⁰

Two features of the rule are often forgotten. Vincent limited it to questions "where the Rule of Faith is concerned," not "every minor question," and to heresies that are "new and recent."¹¹ And he allowed growth: "Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church? Certainly; all possible progress," provided it is "real progress, not alteration of the faith," as a child grows into a man.¹²

Some scholars, following Gerardus Vossius in the seventeenth century and later Adolf von Harnack, have read the rule as a veiled attack on Augustine's teaching on predestination. Thomas Guarino replies that Vincent "never even mentions Augustine in his major work."¹³ The question remains open.

The Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky added a caution: "'antiquity' by itself is not an adequate proof of the true faith," since heresies also appealed to old traditions. The appeal to the Fathers, he wrote, is "primarily an appeal to holy witnesses," not a count of ancient votes.¹⁴

Four test cases

Cyprian and the baptism of schismatics

In the 250s the North African church asked whether someone baptized in a schismatic or heretical group should be baptized again on joining the Catholic Church. St Cyprian said yes: baptism outside the Church is no baptism. "If he believes what is false," he wrote to his fellow bishop Jubaianus, "he could not receive what is true."¹⁵ Bishop Stephen of Rome disagreed and held that such converts should be received by the laying on of hands. Cyprian replied that custom was not enough: "custom without truth is the antiquity of error."¹⁶ In September 256 a council of eighty-seven bishops met at Carthage and backed Cyprian.¹⁷ Cyprian opened it by saying that "neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops," and that each bishop has his own right of judgment.¹⁸

{{very-strong: Cyprian's council taught a position that the wider Church did not adopt, yet Cyprian is venerated as a saint and martyr in both East and West.}} Vincent used the episode as his model of antiquity defeating novelty, yet insisted that Cyprian "will reign with Christ," while those who later used his council to justify schism were condemned.¹⁹ Augustine, answering the Donatists who claimed Cyprian as their authority, said the martyr's error was covered by his love of unity: he "did not prefer the maintenance of a wrong opinion to the bond of unity."²⁰ Augustine also noted that Peter was corrected by Paul and stayed an apostle.²¹

The Eastern story, however, is not simply "Cyprian lost." St Basil the Great wrote that "the ancient authorities, I mean Cyprian and our own Firmilianus," had rejected the baptism of the Cathari, Encratites and Hydroparastatae. Yet when some bishops of Asia judged that, "for the sake of management of the majority," the baptism of the Cathari should be accepted, Basil conceded: "let it be accepted."²² The Council in Trullo (692), which the Orthodox Church receives as part of its canon law, went further. Its second canon ratified "the Canon set forth by Cyprian," noting that it "has been kept only in the country of the aforesaid Bishops, according to the custom delivered down to them."²³ Cyprian's rule thus entered the Orthodox canons as a legitimate local practice, and Orthodox churches still differ in receiving converts, some by baptism, some by chrismation, appealing to strictness (akribeia) or pastoral flexibility (oikonomia). See the article on Cyprian of Carthage.

A Father may be wrong on a disputed point and still be a saint, and a question can stay partly open for centuries without dividing the Church.

Gregory of Nyssa and the restoration of all

St Gregory of Nyssa (died about 395) was one of the Cappadocian Fathers whose Trinitarian language was confirmed at Constantinople in 381. In his Catechetical Oration, a handbook for teachers, he described Christ's saving work as "freeing both man from evil, and healing even the introducer of evil himself. For the chastisement, however painful, of moral disease is a healing of its weakness."²⁴ The "introducer of evil" is the devil. A reader of one manuscript wrote in the margin, "This must be read with caution: it seems to savour of Origen's opinion."²⁵

{{strong: Gregory of Nyssa did hope for, and in places taught, a final restoration of all rational beings.}} St Germanus of Constantinople in the eighth century argued that Gregory's dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection had been interpolated by heretics. The old Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia judged bluntly that the work contains "genuine Origenism."²⁶ Today Ilaria Ramelli argues that belief in this restoration was widespread among the Fathers, and the Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart defends universal salvation outright; both books have drawn strong criticism, for example from the historian Michael McClymond, in a long review of Ramelli and in his two-volume history of Christian universalism.²⁷

The Second Council of Constantinople (553), the Fifth Ecumenical Council, named Origen among condemned heretics in its eleventh anathema. Yet Emperor Justinian's letter, read to the bishops at the council's opening session, declared that he followed "the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose," and others, Augustine included.²⁸ A separate list of fifteen anathemas against Origenist teaching condemns "the monstrous restoration" that follows from the pre-existence of souls. {{debated: Whether those fifteen anathemas belong to the ecumenical council itself is disputed.}} Norman Tanner's standard edition of the councils leaves them out, explaining that "recent studies have shown that these anathemas cannot be attributed to this council"; other scholars think the bishops approved them just before the formal sessions began.²⁹

Gregory is a saint, and his Trinitarian theology was received as the Church's own; his eschatology was not. The Church confesses that Christ "will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead," and it has never taught that all will certainly be saved; Emperor Justinian's anathemas against Origen explicitly condemned the view that the punishment of demons and the impious "is only temporary." How much one may hope for all, and how to read Gregory, remain debated among Orthodox theologians. The site's guides to heaven, hell and the final judgment and to Origen's legacy go further.

Augustine on grace and inherited guilt

No Father shaped the Western churches more than Augustine of Hippo (354 to 430). In his Enchiridion, a short handbook of the faith, he described humanity after Adam as a "mass of perdition" from which God saves some. Of those who die with original sin but no personal sins (in his framework, unbaptized infants), he wrote that "the mildest punishment of all will fall upon those who have added no actual sin, to the original sin they brought with them."³⁰ Catholic and Protestant theology both drew heavily on him, in different ways.

The Orthodox Church honors him. The Orthodox Church in America lists "Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo," and states: "The Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Augustine on June 15."³¹ But his teaching on inherited guilt and predestination was never received in the East, where the Church speaks of inheriting mortality and corruption from Adam rather than Adam's personal guilt (see original sin vs. ancestral sin). Orthodox writers today range from warm appreciation to sharp criticism of him.

Origen: the teacher who was condemned

Origen of Alexandria (died about 253) was Vincent's great warning: a man so gifted that people said they "would rather be wrong with Origen, than be right with others," yet one who, Vincent judged, set aside "the traditions of the Church and the determinations of the ancients."³² Later saints used his biblical scholarship, but his speculative system was condemned and his name stands in the anathemas of 553. He is read as a Church writer, not venerated as a saint.

How councils and reception sort the Fathers

No council ever graded every sentence of every Father. Councils defined what a crisis required, "following the holy Fathers," and the rest was sorted gradually by what the Church went on teaching, praying and singing. The article on how the Orthodox Church recognizes ecumenical councils explains why reception matters even for councils.

When Latin theologians quoted Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome for the Filioque, St Photios the Great first doubted that they had taught it plainly. Then he argued that even if one of them had erred, since all were human, the right response was that of Noah's sons in Genesis 9: to cover a father's shame rather than expose it.³³ Honor the person; do not adopt the error. The principle applies just as much to Eastern Fathers.

In practice, then, an Orthodox Christian can weigh a patristic statement roughly like this:

• What the Church confesses together in the Creed, the definitions of the ecumenical councils and its common worship is binding faith.
• What many Fathers teach in agreement, across times and places, carries great weight even where no council has defined it.
• What one Father or a few teach, against the common mind of the others, is a personal opinion. It may be set aside without dishonoring its author, especially if he died in communion with the Church.
• What councils have formally condemned is error, whoever first taught it.

These are guidelines, not a machine; applying them needs careful history and the judgment of the Church, which Orthodox Christians believe the Holy Spirit guides.

The strongest objections

A Protestant objection: "Then why not Scripture alone?"

If the Fathers can err, many Protestants ask, why give them any binding role? The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) states the Reformed view: "All synods or councils since the apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both."³⁴

The Orthodox reply agrees that individual Fathers are not inspired as Scripture is; Augustine's letter to Jerome says so. But it adds Vincent's point that Scripture is read in many senses, and the question is which reading is the Church's. Most Protestants accept the Nicene and Chalcedonian definitions, reached by councils reading Scripture with the Fathers. The difference is whether the Church's common reading carries authority or only advice. The site's article on why tradition means different things to Protestants and Orthodox explores that difference fairly.

A Catholic objection: "Consensus is too vague without a living judge"

Catholic theology also appeals to the Fathers. The Council of Trent (1546) forbade interpreting Scripture "contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers," and the First Vatican Council (1870) repeated the rule.³⁵ But Catholics argue that consensus alone cannot settle a live dispute, because both sides will claim it; a living magisterium, centered on the Bishop of Rome, is needed to decide. Vincent himself, they note, praised Pope Stephen for his rule "Let there be no innovation."³⁶

The Orthodox reply grants that its way of discerning is slower and sometimes leaves questions open, as the reception of converts shows. But the ancient councils, not a single bishop, settled the great disputes, and their decisions still needed reception by the whole Church. Cyprian resisted Stephen and is a saint, and his practice survived in Eastern canon law. Orthodox readers see a conciliar Church in that history; Catholics read it differently.

A skeptical objection: "The consensus is circular"

The sharpest objection is that the "consensus of the Fathers" is assembled after the fact: writers who agreed with the eventual winners count as Fathers, and the rest become heretics or private opinions. Vincent's rule counts only teachers who stayed "in the Catholic faith and communion."

This objection has real force. The consensus of the Fathers is not a neutral test that a non-believer could apply and reach Orthodox conclusions; it is how the Church recognizes its own faith over time. Two things soften the charge without removing it. First, the Church did not erase dissenters: Cyprian and Gregory of Nyssa remain saints whose opinions are openly discussed. Second, on the central doctrines the early witness is broad and comes from many regions; where it is thinner, the Church generally does not claim a dogma.

What we can say confidently

• Individual Fathers disagreed and sometimes taught what the Church did not adopt; they said so themselves.
• Vincent of Lérins (about 434) taught "everywhere, always, by all," and called a lone teacher's contrary view, even a martyr's, a "private fancy."
• Cyprian's council of 256 required rebaptism of converts from schism; Rome resisted; Cyprian is a saint; Eastern canon law kept his rule as a local practice.
• Gregory of Nyssa's Catechetical Oration speaks of the healing even of the devil, and the Fifth Council named Origen as a heretic while the emperor's letter that opened it listed Gregory among the Fathers to be followed.
• Augustine is commemorated in the Orthodox Church, while his teaching on inherited guilt was not received in the East.

What remains disputed

• Whether the fifteen anathemas against Origenism were approved by the Fifth Ecumenical Council itself.
• Whether Gregory of Nyssa taught universal salvation as a firm doctrine or a hope, and whether any of his texts were altered.
• Whether Vincent's Commonitorium was aimed partly at Augustine.
• How useful the modern term theologoumenon is, and which particular questions belong in it.
• Whether any account of patristic consensus can avoid a degree of circularity.

Conclusion

The Orthodox Church has never needed the Fathers to be flawless. It claims that through them, with all their limits, the one faith of the Apostles was handed on and put into words, and that the Holy Spirit kept the Church in that faith even when a great teacher went astray. So Orthodox Christians can venerate Cyprian without making his rule universal, read Gregory of Nyssa with gratitude without making his hope a dogma, and keep Augustine's feast without adopting his theory of inherited guilt.

There is freedom in this. The Fathers are not a court of infallible judges whose every sentence must be defended. They are elders in the faith whose common witness we trust and whose private mistakes we cover, as Photios urged, the way Noah's sons covered their father. Learning to tell the two apart is part of reading the Fathers inside the Church.

Notes

1. Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith, trans. Henry Percival, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF), 2nd series, vol. 14 (1900), as revised at newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm. ↩
2. Second Council of Nicaea, definition, as quoted by Georges Florovsky, "St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers," Sobornost 4, no. 4 (1961): 165-176 (text at myriobiblos.gr). ↩
3. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 27 (First Theological Oration), section 9 in the New Advent numbering (some editions number it 10), trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 7 (1894). ↩
4. Bolotov, "Thesen über das Filioque (von einen [sic] russischen Theologen)," Révue internationale de théologie 6 (1898): 681-712, as cited by Vladimir Lossky, "The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine," in In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press), 71-96, where Lossky also criticizes Bolotov. Bolotov's text was not opened for this article. ↩
5. John Sanidopoulos, "On the Application of the Term 'Theologoumenon'," Mystagogy Resource Center, 28 June 2017 (quoting Bolotov; noting that Metropolitan John Zizioulas and many conservative Orthodox do not accept the scheme). ↩
6. Augustine, Letter 82.3 (to Jerome), trans. J. G. Cunningham, NPNF 1st series, vol. 1 (1886). ↩
7. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium 2.5 and 29.78 (on Ephesus "some three years ago"), trans. C. A. Heurtley, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 11 (1894). ↩
8. Vincent, Commonitorium 2.6. ↩
9. Vincent, Commonitorium 3.8. ↩
10. Vincent, Commonitorium 28.72. ↩
11. Vincent, Commonitorium 28.71. ↩
12. Vincent, Commonitorium 23.54-55. ↩
13. Thomas G. Guarino, "Was St. Vincent of Lérins Anti-Augustinian?" First Things (web), 22 July 2025; see also his Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013). ↩
14. Florovsky, "St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers" (note 2). ↩
15. Cyprian, Epistle 72 (to Jubaianus; Ep. 73 in modern numbering), trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), vol. 5 (1886). ↩
16. Cyprian, Epistle 73 (to Pompey; Ep. 74 in modern numbering), quoting Stephen's letter, and 73.9, ANF vol. 5. ↩
17. John Chapman, "St. Cyprian of Carthage," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (1908), dating the larger council to September 256; the ANF heading to the Sententiae Episcoporum gives "a.d. 258." ↩
18. Seventh Council of Carthage (Sententiae Episcoporum), Cyprian's opening address, trans. Wallis, ANF vol. 5. ↩
19. Vincent, Commonitorium 6.16-18. ↩
20. Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists 2.5.6, trans. J. R. King, rev. Chester D. Hartranft, NPNF 1st series, vol. 4 (1887). ↩
21. Augustine, On Baptism 2.1.2. ↩
22. Basil of Caesarea, Letter 188 (First Canonical Epistle to Amphilochius), canon 1, trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 8 (1895). ↩
23. Council in Trullo, canon 2, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 14. ↩
24. Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration (The Great Catechism) 26, trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 5 (1893), CCEL text. ↩
25. NPNF 2nd series, vol. 5, editors' note 2004 to Catechetical Oration 26, reporting a marginal note in one of the manuscripts used by Krabinger. ↩
26. Friedrich Loofs, "Gregory of Nyssa," New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 5 (1909), CCEL text. ↩
27. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 120 (Leiden: Brill, 2013); David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). For criticism: Michael McClymond, "Origenes Vindicatus vel Rufinus Redivivus? A Review of Ilaria Ramelli's The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013)," Theological Studies 76, no. 4 (2015): 813-826; and McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018). ↩
28. Second Council of Constantinople, Emperor Justinian's letter to the council (Session I, as summarized in the NPNF text) and anathema 11, trans. Percival, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 14. ↩
29. "The Anathemas Against Origen," anathema 1, and "The Anathemas of the Emperor Justinian Against Origen," anathema 9, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 14; Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1990), Constantinople II, introduction (text at papalencyclicals.net). The view that the bishops approved them before the formal sessions goes back to Wilhelm Diekamp (1899) and is associated with Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), which was not consulted directly for this article. ↩
30. Augustine, Enchiridion 92-93, trans. J. F. Shaw, NPNF 1st series, vol. 3 (1887). ↩
31. Orthodox Church in America, "Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo," Lives of the Saints, June 15, oca.org. ↩
32. Vincent, Commonitorium 17.43-45. ↩
33. Photios, Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit 70, paraphrased from the English text published at myriobiblos.gr (translator not named there). English translations: Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Studion, 1983) and Joseph P. Farrell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987). ↩
34. Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 31, text at ligonier.org (section numbering differs between editions). ↩
35. Council of Trent, Session IV (8 April 1546), Decree concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books, trans. J. Waterworth (1848); First Vatican Council, Dei Filius ch. 2, in Tanner, Decrees; both at papalencyclicals.net. ↩
36. Vincent, Commonitorium 6.16. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Augustine of Hippo. Letter 82, trans. J. G. Cunningham, NPNF 1st series, vol. 1 (1886); On Baptism, Against the Donatists, trans. J. R. King, rev. Chester D. Hartranft, NPNF 1st series, vol. 4 (1887); Enchiridion, trans. J. F. Shaw, NPNF 1st series, vol. 3 (1887). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
• Basil of Caesarea. Letter 188. Translated by Blomfield Jackson. NPNF 2nd series, vol. 8. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.
• Cyprian of Carthage. Epistles 72 and 73; The Seventh Council of Carthage. Translated by Robert Ernest Wallis. ANF vol. 5. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.
• Councils of Chalcedon, Constantinople II and Trullo, with the anathemas against Origen. Translated by Henry Percival. NPNF 2nd series, vol. 14. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.
• Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 27. Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. NPNF 2nd series, vol. 7. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.
• Gregory of Nyssa. The Great Catechism. Translated by William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson. NPNF 2nd series, vol. 5. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.
• Photios of Constantinople. The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. Translated by Joseph P. Farrell. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987. (English text also at myriobiblos.gr, translator not named there.)
• Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990. (Constantinople II; First Vatican Council, Dei Filius.)
• Vincent of Lérins. Commonitorium. Translated by C. A. Heurtley. NPNF 2nd series, vol. 11. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Lossky, Vladimir. "The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine." In In the Image and Likeness of God, 71-96. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press.
• Florovsky, Georges. "St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers." Sobornost 4, no. 4 (1961): 165-176.
• Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo." Lives of the Saints, June 15. oca.org.
• Sanidopoulos, John. "On the Application of the Term 'Theologoumenon'." Mystagogy Resource Center, 28 June 2017.

Other scholarship

• Chapman, John. "St. Cyprian of Carthage." In The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.
• Loofs, Friedrich. "Gregory of Nyssa." In The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 5. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1909.
• Guarino, Thomas G. Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013; and "Was St. Vincent of Lérins Anti-Augustinian?" First Things, 22 July 2025.
• McClymond, Michael. "Origenes Vindicatus vel Rufinus Redivivus? A Review of Ilaria Ramelli's The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013)." Theological Studies 76, no. 4 (2015): 813-826.
• McClymond, Michael. The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism. 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.
• Ramelli, Ilaria L. E. The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 120. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Sources from the traditions being discussed

• Council of Trent. Session IV: Decree concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books (8 April 1546). Translated by J. Waterworth. London: Dolman, 1848.
• The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). Text at ligonier.org.