Nomine Fucking Patris

I would find the Church Fathers fascinating, if I could tolerate them in any but small doses. John Chrysostom is sometimes as much a thug as he is a thinker. Augustine often comes across as an asshole, an emotionally abusive bully, and a philistine frightened by the power of other people's imaginations. Tertullian has an outright sadistic side to him as transparent as the barrier he imagines between heaven and hell. Jerome is like G.K. Chesterton: a brilliant mind gone very bad. And in Eusebius' sick attack against Jews for the alleged crime of deicide, I hear the incipient rumblings of European anti-semitism.

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