Scripture with the Church Fathers
What do the Fathers say about this verse?
Open any verse and read, in a few sentences, how the Fathers of the Church understood it: where they agree, who says what where they differ, and their own words one tap away. Free, offline, and in your language.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
All four Fathers read this verse as the plain declaration of the Son’s eternity and Godhead, written to refute those who would make the Word a creature or a mere utterance. Chrysostom and Cyril both stress that “was” runs ahead of every beginning and every mind that pursues it…
- Eternity of the Son
- Trinity
- Consubstantiality
- The Word
- 27books of the Bible
- 11,174verses summarised
- 11Fathers, with the Catena Aurea
- 3languages of commentary
- 6Bibles included offline
- Freeno ads, no accounts
Three steps to the Fathers
The app is built like a book, not a feed. There are only three levels, so you are never more than two taps from the Fathers.
Choose a chapter
Pick a book and chapter from the Old or New Testament. The text is there in a translation you choose, printed with red verse numbers as in the old service books.
Open a verse: the Summary
A short synthesis of what the Fathers say about that verse, written in the present tense, naming who says what. Key themes and the Father who treats it most fully are marked in red.
Go deeper: the Details
Each Father’s own reading of the verse, and from there the whole homily or sermon it comes from, in the classic nineteenth-century translations.
Our vision: the Fathers in every tongue, for everyone
“And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?”Acts 2:8
The commentaries of the Church Fathers are the inheritance of the whole Church. Yet most Christians have never read a page of them. They sit in heavy volumes, in old translations, in languages many cannot read, behind library walls and price tags.
At Pentecost every listener heard the Apostles in his own language. We want every believer to be able to hear the Fathers the same way: in the language they pray in, on the phone in their pocket, free, without an account, and even without a signal.
- Every language. Today the commentary is in English, Arabic and Italian, and the app itself also in French and Spanish. We will keep adding languages until anyone, anywhere, can read what the Fathers say about a verse in their own tongue.
- For everyone. Free, with no ads, no accounts and no subscriptions. The commentary lives on the device, so it serves a village without coverage as well as a city.
- Faithful to the sources. Only public-domain translations of the Fathers, every summary tied to the Father’s own words, and where the Fathers differ we say so, and who says what.
- The whole of Scripture. Twenty-seven books today, from Genesis to Revelation. More will follow as public-domain translations of the Fathers allow.
Help bring the Fathers to your language
If you read the Fathers and write well in another language, or can check our Arabic and Italian, we would be glad to hear from you: hello@thefatherssay.com.
Languages
Pick your language in the app’s settings. Each language comes with its own public-domain Bible, included in the app, and more translations can be read online through API.Bible.
- App in this language
- Summaries of the Fathers
- The Fathers’ full text
- King James Version · World English Bible
- App in this language
- Summaries of the Fathers
- Full text in English
- ترجمة فان دايك (1865)
- App in this language
- Summaries of the Fathers
- Full text in English
- Riveduta (1927)
- App in this language
- Summaries in preparation
- Full text in English
- Louis Segond (1910)
- App in this language
- Summaries in preparation
- Full text in English
- Reina-Valera (1909)
Tell us which language you would like next, or help us translate it. hello@thefatherssay.com
The Fathers in the app
Twelve sources, from the second century to the thirteenth, arranged in the order the Fathers lived. The Catena Aurea gathers many more Fathers, compiled by St Thomas Aquinas.
- St. Hippolytus of Romec. 170–235Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Daniel
- Origenc. 185–253Matthew, John
- St. Dionysius of Alexandria† 264Ecclesiastes
- St. Gregory Thaumaturgusc. 213–270Ecclesiastes
- St. Victorinus of Pettau† 304Revelation
- St. Hilary of Poitiersc. 310–367Psalms
- St. Basil the Great330–379Genesis
- St. John Chrysostom349–407Matthew, John, Acts, the Epistles of St Paul, Hebrews
- St. Augustine354–430Psalms, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, 1 John
- St. Cyril of Alexandriac. 376–444Luke, John
- St. Gregory the Greatc. 540–604Job
- Catena Aurea (the Fathers, compiled by St. Thomas Aquinas)1262–1264Matthew, Mark, Luke
The sources
Every word of the Fathers in the app comes from public-domain translations: the Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, the Library of the Fathers, and Newman’s Catena Aurea, as transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and others. Each source is credited in the app.