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A friend or pastor recommends you read a book by a church father, promising it will change the way you read the Bible or enrich your spiritual life. The church fathers were some of the earliest Christian writers, pastors, and bishops, whose works shaped how the church read the Bible. Maybe you’ve heard a few of their names at some point—Polycarp, Augustine, Athanasius—but this will be the first time you try to read their writings. By the time you get to the fourth or fifth paragraph, however, your eyes have glazed over: The writing is weird, and you aren’t sure what the author is trying to tell you. By the time you get to the fourth or fifth page, you’ve all but decided the best use of your time is to return the book to your shelf until you have a little more mental energy. Our instinct is to blame ourselves—or them. But the church fathers’ obscurity is often intentional, and understanding why can change how we read them. One example of this obscurity is the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria. It’s a deliberately dense work. For good reason, its title is more literally translated into English as Miscellanies or Patchwork. In one moment, Clement will catalog quotations from non-Christian Greek writers; in the next, he will describe the education of Moses or talk about Christian martyrdom. How could this be the book that the church historian Eusebius described as a “wealth of useful learning” (Ecclesiastical History 6.13)? Using Clement as a case study, let’s consider why the church fathers write in such an obscure fashion and why their obscurity makes them so rewarding. Book to Be Labored Over Clement of Alexandria lived in the second and early third centuries. Although a few additional works and fragments survive, his lasting legacy is a trilogy of writings: Protrepticus, Paedagogus, and Stromateis. These three books embody the progression from conversion to spiritual contemplation. Protrepticus is an exhortation to Greek pagans to convert to Christianity, while Paedagogus depicts Christ as a moral guide for his students. Clement’s weightiest work is the Stromateis. Early in the work, he offers a revealing comment that describes the nature of the book: The Stromateis, making a body of wide learning, aim to skillfully conceal the seeds of knowledge. Just as the one who loves the chase looks for, tracks, traces, and trails with dogs, winning the wild beast, so the truth appears sweetened when sought and brought about with labor. (Stromata 1.2.20.4–21.2) Clement’s strategy is to compile a wide range of learning, sources, and ideas so he can simultaneously conceal and reveal the seeds of divine knowledge. The rationale behind his strategy is that the truth appears sweeter when you have worked hard for it. As the reader progresses through the dense writing style, he or she works harder to make sense of Clement’s words. It’s like the hunter who chases after his prize game, tracking it, chasing it, and ultimately obtaining it. When we labor over what we read, we end up sharpening our spiritual intellects more than if we were told the truth directly. Principle from Jesus Clement, like other church fathers, gets this idea from Jesus’s ministry. One popular verse among these writers is Matthew 7:6, where Jesus implores his hearers, “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” Clement and other early Christian writers interpreted this verse as a command to defend right theology against false teachers or poor readers of the Scriptures. When we labor over what we read, we end up sharpening our spiritual intellects more than if we were told the truth directly. Being careful hearers of Jesus, they recognized that premature or half-realized truth often gets trampled rather than received. And, so, in response, writers like Clement (or the monk Evagrius Ponticus shortly after Clement) often invoke this verse to defend their reason for concealing the truth as they write. It’s the same principle that Jesus reiterates in Mark 4:10–12. The disciples ask why he speaks in parables, and Jesus replies, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’” Learning to listen patiently and attentively helps shape us to become certain kinds of hearers—hearers who receive the truth of the gospel message. Formed by Truth and Obscurity Clement uses an even more striking image in a lesser-known fragmentary work, the Prophetic Selections. There, Clement compares the relationship between books and their readers to magnets and iron: In the same way that a magnet ignores everything else and pulls iron toward itself, so books may be read by many people but only draw in those who are able to understand (Prophetic Selections 27.5). The magnet and the iron belong to one another by nature, and this is the case with the diligent reader and the truth contained within books. This example highlights a spiritual shift that takes place as we grow in the gospel. As we become more like Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit, we are able to read Scripture with new eyes. This is similar to Paul’s language in 2 Corinthians 3:12–18, as he talks about the reading of the law and the veil remaining over the Israelites’ hearts. In Christ, the text of the Scriptures is truly unveiled. The truth of the gospel in the Old Testament is drawn to the Christian reader like iron is drawn to the magnet, allowing him or her to behold God’s glory with an unveiled face. Read the Fathers Well Why, then, were the fathers so obscure when they wrote? Because clarity shapes us less than difficulty does. As Clement promises, truth tastes sweeter when it has been labored over, chased down, and drawn out from something that hides it. Truth tastes sweeter when it has been labored over, chased down, and drawn out. Perhaps this is what Eusebius meant when he called Clement’s work a “wealth of useful learning”—not that it was the quickest guide to interpreting Scripture or a handbook we could consult daily. Rather, it’s by working through the fathers’ obscurities that we are trained to notice how God guides us to the truth in unexpected ways. Not every patristic work is as intimidating as Clement’s Stromateis. Some, like the Didache, the epistles of Ignatius, or Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, are much more accessible entryways to reading and understanding patristic theology. Nonetheless, I challenge you: The next time you pick up a work from a church father and feel lost in the first few pages, don’t close the book. Treat the difficulty as the point. After all, the labor is oftentimes the formation.