" The main intellectual effort of the patristic age was devoted to the development of the biblical tradition and its adaptation to the understanding and needs of Gentile culture. [...] In the later periods, the Fathers who were most Greek in culture, like Origen and St. John Chrysostom and Theodoret, were also the ones who did most for the study and exposition of the Bible. The essential achievement of the patristic age was the synthesis of Eastern religion and Western culture, or, to be ore precise, the uniting of the spiritual traditions of Israel and of the Christian Church with the intellectual and artistic tradition of Hellenism and the political and social traditions of Rome. This synthesis has remained the foundation of Western culture and has never been destroyed, in spite of the tendency of the Reformation to re-Hebraize Christianity and that of the Renaissance to re-Hellenize culture. "
― Christopher Henry Dawson , The Formation of Christendom
![Christopher Henry Dawson quote : The main intellectual effort of the patristic age was devoted to the development of the biblical tradition and its adaptation to the understanding and needs of Gentile culture. [...] In the later periods, the Fathers who were most Greek in culture, like Origen and St. John Chrysostom and Theodoret, were also the ones who did most for the study and exposition of the Bible. The essential achievement of the patristic age was the synthesis of Eastern religion and Western culture, or, to be ore precise, the uniting of the spiritual traditions of Israel and of the Christian Church with the intellectual and artistic tradition of Hellenism and the political and social traditions of Rome. This synthesis has remained the foundation of Western culture and has never been destroyed, in spite of the tendency of the Reformation to re-Hebraize Christianity and that of the Renaissance to re-Hellenize culture.](/image/1322287.jpg)