Living in the Language of the Fathers: Edward Pusey as Retrieval Theologian

This article examines the writings of Edward Bouverie Pusey to understand why and how he read the church fathers. It proposes that he studied the fathers the way one might learn a foreign language, aiming to apprentice himself to their idioms and habits of speech. After surveying the factors that inspired Pusey’s retrieval, I examine four examples of its practice and suggest how Anglican pastors and theologians might learn from it today.