Rich:
Protestants in general look with suspicion on pretty much anybody before Martin Luther. We used to live in Eastern Pennsylvania, and there was an enormous Christian (Protestant) book store in town, the size of some WalMarts. I remember going in there once and asking if they had a section on Patristics. The employee had no idea what Patristics were. So I asked for “classic writings, you know, of great early thinkers.” So he directed me to their classic writings section - Luther, Calvin, Wesley, … you get the idea. In my experience, if you cite anybody after Nicea, they will say the source was already corrupted by the paganizing influence of Constantine; if you cite a pre-Nicene source, they’ll say the records of the opposing views were destroyed by the church after Nicea, or that the pre-Nicene documents you are citing were altered by the corrupted church later, such that it is no longer possible to know what these folks actually believed and taught. Of course, our Muslim and Mormon friends take that logic to the next step and say the bibles we have were also altered beyond recognition by the corrupt early church, hence necessitating the sending of a new “prophet” to set things straight. But most Protestants, for no internally consistent logical reason I’ve ever been able to detect, will not go quite so far - they may insist that none of the other early writings that have come down to us are reliable, but they’ll hold to the bible that has come down through the same people as being the utterly reliable word of God Himself.
