Church Fathers and consistency

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CompSciGuy

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Hi,

I was brought up Presbyterian (Calvinist) and converted to Catholicism (came into the Catholic Church in Easter 2011). Among many things I have cited the Church Fathers as one of the primary reasons why I chose to convert. Anyways, I was talking about this with my dad and he claims that there is a lot of variation among the Church Fathers especially regarding the papacy, apostolic succession, the Eucharist and the like. From my experience with the Fathers (at least those I have read) they have been practically unanimously in line with Catholic teaching on these matters. Is anyone aware of the variation he may be talking about? (Basically church fathers disagreeing with Catholic teaching on these subjects)

My dad says he is planning to go through the Church Fathers and write a book about them, and dedicate the book to me. Pray that this search will bring him to conversion.
 
Well, certainly the Church Fathers are consistent. That does not mean individual Fathers didn’t have differing views. Remember, many items that were not yet definitively defined were argued vigorously. Some writings of some Fathers have been deemed heterdox while other of their writings are deemed orthodox, Origen and Tertullian for example. Remember, even St. Thomas Aquinas wrote against the Immaculate Conception as we now know it in his Summa (which is fine b/c at the time it was not defined so he was not in any sort of formal heresy, he was simply wrong). Individuals are not infallible.
 
CompSciGuy said:
Hi,

I was brought up Presbyterian (Calvinist) and converted to Catholicism (came into the Catholic Church in Easter 2011). Among many things I have cited the Church Fathers as one of the primary reasons why I chose to convert. Anyways, I was talking about this with my dad and he claims that there is a lot of variation among the Church Fathers especially regarding the papacy, apostolic succession, the Eucharist and the like. From my experience with the Fathers (at least those I have read) they have been practically unanimously in line with Catholic teaching on these matters. Is anyone aware of the variation he may be talking about? (Basically church fathers disagreeing with Catholic teaching on these subjects)

My dad says he is planning to go through the Church Fathers and write a book about them, and dedicate the book to me. Pray that this search will bring him to conversion.
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The Church Fathers held a wide variety of opinions, which included different interpretations of Scripture and such. A different interpretation doesn’t amount to contradiction though, because there can be more than one valid interpretation sometimes. Other times a Church Father got this or that wrong. BUT…BUT there is something called The Unanimous Consent of the Fathers in which anything the Church Fathers taught Unanimously on is an infallible teaching!

So lets take Doctrine-X as an example. The Unanimous Consent does not mean every Father mentions Doctrine-X at some time in their writings, but rather Unanimous Consent means that every Father who happens to mention Doctrine-X is in agreement with every other Father who mentions Doctrine-X.

Some examples where the Church Fathers taught Unanimously: The Divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, Apostolic Succession, Baptismal Regeneration, Divorce is forbidden, the Eucharist is not mere bread but Christ’s actual Body and Blood, Schism and Heresy are damnable offenses, Justification is not by faith alone, etc, etc.
 
It did take the Church some time to define various issues but there was always general unanimity on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, apostolic succession, and the Sacraments.

An unbiased study of the early Church will demonstrate this to your father.
 
If any Church Father rebelled against a final ruling of the Magisterium, they wouldn’t be called a Church Father.
 
CompSciGuy said:
… Anyways, I was talking about this with my dad and he claims that there is a lot of variation among the Church Fathers especially regarding the papacy, apostolic succession, the Eucharist and the like. …
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I think you should respectfully ask your dad to please show you the variations he is referring to.
 
Nita said:
I think you should respectfully ask your dad to please show you the variations he is referring to.
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I reckon I would have to wait until he releases his book! But I have a hard time believing that there will be anything really convincing
 
Ask him if he’d be willing to make it a “joint” work: Take a topic, say baptism, and you can research the unanimity of the ECF’s and he can research their divisions, then have a section where you address the other one’s choice of quotes, then move on to another topic.

Go back an forth like that and see what happens 🙂

Get him 3 books: The Father’s Know Best; Crossing the Tiber and Upon this Rock. Steve ray and Jimmy Akin have done the work for him already 🙂

God Bless :signofcross:
 
Debate about issues was common, but for bishops and priests, debates tended to get settled in councils. Some theologians (as today) sometimes went off the rails. For example, Origin, Arnobius, and Tertullian. But, as you know, theologians are a lot less conservative in their speculations than bishops and priests are who are part of the magisterium. They are still a great source of information about the early church and the deposit of the faith.

Hope this helps,
God bless,
Ut
 
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