Needed to pop in to reply to this. Mark Bonocore gives this topic an interesting treatment (in response to James White) here:
biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/a38.htm
Make of it what you will. In any case, there’s nothing that says that a Church father has to be right about everything in his writings. Writers like Tertullian and Origen, who provided lots of valuable insight into the thought of the early Church, each fell into heresy at some point or another. St. Thomas Aquinas, considered by many the best thinker that the Church has produced, believed that Mary was kept immaculate from her birth, not her conception (before that particular dogma was affirmed officially by the Church).
The nature of this conversation itself begs the question of how we determine what anyone with an opinion is right about or wrong about on matters of faith and morals. Every accomplished and well read theologian down to every street preacher and even that guy at work who misquotes and misuses Bible verses to support his personal viewpoints. Once we get outside the
sola scriptura mindset (which I know you’ve mentioned that you do not believe), the search for authority really ramps up.
If Jesus didn’t intend the Truth regarding his saving message of the Gospel to be transmitted through a book, and a book alone, how else did He do so and whom can we trust? We know He prayed for Peter’s faith. Poor, bumbling Peter who began to sink when walking on water, denied the Lord three times, and so on and so forth. We know at the beginning of Acts that an Apostle gets replaced (with Mattias who replaced Judas Iscariot). So there’s a “seat” or “chair” that belongs to the Apostle, and it is potentially eternally occupied between Christ naming the Apostles and Christ coming again.
I couldn’t look at how the early heresies were handled - Arianism, Donatism, Gnosticism, etc. without realizing that their solution was never to pull out their Bibles (which weren’t compiled yet) and say “pray to the Holy Spirit, then tell me the true meaning of Romans 3:28.” It was “who holds the office of Peter and the rest of the Twelve? They are whose teaching we trust.” If the former, or any other method of determining orthodox teaching, were true, then any of the heresies from the first three or four centuries (and every heresy since) has the same chance of being the true and rightful teaching of Christ. If succession of the Apostles makes enough sense, that leaves two options - Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. From there, seek the reasons for the split (primacy vs. supremacy of Peter and his office,
filioque, a few others) and go from there.
But that’s my processing of it - and I know that doesn’t apply to everyone. As my guy GK Chesterton says: “The Church is a house with one hundred gates, and no two men enter at the same angle.” Mine was more of a reversion. A cradle Catholic who attended Mass weekly and did my best to be a “good person”, 18 years of Catholic schooling, but really not much drive in the way of theology or truly living my faith. Dating a beautiful, faithful woman (now my fiancee) who practices as an Evangelical forced me to stand back and really dig into what this was all about. What is Truth? Where is it found? How can I live it entirely? And I ended up here.
If I may steal once more from Chesterton: "It’s one thing to conclude that Catholicism is good and another to conclude that it is right. It is one thing to conclude that is right and another to conclude that it is always right.” That, even as a cradle Catholic, made me shudder because it’s
hard.
But now I joyfully advocate for the Catholic faith at places like here and on Reddit, not because I seek to demean or belittle my Christian brothers/sisters from other denominations (or those who don’t believe, or believe something entirely different), but because I love each of them and desire to share this awesome
thing with them, and hopefully am communicating with the highest level of charity afforded to me by God’s Grace.
Every time another doctrine or teaching fits neatly into place on the testimony of Scripture and Tradition, every insight from the writings of a saint throughout the ages, every visible sign of conversion through the Sacraments is like a little tickle from heaven. And once I realized it, there no longer remained a need for questioning because I knew I was home. In the spirit of this thread, how could one not want to share that?
Peace,
DK