Why dont protestants...

[envchemist]

You know someone had to respond to you with this…

By a former Protestant:

“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

• Cardinal Newman

Yeah, well lol I have seen that before! That’s kind of what I was getting at. My husband and I spent an hour yesterday with one of our RCIA candidates and one of the books we gave him was Romanisma and Fundamentalism By Mr. Keating as our candidate is dealing with a sister who isn’t sure she likes her brother becoming Catholic.

 

[SolaFide]

Why dont protestants study the early church fathers?

Many do. The difference between how a Protestand and a Catholic studies the church fathers is this:

1. Protestants realize that even before the death of the apostle John the churches had serious problems. Thus the need for the letters to the churches of Revelation and Paul had to address the gnostic heresies of several churches and chaos in the Corinthian church. Paul even said to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 that from their own number (thus from among the church leaders) there would be false teachers and corrupt doctrine would arise. So why should we take the church fathers word for everything? There is nothing inspired of the Holy Spirit needed for instruction after Revelation. Period, end of story.
2. Men are fallible, no matter how well-meaning they may be, they are still fallible and subject to pride. Thus everything must be subjected and filtered through the lens of Scriptures.
3. By the 4th century most of the church and the church teachings had been twisted from it’s original Hebraic roots to a Hellenization (thanks to Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine) misinterpretation, so the church fathers had become corrupt.
4. With Constantine’s legalization of Christianity and promoting Christian clerics to high office and thus coming under the patronage of the leader of the empire, the church leadership had been “bought”.

Bottom line: the church fathers are interesting to read for history or culture but they are fallible, sinful men and their writings are not to be taken as a “hard party line” for doctrine no matter how well-intentioned they may have been.