Why don't they believe the early chruch fathers

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runandsew

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I have noticed on some “Catholic unfriendly” chat lines, that when a Catholic is trying to argue what the early church fathers said to support the Catholic position, the response from the non-Catholic is either:
  1. It doesn’t matter, the fathers were fallible
  2. The fathers were on both sides of an issue
  3. They are all forgeries
  4. They were apostate
Do these people say all this because the early church fathers seem to teach Catholic beliefs, so therefore they can’t be trusted since the non-Catholic doesn’t believe the early Church taught Catholic beliefs. After all if the fathers were reliable then they would teach what the non-Catholic believed.
 
That’s when you know it’s more about winning an argument than finding the truth. The ECFs don’t fit with revisionist Christianity so people must discredit them or ignore the obvious. You’ll notice that many of the same people will latch on to one or two quotes from an ECF that they feel “proves” their Protestant viewpoint. Such quotes are invariably taken out of context.

A non-Catholic or non-Orthodox Christian who delves into their faith and it’s history ends up facing some tough questions. It’s what you do when facing the answers that is the tough part.
 
runandsew said:
Do these people say all this because the early church fathers seem to teach Catholic beliefs, so therefore they can’t be trusted since the non-Catholic doesn’t believe the early Church taught Catholic beliefs. After all if the fathers were reliable then they would teach what the non-Catholic believed.
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That is my guess. It seems to be about interpretation. They believe what they think Scripture says so they must condemn anything that seems to contradict that. I think, (personal opinion only here) that many do it in good faith. There are many though, who do it out of pure obstinance. It is hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Interpreting the Early Church Fathers is difficult, but not impossible. It does require submitting to authoritative teaching. It seems to boil down to authority yet again.
 
Now I have the books “The faith of the early church fathers” by jurgens, and “The teachings of the chruch fathers” by Willis.
I know that these reference the writings of the ECF but they do not have the complete writings. Are these books just picking out the teachings that support the Catholic teachings, and leaving out the many teachings that support the non-Catholic beliefs, or are these a good summary of what the ECF wrote, and believed?
 
I think another reason they say things like that (that the Fathers were fallible, were on both sides of an issue, all forgeries, apostate, etc) is to cover up the fact that they’ve never even heard of them.

Their instinctive reaction to any “man’s interpretation” (as they see it) is that obviously they must be wrong, if they disagree with “my pastor,” or “the Bible as I understand it” - having never heard of these people, they simply assume that they must be more of the same.

Once you get them to figure out that, hey, these were the infants whom Jesus blessed, who lived their entire lives from infancy with Jesus and the Apostles, and grew up to become (collectively) the Early Church, then you see one of two responses - either they become Catholic, or they practically renounce Christ Himself in favour of their own religion - even if Christ Himself disagrees with them, then He must be wrong, and He’s just going to have to get over it and get with the program.

(I heard someone give a testimony one time, who at some point during his arguments with the Early Church Fathers, all of a sudden realized that he didn’t think that Christ was a real Christian or that the Early Church was really Christian because of all these Catholic ideas that He promulgated and that they followed and taught - that’s when he really started to re-examine himself, and ultimately, he became a Catholic.
 
NPS said:
That’s when you know it’s more about winning an argument than finding the truth. The ECFs don’t fit with revisionist Christianity so people must discredit them or ignore the obvious. You’ll notice that many of the same people will latch on to one or two quotes from an ECF that they feel “proves” their Protestant viewpoint. Such quotes are invariably taken out of context.

A non-Catholic or non-Orthodox Christian who delves into their faith and it’s history ends up facing some tough questions. It’s what you do when facing the answers that is the tough part.
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Has anyone thought of the following. If Protestants consider the Catholic church an Apostate church Than naturally they must be aware that they must also call all of the Church fathers apostate also. If they call the church fathers apostate How do they know who even wrote the Gospels for sure. The Gospels do not identify who wrote them. The only means of Indintifying the who wrote the Gospels is from the church fathers. But if they are apostate then how can one trust them as far as who wrote the Gospels. How can you use them to identify the Gospels???
 
runandsew said:
Now I have the books “The faith of the early church fathers” by jurgens, and “The teachings of the chruch fathers” by Willis.
I know that these reference the writings of the ECF but they do not have the complete writings. Are these books just picking out the teachings that support the Catholic teachings, and leaving out the many teachings that support the non-Catholic beliefs, or are these a good summary of what the ECF wrote, and believed?
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These quotes are sourced so one can go back to the endiburg edition of the church fathers and look up the quotes and confirm.
They are a good summary.

I do recomend the following web sites over Jurgens. Jurgens organizes by church fathers. These web sites organize by doctrine which is far easier to work with.

http://www.cin.org/users/jgallegos/contents.htm

http://www.scripturecatholic.com/
 
Most likely they have no knowledge of the church fathers at all and are only going on hearsay.

Ask them if they have read any of the church fathers and who told them about the church fathers.
 
In Protestant tradition it is taught that the Church Christ established fell immediately after the death of the last apostle, some put the “fall” when Constantine arrived on the scene or at the Protestant Revolt. If these position are taken then we are calling Christ a liar, and his prayers to the Father on Church continuity and defense against hades worthless.

In Christ!
 
runandsew said:
I have noticed on some “Catholic unfriendly” chat lines, that when a Catholic is trying to argue what the early church fathers said to support the Catholic position, the response from the non-Catholic is either:
  1. It doesn’t matter, the fathers were fallible
  2. The fathers were on both sides of an issue
  3. They are all forgeries
  4. They were apostate
Do these people say all this because the early church fathers seem to teach Catholic beliefs, so therefore they can’t be trusted since the non-Catholic doesn’t believe the early Church taught Catholic beliefs. After all if the fathers were reliable then they would teach what the non-Catholic believed.
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As my pastor said today from the pulpit as we closed 40 hours devotion with a beautiful Missa cor Sanctissimum (Mass before the Blessed Sacrament Exposed)- “They will make up an interpretation as along as it goes against the Catholic Truth.” (Protestants in regards to the Eucharist).

Most mainline Protestant Scholars however do agree that the Christians from day one believed the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. But they have a comeback saying that they all also believed the world was flat.😃

Ken
 
runandsew said:
I have noticed on some “Catholic unfriendly” chat lines, that when a Catholic is trying to argue what the early church fathers said to support the Catholic position, the response from the non-Catholic is either:
  1. It doesn’t matter, the fathers were fallible
  2. The fathers were on both sides of an issue
  3. They are all forgeries
  4. They were apostate
Do these people say all this because the early church fathers seem to teach Catholic beliefs, so therefore they can’t be trusted since the non-Catholic doesn’t believe the early Church taught Catholic beliefs. After all if the fathers were reliable then they would teach what the non-Catholic believed.
Click to expand...

Reasons 1 & 2 are perfectly true. Reason 3 is also sometimes true - in that works sometimes attributed to them, sometimes are not theirs, or are later than a named author’s times. Reason 4 also contains some truth - for the CC does not accept all that Augustine (for example) says.​

Which of the three interpretations of Romans 9-11 by Augustine do we take ? He didn’t agree with himself - so how can anybody else be expected to treat him as an unvarying & infallible oracle ? This in is no way a criticism of him - but it is a criticism of those who assume, against all reason & faith & doctrine & theology & history, that the Fathers are an undifferentiated regiment of omniscient, timeless, unimprovable, all-wise, wholly consistent, unchanging, never-disagreeing authors. Life is not like that, & neither were the Fathers.

Some Patristic theories were rejected by other Fathers - Victorinus of Pettau, like Justin Martin & Irenaeus of Lyons, was a millenarian: it was Augustine who gave millenarianism its death-blow.

Jerome held a theory of Providence which regarded God as attending only to the greater matters, not as having a Providence which extends toi the least details in the universe.

Many Fathers - Augustine, Lactantius, Cosmas Indicopleustes are three famous ones - regarded belief in the Antipodes as impossible for a Christian. There are Antipodean lands even so, & we know them as Australia & New Zealand.

Lactantius opposed the death penalty for heresy, as did Chrysostom & other Fathers - the Church was burning heretics alive by the 13th century, and Leo X in 1520 defended it.

Some Fathers held that the ransom of the Atonement was paid to the devil. As others pointed out, this made no sense, as the devil had no rights over the human race, so the idea died out after 600 or so.

Some Fathers opposed the reading of heathen authors by Christians - some, like St.Basil of Caesarea, defended it.

Are we to canonise and declare inerrant every Classical author’s mistake in the sciences, merely because such things are reproduced by this or that Father ? Do we accept the ideas of Eusebius of Caesarea & Epiphanius of Salamis on ancient history, even though these ideas are wildly inaccurate, on the mere ground that they are uttered by Fathers ? The Fathers are not & cannot be final authorities on geography, or ancient history, or on anything else. They are not inspired, & they would be the first to hold up their hands in horror at the exaggerated deference bordering on idolatry that some want to pay them.

It is perfectly possible to accept the Fathers as the fallible, often mistaken, often disagreeing, limited, people they were, without having any less respect for them. This is not disrespectful, but realistic - because it accepts what they wrote as what they wrote, without trying to to pretend that everything they ever wrote is timeless or inspired, or always in agreement with later Catholicisms, Eastern or Western. One can perfectly well learn from them, without imagining that they - few of whom knew any Hebrew, & many among the Latin Fathers, no Greek (such as Augustine) - are the final judges of the meaning of the Bible.

This is a very very short explanation of why the Fathers are not regarded as final courts of appeal, nor as inerrant. Hope it helps ##
 
Re. response #1, I always find it interesting to point out that Luther and Calvin were not infallible either and to ask why they choose to believe them rather than Ignatius and Irenaeus.

The responses are amazing, and would be funny if they weren’t so sad.
 
Another thing that protestants fail to see is that, at the time of acceptance of the book in the bible, there were writtings from several ECF that were deemed to be God inspired and revelvant to the Faith, but not from the apostles. So these writing were not included in the bible.

The were deemed to be God inspired. Does that not count for anything. God can’t be wrong or mislead the faithful.
 
What these people are saying is that if what the chruch father taught lines up clearly with Scripture is it of any eternal value. Othere-wise it is just history. We do not find any decree in the bible to follow the teaching of the Church Fathers. This does not mean that their teachings have no value. Only as what they taught agrees with the Bible does it have any value.
 
There are several movements in Protestantism today.

One is an attempt to return to the earliest Church teachings, including the teachings of the Church Fathers after the Apostles.

But another movement is an attempt to obliterate any sense of tradition or anitquity because these things are “of man” and therefore not of God.

Debate between Protestants in these two camps is quite heated. We have a “no traditions” movement in our city that basically attacks everything hinting at “tradtition,” even candles.

I recommend reading the magazine “Christianity Today” if you want a sense of what’s happening in Protestantland. You don’t have to spend money on a subscription; it’s in most public libraries, and I think there’s an online version. This magazine is considered extremely suspect by many Protestants, BTW, because they write positively of Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
 
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