The Church fathers

The writings of the "fathers" are wide open to interpretation just as everything else translated from one language to another. Read some of their commentary on John chapter 6 and you will see that Protestants will interpret their writings different from a Roman Catholic. A father who agrees with key points of RC theology will be considered a Church father while others (like Tertullian for example, who didnt like infant baptism) are just "ecclesiastical writers".

BTW, there isnt one father who anyone will agree with on every point. They are fallible

 

The real value of the fathers writings are their Scripture quotations as witnesses to the original text of Christ and the apostles.

This has its difficulties because it would appear that they made mistakes quoting from memory.

HankD

 

Then you should be a Roman Catholic. Not a Baptist. If the fathers agree mostly with the RC church then why are you not a Catholic? Are you a Baptist against your true convictions?

 

Considering their "close proximity" to the apostles and the fact that they agree with each other most of the time and they all claim "real presence" in the euchrist, then are you and I fools for remaining Baptist Bible believers?

 

A really great book on the subject is:

Four Witnesses
The Early Church in Her own Words
Clement of Rome
Ignatius of Antioch
Justin Martyr
Irenaeus of Lyons

Edited by Rod Bennett

The Church Fathers don't 'agree' with the Catholic Church, in their day, they were members of the Church.

 

I agree...I am just about finished with this book. I have learned much about the Early Church and inspired by their faith.

 

These verses in Acts 20 talks about two problems:

29. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
30. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

One is the wolves coming in among the flock. The other is men 'of your own selves.' Even elders can mislead the flock. This may be one of the few verses about 'sheep stealing' in the Bible. Elders of the church don't steal sheep from each other, because all the sheep belong to Christ. They steal sheep if they steal sheep away from Christ, causing them to follow themselves in the wrong direction.

 

Moderators should make note of this comment. Can this poster post in Baptist only forums being baptist in name only?

 

Actually, Athanasius was just as much influenced by Origen. What Arianism and the later Nicene "orthodoxy" had in common was the emphasis on the separate "hypostases". The debate between them then was whether the 2nd and 3rd were eternal or created.
But earlier fathers did not express the Godhead quite this way. Even right before the Nicene Council, the Bishop of Rome himself, Dionysius, "was clearly shocked at the Origen-inspired doctrine of the three hypostases", as suggested by Dionysius of Alexandria, "which seemed to him to undermine the divine monarchy", and he implied they were "virtual tritheists, splitting the indivisible oneness of the Deity into 'three powers, three absolutely separate hypostases, three divinities'" (Kelley, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 134).

It also seems that there was a great change in the church between the apostles and the earliest fathers. This has been called "the lost century".

Jesse Lyman Hurlbut The Story of the Christian Church p.41

William J. McGothlin The Course Of Christian History

Samuel G. Green A Handbook of Christian History:

William Fitzgerald Lectures on Ecclesiastical History:

Philip Schaff History of the Christian Church

This has always been of interest, but recently, it came to light again as I debated the preterists, who say that the Kingdom began in AD70; a teaching we do not really see immediately afteward; as the early fathers continued to wait for a return of Christ. The destruction of Jerusalem, I have learned has a lot more significance than we have realized. This probably does figure into what happened to the writings, doctrine and practice of the Church. It was after this that the Church began its ascent to the later "Catholicism", with bishops becoming exalted, and baptism and communion taking on mystical significance.

So while we can look to the fathers to get an idea of what the original teaching was, still, we must realize that even by their time, a lot had already changed. Actually; we have the original teachings in the New Testament; but it all boils down to the correct interpretation of them.

 

It boils down to more than that, because it is tradition that gives us the New Testament in the first place. Men of God penned the New Testament and men of God decided on the canon of the New Testament. So it begs the question, is the New Testament canon infallible?

 

The early Church evolved directly into what is now called the Orthodox Church. Was the RCC expelled from the Church in 1054 for teaching heresy?

 

For every one Protestant that leaves their church (an example would be Cardinal Newman) hundreds upon hundreds of former Catholics fill Baptist Churches. Are they just ignorant?