SuperLutheran (Avignon Half) on Nostr: The Church Fathers aren't all they're cracked up to be and I'm tired of pretending ...
The Church Fathers aren't all they're cracked up to be and I'm tired of pretending they are.
Are they a great resource to check yourself when writing sermons? Absolutely, if you have an 800 year expanse of guys doing exegesis, it's always great to have that second opinion. But are they the end-all-be-all determining factor concerning doctrine? Heck no lmao
"If your doctrine is true, how come it's not in the Fathers, PROT?" When you come across someone asking this question, seriously please don't go on some wild goose chase trying to find quotes from Augustine or Tertullian to shore up what you believe. It's pointless. The Fathers didn't do systematics the way we do today, and they had completely different battles to wage than we do.
Here's some handy-dandy ways to help people understand that dudes whomst've been dead for 1700 years and also wrote a lot of weird things are not the basis of our faith:
a) God inspired the Scriptures, not the Fathers. Which is good, because a whole lot of people were following Origen until they decided he was anathema for his goofy eternal merry-go-round theology.
b) The Church Fathers did not die for you. Jesus did. Pay more attention to Christ and the words of Scripture which He gave you than whatever Ambrose said.
c) Guess what? Every denomination agrees that some of the Church Fathers got stuff dead wrong. The only determining factor in which Church Father got what wrong is the denomination telling you which one. Orthobros say Augustine's doctrine is le bad. Catholics flat out delete the 28th canon of Chalcedon. Us Lutherans? Yeah, we're going to laugh off that John of Damascus guy and his big long "defense" of kissing pictures.
d) The flip side is also true. Every denomination can find some ancient theologian that says what they want him to say. Namely because there were a lot of them and unlike the inerrant supernatural consistency of Scripture, the Church Fathers disagreed with each other all the time.
d) Also consider that they were sinners too. Don't treat the Church Fathers like bugmen treat Marvel characters, ok? For the most part they were average guys that God assigned to the teaching office, but literally none of them attained some level of infallible perfection in this world. They didn't have superpowers, they still had to go to confession, and they made mistakes all the time.
Consider the Scriptures in contrast though. The Bible is inerrant, does not contradict itself, is authored by the perfect and infinite Deity that created us all, and has caused literal billions of lives to be changed for the better. Compared to the pure Word of God, the Church Fathers are a foundation of sand.
Are they a great resource to check yourself when writing sermons? Absolutely, if you have an 800 year expanse of guys doing exegesis, it's always great to have that second opinion. But are they the end-all-be-all determining factor concerning doctrine? Heck no lmao
"If your doctrine is true, how come it's not in the Fathers, PROT?" When you come across someone asking this question, seriously please don't go on some wild goose chase trying to find quotes from Augustine or Tertullian to shore up what you believe. It's pointless. The Fathers didn't do systematics the way we do today, and they had completely different battles to wage than we do.
Here's some handy-dandy ways to help people understand that dudes whomst've been dead for 1700 years and also wrote a lot of weird things are not the basis of our faith:
a) God inspired the Scriptures, not the Fathers. Which is good, because a whole lot of people were following Origen until they decided he was anathema for his goofy eternal merry-go-round theology.
b) The Church Fathers did not die for you. Jesus did. Pay more attention to Christ and the words of Scripture which He gave you than whatever Ambrose said.
c) Guess what? Every denomination agrees that some of the Church Fathers got stuff dead wrong. The only determining factor in which Church Father got what wrong is the denomination telling you which one. Orthobros say Augustine's doctrine is le bad. Catholics flat out delete the 28th canon of Chalcedon. Us Lutherans? Yeah, we're going to laugh off that John of Damascus guy and his big long "defense" of kissing pictures.
d) The flip side is also true. Every denomination can find some ancient theologian that says what they want him to say. Namely because there were a lot of them and unlike the inerrant supernatural consistency of Scripture, the Church Fathers disagreed with each other all the time.
d) Also consider that they were sinners too. Don't treat the Church Fathers like bugmen treat Marvel characters, ok? For the most part they were average guys that God assigned to the teaching office, but literally none of them attained some level of infallible perfection in this world. They didn't have superpowers, they still had to go to confession, and they made mistakes all the time.
Consider the Scriptures in contrast though. The Bible is inerrant, does not contradict itself, is authored by the perfect and infinite Deity that created us all, and has caused literal billions of lives to be changed for the better. Compared to the pure Word of God, the Church Fathers are a foundation of sand.