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To: stfassisi; metmom; boatbums; caww; presently no screen name; smvoice; Greetings_Puny_Humans; ...
I'm not sure everything you wrote is accurate regarding the Anglicans, but regardless.

You can doubt it, but take it up with one of your own:

95% of all the writings of the Church Fathers on the internet are derived from the Oxford/Edinburgh "Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers" 38 volume series. This effort was completed in the late 19th century by the Anglican divines. This entire 38 volume set is in the public domain. Nevertheless, this effort only provides a small selection of writings of the Church Fathers.

There is no Catholic magisterial statement listing the names of the Church Fathers...Most of the Church Fathers were bishops, a few were lower clerics and a fewer yet were laymen. However, there were a few female Church Fathers. One such female ecclesiastical writer in the ancient Church was Egeria of Spain. She wrote and lived during 5th century. — http://www.catholicfidelity.com/church-fathers-faq-by-joe-gallegos/

There is even less information on what is said to be original Scripture, so you're faced with a problem when you disregard information from what the Church Fathers wrote interpreting Scripture that we know was closer to the original Scripture.

First, despite your invocation of CFs as if they were determinative of doctrine, as sometimes there is disagreement btwn CFs and btwn some of them and Rome, then your real argument is that Rome is determinative of truth, and what CFs taught (vs the interpretation of them by others), and even what the stipulated unanimous consent ” means.

Once again, "It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine." — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost; p. 227; http://www.archive.org/stream/a592004400mannuoft/a592004400mannuoft_djvu.txt)

This presumes the magisterium is what faithfully interprets Scripture, based upon tradition, yet the church began in dissent from those which, like Rome, presumed a level of assured veracity than Scripture teaches.

Likewise, you presume that uninspired writers (CFs) were accurately interpreting Scripture based on accurate knowledge of what the NT church believed, rather than seeking to use Scripture is support traditions of men, while the reality is they somewhat engaged in both, yet with differences btwn them, and perhaps changes in their own understanding over time.

The use of "proof texting" is notably seen in no less a CF than Jerome in his attempt to support his unbalanced "tradition" on marriage versus celibacy. Engaging in a false dilemma, Jerome argues that since 1Cor. 7:1 says "it is good not to touch a woman, [then] it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil..The difference, then, between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not sinning and doing well..."

While Jerome condescends a less harsher comparison may be used, the primary logic of Jerome renders all marriages in this life to be evil, yet the Holy Spirit clearly states that,

"Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. " (Hebrews 13:4)

While ideally we should not have to engage in anything that may gratify the flesh or distract from or compete for attention to purely spiritual things, nowhere are marital relations portrayed as evil or unclean (except during menstrual period), which idea is held by a form of gnosticism, but is included in all the things we can do to the glory of God. (1Cor. 10:31)

However, in Jerome's unbalanced theological tradition which he wrests support from Scripture for, he reasons,

The same Apostle in another place commands us to pray always. If we are to pray always, it follows that we [priests] must never be in the bondage of wedlock, for as often as I render my wife her due, I cannot pray...Now a priest must always offer sacrifices for the people: he must therefore always pray. And if he must always pray, he must always be released from the duties of marriage.  

The perverse conclusion of Jerome is readily apparent in the light of the fact that marital relations are not the only things that may distract from prayer for a time (which does not mean it cannot/should not be practiced prayerfully like other activities), but eating, driving, etc. also may. Thus Jerome's conclusion is that a minister (which are never called priests as a distinct class) cannot eat or drink, or engage in any like physical activity. Yet in further seeking to use Scripture to support his skewed view of marriage, Jerome next invokes Genesis 2 and 7, arguing,

"This too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, “God saw that it was good,” on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness. (Against Jovinianus, Book 1, Cps. 7,13,16,33; http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vi.vi.I.html)

So much for sending out disciples by pairs, while this renowned Bible scholar ignores that it was after the 4th and 6th days that GoD said His creation was God (Gn. 1:18,19,31) Thus according to Jerome's logic even numbers also denote cleanness.

Similarly, Augustine held a perverse view of marital relations, believing that Heb. 13:4 only means the marriage bed is not defiled if fornication and adultery or relations without the intent to procreate is avoided, and that marital intercourse could not be engaged in without sinful passions, though these were excused for Christians. In On Marriage and Concupiscence (Book I, cp. 27) he states,

Marriage is itself "honourable in all" Hebrews 13:4 the goods which properly appertain to it; but even when it has its "bed undefiled" (not only by fornication and adultery, which are damnable disgraces, but also by any of those excesses of cohabitation such as do not arise from any prevailing desire of children, but from an overbearing lust of pleasure, which are venial sins in man and wife), yet, whenever it comes to the actual process of generation, the very embrace which is lawful and honourable cannot be effected without the ardour of lust, so as to be able to accomplish that which appertains to the use of reason and not of lust....This is the carnal concupiscence, which, while it is no longer accounted sin in the regenerate, yet in no case happens to nature except from sin. — http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15071.htm

Now, this ardour, whether following or preceding the will, does somehow, by a power of its own, move the members which cannot be moved simply by the will, and in this manner it shows itself not to be the servant of a will which commands it, but rather to be the punishment of a will which disobeys it. It shows, moreover, that it must be excited, not by a free choice, but by a certain seductive stimulus, and that on this very account it produces shame. This is the carnal concupiscence, which, while it is no longer accounted sin in the regenerate, yet in no case happens to nature except from sin. It is the daughter of sin, as it were... http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf105.xvi.v.xxvii.html

Similarly, Tertullian argued that second marriage, having been freed from the first by death,

“will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication,” partly based on the reasoning that such involves desiring to marry a women out of sexual ardor. (An Exhortation to Chastity, Chapter IX.—Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery; http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.iii.vi.ix.html)

The reasoning here would easily extend to any gratification of the flesh, from eating chocolate to scratching a itch, yet, again, Scripture does not teach that the marriage bed is unclean, nor (by extension) that anything that gratifies the flesh must be sinful (cf. Col. 2)

The imbalanced tradition on marriage versus celibacy led to the belief that clergy were to be single and practice continence even if married, or single or widowed ones could never marry, yet married pastors with children was evidently the norm in the NT church, (1Tim. 3:1-7) with the only known single pastors being two traveling apostles, and who yet had the power to marry. (1Cor. 9:5)

The views of these in this area are one example among others of CFs lack of discernment and misusing Scripture to support a skewed tradition, rather than "rightly dividing the word of truth" in a balanced manner.

While historical commentary may provide a valuable insight into what a portion of Scripture is referring to, error was competing for apostolic truth even during the time of the apostles, and rather than correcting it, infected commentators can instead perpetuate it and subjecting Scripture to the church, like the error of the Pharisees, versus the church to Scripture. And thus we have the infallible perpetual petrine papacy, praying to the departed , and more as well as different interpretations of the CFs and tradition. Au

1,758 posted on 06/11/2013 12:26:36 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: daniel1212
Nevertheless, this effort only provides a small selection of writings of the Church Fathers.


1,767 posted on 06/11/2013 2:17:52 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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