“I see you still want to obfuscate, so I will rephrase the question”
I really don’t want to obfuscate at all, MLG. When and if you come to understand Eastern Orthodoxy you will also understand that we don’t look at The Faith at all the way Western Protestants do, which makes theological discussions with Western Protestants difficult.
“Since the Scriptures are “inspired” by God, are the fathers on an even par with the inspiration by God of the Scriptures or a lessor inspiration?”
Well I don’t know if there are gradations of divine inspiration. I doubt it, but The Church determined what would be scripture and what isn’t. Scripture is divinely inspired and so is the work of the Fathers. But the writings of the Fathers are not considered scripture (they are about scripture) and aside from +John Chrysostomos’ Pascal Sermon, I don’t think any of the writings of the Fathers are read at the Divine Liturgy. I suspect that divine inspiration alone isn’t what qualifies a writing as scriptural.
All in all, I’d say divine inspiration is divine inspiration and there are no gradations of it. The Church, however, understands what is scripture and what is not and has proclaimed what is and is not scriptural.
I really don’t want to obfuscate at all, MLG. When and if you come to understand Eastern Orthodoxy you will also understand that we don’t look at The Faith at all the way Western Protestants do, which makes theological discussions with Western Protestants difficult.
“Since the Scriptures are “inspired” by God, are the fathers on an even par with the inspiration by God of the Scriptures or a lessor inspiration?”
Well I don’t know if there are gradations of divine inspiration. I doubt it, but The Church determined what would be scripture and what isn’t. Scripture is divinely inspired and so is the work of the Fathers. But the writings of the Fathers are not considered scripture (they are about scripture) and aside from +John Chrysostomos’ Pascal Sermon, I don’t think any of the writings of the Fathers are read at the Divine Liturgy. I suspect that divine inspiration alone isn’t what qualifies a writing as scriptural.
All in all, I’d say divine inspiration is divine inspiration and there are no gradations of it. The Church, however, understands what is scripture and what is not and has proclaimed what is and is not scriptural.
Well, since you view them both as divinely inspired of God, then both must be infallible, yet the church fathers disagreed and contradicted each other plenty in their writings.
So, does God contradict Himself when inspiring writings?