Individual Church Fathers never claimed that, FK.
I didn't mean to imply otherwise, but apparently I did. :) I meant "they" in the plural, and then to be sure added the clause in parenthesis.
FK: "If any other group gets together and comes up with "dogma" or "doctrine", then it has less weight, but when the Church Fathers did it (with others of the hierarchy), you claim it was from God."
What "other group?" Heretics? Look, the Church allowed theological opinions, but there are limits. Just as there are some things your tradition will not allow and still consider someone a Baptist. Those other groups as you call them taught things that are not in conformity with what the belief concerning the Holy Trinity and Christ.
I wasn't really thinking along the lines of major heretics, just local churches who may have come to agreement locally on some matter. At least in Orthodoxy, even many Councils were local, weren't they, and thus not "officially" consensus patrum?
No, consensus patrum means the whole Church. Local or particular churches and individual fathers can be within bounds of orthodoxy and differ on issues that are not dogmatic. Contrary to popular opinion, "orthodoxy" is not a narrow, rigid set of beliefs. Orthodoxy is a solid foundation on which the faith rests. The only restriction is that, in the final analysis, whatever we believe must not violate that foundation, namely the belief in the Holy Trinity, the dual nature of Christ in one Person, the belief in Resurrection, etc.
Since there was no dogma regarding the original sin, St. Augustine's teaching did not constitute "heresy" visa-a-vis the Church in the East, and the Church in the East could dismiss his teaching without making him a "heretic." Part of the Curch could disagree with him and still consider him a Saint in the Orthodox Church.
St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three giants, the Cappadocian Fathers, thaught (for a while at least) universal salvation (he used to be Origen's student), but later realized his error and stopped teaching that, otherwise he would have been excommunicated for that teaching because the consensus patrum rejects universal salvation.
Likewise, anyone who taught that Christ was a "lesser" God than the Father, as taught by Arius (Arian heresy) or professed hierarchichal trinity of the Godhead (Gnosticism), as taught by Origen, was given a chance to recant or be excommunicated because this clashes with the foundations of the orthodox faith.
This idea of some variance being allowed within the confines of orthodoxy is evident form the earliest days of the Church. Thus, Hippolytus, an early 3rd century Christian writer left us this regarding the use of epiklesis in the liturgy (my emphases):
The Church always allowed what the Greeks call theologoumenna (theological opinions), with the understanding that they must not include heterodox beliefs but rather remain within the confines of orthodox foundations of the faith as recognized by the whole Church (i.e. consensus patrum), not local councils.