How can this be? Is Scripture like a foreign language, or cryptic code, that it has to be interpreted? I've heard complaints about how those very same Church Fathers made up the Gospels themselves. I find it amazing how they didn't even try to justify their own claims in that writing. Instead, what they supposedly wrote contradicts their own claims and actions, and fixed those contradictions permanently in doctrine through the applicaiton of democratic process.
God Bless.
spunkets:
THe methodology you are using is one that lacks continuity with the Tradition of the Apostles as handed on to the Apostolic Fathers [i.e. those that new the Apostles such as St. Clement of Rome and St. Polycarp] who then handed the orthodox Apostolic Tradition to the earliest Church Fathers. These same Church Fathers did not make up the Gospels for themselves, it is thru them and their defense against the various heretical movements starting in the early 2nd century such as the Gnostics [Marcionites, Ebionitites] and continuing with the Modalist, Montanist in the early 3rd century moving on to the Arians, Manicheans, Donatist, Nestorians in the 4th and 5th that the Bible as we know it came to be.
So what Doctrines of the early Church do you reject? Do you reject St. Ignatius of Antioch’s writings [circa 107 AD] against the Docetist? Do you reject Pope Pius I’s rejection of Marcion’s doctrines in circa 144 AD? Do you reject St. Irenaeus’s writings against the various Gnostic Movements written circa 175-180AD? Do you reject the early 3rd century writings of ST. Hippolytus of Rome and the various statements of various Popes in the early 3rd century that rejected Modalism? Do you reject the Decrees of the Council of Nicea in 325AD?
I will stop at this point as I am trying to figure out your theological methodology for arriving at the views you are positing here on FR?
Regards and God Bless