Fathers vs. the Evangelicals

What does “ taught by St. Peter the Apostle
mean when the quotes are by other, later persons, not Apostles, and not, insofar as I know, divinely inspired>

I never understood the claim to sacred tradition as the apostles did not have any Christian traditions to call upon.

Thank you, and amen.

Unfortunately, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox don't agree with the church fathers about everything. Almost all the church fathers interpreted the Hexameron literally. But now Catholics/Orthodox, who bow to the fathers on every other issue, simply shrug their shoulders and say "they were men of their time" when it comes to the early chapters of Genesis.

Since Genesis 1-11 is not the slightest bit more impossible or unlikely than the virgin birth, resurrection of the dead, or real presence, I have concluded the near universal embrace of evolution and higher criticism by Catholics/Orthodox is based on nothing more than an antipathy towards the people with whom belief in Genesis1-11 is associated--a reason that is purely sociological, with no theological reasoning whatsoever.

The Church Fathers used both Scripture and Tradition to explain and defend the Catholic faith.

Which explains the rampant heresy and the intro duction of paganism into the church.

what it means is, if you taught me what baptism is, how it is to be performed and who is to be baptized, i would understand what you believed about baptism. since you are not an Apostle, i am free to disregard what you believe.
however, if someone was taught by the Apostle Peter, Paul or John and we know that person was ordained to the episcopate, then that person’s writing can be trusted to convey the teaching they received directly from an Apostle.
it is how the “universal” or “catholic” faith was developed. since the Apostles traveled the known Roman world preaching the same Gospel, someone in Syria, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Rome, India, Jerusalem, etc. etc all received the same faith, the catholic faith.

So the Protestants all the sudden rediscovered the true hidden meaning some 1600 years later?

How quaint. I’m not about to address your strawman accusing the Church Fathers of paganism.

In the Protestant case, it’s invent your own religion.

The Bible needs an interpreter. What makes you so confident that you are interpreting it correctly?

Are you saying that your pastor understands scripture or what it means better than the earliest Christians?

Chapter XXIII, “On the Development of Doctrine in the Church”

[54] “But some one will say perhaps, ‘Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church?’ Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alternation, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

[55] The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which mature age has given birth, these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly a true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

[56] In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterated, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits.

[57] For example: Our forefathers in the old time sowed wheat in the Church’s field. It would be most unmeet and iniquitous if we, their descendants, instead of the genuine truth of wheat, should reap the counterfeit error of tares. This rather should be the result’there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind’wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensure in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles. God forbid that in that spiritual paradise from plants of cinnamon and balsam darnel and wolfsbane should of a sudden shoot forth.

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance an go forth to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes one, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but no that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.

[59] But the Church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited in her charge, never changes anything in them, never diminishes, never adds, does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose her own, does not appropriate what is another’s, but while dealing faithfully and judiciously with ancient doctrine, keeps this one object carefully in view’if there be anything which antiquity has left shapeless and rudimentary, to fashion and polish it, if anything already reduced to shape and developed, to consolidate and strengthen it, if any already ratified and defined to keep and guard it. Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practiced negligently should thenceforward be practiced with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils’this, and nothing else’she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by Tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name.” –Saint Vincent of Lerins

http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/documents/Vincent%20of%20Lerins_The%20Development%20of%20Doctrine%20in%20the%20Catholic%20Church.htm

Chapter XXIII, “On the Development of Doctrine in the Church”

[54] “But some one will say perhaps, ‘Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church?’ Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alternation, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

[55] The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which mature age has given birth, these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly a true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

[56] In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterated, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits.

[57] For example: Our forefathers in the old time sowed wheat in the Church’s field. It would be most unmeet and iniquitous if we, their descendants, instead of the genuine truth of wheat, should reap the counterfeit error of tares. This rather should be the result’there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind’wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensure in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles. God forbid that in that spiritual paradise from plants of cinnamon and balsam darnel and wolfsbane should of a sudden shoot forth.

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance an go forth to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes one, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but no that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.

[59] But the Church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited in her charge, never changes anything in them, never diminishes, never adds, does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose her own, does not appropriate what is another’s, but while dealing faithfully and judiciously with ancient doctrine, keeps this one object carefully in view’if there be anything which antiquity has left shapeless and rudimentary, to fashion and polish it, if anything already reduced to shape and developed, to consolidate and strengthen it, if any already ratified and defined to keep and guard it. Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practiced negligently should thenceforward be practiced with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils’this, and nothing else’she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by Tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name.” –Saint Vincent of Lerins

http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/documents/Vincent%20of%20Lerins_The%20Development%20of%20Doctrine%20in%20the%20Catholic%20Church.htm

The apostles preached first then wrote books. The oral word is the key to understanding the written word because it safeguards against heresies.

Do you trust a preacher who lived 16 centuries after Jesus to understand the apostles’ preaching better than one who personally heard the apostles preach?

The Apostolic Fathers knew Jesus’s apostles and heard their preachings.

You just posted a challenge for Protestants to examine their beliefs by those of the church fathers. I point out to you that Catholics/Orthodox don't agree with the fathers on everything and now you defend Catholic/Orthodox dissent from the fathers by saying that of course church doctrine must "develop." So you're saying Protestants can't disagree with the fathers but Catholics/Orthodox can. Sheer hypocrisy.

Ain't it funny that Catholic belief "developed" away from a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 but not on other matters (real presence, virgin birth, resurrection of the dead, etc.)? It seems that Catholic doctrine very conveniently and coincidentally "develops" only with regard to Genesis 1-11. I wonder why? It's not as if the virgin birth is any more "scientific" than six day young earth creationism.

Hey, I understand. You're a Catholic convert from Evangelicalism, so you have to be an enthusiastic evolutionist and higher critic to prove you aren't still a Baptist (or whatever).

The Bible needs an interpreter. What makes you so confident that you are interpreting it correctly?

Do the teachings of the RC Church need an interpreter as well? How can you know that they teach without some intermediary interpreting their interpretation?

We don’t assert that scripture interprets scripture.

Right, but does the interpretation of scripture interpret itself or do you need another layer of bureaucracy?

If it interprets itself and there is one God, then why all of the 1,000s of divergent opinions among those who cling to Sola Scriptura?

I wouldn’t call the bishops acting as the successors of the apostles bureaucracy.

If it interprets itself and there is one God, then why all of the 1,000s of divergent opinions among those who cling to Sola Scriptura?

Examples please. I'm sure you've been asked before as have other Catholics who spew the same party line.

Scripture does interpret Scripture. It must be internally consistent with itself. If there is an apparent contradiction, then the interpretation is wrong and it needs to be further investigated, not subjugated to a self-appointed allegedly infallible magisterium.

riune God.This section will deal with various aspects of the Holy Trinity in patristic thought. Corunum will cover such things as: God as Triune, the divinity of the Son, the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the procession of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Trinity
Documents illustrating that God is three divine Persons in the unity of one divine nature

God the Son
Documents illustrating that the Second Person of the Trinity,the Son, is consubstantial with the Father

Filioque
Documents illustrating that the Third Person of the Trinity,the Holy Spirit, proceeds from both the Father and the Son as one Principle.

God the Holy Spirit
Documents illustrating that the Third Person of the Trinity,the Holy Spirit, is God. The ante-Nicene Church did not express the deity of the Holy Spirit in very explicit terms, as much of the controversy in the ante-Nicene centered around the early Christological heresies. Much of the work for synthesizing the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's deity was accomplished by St. Athanasius and the Cappodocians.

If it interprets itself and there is one God, then why all of the 1,000s of divergent opinions among those who cling to Sola Scriptura?

Maybe their doctrine is "developing?"