Yes. THOSE Church Fathers.
The justification argument is complicated, and too many of you don’t even understand what the Catholic position because you think we believe salvation like a gumball machine where we deposit a “work” and automatically earn a treat as if God were constrained to give a grace instead of giving it freely. We don’t think that.
So you throw up a bunch of quotes you got from some website somewhere. To refute them properly, I have to literally go back and do an extensive research project on each quote, determining what the context of the Fathers’ arguments were (if even the quotes were accurate in the first place.) and why the Catholic position still remains correct. Because I know that the Catholic position was *based on a thorough understanding of what the Fathers said in the first place*.
I’m not retired. I don’t have time to do all that research. And you won’t read it anyway.
But I suspect that I’m the only one in this discussion who has read Clement and Ignatius on the authority of bishops. Who has read Augustine’s numerous homilies on the veneration of the martyrs. Who has read Irenaeus on the authority of the Bishop of Rome in Chapter 3 of the Adversus Haeresis.
There’s a lot in there that you would find....uncomfortable.
Go back and read the Church Fathers’ entire works, and see what they believed for yourself. IF they truly DID agree with you, it will only strengthen your arguments against the Catholic Church, right?
Of course if they didn’t......well......
“The justification argument is complicated.”
Pull the other one; it’s got bells on.
You just spent several days trying to come up with some desperate argument that the church fathers didn’t believe in salvation through faith alone, and the best you can come up with is that the church fathers contradict themselves?
Then why do you cite them in the firat place?
Or are you claiming that they REALLY mean the opposite of what they say, just like you do with Jesus and the Apostles?
It’s pretty pathetic in either case; you’re really not worth replying to any more if that’s the best you’ve got.
And finally, the church fathers would denounce modern day Roman Catholicism as heresy and embrace the Reformers as the True Church.
What else could they do with a church that promotes sodomy in its priests, elected Pope Frank, and both protected and enabled the rape of children?
Just to trigger you, lol.