And
3 John 1:13-14 - "I have much to write to you, but I do not wish to write with pen and ink. Instead, I hope to see you soon, when we can talk face to face."
Prideful Catholics; so SURE that the ECFs did a GOOD job in filling in the gaps of teaching in the book that Rome assembled.
Poor Catholics; so SURE that the ECFs did a BAD job in filling in the gaps of teaching in the book that Rome assembled; that their Dear Mary; the Untier of Knots; has had to make NUMEROUS appearances on Earth to add even MORE stuff that evidently got left out; too!
In other words, you either have both (written and oral Apostolic Tradition) or you have neither.
For example, read Jerome, whom most Protestant apologists accept as a good guy as far as the formation of the Canon is concerned.
In “Against Helvidius”, he wrote in defense of the Ever-Virginity of Mary, which was already part of the body of beliefs of the extant Churches East and West. These Churches still subsist as Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Assyrian Church of the East, all of which title Mary the "Ever Virgin", and always have.. (You can't find any earlier historical time when they didn't.)
And how did Jerome argue against Helvidius?
Sure he had his own lines of reason, his own interpretations of Scripture, his own copious scholarship. But even though he was a formidable and even vehement arguer, he did not consider his arguments disposative, as if it could be established on his own authority. No, his clincher was always, finally, that This is what the Churches teach. This is what they all believed since Apostolic times.
Helvidius had argued against the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity by appealing to Tertullian, whom Jerome simply dismissed by pointing out that Tertullian was "not a man of the church."
"We are, however, spending our strength on trifles, and, leaving the fountain of truth, are following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, (He adds, “If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man.”)He makes the same argument in the formation of the Canon. He lays aside his view (his own opinion was against the seven Greek books of the Deuterocanon) and writes to Rufinus,
"The churches choose to read Daniel in the version of Theodotion. What sin have I committed in following the judgment of the churches?"
Here's what we have to keep in mind: the ECF's relied, ultimately, on the doctrines and practices of the churches, and the churches relied on what was handed on to them from the Apostles (Apostolic Tradition), and that Tradition (what was handed on) includes the very Scriptures themselves.
1 Timothy 3:15
If I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.