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To: boatbums
Some points on your post:
1. The fact is that the “early Fathers” were mostly heretics! --> That's not a "fact" anymore than it is fact that the moon is made of cream cheese. A heretic is a person who committed heresy. Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma --> by that definition, none of them are heretics, how can DAvid Cloud call them that?

The only genuine “church fathers” are the apostles and prophets their writings that were given by divine inspiration and recorded in the Holy Scripture Ok, so not an apostle nor a prophet with the authorship of Hebrews in dispute, if it was not written by an apostle should it be discounted? What about Revelation if the author John of Patmos is not John the Apostle? This definition of Church Fathers is not the accepted one,nor has ever been and has holes in it's theory.

3. Further, we only have a very partial record of the early centuries and the surviving writings have been heavily filtered by Rome --> Now, that is historically and factually FALSE, wrong, in error you have the works of Josephus and secular writings that confirm that what was written IS as what we have now. Prove it to be otherwise. Your pastors can't so they build up a conspiracy theory

On Ignatius --> You just point out three conclusions with no comment

On Irenaeus (c. 125-202) --> ditto --> in fact, you show how Catholic Doctrine on infant baptism, Eucharist, the True Presence etc. date from the Early Church. Bravo

On Clement --> Prove the false statement made: Clement intermingled the philosophy of Plato with Christianity. where is the proof for your pastor's judgements? 1800 years later, your pastor presumes to know more about the times then?
He helped develop the doctrine of purgatory and believed that most men would eventually be saved. --> Now, now, are you Calvinist or Arminian in your beliefs? THe pastor is probably Calvinist, hence the jab

On Tertulian --> Again, more statements with no proof.

On Cyprian --> being a Baptist website of course your pastor says He supported the heresy of infant baptism.

On Origen --> as in my original post I said that Origen is NOT a Church Father, but we read some of his writings -- in others he is plainly wrong, but he was in the early centuries investigating and a lot of his books or theories are really questions

On Eusebius --> Nothing here except some weird sentences like Constantine the Great, who had joined church and state in the Roman Empire and had thereby laid the foundation for the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church, hired Eusebius to produce some Greek New Testaments. "to produce"? And also accusing Eusebius of making edits -->WHERE IS THE PROOF for this accusation?

On Jerome --> Jerome followed the false teaching of asceticism "False teaching"? And by whose words is it "false" -- so John the Baptist was false? Your pastors do not know what they are talking about

On Ambrose, Augustine, John Chrysostom etc. you have no more than a pastor's views on a subject

Let's repeat --> You have posted only one pastor's personal views and opinions

-->

these are not facts,

these are not statistics,

these are not even cross-verified observations,

these are personal opinions of some pastor with no backing evidence when he slurs a historical figure

and only statements saying "Oh, this guy in the 1st century practised and preached about infant baptism, but I don't like that, hence the 1st century guy must be wrong"


Do some actual reading on Church Fathers.
3,358 posted on 07/29/2010 12:09:32 PM PDT by Cronos (Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. "Allah": Satan's current status)
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To: Cronos
Good post, pointing out the logical contradictions and errors contained in this “pastor's” little diatribe against the Church.

A mishmash of stuff thrown out there in the hope that something would stick to the wall.

3,366 posted on 07/29/2010 12:20:31 PM PDT by Deo volente (God willing, America will survive this Obamination.)
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To: Cronos

Just a point of order here...this is not ‘my pastor’. In fact when I was saving the document you posted, I tried to save it as a Word document with the name “early church fathers” and discovered I already had a doc by that name. When I read it again, I felt it added some information to the topic we were discussing. I still think that and the knee-jerk reaction to what is being said without noting that this author uses “sourced” material - not just his own thoughts - is quite telling. We are fussed at because we don’t read up on the history and opposing views, and then, the very same ‘fussers’ do the very same thing.


3,543 posted on 07/29/2010 6:13:05 PM PDT by boatbums (God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to him.)
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