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The Church Fathers aren't all they're cracked up to be and I'm tired of pretending they are.
Are they a great resource to check yourself when writing sermons? Absolutely, if you have an 800 year expanse of guys doing exegesis, it's always great to have that second opinion. But are they the end-all-be-all determining factor concerning doctrine? Heck no lmao
"If your doctrine is true, how come it's not in the Fathers, PROT?" When you come across someone asking this question, seriously please don't go on some wild goose chase trying to find quotes from Augustine or Tertullian to shore up what you believe. It's pointless. The Fathers didn't do systematics the way we do today, and they had completely different battles to wage than we do.
Here's some handy-dandy ways to help people understand that dudes whomst've been dead for 1700 years and also wrote a lot of weird things are not the basis of our faith:
a) God inspired the Scriptures, not the Fathers. Which is good, because a whole lot of people were following Origen until they decided he was anathema for his goofy eternal merry-go-round theology.
b) The Church Fathers did not die for you. Jesus did. Pay more attention to Christ and the words of Scripture which He gave you than whatever Ambrose said.
c) Guess what? Every denomination agrees that some of the Church Fathers got stuff dead wrong. The only determining factor in which Church Father got what wrong is the denomination telling you which one. Orthobros say Augustine's doctrine is le bad. Catholics flat out delete the 28th canon of Chalcedon. Us Lutherans? Yeah, we're going to laugh off that John of Damascus guy and his big long "defense" of kissing pictures.
d) The flip side is also true. Every denomination can find some ancient theologian that says what they want him to say. Namely because there were a lot of them and unlike the inerrant supernatural consistency of Scripture, the Church Fathers disagreed with each other all the time.
d) Also consider that they were sinners too. Don't treat the Church Fathers like bugmen treat Marvel characters, ok? For the most part they were average guys that God assigned to the teaching office, but literally none of them attained some level of infallible perfection in this world. They didn't have superpowers, they still had to go to confession, and they made mistakes all the time.
Consider the Scriptures in contrast though. The Bible is inerrant, does not contradict itself, is authored by the perfect and infinite Deity that created us all, and has caused literal billions of lives to be changed for the better. Compared to the pure Word of God, the Church Fathers are a foundation of sand.
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>Some of the traditions came out of old testament religion practices continued forward
Not sure which ones you're referring to, but at face value I'm a bit cautious since much of old testament ritual are things either centered around the temple or have been made irrelevant by the cross. I would also be weary of judaizing. Again, I could be way off the mark with those concerns, but that's just my gut reaction when reading that.
>and some were revealed to priests/bishops/etc. in a dream (not a joke).
I get that there is some process by which these "revalations" are supposed to be tested but we are rather explicitly told that God's word should not be added to. If a tradition requires some external revelation and isn't found "as-is" within scripture, I am incredibly skeptical of it at face value.
I do agree that there is value in tradition but not every tradition is valuable, and none rise to the level of scripture.
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@doctorsex @SuperLutheran Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom has a lot of cool symbolism that is designed to honor and teach through showing and participation. For example, metal fans called ripidia with pictures of seraphim on both sides of the altar, and they're carried out when scripture is read or holy communion. Allegedly the idea of ripidia came to him (or some other church father) in a dream where he saw angels praying and worshipping God, following the word of God as it was brought out for the reading and body and blood of Christ at communion. The metal fans represent the seraphim and are a physical reminder of the spiritual nature of prayer and worship and of the angels worshipping God with us. The tradition doesn't save you, but it's important for a lot of reasons.
orthodoxwiki.org/Liturgical_fans
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@doctorsex @SuperLutheran Some of the traditions came out of old testament religion practices continued forward, and some were revealed to priests/bishops/etc. in a dream (not a joke). I value tradition, and I see scripture as the most important part of it. It's become hard to separate the two for me, because exagesis is a tradition even if it can exist entirely outside of any one particular church body. Churches have overstepped interpretation many times, and that's not unique to Protestants or Catholics or Orthodox. My favorite church traditions are ascetic, because it's about removing unnecessary things to leave room for God to work in your life and heart. One could certainly derive that from scripture, but practical application is the area I appreciate having more guidance on.
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The objection that always bothers me is "well how do you KNOW the Bible is the word of God" like for the first couple of centuries before the canon of made official nobody knew what the fuck they were doing
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The gordian knot of tradition can be pretty easily cut several ways, one of which is simply pointing out that any tradition at some point was novel- simply doing things because "that's how it's always been done" is insufficient. Trads love to invoke Chesterton's fence but forget that it's predicated on not knowing why the fence is there. If you know why the fence was built and can articulate why it's no longer necessary, or never was to begin with, then there really isn't a good reason to keep it up.
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See that kind of stuff, I think it's neither here nor there. I personally prefer a liturgical service, but it isn't mandated by any stretch. Where I draw the line is just stuff that just isn't there, like Marianism
SuperLutheran (Festive half)
Dr. Sex, Ph.d, Esq.
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