Church Fathers And The Protestant "reformers"

[Cure of Ars]

[quote]
"The Reformation is an argument not just about the Bible but about the early Christian fathers, whom the Protestants wanted to claim. This is one of those things that is so obvious nobody has paid much attention to it—then you look and you see it everywhere.

"The Reformers use the Fathers all over the place. We know Calvin read Augustine, and we discovered recently that Luther read Jerome—he had copies annotated in his own hand. The index of Calvin's Institutes is filled with an enormous number of quotations from the Fathers. And in the first preface to that work, addressed to Francis I, Calvin did his best to show his teachings were in complete harmony with the Fathers.

"The Protestants did this because they were keen to have ancestors. They knew that innovation was another word for heresy. 'Ours is the ancient tradition,' they said. 'The innovations were introduced in the Middle Ages!' They issued anthologies of the Fathers to show the Fathers had taught what the Reformers were teaching.
"But they also turned to the Fathers because they found them important sources of insight into the text of Scripture. Calvin and Melanchthon both believed it was a very strong argument against a given theological position if you couldn't find authorization for it in the Fathers.

"All the Reformers loved Augustine (Luther, remember, was an Augustinian friar). Calvin, though he loved Augustine for doctrine, preferred Chrysostom's approach to biblical interpretation.

"Chrysostom is a verse-by-verse commentator in his sermons. Calvin doesn't mimic Chrysostom, but he appreciates his model. Augustine flies a little too high above the text for Calvin—he is too quick to go to figures of speech, allegory, and so forth. Chrysostom flies at a lower level.

"Finally, the Reformation was not an argument about everything, but about just some things. It was not, for example, about the Trinity or the two natures of Christ. The Protestants had their own slant on these doctrines, but they agreed basically with Roman Catholics. Both confessed the Trinity and the two natures of Christ. And if we ask where these accepted doctrines came from—they came from the Fathers' reflections on the Bible!" [/quote]

[url="http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ZlVd_VILhhQJ:www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/102/52.0.html+John+Calvin+church+fathers&hl=en&ie=UTF-8"]http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ZlVd_...&hl=en&ie=UTF-8[/url]

[Cure of Ars]

[b]Encyclopedia Article from Encarta [/b]

[quote]According to Calvin, the Bible specified the nature of theology and of any human institutions. Thus, his statements on doctrine began and ended in Scripture, although [b]he frequently cited the church fathers and important medieval Catholic thinkers[/b]. He sought to minimize speculation on divine matters and instead to draw on the Word of God. He also urged the church to recover its original vitality and purity.[/quote]


[url="http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Y-y8JyHLvCgJ:encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570916/John_Calvin.html+John+Calvin+church+fathers&hl=en&ie=UTF-8"]http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Y-y8J...&hl=en&ie=UTF-8[/url]

[Cure of Ars]

I actually meant for this to be in the apologetics section. I’m not really looking to debate anything here.

[cmotherofpirl]

I'll leave it here for awhile so Curiious Protestant might want to raed it, then I'll put it in apologetics for you.

[ICTHUS]

I don't see why this comes as a suprise to anyone. Sola Scriptura does not entail that we use the Bible to the exclusion of everything else, it rather means that we submit all other authorities to the scrutiny of the Bible, and whatever is unbiblical we reject.

I am greatly edified by reading Patristics (especially St. Augustine), but I am always careful to reject anything which the Fathers say which is unscriptural (such as their emphasis on purgatory, 'free will', and Mary worship)

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Sep 29 2004, 06:44 AM'] I don't see why this comes as a suprise to anyone. Sola Scriptura does not entail that we use the Bible to the exclusion of everything else, it rather means that we submit all other authorities to the scrutiny of the Bible, and whatever is unbiblical we reject.

I am greatly edified by reading Patristics (especially St. Augustine), but I am always careful to reject anything which the Fathers say which is unscriptural (such as their emphasis on purgatory, 'free will', and Mary worship) [/quote]
The Protestant [i]sola scriptura[/i] doctrine is non-sensical because the canon of scripture itself is not contained within the Bible. The canon of scripture is an extrabiblical tradition infallibly defined by the Church's Magisterium. As St. Augustine said, "But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." [St. Augustine, [u]Against the Epistle of Manichaeus called Fundamental[/u]]

[Cure of Ars]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Sep 29 2004, 08:44 AM'] I don't see why this comes as a suprise to anyone. Sola Scriptura does not entail that we use the Bible to the exclusion of everything else, it rather means that we submit all other authorities to the scrutiny of the Bible, and whatever is unbiblical we reject.

I am greatly edified by reading Patristics (especially St. Augustine), but I am always careful to reject anything which the Fathers say which is unscriptural (such as their emphasis on purgatory, 'free will', and Mary worship) [/quote]
If the Fathers held to "Mary worship" then why listen to them?