"Church Fathers"

[Amie]

Why do people study the "church fathers"? It seems to me that it is as if the point is to build up ones own view. It's not presented then as "my" and "your" view, but as "my and the church fathers" against "your" view. So the point in learning their views, is to bolster ones' own position.

Is there importance other than position to learn what they believed?

What also of the idea of history being written by the victors? Like, who decided who the "church fathers" got to be?

..need I even bring up the absence of "church mothers"..

Thanks ahead,

Amie

[jlv]

Amie,

The New Testament wasn't written to us. As preterists, we are concerned about audience relevance. How do you get into the heads of the audience so you can understand Scripture the way they should have understood Scripture?

Catch that?

There's the way moderns claim the ancients understood.

There's the way the ancients actually understood.

There's the way they should have understood.

The first usually has no bearing on reality. That's what you are complaining about.

The other 2 are in many ways very close. For example, they generally understood Mattew 24-25 to be fulfilled. They were confused about The Revelation, but they were generally Greek living a hundred years later.

Blessings,

JL

[Me Again]

Leaving the Mothers vs. Fathers issue out for the moment, I would say that one big thing that the "Fathers" tell us is how varied the opinions were in the early church. It is absolutely false to try to claim that the Fathers were unified in their theology. On top of the writings that are usually referenced today, there were probably tens of thousands of other books and articles written that were destroyed; most likely by the RCC in order to eliminate dissent. As an example, it is said that Origen wrote 6,000 books, although we only possess a small portion of those. Where are the rest? How many other "Fathers" were there that wrote prolifically but we possess not one single document of theirs? And the ones who, like Origen, have left behind a dozen or so, but actually wrote hundreds, and perhaps thousands?

I believe that as preterism takes hold in the academy, more scholarship will be done on these ancient writings. Some of the translations are suspect, in my opinion. E.g., in some books like Enoch, we are treated endlessly to "HELL" as a translation of some word. Is it possible that this again is an example of translator's bias? I think so.

Ancient documents are valuable for their history. If they hold value theologically, great; but I do not think they should drive our theology. Just because Justin Martyr wrote something doesn't mean that Justin's contemporaries thought much of what he had to write. Hell, look at me. I write a lot - but does anybody care? :)

ed

[loveroftruth]

Why would we think that the "Fathers" knew all or any truth?
Look how many views there are now :eek:
I am sure it was no different then.

[Me Again]

Exactly. And there's no possible way that we can determine what the "majority" believed anyway...thousands of years could mean millions of documents lost or destroyed, especially when you factor in that the Roman church destroyed many "banned" books during the Inquisition and earlier that dated to those post-apostolic times.

ed

[Jason Hall]

Knowing what the "church fathers" thought teaches us what was thought before the following 1700+ years of dogma that's been created. I've not read much of their stuff myself, but I do see it as helpful to understand who they were, because they were a huge part of the creation of doctrines. If you understand what they thought, you could understand why some doctrines are what they are. You can also see that even those so close to the Parousa were as confused as most of use all are now...which is conforting in that we're all in the same boat. Also, along that same vein: when the age of the church is used as proof of it being right in certain views, you could point to the "fathers" and show that even older people said otherwise.

But using "church fathers" to prove anything, as Scripture is used, is silly.