The Roman Catholic Church is known for making claims of possessing the fullness of God given truth, beginning with the Lord Jesus Christ bestowing the authority of the keys exclusively to the Apostle Peter. He allegedly carried that on in a chain of apostolic successors. Catholic bishops are thus said to have preserved inspired oral tradition for the past 2,000 years. It is oftentimes claimed by apologists for Rome that the church fathers were unanimous in their acceptance of various distinctive Roman Catholic dogmas. These claims are shown to be false for a variety of reasons:
1.) Church history offers descriptions of what people have done in the past. Its purpose is not to prescribe what our beliefs ought to be. Further, it is improper to view church history in a monolithic way. Historical data is subject to interpretation. Church history contains all sorts of theological developments, schisms, and reforms. It all contributes to the richness and diversity of thought within Christian tradition.
2.) Longevity does not prove truth. Do Buddhism and Hinduism contain more truth than Christianity just because they are older religions? The fact that an institution has been around for a long time does not make its claims more valid or authoritative. It can still be challenged or put under scrutiny. Heresy is still heresy, even if it was introduced early in church history or believed by a majority of professing Christians.
3.) Even if we unanimously agreed to accept papal authority, that would only eliminate doctrinal conflict in a question begging, tautological sense. That would still not reveal to us whether we should be in communion with Rome (i.e. whether we are right or wrong in our decision making). A case for Roman Catholicism would still need to be made. We are not required to embrace ideas from people who lived before us just because they were believed to be true. There is nothing inherently good about clinging to the past for its own sake.
4.) Both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches make identical claims of having been established directly by Jesus Christ, but maintain contradictory teachings. They dispute each other's claims to authority. In fact, not a single known patristic author can be cited as agreeing with every uniquely Roman Catholic dogma.
5.) The church fathers sometimes contradicted each other, and even themselves. For example, Origen initially argued against self-castration but later had himself castrated to avoid temptation. Therefore, we have reason to not put such people on par with the authority of divine Scripture. These men, no matter how godly or theologically gifted, were not inspired by God. Sometimes church fathers made factual errors. Irenaeus, for example, taught that Jesus Christ lived to be more than fifty years of age, even though gospel tradition indicates otherwise (John 8:57).
6.) Divine revelation exists independently of the writings of church fathers. They are not to be treated as a smokescreen to bypass exegetical questions. We do not have to accept everything that patristic authors taught without reservation. Who specifically gets to determine which early writers were actually church fathers? Whose writings are more authoritative than others on what topics? Who gets to decide what counts as apostolic tradition?
7.) Heresy existed even during the first century (Acts 20:28-32; 1 John 4:1-4). Even people taught directly by the apostles sometimes abandoned the faith (2 Timothy 4:14). Therefore, the argument that we should trust the church fathers because they lived closer to the time of Christ is a false one. Scripture is the only safe and reliable guide existing for the development of doctrine. Just as God never made Israel infallible to where the people could not stray into idolatry, so He did not make similar promises to preserve the church wholesale from doctrinal error.
8.) We do not have every document written by each church father on every subject. Neither were we present in the early church to take surveys of what everybody believed. Our knowledge of this period is but fragmentary. This point alone demonstrates the Roman Catholic claim of unanimous consensus in early church history to be vacuous.
9.) Protestantism itself arose from a historical context where the Reformers sought to address what they perceived to be deviations from the teachings of Jesus and the early church. They emphasized direct access to the Scriptures, the priesthood of all believers, and justification by faith alone. These ideas did not simply exist in a vacuum.
Well said, Jesse!
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