BH

Why should we believe anything the "church fathers" have to say about church history, the formation of the canon, ect.?

How do we know that they haven't lied or been mistaken in their understanding of events?

Toto

You should not believe anything uncritically. Subject the church fathers writings to the same standards you use with other historical sources, many of which have an agenda.

This doesn't require throwing away all of the history of antiquity. But it means recognizing that we can't know everything with 100% certainty.

Was there some particular church father or some issue that concerns you in particular?

BH

I was wondering about the heretics of the first century or two. As far as I know we don't have any books and commentaries written by them about either the accepted books of the Bible or their own books.

How do we know that what the "church fathers" said about their teachings were not misunderstandings or lies?

Toto

We don't.

mountainman

As Toto has already commented, we know very little.
Many assumptions and inferences are being made even
in the mainstream interpretation of what little evidence
still remains about the first 300 years of antiquity (0-300).

How do we know that the writings of christianity and the
"church fathers" were not all assembled under the guidance
and skills of Eusebius Pamphilus of Caesarea, in the library
of Caesarea in which precise location the writings of Origen
were perverted, under the sponsorship of Constantine?

Theories of history of this antiquity are many and varied.
All vie for consideration on the basis of some form of
integrity and consistency, with all fragments of knowledge
from that period and/or the dominant mainstream paradigm
(ie: contemporary belief system).

Here is a brief list of these available citations to knowledge
from the historical past. It is not meant to be exhaustive.

* literature (written words) - ms, papyrii fragments, etc
* architecture and buildings
* coins
* inscriptions on buildings, structures, headstones, slabs, etc
* symbols drawn on same
* statues and art
* graffiti

There are probably others that escape me for the moment.
Can anyone add to the list?


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

BH

Let me get more specific.

Let's take the so-called Judaizers found in Galatians and Acts. How do we know, assuming Jesus really lived which I personally do, that the "Judaizers" though a small group were the "original" Christians and later "Paul" and gang convinced everyone that such was not the case?

mountainman

There is a bigger problem than that relating to the church
fathers, for example Ignatius of Antioch, and his letters,
purportedly written (in accordance to the Eusebian chronology)
around 100 CE or earlier. As all theories of the history of christianity
must have it, it was people like Ignatius who passed down to
the earliest recognised historian (Eusebius) the gospels, letters
and acts themselves. So did the author Ignatius live circa 100 CE?

UNLIKELY. We find current scholarship (Allen) linking the
author of these letters to period of at least the age of the
second sophistic (2nd-3rd Century CE). It is not stretching
the imagination too far to see the Eusebian reaction against
Philostratus (Hierocles et al) as being of the same genre
of propaganda.



Pete Brown

Chili

It doesn't matter if what the church fathers say is true or is not true as long as it gets you where you want to be . . . or where you should be without even knowing that where you end up is where you really wanted to be but never knew how to get there.

If religion is only a vehicle to arrive at our ultimate destiny would it not be nicer to leave the lie behind when the truth is found?

Roger Pearse

The same question, surely, applies to all ancient texts, not just the fathers?

Beware of obscurantism here -- it is a trap that people who find data (on whatever subject) inconvenient seem to find it easy to fall into, I think.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Doug Shaver

Because if we don't, then Christians have been wrong for almost 2,000 years. But Christians cannot be wrong, and so the church fathers must be believed. QED.