THINK PROGRESS

As a general question are the apostolic churches "sola church fathers" in their arguments like protestants are with the bible?

>The Church Fathers didn't develop any doctrines, they just witnessed and defended doctrines.

How so is this just taken as a matter of faith, how can you be sure they didn't develop on what they saw?

It's not sola Church Fathers, rather it's showing a doctrine can be traced *continuous* from today back through the Church Fathers and to Scripture. A Church Father mentioning it isn't enough, it needs a continuous line of existence.from Scripture to today.

Could you give an example of a doctrine they might have developed on what they saw?

>Could you give an example of a doctrine they might have developed on what they saw?

The whole point was the difficulty that would exist in demonstrating that either way given their influence in the early Church and its composition.

Ie what is the difference between them just defending what they saw and that becoming biblical and church doctrine and them devolving on what they saw and that becoming biblical and church doctrine

That would assume they were in agreement. Which was not the case. They argued a lot on almost everything, from the specific books in the scriptures to almost every core doctrine, even Incarnation. Which is in another words historical development of doctrine through the magisterium of the church. And there's no reason to assume it magically stopped (in fact it hasn't, marian dogmas) because you are eternally butthurt about being in schism.

One is taught by Christ directly to the Apostles and passed down in Apostolic succession. All writing about, Scripture, Church Fathers, etc. is just witnessing it, you are not supposed to change the understanding, because Christ gave the exact understanding he wanted to give, and the job is to ensure it is preserved, to protect it, not to tamper with it.

So it is based on faith then

The Scriptural canon is not dogma in Orthodox Christianity. Scripture is well established as a witness to Christ, but since he never specified a canon, there can never be a dogmatic canon. The Church Fathers didn't debate the canon on the grounds of this or that book being heretical, but rather who wrote it and if it were early enough, because it was all supposed to be first-generation.

The Orthodox doctrine of the incarnation was always present from before Pentecost. Other theories might have been innovated and introduced, but they are not the truth passed down by Christ.

The Orthodox seem to have taken a very fideist approach to it, or at least local shills.
The view is different in different churches, I highly recommend Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman.

It's based on faith in Christ, who said the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church. If anything were taught as dogma, which did not come directly from him, that would be heresy, and would invalidate the Church, sacraments and all (no, the RCC does not have valid sacraments).

He's not Orthodox

I didn't think orthodox theology was such fideist trash, but it seems I was wrong.

So why didnt you say that in your first response to my post?

How is it fidest trash?

Because it's reducible to believe just because I do and we won't think about it too hard. Or at least that's what you get from Constantine.

How is faith in Vatican II any different? The only difference is Orthodoxy is about faith is lack of change, the RCC is about faith that the change is proper.

I put the definition of Orthodox dogma pretty early in this thread

Here is an argument I wrote for the historicity of the Resurrection: pastebin.com/9XxNnSU6

>I put the definition of Orthodox dogma pretty early in this thread

That doesnt seem to have any connection to why you said no then you said yes

>How is faith in Vatican II any different?
It wasn't a dogmatic council so everything that it assumes is through strength of argument.
>The only difference is Orthodoxy is about faith is lack of change, the RCC is about faith that the change is proper.
No, Orthodoxy is in theology defined mostly by eternal butthurt about scholasticism and it had a lot of reductions of earlier theological practices because of it. Faith in RCC isn't that change is proper, it's that God isn't dead and continues to speak through apparitions, magisterium and tradition. It's much like analytical philosophy in which you start from certain axioms and discuss the system from there.
Historical arguments for faith are pretty shitty. The only thing they are useful for is for proving that there was a Jesus and for understanding the historical process of revelation. No amount of historical posturing will lead to faith because it doesn't deal with the supernatural.

I think that poster was saying that your views on the Church fathers not Christianity as a whole was what was linked to fideism

It doesn't make any arguments. It makes proclamations. And some of those proclamations absolutely pertain to dogma, like the validity of heretical sacraments

Ultimate truth in Christianity is about REVELATION, what you're talking about is the Liberal conception of ultimate truth. Christian truth is a living subject, a being who expresses himself, not something you study under a microscope. The truth is revealed precisely how much God wants to be when he explicitly expresses it, you don't discover Christian truth like some Jesuit version of Kant
My argument is for the Resurrection

>It doesn't make any arguments.
It thousands of pages with explanations on things and pointing to sources not contained within it.
>It makes proclamations.
It does indeed. That's why it was called. But the proclamations were reached through extensive arguments.
>And some of those...
All of them absolutely pertain to dogma. But none establish a new one. And calling out the position far more augmented and rich than your own heretical is just annoying.
>Liberal conception of ultimate truth.
It is about revelation, but not everything is in the revelation. The natural law isn't explicitly professed by it, but is complementary to it. And I'm assuming everything you don't like is liberal here, including Augustine.
Oh right, he's Catholic, you had to remove him from your official church father list because you didn't like it.
>Christian truth is a living subject, a being who expresses himself, not something you study under a microscope.
I don't see how it being a living subject is contradictory to it being examined. After all if you don't reexamine your faith it'll crumble or be reduced to a baseless conviction not different to a secular ideology.
>The truth is revealed precisely how much God wants...
He expressed it through a historical process in the first place. The argument also goes that God is Logos which means your reason can partake in it, John didn't use the expression for nothing. >you don't discover Christian truth...
How do you know? I know of a solid number of people to whom God revealed his truth through jesuit versions of Kant.
>My argument
Which is a supernatural event which will never be accepted on a historical basis and it's value comes from giving legitimacy to your own position. Arguing that one should be a Christian because the resuscitation is a historical event is profoundly stupid and even contradictory to your earlier position in which Truth isn't reached through thinking about it and reading.

>It thousands of pages with explanations on things and pointing to sources not contained within it.
Trust me, there is no source on heretics having valid baptisms. None.

>But the proclamations were reached through extensive arguments.
Without explicit precedent of tradition, these arguments might as well be Jews

>But none establish a new one
No, no, of course not, they just "improve" existing dogma.

>The natural law
Is not dogma

>And I'm assuming everything you don't like is liberal here, including Augustine.
A Nestorian, not exactly the best source of appeal

He is not off our Church Father list, and he is still a saint. We just take him with a very large grain of salt.

>After all if you don't reexamine your faith
That's different from updating it.

>The argument also goes that God is Logos which means your reason can partake in it
"Logos" is just an important term because of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew word for Word, which doesn't mean "reason", it means "Law". You're using the pagan understanding of the term instead of the Christian understanding!

I don't feel like wallowing in your stupidity much longer, but John was a Jew educated in Greek philosophy and the term Logos is a redefinition of the old pagan concept in which he equates the eternal principle with a living mind that is God.

The thing about church doctrine is that it develops by changing definations.

Hell is clearly represented as a place of suffering with lots of fire and stuff. Origin comes along and changes the defination of hell to be "removed from God but without fire and stuff" and than all the descriptions of fire and suffering get their defination changed to metaphors.

Francis and V2 changed definitions too making "God" and "God's grace" more broad and extending to the Muslim faith.

Here's a fun experiment. Open the bible. Pick any word, change it to mean something else. Now put on a bishop hat and channel the Holy Spirit. You have no "reinterpreted" but not changed dogma.

Not mention the Holy Spirit is just Gnostic Sophia reinterpreted.

The Logos is established as a special concept in the Septuagint. See Psalms 107:20 and Isaiah 55:11

Origen is anathematized, so I don't see why he'd be used as an authority

Sophia (that is, Greek for Wisdom) of God, as mentioned is the same as the pre-incarnate Logos; she is talked about throughout Proverbs 9.

The Holy Spirit is in Matthew 28:19 and 3:16, and what John 14:16 is talking about. He is in Genesis 1:2