Patristics

 Neither the East nor Rome owns the Church Fathers. It is absolutely fair to say Lutherans in the sixteenth century invented patristics because of Lutherans' fight with the Roman Catholics. They would say what you are teaching [faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone] is novel and not what the Church taught. In his Examination of the Council of Trent, Martin Chemnitz shows point by point this is what Scripture says, and this is what the Church Fathers had to say about those Scriptures, and he lays out all the patristic evidence." The Church Fathers had brilliant minds and have been thinking about what these Spirit-inspired texts meant for fifteen hundred years, and we would be dumb to say all that is irreverent.

A famous Protestant convert to Catholicism, John Henry Newman, once wrote, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." Ironically, while Newman was converting to Catholicism, Cardinal Henry Manning wrote: "We will overcome history with dogma." He knew history wasn't in their favor and believed the key was that he needed to have doctrinal development beyond the New Testament to be able to justify the stance that Rome took. We recognize there is no doctrinal development beyond what the New Testament lays down, and nothing that goes beyond Scripture is binding on Christians. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote: Let the Divine Scriptures be the umpire between us, and whoever accords with that, that's where the vote of truth is given.

You would be shocked if you listened to how the Lutheran Confessions speak of the Fathers. The Lutherans have the audacity to insert in the face of Rome and the East that the Fathers are actually our Fathers. If you listen to what the Fathers teach, what they teach is our faith. The Holy Fathers often say we are saved by mercy." When the Lutherans presented their confessions to the Roman Catholics, they argued from the Scriptures that the Word of God agreed with the Lutherans. Furthermore, the Lutherans presented many quotes from the Church Fathers, such as Ambrose (340-397), Athanasius (296-373), Augustine (354-430), Basil (330-379), Chrysostom (347-407), Clement of Rome (96), Gregory of Nyssa (330-395), Irenaeus (130-200), Mark the Ascetic (425) to show they agreed with the Word of God.

-Pr. Will Weedon