I don't appeal to their authority for any other reason than the fact that you guys seem to put weight into them...I could care less what they say...What I do see is they are NOT what the Catholic apologists paint them to be, I am not as familiar with eastern Traditions theology so I can't say in that regard.
My approach has always been that of seeking to understand and seeking to worship with all my heart and soul once I did understand. When I was young I honestly asked what religion made the most sense to me, and wound up with something like Deism. Later, my Father asked me to give the Catholic Church a better chance, so I looked into it kind of sticking one foot into the water. Then at a Cursillo I came to faith in Jesus Christ. It was a turning point in my life and I've never been the same. This really made the Catholic liturgical life come to life for me. And I started actually believing much of what I was reading about church history and agreeing with the Catholic apologists I surrounded myself with at that time and the years that followed.
However, I was also involved in the charismatic movement in the Catholic Church and to a large extent the majority of Catholics were among the 'frozen chosen' - a fact that ultimately made me feel more comfortable worshiping in my wife's Penetecostal Church, which is Sola Scriptura.
After I was married to someone who took a very different view than me, even though she was a "cradle" Catholic and I wasn't, we were in the situation of needing to find a place where we could both feel comfortable worshiping together. We continued worshiping in Pentecostal Churches , and every now and then I'd come feed on the Sacraments by visiting a Catholic Church.
She had some qualms about the Catholic faith. She didn't like the statues. She didn't like praying to Mary. She was OK with the sacraments. But her main complaint, much as mine, was that the Catholic faithful rarely read the Bible outside of liturgy and didn't care much about their faith - not the younger people like us.
After a few more years of searching we found our compromise in an Orthodox Church that placed a great deal of emphasis on prophecy. Things were far from perfect there, but one result was that I became very serious about studying the Early Church Fathers. I purchased
the 38 volume series by Hendrickson for under $300 from CBD and read as often as I had time. Those were the days before the Internet. Pretty soon the earliest volumes, particularly, had as many notes in the margins as my worn out Bibles.
I did this not because I felt the Early Church Fathers had the same level of authority when they spoke as the Scriptures do, but because I knew that they contained the missing pieces of the puzzle as to how the early church used to think. I looked to them to solve questions that today's churches argue about. And generally, I just wanted to get a good sense of them.
Reading them made me feel very good about my decision to become an Orthodox Christian and to turn away from the idea of papal supremacy. I was not reading the words of apologists but going straight to the source. Much as Bibilical archeology fortifies various notions about the Bible itself and about the early church, so do the early church fathers.
So to say that you couldn't care less, I will accept as a statement concerning the authority of the Scriptures, which with you I revere most highly, as did St. Ambrose and all the ECFs, as exceptionally authoritative. I do not believe that you really don't care about the ECFs as you say. You may also believe, as I do, that they "cannot be broken" - as Christ said. That is to say, that they are infallible and free of error, at least with respect to the originals.
This is not something I would say about the ECFs. And I think most Eastern Christians would agree with me on this. I think some Protestants get the idea from their experience with Catholics, that we place Tradition equal with Scripture, when we don't. We consider them to be one and the same thing. But we don't have a pope that is asserting infallibility. And probably because of this, we are simply reiterating what was in the Scriptures to begin with. We preach what was always taught in all places. Theoretically anyway, we don't make anything up that is new, as if any new doctrines could replace old ones because they had some sort of authority.
The Catholics claim the same, but they are hard pressed to show that they actually do this. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, for instance, is nothing close to a catholic doctrine - ("catholic" meaning always taught everywhere) - yet it was declared Catholic Dogma just a century ago.
Then again, if we look at the ECFs, neither do we find prayers to saints. As I said, my approach has been to inquire honestly. I can definitely see a shift from a church that focused on Jesus to a church that focused on veneration of saints. My desire is to worship as the first church did. It is a simple desire which calls for reform within Orthodoxy.
The problem is that the Orthodox are not only not interested in reform, but believe that only very un-humble people can have the audacity to suggest that they know better than the revered bishops, clergy and theologians of the church as to how we should worship. They call this prelest, or spiritual pride.
To a certain extent we need to provide a benefit of the doubt. We know that the church did have bishops and that they were responsible as good stewards for administering the faith unchanged. In America today we are taught to question authority. The bishops do have a degree of authority and always did - very solemnly so. They are charged with delivering the faith once handed to the saints and, (gasp) holding fast to the traditions that Paul gave to them (
1 Cor. 11:2;
2 Thes. 2:15).
The problem with this is that they are like links on a chain. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
One thing I like about Orthodoxy is that there are many chains, rather than just one descending to Rome. That all the churches everywhere have always taught the same thing is a very strong authority. However, there is a gap in information between the first and fourth centuries. So this fact loses some of its oomph if it isn't supported be the early church fathers.
To a very large extent it is, but on questions like veneration of saints it is not. Sure, there is a difference between worship and veneration. But to suggest that the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the Fourth Century, or particularly as it is practiced today with additional prayers from Emperors is the same as the form of worship in the First Century is a leap of faith.
But no matter how you look at it, when the approach is to look at the traditions and beliefs of today, (whether they are Baptist or Pentecostal or Lutherand, Catholic or Orthodox), and compare them with what we guess may have been the practice among the apostolic fathers (1st - 3rd Centuries), we are faced with a kind of balance between the pride of personal understanding as gleaned from any real reading of the ECFs, and the apologetics of those traditions, which are usually comprised of proof-texts to support the views of traditions.
Sorry for the run on sentence. But this is what I want to point out as a response to everything I've read in this very long thread.
1. We need the to read the fathers and yes they are important for all the reasons described above.
2. We benefit most as we read them if we sort out the difference between real inquiry and defensive inquiry. The former can consider the latter, but among too many people no real inquiry has ever occurred at all.
Real inquiry has placed me personally in a very uncomfortable place, as it has others. I had to "come out of" the institutional churches in a sense, at least by intellectual freedom. I had to have the courage to say, "maybe none of them are completely right." The price may be excommunication. The reward is living with a good conscience.
) I stated that the NT does not explicitly state that Mary and Joseph were married; the Greek term translated as married has several meanings, one of which denotes marriage. In order to interpret the term (or in general, to conclude) that they married, one must rely on a tradition or bias of some sort. Here is what I said:
