don't reject the E.C.F.s (although they are all over the place re. doctrine, often disagreeing with each other, just as modern commentators do); and, they can certainly be helpful.
On this point, actually, we have to make a clarification. Regarding the essentials of doctrine, that is to say, the issue of the first three ecumenical councils (and also the seventh), there is very little disagreement between the Early Church Fathers.
Specifically, I am aware of no early church fathers who denied the Trinity, the Incarnation of Christ, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (the nature of that presence was not defined in detail as in, for example, trans-substantiation, but the real physical presence was asserted both in the liturgical texts and in the commentaries; some people like to argue Theodore of Mopsuestia, who is regarded as a church father by the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East and since Vatican II, some members of the East Syriac Rite churches of the Roman Catholic communion (specifically, some Chaldean Catholics and Syro Malabar Catholics), argued in favor of the real presence being merely spiritual, but having studied his writings on the subject; that is incorrect, rather, his views were a bit stranger, and he is a rare example of an early church father who tried to explain the Real Presence, but his explanation is radically different from Transubstantiation or Roman Catholic doctrine more generally, I won’t get into the details here); Theodore of Mopsuestia was anathematized in a process related to the Fifth Ecumenical Synod in Constantinople (the Second Council of Constantinople, in the early sixth century) along with Origen, who is an example of an early church father who is recognized as such but was widely disagreed with because of his belief in apokatastasis and his speculations on other doctrines which were extremely controversial and unusual; some legitimate early church fathers respected Origen, notably the Cappadocians (St. Basil the Great, his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Gregory the Theologian), while not agreeing with some of his more unusual ideas, although St. Gregory of Nyssa is known for endorsing Apokatastasis (as well as St. Isaac the Syrian, a member of the Church of the East, which for a time taught apokatastasis, and was also before that under the influence of Nestorians, but no longer holds to it as doctrine, which in the 1960s split into the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East due to a controversy caused by the presiding bishop of that church at the time); the Church of the East is a common denominator in most areas where we have actual disagreements, but not because of any inherent heretical tendency on its part, rather, its much more complex and there were misunderstandings since unlike the West Syriac Christians, who tended to know Greek and were very able to communicate with the Greek speaking bishops who were at the center of the Christian
oikumene, (due to the Bible being written in Greek and all seven ecumenical synods being conducted in Greek, and four out of the five ancient Patriarchates being in Greek cities, namely Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople), also all major Roman Christians wrote in Greek until Victor, the Bishop of Rome in the middle of the second century, had the Bible translated into Latin along with the liturgy of the Roman church, which effectively made Christianity accessible to less educated Roman Plebeians who had not attended a Rhaetor and learned at least the rudiments of the Hellenic tongue), the East Syriacs usually did not speak Greek and there were difficulties in communication.
Now starting in the fifth century we have an actual three-way rupture between the Nestorians, who managed to become predominant for a time in the Church of the East before that church adopted a Syriac interpretation of Chalcedon under Mar Babai the Great around 600 AD, the Oriental Orthodox, who accept the first three ecumenical synods and like Chalcedonians reject monophysitism, but are often falsely accused of it, and who also, like the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, rejected iconoclasm (the Assyrians claim to reject it but their churches lack icons, so its a bit of an odd situation), and the Chalcedonians, which was the first lasting schism in the history of Christianity (the next one wouldn’t be until the Great Schism caused by Rome excommunicating the Eastern Orthodox in 1054 and invading the Byzantine Empire during the Crusades, killing many Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians, which created a resentment towards Rome which, combined with later acts of persecution, for example, in North America, the martyrdom of a 15 year old Native Alaskan boy, St. Peter the Aleut, who was a member of a fishing party who was captured by the Spanish when his party sailed into the San Francisco Bay and was found wearing an Orthodox cross; because St. Peter refused to renounce the Orthodox Church and convert to the Roman Catholic church his hands and feet were cut off and he received a crown of martyrdom).
Prior to that however, there was very little disagreement, and what disagreement existed, when it became important enough to actually matter dogmatically, was resolved by the ecumenical councils. Now on this point something important must be stressed - those who advocated for celebrating Pascha (the Feast of the Resurrection, also called Easter in some Germanic languages excluding Dutch) on the 14th of Nissan rather than using the Paschalion, the formula that remains in use to this day, albeit with only the Orthodox still using it with the Julian calendar, prior to the council of Nicaea, are not condemned for it, because (a) it was an accepted practice and (b) the reasons why Nicaea prohibited it were not a factor at the time prior discussions about it occurred in the second century. The same is the case with Chiliasm, which was excluded at Constantinople, but which was taught by St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, and St. Papias.
Conversely, those who contradicted the Council of Nicaea regarding the deity of Christ before or after the council can be regarded as heretics, since before Nicaea the bishop Paul of Samosata was anathematized for doing this, so Nicaea was simply upholding an existing doctrine very clearly expressed in the New Testament text, which on the other hand does not provide a computus for calculating the date of Pascha.
So there were some disagreements, but there was not a proliferation of denominations at the present; rather, the Early Church Fathers made a point of avoiding anathematized persons, so one was either in communion, and part of the Early Church, or not in communion, and a schismatic or heretic, until the fifth century when schisms occurred following Ephesus and Chalcedon.
And regarding the schism at Ephesus, insofar as the Church of the East later rejected Nestorianism, while they alone continue to venerate Nestorius as a confessor of the faith (which is odd since he was never tortured, merely deposed and sent into a comfortable exile, where he wrote his memoirs with the pompous title, by standards of the time, of “The Bazaar of Heraclides” - compare this to the
Confessions and
Retractions of St. Augustine, for example, and one might sense why Nestorius is not well regarded by scholars of Patristics. Most early church fathers refrained from autobiography and some wrote anonymously, wrote under the names of Biblical personas (for example, psuedo-Dionysius) or hid from view to the point where we know little about them aside from their literary corpus. There are also the Desert Fathers and other ascetics many of whom are known only by the beautiful expressions of the Gospel they expressed which were written down, or by their actions or manner of living.
So it would be incorrect to say the Early Church Fathers are all over the place on matters of doctrine provided we limit ourselves to those who were not anathematized but were a part either of the Chalcedonian church before the schisms between Rome and the Orthodox began to get heated (really the Filioque Controversy is where things got real, but the final rupture did not occur until 1054, which according to Rome is after the Patristic period ended, which I would agree with if one is considering Western theologians only as there is a disconnect between the writings of the likes of Anselm of Canterbury and the Greek fathers or Syriac fathers or the Latin fathers of the second, third and fourth century) or the Oriental Orthodox Church, which agreed with the Chalcedonian church on all doctrinal matters except the question of whether to describe our Lord as being incarnate in two natures (the Chalcedonian view) or from two natures (the Oriental Orthodox miaphysite view), the problem being the debate got very heated with Chalcedonians confusing the Oriental Orthodox with the Monophysite sect led by Eutyches, which the Oriental Orthodox had anathematized, and the Oriental Orthodox fearing Nestorianism among the Chalcedonians; when this schism happened, Nestorius was still alive and fueled the fire by writing that Chalcedon expressed what he had been trying to say all along, which we know to be false since Chalcedon expressly affirmed the hypostatic unity of the divine and human natures, which St. Cyril had taught and Nestorius had rejected, and the use of the term Theotokos, rather than Christotokos as Nestorius insisted, and there was also a crypto-Nestorian who was active in the Chalcedonian church at the time, Ibas. For this reason as an Eastern Orthodox I am among those who rejoice by the fact that the EO-OO schism is on the verge of healing and get rather upset when I see neophytes being influenced by Old Calendarists who are not part of the canonical church calling the Oriental Orthodox “monophysites” and in some cases making remarks which are crypto-Nestorian.
Now I myself am a convert, but I wouldn’t have converted were it not for the fact that serious efforts to heal the schism had already been made and are still ongoing, because otherwise it would have been such an absurd issue for division to remain over during a period when both churches are suffering persecution at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists that it would have alienated me, but indeed, that was not the case; what actually made me decide to become Orthodox was the abduction of the Syriac Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox) and Antiochian Orthodox (Eastern Orthodox) bishops of Aleppo in 2013, whose whereabouts or vital status remains unknown 13 years later; they were the victims of a forced disappearance likely at the hands of Islamist extremists, but seeing the outpouring of love between the Syriac and Antiochian churches for each other in the face of such horrible persecution and the complete lack of recourse to ancient squabbles which had already been resolved on a theological level by ecumenical dialogue between the two churches (indeed since 1991 the two churches have had a sweeping ecumenical agreement in place, which is a template for how to reunify separated brethren in Christendom in my opinion) was so moving, and I was so alienated by what had happened in the Episcopal Church, which I was attending temporarily during the last year of my friend’s tenure as a priest, before his mandatory retirement, and in the United Church of Christ where I had been one of the few remaining conservatives, and in the United Methodist Church in which I was baptized, and the other mainline Protestant churches, and by this tendency for liturgical churches to shift to liberal theology and conservative churches to get rid of traditional liturgical worship in favor of contemporary worship with various forms of Christian rock music or “praise and worship” music with electric guitars, or guitars in general, and drumkits, and so on, replacing the organ and congregational singing, -
The beauty of the ancient Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches is that the conditions which caused the Protestant reformation in the West never occurred in the East, so most Eastern Christians are still a member of an Orthodox church, which is integral to their national or ethnic identity, and additionally, the few schisms that have happened have occurred over attempts to change the mode of worship, which Eastern Christians are extremely resistant to, to the point where the number of changes that have occurred to the liturgy over the years is very low and also well documented, and it is easy to reconstruct what worship was like before that change occurred, and also the cultural values of most Eastern Christians are extremely conservative; it is inconceivable that a canonical Orthodox church (Eastern or Oriental) would depart from the BIblical position on issues such as human sexuality in the manner of the mainline churches.
