Cameron,
I appreciate you thought. I was someone who was Reformed and then strayed and almost became a Catholic; and the arguments by Catholic Teachers and Apologists from the Early Church Fathers was one of the things that was a draw for me.
As with anything, people are going to take what ever supports their position and highlight it and then have the tendency to ignore or explain away the rest.
When it comes to the study of the Early Church Fathers, this can be done very easily. I've been reading and studying the writings of the Early Church Fathers now for several of years and here is my honest conclusion.
They were all over the place in their doctrine and practice. Each Church Father, in my opinion, was a little bit different and had different reasons for writing what they did.
Some of them did believe in the "real presence." Some of them did not.
Whether or not most of them believed in baptismal regeneration or not is hard to tell I believe. I really don't think there is enough writing to support this. There really isn't enough to support whether they baptized infants or not, but I do believe that they did.
My point is this; there is a lot in the Early Church writings that I believe "does" support the Catholic Position. I'm not going to deny that.
But I also believe that the Early Church was also in error in many ways. I believe that even in the first century, the Church was starting to slide into error in many ways...... or why else would have Christ given warnings to all of the Churches through John?
My point here is, I personally don't view the Early Church Writings with any authority.
Just like I don't hold to the writings of Luther and Calvin with much authority.
My main authority comes from Scripture and Scripture is very clear that Justification is by faith in Christ alone. That is the gospel and to deviate from that in any way is a different gospel.
I hope this helps
Dave
