TL

“regarding church fathers. INdeed they are fallible and got many things wrongs, as we all do now aswell. However they are the closest people we have to the NT times who would best understand language, culture, exegesis than we can ever do this far from Christ- that is why there imput is invaluable. To be accurate historically we need a good understanding of history. They give us insight into early theological crisis, early ministry formation, interpretation of scripture, language difficulties and ultimately how the church began and grew through the early centuries of persecution.”

Thank you Mark, for that clarification. We agree. The input of the early Church fathers is invaluable. But it is not authoritative. Their understanding was not authoritative. Only Scripture is authoritative.

I’ve always found it amazing that the apostles even with Christ with them daily did not understand so much. They were just human and fallible after all. However, we can trust the Holy Spirit’s anointing upon them as they addressed problems in the church and wrote things which still help us today. The Holy Spirit can use anyone to write and speak eternal truths. There were some things that the early church fathers wrote that was indeed anointed, but not like the writings of the original disciples. There were other things they wrote that was actually horrible, and yet they thought was so right. As Kay said, a reformation was surely needed. Without the HS, we’d be helpless indeed.