To start off, I have to put forth a disclaimer. This is an opinion piece, and not intended to reflect the belief of an entire group. As all my articles are, this is a set of reasonings to satisfy my thoughts.
I have often encountered people who use the Fathers of the Church as proof for the point they are trying to argue. As a latest example, I was talking to a younger fellow, who was trying to argue the dogmatic proof of Theosis. And the way he was trying to prove this was by saying that it is found in all the father's of the Church writings.
Now, the underlying supposition when someone refers to the Fathers of the Church, are the bishops/priests/monks of the first few centuries, before the split of the Church in the council of Chalcedone. After having several of these discussions, where people over and over use quotes from the Fathers of the Church as proof to their arguments, I was forced to ask the question, can we completely rely on the Father's of the Church? Do they stand on their own?
In order to reason through this, I have to draw parallels between the Fathers of the Church and scientists of the modern age on whose discovered theories we build science further. Speaking more specifically and in an area which I have more knowledge in is the field of Software Engineering.
It is clear that we never start Software systems from scratch. Almost always we are building on already existing work that has been done before us. Simply put if you write a "Hello World" application, you're already invoking multiple things. First off the whole idea of the "Hello World" program is something that came about in a book called "The C Programming language". So it is not a new idea we're putting forth, rather it is a traditional way to learn how to write your first program.
Secondly, this "Hello World" program is compiled using a compiler that you have not written, using a language that you have not developed, running on hardware you didn't build, Hardware, which was built using technology you didn't create, etc, etc.
I believe it is safe to say that anything you use in every day life, falls in the same category. Cars, houses, streets, glass and the list goes on. All what we use is only possible because we're using ideas and technology which was built by other people, who were able to build it because of work done by earlier generations and I'm sure you can trace it back to the start of known history.
How does this relate to the Fathers of the Church? Well, I believe they fall in pretty much the same category. They have discovered and put forth ideas which were handed down to us, and that's how we have the Church dogma that we currently live by. And I think that's why some people feel obliged to use them as proof. The key word here is "proof" not reference.
However, I find that we tend to give the wrong type of "glory" to these Fathers, like St. Athanasius, St. John Crysostom, etc. Instead of attributing the right credit to them, we attribute the wrong credit, if I may be so bold to say, more credit than they deserve. This might sound arrogant, but allow me some space to explain.
What did the Fathers of the Church do? Did they invent something new? Did they discover a truth that was not known to earlier writers, like St. Paul or St. Peter? Or did they simply come to an understanding of a truth that pre-existed them? I believe it's the latter. They were given a measure of grace that they were able to use to understand truths. And these truths were already known to earlier generations, but might not have been recorded down, due to the fact that it was not necessary. Or it was taught to people but lost in the tides of history.
So we should give them the credit of discoverers and not inventors. They did not invent new ideas or ideas that weren't around until they wrote it down, they "merely" recorded down a truth that was known, and they explained it. I use the word "merely" here in a loose way. I do not mean that it was a small feat, quiet the opposite, I'm sure it's an important task that they performed, and most often, they had to stand by the truth that they believed in, in front of mounting pressure.
This leads me to the second point, what kind of attitude did these Fathers take? Did they believe that they found the absolute truth? Now I can never tell for sure what they thought, and what was in their heart, only God knows. But I can turn to myself and ask, what would be the ideal way of knowing that what you now hold is as close to the truth as someone can get? In a word, evidence. I'm sure they have searched through the Holy Bible, prayed and God gave them a measure of light by which they were able to understand the scriptures and connect the different verses and passages together and reach a specific conclusion, whether it's about the trinity, or the nature of Christ, etc. Moreover, after they arrived to such a conclusion, their humility would lead them to open up dialogue with others to make sure that they didn't "get their sums wrong". And if someone introduced other aspects that they might not have considered, then they would change and correct their thoughts. I think that's how progress is done. It is not done by a heroic act of one person, but the coming together of open minds with a common goal: of knowing the truth.
Therefore, when we have characters across history, who stood against the tide to defend the truth they discovered, it is not with the attitude that "I'm right and everyone else is wrong", rather it's with the attitude that here is what I believe, backed by this set of evidence, that I have discussed over with my peers, and therefore, I believe that this conclusion to be true. Let's then enter into dialogue together and if there is some error in my findings, then I do not mind correcting myself. Most of the time, however, they were thorough enough that their findings were not refuted. In fact, as far as I know of Church history, in the first three councils there was a large consensus against the heresies that were being examined at the time. These councils were comprised of many people who were "experts" in their fields, and together they had consensus of the truth.
Things broke down when their goals didn't align. They no longer had the common goal of knowing what the Truth is, but rather, crept unaware, are other goals which were for personal benefit. Of course, this is all by my reasoning. I wasn't there so I can't tell for sure what happened. But my intention here is not to record history, but to answer the question "Can we rely on the Father's of the Church?"
I believe, that using the father's of the Church as "proof", thereby relying fully on them, rather than using them as reference, is the wrong approach for me. I qualify this statement by "for me", because this is not an absolute statement. It could be quiet satisfactory for some to take everything on authority. Meaning, if the church says so, then it must be so. But I believe, that this has its limits. You can not make further progress with this type of approach.
Let's go back to my Computer Science analogy. If I look at a computer system and am only satisfied with the superficial knowledge, that writing a few statements in a specific syntax, will result in such and such output and I stop there, then, I will not go much further with my project, other than "get it to work". But sometimes, "getting it to work" is not good enough, sometimes, I need to "get it to work well" or "getting it to work well under different conditions and environments". And getting it to work well, can only be done by answering the question "Why do these statements produce this result?" I have to gain the underlying knowledge of how the C statements I'm writing get translated by the compiler to assembly language, what kind of optimization does the compiler do to my code, what is the assembly code that gets produced, and how the processor executes that assembly code. Only then will I be able to write excellent code that is free of bugs and runs optimally on the chosen platform.
Relating that back to what I was saying, is that it's not enough to use the Father's of the Church as the source of the truths, because they are not the source of the truth. They simply were able to discover the truth by being able to connect already existing information together in a way that allowed them to reach the conclusions we now are using. There should be no reason why we can't go back and understand how they reached these conclusions, rather than taking their conclusions at face value. In fact I think there is much to gain by doing exactly that. It not only teaches the researcher knowledge, but an approach and a way of thinking that will help them navigate other areas.
Moreover, these Fathers were highly educated individuals. They studied and read much, both the scripture and other writers of their own time. So it seems to me that learning from their example is a natural extension of respecting them. We should learn to search and to understand and to reason. I do not think we were ever asked to take ideas at face value and not to question.
Unfortunately, I find that this is not the attitude taken by many today. They associate blind obedience with the Church. "If the priest said so, then we must do as the priest says". You can substitute "priest" with any authority figure; whether bishop, monk or a Sunday School teacher. The more unfortunate aspect I observe, is that these authority figures, love to have it so. They love the lime light. They love to be able to control people's belief. Okay, maybe I'm being a tad harsh or a tad unfair, I do apologize. But if you are such a person in this role of responsibility, what did you feel when you read this? Did you feel offended? Or did you rather at least consider that there might be some truth to these statements? I think the answer to these questions, will shed some light on what's in our hearts. I speak as a person who has also some measure of authority, although it is not much.
My point here, is that it is important to learn to satisfy the inquisitive minds at all levels. Not everyone will want to dive deep and understand, and not everyone will want to dive deep in all aspects, but at least we should encourage people with these abilities to expand and to exercise their abilities. We should be helping them grow these abilities, because they could be the next St. Athanasius. But if we discourage them, and put them down and force them to "submit" to the "will" of the church, then what have we done but put off a candle that could've given light to the people in darkness. I think we do a great disservice to the world in general by not being proud of our children who question and enquire. I say this because I have experienced this exact thing first hand. I was deeply interested and had a great passion toward a specific avenue of service, but all I encountered from authority figures when I was young is opposition and discouragement. I didn't give up, but dealing with such discouragement from people whom I viewed as "authority" figures, caused me much psychological pain, that might last a life time. I do not want to see others go through this.
My first reasoning then, is that we can only use the Father's of the Church as "reference" and not as proof.
However, one scary concept that the Church avoids, is the idea of progress. They fear that progress will translate in straying farther away from the Truth. This of course might very well be the case, but I believe that fear is rooted in the lack of knowledge and understanding. If I don't understand why certain things came to be, then I'm standing on shaky ground. If I don't know why a computer programs works like it does, I would fear changing it because I could be introducing bugs that didn't exist before. But computer programs, as years go by, need to be modified in order to work properly with new factors that were introduced that weren't there before. That doesn't change the core of the program. The algorithms would pretty much be the same, the resulted output would remain the same, but more code needs to be written and existing code must be re-written, in order to account for the newly introduced factors. But I can't even approach that, without first understanding thoroughly how the program works in the first place. My perception is that many people who fear making any changes in the church are in the same boat. They don't understand how the church came to be, and therefore fear making any changes in order not to introduce bugs. I give them that the church "bugs" are severe enough that it could cause the entire system to crash. So maybe sometimes it's better not to make changes. But I would assert, that if you're unwilling to make changes, you shouldn't stand in the way of people who are making a copy of your code and applying their own changes to it at their own risk. You should be open enough to look at these modifications and evaluate whether it is reasonable and whether it is beneficial to integrate without compromising the existing structure.
In fact, it seems sorely obvious to me that this is exactly what the Church has done over the years, as it expanded from one part of the world to another. They rewrote their code to account for the new factors the Church found itself in. Without them doing that, they would've crashed long ago.
Finally, I think it is important to give the Father's of the Church their due credit as discoverers, as teachers but not as inventors. If we give them credit as inventors, then we almost make them equal to God, in the sense that we ought not question their line of thoughts. But if we give them credit as teachers, then we have every right to probe further and to understand how they reached the conclusions they reached. In doing so, we will ensure that we are on solid ground and we will ensure that we can face any sort of questioning or critique that might be thrown our way, without sounding pretentious and overly righteous. If we have a good understanding of the kernel of our faith, then we will not fear change, on the contrary, we will direct this change for the glory of the author of our Faith.