The early church and the fathers (interpretation and (more Roman Catholic than Protestant)

This ARTICLE was quite good so I am quoting it in full, but it can be found here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/11/how-quickly-catholic-heresy-took-over-the-church-immediatly/

"When I started taking a closer look at the early church while still a Presbyterian I remember encountering what I considered a lot of ‘Catholic stuff.’ It happened innocently enough. For example, I would be reading the “Confessions” of St. Augustine and would encounter a scene where Augustine describes the relics of martyrs being venerated thorughout the city by Christians and I would stop and think, “Did I really just read that? I thought Augustine was a Reformed father!?” Before long, I realized that much of that ‘Catholic stuff’ was found in the early church well before my ‘Presbyterian stuff.’

Brantly has given a chronological outline which identifies the year when a particular ‘extra biblical’ witness relating to Christian doctrine was first recorded.

(A.D. 33 – death and resurrection of Christ)
A.D. 90 – the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice
(A.D. 95 – death of the last apostle, John)
A.D. 95 – apostolic succession
A.D. 110 – real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist
A.D. 110 – the necessity of bishops to the Church, and the necessity of submitting to bishops
A.D. 150 – baptismal regeneration and the necessity of baptism for salvation
A.D. 150 – basic structure of the Mass as Christian worship
A.D. 155 – veneration of saints and their relics
A.D. 160 – Mary as the New Eve
A.D. 170 – use of the word ‘Trinity’
A.D. 180 – primacy of the bishop of Rome
A.D. 200 – ‘Trinity’, ‘Person’, ‘Substance’ formula
A.D. 367 – today’s 27 book New Testament canon
A.D. 1500s – Protestant Reformation

The bold doctrines are those held by Protestants and Catholics alike. The non-bold are examples of doctrines that most Protestants argue that Catholics got wrong. Those in (…) reflect historical events where there is no dispute.

Brantly discusses each point further in his post, which I recommend visiting.

When I was discovering the early church, what made an impression upon me was that “if all of those beliefs which most evangelicals tend to view as sure markers of the obviously perverted corruption of the Catholic Church were already there, then the same Church that settled the New Testament canon and fought the Trinitarian and Christological fights of the early Church was already well immersed in corruption, superstition, and heresy.” HE is referring in this post to another blog which can be found below.

For a more detailed look go here:

http://youngevangelicalandcatholic.blogspot.com/2011/11/updated-how-quickly-catholic-heresy.html

also on interpreting church fathers from comment 239 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/comment-page-5/#comment-38522

In order to understand the Church Fathers accurately, it is important to understand them in the context of the Tradition in which they wrote, and which they were upholding, and which they bequeathed to their successors. To read each Father in a hermeneutical vacuum is an artificial abstraction that is not only impossible, because the reader unavoidably brings some interpretive framework, but also fails to include the fuller context, and thus leads to distorting the Fathers, typically to make them say what one wants them to say. (See “The Tradition and the Lexicon.”)

So when St. Clement speaks of justification by faith, we should seek to understand what he means by that, by looking at the way the other Church Fathers understand justification by faith, and not attempting to make him say something that would go against what the other Fathers teach on the subject. For apologetical purposes, the Catholic need only show that it is possible that St. Clement held that justification is by living faith. The burden of proof that he did not is on the Protestant, for reasons I’ve provided in comment #18 in the “Some Thoughts Concerning Michael Horton’s …” thread, and in “Trueman and Prolegomena to “How would Protestants know when to return?”.” That is, the Protestant would have to demonstrate that St. Clement’s teaching (and that of the Epistle of Diognetus) are incompatible with Catholic doctrine. It is not enough, given the Protestant burden of proof, to show that one can interpret them in a Protestant way. Sufficient for my purposes (though I think I have done more) is showing merely that they can be understood in a Catholic way.

from comment 247 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/comment-page-5/#comment-38522  :

I am not saying that St. Clement had something in mind that did not exist in his time. Rather, I do not assume that the Apostolic Tradition is located only in the writing of the Apostles, and not also in the writings of the second and third (and fourth) century Church Fathers. So it is not only the writings of the Apostles that provide the theological and hermeneutical context in which to understand St. Clement rightly, but also the writings of the Church Fathers who come after St. Clement, because their writings also reveal and clarify the Apostolic Tradition that was passed down by St. Clement and his generation of bishops. As the Apostles help us understand Jesus, so the Fathers who came after St. Clement can also help us understand rightly the meaning of his teaching, by providing clarification and explication concerning the faith as they had received it from St. Clement and the other bishops in communion with one another throughout the Church catholic.