The Catholic approach to the patristic data is capable of accounting for all the doctrines of the fathers, including and especially, those few patristic works to which Protestants sometimes appeal as a means of legitimizing the doctrinal basis for schism – such as Augustinian doctrines on grace, free will, or justification. Doctrines which, upon examination in context (whether according to individual work or the wider Augustinian corpus), turn out to be entirely Catholic – Tridentine-compatible no less! Hence, even those select Augustinian passages in which Protestants think they possess something like a home field advantage, only appear as such to the degree that Protestants carefully avoid surveying the wider explicit, overt, Catholic Augustinian landscape. Inevitably, when an inquiring Protestant reads wider and deeper within the Augustinian corpus, he begins to sense quite clearly that Augustine is an ‘away game’ for Protestantism. That’s what happened to me. But that was only the first shock wave.
The patristic fathers (East and West), including St. Augustine, explicitly affirm gads of Catholic and proto-Catholic doctrines which most Protestant don’t care to touch with a ten foot pole, such as: apostolic/episcopal succession, Petrine authority, a ministerial priesthood, baptismal regeneration, sacramental confession, the Real Presence in the consecrated host (with plenty of explicit examples of how the host itself was worshiped, adored, protected, etc – which betokens transubstantiation), the restriction of the power of Eucharistic consecration to the ministerial priesthood, veneration and prayers asked of deceased saints and martyrs, monasticism, the value of consecrated virginity, the sinlessness and perpetual virginity of the Mother of God, and the list goes on – all in the very centuries in which many of the fundamental creeds which most Protestants embrace (such as Nicaea and Chalcedon) were formulated and ratified!
In other words, the Catholic approach to the Patristic data has a way of accounting for all the data – including that small subset of texts which Protestants apply to themselves (at least those Protestants concerned to show some doctrinal basis for the Reformation in the patristic record). By contrast, the Protestant approach makes very selective reference to a quite small subset of patristic passages (mostly St. Augustine) to shore up support for a few distinctive 16th century Protestant doctrines (which Protestants stipulate as “essential”, make or break, doctrinal matters based on a private reading of Scripture), while often ignoring the elephant in the room; namely, the enormous body of texts adverting to Catholic doctrine and ecclesiology circulating everywhere during the Patristic age. If a Protestant reads deep and wide in the patristic literature, yet remains Protestant (assuming it is a firm, permanent decision, and not a Tiber or Bosporus swim-in-progress), his decision to remain Protestant almost always reduces to one of three causes:
1.) He holds to a theory that the testimony of the fathers is hopelessly corrupt due to widespread doctrinal apostasy and “catholicizing” taking place VERY early (almost immediately) after the apostles. Here he faces two problems. Firstly, dubious dependence upon the argument from silence, whereby he stipulates that the “real” doctrine and structure of the primitive church was basically akin to his own Protestant congregation based on question-begging scriptural interpretation combined with relative post-apostolic documentary silence from say 70ad to 200ad (depending on one’s assessment of the authenticity and dating of the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch); but where the first actual post-apostolic records which do emerge from the earliest centuries are characterized by Catholic, and catholicizing, doctrinal and ecclesial notes. Secondly, if he adheres to some rule of faith derived from an eclectic selection of the doctrinal formulations promulgated within the early baptismal formulas and/or the first few ecumenical councils, he seems to be adverting to something like an ad hocapproach to doctrine, since he embraces some doctrines advanced within early formulas or by “ecumenical” gatherings of bishops (who understood themselves to have doctrine-promulgating authority through apostolic succession via ordination), while rejecting the wide array of Catholic-like doctrines held, taught, and practiced among the very same faithful and bishops responsible for the creeds and formulas he deems orthodox!
2.) He dislikes the Catholic (or Orthodox) Church to such a degree that, despite the ubiquity of Catholic doctrine and ecclesial organization within the patristic period, he unabashedly admits that he is ad hoc with regard to his embrace of certain creedal doctrinal formulations or the ratification of the canon, over against all the Catholic doctrines held and taught during the very same period.
3.) He recognizes the inherent problems and inconsistencies involved in 1 & 2, but for family or career, or some other set of situational reasons, cannot bring himself to follow where the data (and he might admit, the logic) leads.
Accordingly, one common reason that people end up converting to the Catholic Church after reading deeply in the fathers is because adoption of any of the above 3 options strikes them as contrary to personal integrity. I don’t mean to say that all persons who read the fathers deeply, yet remain Protestant, lack integrity. For example, a Reformed theologian, working within the ambit of a Reformed university and faculty, might take the “wide and early corruption” view (option 1) toward the fact of widespread Catholic doctrine and ecclesiology embraced by the fathers, without feeling the force of the two problems I raised in relation to that stance. The widespread embrace of the “early corruption” view – as a matter of course – by his overall tradition and especially by his colleagues and peers, can blind him to the inconsistencies which might seem obvious to another sort of Protestant who has a less entrenched attachment to a cherished doctrine (say sola fide) or ecclesiology (say Presbyterian polity), or even a lessened general animus toward all things Catholic. Still, for those who do leave Protestantism after encountering the fathers, it is very often nothing less than a re-affirmation of Newman’s oft-repeated quip: “to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant”.
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