Double Standards

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Lee's so-called "high peak" (God became man to make man god.) was never in the Bible in the first place, so how could it get recovered? Lee skirted that problem by citing a quotation from Athanasius. Thus what he proposed was a "recovery" of the church fathers, not of the scripture.

Readers will be familiar with my occasionally waxing poetic over the Church Fathers, an area of textual reference vastly overlooked and underutilized in the Protestant tradition. The 'sola scriptora' folk will say, "But it's not in the Bible" if one leans too heavily upon, or gives too much credence to the teachings and interpretations of the ancients.

Lee was fully in this Calvinistic vein: if one waved ideas "not from the Bible" before him, they were summarily dismissed as the imaginations of men. Paradoxically, Lee then pinned his so-called high peak theology on one of these Fathers, not on scripture. Talk about a double-standard!

I do appreciate the Fathers much more today than previously, and hold them to a standard of great admiration, respect, and reference them as those having access to oral traditions and private teachings that were lost over time. Thus they open a window into the past, otherwise inaccessible. But I could present many, many teachings and sayings of the Fathers which the LC people wouldn't have even the slightest interest in, because, "it's not in the Bible"...