How Much Authority Do the Church Fathers Really Have? | The Michael Lofton Show
Reason & Theology | 29 Sept. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/live/rxayz5Pde3c
14:59 You are aware EO adressed Protestantism in Jerusalem and Iasi?
18:52* More important: % of what total?
Of all Church Fathers, regardless of how little they wrote and that is preserved, even if they never touched the question? Or of all Church Fathers that spoke on the question?
Geocentrism and YEC will have a low % of all CCFF overall, but 100 % of all CCFF who spoke on the question. (David Palm dug up one CF who spoke about a Pagan philosopher "discovering" that the Earth goes around the Sun, the context is not Joshua 10, the context is Pagan philosophers, so I presume "discovered" could have been said tongue in cheek).
I would say, the former idea would make the criterium meaningless.
20:52 How we establish unanimity?
You establish unanimity among the ones you have read, and challenge the opponents to show dissenting voices among the CCFF.
David Palm was able to dig up that one CF who considered (in a very specific context) Heliocentrism as a "discovery" (of human reason? or of human reason perhaps gone wrong?)
22:23 If you pretend "heliocentrism" and "geocentrism" are a matter of "science" and therefore not of faith and morals, sorry, that's the error of non-overlapping magisteria.
It was coined by a modernist Jew, Stephen J. Gould, who held Torah only required morals and not faith.
It is also attributing to our forefathers in the faith a distinction which presupposes the concept we have of science, as an institution, which is anachronistic.
If you pretend they touch on no article of the faith or no major item in Christian philosophy, and therefore not of faith and morals, sorry again, by now heliocentrism / acentrism touches on "what is heaven" and therefore "sedet ad dexteram Patris" and "what is resurrection" and therefore on Lateran IV "resurgam eadem carne quam nunc gero" (eadem, not eiusmodi). By "distant starlight" it touches on age of the universe, which by now, after C14 dating (which wasn't available to Pius XII in 1951 or to Fr. Fulcran Vigouroux in 1909 or in the 1880's when he wrote his manual) touches on God's goodness to Adam and on Adam as universal progenitor.
The same is obviously true of other arguments in Old Earth / Young Earth.
It can be added that St. Paul in Romans 1 wasn't speaking of the flagellum of the bacterium, since it isn't visible to the naked human eye, and microscopes haven't been around since creation. He arguably was speaking precisely on God moving Heaven around us each day.
It can also be added that Nazi Catholics who endorsed Eugenics despite Casti Connubii reasoned that way "it isn't a matter of morals, but of science" ... Pius XI obviously condemned that position, and in 1937, Mit brennender Sorge was targetting that and other persecutions of the poor and marginalised, since Auschwitz wasn't around yet. Not all Nazi Catholics did, though, I hope Albanus Schachleiter who died in 1937 didn't, he did call out Nazism for going in too Protestant a direction (mainstream Protestant Churches had at the time a pretty complete endorsement of Eugenics).
22:34 You omitted the strongest Biblical argument apart from Romans 1.
Joshua 10:12.
Joshua first spoke to God, words not recorded, then adressed Sun and Moon. If it was instead of Sun and Moon only Earth that ceased rotating, it would be the only place in the Bible where a miracle worker adressed something other than what needed adressing.
If you speak of leprosy and "be clean" and "leprosy was cleansed", there are different aspects of cleansing. The man is cleansed pure and the leprosy is cleansed off**
18th or 19th C. German Protestant theologians have pretended "God accomodated to popular error" both in Joshua's long day and in the exorcism of demons.
Or, if you pretend the prayer is the words to Sun and Moon, sorry, but Sun and Moon are simply not names of God.
25:45 It may be remarked that the condemnations of Bishop Tempier of Paris in 1277 (or 1276 as they counted then) were never revoked, except if there was an indictment against St. Thomas as suspect for holding this, this indictment was revoked 48 years later. The syllabus part wasn't.
Now, this doesn't just concern Paris, but also French and English speaking colonies in N. America, because Louisiana and Québec (larger historic sense) were colonised with people speaking Paris French as it was back then, and I think it was bishop Arundel who in a council that was regional re-adopted the same condemnations for all of England.*** So, anything from Maine to Georgia would be bound by the syllabus of Tempier too.
While it doesn't condemn the proposition of there being no angelic movers, angelic movers were certainly on the table, and weren't condemned as such.
Meaning in French and English colonies, explaining retrogrades and the movements known as aberration, parallax and proper movement by angelic movers is licit.
27:27 I'm suspicious of the idea that Church Fathers collectively have less authority than the universal magisterium.
If anything, that would concern matters of formulation and establishing minimal agreements with the doctrine.
27:43 For their flock ... correct.
At that time only? No ... up to when a decision, if it ever is, is rescinded locally or superseded by higher authority. That's why a decision from 1277 is still applicable, except insofar as the original decision involved suspicions against the Angelic doctor.
However, if flock after flock is told the same thing era after era, and we find no or only superficial or only marginal exception, that is a moral unanimity reflecting the body of bishops in union with the pope, century after century. A third way, apart from Papal decisions and Ecumenic councils for Pope and Bishops to exercise their power.
28:05° Hippo is a decent standin for Carthage if we have no dissenting voice from Carthage.
Hippo is a decent sample of the Church Universal, if we have no dissenting voice from Carthage, Rome, Damascus, Seville, Jerusalem, centuries on centuries.
29:03 Access to all? Doesn't matter. In footage from a crime scene, it should matter, but in Patristics, it shouldn't.
If all Patristics we have access to is Young Earth Creationist (including those who aren't Six-Literal Days), we can't go "but an unknown Church Father might disagree" or "a Church Father known for writing only on the sacraments might have disagreed in a lost sermon on Genesis" ...
That approach would, precisely as a % of all CCFF approach, make the criterium from Trent meaningless
30:10°° Indeed, from St. Augustine the New Advent site omits "De Genesis ad litteram libri XII" and "Contra academicos" ...
34:28 If you think I have relied on a CF who is misattributed, go for it.
I think modern editions of City of God (on New Advent) or of De Genesi ad litteram libri XII (in Budé, with facing French translation) are suspect, I think you are streching it. I cite that for taking Genesis 5 and 11 (genealogy part) as literal chronology and for St. Augustine being Geocentric.
34:54 1) St. Athanasius' Quicumque vult was a Latin original, 2) the Greeks simply didn't have the First Council of Toledo and Pope St. Leo I promoting it 40 years later (from Toledo to Astorga).
* Michael Lofton was asking what percentage is moral unanimity. ** German has the useful distinction between "reingewaschen" and "abgewaschen" ... *** I copied the "English" version from an appendix of a book by David Piché, giving the original with French translations, mainly, and the Appendix started with Chapter VI of the English document:
Index in stephani tempier condempnationes
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/index-in-stephani-tempier.html
Collectio errorum in Anglia et Parisius Condempnatorum
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/collectio-errorum-in-anglia-et-parisius.html
qui sic per capitula distinguuntur
Capitulum VI
Isti articuli qui sequuntur, condempnatisunt a domino stephano parisiensi episcopo, de consilio magistrorum theologie, anno domini M °. CC °. LXXVI, die dominica qua contatur "Letare Ierusalem" in curia parisiensi, ubi excommunicauit in scriptis omnes illos qui scienter eos docuerint uel defenderint. Et primoordinantur qui sunt de deo ...
° Michael Lofton said a decision by St. Augustine of Hippo isn't magisterial today (basically, even in Hippo). I hedge that very severely in my comment. °° English is a drop in a bucket.
