I think Consular was the one who asked this but I'd like to see an answer: how many Fathers have to say X before X can be called universal and ancient?
That is one question which has bothered me ever since I read this, a clause in the Creed of Pius IV produced by Trent: Notice that the person saying this creed 1. believes that the Church has always held and will always hold the true sense of the Scripture, and then 2. believes that this is consistent with the unanimous consent of the Fathers. Being Anglicans, we know this R.C. Creed is necessarily contradictory, since Rome teaches many things that the Fathers disagreed amongst each other on, or disagreed with Rome on, or they simply had no opinion at all! This is one of the four official creeds of the Roman Catholic Church, in case the reader didn't know that. The problem for this phrase, "unanimous consent", is that there is no unanimous consent of the Fathers on any given subject. This thread is not about Rome, however, but the general principles of the Fathers.
I have often wondered about this principle of what the fathers agree on is part of the universal Christian faith. . If the fathers, or most agree on a subject it could be part of the deposit of the apostolic faith, but then again it could be because they came from the same basic culture, mostly from a pagan greco-roman culture and taking in the same assumptions from that. Or the apostolic fathers learned from the apostles or their immediate successors and so should be given pre-eminence in their interpretation. Well, just because they sat at the feet of the apostles doesn't ean their teaching is the same as that of the apostles. Saul had a completely different philosophy from his teacher Gamaliel, Beza had his own views aside from Calvin... judging the universal christian principles by what the fathers said appears to me to be a bit cliquish. Paul warned against treating poor brothers dfferently from the rich, but with the church fathers we seem to elevate these intellectuals over the simple ordinary clergy and congregations from the time. From a protestant persepctive many of the insignificant small preachers who we only have a name and a handful of quotes we would agree with over some of the church fathers who argued against them The church fathers should be admired, they were the first to wrestle with their faith and the prevailing culture and attacks, and we all owe a debt to them. But as a measuring rod for universality it seems ridiculous.