Then how are we to evaluate their reasonings and conclusions? Were these men inspired with holy spirit as Peter was when he wrote? They don't claim so.
Were they free from error, somehow always led by holy spirit when they wrote? Acts 20:29,30, Paul warns that wolves would arise from those Christians and speak perverted things to draw disciples after themselves.
Just as he had warned the Thessalonians (2 Thess. 2:7) that the apostasy was already at work.
That a writer lived close to the time of the apostles or claimed to be a disciple of an apostle cannot be given mush weight. Even Judas could fit that description.
So just what do “the fathers” mean to us? and to what standard to measure their writing against?
I don't think it's like that.
I spent a few happy days in January reading in Ephrem of Syria. When he was born, Xty was illegal. He lived through Constantine and Julian the Apostate. His city was for a while subject to Byzantium/Constantinople, then to Persia, then to Constantinople again. Yet he lived a long life and was a deacon.
He wrote hymns, poems really, but they were meant to be sung in worship.
I read him for the poetry of it, but what he reminded me of is that the Fathers read Scripture more in the way Peter, Paul, and even our Lord did than in the sort of almost mathematical or legalistic way that has come down to many of us. Just look at the "arguments" in Hebrews.
So the Fathers, to me, not only open Scripture but also demonstrate a way to read Scripture.
As to the reliability of the Fathers, Tertullian, who died a heretic, is a fine example of how the fathers can do err. My boy Ephrem is a major anti-Semite, as were many other early greats. I personally think his disapproval of philosophy foreshadowed his later Montanism, but his "apology" is still pretty good stuff.
I guess I agree with the Catholics that while revelation stopped with the last Apostle, the Holy Spirit's guidance of the Church did not. And even Peter could be both erratic and authoritative.
While I'm still not happy with the way I'm expressing this, I also think that the question of reliability and of a standard itself needs examining, though I scarcely know how to begin.
I'll be slow in responding this week.