Athanasius' usefulness during the first Council of Nice is well known - after all, they were not gathered to discuss man becoming God. Scripture stands alone,' as one has said, 'in majestic isolation, preeminent in instruction, and separated by unapproachable excellence from everything written by the church fathers ' . . . The definite and absolute statements of scriptures coming direct from God to the soul, are widely different from the writing of Ignatius and of all the church fathers. Our only sure and safe guide is the word of God. How seasonable then is the word in the First Epistle of John, 'Let that therefore abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning' . . .
Nothing has direct divine authority for the believer, but that which was from 'the beginning'.