Before 300: Was Early Christianity Overtly Roman Catholic?

[RJB]

Christians.



Correct. Nobody can point to any community that has held fast to any beliefs from AD 33 until today. The Church has held fast to the Gospel. But the Church when viewed as a worldwide body is made up by all true believers united to one another in a spiritual way, regardless of their memberships in any organized communities. This worldwide body has always included various conglomerations of individual believers who united with one another outwardly in local assemblies and in groups of local assemblies that had close relationships to one another. Such things existed in AD 33, and such things exist today. But there do not exist any today that can trace back their organizational history to any groups as far back as AD 33 through some kind of apostolic succession of laying on of hands or anything like that.

You sound a bit envious, Erowe1. Sour grapes, perhaps?

 

[erowe1]

You sound a bit envious, Erowe1. Sour grapes, perhaps?

I might be. Maybe I should move to Antioch so that I can be at the right longitude and latitude to connect myself to the church of the apostles.

 

[RJB]

I might be. Maybe I should move to Antioch so that I can be at the right longitude and latitude to connect myself to the church of the apostles.

No need to move. Talk to HB. He can hook you up with that!

BTW can you point to a community of 5 point Calvinists who started their community in 300 AD, 500 AD, or even 1000 AD?

 

[Sola_Fide]

No need to move. Talk to HB. He can hook you up with that!

BTW can you point to a community of 5 point Calvinists who started their community in 300 AD, 500 AD, or even 1000 AD?

Since the five points of Calvinism was a reaction to the five articles of remonstrance in 1610, I don't know how your question could be a possibility.

 

[erowe1]

No need to move. Talk to HB. He can hook you up with that!

BTW can you point to a community of 5 point Calvinists who started their community in 300 AD, 500 AD, or even 1000 AD?

I don't know about 5 point Calvinists. But the doctrines that you probably have in mind were taught by Jesus and his apostles, and held by the churches they founded, so there's that. If that's not good enough for you, there's the Synod of Orange of 529, as well as the Synod of Valence of 855.

 

[Ronin Truth]

Is there a value statement (good/bad) to that quote in the context it was pulled from? Praxaeology tells us that masses of people will form authority structures of some sort by nature to prevent entropy as best as possible.

Over time, I have lost the source and context.

I tend to kinda doubt that the mass is any too concerned with preventing entropy.

I think they're mostly just lost sheeple (the 80% with 20% of the brains), begging for shepherds.

 

[Sola_Fide]

RJB, Here is a history lesson. The early "church" began very early to lose the gospel of grace that Paul taught:

Kenneth Escott Kirk writes:

“St. Paul's indignant wonder was evoked by the reversion of a small province of the Christian Church [Galatia] to the legalistic spirit of the Jewish religion. Had he lived half a century or a century later, his cause for amazement would have been increased a hundredfold. The example of the Galatians might be thought to have infected the entire Christian Church; writer after writer seems to have little other interest than to express the genius of Christianity wholly in terms of law and obedience, reward and punishment.”

J. L. Neve carefully documents in the apostolic fathers how quickly after the age of Paul—doubtless due to Jewish and Hellenistic influences without and the tug of the Pelagian heart within—the emphasis in their preaching and writings on soteriology fell more and more upon human works and their merit and upon moralism.

J. N. D. Kelly reaches similar conclusions. Richard Lovelace affirms:

"By the early second century it is clear that Christians had come to think of themselves as being justified through being sanctified, accepted as righteous according to their actual obedience to the new Law of Christ."

And Thomas F. Torrance, in his The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers—whose entire work is an inquiry into the literature of the apostolic fathers, that is to say, into the Didache of the Twelve Apostles, the First Epistle of Clement, the Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Polycarp, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Second Epistle of Clement, in order to discern how and why such a great divergence away from the teaching of the New Testament occurred in their understanding of salvation—concludes his research by saying:

“In the Apostolic Fathers grace did not have [the] radical character [that it had in the New Testament]. The great presupposition of the Christian life, for them, was not a deed of decisive significance that cut across human life and set it on a wholly new basis grounded upon the self-giving of God. What took absolute precedence was God's call to a new life in obedience to revealed truth. Grace, as far as it was grasped, was subsidiary to that. And so religion was thought of primarily in terms of man's acts toward God, in the striving toward justification, much less in terms of God's acts for man which put him in the right with God once and for all. “...Salvation is wrought, they thought, certainly by divine pardon but on the ground of repentance, not apparently on the ground of the death of Christ alone.… It was not seen that the whole of salvation is centred in the person and death of Christ, for there God has Himself come into the world and wrought a final act of redemption which undercuts all our own endeavours at self-justification, and places us in an entirely new situation in which faith alone saves a man, and through which alone is a man free to do righteousness spontaneously under the constraining love of Christ. That was not understood by the apostolic fathers, and it is the primary reason for the degeneration of their Christian faith into something so different from the New Testament.”

Thus the early post-apostolic church's sub-Christian soteriological deliverances launched the church on a doctrinal trajectory that moved virtually the entire church (there was always a “remnant” that put up resistance) away from the pristine Pauline teaching on salvation by pure grace and justification by faith alone, a trajectory that eventually came to expression in Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, and Semi-Semi-Pelagianism, that then found formal expression in the system of Thomas Aquinas, and finally became the hardened official position of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent.

- See more at: http://trinityfoundation.org/journal....xXSV3oyv.dpuf

 

[RJB]

I don't know about 5 point Calvinists. But the doctrines that you probably have in mind were taught by Jesus and his apostles

Oh yeah. I know "Faith Alone" is mentioned by name once in James. Although I haven't seen "Double Predestination" and others mention by name in the Bible. Were these apostolic traditions?

, and held by the churches they founded, so there's that. If that's not good enough for you, there's the Synod of Orange of 529.

I was talking more like isolated communities not affected by the domination of Rome who had a chance to flourish with varying Christian beliefs. Ireland for instance was never conquered by Rome, yet they are very distinctly Catholic. Even far flung places such as India's early Christian community has held onto Orthodox beliefs. Ethiopian's have been traditionally Oriental Orthodox.

Pretty much every ancient Christian community I've read about has and still does hold on to a Catholic tradition (The Sacraments, etc.)

 

[RJB]

RJB, Here is a history lesson. The early "church" began very early to lose the gospel of grace that Paul taught:

Thank you, Sola. So where are the ancient 5 Point Calvinist communities that survived, hidden in remote mountains and far off places like India from antiquity?

 

[erowe1]

Thank you, Sola. So where are the ancient 5 Point Calvinist communities that survived, hidden in remote mountains and far off places like India from antiquity?

How could a community survive from antiquity?

 

[RJB]

How could a community survive from antiquity?

With God's Grace, of course.

 

[erowe1]

Oh yeah. I know "Faith Alone" is mentioned by name once in James. Although I haven't seen "Double Predestination" and others mention by name in the Bible. Were these apostolic traditions?

You wouldn't find any doctrines mentioned by name in the apostolic writings. They didn't have names. But you can find the doctrines taught.

I was talking more like isolated communities not affected by the domination of Rome who had a chance to flourish with varying Christian beliefs

Isolated from what? Rome didn't dominate most other churches until around the time of Gregory the Great in the 500's. The great majority of Christians before that time were not under some hierarchy headed by the bishop of Rome or any other major patriarch.

Ireland for instance was never conquered by Rome, yet they are very distinctly Catholic

Many Irish are now. But when Patrick first took the Gospel there he did so independently of Rome, and he taught doctrines that contradict what the RCC would go on to make its dogmas. Christians in Ireland proved to be rather resistant to Rome's influence for quite some time after that.

Even far flung places such as India's early Christian community has held onto Orthodox beliefs.

I hold to orthodox beliefs, so that's good.

Ethiopian's have been traditionally Oriental Orthodox.

Starting when? Christianity spread to Ethiopia very early on in the ministry of the apostles themselves, and the essential features of Oriental Orthodox Christianity wouldn't exist until centuries later.

 

[erowe1]

With God's Grace, of course.

But conceptually, what would that even mean? A community is a group of people. For a group of people from antiquity to be around today, would those people who belonged to that ancient community still have to be alive? If not, then what?

 

[RJB]

But when Patrick first took the Gospel there he did so independently of Rome, and he taught doctrines that contradict what the RCC would go on to make its dogmas. Christians in Ireland proved to be rather resistant to Rome's influence for quite some time after that.

If that is so, why did the Irish become so Roman Catholic? BTW, have you read St. Patrick's autobiography? Can you point to something that goes counter to Roman Catholicism? We (the Orthodox) claim him as one of our saints as well, but his writing is heavily influenced by Augustinian legalism.

 

[RJB]

But conceptually, what would that even mean? A community is a group of people. For a group of people from antiquity to be around today, would those people who belonged to that ancient community still have to be alive? If not, then what?

Since we mentioned Antioch, go visit HB's church. You will see God's work in the Antiochian Orthodox tradition that has survived from the Apostles through the Muslim conquest to the modern day meddling of the U.S. military.

 

[moostraks]

Christians.



Correct. Nobody can point to any community that has held fast to any beliefs from AD 33 until today. The Church has held fast to the Gospel. But the Church when viewed as a worldwide body is made up by all true believers united to one another in a spiritual way, regardless of their memberships in any organized communities. This worldwide body has always included various conglomerations of individual believers who united with one another outwardly in local assemblies and in groups of local assemblies that had close relationships to one another. Such things existed in AD 33, and such things exist today. But there do not exist any today that can trace back their organizational history to any groups as far back as AD 33 through some kind of apostolic succession of laying on of hands or anything like that.

Now, an interesting question imo is if the Faith is universal in scope as say a historical church person would argue as is seen repeatedly here in these subforums, then why would the Church be largely held within such a minority of physical vessels (of the brick and mortar kind)? Seems mighty inefficient and illogical, but someone definitely benefits from said argument...

 

[erowe1]

If that is so, why did the Irish become so Roman Catholic?

The same question can be applied to every other ethnic group. Why did any become Roman Catholic? The accrual of power over other churches to the bishop in Rome was something that developed little by little over many centuries.

BTW, have you read St. Patrick's autobiography? Can you point something that goes counter to Roman Catholicism? We (the Orthodox) claim him as one of our saints as well, but his writing is heavily influenced by Augustinian legalism.

Yes. His own writing is the primary basis for my claim. I will have to consult it again and get back to you. But, for example, he believed in believer's baptism.

 

[RJB]

The same question can be applied to every other ethnic group. Why did any become Roman Catholic? The accrual of power over other churches to the bishop in Rome was something that developed little by little over many centuries.

They were never conquered by Rome. How could the Church of Rome have any power over the Irish people without the Spirit of God?

 

[Sola_Fide]

They were never conquered by Rome. How could the Church of Rome have any power over the Irish people without the Spirit of God?

The spirit of someone else a little lower. Sorry to be so frank, but we have to look at the reality of this spiritual world in which we live.

 

[RJB]

The spirit of someone else a little lower.

Takes one to know one?

Sorry to be so frank,

Likewise

but we have to look at the reality of this spiritual world in which we live.

Exactly.