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Orchard's history is good if you read it with the understanding he was an early leader in the Landmark movement among Baptists. He takes a position similar to those of J.M. Carroll, John T. Christian, Thomas Crosby, J. M. Cramp, William Cathcart, Adam Taylor and D. B. Ray.

Of that list I would recommend John T. Christian's two volume history.

All of them hold to the theory that there has been an unbroken chain of churches since the days of John the Baptist, who baptized Christ, which have held similar beliefs (though not always the name) of current Baptists. Ancient anti-paedobaptist groups, such as the Montanists, Paulicians, Cathari, Waldenses, Albigenses, and Anabaptists, have been among those viewed by them as the predecessors of modern-day Baptists.

It may be true that among such groups there were biblical Christians but it is by no means accurate to ascribe biblical faith and practice to all who bore those names.

I tend toward the "Spiritual Kinship" position of William Kiffin which basically says that today's evangelical Christianity has had historic representatives all down through the ages of ecclesiastical history. And, like modern evangelicalism, those representatives were varied and diverse but were faithful to the gospel and thus our spiritual kin, IE, brothers and sisters in Christ. (Unlike Baptist Successionism, which sees a chain of Baptist churches all down through the same period.)

 

What you have to remember is that the history of the Paulicians and Cathars was written by Roman Catholic apologists.

During the darkest days of the Papal strangle hold on "Christendom" there existed a group of Christians that stood tall for their faith. The Paulician churches were the most maligned of all the enemies of the Roman system.

In 1891 a Paulician book entitled "Key Of Truth" was discovered by the Armenian scholar Frederic Cornwallis Conybeare (1856-1924), and published in 1898. For the first time the Paulicians were allowed to speak for themselves.

The Paulician churches were of apostolic origin, being planted in Armenia in the first century A.D.- according to their tradition, by the apostle Thomas.

It is also quite evident that the Montanists, Novatians, and Donatists were perpetuated in the Paulicians. Schaff, in his History of the Christian Church (Volume II, page 92) states, "In spite of this strong opposition the Novatian sect ... propagated itself in various provinces of the west and the east down to the sixth century." "In Phrygia it (the Novatians) combined with remnants of the Montanists." "A remnant of the Donatists, as we learn from the letters of Gregory I, perpetuated itself into the seventh century." (Volume III, page 153).

In his classic, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon notes that the faith of the Paulicians stemmed from the first century and was a branch of Antiochan Christianity.

They managed to survive for such a long period of time largely due to the fact that Armenia is a very isolated and mountainous region located mainly in modern Turkey, but also extending into present day Iran and the old Soviet Union. It lies between, and to the south of, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

The name Paulician did not come into general use until the 7th century and was applied because of the emphasis placed by these people on the epistles of Paul, and their adoption of Pauline names for their leaders. The Paulician movement rose to prominence during the 7th century, but existed long before they were called by that name.

At the request of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, all of the Eastern Emperors persecuted the Paulicians. Even the Armenian-born Emperor Leo III permitted the Paulicians to be attacked, with the exception of his allowing many of them to migrate to Thrace, where he granted them a city in southern Bulgaria called Philippopolis (Plovdiv) and a certain amount of religious freedom in 970 A.D.

The doctrines of the Paulicians were obscured by the writings of their enemies, notably Photius and Sideliotes, which Gibbon called "malice and poison." However, the discovery of their book, "The Key Of Truth" has done more to shed positive light on these people then any other discovery of this millennium.

According to their own writings the Paulicians claimed to have originated with Christ and the Apostle; accepted the Bible as the sole rule of faith; recognized only believers baptism by immersion; rejected transubstantiation; rejected ceremonialism; rejected penance as unprofitable and absurd; had no hierarchy or clerical office; they were strong Trinitarians; opposed all image worship (called the "holy relics" "JUNK"!); believed in holy living.

The accusations against the Paulicians were the most strident in the attempts of their enemies to discredit them. The first of these false accusations was that they were Manichaeans. Manichaeism was a semi-christian gnostic sect founded by Mani in 240 A.D. in Babylon. It was a combination of Persian Zoroastrianism and Gnostic tenets.

It is true that one of the leaders of the Paulicians (Constantine) had been a Manichaean prior to his conversion. W. A. Jerrell writes in his history, "From the time he got acquainted with these writings (the Gospels and Paul's Epistles) it is said he would touch no other book. He threw away his Manichaean library and exploded and rejected many of the abused notions of his countrymen."

Paulicians taught the two natures of the believer, and this biblical teaching has been twisted by their enemies to be the "dualism" of the Manichaeans.

The major reason for the charge of Manichaeism - stigmatization, something the Roman church did very often to all who opposed them.

The second charge is that the Paulicians rejected parts of the Bible. However, it must be noted that the Catholic church used the Old Testament to support their concept of a formal "priesthood" and the "church-kingdom-state." When the Paulicians reject those false doctrines, it was charged they rejected the Old Testament, a false accusation. When the Paulicians rejected the Roman dogma of the primacy of Peter, they were accused of rejecting the writings of Peter, i.e., 1 and 2 Peter, another false charge.

The next charge was that the Paulicians rejected the ordinances. In fact, all that they rejected was the Catholic sacraments. It was also claimed that they were adoptionists, i.e., that the human Jesus was adopted by the eternal Word at the time of the baptism of Jesus (that is, that Jesus was not truly the eternal Christ, but was only used by Him during the incarnation). The charge most likely arose out of the Paulicians opposition to Mariolatry and the "Mother of God" teaching of the Catholic church. Like the Nestorians, who delineated the natures of Christ in their opposition of such heresy, the Paulicians were, most likely, unjustly accused of being adoptionist.

There were other charges, most of them merely ridiculous, i. e. that they were cannibals, making cakes from meal and the blood of infants; that they conducted their prayer meetings naked; they practiced incest; and taught marriage was a sin (in spite of the fact that every one of their leaders was married!).

It is apparent the first century churches of Armenia remained in the backwaters of "mainstream" Christianity for many years, relatively unchanged in their New Testament simplicity.

Nevertheless, such churches had a profound influence upon some major developments in Christian and world history. One of those was the Iconoclastic Movement. The Iconoclastic Movement began in 726 when the Eastern Emperor Leo III, who ruled from 717-741, issued an edict against the worship of images and pictures, following with a persecution of image worshipers and the wholesale destruction of icons, images, and paintings. Thus began a controversy which lasted until the reign of Theodora in 842. The Paulicians, like other non-conformist groups, were very much opposed to the veneration of images, a practice which had been going on since Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 325, and returned with (supposed) pieces of the cross and nails used in the Lord's crucifixion. The emperor Leo was himself from the Isaurian Mountains, part of the Taurus chain, and Armenian. "Leo was virtually a Paulician, and it has been maintained that his successor, Constantine Copronymus, 741-775, was a 'pure Paulician'" (Newman, A.H., A Manual Of Church History, Volume I, page 381). It is doubtful that Leo was actually a Paulician, for he was a ruthless man in many ways, but he certainly held some Paulician sentiments.

The greatest impact of the Paulician movement was seen in its spread into Eastern Europe. The first Paulician emigrants settled in Thrace about 775. Thrace is an area which comprises part of Macedonia (present day Greece), European Turkey, and Southern Bulgaria. During the comparative respite of the iconoclastic period, a vast amount of missionary work was done by Paulician preachers. The Gospel was preached all over Asia Minor, into Bulgaria, and as far West as Bosnia.

During the severe persecutions of the ninth century, many Paulicians fled to the Balkans, where many churches were established. As mentioned previously, in 970 a large number were settled in Southern Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, the Paulicians came to be called "Bogomils", a word thought to mean "friends of God". These people spread across the land with their simple brand of Christianity. Further Byzantine persecutions sent many Westward into Serbia where the Serbian Orthodox Church pushed them into Bosnia in the twelfth century. Pope Innocent III, in 1203, tried to eradicate these people in Bosnia, who were now often called "Cathari," meaning "pure ones." In 1291 a Dominican and Franciscan Inquisition was launched against them, the end result of which was to once again weaken the barrier against the onslaught of Islam, and by 1400 much of this area fell under the control of the Ottoman Turks.

Paulicians also found their way into Europe, particularly Southern France in the Languedoc region, and had a profound influence in the revival of the ancient Churches there. When Bogomils from the Balkan countries fled to Europe, they met many believers of like faith - the Albigenses.

Like Baptists, not all Paulicians were sound in the faith, but it seems more than likely that some of them were our spiritual kin.

 

"Cathari" simply means "pure ones." That name was given to the Montanists, the Novatians, the Donatists, the Britons, the Celtic Churches Of Ireland, the Paulicians, the Petrobrussians, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and even the Anabaptists. So it is hard to ascribe any coherent doctrinal position to them.

 

Ah, yes. In my not entirely humble opinion, the best Christian University in the US. Knew Doc Cederholm well. And Richard Weeks and of course, my old friend Dr. James Hollowood. Those were the days.