Church history and Evangelical Protestantism

He has quoted many early Christian martyrs and saints, but you have not proved that they were false teachers. Their only opponents--simply put, the men who disagreed with them--essentially, were unbelieving Jews and men like Marcion and Arius. Should we conclude that you agree instead with these saints' opponents then? No, I believe you disagree with both sides, the early Christian leaders and stalwarts of the faith and the heretics with whom they grappled, because none can be found in the Church's early history to support most modern Baptist distinctives.

We can base our faith and religion on the teachings and quotes of the apostles and their disciples, but if they are not found in your own interpretation of the Scriptures or if they contradict your own bulls, encyclicals, edicts and decrees on the Scriptures then we are following a false religion. The Eucharist is, according to you, a false teaching, and since it comes directly from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ and the pen of the apostle Paul, then what should that say about your opinion of Christ and Paul? Only that you refuse to take them at their word and so, rather than contradict them openly, you interpret them away--"spiritualize" what they said.

You judge the Church of God rather than let her judge you. You stand against those who would have had the rule over you rather than obey them, had you lived at the time of the apostles and disciples. Of course, had you actually lived in that time, you more likely would align yourself with the faith once delivered to the saints rather than modern Western rationalistic and naturalistic innovations inspired by Renaissance humanism (such as baptism and Eucharist being merely symbolic).

Tauf, historian and non-Roman Catholic

 

Hi Ed,

To my knowledge all of these people and groups use the Bible to arrive at their conclusions. In what manner do they not agree with Scripture?

CA

 

Your concept of the Eucharist was not spelled out by Christ or by Paul, but rather interpreted by later fathers, and all you do is project it back to the apostles; like "well, close enough; that must have been what they taught". And as I've said, you can see the doctrine developing, as each new leader put an additional spin on it, till we get to a "a change" brought about by the prayer of the priest. Christ or Paul said nothing of this, and when Christ first uttered it, his actual flesh was still right there, in person, which is a clue that it is not about beling His lteral flesh.

Again, the control mongering. The original church was not about "rule" in the sense that you are using it, where the offices are powerbases that dominate over people, who they must follow without question, or be ejected as it were, out of Christ.
One of your compatriots was recently booted for using this board to proselytize for your church, so be careful.

Rationalism and Humanism! That's the same scapegoat used by every controlmongering religious pundit who's angry that they have lost control over society. The fundamentalist Baptists you criticize use the same rhetoric. Maybe if the Church wasn't so corrupt in the past, they wouldn't have lost "Western Civilization" to the rationalists and humanists. Those movements arose because the Church had a stranglehold on civilization with its overblown unquestionable authority used to support totally irrational nonsense, (flat earth, earth at center of universe, often at the threat of persecution); and everyone got tired of it and rejected it. But the Church was never to be about worldly power, so criticizing rationalism and demanding that we go back to the old Church is not the answer. All men have sinned, both in the church and out, and if the "light" in the church was such darkness, then what do you expect from the world that it ruled over?

 

Welcome,to the BB, Junior Member.

However, you missed the point. The point is not that one individual or 'group' is agreeing with Scripture, while another is not agreeing with Scripture. In context, what any believe or believed, is here irrelevant. The point is that I was speaking of one or another's opinion, and in that sense, yours is neither any better or any worse than mine. Likewise, in a group setting, one group is no better or no worse than that of another group. There is only one thing I am interested in, namely, what does Scripture say about it? And 'track record' is no justification for accepting or not accepting a POV.

Ed

 

I'm a pundit? Cool!

I'm referring to Christ stating that we had to eat His flesh and drink His blood, which many disciples took pretty much literally and thus forsook Him (He didn't correct them as misunderstanding Him, but simply asked His remaining disciples whether they would leave too) and Paul noting that failing to discern the Lord's body and sinning against the body and blood of the Lord were killing people.

We regard the "change" as brought about by the Holy Spirit in response to the prayer of the priest and the faithful; remember, the priest cannot celebrate the Eucharist alone. We have no primary source that Christ or Paul said anything about an epiclesis, so we have no original evidence either way. Christ was of course not talking about His literal flesh--the Eucharist does not physically become His body and blood (that would be transubstantiation), it is mystically His body and blood.

The author of Hebrews commanded us to obey those who have the rule over us, as they must give account; Paul commanded the Corinthians to excommunicate a disorderly brother. The kind of control you describe sounds very Papist.

Who? I can think of one possibility, but I assumed he was banned for violating a rule, such as calling somebody names or posting an ad hom attack, not for proselytizng on behalf of the Church of the living God.

The rationalism and naturalism I'm referring to came to permeate virtually all levels and varieties of Western Christianity by the end of the Enlightenment era; Charles G. Finney's lectures on revival are filled with choice examples. My own sect formerly, the Anabaptists, were the foremost proponents of it at the time of the Reformation.

But to be specific, which fundamentalist Baptists have I criticized? And am I a "controlmongering religious pundit" angry that I've lost control over society? (I should make that a personalized T-shirt or bumper sticker.) I wonder when my or mine ever had control over this society, since we're hardly even known in this hemisphere; we've been dubbed America's best-kept religious secret.

The humanism I refer to, of course, is not "'secular' humanism" or anything to do with John Dewey or Gene Roddenberry, but the humanism of the Renaissance.

And rightly so. The Church of Rome was quite corrupt (although the geocentricity of an infinite universe within an Einsteinian conception of that universe might be possible--but where is the center point of infinity?). The magisterial Reformers rejected indulgences, purgatory, papal supremacy, transubstantiation, the Eucharist in one kind, liturgy in a tongue not understood by the laity, mandatory clerical celibacy at all levels, and a number of other errors, but some threw the baby out with the bathwater, while also failing to reject other errors, such as the Augustinian view of original sin.

 

That's your (and the erly fathers') interpretaton of those points. Precisely the mistake of those "disciples" was not understanding the things of the Spirit and thus taking it too literally. This happened with much of Christ's teaching. So yes, this is what the later Church would follow suit on.
WE are the Body of Christ, and if we don't preoerly respect this spiritual emblem, we may be judged. But it is a mistake to think the emblem has some mystical power os spiritual presence in itself

And they base that on ther misinterpretation of those passages. You may not have the same rulership structure as they, but you are using the verses in the same vein.

The person I'm thinking of did not get into any attacks, from what I remember, but got into a debate with a moderator, who then finally realized he was proselytizing, and you did not see him after that.

Same difference. It is all criticized with that same condescending contempt, whenever anybody pitches for the good old days of the Church.

You are criticizing Protestantism and fundamentalism for not being apart of your Church, and following its doctrines. I wasn't necessarily saying you were a pundit, but that that rhetoric was what is always used by such.

 

Interpretations

I referred to a couple of rather straightforward passages in particular that are pretty plain at face value. But I know what you're getting at. Nevertheless, were it a simple matter of interpretation, then yes, it comes down to this: whose interpretation do we trust? We all recognize certain groups as heretical--e.g., Manichaeans, Marcionites, Ebionites, Gnostics, Sabellians, et al. Only those we likely both note to be heretics considered such men as Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Justin to be heretical, at least for nearly 1500 years. The argument always put up is apostasy was present while the NT was being written, and only waxed worse and worse over time, so we cannot trust the men above and their disciples to give the correct interpretation of Scripture. They were poised over John's deathbed, and the moment he breathed his last, they threw their arms into the air, shouting with glee, "Now we can all become 'Catholics'!" :BangHead:

We do not have record that these personal disciples of the apostles were regarded as apostate, nor those above who were disciples of disciples of the apostles. We have no reason to distrust these extremely conservative men of God who were carefully handing down, according to them, what Paul, Peter and John, et al. had taught directly to them. The logic of the apostasy argument fails too when we consider that so many today--after so much more time has passed--trust Geisler, Pink, McDowell, MacArthur, Lucado, Strobel, Swindoll, Stanley, Warren, McGee, Graham, Lutzer, and on and on, rather than Clement, Ignatius, et al. Not that there is anything particular I want to disagree with those present-day men about, just...why should we trust a pastor or author today when he does disagree with the apostolic fathers or early apologists? Why not trust the men who got it from the horse's mouth and think someone writing today is at least significantly less likely to be right if he disagrees with them?

When Jesus meant something non-literally, the text tells us so--"He spoke of the temple of His body," for example.

Again, face value.

OK, I'm not a pundit, I'm condescending, contemptuous, and critical. :tear:

 

The text does not always tell us so, but it can be determined from the context. Christ used many figurative terms that are not "interpreted" bu the text, like being the Door, Light and darkness, etc.

Myself; I don't "trust" any of these men. That's the mistake. It is not you have to "trust" one man or the other. I read what they say and weigh it by the Bible. And things can change gradually and not be condemned as heresy in the first stage of change, because it is not that different from what the last person taught. So noody was standing over John waiting for him to die so they could deliberately change the teachings. They thought they were passing down what he meant, but put their own spin on it, and it was close enough that it would not be condemned by anyone. Look at the way Churches have changed from 100 years ago. Again, what we see with the interpretations of those scriptures is a doctrinal development. Someone comes and emphasizes a literal understanding, and the next person then goes into more detail with this, and then you have to explain it with a priest making a prayer to change the elements, and then you have transubstantiation, but oh, the East thinks that's going too far, etc.
As I have said all along; it is quite a long stretch to surmise that the apostles held the elaborate rituals we see in liturgicalchurches today with all the mystical meanings, yet held all of this from the epistles, and it was only their successors who began leaking it gradually in their writings.

I was in a rush, and after posting; I realized I omitted those words in my clarification. Sorry.

 

That's the mistake--it's not even the error of sola scriptura; it's worse: solo scriptura. Just me 'n' my Bible, a papacy of myself.

I'm a historian. I don't surmise that the apostles held the same elaborate rituals the Church uses today, though the synagogue services the apostles based their liturgy on was more elaborate by far than what a non-liturgical group does, and they did not hold all that from the epistles leaked gradually by their successors. Any good Orthodox liturgical historian would agree.

 

Well, that's all we can do today. We either read it for ourselves, or we choose men to read and interpret it for us, and then learn to read their interpretations of it into it for ourselves. We have the choice of choosing the men we see around us today, or trying to choose the oldest authorties, but the problem was, they were men too, and not guaranteed to be perect just because they were a bit closer to the apostles. Again, we see them developing doctrines and practices into systematic form, not passing down everything exactly as it was in the NT.

And the Church was eventually ejected from the synagogues. There is no evidence that they carried on the rituals, and the rituals were different anyway (as they did not acknowledge Christ, but were rather OC-based). And funny that in the issue of the apocryphe, the Jews bekliefs are so rejected, but now they are used as proof of Catholic practice!

 

See Orthodox Worship, A Living Continuity With the Temple, the Synagogue and the Early Church
by Benjamin D. Williams and Harold B. Anstall for a description of the early Church's liturgy and a comparison to the first-century synagogue service. Early Christians met in the synagogues on the Sabbath then gathered for an agape that evening (the first of the week to them, Saturday night to us). After they were ejected from the synagogues they combined both services Sunday mornings, the former synagogue service becoming the Liturgy of the Word or synaxis as NT readings were added, and the agape becoming the Eucharist. The book provides references and a bibliography.

The early Church adopted the entire Jewish canon of Scripture--the Hellenistic Jews' canon--not that of Palestinian Pharisees at Jamnia. So in the matter of the deuterocanon there is again continuity with Jewish practice.

 

When they gathered in the synagogues, they were basically guests, and neither they nor the apostles were the ones leading the liturgy. The liturgy was what the Jews were doing, and it was there because it was their practice, not the apostles'. So even if the Christians ejected from the synagogues did bring some of the liturgy with them (after the apostles), you still cannot say it was an "apostolic" practice.
And again, did the synagogues have Communion? They may have had the seder on Passover, but that is still not a weekly "mass" based on Christian imagery.

 

Please reread my last post.

 

Eric, I'm curious: you dismiss the ECFs' interpretations of Scripture (for example, Ignatius' rendering of the meaning of the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6) yet are quite happy to go along with your own interpretation of Scripture. All that you're left with then is a duel not so much of proof-texts, but a duel of interpretations of proof texts - yours -v- mine - v- MacArthur's - v - Ignatius'.

Myself, I''m much happier trusting Ignatius' rather than anyone else's. There's a simple reason for that: Ignatius was discipled by the guy who wrote down Jesus' Bread of Life discourse and he was therefore eminently more qualified than you, me or MacArthur to say what Jesus really meant.

 

I don't know where you all are getting this concept of "qualification" from. The Bible does not say "follow only people who were directly taught by us", or "whoever is the earliest teacher" in comparison with later teachers. Yes, if Ignatius was discipled by John, then that would be an evidence that he may have had the right doctrines and practices. But no heretic ever made up all his own doctrines of Christ from scratch without ever hearing of Christ or the bibe and being taught the concepts by someone else, and then making up his own mind or putting his own spin on it. (I'm not saying Ignatius was a heretic, but just using a worst case scenario as an example).

For one thing, don't forget that we're not even talking so much about Ignatius' doctrine, because all you see from him is another (not too different from the NT terms) ambiguous metaphor (confess not the Bread "to be" the body), and it was yet later leaders who took that and added yet more to it. And they were NOT discipled by John! Again, in military classes, they tought how in a matter of minutes, a message passed down in the room can change signficantly. So you can't use Ignatius to project some elaborate ritual of a priest "changing" bread and wine into the body and blood, or whatever back onto the apostles, who just happened to have omitted it from all of their epistles.

You mean about reading the book? OK, if I can ever find that book. But it still stands that the Christians were guests, so you can't assume that the apostles authorized, copied and brought the ritual over, though later leaders may have. And the rituals and their meanings were different from Christian practice.

 

The Bible does contain an injunction from Paul to Timothy to "hold fast what has been entrusted to you" (I Tim 6:20) and charges him to "continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it" (II Tim 3:14;italics mine), so there is a Biblical precedent for someone discipled by an Apostle to have authority in matters of doctrine; the whole thrust of Paul's Pastoral letters is for the next generation of leaders to thus "guard the deposit of truth" against the threats of persecution and heresy

 

But the point is that there is no guarantee that an individual next generation leader, let alone later generations WOULD get everything exactly right. That was an instruction, not a prophecy. And in fact, we're not even talking about the later leaders dropping anything they learned from the apostles, but rather adding to it. So they could have actually followed those instructions, but they did add their own spins to certain things, and systematized forms of doctrine and practice were developing, very gradually.

 

....which takes us back to Jesus' prophecy (if you're after prophecy) that the Holy Spirit would lead the Apostles "into all truth"

 

Well, that obviously was not talking about complete errorlessness for all ages. Again, the argument is not about any of the fathers leaving off any truth, but rather adding their own spin to it. So the Spirit did lead into "all truth" (about Christ and His mission), but the fathers continued to develop doctrine and practice according to their own interpretations.

 

"Obviously", eh? And you know that how, exactly?