My church defined your church's bible

[orthodox]

Okay: I will pretend that you really do not know. "Religious adoration" means worship-like activity beyond what we normally do with living people but which we would do toward God.

So your concerns would be assuaged if our activities were limited to what "normal people do with living people" (whatever that may refer to) ?

Scripture indicates that the Kingdom of God belongs to children. They already have it. We need to do nothing in this regard.

We follow Scripture by baptizing in order: conversion, then baptism. We do not baptize unbelievers.

Matthew 28:19-20 indicates that we are to be trying to make disciples, so we need to be teaching children about Jesus. At some point, a child matures enough to be able to understand the need for the Gospel and its significance. At this point, the child can "believe" or "not believe." When that child believes, s/he becomes a believer and then and only then should s/he be baptized.

Where is the verse about "understanding the need for the gospel and its significance"? That's not in the bible, that's just your tradition.

I could discuss arguments put forward on the other side, like Acts 2:39 "this promise is for you and your children", or 1Cor 10:2 "all were baptized into Moses and ate the same spiritual food (including the children!)". I could point out that if your children are learning from you, that makes them disciples and you have to baptize them according to Mt 28:19.

And then you will rejoin with your arguments about those verses, and on and on it will go, but you will never have any unity in the churches by going back and forward with these scriptural arguments.

Some Protestants are more willing to follow 1 Corinthians 4:6 than others. Some Bible-only non-Protestant Christians are likewise.

If 1 Cor 4:6 meant what you I assume are claiming it means, then the Corinthians would have had to abandon half the Christian religion. Paul would have come into Corinth, set up the church, taught them the Christian doctrines. Then later on, when he sent them 1 Corinthians, the Corinthians would have said "Oh no, he says to only hold to what is written. We have to stop following all the precepts of the Christian religion he taught us, and just limit ourselves to the OT. What's more, we have to take up all the Jewish law again, because nobody has written Acts or Romans yet, so we have no basis for not keeping the law".

When your interpretation results in an absurdity, I think you need to re-think. The context of 1Cor 4:6 is that people in the church were judging each other, and they were becoming arrogant with respect to each other. People were becoming elitist because they had done more good works than some others, and they were then judging their standing before God on that basis. So Paul says that when it comes to judging others standing before God, don't go beyond what is written so that you don't become arrogant.

That doesn't have anything to do with whether tradition is important in the life of the church and its doctrine. If it meant not to hold to Paul's oral tradition, then it would directly contradict what Paul said in 1 Thessalonians.

Furthermore, in all likelyhood, the church would have understood Paul's statement as referring to the OT, since the understanding of the NT canon hadn't developed yet, and in large part didn't even exist yet.

The Didache, however, suggests that emergency is not the issue. It is the availability of water that allows for the exception to immersion.

You're nitpicking. The fact is, Orthodox accept non-immersion when compelling practical concerns warrant it.

It also indicates that a fast of at least one day must precede baptism, which does not indicate emergency situations. Hence, the author of the Didache would disagree with this emergency qualification.

But the Orthodox also recommend fasting before baptism where possible.

You're trying too hard here to nitpick out a difference where these is none. And yet how many major doctrinal differences will I find just in the baptist churches, let alone in all the protestant churches?

On the other hand, if the Orthodox are claiming Scripture as an Orthodox document, they depart from it when they in any way recognize as valid a baptism by any method than what the Greek Scriptures call for: immersion.

Well here we come back to interpretation again, since scripture doesn't come with a built-in infallible lexicon. For those lexicons that are compiled you find possibilities like "dipping" and "Jewish ceremonial washing", and you find verses like Mark 7:4 "as the baptizing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables" which obviously means washing, and it is doubtful they were immersing tables.

Of course, we could argue back and forth about lexicons, and whose lexicon is better than whose, but would that result in unity of the church? Pretty soon everyone will have to have their own church because their own particular combination of views on any particular doctrine will not coincide with anybody elses.

 

[Eric B]

I'm not seeing a lot of interaction here with what the bible actually says:

2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.

It specifically says to hold BOTH kinds of traditions, written and oral. Can you explain to me why I have to justify the wisdom of following both kinds of tradition, when scripture says to do it? If scripture says not to commit adultery, do you reject it until someone proves why that is a good teaching? Scripture ought to be enough authority for you.

I can give you some suggestions why we are to hold to the oral tradition - because that way the church can hold to the interpretation of scripture which is the common understanding of the church, and not be tossed around by every wind of doctrine, but grow up in Christ from whom the whole body is building itself up. (Eph 4:14-16).

What we see in the current age is new churches springing up disputing every interpretation that was agreed upon in the church for its first 1500 years. The church didn't suddenly discover scripture in the 16th century. The early church fathers were smart folks, and they agreed on many many issues that were never ever disputed till the reformation. And even the things that the reformers would never have questioned, have been questioned again later by new churches springing up. So we've got churches again disputing the deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, when you should be baptized, at what age you can take communion, what communion is, what books are canonical, what will happen in the end times, the physical resurrection and on and on. In short, every doctrine of the Christian religion.

I think if you think a little bit harder you will see the reason for holding to the traditions - it provides unity in the church.

You talk about "my church", but for a thousand years it wasn't your church vs my church it was THE Church.

Tradition also provides the means for testing tradition. That which is catholic (universal) and has antiquity in the teaching of the church fathers.

For example, nobody in the early church ever disputed infant baptism. It was a practice of the universal church. You may claim it wasn't because scripture doesn't specifically state the ages of various families baptised and so on. And you will argue that case, and the rest of the church will argue from the Jewish practice of including those of all ages in initiation rites. But there is no doubt as far as Tradition is concerned.

It's not a matter of it being "inefficient", it is a matter of recognizing that scripture has been taken out of its home. Paul wrote to the Corinthians and told them to hold to what he wrote AND to what he told them. The church was unified for over a thousand years. Then some people came along and decided to take scripture out of the church it came from and interpret it outside of its home and now every doctrine known to man is up for grabs.

As far as Rome is concerned, it is up to you to decide if the catholic faith as found in the early church fathers granted Rome the powers that it now claims. Still, the differences between Rome and Orthodoxy are fairly limited compared to the differences now evident. I do not believe you will be able to find even the smallest difference between 4th century practice and current practice in Orthodoxy. You will find I think some differences to Roman Catholicism over the centuries, which are more or less apparent. As for what you call the "Eastern factions", there is actually very little at all disputed by the other non-Orthodox eastern churches, and indications are that there may well be full unity soon.

The West has elevated the papacy above tradition. We think tradition itself makes that obvious by examining the early teachings of the church.

You're still presupposing that the teachings Paul was calling "oral" were any different from what was written. Once again, all this is saying is whichever way you receive the teaching, follow it. You even gave another example, of how before Acts and the epistles were written, oral teaching was all they had. This included their entire body of teaching, and has nothing to do with any special teachings that were to be oral ONLY. Oral was a necessity for when there was no writing, not a whole sepatrate body of teaching, so that was why they were told either oral or written. Not because they were two different sets of teaching.
Why would infant baptism be deliberately left out? What you have done just pushes the burden of proof back to the early fathers. So I now must believe whatever they say, instead, with no way to test it, except their agreement with each other on certain points. And even that is susceptible to misunterpretation by later readers (especially with ambiguous statements like Irenaeus' reference to the Eucharist taken as an absolute literal 'catholic' position). The early fathers did not have fully formed "catholic" doctrines and practices in most cases, but but rather bits and parts of things taken and generalized into "the full body of teachings" as still held in the east in the 12th century. Still, why would all of this have been so completely omitted from the writings by the apostles, and only written by the fathers? (If it was so meant to be oral, then maybe it was supposed to be left that way?)

The Jews similarly claim "oral Mosaic tradition" which they provide OT proof texts for as we'll. Not only did this justify all their extrabiblical practices, and restrictions, but it also led them to reject Christ. Now their "tradition" goes even before yours, so if you want to play the seniority game (older must be right), they would win, and Christ is false. How can you prove it? Not just from OT scripture (as Jesus and the apostles did), because that "takes it out of its home", the oral tradition of Moses.

If you quote Eph. Further, you will see mention of "the sleight of man, and cunning craftiness", and that is precisely what this is. Man wants to be above question. The church used its worldly power to supress division, but with the advent of printing, plus the increasing corruption (which could not be questioned), THAT is what led to all the schism.

Also, Rome justified its elevation of the papacy on what else, but TRADITION. From many of the same early sources you cite. Now who's right? See why that tactic is faulty, and doesn't prevent schism? And regardless of how little the division in your groups are, or how soon they may rejoin; they are still there despite the common traditions.
You keep throwing up "all the disunity", but it looks more divided than it is, because everyone built an organization around their teaching, leaving the parent organization. But Christ's body (the one that would never fail) is not defined by these organizations, but by the spiritual body of true believers within. You're trying to get everybody to come back under your organization and just accept whatever it says. But that is artificial, and not the basis of true unity, any more than being citizens of the same country. That is what I was getting at with my comment on organizations.

 

[orthodox]

You're still presupposing that the teachings Paul was calling "oral" were any different from what was written.

How am I presupposing anything by simply doing what the bible says and following the written and oral traditions? You are the one who has taken Paul's admonition to follow the traditions whether handed down orally or written, and made the arbitrary decision, (ironically based on no scripture) that they must be the same thing, and you can therefore ignore part of Paul's command. If you can't trust the oral tradition, which is your claim, why did Paul say to follow it? You suggest that they are the same thing, yet one you can trust, the other you can't. So why would Paul tell you to follow an authority that can't be trusted?

Once again, all this is saying is whichever way you receive the teaching, follow it.

But why follow the teaching received orally, since according to you it is untrustworthy?

You even gave another example, of how before Acts and the epistles were written, oral teaching was all they had. This included their entire body of teaching, and has nothing to do with any special teachings that were to be oral ONLY. Oral was a necessity for when there was no writing, not a whole sepatrate body of teaching, so that was why they were told either oral or written. Not because they were two different sets of teaching.

So then, you conceed they were instructed to follow the oral teaching. Since you claim to follow sola scriptura, show me the verse where that instruction was recinded.

Why would infant baptism be deliberately left out?

Because it was understood from the Tradition. I could just as much ask you why scripture gives no guidance about what age and understanding is sufficient to be deemed a believer. Some might say 3 years old, others 10, 15, 18. Scientists say the brain isn't fully developed until 25. There is enormous range for argument there for sola scriptura adherents, but for those adhering to tradition, everything is quite clear.

What you have done just pushes the burden of proof back to the early fathers. So I now must believe whatever they say, instead, with no way to test it, except their agreement with each other on certain points.

Yes, there is not always a way to test the early traditions, just like there is not always a way to test scripture. Was Paul right with all his advice? You can't test it, you take it on faith. Is the tradition of the church right? We take it on faith. Is the canon right? Yes, we take it on faith.

And even that is susceptible to misunterpretation by later readers (especially with ambiguous statements like Irenaeus' reference to the Eucharist taken as an absolute literal 'catholic' position).

It is also a living tradition, in that we believe the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. So we believe the current church correctly follows the early fathers, and the only time you need to test that is if the church falls into schism, and you need to test the antiquity and catholicity of competing claims.

So, you can test traditions against scripture, but if scripture is silent or ambiguous, then you have no basis for disputing tradition. As for Irenaeus, if there was any dispute in the church concerning the Eucharist, then we could look more closely at Irenaeus. But since there really isn't any dispute, then the ambiguity of Irenaeus is moot, since we can look at him in the broader context of tradition to resolve the ambiguity.

The early fathers did not have fully formed "catholic" doctrines and practices in most cases, but but rather bits and parts of things taken and generalized into "the full body of teachings" as still held in the east in the 12th century. Still, why would all of this have been so completely omitted from the writings by the apostles, and only written by the fathers? (If it was so meant to be oral, then maybe it was supposed to be left that way?)

One might just as well ask why the apostles didn't write an unambiguous systematic theology and save a lot of problems down the track.

The fact is, there isn't much ambiguity in doctrine when you interpret scripture in the context of tradition, but there is a ton of ambiguity when you interpret scripture by itself. The former kept one church for a thousand years. The latter has bred thousands of denominations who frankly, don't agree on anything at all.

The fact is that the apostles built a church, and then wrote epistles on an ad-hoc basis to solve ad-hoc issues. They didn't write in a systematic way to provide a systematic theology. And the epistles they did write assume a certain background knowledge (e.g. "hold to the oral traditions").

Apparently they thought that the written plus oral traditions would hold the church in good stead, which it did for a thousand years. When churches abandoned part of the deposit of faith, when it rejected tradition, then we have splintering upon splintering of the church.

The Jews similarly claim "oral Mosaic tradition" which they provide OT proof texts for as we'll. Not only did this justify all their extrabiblical practices, and restrictions, but it also led them to reject Christ. Now their "tradition" goes even before yours, so if you want to play the seniority game (older must be right), they would win, and Christ is false. How can you prove it? Not just from OT scripture (as Jesus and the apostles did), because that "takes it out of its home", the oral tradition of Moses.

If you've got specific things you want to discuss in the Jewish tradition, let's do it.

However I have to point out that the NT writers themselves relied on the Jewish extra-biblical tradition.

At Mt 2:23 it says "that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’" There is no such scripture, it is an extra-scriptural tradition.

At 1 Cor 10:4 it says "the water that God provided for Israel: "All drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ". But there is no scripture saying the rock followed them.

In his first epistle Peter tells of Christ’s journey to the netherworld during which "he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah" (1 Pet. 3:19). There is a growing scholarly consensus that the interpretive key to this verse is found in Genesis 6:1-7, in which "the sons of God" cohabited with "the daughters of men" and produced ghastly offspring. According to ancient interpretation, these "sons of God" were actually rebellious angels who sinned by mating with human women.

It appears likely that this is Peter’s view as well. "For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until judgment…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial" (2 Pet. 2:4, 9). Note the close link to Noah and Geneses 6. Compare too Jude 6, which says that "the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day…" These references are evidence that Peter has this traditional interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4 in mind when he writes of Christ’s preaching "to the spirits in prison."

Jude 9 relates an altercation between Michael and Satan: "When the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’" This is not found in scripture, it is an oral tradition.

At Jude 14 it says "It was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’"

This statement may also be found in the non-Scriptural book of 1 Enoch (1:9); but Jude’s use of it does not really say anything about the inspiration of 1 Enoch. Rather, he asserts that the saying itself actually hales from the venerable Enoch, whose righteous life is mentioned in Genesis 4-5.

Here is a tradition, a prophetic revelation, which was passed on orally for millennia before being captured first in a non-inspired written document (1 Enoch) and then in an inspired document (Jude).

At 2 Tim 3:8 Paul dips into rabbinic tradition to supply the names, Jannes and Jambres, of the magicians who opposed Moses in Pharoah’s court .

James tells us that because of Elijah’s prayer there was no rain in Israel for three years (Jas. 5:17), but the Old Testament account of Elijah’s altercation with King Ahab says nothing of him praying (1 Kgs. 17).

Even the Golden Rule, "So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets" (Matt. 7:12) was anticipated by Jewish oral Tradition. Rabbi Hillel taught, "What you do not like should be done to you, do not to your fellow; this is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary."

.... CONTINUED...

 

[orthodox]

If you quote Eph. Further, you will see mention of "the sleight of man, and cunning craftiness", and that is precisely what this is. Man wants to be above question. The church used its worldly power to supress division, but with the advent of printing, plus the increasing corruption (which could not be questioned), THAT is what led to all the schism.

Firstly, I don't know what worldly power you are talking about, because pretty much all the orthodox doctrines can be found in the pre-Constantine era. Unless perhaps you want to dispute the finer points of the trinity, which most baptists appear reluctant to do.

As for man wanting to be above question, I am not talking about traditions of men, but rather the Holy Tradition which is passed on by the apostles. You claim you don't trust men at all, but you trusted the men who told you want the canon is, and you trust the men in the orthodox church who copied the scriptures down to this day. If you regard us as engaging in "sleight of man, cunning and craftiness", then you have no cause for trusting our canon or our copiers.

Also, Rome justified its elevation of the papacy on what else, but TRADITION. From many of the same early sources you cite. Now who's right? See why that tactic is faulty, and doesn't prevent schism?

That depends - do you think the teachings of the early church fathers support the bishop of Rome wielding absolute power and proclaiming doctrine infallibly and without the church's consent? I don't think you do believe that, and if you do I could give you quotes from the fathers specifically saying that nobody in the church decides things without the consent of the church.

If it be the case that you don't believe this, aren't you really arguing a nonsense? You can't compare the papacy with say, the monarchial episcopate which dates back at least to 100AD with Ignatius, or infant baptism for which there is no evidence that anybody disputed it.

And regardless of how little the division in your groups are, or how soon they may rejoin; they are still there despite the common traditions.

Firstly, if you are talking about "your groups", i.e. the Orthodox church, there are no divisions whatsoever, between the Russian, Greek, Jerusalem, Alexandrian, Byzantine or Antiochian churches. None at all.

If you want to mention the coptic church, okay, except that they have been meeting with the orthodox leaders and have agreed that there never was any disagreement and the disputes were really all a big misunderstanding. It may take some time to figure out how to implement full unity with that church, but you can hardly compare this to even the range of thought within baptist circles, let alone protestant.

If this tiny empiral reference of yours is supposed to prove the problems of tradition, what on earth would it do to the notion of sola scriptura?

You keep throwing up "all the disunity", but it looks more divided than it is, because everyone built an organization around their teaching, leaving the parent organization. But Christ's body (the one that would never fail) is not defined by these organizations, but by the spiritual body of true believers within. You're trying to get everybody to come back under your organization and just accept whatever it says. But that is artificial, and not the basis of true unity, any more than being citizens of the same country. That is what I was getting at with my comment on organizations.

Interesting philosophizing, but where is the scriptural basis for distinguishing the church and the organization? Where is the scriptural basis for leaving the church the apostles built, and forming your own church? Where does Paul advocate that? When Jesus said "take it to the church" (Mt 18:17), he assumes the church is visible, not invisible. When Paul writes to a church in a city, or Jesus addresses the church in a city in Revelation, he doesn't assume it has broken into multiple organizations, some of which are doing well, others of which have lost their zeal. He assumes one church. Where I live there are two protestant churches built adjacent to each other! And in the small suburb where I live there are 5 different protestant churches. Where does scripture say that is normal?

 

[redwards]

I see the KJVO debate rages on here.

As an Orthodox Christian, I have to ask the question to KJVOs. Since my church proclaimed and declared the NT canon that you now accept... if there's any proclaiming to be done about an authoritative version of the bible, for consistency's sake, aren't you going to have to wait until my church declares that too?

My, my, my.
Joined on 07/28.
Introduced self as Russian Orthodox.
Proceeded to proclaim "my church" and "my bible".
So far has made 20 posts of 43 total posts to a single thread.
Kind of reminds me of this.
If you are not careful, you are going to grind the head right off that ax, and then you will only be left with a handle.

 

[bound]

Grace and Peace Everyone,

I'm following this topic of discussion closely and I find it very interesting.

Personally I have a great deal of affection for our Brothers and Sisters who are more or less 'liturgical' in their worship of our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ but what chaffs me is the 'demand' that such evolved practices be followed to be recognized as 'orthodox' Christians. When I reflect on the words of the Apostle Paul in the 14th and 15th Chapters of Romans I find no demand for such tyranny by the 'Church' over the individual members of the Body of Christ. Such is not the liberty in which are Lord has placed us and thus I contend with anyone who attempts to seize our God-Given liberty to place us under a yoke of bondage. I use this criticism equally against Catholics and Orthodox because I see the same kind of bondage to traditions of men in both which although I don't necessarily contend damns them is not necessary for our embracing the promises of eternal life found in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

One more point is I believe it is valuable to read and reflect on the works of early Christians but I question the need to elevate such Brothers and Sisters in Christ above those living today guided by the 'same' Holy Spirit. Once we elevate Brothers and Sisters to Fathers and Mothers we place them as equals in authority to the Prophets and Apostles which I for one question as meritorious.

Regardless I continue to enjoy the thread.

God Bless.

 

[Eric B]

Orthodox,
Your question of "why don't I just accept/believe/trust the traditions?" is what presupposes that I know what these hypothetical traditions (that were never written until the postapostolic period) are, and of course, that it is your church that has preserved them. What I don't trust is your church, and that it actually kept everything perfectly from the beginning. That if I walked into a NT church under the apostles, it would look just like St. Demetrios cathedral that I pass by, and that all those other practices in there were perfectly understood from the tradition, and simply never became ad-hoc issues that warranted mention in the epistles. (In that case, which presupposes the tradition as the "background", again,why was anything ad-hoc and needed to be written?)
The only example I see is common teaching that can be found elsewhere in scripture. You insist there was all this other stuff.

The epistles may have not been systematic theology manuals, but it is a far stretch to claim that all of these doctrines in question were perfectly understood and therefore neatly omitted, and we just have to accept them from you by "faith". That divides our faith between God and men, and according to you, believing the canon is faith in man anyway(see below). But that's just what the agnostics who trash the whole faith claim as well.

You take one or two verses mentioning written or oral, and then build this whole premise of the "oral tradition" being the "background" or "home" of the written word. But those passages do not say that! Already, you've added assumptions to the text.
The command may never have expired, but then we don't have the original apostles here giving them to us either. (Once again, that was only for when the writing wasn't available yet). So it comes down to trusting what you say.

Your best argument is about the canon, but all your magisterium did was make an official decree of it. But my faith in them comes through the Holy Spirit's guiding as I read them.
When I read the fathers and later church writings, as well as the OT apocrypha, they may read similarly, but there is just something different about them. So while there may always be an element of faith in God's working through men, your position increases the level of faith in men from whatever it could be said to be.

We do not have all the details on exactly how the canon came about. None of us were there. But we cannot assume that your magisterium gets all the credit for it. I believe the Holy Spirit guided men in spite of themselves, as many of the other writings more clearly taught these traditions, and would have been included if it were just up to them and their own authority. But still that does not mean that is they were moved by the Spirit that much that we assume then that everything else they taught is automatically true. That's what your argument is doing. Peter was an inspired apostle, but at one point he was in error and rebuked by Paul. People at the time would have been wrong to follow him in that practice just because he wrote two epistles.

As far as "unity", the only superiority you can boast of for tradition is that it is harder to scrutinize, reinterpret, argue over, etc. and therefore less prone to people dividing over. But that all by itself doesn't prove it's right, which seems to be your ultimate argument. And the church's only accountability is to itself, and it is only tested by itself. So just believe everything you say without question, "because you already believe our canon". This exalts the church above Jesus, since even He didn't base His claims on himself, and demand "just believe what I say because I said so".

When a religion, political system, or anything else man does takes on this kind of absolute authority, it always becomes corrupt (because of the lack of accountability), and this is what leads people to break off from it. I am not saying people should have broken off of one organization and formed their own. They should not have been state organizations in the first place (which DID separate themselves from the general "laity". Since this did not exist in this form in the NT, that's why 'no such distinction is made'). Then, we would not have all of these [legal] corporations, and unity would be easier, as no one would be pledged to these organizations and their doctrinal "constitutions". (This "microcosm of the Empire" did start before Constantine, and in fact is part of what impressed him enough to wed the Church to his empire). And if we had stuck with the simple gospel of salvation, and not try to add all of this other stuff, there would be much less to divide over. Most of these debates on here come from people coming and trying to claim the average evangelical or Baptist body is not doing enough. Whether it's Catholic tradition, or OT laws, or Church of Christ, or old-line fundamentalism, or Calvinism as the true Gospel, etc. Just because all of these people come with their views doesn't prove that your group is the answer, and if we stayed uder you, we wouldn't have all of this. I'm sorry, but you look like just another one of them, with your own unique argument, to me. You are apart of the disunity, not our savior from it.

The same way you claim that Ignatius clearly taught the "monarchical episcopate", Rome claims this was the papacy, and that it was universally accepted in the first four centuries. (I also ealier meant Ignatius and not Irenaeus). You can't even agree on exactly what these fathers are teaching on that, so how can we rely on them so much to prove what was a "catholic tradition"?

As for the Jewish tradition, the Spirit guided them as to which were legitimate. Not all of them were. Jews will claim all of them were, which would give us interpretations of scripture that rule out Jesus as Messiah. So while some of their traditions may happened to have been true, so could the canon be true, but not the rest of your traditions. As for the reference to the spirits in Noah's day, I'll have to answer that one tonight.

 

[orthodox]

Personally I have a great deal of affection for our Brothers and Sisters who are more or less 'liturgical' in their worship of our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ but what chaffs me is the 'demand' that such evolved practices be followed to be recognized as 'orthodox' Christians.

I'm a little vague on what you mean by an "evolved" practice, or what you mean by "demanding" that they be followed. If you join an orthodox church, nobody is going to demand very much in terms of how involved you want to get.

 

[Eric B]

In his first epistle Peter tells of Christ’s journey to the netherworld during which "he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah" (1 Pet. 3:19). There is a growing scholarly consensus that the interpretive key to this verse is found in Genesis 6:1-7, in which "the sons of God" cohabited with "the daughters of men" and produced ghastly offspring. According to ancient interpretation, these "sons of God" were actually rebellious angels who sinned by mating with human women.
It appears likely that this is Peter’s view as well. "For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until judgment…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial" (2 Pet. 2:4, 9). Note the close link to Noah and Geneses 6. Compare too Jude 6, which says that "the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day…" These references are evidence that Peter has this traditional interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4 in mind when he writes of Christ’s preaching "to the spirits in prison."

"For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, indeed being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit; in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared (in which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water)";
Similar is ch. 4:3-6 —"For the time of life which is past is enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, having gone on in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, parties, carousings, and abominable idolatries. In these things they are surprised, that you are not running with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming. But they shall give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For to this end the gospel was preached also to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit."

Many in the past have combined this with Christ's burial, and have posited a whole scenario of Christ "descending into Hell", which must have had two sections, "paradise" for the righteous, and a place of suffering for the wicked; and that Christ preached to its inhabitants, and even bringing the righteous (such as Noah) back up with him, to Heaven. Others see the reference to Noah as referring to fallen angels, who existed back then as well as now. But fallen angels are not "sometimes" disobedient, and the other angels are never disobedient. It is useless to "preach" to either. In the context, above we see Paul is discussing unsaved people now (in his time, and of course it applies to our time as well), who taunt Christians for not living like them anymore. It was this same type of people in the "world" in Noah's time, who mocked as he built his ark to escape the coming judgment, and all soon perished. It was not those people in Noah's time who were being preached to by Christ, (unless you see Christ preaching to them through Noah) but just a comparison of the wickedness. The point is, Christ's message is being offered to these people in the world today, enslaved in the prison of sin and condemnation. This passage even seems to be a reference to (fulfilment of) the messianic prophecy in Isaiah 42:1-7 "Behold My Servant, whom I uphold; My Elect, in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit on Him; He shall bring out judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not fail nor be discouraged until He has set judgment in the earth; and the coasts shall wait for His law. So says God, the LORD He who created the heavens and stretched them out, spreading out the earth and its offspring; He who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. I the LORD have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand, and will keep You, and give You for a covenant of the people, for a Light to the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness out of the prison house".
This is even recognized in chain references. Sin is many times over referenced as both "prison" and "death".
Hanegraaf, in Christianity in Crisis, Harvest House, 1993 p. 396, uses this passage as a proof text of Christ descending to Hades to preach to the righteous in "paradise", but then his own Christian Research Journal (12-97 p.24,25) Luke Wilson, answering Mormon doctrine of the salvation of the dead (a logical possibility with common interpretation of the passage) shatters the idea. The passage suggests this happened after Christ was put to death, and then made alive. And he ultimately shows from the Greek that this passage is describing Christ's [SIZE=-1]PROCLAMATION[/SIZE] of victory which "took place in the context of this journey". (though he takes the view that it was to fallen angels; though after the resurrection). In the notes he adds :"I do not believe 1 Pet.3:18 ff can properly be understood in connection with the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades during the time His body lay in the tomb".

At 1 Cor 10:4 it says "the water that God provided for Israel: "All drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ". But there is no scripture saying the rock followed them.

That means that Christ followed them in time. He came after them. That was not any "tradition", but rather an observable reality.

 

[orthodox]

Orthodox,
Your question of "why don't I just accept/believe/trust the traditions?" is what presupposes that I know what these hypothetical traditions (that were never written until the postapostolic period) are, and of course, that it is your church that has preserved them. What I don't trust is your church, and that it actually kept everything perfectly from the beginning.

How is it any different in principle to trusting the church's
preservation of scripture and its preservation of the tradition of
what scripture is canonical compared to its preservation of tradition?

When people are forming an apologetic for the preservation of
scripture they usually talk about the number of manuscripts and the
geographic distribution of those manuscripts as evidence that nobody
interfered with them along the way. The argument has merit, although
it does suffer from the problem that it can't reach into the earliest
period of the church when the evidence is too sparse.

Why not the same for tradition? One can observe that many traditions
were the same in all the churches, even though they weren't ruled by
one head.

The other apologetic often used about scripture is that God would have
preserved it, because of its necessity to his church. But why wouldn't
he have preserved tradition also? I think you could probably admit
that the orthodox church hasn't changed since the 4th century, because
the amount of evidence from that period is overwhelming. So why would
God have let tradition go astray between the 2nd and 4th century and
then have it preserved so accurately since then to the 21st century?

And yet there is very limited manuscript evidence before the 4th
century for the scriptures. Some people have argued that the
trinitarian formula at Mt 28:19 is a later addition because it varies
from the baptisimal formula in Acts and there are some quotes by
Eusebius lacking the formula. There are no manuscripts of this verse
from the first three centuries. You say "What I don't trust is your
church and that it actually kept everything perfectly". Well, why do
you trust this scripture? There are churches now disavowing the
trinitarian baptism because of arguments about this verse.

That if I walked into a NT church under the apostles, it would look just like St. Demetrios cathedral that I pass by, and that all those other practices in there were perfectly understood from the tradition

Orthodox are under no illusions that everything that happens in your
local cathedral is Holy Tradition. We know the difference between Holy
Tradition, good traditions and bad traditions. In principle an
Orthodox church does not have to do everything the way it is in fact
done.

But the reason an Orthodox service will not look the way a baptist
service will look like is because we use the bible as a model for how
God should be worshipped. Firstly, the Judeo-Christian tradition has
always used a lot of symbols and imagery. The whole of Revelation is
symbolic. Baptism is symbolic, the Eucharist is symbolic, the passover
is symbolic. Everything in the Orthodox service has a symbol which is
meant to draw the worshippers thoughts towards God. The specific
things in the Orthodox service are often found in scripture. Incense
is used in Revelation and prophesised to be used in the nations in
Malachi. Images of cherubim are used in Exodus 25. In Ps 99:5 they are
told to bow before the footstool of the Lord, which we know from 1Ch
28:2 is the ark. It is a normal part of the Judeo Christian tradition
to use imagery as a substitute for what it stands for.

So, in theory an Orthodox church could worship considerably
differently, and use a whole new or different set of symbols and
imagery, but it would kind of defeat the purpose since most people
know what the current imagery means.

, and simply never became ad-hoc issues that warranted mention
in the epistles. (In that case, which presupposes the tradition as the
"background", again,why was anything ad-hoc and needed to be written?)
The only example I see is common teaching that can be found elsewhere
in scripture. You insist there was all this other stuff.

I would question your understanding that there is "all this other
stuff". Most of the things you are including in the "other stuff" are
not Holy Tradition at all, they are just traditions we keep because
they are beneficial and we choose to, or else they are found in
scripture, but are just interpreted differently by us than by you, or
else we say that scripture is just silent.

For example, all the baptist churches I have been to have allowed
children to take communion. I don't know if that is common in your
part of the world or not, but that is what I have experienced. On the
other hand the presbyterian churches I have been to do not allow
children to take communion. To me that's a little
inconsistent. Anyway, I'm sure there are some baptist churches that do
not allow children to take communion, and there are probably some
infant-baptizing churches that do allow children to take communion.

You're going to have a hard time convincing everybody the right
solution from scripture, but in tradition it is clear that children
may take the Eucharist. Cyprian makes a passing reference to infant
communion around the year 250AD, and assumes it is a fact. On the
other hand Calvin said it was clear and obvious that infants should be
baptized but should not receive communion. It is a matter of record
that the Roman Catholic church ceased infant communion between the
14th and 16th centuries.

The epistles may have not been systematic theology manuals, but it is
a far stretch to claim that all of these doctrines in question were
perfectly understood and therefore neatly omitted, and we just have to
accept them from you by "faith". That divides our faith between God
and men, and according to you, believing the canon is faith in man
anyway(see below). But that's just what the agnostics who trash the
whole faith claim as well.

Au contraire, I do not believe faith in the canon is faith in man,
because the scripture says to the people of God that "the Holy Spirit
will lead you into all truth". How _you_ escape that accusation I
don't know, because your belief in what is the canon ultimately rests
on YOU does it not?

Neither is following the traditions relying on man, because men merely
copy what our predecessors did, just like scribes merely copy their
exemplar. Why do you escape the charge of relying on man because you
rely on the scribes of scripture, and we fall under the charge of
relying on men because we rely on those who pass on the traditions?

Now you say that it is a stretch to claim that doctrines were
perfectly understood and "neatly omitted", but why is it the sola
scriptura churches cannot agree on infant communion, yet there is
never a word of dispute about it in the ancient church?

You take one or two verses mentioning written or oral, and
then build this whole premise of the "oral tradition" being the
"background" or "home" of the written word. But those passages
do not say that! Already, you've added assumptions to the text.

Well actually they do say that, because the letter is addressed to the
churches that Paul visited and passed on his oral teaching to, and he
writes his command "hold to the traditions taught orally", ASSUMING
that the reader is in a church that has received the oral
traditions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for somebody reading
Paul's letter who hasn't received the oral traditions, because they'll
have a hard time following it. Thus, the assumption is that the
scripture will be read in the church that received the oral
traditions. Your church hasn't received them, so you get confused when
you get this verse and start shrugging your shoulders saying you don't
know what these traditions are.

The command may never have expired, but then we don't have the
original apostles here giving them to us either.

Neither did the readers of 2 Thessalonians have the apostles with them either!!!!

I guess if you had joined the church in Thessalonica after Paul had
visited and then had received the letter, the elders would be
instructing you in the oral traditions and you would be arguing with
the elders saying "I don't believe you, I don't trust you, how can you
be sure Paul said that, how do you know he meant that, let's wait a
hundred years till the canon is assembled".

That is absurd don't you think?

CONTINUED.....

 

[orthodox]

........CONTINUED

(Once again, that was only for when the writing wasn't available yet). So it comes down to
trusting what you say.

Yes, it comes down to trusting the church that Jesus built to pass on
accurately the written and oral traditions. This is what the first
readers of 1 Thessalonians had to do, and this is what you must do
too, and you do do it for the written, why not the oral? The 1st
century church did it for the oral, why don't you want to be like the
1st century church?

Your best argument is about the canon, but all your magisterium did was make an official decree of it. But my faith in them comes through the Holy Spirit's guiding as I read them.

Magisterium is a western concept. Faith in the canon, in Orthodoxy
does not particularly rely on the teaching office of the church. It is
a Holy Tradition, based on the faith of the people. Just like you sort
of, except it is the faith of the people in the church that Christ
built, not you and your bible under a tree.

When I read the fathers and later church writings, as well as the OT apocrypha, they may read similarly, but there is just something different about them. So while there may always be an element of faith in God's working through men, your position increases the level of faith in men from whatever it could be said to be.

The church fathers are not God-breathed, but they are a reliable
witness to the Holy Tradition. So if for example, the witness of the
church fathers is universally in favour of infant communion, that is
clear evidence of the Holy Tradition concerning that doctrine.

We do not have all the details on exactly how the canon came about. None of us were there. But we cannot assume that your magisterium gets all the credit for it.

We wouldn't dream of it! See above.

I believe the Holy Spirit guided men in spite of themselves, as many of the other writings more clearly taught these traditions, and would have been included if it were just up to them and their own authority. But still that does not mean that is they were moved by the Spirit that much that we assume then that everything else they taught is automatically true. That's what your argument is doing. Peter was an inspired apostle, but at one point he was in error and rebuked by Paul. People at the time would have been wrong to follow him in that practice just because he wrote two epistles.

Peter was wrong because he deviated from the Christian Tradition. Paul
could not correct him based on scripture, because there wasn't really
a scripture for Peter's Judaizing. No one person is infallible. That's
why it is unwise for you to rely on your own feelings concerning the
canon, because you are not infallible either. But the Church is
infallible when it acts in unity, because the Spirit guides it into
all truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail against us.

I think in reality, you would not be happy if somebody turned up at
church and declared that they didn't believe in your canon because
they'd studied the evidence and found certain books wanting. In all
likelyhood your church might consider kicking them out. But you've got
no basis for saying that the consensus of your particular church is
authoritative.

As far as "unity", the only superiority you can boast of for tradition is that it is harder to scrutinize, reinterpret, argue over, etc. and therefore less prone to people dividing over. But that all by itself doesn't prove it's right, which seems to be your ultimate argument.

It doesn't prove it's right, we believe it by faith, just like you
believe the written traditions by faith, yet doubt the oral
traditions.

And the church's only accountability is to itself, and it is only tested by itself. So just believe everything you say without question, "because you already believe our canon". This exalts the church above Jesus, since even He didn't base His claims on himself, and demand "just believe what I say because I said so".

Since you apparently believe the canon either based on your feelings
or based on the evidences of men, aren't you putting yourself above
church AND Jesus?

But the church is the body of Christ and/or the bride of Christ. It is
not "just men" when it acts in unity, it is guided by the Holy
Spirit. We have God's promise about the church that hell will not
prevail against it.

And don't believe anything just because one authority says so. If the
pope says a certain thing, ask what the other apostolic churches
say. Ask what the early church fathers said. If it contradicts what
was universally taught in the early church, don't follow it.

When a religion, political system, or anything else man does takes on this kind of absolute authority, it always becomes corrupt (because of the lack of accountability), and this is what leads people to break off from it. I am not saying people should have broken off of one organization and formed their own. They should not have been state organizations in the first place (which DID separate themselves from the general "laity". Since this did not exist in this form in the NT, that's why 'no such distinction is made'). Then, we would not have all of these [legal] corporations, and unity would be easier, as no one would be pledged to these organizations and their doctrinal "constitutions". (This "microcosm of the Empire" did start before Constantine, and in fact is part of what impressed him enough to wed the Church to his empire).

I think you misunderstand Orthodox doctrine. The church hierarchy is
not the ultimate authority in the church. The laity have the option to
overthrow the hierarchy if they deviate from the Holy Traditions. This
has in fact happened once or twice, especially when the secular powers
have tried to interfere in church affairs. So I agree with you, don't
follow anybody into corruption if they deviate from catholic faith.

And if we had stuck with the simple gospel of salvation, and not try to add all of this other stuff, there would be much less to divide over.

But what is the simple gospel of salvation? Pretty soon you can't
preach a sermon at church because you're afraid of getting too
specific and offending somebody who believes a little different than
you do. Protestantism is getting more and more minimal over time. The
early reformers were very specific about what they believed, and they
had long statements of faith. Over time they have been thrown away
because nobody wants to offend anybody.

When I was a protestant, trying to practice sola scriptura, I was very
specific about what I believed. The trouble is, none of the churches I
went to held the same combination of beliefs I did. I agreed with the
baptists about some things, the presbyterians about other things, the
pentacostals about other things. So they all pleased me and offended
me all at once.

Most of these debates on here come from people coming and trying to claim the average evangelical or Baptist body is not doing enough. Whether it's Catholic tradition, or OT laws, or Church of Christ, or old-line fundamentalism, or Calvinism as the true Gospel, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by "doing enough". I'm sure you are doing
plenty of stuff. I just encourage people to do it in the context of
the fullness of truth.

Just because all of these people come with their views doesn't prove that your group is the answer, and if we stayed uder you, we wouldn't have all of this. I'm sorry, but you look like just another one of them, with your own unique argument, to me. You are apart of the disunity, not our savior from it.

I'm sure we do look "just like another group", when there are so many
groups out there. But I would ask you to consider that our group has
been doing the same thing for 2000 years, and your group might be only
semi-recognizable to your forbears 100 years ago.

The same way you claim that Ignatius clearly taught the "monarchical episcopate", Rome claims this was the papacy, and that it was universally accepted in the first four centuries.

If a church, Orthodox included, tells you that something was taught in
the first four centuries, don't assume it, test it!

You tell me in all honesty. Does Ignatius teach the monarchial
episcopate? Does he teach that there is a papacy that has supreme
authority over the church? I think the answer is obvious, and I
wouldn't ask you to take my word for it.

You can't even agree on exactly what these fathers are teaching on that, so how can we rely on them so much to prove what was a "catholic tradition"?

And "you" (protestants) can't agree on anything at all. Touche?

But I wouldn't ask you to believe me about what the fathers
taught. Find out for yourself what they taught, and follow it. I think
you'll find they weren't baptists.

As for the Jewish tradition, the Spirit guided them as to which were
legitimate. Not all of them were. Jews will claim all of them were,
which would give us interpretations of scripture that rule out Jesus
as Messiah.

The trouble is, you're going to have trouble working out, 2000 years
after the fact, which traditions were universally accepted traditions,
and which were not, and which were considered divine traditions, and
which were not. To compare apples to apples, you would need to do
that.

 

[orthodox]

"For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, indeed being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit; in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared (in which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water)";
Similar is ch. 4:3-6 —"For the time of life which is past is enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, having gone on in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, parties, carousings, and abominable idolatries. In these things they are surprised, that you are not running with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming. But they shall give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For to this end the gospel was preached also to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit."

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what you are proposing as to who the "Sons of God" in Genesis are.

One other factoid - many of the Greek copies of the scripture here in Genesis actually say "angels", leaving no option as regard to interpretation. Which reading Peter or Jude had access to is unknown, but it would not be the first time that an NT quotation of the Greek OT relies and assumes a particular interpretation of the OT contained in the Greek, which later Hebrew scholars would be less certain of. A bit like the "A virgin shall give birth to.." in the Greek OT, which some Hebrew scholars want to interpret "A young woman shall give birth to..".

Here again, tradition provides the correct interpretation. It sounds like you've come up with a clever interpretation of these verses, but is it the Tradition? Even the tradition that the apostles knew of and held to? Not sure, more investigation would need to be done, but I see that even your scholars can't even agree on the details.

 

[Eric B]

How is it any different in principle to trusting the church's
preservation of scripture and its preservation of the tradition of
what scripture is canonical compared to its preservation of tradition?

When people are forming an apologetic for the preservation of
scripture they usually talk about the number of manuscripts and the
geographic distribution of those manuscripts as evidence that nobody
interfered with them along the way. The argument has merit, although
it does suffer from the problem that it can't reach into the earliest
period of the church when the evidence is too sparse.

Why not the same for tradition? One can observe that many traditions
were the same in all the churches, even though they weren't ruled by
one head.

The other apologetic often used about scripture is that God would have
preserved it, because of its necessity to his church. But why wouldn't
he have preserved tradition also? I think you could probably admit
that the orthodox church hasn't changed since the 4th century, because
the amount of evidence from that period is overwhelming. So why would
God have let tradition go astray between the 2nd and 4th century and
then have it preserved so accurately since then to the 21st century?

And yet there is very limited manuscript evidence before the 4th
century for the scriptures. Some people have argued that the
trinitarian formula at Mt 28:19 is a later addition because it varies
from the baptisimal formula in Acts and there are some quotes by
Eusebius lacking the formula. There are no manuscripts of this verse
from the first three centuries. You say "What I don't trust is your
church and that it actually kept everything perfectly". Well, why do
you trust this scripture? There are churches now disavowing the
trinitarian baptism because of arguments about this verse.

Well, face it, a written scripture is a bit more tangible and easier to
preserve than an unwritten "tradition". And a century is a long time for
things to change. Christmas is a "tradition", and it has changed
drastically in the last century, and that's even with written records of
it. That's why tradtion was not and end in itself, but only a means of
transmitting the message when there was no writing.

I do think the Church did change since the 4th century, even up to the
11th when the split occurred; though a lot of that may have been just
the West.

The Trinity is a doctrine where I believe the precise formulation of the
fourth did develop, so we can't say that the formula of "three persons,
one substance" was an "oral tradition" passed down from the apostles,
and only first written by Athanasius and the Nicene Creed. That clearly
was put together in opposition to post-NT heresies, and other doctrines
developed in a similar way So while you can say these doctrines were
truer to "the catholic/apostolic faith" than what it was formulated
against, you still cannot assume this and especially many of the other
practices (such as the one discussed next) were all passed down verbatim from the apostles.

Orthodox are under no illusions that everything that happens in your
local cathedral is Holy Tradition. We know the difference between Holy
Tradition, good traditions and bad traditions. In principle an
Orthodox church does not have to do everything the way it is in fact
done.

But the reason an Orthodox service will not look the way a baptist
service will look like is because we use the bible as a model for how
God should be worshipped. Firstly, the Judeo-Christian tradition has
always used a lot of symbols and imagery. The whole of Revelation is
symbolic. Baptism is symbolic, the Eucharist is symbolic, the passover
is symbolic. Everything in the Orthodox service has a symbol which is
meant to draw the worshippers thoughts towards God. The specific
things in the Orthodox service are often found in scripture. Incense
is used in Revelation and prophesised to be used in the nations in
Malachi. Images of cherubim are used in Exodus 25. In Ps 99:5 they are
told to bow before the footstool of the Lord, which we know from 1Ch
28:2 is the ark. It is a normal part of the Judeo Christian tradition
to use imagery as a substitute for what it stands for.

So, in theory an Orthodox church could worship considerably
differently, and use a whole new or different set of symbols and
imagery, but it would kind of defeat the purpose since most people
know what the current imagery means.

Jesus spoke ofthe time when the true worship would be "in spirit
and in truth". Drawing towards God is now a spiritual move, not a
visible one. God was often visible in the OT; now He's in the heart. OT
worship was more earthly, and you do not keep the sabbaths and other
practices, but believe they were shadows of spiritual realities. So why
do you copy all other aspects of OT worship? I see the later church as
being very selective of what was copied, and the driving motive seemed
to be antisemitism. The sabbaths were specifically associated with the
Jews, so change that. The ritual was common to all gentile religions, so
we can take that from the Jews, and claim their Law for it, even though
we say that law was otherwisedone away.
But the few symbols (ordered directly by God to Moses, and written in
the book of the Law, not by oral tradition) seem very different from
what is seen in the Church, and the Jews (who believe in oral tradition,
and also of course, the old Temple elements) see what goes on in
cathedrals as idolatry, not a continuation of their worship. God's very
presense dwelled in the Temple, and if He told them directly to bow to
it, that can be trusted, but not men telling us to bow before something
claiming nothing but a secret unwritten tradition. The rest of the items
were also not prayed to, or used to represent any entities prayed to.
The stuff in Revelation was symbolic. Heaven is not a physical place
with real incense. That was a symbol of the prayers of the saints, an
since we just pray now, we do not need the physical incense.

I would question your understanding that there is "all this other
stuff". Most of the things you are including in the "other stuff" are
not Holy Tradition at all, they are just traditions we keep because
they are beneficial and we choose to, or else they are found in
scripture, but are just interpreted differently by us than by you, or
else we say that scripture is just silent.

So you admit that not everything done now was handed down from the
apostles?

For example, all the baptist churches I have been to have allowed
children to take communion. I don't know if that is common in your
part of the world or not, but that is what I have experienced. On the
other hand the presbyterian churches I have been to do not allow
children to take communion. To me that's a little inconsistent. Anyway, I'm sure there are some baptist churches that do not allow children to take communion, and there are probably some infant-baptizing churches that do allow children to take communion.

You're going to have a hard time convincing everybody the right
solution from scripture, but in tradition it is clear that children
may take the Eucharist. Cyprian makes a passing reference to infant
communion around the year 250AD, and assumes it is a fact. On the
other hand Calvin said it was clear and obvious that infants should be
baptized but should not receive communion. It is a matter of record
that the Roman Catholic church ceased infant communion between the
14th and 16th centuries.

Au contraire, I do not believe faith in the canon is faith in man,
because the scripture says to the people of God that "the Holy Spirit
will lead you into all truth". How _you_ escape that accusation I
don't know, because your belief in what is the canon ultimately rests
on YOU does it not?

Neither is following the traditions relying on man, because men merely
copy what our predecessors did, just like scribes merely copy their
exemplar. Why do you escape the charge of relying on man because you
rely on the scribes of scripture, and we fall under the charge of
relying on men because we rely on those who pass on the traditions?

Now you say that it is a stretch to claim that doctrines were
perfectly understood and "neatly omitted", but why is it the sola
scriptura churches cannot agree on infant communion, yet there is
never a word of dispute about it in the ancient church?

I believe "the Spirit will guide you into all truth" was directed to the
original apostles, who would then transmit it to their writings (and
also of course speak it). Not that every generation of Church leaders
would be divinely guided in passing down a separate body of teaching
that was oral only. With the written word, that would not even be
becessary. I will admit that relying on scripture can be hard enough,
especially with all the dispute over and against it. To add your claims
of an oral tradition that men always got right, and passed down
perfectly is a bit too much, especially when I see no such promise made
in the onw or two verses that just mention "tradition". You still have
to show that these were even intended to be a separate body of
teaching.
Sola Scriptura churches disagree on infants and other issues, because
the older ones still maintained much of their Catholic influence. As time went on, and the scriptures became more available through printing, later groups came to different conclusions (and this is the real reason for the "Protestant explosion". Not that all was well, and one day, people just up and decided to break from the Church).

 

[Eric B]

Well actually they do say that, because the letter is addressed to thechurches that Paul visited and passed on his oral teaching to, and hewrites his command "hold to the traditions taught orally", ASSUMINGthat the reader is in a church that has received the oraltraditions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for somebody reading Paul's letter who hasn't received the oral traditions, because they'll have a hard time following it. Thus, the assumption is that the scripture will be read in the church that received the oral traditions. Your church hasn't received them, so you get confused when you get this verse and start shrugging your shoulders saying you don't know what these traditions are.

This still does not prove that these "oral teachings" were a totally separate body of teaching, and particularly on worship ritual. The example we have seen is a simple ethical teaching that was not spelled out there, but the people should have remembered it from the time he was there and taught it to them. (My statement that I didn't know what the traditions were was hypothetical, granting your theory that they were different from what was written the benefit of the doubt)

Neither did the readers of 2 Thessalonians have the apostles with them either!!!!
I guess if you had joined the church in Thessalonica after Paul had visited and then had received the letter, the elders would be instructing you in the oral traditions and you would be arguing with the elders saying "I don't believe you, I don't trust you, how can you be sure Paul said that, how do you know he meant that, let's wait a hundred years till the canon is assembled".
That is absurd don't you think?

Yes they did have him there, in letter if not in person. That is a far cry from today where we are separated by 2000 years of tumultuous Church history with organizations growing and becoming state institutions, and then becoming corrupt, and finally splintering into all these groups with all these claims. The Thessalonians were in a more sure position than even those 100 years later, so your analogy of what I would do then is way off.

Yes, it comes down to trusting the church that Jesus built to pass on accurately the written and oral traditions. This is what the first readers of 1 Thessalonians had to do, and this is what you must do too, and you do do it for the written, why not the oral? The 1st century church did it for the oral, why don't you want to be like the 1st century church?

Because I'm 20 centuries removed from the first century, and I see a lot of pretenders to the title of the "true church"; all of them with convincing claims. The only thing you have over them is age, but that still does not equate to your practices being some oral tradition that you still have not proven was unanimously omitted from all writings.

Mojoala elsewhere admitted that the concept of priesthood had changed from the first century to the second.
(Also, I believe that "the Church Jesus built" is the entire body of believers, not just those under one particular organization--as if that was what defined "the Church")

Magisterium is a western concept. Faith in the canon, in Orthodoxy does not particularly rely on the teaching office of the church. It is a Holy Tradition, based on the faith of the people. Just like you sort of, except it is the faith of the people in the church that Christ
built, not you and your bible under a tree.

I think you misunderstand Orthodox doctrine. The church hierarchy is not the ultimate authority in the church. The laity have the option to overthrow the hierarchy if they deviate from the Holy Traditions. This has in fact happened once or twice, especially when the secular powers
have tried to interfere in church affairs. So I agree with you, don't follow anybody into corruption if they deviate from catholic faith.

"The people"? Well, the other orthodox here never said this, and did not appear to disclaim the magisterium as far as I can remember. Your whole claim is based on taking small hints and clues from the ECF's and then assuming that the first century church was identical to 11th century to the present eastern Church. Following untestable traditions proved itself to cause more problems than "you and your Bible under a tree", (especially when most of the traditions are admittedly not even from the Bible, but deemed to be an entirely separate body of teaching), hence this approach today. Once again, if people did not try to add so much to the basic message, and one-up each other with "I keep the true practice and you don't", we wouldn't have so much division.

The church fathers are not God-breathed, but they are a reliablewitness to the Holy Tradition. So if for example, the witness of thechurch fathers is universally in favour of infant communion, that isclear evidence of the Holy Tradition concerning that doctrine.

That may be "evidence", but not exactly clear evidence. One century was enough for something like that to spread; as postapostolic leaders put their own interpretation on whichever writings they had. Once again, this may be "evidence", but it is not decisive enough to support your absolute claims on the "traditions".

Peter was wrong because he deviated from the Christian Tradition. Paul could not correct him based on scripture, because there wasn't really a scripture for Peter's Judaizing. No one person is infallible. That's why it is unwise for you to rely on your own feelings concerning the canon, because you are not infallible either. But the Church is infallible when it acts in unity, because the Spirit guides it into all truth, and the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
I think in reality, you would not be happy if somebody turned up at church and declared that they didn't believe in your canon because they'd studied the evidence and found certain books wanting. In all likelyhood your church might consider kicking them out. But you've got
no basis for saying that the consensus of your particular church is authoritative.

You may have a point there, but still, that does not prove wholesale all of your traditions correct. Just like Peter could be wrong in one area, right in another, so could the later Church. Likewise, before being confronted, Peter could have claimed his practice was the tradition, and he probably had more of the other leaders being "carried along" in tha as Paul even said.
Paul used reason to show that he was being hypocritical, not some nebulous concept of "tradition". Today, much of the Church disagrees with your organization, but you claim that doesn't matter because only that organization is right.

It doesn't prove it's right, we believe it by faith, just like you believe the written traditions by faith, yet doubt the oral traditions.

If you're going to use a relativistic argument like that, then it shouldn't matter what I have faith in. ("It doesn't matter whether it's true; just believe it because we said so". This tactic is what caused so many to break away from the medieval Church in the first place)

Since you apparently believe the canon either based on your feelings or based on the evidences of men, aren't you putting yourself above church AND Jesus?
But the church is the body of Christ and/or the bride of Christ. It is not "just men" when it acts in unity, it is guided by the Holy Spirit. We have God's promise about the church that hell will not
prevail against it.
And don't believe anything just because one authority says so. If the pope says a certain thing, ask what the other apostolic churches say. Ask what the early church fathers said. If it contradicts what was universally taught in the early church, don't follow it.

I weigh what all the Churches say (not just the older, state churches, which is not what Jesus was referring to when He said hell would not prevail against it), and then measure it by scripture, like the Bereans. That's all I have (coming fresh from outside Christendom), because once again, so many groups are saying so many things, and all claim to be the bride or apostolic, and you're just another one of them, the only difference being older. The early Church writings we have do not necessarily prove what was "universally" taught; only what became popular, and spread in the previous century.
What I have found, is that the message is simple to understand, and we wouldn't have all this division if people weren't so busy trying to one-up their way to being the one true group.

But what is the simple gospel of salvation? Pretty soon you can'tpreach a sermon at church because you're afraid of getting too specific and offending somebody who believes a little different than you do. Protestantism is getting more and more minimal over time. Theearly reformers were very specific about what they believed, and they had long statements of faith. Over time they have been thrown awaybecause nobody wants to offend anybody.
When I was a protestant, trying to practice sola scriptura, I was veryspecific about what I believed. The trouble is, none of the churches I went to held the same combination of beliefs I did. I agreed with the baptists about some things, the presbyterians about other things, the pentacostals about other things. So they all pleased me and offended me all at once.

The early Church was home fellowship, not organizations with constitutions and doctrinal lists. If we had stuck with that, then many of those finer points would not matter as much. Once again, it is people adding a lot of this stuff that causes the problems.

 

[Eric B]

I'm not sure what you mean by "doing enough". I'm sure you are doing plenty of stuff.

according to all the different groups out there, we're not keeping the 7th day sabbath and that's "antinomian", we're not declaring that our salvation began at baptism, we use the wrong style of music, we use instruments period, we don't have the right name or organization, we can't trace our organization all the way back, we don't have all the rituals, etc.

I'm sure we do look "just like another group", when there are so many groups out there. But I would ask you to consider that our group has been doing the same thing for 2000 years, and your group might be only semi-recognizable to your forbears 100 years ago.

That still does not mean that your traditions are from the apostles. Any more than if I had never heard of your group, and a Calvinist claimed to be the truth because it traced itself back further than an Arminian.

If a church, Orthodox included, tells you that something was taught in the first four centuries, don't assume it, test it!
You tell me in all honesty. Does Ignatius teach the monarchial episcopate? Does he teach that there is a papacy that has supreme authority over the church? I think the answer is obvious, and I
wouldn't ask you to take my word for it.

That's debatable and still subject to people's interpretation (I don't see either position in there; only him urging people to follow the bishops in the face of trouble. That to me always looked like an innovation, and once again, the Church had changed in that prior century)

And "you" (protestants) can't agree on anything at all. Touche?
But I wouldn't ask you to believe me about what the fathers taught. Find out for yourself what they taught, and follow it. I think you'll find they weren't baptists.

I judge the ECFs on the Scriptures, not on their own authority. They are not proven by default just because we have a lot of people dividing over various things today.

The trouble is, you're going to have trouble working out, 2000 years after the fact, which traditions were universally accepted traditions, and which were not, and which were considered divine traditions, and which were not. To compare apples to apples, you would need to do
that.

That's why I believe in relying on scripture and not tradition. You claim the canon was tradition, but that is only ONE tradition that can be tested to a certain point (they all have a unity, similar writing style, and similar topics, which is why all the liturgical stuff seems so out of place in the NT Church in the first place). To add more traditions that we have to weigh like that just causes more confusion and wastes time. If it is so hard to follow the written word and agree on it, then tradition will be even harder with the disputatious Christians of the modern Church, and just telling them to stifle all their views and just accept those of your organization will never work.

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what you are proposing as to who the "Sons of God" in Genesis are.

One other factoid - many of the Greek copies of the scripture here in Genesis actually say "angels", leaving no option as regard to interpretation. Which reading Peter or Jude had access to is unknown, but it would not be the first time that an NT quotation of the Greek OT relies and assumes a particular interpretation of the OT contained in the Greek, which later Hebrew scholars would be less certain of.

Here again, tradition provides the correct interpretation. It sounds like you've come up with a clever interpretation of these verses, but is it the Tradition? Even the tradition that the apostles knew of and held to? Not sure, more investigation would need to be done, but I see that even your scholars can't even agree on the details.

I wasn't talking about the "sons of God" who mingled with women (which I never did claim to know for certain which interpretation was true). You are the one who paired that off with the references to Noah in Jude and Peter.

 

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Well, face it, a written scripture is a bit more tangible and easier to
preserve than an unwritten "tradition". And a century is a long time for
things to change. Christmas is a "tradition", and it has changed
drastically in the last century, and that's even with written records of
it. That's why tradtion was not and end in itself, but only a means of
transmitting the message when there was no writing.

So you say written is easier to preserve than oral. That's an opinion I suppose. Since when does doctrine come from opinions?

I could form an "opinion" that written is hard to preserve too, and abandon the written. That would not be a faithful solution however.

But Paul said three times said to hold to the traditions, without qualifying that there was a sunset clause for when the canon was formed. How can you hold to sola scriptura when you can't point me to the sunset clause?

I do think the Church did change since the 4th century, even up to the
11th when the split occurred; though a lot of that may have been just
the West.

Well, let's investigate them if you can point to what they are.

The Trinity is a doctrine where I believe the precise formulation of the
fourth did develop, so we can't say that the formula of "three persons,
one substance" was an "oral tradition" passed down from the apostles,
and only first written by Athanasius and the Nicene Creed. That clearly
was put together in opposition to post-NT heresies, and other doctrines
developed in a similar way So while you can say these doctrines were
truer to "the catholic/apostolic faith" than what it was formulated
against, you still cannot assume this and especially many of the other
practices (such as the one discussed next) were all passed down verbatim from the apostles.

Obviously the Nicene formula wasn't passed down verbatim from the apostles. However, part of the argument by the anti-Arian side was that the full deity of Christ was an apostolic tradition. When I look at the pre-Nicene writings, I think they are right.

I spent quite a few Christian years confused about what the bible actually teaches. I wavered for a long time drifting from trinitarian, to oneness to arianism, before concluding that trinitarianism was slightly more likely to be in line with the scriptures than other options.

But now I look back on it, I think I wasted my time because I could have just trusted the church on this one. Maybe you think I'm stupider than the average Joe that I couldn't see straight off that the bible teaches the trinity. But do I have to be so smart to figure out everything for myself, me and my bible under a tree? Of course, most Christians tend to just accept whatever they have grew up in or whatever they are told by whoever got to them first, and generally the scriptural arguments can be quite convincing. I found the JW materials to present quite a good case. It was more to do with the other baggage that goes along with being a JW that put me off.

So given the harsh reality that many of us can be persuaded of a lot of things given a clever enough argument, and we can't always understand the scriptures ourselves, shouldn't there be someone to trust to help us?

The Orthodox would call it giving your ancestors a vote, instead of every Christian re-inventing the wheel every time.

You would say that any smart fellow can come along and set up a "church" and help people understand the scriptures. But then how does your average God-seeker know who to pick?

But how can anybody just come along and set up a church? Well, you couldn't have done it in say the year 60AD, because you wouldn't have been able to hold to the traditions unless you were in the church that the apostles built. You wouldn't have been able to do it in the year 150AD, because you would not have known what the canon was without asking the church the apostles built. If you'd just looked around for Jesus teachings, you would have had to choose between the gnostic writings and other sects. Even if you'd restricted your books to the ones that the apostolic churches used, you still wouldn't know for sure the canon until the apostolic churches settled it for sure.

So you couldn't have set up a baptist church in the first centuries because you would lack the theological foundation for doing so. Yet you think you can now. It doesn't quite sit right.

Now you complain that the apostolic churches hold to the traditions, and you would have them jetison them in favour of sola scriptura. But you can't tell us the verse containing the sunset clause that would allow us to do so. Nor could you point to a scripture that teaches sola scriptura.

Jesus spoke ofthe time when the true worship would be "in spirit
and in truth". Drawing towards God is now a spiritual move, not a
visible one. God was often visible in the OT; now He's in the heart.

Orthodox would say this is a gnostic heresy to deny the goodness of the physical reality. In the OT God was only known as spirit, but in the NT we have the incarnation. No-one has ever seen God, but God the only-begotten was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you.

The Christian tradition has never cut itself off from the physical. Baptism is physical. The Eucharist is physical. Jas 5:14 says to ask the elders to annoint you with oil if you are sick. The apostles laid on hands for the people to receive the spirit. In Acts 19:12, even a hankerchief of Paul healed the sick.

Where does it say worshipping in spirit means renouncing the physical reality?

OT worship was more earthly, and you do not keep the sabbaths and other
practices, but believe they were shadows of spiritual realities.

What the bible says is that earthly worship is a shadow of what goes on in heaven. The bible never says that the OT worship is a shadow of NT worship. Go look up shadow in your concordance.

And the Orthodox try and obey this precept and make our worship a shadow of what goes on in heaven. Revelation tells us what goes on in heaven, and you can say it is symbolic, but then so is Orthodox worship symbolic of what goes on in heaven.

So why do you copy all other aspects of OT worship?

Why we do what we do is because we pass on the traditions. Why they are traditions, I suggest the answer is to be found in the fact that Christianity grew up from Judaism. The apostles were Jews, Jesus was a Jew, the first Christians were Jews, and they all grew up worshipping in the synagogue, so naturally this was the only model for worship they would have known. As you see from reading Acts, the early Christians still went to synagogue, so obviously they had no qualms about the Jewish form of worship. It was only later when the non-Christian Jews would no longer tolerate the Christian Jews that Christianity split off from synagogue worship. Why do you have qualms that the early church didn't?

According to what logic would God be happy with a kind of worship one day, and not happy the next?

I see the later church as
being very selective of what was copied, and the driving motive seemed
to be antisemitism. The sabbaths were specifically associated with the
Jews, so change that. The ritual was common to all gentile religions, so
we can take that from the Jews, and claim their Law for it, even though
we say that law was otherwisedone away.

Not sure what you're talking about here.

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But the few symbols (ordered directly by God to Moses, and written in
the book of the Law, not by oral tradition) seem very different from
what is seen in the Church, and the Jews (who believe in oral tradition,
and also of course, the old Temple elements) see what goes on in
cathedrals as idolatry, not a continuation of their worship.

Not sure what the opinion of modern day Jews proves. Jewish catacombs
of the period contain icons. The Palestinian Talmud records (in Abodah
Zarah 48d) "In the days of Rabbi Jochanan men began to paint pictures
on the walls, and he did not hinder them" and "In the days of Rabbi
Abbun men began to make designs on mosaics, and he did not hinder
them." Also, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan repeats the command against
idols, but then says "but a stone column carved with images and
likenesses you may make upon the premises of your sanctuaries, but not
to worship them."

I suggest if you do more research you may find there less difference
between the Jewish tradition and the Orthodox tradition than you may
think.

God's very presense dwelled in the Temple, and if He told them directly to bow to
it, that can be trusted, but not men telling us to bow before something
claiming nothing but a secret unwritten tradition.

This is really just a cultural thing, as in the middle eastern cultures bowing is merely a sign of respect. In the OT there are dozens of instances: Gen 27:29; 33:3-7; 37:10; 41:43; 42:6; 43:26; 47:31; 48:12; 49:8; Ruth 2:10; 1 Sam 20:41; 24:8; 25:23, 41; 28:14; 2 Sam 9:8; 14:22, 33; 18:21; 24:20; 1 Kings 1:15, 23 , 31, 47, 53; 2:19; 2 Kings 2:15; 4:37; 1 Chr 21:21; Est 3:2 ; Isa 60:14).

In the NT, you find people bowing down to Jesus who have no notion that he might be God, they only know he is a good Rabbi. e.g. Mt 8:2.

The trouble is, you are approaching this with western sensibilities.

The rest of the items
were also not prayed to, or used to represent any entities prayed to.
The stuff in Revelation was symbolic. Heaven is not a physical place
with real incense. That was a symbol of the prayers of the saints, an
since we just pray now, we do not need the physical incense.

Well, one would have to ask why Revelation would use incense as a
symbol, and using the word "censer", if the new Christian church
wasn't using them. It would be a bad choice of symbol if it wasn't part of Christian thought, no?

But Malachi is even clearer:

Malachi 1:11 For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My
name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is
going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for
My name will be great among the nations," says the LORD of hosts.

You tell me: At what point in history do the nations (aka the
gentiles) offer incense to God's name in every place?

The other thing about Revelation here is that in Rev 5:7 the elders
hold the prayers of the saints and offer them to God. Now you can say
it is symbolic, but symbolic of what? Why do saints in heaven offer
the prayers of the saints on earth to God, if they have nothing to do
with the saints prayers?

Now the people of the OT bowed down to the tabernacle, which Moses was
told to make a shadow of the heavenly things: "[the priests who serve
in the Temple in Jerusalem] serve unto the example and shadow of
heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to
make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things
according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount" (Hebrews 8:5;
cf. Exodus 25:40).

In the new covenant we know a bit more about who and what is in
heaven, it it is reflected in the iconography.

So you admit that not everything done now was handed down from the
apostles?

Not the details, only the philosophy that leads to the general style
of worship.

I believe "the Spirit will guide you into all truth" was directed to the
original apostles, who would then transmit it to their writings (and
also of course speak it). Not that every generation of Church leaders
would be divinely guided in passing down a separate body of teaching
that was oral only.

Firstly, we do not believe it is particularly the church leaders who
pass down traditions. The biggest obstacle to change in the Orthodox
church today is the laity. And yes, there are things which need to
change, but the hierarchy finds it very difficult to change anything
because of outcry from the laity.

Secondly, you assume divine guidance is needed to pass down
traditions, but you don't need it to copy the scriptures. In truth,
it's a lot easier to keep a tradition of whether infants are baptised
and whether infants may take communion, than it is to make a copy of
the scriptures by hand. Try it some time and you will find out!

With the written word, that would not even be
becessary. I will admit that relying on scripture can be hard enough,
especially with all the dispute over and against it. To add your claims
of an oral tradition that men always got right, and passed down
perfectly is a bit too much, especially when I see no such promise made
in the onw or two verses that just mention "tradition".

If the promise is not implied, why does Paul admonish the church to
hold to the oral traditions? If it is that tough to keep these
traditions, then Paul was playing with fire in telling the church to
keep them.

You still have to show that these were even intended to be a separate body of
teaching.

Again with putting the burden of proof on us. But our church was given
the traditions by the apostles, and our church has passed on the
traditions of the apostles, as we were instructed to do. You doubt
that we have done it, but you can't produce any documentation that we
have changed our doctrines. You make a lot of assumptions about what
went on 2000 years ago, and what didn't go on. But you can't document
them with certainty.

Do you understand why we are not willing to abandon our traditions
which we believe the apostles gave us based on your say so?

Sola Scriptura churches disagree on infants and other issues, because
the older ones still maintained much of their Catholic influence. As time went on, and the scriptures became more available through printing, later groups came to different conclusions (and this is the real reason for the "Protestant explosion". Not that all was well, and one day, people just up and decided to break from the Church).

And I suppose your particular church has got it right, and the others
don't? Either the presbyterians fell short in their reformation, or
the Oneness Pentacostals and Jehovah's witnesses overshot and
over-reformed from Catholic influence?

Is it really *THAT* hard to believe that maybe, just maybe, the church
the apostles built might have been able to pass on the traditions for
a couple of hundred years until more or less everything had been
discussed and agreed in written form by the church fathers, and which
is still followed 1700-1800 years later? Is that so much harder to
believe than that the truth is certain in scripture, it's just that
none of the sola scriptura churches can agree on what it is?

Yes they did have him there, in letter if not in person. That is a far cry from today where we are separated by 2000 years of tumultuous Church history with organizations growing and becoming state institutions, and then becoming corrupt, and finally splintering into all these groups with all these claims. The Thessalonians were in a more sure position than even those 100 years later, so your analogy of what I would do then is way off.

We have him in letter but not in person too!!

You said it was different back then because they had the apostle in
person. But it aint true, they didn't have him in person, which is why
he had to send them the letter.

As for "state institutions", we have writings of the church fathers
pre-Constantine, which is normally when those with a paranoid bent
would claim corruption by the state. Except that these pre-state
fathers are following Orthodox doctrine, not protestant doctrine.

JWs etc would claim that the state overly influenced the Nicean
formula, but I don't see too many baptists disavowing the trinity.

And you talk about 2000 years of tumultuous church history, but I'm
willing to defend every Orthodox doctrine from the first four
centuries, so let's not exagerrate here.

Because I'm 20 centuries removed from the first century, and I see a lot of pretenders to the title of the "true church"; all of them with convincing claims. The only thing you have over them is age, but that still does not equate to your practices being some oral tradition that you still have not proven was unanimously omitted from all writings.

We don't merely have "age". It also so happens, that our church is the
same church that the apostles formed. The baptist church was formed by
John Smyth in 1612. The Mormon church was formed by Joseph Smith in
1830. The Orthodox church was formed by Peter at Pentacost.

What scripture commanded to go form a new church?

Mojoala elsewhere admitted that the concept of priesthood had changed from the first century to the second.

Not sure what you refer to.


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(Also, I believe that "the Church Jesus built" is the entire body of believers, not just those under one particular organization--as if that was what defined "the Church")

1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for
if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they
went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.

If the church was merely believers, not required to belong to the
visible church the apostles built, what is the point in the apostles
talking about those leaving the visible church? They might have just
gone out to start another church.

Contrary to modern thought, the early church had a keen sense that the
church should be one. John 17:22 "The glory which You have given Me I
have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are
one. Ephesians 4:4-6 There is one body and one Spirit, just as also
you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and
in all.

It doesn't seem to mean much to the modern protestant mindset.

"The people"? Well, the other orthodox here never said this, and did not appear to disclaim the magisterium as far as I can remember.

"These definitions (i.e decisions made in councils) must then be
acclaimed by the whole people of God, including the laity, because it
is the whole people of God that constitutes the guardian of
Tradition." - The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware P252.

Your whole claim is based on taking small hints and clues from the ECF's and then assuming that the first century church was identical to 11th century to the present eastern Church.

We don't assume it is identical, we believe it is identical in
doctrine only. Doctrine spills over into practice in a general sense,
but not in specifics. As I said, not everything is Holy Tradition.

As far as supposed "hints and clues", isn't that a bit hypocritical
given your "hints and clues" approach to scripture? You think there
are hints and clues about infant baptism and presumably about infant
communion (although you havn't stated where you stand on that issue),
but in honesty, the scripture doesn't state anything explicitely,
there are only hints and clues, which is why presbyterians and
baptists can still engage in lively debates.

Yet the witness of the entirety of tradition is much more explicit
that mere suppositions, because there is no record whatsoever of
anybody in the church debating the merits of infant baptism. According
to you, every church in the whole world simply rolled over and
abandoned the apostolic traditions, and the did so without leaving any
record of dispute or debate. That's an amazing thing don't you think?
How hard would it be for me to change the opinion of even one baptist
church today, let alone every baptist church? Boy, churches can be
political beasts. It's hard to get agreement on any change in even a
laid back church. To think I could change the opinion of every baptist
church even if I wanted to, even if I engaged in a concerted world
wide tour, would be hopeless.

Following untestable traditions proved itself to cause more problems than "you and your Bible under a tree", (especially when most of the traditions are admittedly not even from the Bible, but deemed to be an entirely separate body of teaching), hence this approach today. Once again, if people did not try to add so much to the basic message, and one-up each other with "I keep the true practice and you don't", we wouldn't have so much division.

Really? I don't think you would reduce division by any measurable
amount. Just take some of the issues that protestant churches can't
seem to help themselves but take a position on: infant baptism, infant
communion, calvinism/arminianism, congregational vs presbyterian
polity, speaking in tongues/no speaking in tongues. There is the seeds
right there for 32 churches, each with their own combination of
doctrines.

And you are worried about what? That we retain the complex form of
worship inherited from Judaism? It ought hardly rank as an issue.

That may be "evidence", but not exactly clear evidence. One century was enough for something like that to spread; as postapostolic leaders put their own interpretation on whichever writings they had.

If all the postapostolic leaders in unison, and yet independently,
interpreted the scriptures in an Orthodox fashion, and not in a
protestant baptist fashion, it doesn't say much for your position does
it?

You may have a point there, but still, that does not prove wholesale all of your traditions correct. Just like Peter could be wrong in one area, right in another, so could the later Church. Likewise, before being confronted, Peter could have claimed his practice was the tradition, and he probably had more of the other leaders being "carried along" in tha as Paul even said.

That's why local traditions and traditions of part of the church are
not authoritative. The catholic faith is authoritative - that is the
faith of the church as a whole. Peter followed the catholic tradition,
then he departed from the catholic tradition, and was therefore wrong.

Paul used reason to show that he was being hypocritical, not some nebulous concept of "tradition".

Actually, Paul points out that Peter used to eat with the gentiles,
and also he points out that the gentiles have received the gospel
already. Those two things amount to the tradition, both of the church
and of Peeter.

Today, much of the Church disagrees with your organization, but you claim that doesn't matter because only that organization is right.
If you're going to use a relativistic argument like that, then it shouldn't matter what I have faith in. ("It doesn't matter whether it's true; just believe it because we said so". This tactic is what caused so many to break away from the medieval Church in the first place)

You blandly call us an "organization", but we are the Church, the
bride of Christ, the body of Christ. We are the "organization"
entrusted with the word of God, in both its written and oral forms,
both guarding it in substance, and guarding it in
extent. (i.e. guarding both the text of scripture, and the canon of
scripture, both the oral traditions, and their extent). Yes you must
trust us, because we are the custodians of God's plan of salvation, as
expressed in written and oral forms. If you don't trust us, then it is
just you and your speculations under a tree. Well, unless God decides
to give you a first person revelation. You take our scriptures, you trust our scribes, you follow our canon, then you fall short in not following the entire deposit of faith.

I weigh what all the Churches say (not just the older, state churches, which is not what Jesus was referring to when He said hell would not prevail against it),

I wish you'd tell us what this state church thingy is. What state is
supposedly controlling the Orthodox church?

and then measure it by scripture, like the Bereans.

The Bereans may have checked Paul's authority by verifying the crux of
his argument from scripture, but clearly the Bereans didn't find all
Paul's doctrines in scripture did they? How did they check everything
Paul said?

That's all I have (coming fresh from outside Christendom), because once again, so many groups are saying so many things, and all claim to be the bride or apostolic, and you're just another one of them, the only difference being older.

You keep saying the only difference is age, but who founded our
church, and who founded yours?

The early Church writings we have do not necessarily prove
what was "universally" taught; only what became popular, and spread
in the previous century. What I have found, is that the message is
simple to understand, and we wouldn't have all this division if
people weren't so busy trying to one-up their way to being the one
true group.

How can we be "one-upping" our way to be the one true group, when
we're just saying the exact same thing from when we WERE the only
group?
We've been saying for 1500 years that we believe in One
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Is it our fault that others came
along a thousand years later and told us we weren't the One Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church?



CONTINUED......

 

[orthodox]

Page 4:
...... CONTINUED

The early Church was home fellowship, not organizations with constitutions and doctrinal lists. If we had stuck with that, then many of those finer points would not matter as much. Once again, it is people adding a lot of this stuff that causes the problems.

Constitutions and doctrinal lists is the exact complaint that
Orthodoxy levels against the west, both in its protestant and catholic
forms. Both have a scholastic obsession with finer points, definitions
and so-forth, whether it be the catholic catechism, or the baptist
confession of faith.

But I tell you what: if you can get your baptist pastor to baptize a
baby, THEN I'll say hey, you're practicing what you preach. Until
then, you look a bit hypocritical.

according to all the different groups out there, we're not keeping the 7th day sabbath and that's "antinomian", we're not declaring that our salvation began at baptism, we use the wrong style of music, we use instruments period, we don't have the right name or organization, we can't trace our organization all the way back, we don't have all the rituals, etc.

It's perfectly fine that you are doing what you can with the truth you
have. The fact that you don't have the fullness of truth is not
something we judge you over, but just regret that you are missing out
on.

For example, with the protestant rejection of the physical in favour
of the spiritual, many protestant churches would not bother following
James 5:14 - annoint the sick with oil. Protestants have a hard time
fitting this into their theology. What good is oil anyway?

You can ignore the rituals, that's fine, but it's your loss, not
ours. We're happy you follow the truth you have, and don't judge you
that you don't have it all.

That's debatable and still subject to people's interpretation (I don't see either position in there; only him urging people to follow the bishops in the face of trouble. That to me always looked like an innovation, and once again, the Church had changed in that prior century)

I don't see how you can claim he doesn't teach the monarchial episcopate:

"Give ye heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to you. I am
devoted to those who are subject to the bishop, the presbyters, the
deacons." - Ignatius to polycarp.

I judge the ECFs on the Scriptures, not on their own authority. They are not proven by default just because we have a lot of people dividing over various things today.

Instead of just judging the ECFs by the scriptures, I suggest you also
judge the ECFs against each other, yourself against the ECFs. Are you
so wise in your interpretation that you outweigh dozens of bishops? If
so, how and why?

That's why I believe in relying on scripture and not tradition. You claim the canon was tradition, but that is only ONE tradition that can be tested to a certain point (they all have a unity, similar writing style, and similar topics, which is why all the liturgical stuff seems so out of place in the NT Church in the first place).

I'm not sure what you mean by "all that liturgical stuff". Everybody
who cares to investigate realises that the early church was
liturgical. The word is even used in the New Testament. Acts 13:2
"While they were engaged in the liturgy of the Lord and fasting".

To add more traditions that we have to weigh like that just
causes more confusion and wastes time.

If it's so confusing, how come nobody disputed it for 2000 years, and
still nobody in the Orthodox church disputes it? I guess you can make
disputation out of anything, but if something worked for 2000 years, I
don't see how you can seriously claim confusion.

If it is so hard to follow the
written word and agree on it, then tradition will be even harder with
the disputatious Christians of the modern Church, and just telling
them to stifle all their views and just accept those of your
organization will never work.

Well what will work, you tell me?

But the goal here is not to stifle and supress anybody else. We just
proclaim the truth. We don't compromise it to achieve unity. As the
Emperor Michael's sister put it "Better that my brother's Empire
should perish, than the purity of the Orthodox Faith".

 

[nate]

Contrary to the pipe dreams of the Orhodox and RCC members here - the NT saints of Acts 17:11 were not WAITING AROUND for an Orthodox church or and RC church to "evolve" before they began "searching the scriptures daily to SEE IF those things spoken to them by Paul WERE SO".

Ahem....

They were using an OT Canon that the Jews had established. The early Church had a different canon. The so called Apocrypha was actually included in the OT Church's OT. Those in Acts 17:11 were searching the OT not the NT.
In Christ,
Nate