Yet Jesus also acknowledge that they nullified the commands of God with their man-made (originating in themselves) tradition. So it would seem they weren't the faithful followers of OT "Judaism" that they made themselves out to be.
Well, I'm not saying they were particularly right. They are the ones who claimed to follow "oral tradition". They could show you ways in which all of God's "commandments" weren't always written (e.g. murder already wrong even though no written command was given to Cain or reecorded in the Torah, etc). From this, they would rebuff your claim that their tradition "originated in themselves" just like you try to do with us. So if they were right, and Jesus and His followers' teachings contradicted this "equally authoritative" form of God's word, then no amount of claims of truth or miracles they did would authenticate them. There would be no way to tell who had the truth except that "we said it, it was handed down to us, that settles it". I don't know why you can't see that what you're doing is the same exact thing as they! The "catholic" churches have shown themselves not to be the faithful followers of NT "Christianity" that they made themselves out to be, even though, they could trace themselves all the way back, just like the Pharisees could. That's what I mean in not looking at a visible organization. Even when founded by God, and initially endowed with His truth; they go astray. The whole point of Christ's Kingdom was that it would no longer be institution based like Israel.
Though not discounting the fact that we must present ourselves as living sacrifices (in view of God's mercy), the Eucharist (the bread and cup), being the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, is the participation in and re-presentation of Christ's unique sacrifice on the cross. This is the commmon belief of Chrisitians for the first millenium-and-a-half.
Sorry, but our "sacrifice" is what is made the re-presenation of Christ's sacrifice. Why do you think we are instructed in terms of "take up our Cross"? Once again, after a whole Milennium and a half, the Church largely became a cultural/sentimantal element, that did not change most people's lives anymore, because these principles became focused on lifeless physical elements, and not the life-changing power of God in our lives.
You mean inanimate objects such as the cross of Christ, or the blood He spilt? You err because you ignore the numerous Scriptures in which God uses physical events and objects to effect not only physical but spiritual healing.
I don't venerate crosses, and none of us claims to have any of His actual spilled blood preserved anywhere in order to make such an idol of it. The Cross and blood are legal concepts that purchase our spiritual salvation. The physical objects themselves did not do anything for anyone. Before anyone, even some Baptists and others flips over this, just think of it this way. The other thief on the Cross, the one who mocked and did not repent, could very well have gotten some of Christ's blood on him. But that would not save him. This "blood" is applied
spiritually, not physically. The physical application of blood (on the doorposts in Egypt) was the type.
So for Churches to make virtual idols out of all of these other things: the Cross, or supposed pieces of it they think they have, or a claim to have a vial of His original blood preserved, or the cup He drank out of, or the shroud he was buried in, as well as bread, wine and baptismal water; is all apart of the shift from the Spirit as the center of things of the Spirit to material items, and this is what promotes the nominalism where people think they are saved by the Church through these items, no matter their actual relationship to Christ.
That the "gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church" is a promise of Christ that believers have accepted on faith. Historically one can point to the consistency of doctrine/practice, over the years, across time and space, between the early church and the Orthodox teachings of today to show the Orthodox continuity with the church of the apostles.
There has not been a consistencey of doctrine and practice. Only basically baptism and communion, and perhaps Mary and icons. Then, you try to prove those things are from the apostles by this "consistency", which begs the question of whether they are really consistent with the apostles. If we do not have any statement from they themselves, then there is no real PROOF at all they believed these things. You are basically asking us to place our faith in the organization of the Church, based on the premise that God would not let it depart from the truth, but when we see it looks like it did, then we are pointed to a bunch of truths that were omitted from writing by the apostles. So then we are right back where we started. How can we know that? We have to haveve faith in the later church's word.
Also, the Church teaching was "consistent" on the world being flat and at the center of the universe; until the physical evidence
forced them to eventually drop it. But that was seen as right up there with the other doctrines.
"Circular"--oh, do you mean like your argument that presupposes that Christians who share your Baptist interpretations must have actually existed (despite the absence of historical evidence) because your interpretation of the Bible demands that such must have existed?
But I have not even been arguing that here. You are hearing something others may have said, and trying to throw something I said back at me with it, but I have not emphasized that idea. As I have just said in one of these discussions; a lot of things were not clearly understood even in the early Church, and became official statements as time went on. The Trinity is a perfect example. The dosctine as we know it was formulated in the fourth century. Before then, more and more of the statements associated with it were beginning to be coined, as people tried to put togethter the truths
from the scriptures, as they were becoming more available (not oral tradition)!. At one point, the Church did not even think of Jesus as "being" God, but rather linked God and Jesus in terms of doing the same works. You can see this addressed in Shirley c. Guthrie's
Christian Doctrine. Then, we see 2 Clement come and tells us "Bretheren, we ought to think of christ as of God, as the judge of the quick and the dead". We know we can say that Christ is God, but people in the beginning saw it in completely different terms. If it was about a "tradition" passed down from the apostles, then there would never have been any such development or problems. We should not see fathers and apologists framing statements in
reaction to heretical views. It would simply be "the apostles told us thus themselves, and it is not in the scriptures, so you are missing some of the revelation; so that settles it". (I have not studied up upon baptism, Eucharist, icons, and the rest of that stuff, you you could challenge me more on those, but the history of the Trinity I am well studies in).
Except the Orthodox Church is not a conglomeration of competing denominations with conflicting beliefs. It is unified on matters of the faith--God, Christ, salvation, and the sacraments.
I didn't say that it
was a conglomeration; but that it was just another
part of that conglomeration )called "Christendom". Just like any other particular denomination that claims to be truer, and is unified on matter of faith within its own group.
But none of those groups you listed can back it up.
They all claim to. You use your group's age and proximity of some of the teachings ot the apostles. Others, as I said, will claim one of the "heresies" was really the truth that was suppressed by a corrupted institution. It could go either way, as the Church did often wrongly quash practices that were not really heretical (quartodecimanism and other Jewish practices kept as per Rom.14, for instance).
Uh, oh...Dan Brown alert again.
Thankfully, we have Christ's promise that the gates of Hell wouldn't prevail against the Church. The Church, through the guidance of the Spirit, maintained the Apostolic Tradition and has been able to proclaim the truth and speak out against error.
Yes, those groups are often conspiratorial. (I don't know who this "dan Brown" is, though). But if they happened to be right, that the truth would have been kept by these small groups, or at least preserved in the written Word, as I maintained. Either way, we would have to choose one side and have faith in what they are saying. None of us were around back then, so we can;t see for ourselves. You have to have faith in something. So many of us see it is better to go back to the source, and try to decipher it for ourseolves. Now you say this is just everyone going by their own personal opinion and produces hundreds of conflicting groups. Well, then, the people will be judged for how they handle the Word. If all are wrong, all will give account. But the solution is not to place our faith in any of these goups claiming to have the monopoly on the truth. All that is is another set of individuals going by their own personal opinions, but forrcing them on others ont he premise of an unprovable, untestable apostolic tradition.
Nope, it's about proclaiming the truth and fighting against error,
And that's what all of those goups you are dismissing are saying; espcially the cults and fundamentalists (who are hardest on catholic groups).
An assertion you keep making but have yet to prove
You yourself attest to the same things, in different words/indirectly. On one hand; it is possible for those in the visible church to go astray, oof ro there to be some conflict, until they sit down and decide on the issue; but God still prevents all from going astray. A whole section of the Church apparently fell away from the true "East" church, even though it descended from the apostolic Church as well. What you have is an invisible organism, which to you is now embodied in the visible EOC oraganization. If Constantinople were to go astray, and Jerusalem were to maintain the practices, then iot would be embodied in Jerusalem. God's Spirit is invisible, and the spiritual Body He maintains is invisble, but manifest visibly through its
members.
But the visible Church is not "man's orgnization"; it's Christ's divine-human Body. It has it's organizational and instutional aspects, but it has more than that--it has the promise of God to preserve it from error.
I think you may be confusing what I mean by "visible Church". A visible body of Christians is Christ's body. It's the "organizational and instutional aspects" I;m etting at, and yes, it
should be "more than that", but in practice, it comes to be defined by that. So likewise, you look at a "conglomeration" of
oraganization and then deny that we are one Church, claiming that only your one organization represents it. That is making the Body "no more" than just an organization. If you really saw it as more than that, we wouldnt be having this debate over multiple oragnizations versus one organization. All of this is why I say organizations get in the way.
Or just insist that folks maintain the fulness of apostolic faith that has been deposited into Christ's church. The Church has been given authority to bind and to loose; it has authority to proclaim truth and denounce error as it guards that which has been committed to it. Heretics are always free to leave, and the Church has always had the power to expel the immoral person or false teacher. There is "one faith" just as there is "one body", so it's not unreasonable for this "one body" to seek to proclaim this "faith" in all of its fulness--to have one mind, the mind of Christ.
Heretics, immoral, and false teachers are free to leave, bu those who do not fall into such catefories then are forced into this body with all its trappings, if they would be saved (in Christ). I'm sorry, but that is still control and manipulation. Christ is not about a legally incorporated institution (to make it more clear what I mean by "organization".
