While I don’t have an exact answer to when Rome was viewed as the head (do you mean the Pope by this, I think?) I can say it is unlikely that the year 34 would be accurate. Was there any proselytizing in Rome then? Remember that Christ’s Ascension was somewhere around the year 33 or so, so that would have been pretty quick. I’m sure some of the others here have ready access to early references to Rome, probably from the early church fathers.
the earliest written record of papal Supremacy still in existance is the Letter of Pope St. Clement to the Corinthians in 95AD. this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia goes through all the evidence: newadvent.org/cathen/12260a.htm
Ok that’s what I had found thus far. I had read Clement wrote as early as yr 70 to as late as 96. So if it’s 95, that would have been about 30 yrs after Peter was martyred according to the timeline. So then I guess it just comes down to accepting Clement was correct or not?
Well there’s three witnesses around 100AD. Clement in 95, St. Ignatius of Antioch in 107AD and then St. Irenaeus, and many more in the century or so after that. Remember, Clement’s letter to the Corinthians is of similar age to John’s Revelation and Gospels. It dates from the Apostolic age. Clement was the fourth pope. Peter being the first, and the next two, Linus and Anacletus we know very little about. This is not that surprising, since they were both martyred during the persecutions and it was a very long time ago.
Paul, I know. Which got me thinking. If the Church had included Clement in Scripture along with John, that might have saved a lot of trouble!
Clement was more pastoral than scriptural…Paul, I know. Which got me thinking. If the Church had included Clement in Scripture along with John, that might have saved a lot of trouble!
me too
I’ve never met a Protestant of the sort that you describe here
If such is the unavoidable conclusion, why is it that so many extremely intelligent Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and secular historians come to a different conclusion?
again, so many scholars disagree with this opinion of yours
I don’t get this bit from you….you are talking about a hundred year period and then mention WWII which ended less than 65 years ago. Life spans were shorter then and so by the time Ignatius was killed you would be hard pressed to find survivors who could actually remember having seen Jesus….not impossible but very hard.
It doesn’t look all that Catholic from over here. You must know that Protestants look to the scriptures and so none of those books are seen as giving a particularly Catholic flavor to the early church. In fact, for the Sola Scriptura bunch, it is on the strength of what is contained in those books that they say the Catholic Church has strayed from the original teaching. (I might add that I would take issue with some of the dates you attribute to various books of the NT…but I don’t know that anything hinges on those dates).
There you have it. Someone’s opinion in 2009 outweighs the writings of the early Church fathers, who passed their teachings directly to those they taught Christianity too.
Obviously you are being sarcastic. And I know you put faith in ECFs and I guess at some point cut off any other writings as having any possibility of legitimacy. But @ what yr should a writing no longer be considered? How do you know for instance (granted not 2009) Luther or Calvin’s writings could not have been of Christ as well? And simply a continuation of His church. With Christ stepping in at some point with some reform so as the gates did not prevail?There you have it. Someone’s opinion in 2009 outweighs the writings of the early Church fathers, who passed their teachings directly to those they taught Christianity too.
Trust Apostolic succession. The Apostles taught, and those that they taught, taught and those passed it down the line. Vast differences didn’t show up until the 1500s, and then some of the truth passed.
Also, since we are living in 2010, how do we avoid relying upon an opinion formed or advanced in 2010…if I read and interpret the early church fathers or if I rely on an opinion put forward by JND Kelly isn’t my interpretation and reliance a modern opinion of 2010? Now if only Ignatius had specififed that his views were exactly the same as would be held by the Bishop of Rome in 2010…
I’m afraid you’ll have to be specific about the very different Catholicity. Then we can look at the specific writings and discuss them. From the certain writings I’ve read, I don’t see those differences.
You understand the men of the early Church thought Jesus would return in their lifetime? The more time passed, the more specifications of teachings they had received was written down.Also, since we are living in 2010, how do we avoid relying upon an opinion formed or advanced in 2010…if I read and interpret the early church fathers or if I rely on an opinion put forward by JND Kelly isn’t my interpretation and reliance a modern opinion of 2010? Now if only Ignatius had specififed that his views were exactly the same as would be held by the Bishop of Rome in 2010…
Too bad that we know we lost at lest 2 of St. Paul’s works. But how ironic that a principal of unassailable evidence seems to run absolutely counter to the principal of faith and so he will not likely ever get the balance he wants without trusting in the apostolic authority. But asking a skeptic to trust is like asking a non-believer to have faith in something he can’t see. Diddymus was the same way.sorry, but it seems that the oral evidence that you claim we have is actually written evidence as it is in the form of inscriptions. So then, what are the dates of the inscriptions? I admit that it is not entirely unreasonable to assume that if a doctrine was recorded in 250 AD then it must have been taught by 100 AD and if it was taught in 100 AD then it must have been received from the apostles. It is also not entirely unreasonable to admit that if a doctrine was not recorded until 250 AD then it is entirely possible that it originated after the apostles.
I think this helps me and not you. I admit that the doctrine of the Trinity was a formulation that was not received from the apostles, but was something that was produced later. I can point to express statements (that Jesus is God, that the Father is God, that the HS is God, and that God is one) that led to the formulation, but the formulation itself was derived from those express statements a long time after the apostles departed. So are we then agreed that the Catholic Marian doctrines are later formulations like the doctrine of the Trinity? Perhaps you could show me the express statements that led to the formulation of the Marian doctrines so that we can see if they are logical developments or outright novelties.
The genesis for the Marian doctrines are in the first personal accounts given by God personally to Adam and Eve when they fell from grace in the Garden. This was long before the first word of scripture was ever penned. Yet we must assume that those oral traditions handed down through the lineage of Seth persevered to the day that they were captured on parchment in one of the first books of the OT Cannon - Genesis. Genesis has the first “seed” of the promise for what God will do through the “woman”. It grows from here.
Such a view is not at all unique to me. Consider any court of law in either of our two countries. There is a dispute as to what was the agreement between two parties. There is a contradiction between the evidence put forward by the two sides. One side offers the written contract. The other side offers self-serving oral evidence (no one offers evidence that isn’t self-serving if they can help it). Guess which form of evidence the court will prefer in almost every instance. Our legal systems have been honed over centuries to approach the matter with the best possible chance of arriving at the best understanding of what happened and there is a preference for written over oral.
This is a poorly constructed straw man…so poorly done that I suspect that you have no idea as to what my position actually is…so I will elaborate. Let us say that we are trying to determine whether the Church believed, in 110 AD, that praying to Mary was good and well. It is admitted by me that teaching would commonly be done by word of mouth. That, however, doesn’t tell us what oral teachings were in circulation in that day. It doesn’t tell us that any oral teachings existed that had not also been reduced to writing. What is the oral evidence that you would like to rely upon to assert that the Church did hold that position? You aren’t able to come up with anything that is purely oral unless you have a oral tradition that contains a continuous chain telling of the relay of the teaching along the lines of:
You mean like the golden plates that Joseph Smith translated into the Book of Mormon? Should I rely on a burning in my belly to verify the legitamacy of Catholic doctrines?
** the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.**…apparently Luke thought it a noble thing to check an apostle’s teaching against scripture. Paul checked out…on what basis does your Church’s tradition check out…after all, the first 100 years are supposed to be decidely Catholic, right?
I never said that the early church held to Sola scriptura… now, however, more than 1500 years later we must ask ourselves what it is that we possess that reliably preserves God’s revelation. B/c of the wealth of manuscripts we can do a pretty good job of assessing scriptures’ reliability…what have you offered for us to use to assess the reliability of your Church’s tradition that doesn’t show up in the records from the first 100 years?