Bishops of churches mentioned on the NT

[RKS89]

My wife isn’t Catholic and doesn’t really buy into any of what we believe in. But we were talking about the Bible and the Early Church, and I brought up some of the earliest writings from the ECFs and how they talk about bishops and the Eucharist and infant baptism- basically all the Catholic stuff. And she said that the earliest churches would be the ones in the Epistles. She said where does it say the Church of Corinth (or any other church) believed all that?

So do we have writings from Bishops of any of those churches named in the New Testament? I’m not sure that it will sway her at all but I do try to follow up her questions when I don’t have an answer.

 

[dochawk]

Not a direct answer, but the Apostles and Paul were generally the ones who installed and appointed those bishops, so . . .

And Peter founded the church in Antioch before landing in Rome.

hawk

 

[Thom18]

She said where does it say the Church of Corinth (or any other church) believed all that?

You could just as easily ask her (and perhaps should) where it says the church of Corinth believed anything that she does.

It makes little sense to believe that the early Church believed something totally contrary to what the surviving documents say they did.

 

[RKS89]

I thought of that…

After she’d gone to bed! I’ll ask her tomorrow.

 

[jcrichton]

This Protestant argument/s is perennial–where in Scriptures?

The problem with their argument is that Scriptures do not tell you “only found in Scriptures.”

Look at St. Paul’s admonition to Timothy:

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3)

Do you see the first declaration? It does not speak about Scriptures but about the source of his instruction: Oral Instruction.

Then it speaks about a long-life learning process–Timothy did not one day wake up with a burning ‘the Holy Spirit’ has guided me to… he was instructed as a child and he is being urged to remain loyal to that learning.

Then St. Paul addresses the Holy Scriptures… well not what we know as the Holy Scriptures since the New Covenant Writings would not take place till many years after Jesus’ Ascension and the Writings will remain sporadically shared/studied through out the first few decades of the Church’s infancy.

Finally we are offered the very first issue again: the Word of God as a training tool.

We have definition of the Oral Teachings (Oral Tradition) for decades before the Gospels and other New Covenant Writings are put to ink and disseminated through out the Church.

This, inevitably, brings us to function. The Unfolding done by the Holy Spirit (St. John 16:12-15) will take place as the Church grows and matures; it took them at least three years to go from those of the Way to Christians… yet, not once is there a mention that Jesus followers will become known as those of the Way nor as Christians in any of the Old Covenant’s Writings and it is only but a footnote in the New Covenant’s Writings:

26 And they conversed there in the church a whole year; and they taught a great multitude, so that at Antioch the disciples were first named Christians. (Acts 11)

Now, I know that it is difficult for non-Catholics to appeal to reason (outside of their own) but is it reasonable to ascertain that this issue of who the Disciples were was part of their Ministry (‘who are they’ or ‘what do you call yourselves’ or ‘no, they are not Jews, they are…’) or are we to either reject the term Christians, since there’s no Biblical precedence to this one-time mention in Acts, or are we to believe that this just happened to be coined by some heckler and it stuck?

Doctrine and Definition is part of the Unfolding!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[pablope]

I think Pope Clement, or Clement of Rome is mentioned in one of the epistles…and you could provide her the Epistle of Clement of Rome to Corinth. In the epistle, he mentions about apostolic instruction tonappoint bishops and presbyters.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

where does it say the Church of Corinth (or any other church) believed all that?

This is a classic objection to Catholicism. Seeing the local churches are different denominations with different beliefs, along the lines of the current Protestant movement.

Why would Paul be writing authoritatively to all of these different churches, if they were different denominations from him?

 

[BartholomewB]

I brought up some of the earliest writings from the ECFs and how they talk about bishops and the Eucharist and infant baptism

In the Epistles themselves you can find at least one reference each to bishops and the Eucharist. Nothing on infant baptism, though, as far as I’m aware.

Bishops.―Titus was given the job of appointing all the presbyteroi (elders) in every community in Crete. This counters the argument put forward by some (not all) Protestants that in the early Church each community had its own elders and overseers, with no hierarchy above them. This is not a conclusive argument, but it’s a step in the right direction. The reference is Titus 1:5.

Eucharist.―See 1 Cor 11:17 to the end of the chapter. Paul first tells the Corinth community what they are doing wrong when they meet to celebrate the Eucharist, and then goes on to explain the right way to do it. This is, in fact, the earliest account we have of the Institution of the Eucharist. Paul wrote this Epistle some years before Mark, Matthew, and Luke wrote their Gospels.

 

[RKS89]

Also, we’ve got Ignatius writing less than a 100 years after the Ressurection showing the importance of the hierarchy and episcopate. That’s a pretty short time to shift from Protestant-style “house” churches to Catholic. As far as history goes no religion or political change has ever occurred so quickly and with little evidence of squabble among the involved parties.

 

[catholic1seeks]

Ignatius of Antioch.

Read his seven letters with her. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

Antioch was the location where Christians were first called Christian.

Ignatius was associated with both Peter and John. He was friends with Polycarp, who also knew John.

If your wife cannot trust such men as Ignatius, who was exceptionally holy and died by martyrdom, who led the next generation of Christians, and who knew Peter and John, then how can she trust the Catholic bishops of the fourth century, who gave her the Bible?

 

[RKS89]

That’s exactly what I told her last night. There was maybe 20-30 years between Paul being in Antioch and Ignatius being its Bishop. Its just not logical that Paul was learning/teaching “Protestantism” and suddenly Ignatius is talking about following the bishop as you would Jesus himself.

This is also a problem I run into with other non-Catholics. They want every single doctrine, teaching or practice to be clearly defined immediately after the Crucifixion. And if that’s the case than neither we Catholics or Protestants have much ground to stand on, because as jcrichton pointed out, doctrine unfolds. It represents a really disjointed concept of history. The same applies to appealing to Scripture as authority- how can you use a collection of writings as authoritative when it didn’t exist in that capactiy until HUNDREDS of years after Chris lived and died? Its like if we said we could only learn to cook by reading a cook book. But before the cook book there would have been a bunch of family recipes floating around and being exchanged. And before THAT a whole lot of people learned to cook from their family members. You could make “Grandma’s Famous Breakfast Casserole” with the cookbook, but what that means is you’re trusting Grandma knew what she was doing and the recipe was handed on successfully. Much like skeptics, Protestants put unrealistic demands on Catholics for a kind of “proof” that can’t be obtained short of inventing a time machine. Were the tables turned they couldn’t offer equivelant proofs for their own versions of Christianity, and what they can offer is much less convincing and historically accurate than what our Church has.

 

[Todd_Easton]

In Philippians 4:3, St Paul mentions a Clement, one of his fellow worker in the Gospel.

 

[RKS89]

Exactly. This was the starting point that got me turning towards the Early Church Fathers when I was converting from Protestantism. Once you let your mental guard down and really put yourself in these situations you see the Protestant ideas don’t hold up so well. Protestantism only works because the Church came first. It wouldn’t have held up in those first centuries.

 

[RKS89]

Are we sure its the same Clement? I thought I read somewhere that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that they were the same person.

 

[Todd_Easton]

I don’t know for sure but some people have thought so for a very long time. In Book 3, Chapter 15, of his Church History, Eusebius said they were the same person.

 

[guanophore]

And she said that the earliest churches would be the ones in the Epistles. She said where does it say the Church of Corinth (or any other church) believed all that?

She is right, these are among the earliest Churches, though they are all pre-dated by those in Palestine. And the book of Acts records that Peter and John went to Antioch, where the disciples were first called “Christians”. There is a line of Bishops in Antioch that is older than the line from Peter in Rome.

It is difficult for Protestants to grasp that the NT was never intended to be a full compendium of the faith. But the letters to Timothy and Titus were were among the first Apostolic letters to Bishops.

Titus 2:15 “Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.”

Titus was charged with appointing presbyters in all of Crete. If Titus was given authority to exhort, reprove, and allow no one to disregard him, where did this authority originate?

 

[RKS89]

Right. Almost all arguments in the Catholic v Protestant arena can be reduced to the issue of authority. Either we have a living, active and authoritative Church or we do not. And if we do not there is absolutely no possible way to know your interpretation of Scripture and Christianity is correct. And since Christ is the Truth, we know He wouldn’t leave us to descend into the murky waters of relativism. And obviously the fact that our separated brothers and sisters accept a version of the Canon means they are implicitly acknowledging the authority of the counsel responsible for it. It’s just too nebulous and chaotic without an authoritative, teaching Church.

 

[jcrichton]

If we are kin in listening to Scriptures, we find that even from Sacred Writings the spirit of Protestantism emerges.

I believe that the reason why it did not take hold in early Church or in the following centuries is because people actually feared God and were obedient to Church’s Authority. As time progressed more and more people challenged her Authority and capitalizing on the various movements (error in Church practices, political and social turmoil…) some, as Luther, were able to wrench away the most disenchanted and disgruntled.

We can see this exact mirror in various other fields (social norms, morality, popular growth away from God, justice, compassion…); these changes go back and forth between the secular and religious–compounded, if you will, by both man’s temerity, his desire to be his own boss, and the anti-God fronts.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

It is difficult for Protestants to grasp that the NT was never intended to be a full compendium of the faith. But the letters to Timothy and Titus were were among the first Apostolic letters to Bishops.

Part of this inability to grasp the New Covenant’s Unfolding is that by removing the Church’s Authority, the Succession of the Apostles, and Apostolic Teaching (as both Oral and Written) there’s a huge gap which they must traverse–then they must navigate through this gap with missing information (and/or misinformation); it’s like a trek across the Sahara without any assistance from a compass, map or geographical/stellar markers: a person could well end up going in a crescendo of circular navigation while believing that he/she is on the right path because he/she is making headways through the desert.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Wesrock]

The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is held to be an authentic letter. It is from the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth, primarily meant to address a disciplinary issue where the Corinthians tried to kick out their priests and replace them with different ones, but there’s still sone interesting commentary in there.

The Second Epistle of Clement is held to be a pseudo letter.