Prove Clement had authority from GOD- you can’t.
This saying is trustworthy: whoever aspires to the office of bishop (episcopoi) desires a noble task.
1Timothy 3, 1
Clement, Bishop of Rome (A.D. 91-98), understood very well what the apostle Paul meant by the use of the word “office”, that the bishopric would continue on after his death by his successors. It’s an historical fact that Clement can trace his episcopal authority back to Peter. He was not a private individual who established his own church or “branch”, nor a successor of a common man who had no apostolic authority invested by Christ to establish an independent Christian church in His name. There is only one true universal Church founded by Christ on Peter and the Apostles, who are the foundation or starting point (Eph 2:20) with our Lord as the cornerstone: the Catholic Church. Paul himself regarded his ministerial calling a divine office (Col 1:25). If the divine authority to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments of the Church terminated with his death or that of Timothy, who was appointed to the episcopacy by Paul through the formal laying on of hands, then neither of their positions could rightfully be called an office. You don’t think that the office of the President of the United States ended with the death of George Washington, do you?
Christians don’t reject the Disciples, Paul, the Apostles or their authority. We have GODS Word saying HE gave them authority.
We have God’s word saying He gave them the same authority Christ had to appoint and commission their valid successors in the
epicopoi and
presbyteroi as guardians of the one true faith. These particular men would by allusion include Timothy, Titus, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, (etc.).
But the one who gives us security with you in Christ and anointed
us is God; he has also put his seal upon
us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.
*2 Corinthians 1: 21-22 *
No ordinary person can start a church and claim it was established by Christ simply by forming a community of believers and appealing to the Bible. For the one true Church has the Apostles as its foundation, and no private individual like Luther or Calvin can claim having a legitimate authority to preach the gospel to begin with, a divine office that can be directly traced back to the Twelve through the formal rite of ordination. (Luther was excommunicated.) Not even Nestorious, the excommunicated Bishop of Constantinople, had the authority to form his own church in Christ’s name based on his heretical beliefs and teachings. Only those bishops whose teachings are in union with the Catholic Church can trace their authority back to the Apostles. There is no Church founded by Christ where this apostolic teaching authority is absent.
What can not be proven is authority was passed down or that it was given to any spercific branch of Jesus’ Church.
Obviously you know very little about the Church in the New Testament and the early Church. There definitely weren’t any “specific branches” at these times and there still aren’t. The idea of an invisible Church emanating conflicting essential doctrines pertaining to our salvation is a Protestant myth - a rationalization.
"All the people wondered that there should be such a difference between the unbelievers and the elect, of whom this most admirable Polycarp was one, having in our own times been an apostolic and prophetic teacher, and Bishop of the Catholic Church which is in Smyrna. For every word that went out of his mouth either has been or shall yet be accomplished."
Martyrdom of Polycarp, 16:2 (A.D. 155)
PAX :harp:
I see nothing but division in protestantism, yet you don’t seem to mind it, or target anyone in the protestant sphere for the blame; just Rome, or maybe I overlooked it.
