Church of Jerusalem?

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psalm51mercy

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How might I respond to a Protestant friend to the claim that the first true church was the church of Jerusalem? And furthermore that this disproves the Catholic belief of being the One True Church beginning with Peter through our Holy Father Pope Francis?

My friend claims that since the church of Jerusalem precedes the Church of Rome, that protestants can discredit the notion of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and that the Catholic Church was really created by Constantine.

This is a lot of history to refer to but I’m wondering about early church documents that refer to early primacy of the bishop of Rome?

Thanks for your help here…
 
psalm51mercy said:
How might I respond to a Protestant friend to the claim that the first true church was the church of Jerusalem? And furthermore that this disproves the Catholic belief of being the One True Church beginning with Peter through our Holy Father Pope Francis?

My friend claims that since the church of Jerusalem precedes the Church of Rome, that protestants can discredit the notion of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and that the Catholic Church was really created by Constantine.

This is a lot of history to refer to but I’m wondering about early church documents that refer to early primacy of the bishop of Rome?

Thanks for your help here…
Click to expand...
I’ll leave your question for others to answer in more depth, but I will point this out: the Church in Jerusalem, while it was (obviously) the ‘mother church’ and while it did have some measure of authority for the first couple of decades, had lost its ‘importance’ due to the events between AD 70 (the fall of Jerusalem) and AD 135 (the end of the Bar Kochba rebellion, when Hadrian expelled all Jews from the city): without a visible entity to speak with authority, its respected position as a guide would begin to fade.

Part of the reason why the Jerusalem Church never recovered fully after AD 70 was due in part to the Temple: when the Temple still stood, Jewish Christians from the diaspora would have frequently visited the city and will have helped to maintain the influence of the see of Jerusalem and a sense of its role as the center of Christian movement for many Jewish and probably even many gentile Christians. Also, Hadrian’s expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem (now renamed Aelia Capitolina) meant that the Jerusalem Church effectively became gentile: the first bishops of Jerusalem were “of the circumcision” (not to mention that some of them were the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Jesus’ ‘brothers’ - the desposynoi), but after AD 135, non-Jewish Christians took on the episcopal see. That doesn’t mean every Jewish Christian left Jerusalem (especially since Jews and Christians were now distinguished from each other), although those who still identified themselves as ‘Jews’ and practiced Jewish customs would have departed for other cities. The ‘mother church’ in Jerusalem was so weakened and decentralized that later Christians no longer paid much deference to it. (Jerusalem was part of the later Pentarchy, but it was more of a ceremonial position than a practical one.)
 
psalm51mercy said:
How might I respond to a Protestant friend to the claim that the first true church was the church of Jerusalem? And furthermore that this disproves the Catholic belief of being the One True Church beginning with Peter through our Holy Father Pope Francis?

My friend claims that since the church of Jerusalem precedes the Church of Rome, that protestants can discredit the notion of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and that the Catholic Church was really created by Constantine.

This is a lot of history to refer to but I’m wondering about early church documents that refer to early primacy of the bishop of Rome?

Thanks for your help here…
Click to expand...
The RCC understands “Church” to mean more than one entity residing in one locale. There are many individual Churches and the concept of “true Church” would include the Church of Jerusalem but also, for example, the Eastern Orthodox Church, made up, as the RCC is, of many individual Churches.
 
You tell your friend that being first doesn’t always equate to being the most important. Also let your friend know that it wasn’t until the Church spread to Antioch a few years later that these Jews who followed Christ began to call themselves Christians. Would the Church of Antioch not be the first Christian Church since that’s where we first started calling ourselves Christian? As an aside, St. Peter happened to be the first bishop of the Church at Antioch.

As for early church documents referring to the primacy of Rome, look no further than to St. Ignatius of Antioch. St. Ignatius was the third ever bishop of the church at Antioch and was martyred somewhere between 107-110 AD. More importantly, St. Ignatius was a disciple of St. John and church tradition holds that Ignatius was ordained a bishop by St. Peter himself. Anyways…while St. Ignatius was on his way to Rome to be killed in the Coliseum he wrote seven letters to seven different churches. We learn a lot from these letters, particularly his views on the importance of the Eucharist as well as the first ever recorded usage of the term “Catholic Church.” In his letter to the Roman Church, St. Ignatius is in awe of these guys.

He writes: “You [the church at Rome] have envied no one, but others you have taught. I desire only that what you have enjoined in your instructions may remain in force.” He also has this to say: “…to the church also which holds the presidency, in the location of the country of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of blessing, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of sanctification, and, because you hold the presidency in love, named after Christ and named after the Father.”

Also point your Protestant friend to the Letter of Pope St. Clement I to the Corinthians. This is the earliest document we have of a Bishop of Rome asserting his authority over another church. And please keep in mind this letter was written in the final decade of the 1st Century. So the Bishop of Rome had already begun to see itself above the others before the dawn of the 2nd Century. As the historian Sir Nicholas Cheetham had to say: “Clement asserted the primacy of the Roman church in no uncertain tones when he rebuked the Christians of Corinth for lapsing into dissidence and schism. The Epistle chiding them for their quarrels and usually attributed to him has the authentic papal ring, both authoritative and paternal.”

So there you have it.
 
RollTide1987 said:
You tell your friend that being first doesn’t always equate to being the most important. Also let your friend know that it wasn’t until the Church spread to Antioch a few years later that these Jews who followed Christ began to call themselves Christians. Would the Church of Antioch not be the first Christian Church since that’s where we first started calling ourselves Christian? As an aside, St. Peter happened to be the first bishop of the Church at Antioch.

As for early church documents referring to the primacy of Rome, look no further than to St. Ignatius of Antioch. St. Ignatius was the third ever bishop of the church at Antioch and was martyred somewhere between 107-110 AD. More importantly, St. Ignatius was a disciple of St. John and church tradition holds that Ignatius was ordained a bishop by St. Peter himself. Anyways…while St. Ignatius was on his way to Rome to be killed in the Coliseum he wrote seven letters to seven different churches. We learn a lot from these letters, particularly his views on the importance of the Eucharist as well as the first ever recorded usage of the term “Catholic Church.” In his letter to the Roman Church, St. Ignatius is in awe of these guys.

He writes: “You [the church at Rome] have envied no one, but others you have taught. I desire only that what you have enjoined in your instructions may remain in force.” He also has this to say: “…to the church also which holds the presidency, in the location of the country of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of blessing, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of sanctification, and, because you hold the presidency in love, named after Christ and named after the Father.”

Also point your Protestant friend to the Letter of Pope St. Clement I to the Corinthians. This is the earliest document we have of a Bishop of Rome asserting his authority over another church. And please keep in mind this letter was written in the final decade of the 1st Century. So the Bishop of Rome had already begun to see itself above the others before the dawn of the 2nd Century. As the historian Sir Nicholas Cheetham had to say: “Clement asserted the primacy of the Roman church in no uncertain tones when he rebuked the Christians of Corinth for lapsing into dissidence and schism. The Epistle chiding them for their quarrels and usually attributed to him has the authentic papal ring, both authoritative and paternal.”

So there you have it.
Click to expand...
I think it’s also no coincidence that the most important local churches were based in the largest and most important cities in the Empire: Rome (obviously), Antioch and Alexandria, rivalled only perhaps by Ephesus and Carthage. In fact, it is in Roman Christianity that we have the first and best records. The importance Rome came to enjoy indicates that Christians recognized that the future of the Faith lay in the Empire as a whole instead of simply the confines of backwater Palestine.
 
psalm51mercy said:
How might I respond to a Protestant friend to the claim that the first true church was the church of Jerusalem? And furthermore that this disproves the Catholic belief of being the One True Church beginning with Peter through our Holy Father Pope Francis?

My friend claims that since the church of Jerusalem precedes the Church of Rome, that protestants can discredit the notion of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and that the Catholic Church was really created by Constantine.

This is a lot of history to refer to but I’m wondering about early church documents that refer to early primacy of the bishop of Rome?

Thanks for your help here…
Click to expand...
WHERE is this “Church of Jerusalem” today?

Is it POSSIBLE that Peter moved to Rome to take the Word there? After all, Rome was the center of the world, back then. If you wanted to change the world back in the '30s AD, that’s where you’d go, right???

Does your friend have PROOF that the Catholic Church was created by Constantine? That old fable has been around for a long time, and as far as I know, is scoffed at by most legitimate historians. Just a Catholic-basher grasping at straws. Since your buddy is making the assertion, the burden of proof is on HIM.

I have never heard of this “Church of Jeruselem.” That’s a new one to me… Maybe I will do a Google-search. Wish me luck!

PS: Have a blessed Easter!!!
 
Thanks again everyone. These posts are super helpful. I have some reading to do. 🙂
 
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