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MichaelP3
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History is exactly the reason I am Protestant. Never really understood Newman on that one.
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Peccavi
Guest
I am neither a Catholic or a Protestant but an Ebionite Nazarene - I follow the first Christians who were the Jews believing that Jesus was the messiah. In his earliest work which mentions the Ebionites, Eusebius before 313CE writes that in a village called Choba, “there are Hebrews who believed in Christ, called Ebionites”. We accept an early Gospel of Matthew, and our beliefs are in accordance with the earliest reports of the gospels of Luke and Matthew, and with Jewish prophecy. We do not believe in the Pauline Greek Christ but the Jewish messianic Jesus and the Kingdom of God.
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Peter_J
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Peter_J
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mackbrislawn, could you elaborate on “Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone deep into scripture”? I’ve never heard a Catholic say that or anything close to it, but possibly there’s a negative in the phrase “deep into” that I am not getting.
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susanlo
Guest
I think John Henry Newman talks about ‘development of doctrine.’ He doesn’t say Catholicism is like the early church (which many Protestants/non-Catholics try to emulate), but that they had the authority to change Christianity over the centuries as they developed new teachings. That is how I understand it, at least. I personally prefer to think that the practice and teaching of Apostolic times was right and didn’t need to be developed and altered over the centuries, but that is the different understandings of history.
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Peter_J
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For example, Cardinal Newman wrote " … the proposition defined will be without any claim to be considered binding on the belief of Catholics, unless it is referable to the Apostolic depositum".
Not that he didn’t write a lot of other things about development of doctrine as well, but that’s one that comes to mind.
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MichaelP3
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True.
The development of doctrine is something I don’t agree with and feel that the very “development” is where the discrepancies started to appear through history.
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JB_Brother_4446
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The Ebionites were rejected as heretics by the Church in the first century.
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mackbrislawn
Guest
Yes, JW’s study scripture extensively and have for a long time. They have elaborate “Studies in Scripture” that they publish. They have gone deep into scripture, relying on the bible only.
However, as a result of this deep scripture study, they have developed theologies that bear little resemblance to traditional Christian theology, neither Protestant nor Catholic, simply going by the Reformation principle, scripture alone.
So, my comment is a subtle dig at the Reformation notion of sola scriptura, and how scripture alone is not a guarantee of arriving at true Christian doctrine.
That true scripture study can be done only within the community that produced scripture to begin with. Scripture, when taken out of its original context, cannot be understood.
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mackbrislawn
Guest
Hi Peccavi,
I have a question. Would you consider the Ebionite Nazarenes to be descendants of the Jerusalem Christians who escaped from Jerusalem across the Jordan prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70? (Any Christians remaining in Jerusalem at that time would have been slaughtered along with everyone else.)
Those that evacuated Jerusalem would presumably represent the earliest version of Christianity, a non-Pauline version. What happened to them?
Now, where do you get your scriptures, such as the early version of Matthew? And the earliest reports of Luke and Matthew?
Mack
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Peccavi
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Yes by the Pauline Church because like Jesus they continued to practice as Jews.
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Peccavi
Guest
They were not Christians - Christians are essentially followers of St.Paul and the Greek Church - Ebionites ( or Nazarenes as they were often called ie. by Josephus) were Messianic Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah.
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mackbrislawn
Guest
Okay. (Although Peter would have been a Messianic Jew and he was in Antioch, where they were first called Christians.)
But back to the questions, are the current Ebionite Nazarenes descendants, or heirs, of those who escaped from Jerusalem? What is the source of your scriptures?
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commenter
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Newman regarded the “deposit of faith” to have ended with the last apostle. But was realistic enough to observe that Catholics and Protestants alike had “developed” in their understanding of scripture, and applications of it in different situations, in light of tradition. Most Protestants explicitly rejected parts of the pre-Reformation development of the Catholic Church, like Purgatory, but implicitly accepted most pre-Reformation Catholic developments. like most of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
In the late 19th century, there was a little pressure on Anglicanism, and what were later called “mainline” churches, to “develop” their doctrine, without regard to former limits of scripture and tradition. Anglican, and Protestant leaders argued that they could resist unorthodox developments, without any Magisterium. And, for awhile, they were right, as the momentum of scripture and tradition carried them. But Newman foresaw that the momentum would be exhausted, and, without a Magisterium, Protestant and Anglican denominations would be at the mercy of public opinion. This is what we have had since around the 1960s.
In other words, only within the Magisterium would development be held within the bounds of scripture and tradition. But all the other denominations are developing too. I predict there will be pressure to drop certain Pauline verses from the NT, and add certain other books. In the long run, churches that have no magisterium will find it difficult to reject additions to the NT.
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MichaelP3
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I can’t say I agree at all.
Saying Protestants accepted the development of Catholic doctrine like the Trinity is not true. There is nothing one can point to at the time of the council of Nicaea that is not compatible with mainstream Protestants. We still confess the Nicene Creed on numerous occasions. I just think where we differ is that the doctrine of the Trinity is a catholic (small c) doctrine and the Roman Catholic church is overreaching by claiming it for themselves. In other words, If Luther or Calvin was present at the Council they would have stayed catholic (small c). It’s the “development” for example indulgences (in Luther’s case) much later that became the problem.
Further, I can’t understand how one could think (Mainline Protestants as I would not like to be associated with all of them) Protestants will change the NT. One of the biggest arguments for Protestants is that we have the true Bible as translated from St Jerome. And being the Septuagint. By adding or removing will be against one of the foundations. And again why would they, Most of Pauline verses are the very basis for the Reformation?
Also OP referred to the Council of Carthage as binding (Assuming it’s a Catholic council and not a regional catholic (small c) council). (Although the Apocrypha was a appendix as translated by Jerome). Explain to me the Carthage council in 418 which sounds very Protestant and apparently local and non-binding according to a reply I received a while back on some thread. Understand how we Protestants see the discrepancies and and sit back sometimes thinking “well this does not make sense”.
And also having a magisterium and that means being better never did it for me. Forgive me for this but in my opinion it is nothing more than a council of judges who “have” to work according to set rules of law. And we all know how faulty the justice system can be.
Regards
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BibleBullet
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Sadly, thanks to influential people like Wayne Grudem and John Piper, that we Protestants claim to confess the Nicene Creed now means less and less. Look up “eternal functional subordination of the Son” in Google. It has spread far and wide. Only a scant few complementarian scholars (largely those at Mortification of Spin) are standing up to it, and it’s too little, too late.
Of course, many Protestant churches don’t even regard the Creeds, unlike, say, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans. In my childhood church of Vineyard (also coincidentally influenced by Grudem), I actually grew up thinking that Jesus was always submissive to the Father and that the Father was the one with full authority in the Trinity. My time in Calvary Chapel reinforced this notion. I had never heard of the Nicene Creed or Arianism until I studied it for myself as an adult. I grew up unwittingly semi-Arian, because nobody told me about this stuff, nor did anybody walk me through a serious study about the Trinity. Unless, of course, likening God to a triangle or three intersecting circles counts as an in-depth study.
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Peccavi
Guest
You will find Messianic Jews in Israel but also in the USA
See for example - shema.com/messianic-judaism/what-is-it/
Ebionites were persecuted by both Jews and Greek-Roman Christians. Today Messianic Jews are still persecuted in Israel though no longer by Western Christians.
Our source of Scripture is the early version of the Synoptic Gospels and the Torah.
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commenter
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I think your second sentence supports my argument. It does not support your first sentence. Actually, the Magisterium had been guiding the development of Trinitarian doctrine prior to Nicaea. I believe Protestants accept those developments, too. You might say "we respect the “Early Church Fathers” and avoid the “heretics”. But that is because the Magisterium designated certain scholars as “Early Church Fathers” and other scholars as “heretics”.
Protestants seem to accept those 2 crucial, Magisterium designations for the most part. Based on that, they accept certain (Catholic) development, and reject other (e. g. Gnostic) development.
Thank God most Protestants do that. If you meet any Catholics who claim credit for the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Bible, or discovery of Fire, or the Wheel, poke them in the nose. My own ancestors claimed credit for discovery of Humility. Rightly so.
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Peter_J
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Etc.
Fwiw, although I’ve said before that Protestants need to “get their stories straight” concerning the word “Catholic”, I find that your way (ie allowing "Catholic to mean ICWR – thus avoiding the question of whether to say “Roman Catholic”) works best of any that I’ve encountered.
Although it does get awkward, as your post illustrates, to always say “small c” etc.
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mackbrislawn
Guest
The article didn’t mention Ebionites nor Nazarenes. How do these relate to the modern Messianic Jewish movement? The Ebionites presumably were remnants of the Jerusalem congregation that escaped the Roman destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem. Is that right? And are these the ones that hung on until the 7th century?
What do you mean by the early version of the Synoptic Gospels? Are there later versions? Did the Messianic Jews preserve copies of these early versions down through the ages until today? That is what I mean by “source.”
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