Early Bible Christians

[Tonks40]

If there ever was one and I am sure there was, the Catholic Chruch would have killed him and distoryed his works, After all, Martin Luther had to hide from the Catholic Church to save his life

Please, allischalmers, you’ve been around here long enough to know that spouting these unsubstantiated statements does nothing to further the Christian cause.

 

[Teflon93]

exiled;2757691:

If there ever was one and I am sure there was, the Catholic Chruch would have killed him and distoryed his works, After all, Martin Luther had to hide from the Catholic Church to save his life

Wow, THERE’S an historical distortion!

Of course, that’s also pretty inconsistent with the claim that Luther was exceptionally brave, as the whole assumed identity/German prince Witness Protection Program looks pretty unfavorable in light of the martyrs.

The Catholic Church sure took its time in asassinating Luther, what with all the correspondence and dialogue with the ol’ heretic.

The Illuminati just ain’t what they used to be.

But go back to your “Baptism of Blood” pamphlet reading—we’ll eagerly await your next historical "discovery.’

 

[Mannyfit75]

allischalmers:

It wasn’t clear to you that I meant figures after the Bible? From around the 1400’s on we have writings, but nothing before then as far as I can tell. I have yet to come across one early church father who condemns the church, although I do acknowledge that there are discussions and disputes about this, that or the other doctrine.

Who condemned the Church? As far as I know only Arianism, and Nestorianism were at odds with the Church. No Early Church Father condemn the Church. They did condemn heresy but not the Church.

With the assorted heresies that cropped up, I would think there must’ve been a great, scholarly Bible Christian somewhere who wrote in defense of Truth, but it seems all the defenders can be identified as Catholic. I’m looking to see if I need to be corrected on that point.

Early Christians were indeed Catholic. There is historical proof text to support this.

Additionally, if the pope and the RCC were growing, absorbing and corrupting true Christianity, again, I would think there would be many records of pastors and lay people alike trying to undo the damage the RCC was doing.

As far his Christian history show, there was no corrupting of Christianity. You see that as early as 325 AD, the Church defended the Truth against heresy of Arianism, which belief asserting that Christ was not God like the Father, but a creature made in time.

You need to take a deeper look at Christian history, my Baptist friend. Rather than makes assumptions or by making these claims out from Anti-Catholic literature like Lorraine Boetner’s Roman Catholicism.

Who were the great Bible Alone, OSAS, sola fide apologist from (let’s say) 150 A.D until 1400 A.D.?

There was none. As far as Bible Alone and Faith Alone Martin Luther came up with the concept.

OSAS is based on John Calvin bad theology on salvation. I believe Baptist have a Calvinist view of salvation. The Early Christians did not taught OSAS. There were times when St. Clement of Rome, the Pope at the time, wrote a letter to the Corinthian Christians in the year 100, who were apparently not living up with their faith and had to send them a letter.
He wrote the following:
Clement Letters to the Corinthians circa 100 AD:

Every kind of honour and happiness was bestowed upon you, and then was fulfilled that which is written, “My beloved did eat and drink, and was enlarged and became fat, and kicked.” Deuteronomy 32:15 Hence flowed emulation and envy, strife and sedition, persecution and disorder, war and captivity. So the worthless rose up against the honoured, those of no reputation against such as were renowned, the foolish against the wise, the young against those advanced in years. For this reason righteousness and peace are now far departed from you, inasmuch as** every one abandons the fear of God, and is become blind in His faith, neither walks in the ordinances of His appointment, nor acts a part becoming a Christian**, but walks after his own wicked lusts, resuming the practice of an unrighteous and ungodly envy, by which death itself entered into the world. Wisdom 2:24

Source: newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm

Ok, we see that Clement is away that Christians who are supposed to be saved are again living in sin. If OSAS was believe, then why did the Pope, Clement of Rome in the year 100 AD tell the Christian community in Corinth to correct their behavior. OSAS is complete not practiced in the 1st Century. OSAS is a totally foreign belief by Early Christians.

If there ever was one and I am sure there was, the Catholic Chruch would have killed him and distoryed his works, After all, Martin Luther had to hide from the Catholic Church to save his life

The Catholic Church didn’t. She had only condemned heresy of Gnosticism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Marcionism, etc. She has preserved the Truth and canonized saints who died in faith. In your statement you are merely making an assumption. If you what you claim is true, which isn’t. You would have to back it up with historical proof text.

 

[Newchasm]

The reformers didn’t reject extra biblical sources entirely. Rather they made the Bible the Rule of faith. That is to say it cannot be contradicted by these sources. Lutherans retain their use of early church fathers. Reformers also quoted them. Especially Augustine.

As for Bible christians and calvinists, the problem is the subtraction of these other sources with time. It is linked to their believe that the Bible and the original apostalic ministery contained within is sufficient on all matters of faith. Furthermore, interpretation is not from the church but personally from the holy spirit. It is not ‘free’ in the broad sense of the word. Free interpretation is never free conclusions.

Jeremiah 31:31-34
"Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Some protestants will declare that these days are today in relation to their use of the bible.

 

[clmowry]

Matthew, Mark Luke, John, James, Paul, Peter and a few others

Yeah I guess they became “Bible Christians” after they wrote the new testament. Before then they just all walked around in circles wondering what to do next.

Do you suppose the knew anything about Christ before they wrote “the bible” or did they just go into a trance and then wake up and go…ooh…look a book I wonder what I wrote?

Great, now that we got that outta the way we can go start a church.

 

[mercygate]

In 1st John, John writes that you do not need a man to teach you because the Holy Spirit that you have already received will teach you.

I don’t see anything in there about a book.

 

[Eileen_T]

We are looking at a 300-400 year period before the Scripture was not only written, but copied and distributed all around the place and finally collected together into one volume.

Don’t forget the Councils the Cathlic Church held at Hippo 393 A.D, Carthage 397 A.D., and Rome 419 A.D., to determine which writings were to be included in the Canon and which were to be rejected. And it was popes Gelasius, Damasas and Innocent I who made the decisions.

So, no, there where NO “Bible Christians” around in the first few hundred years. During that period, as today, Catholics used Scripture in their Liturgy at the Celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

 

[rwoehmke]

We are looking at a 300-400 year period before the Scripture was not only written, but copied and distributed all around the place and finally collected together into one volume.

The letters of Paul were written before 65 AD. By the year 100 AD all four Gospels and Acts was complete. These writings it is true were not collected into a single volume called the Bible, but they were copied and passed from church community to church community. The Old Testament was certainly complete and existed as separate scrolls. To say that scripture did not exist before circa 300 AD is absolutely not the truth. Within the first 200 years we start to see other writings commenting on the Scriptures as well as recording other things that Jesus taught the Apostles and which they passed on, presumably orally.

Posing a question like that of the OP is like dragging a baited hook through a school of hungry fish. I am not certain it helps at all in convincing folks like Allis Chalmers that his position in the eyes of a Catholic is totally untenable. He certainly provides a counter point to things most of us accept as given. I am guessing he is sincerely doing his best to save those he sees as unsaved.

 

[Bishopite]

If there ever was one and I am sure there was, the Catholic Chruch would have killed him and distoryed his works, After all, Martin Luther had to hide from the Catholic Church to save his life

You must be a conspiracy theorist and you really can’t have a deep trust in Jesus if you think He would establish a church which would be silent for 1500 years in the New Covanent age of grace, guided by the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) and NEVER heard until the 16th century?
Catholicism did pursecute Protestants, no doubt, and Anabaptists but they did so also. Do you know about Calvin and Michael Severutus? And then there is Zwingli who died with a sword in his hand as he was violent too. And then there was King Henry Vlll who executed St. Thomas Moore, Elizabeth l of the Elizabethan era in England who killed and pursecuted a multitude of Catholics. ALL sides acted with the sword, as at that time the culture and governements accepted pursecution of those not in power. And they all did it to each other and those with the power did more than the others.
And there is the Salem witch trials and torture of inocent people accused of being witches; these were Protestants, not Catholics.
My whole point here is that all sides have wrongly pursecuted the other side and it wasn’t just the Catholic church allowing pursecution.

 

[Teflon93]

My whole point here is that all sides have wrongly pursecuted the other side and it wasn’t just the Catholic church allowing pursecution.

Nice try, but as we’ve seen here, Bishopite, only Catholics must be accountable for the burdens of history, and only Catholics are excluded from the considerable boons the Church has granted the world throughout history. This is the Protestant view, at least where history is known at all.

The violent, intolerant Reformers were freedom fighters—any evils they might have committed were necessary because of all those Catholic “abuses”. The Catholic Church, which alone knitted together the crumbling remnants of the western Roman Empire and alone staved off barbarism from the same precincts which produced the Reformers and stood alone against the Muslim hordes while the Reformers indulged in schism upon schism upon schism—well, any good the Catholic Church might have done was mere accident and better a Muslim Austria than a Catholic one anyway.

The Protestant view of history is essentialy Pentecost----Dark Ages—Reformation, where the Dark Ages simply represent growing heresy, corruption, scandal, and evil until Martin Luther rode in to save the day.

It is from this wellspring of utter historical ignorance whence many of the lies about the Church are drawn to this very day.

One cannot claim to be an “early Bible Christian” while being ignorant of the history of the Apostolic Age. Scripture does not exist in a vacuum.

Scripture is not mythology nor fairy tales. It is the history of God and Man, and anyone who presumes to know anything of it really needs to know quite a bit of the history of the Church Christ founded. Otherwise, it is hardly any more useful than “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius”.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

They don’t have one because neither the Apostles nor their successors taught Sola Scriptura or Faith Alone.

Romans 10:13 and Acts 2:21 Make it sound pretty much like they do if you ask me.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Romans 10:13 and Acts 2:21 Make it sound pretty much like they do if you ask me.

“Faith alone” only appears once in all of Scripture

James 2:24. Notice the word “not”

Scripture alone never appears, and contradicts II Thessalonians 2:15.

 

[Mannyfit75]

“Faith alone” only appears once in all of Scripture

James 2:24. Notice the word “not”

Scripture alone never appears, and contradicts II Thessalonians 2:15.

Amen.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

Ambrose
“For how can we adopt those things which we do not find in the holy Scriptures?” - Ambrose (On the Duties of the Clergy, 1:23:102)

 

[flyersfan1088]

Romans 10:13 and Acts 2:21 Make it sound pretty much like they do if you ask me.

So how exactly do you reconcile Matthew 7:21 with Acts 2:21?

 

[savedsinner]

In 1st John, John writes that you do not need a man to teach you because the Holy Spirit that you have already received will teach you.

The subject John is speaking of here is that there were people that left the church and began to teach that Jesus is not God, they were labeled as the antichrists by John. The truth was passed on by the church verbally, that is what you need to hold on to and not be deceived by others outside the church who teach contrary doctrine. The Christians have received the Holy Spirit to help them know the truth, and that truth was what was passed down orally in the church, it is the church teachings which they should know and hold onto, and not listen to anyone outside the church who teaches a different doctrine.

If you go back to verse 18 and read the whole passage you will get the big picture and not take verse 27 out of context like allischalmers did.

1 John 2:18 - 27
Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and know that no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life. I write this to you about those who would deceive you; but the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.

 

[Robin]

The reformers didn’t reject extra biblical sources entirely. Rather they made the Bible the Rule of faith. That is to say it cannot be contradicted by these sources. Lutherans retain their use of early church fathers. Reformers also quoted them. Especially Augustine.

I’m surprised that you refer to Augustine as a “Reformer”. It was he that stated “I wouldn’t believe the Gospels if it wasn’t for the Catholic Church.” .

 

[Teflon93]

Newchasm;2814103:

The reformers didn’t reject extra biblical sources entirely. Rather they made the Bible the Rule of faith. That is to say it cannot be contradicted by these sources. Lutherans retain their use of early church fathers. Reformers also quoted them. Especially Augustine.

I’m surprised that you refer to Augustine as a “Reformer”. It was he that stated “I wouldn’t believe the Gospels if it wasn’t for the Catholic Church.” .

They cherrypick Augustine in the same fashion as they cherrypick Scripture:

1. First, they figure out what they wish to believe.
2. Then they rip a passage or two out of Scripture and torture it until it confesses.

Thus ever with heretics, no?