I reviewed some of the information on the site. The website is supposed to be promoting the doctrines of “The Church of God,” or “COG”. There are several points that have to be dealt with. The author cites several things that he says proves the early Christians were COG and not Catholic.
The most important is, “A Binitarian view, that acknowledged the Holy Spirit, was held by the apostolic and post-apostolic true Christian leaders.” The author contrasts “binitarianism” with “Trinitarianism” and argues that there are only two real Persons in the Godhead. A bunch of other points are listed that are standard Protestant objections, like Baptism not being for infants and images not being used in the early Church.
After seeing this list of disputed points about the early Church, my immediate idea was to go to some Catholic Answers tracts about the early Church and show that the early Church falls on the Catholic side on all these points and not on the COG side. But the first few paragraphs of the article make that a little more complicated, because the author claims that most of the Church apostatized quickly after the Apostles’ deaths, the only true faithful being left in Asia Minor. Thus, you have to be careful how you use most of the early Church Fathers with these guys, because if you quote them as an authority they will just brush them off and say they were mostly apostates.
A better way to use the early Church Fathers would be, first, rely largely on the ones from Asia Minor and show from them that the Church in Asia Minor was Catholic, and not COG, and second, use the other Church Fathers to show that at least the Christians outside of Asia Minor were Catholics, and ask why the Asia Minor Christians didn’t speak up about it. You’d think if there were these two big factions, the “Church of God in Asia Minor” would have spoken out against all the Catholic Heretics…but we have no record of them whatsoever.
This point needs to be elaborated on. The Protestant churches and other “restorationist” Christians have a big problem when it comes to Church History. If they believe the promises of Christ, then the true Christian Church has existed in every age and has been visible for all to see. Most restorationist churches think that, instead, the true faith was lost for a thousand or more years until their founder “rediscovered” it. That’s contrary to Jesus’ promises. Now, some other restorationist churches, like the Trail of Blood Baptists, see this problem and so they say that there was a remnant of true believers in hiding throughout the Middle Ages. That’s what this COG guy does.
In his booklet on Church History, he says, “Because of persecution, the faithful had to flee into the wilderness for over a millennium. …for the next 1,260 years locating true Christians [is] much more difficult.” You bet it is! But if we believe the Bible, locating the true Christians throughout history won’t be difficult at all. First, Jesus said His Church would be a city set on a hill, whose light would shine out for all. Second, Jesus told His Church to preach the Gospel to all nations. Now if all these “hidden Christians” were keeping quiet for over 1000 years, then they weren’t true Christians because they weren’t obeying Jesus.
The true Church sends out missionaries. It will be known. If these “hidden Christians” didn’t, then they aren’t true Christians, and if they did send out missionaries, then they would show up in the historical record. We would find Catholic authors writing against them, and evidence of their doctrines. We do not find any evidence of these supposed COG believers in the Middle Ages; therefore, they either didn’t exist, or, if we have no evidence of them because they were keeping quiet, then they aren’t the true Church.
The worst historical errors in this guy’s article on Church History are his attempts to identify examples of COG believers throughout history. In the early Church he identifies several groups as early COGers: St. Polycarp and his disciples, Melito of Sardis and his disciples, Theophilus of Antioch and his disciples, Polycrates and his disciples, Apollinaris of Hierapolis and his disciples, and some names I don’t even recognize (Thraseas, Sagaris, Papirius, and Camerius). He also cites evidence of early COGers in small groups of heretics opposed by a few Church Fathers: some Church Fathers mention that some heretics kept the Sabbath instead of worshipping on Sunday, and this guy concludes they were COGers.
In the Middle Ages the author identifies “Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathars, Patarenes, and towards the end, some of the Albigensians” as COGers, but qualifies that by saying that a lot of these people had unbiblical doctrines and thus only SOME of them were true COGers. He has to do that because there is absolutely no evidence that any of them believed in anything like COGism. The Cathars and the Albigensians are the worst examples of this – they believed marriage was a sin and that suicide was part of being a Christian.
Like I said earlier, in answer to these claims we need to stress that the true Church sends out missionaries in obedience to Jesus. There is no evidence of these “hidden Christians” believing in COG doctrines, and if they had sent out missionaries, we would have that evidence, because Catholic writers would have cataloged it like they did other heresies. Because of this, these groups either didn’t contain COGers, or, if they did but those ones kept quiet, then they aren’t the true Church. End of story.
