In my mind, the first 300 years of Christianity (30 AD through 330 AD), the Christian Church was pristine.
Why was it so pristine during that period?
.
Then what is your basis for picking AD300? Why not AD 500? Or AD 100? or AD200?
Are you then picking and choosing what you want it to be?
Are you using your bible every Sunday for your Sunday services? If yes, then you should not be using it, the early christians did not have a bible then…it was only after AD 397 that a codified canon was established…and so following your logic, the Bible is the product of an apostasy.
Hope you have read this by now:
calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/
Notice that Hodge is making two distinctions here. One is between “the outward Church” and [presumably] the “inward Church,” which for him is the invisible Church. The “outward Church” can suffer at least ‘partial apostasy’ while the ‘inward Church’ cannot suffer any apostasy. This division of the Church into an outward Church and an inward Church is an ecclesial Nestorianism which necessarily collapses into ecclesial Docetism for the following reason…
If the Catholic Church did not apostatize, then Protestants would not be justified in separating from her. So in order to justify separating from the Catholic Church, Protestants must hold that the Catholic Church apostatized, either earlier in her history, or later. Hodge seeks to distinguish his position from the Restorationists by delaying and diminishing the degree of apostasy. But he faces the following dilemma. The first horn of the dilemma is this: if he claims that the Church apostatized early on, then his position is equivalent to that of the Restorationists. The second horn of the dilemma is this: if he claims that the Church faithfully maintained orthodoxy for 1,500 years, then there is a much greater likelihood that (a) the Church has continued to preserve orthodoxy and he is mistaken than (b) that he is correct and that the Church, after a millennium and a half, has finally fallen into apostasy. The second horn of the dilemma is not open to Hodge, because his theology would be unchanged if he claimed that the Church fell into utter apostasy by AD 500. That is because his theology is for the most part not formed and shaped by the rulings of the ecumenical councils between AD 500 through AD 1,500. So that leaves him on the first horn, with no principled difference between his position and that of the Restorationists.
Because there is no principled difference between Hodge’s position and that of the Restorationists’ with respect to the apostasy of the Church, Hodge faces the very same dilemma described above regarding Mohler. **He can only appeal to tradition in an ad hoc manner, picking and choosing what he thinks is orthodox, and passing over what he thinks is not, according to his own interpretation of Scripture. And like Mohler, that completely undermines his ability to appeal to “traditional Christian orthodoxy” when responding to Mormons and other self-described Restorationists.
**
The Church has this charism because the Church is the Body of Christ, and He, the Truth, is the Head of the Body. That ontological reality underlies Christ’s promise that the gates of Hades will never prevail against His Church,34 that His Holy Spirit will guide her into all truth,35 and that He will be with her to the end of the age,36. It underlies the Apostle Paul’s statement that the Church is the pillar and ground of truth.37
The indefectibility of the Church is a gift from Christ to the Church by which she is preserved to the end of the age as the “institution of salvation.” She can neither perish from the world nor depart from “her teaching, her constitution and her liturgy.”38 The gift of indefectibility does not imply that the members of the Church, even members of the Magisterium, cannot sin or err. But it does entail that the Magisterium of the Church can never lose or corrupt any part of the revelation of Christ, which includes both matters theological and moral. This gift of indefectibility is essential to Christ’s purpose in establishing His Church as the means of continuing His saving work to all the nations and peoples of the world until the end of the age. Regarding this purpose, Pope Leo XIII wrote, “What did Christ the Lord achieve by the foundation of the Church; what did He wish? This: He wished to delegate to the Church the same office and the same mandate which He had Himself received from the Father in order to continue them.”39
One possible objection to my argument against ecclesial deism is that God in His providence might allow the Church to fall into heresy or apostasy in order to bring about a greater good. According to this objection, by letting the Church fall into heresy or apostasy God could be teaching the Church a lesson. This is a good objection, but it does not undermine the fundamental reason why ecclesial deism must be false. It presupposes some form of ecclesial Docetism, as though the Church is a merely human institution to which Christ is related extrinsically.
