Quote:
Originally Posted by inkaneer
Yes, we are all different but Jesus’ prayer was that we be one. Your opinion as an “RC” or otherwise means nothing. Opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has at least one. But this is not a cafeteria where one can pick and choose what one wants. If one is to seek Jesus then one must seek the Truth for Jesus is the Truth. There is only one Truth. What good is there in being different if you do not have the Truth? I will remind you that Adam knew the Truth yet he wanted to be different.
The Body of Christ is the Church which consists of Christians. What makes you think you have the truth? What is the truth? Who is the Truth? The is nly one truth and that is Jesus is our Lord and Saviour and any Christ filled Christian believes that.
There are Christians and then there are Christians. Jesus established a church based upon the apostles. To these men He entrusted the teachings for them to proclaim to the world. These men passed down that teaching to others who did like wise. In the early church the teaching was not written, it was oral. So how did the church know who was teaching the truth ands who wasn’t? The looked for Apostolic Succession. Did this teacher possess it or not. And what was Apostolic succession? It was the unbroken lineage of bishops emanating from the Apostles as the story of Matthias in Acts 1. Matthias is elected to the office of bishop that Judas vacated by his death. The early Church Fathers, who were links in that chain of succession, regularly appealed to apostolic succession as a test for whether Catholics or heretics had correct doctrine. Thus the early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes,
“[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation. . . . Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).
In 187 Irenaeus would write:
“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
Cyprian of Carthage would later write:
“[T]he Church is one, and as she is one, cannot be both within and without. For if she is with [the heretic] Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop [of Rome], Fabian, by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself. For he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way” (Letters 69[75]:3 [A.D. 253]).
And the Great Augustine would follow:
“[T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house” (Against the Letter of Mani Called “The Foundation” 4:5 [A.D. 397]).
This is supported by scripture in which Jesus says He would establish a church that would be guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit and He would remain with that church until the end of the age. There is only one church that claims to be established by Jesus and has been here since the time of Jesus. That church not only claims Apostolic Succession but can prove it. Go to any Catholic, Orthodox or Oriental diocese in the world. They can show you a list of validly ordained and consecrated bishops back through history to one of the apostles. No other christian denomination can do this. Oh they can claim it alright. But claiming it and proving it are not the same. We can prove it. No protestant denomination can pove it.
That is why we say that in the Catholic Church there exists the totality of the deposit of truth entructed by Jesus to the Apostles. Others may have a share or a portion of that Truth but none have the total Truth as does the Catholic Church. The extent to which those others share in the Truth depends on the extent of their teaching that conforms to the teaching of the Catholic Church.
