Protestants: When did the Church depart from Truth into Error?

[SyCarl]

There was Scripture before any council made a pronouncement. Both Paul and Peter refer to Scripture in their letters and Peter includes Paul’s letters as part of it. As to authority, in the Book of Acts there is no indication that Paul viewed it as an affront to his authority when the Bereans searched the Scripture (Old Testament) to see if what he said was so.

On what basis can the church claim more authority than the Bible?

 

[Mannyfit75]

There was Scripture before any council made a pronouncement. Both Paul and Peter refer to Scripture in their letters and Peter includes Paul’s letters as part of it. As to authority, in the Book of Acts there is no indication that Paul viewed it as an affront to his authority when the Bereans searched the Scripture (Old Testament) to see if what he said was so.

On what basis can the church claim more authority than the Bible?

Yes there was but there was no Bible. There were Scrolls and they are not compiled or Canonical. Second, the first Christians did received the Gospel by word of mouth. They weren’t given a book to read.

The Church has authority over the Bible because it was She who added 27 NT text in Council of Carthage. There was no close Canon of Scripture.

There are 73 OT and 27 NT text in the Council of Carthage.

If you have the time, take a look at this.

angelfire.com/ms/seanie/deuteros/graham_contents.html It’s by Rev.HENRY G. GRAHAM, a Church historian.

 

[SyCarl]

However, wasn’t the Council of Carthage a regional, not a ecumenical council? The same would go for the Council of Hippo. Also is not the canon of those councils different than that from Trent in that the earlier councils included 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, which due to splitting 2 Esdras into two books, would gave required Trent to accept 3 Esdras to conform with the earlier councils?

 

[jmcrae]

There was Scripture before any council made a pronouncement.

The Bishops and Apostles who attended the Council of Jerusalem were not reading aloud from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15.

The decisions they came to contradicted every written law of their time. Gentiles becoming members of the Covenant with God? Baptism replacing circumcision, instead of just being a renewal ceremony? Where is any of that in the Old Testament?

Both Paul and Peter refer to Scripture in their letters and Peter includes Paul’s letters as part of it. As to authority, in the Book of Acts there is no indication that Paul viewed it as an affront to his authority when the Bereans searched the Scripture (Old Testament) to see if what he said was so.

That’s because he was interpreting the prophecies of the Old Testament with regard to Christ. They were looking in the Old Testament to see if the prophecies about Jesus were in there; not to see if St. Paul’s teaching was in there. It wasn’t.

On what basis can the church claim more authority than the Bible?

On the basis that the Bible is the Church’s book. The Bible didn’t fall out of Heaven fully formed and then land under a rock, where it was later discovered by wandering Arimeans who read it and then converted to Christianity.

It was written by human beings - leading members of the Church. Even the Old Testament didn’t fall out of the sky - it was written by the Prophets of Israel - the Old Testament Church.

Christ’s Church had been around for nearly two decades before the first word of the New Testament was ever written down.

 

[Mannyfit75]

However, wasn’t the Council of Carthage a regional, not a ecumenical council? The same would go for the Council of Hippo. Also is not the canon of those councils different than that from Trent in that the earlier councils included 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, which due to splitting 2 Esdras into two books, would gave required Trent to accept 3 Esdras to conform with the earlier councils?

The list of Canon from Trent are the same from Council of Carthage and Hippo.

Melito, bishop of Sardis, an ancient city of Asia Minor (see Rev 3), c. 170 AD produced the first known Christian attempt at an Old Testament canon. His list maintains the Septuagint order of books but contains only the Old Testament protocanonicals minus the Book of Esther.

The Council of Laodicea, c. 360, produced a list of books similar to today’s canon. This was one of the Church’s earliest decisions on a canon.

Pope Damasus, 366-384, in his Decree, listed the books of today’s canon.

The Council of Rome, 382, was the forum which prompted Pope Damasus’ Decree.

Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse wrote to Pope Innocent I in 405 requesting a list of canonical books. Pope Innocent listed the present canon.

The Council of Hippo, a local north Africa council of bishops created the list of the Old and New Testament books in 393 which is the same as the Roman Catholic list today.

The Council of Carthage, a local north Africa council of bishops created the same list of canonical books in 397. This is the council which many Protestant and Evangelical Christians take as the authority for the New Testament canon of books. The Old Testament canon from the same council is identical to Roman Catholic canon today. Another Council of Carthage in 419 offered the same list of canonical books.

Since the Roman Catholic Church does not define truths unless errors abound on the matter, Roman Catholic Christians look to the Council of Florence, an ecumenical council in 1441 for the first definitive list of canonical books.

The final infallible definition of canonical books for Roman Catholic Christians came from the Council of Trent in 1556 in the face of the errors of the Reformers who rejected seven Old Testament books from the canon of scripture to that time.
There was no canon of scripture in the early Church; there was no Bible. The Bible is the book of the Church; she is not the Church of the Bible. It was the Church–her leadership, faithful people–guided by the authority of the Spirit of Truth which discovered the books inspired by God in their writing. The Church did not create the canon; she discerned the canon. Fixed canons of the Old and New Testaments, hence the Bible, were not known much before the end of the 2nd and early 3rd century.

Catholic Christians together with Protestant and Evangelical Christians hold the same canon of the New Testament, 27 books, all having been originally written in the Greek language.

Catholic Christians accept the longer Old Testament canon, 46 books, from the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Alexandrian Canon.

Protestant and Evangelical Christians, from the Reformers onward, accept the shorter Old Testament canon, 39 books, from the Hebrew Palestinian Canon. Jews have the same canon as Protestants.

Canonical books are those books which have been acknowledged as belonging to the list of books the Church considers to be inspired and to contain a rule of faith and morals. Some criteria used to determine canonicity were

special relation to God, i.e., inspiration;
apostolic origin;
used in Church services, i.e., used by the community of believers guided by the Holy Spirit.
Other terms for canonical books should be distinguished: the protocanonical books, deuterocanonical books, and the apocryphal books.

The protocanonical (from the Greek proto meaning first) books are those books of the Bible that were admitted into the canon of the Bible with little or no debate (e.g., the Pentateuch of the Old Testament and the Gospels)

The deuterocanonical (from the Greek deutero meaning second) books are those books of the Bible that were under discussion for a while until doubts about their canonicity were resolved (e.g. Sirach and Baruch of the Old Testament, and the Johannine epistles of the New Testament).

 

[Nancie_Lew]

Before Vacitan 2 it was believed only Catholics when to heaven. Maybe the selling of graces and blessings during the crusades. Again when the church believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Lesser rulings no eating of meat on Fridays. I think the church is in err not allowing women to become priests and not allowing priests to marry. Where did Jesus say women can not become priests and priests can not marry. Where did the church err? Many times.

I read a short article about Wittenberg Castle. Wittenberg Castle is where the Reformation began. At one time it held 19,000 religious relics collected by Frederick III. Any pilgrim who viewed all of the relics would receive indulgences that would shorten his time in purgatory by 5,209 years. On January 1, 1967 Pope Paul VI signed “the Apostolic Constitution on the Revision of Indulgences”. This document admitted that for centuries false promises had been made to Catholics. These people have now been in purgatory for 400 years. What do the people in purgatory do now that the requirements for indulgences has changed?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

jmcrae:

Ani, could you please read the whole thread?

I have read the whole thread.

jmcrae:

He has already said numerous times that he already knows the Catholic position.

Yes, he has. And since it seems to me that we do not have a common understanding about what the Catholic position is, I have asked him to clarify with us what he believes the Catholic position to be. That way we can understand what the problem is. That is a legitimate request.

jmcrae:

What he would like to know is whether there is, in fact, a Protestant response to this position.

Yes. I understand that. Shall we turn over CAF forums for discussions exclusively among non-Catholics now?

 

[jmcrae]

However, wasn’t the Council of Carthage a regional, not a ecumenical council? The same would go for the Council of Hippo.

True. That’s why their findings were ratified by Pope Innocent I, and the canon of the New Testament was promulgated infallibly to the whole Church by the Pope; not by either of these Councils.

Also is not the canon of those councils different than that from Trent in that the earlier councils included 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, which due to splitting 2 Esdras into two books, would gave required Trent to accept 3 Esdras to conform with the earlier councils?

I’m not totally sure, since the names of the books seem to change over time. In as little as 40 years, the fourth book of Kings changed to the second book of Kings, because the first and second books of Kings were changed to 1 and 2 Samuel - we didn’t lose 3 and 4 Kings, though; they just got a name change. The content is the same.

In any case, the canon of the Old Testament wasn’t formally defined until the Council of Trent, so it’s perfectly possible that the list might have been different in some small respects, without it being a problem for the Church.

 

[jmcrae]

I have read the whole thread.

Good, then you know that you are side-tracking. Is there some reason you want to side-track him away from the Church, now that he is so close to joining?

Yes, he has. And since it seems to me that we do not have a common understanding about what the Catholic position is, I have asked him to clarify with us what he believes the Catholic position to be.

He has already stated several times his understanding that the Catholic position is that this has never happened.

Yes. I understand that. Shall we turn over CAF forums for discussions exclusively among non-Catholics now?

In order to show definitively that there is no valid answer from the Protestant side of the fence - that the best they can come up with is a rather vacuous “invisible church” theory - I think it is reasonable to let that happen, yes.

 

[Rightlydivide]

The earliest documents that I can ascertain the beliefs of 1st century Christians are the New Testament, although the first 2 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers certainly gives, and compliments, in most cases my beliefs. I cannot tell you a specific date. It would have to depend obviously. Catholic scholars admit that the first mention of the Assumption of Mary is from 300 years after the ministry of Jesus at the least. When did the majority of Christians decide to venerate a Jewish woman instead of God? I am not sure. I only have the thirty or so volumes sitting on a shelf to rely on to determine when the church strayed on many key doctrines and ceased to look like the church of the Bible, and instead resembles what Catholicism has become.
Because their are no infallible documents from a Roman Catholic perspective until the first council, I can only read the contradictory writings of men who are used as “proof” on one hand, and discounted when they differ from present Roman Catholic theology.
On a side note, I have to question if anyone who has weighed in has read the documents surround Hippo and Carthage, if they had, they would not propose the laughable hypothesis that a unilateral “Pope” was needed to approve them. I wonder if they consider the same North African synod “infallible” when they told the Roman bishop to “bug off” (my words of course)

 

[Ani_Ibi]

jmcrae:

Good, then you know that you are side-tracking. Is there some reason you want to side-track him away from the Church, now that he is so close to joining?

I am asking for clarification.
I do not believe that asking for clarification is sidetracking.
I would rather people join the Church out of clarity than out of not knowing what the Church teaches.
If someone’s understanding is not clear then presumably we can direct that person to some useful information.
That’s why I asked rr to clarify his understanding.
(I notice by the way that much useful information has already been posted on this thread.)

jmcrae:

He has already stated several times his understanding that the Catholic position is that this has never happened.

But I did not ask him to restate his understanding that the Catholic position is that the Church never departed from the Truth.

I asked him to clarify his understanding of why the Church takes this position.

Moreover, rr has posted points of view as follows, which has caused some confusion as to whether or not he does in fact understand the Church’s position. For that reason I asked him to clarify.

rr1213:

I understand that Catholics do not believe that the Church, as opposed to individuals in the Church, can err on matters of faith and morals. I truly do understand that concept, although I don’t accept it.

rr1213:

I think as Protestants that we have to believe Catholicism erred because of the nature of the claims that the Catholic Church makes. The Church claims to always be right on doctrine and to be the One True Church.

What is the nature of the claims that the Catholic Church makes? The Church does claim always to be right on doctrine and to be the One True Church – more or less. Why are these claims problematic?

rr1213:

If the Church is right, then Protestants are wrong.

Is that it? Being wrong is problematic?

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

rr1213:

Likewise, if Protestants are right, then we should be able to show how, over the years or at a certain point, the Church strayed from the truth.

And thus demonstrate that Jesus’s own promise to His Church was not kept. The only way this would work is if the torch of Truth was passed from the Catholic Church to the Protestant church(es).

If this is true, then can someone demonstrate where Jesus made allowances for such a transfer?

Moreover, if this is true, all of the various and contradictory doctrinal pronouncements of the Protestant church(es) would have to be inerrant.

That is logically impossible because the doctrinal pronouncements among the Protestant churches are divergent. But there is another option. Maybe just one Protestant church is inerrant, in which case, I would ask which one?

How can we know which one? Is it logical that Jesus would make it this complicated to find the needle in the haystack? Is it not His goal to find the lost sheep, not lose them?

rr1213:

This is like saying that Enron itself is incapable of committing a criminal act, only its officers and directors can do so. And, yes, I am fully aware that Enron never had any guarantees from God Almighty, but the analogy still holds.

Here rr is saying that the analogy both holds and does not hold.

Later I asked for clarification from you about a post you had made:
Ani ibi:

Shall we turn over CAF forums for discussions exclusively among non-Catholics now?

And you clarified as follows:

jmcrae:

In order to show definitively that there is no valid answer from the Protestant side of the fence - that the best they can come up with is a rather vacuous “invisible church” theory - I think it is reasonable to let that happen, yes.

So you are suggesting that only Protestants respond to this thread. I wasn’t aware that folks could exclude various faith groups from any given thread on CAF. rr himself seemed open to non-Protestant posts:

rr1213:

If you look at the OP it was directed primarily towards Protestants, but I’m still interested in hearing from Catholics as well

I know that it is possible for some threads to be accessed only by certain posters on forums outside CAF. The Sparrows Forum does this. But I was not aware that CAF does this.

I understand rr’s request that Protestants besides himself comment on when the Church departed from Truth.

However, without knowing rr’s own understanding of why the Church believes that She has not departed from the Truth, then the thread is simply a list of opposing points of view. It is common understanding we are after, are we not?

I do not see the problem in asking why rr does not accept the Church’s claim to inerrancy on doctrinal matters.

Nor do I see the problem in asking what exactly rr’s understanding is on why the Church believes Herself to be inerrant on doctrinal matters.

 

[jmcrae]

Nor do I see the problem in asking what exactly rr’s understanding is on why the Church believes Herself to be inerrant on doctrinal matters.

Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to dissuade him from this line of questioning, or to listen only to Catholic responses to his questions.

I think the reason he is asking Protestants primarily is in order to determine whether or not there exists a Protestant answer to the question.

If there is a Protestant answer to the question, then he can remain Protestant - if not, then he must become Catholic.

 

[KatholikosMercy]

Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to dissuade him from this line of questioning, or to listen only to Catholic responses to his questions.

I think the reason he is asking Protestants primarily is in order to determine whether or not there exists a Protestant answer to the question.

If there is a Protestant answer to the question, then he can remain Protestant - if not, then he must become Catholic.

You think everyone should become Catholic? Me too. :->

 

[jmcrae]

I wonder if they consider the same North African synod “infallible” when they told the Roman bishop to “bug off” (my words of course)

I don’t have a copy of the Council of Hippo, but I do know that St. Augustine presided over it, and it seems extremely unlikely to me that he would have officially endorsed telling the Bishop of Rome to “bug off” no matter how politely it was phrased; he was a staunch defender of the Faith.

It seems especially odd in the light of the fact that the Bishops of the Council of Hippo, when reporting their findings to Carthage four years later, exhorted the Bishops at Carthage to " …] let Church beyond sea (Rome) be consulted about confirming this canon."

 

[BelFarfalla]

I read a short article about Wittenberg Castle. Wittenberg Castle is where the Reformation began. At one time it held 19,000 religious relics collected by Frederick III. Any pilgrim who viewed all of the relics would receive indulgences that would shorten his time in purgatory by 5,209 years. On January 1, 1967 Pope Paul VI signed “the Apostolic Constitution on the Revision of Indulgences”. This document admitted that for centuries false promises had been made to Catholics. ….

Here is a link to the
APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION
OF POPE PAUL VI
INDULGENTIARUM DOCTRINA
WHEREBY THE REVISION
OF SACRED INDULGENCES IS PROMULGATED
vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19670101_indulgentiarum-doctrina_en.html

You might want to read it since you are trying to interpret here in your above post. It does acknowledge there were abused of indulgences in the past. It did not say that all indulgences of the past were abuses. IT did not say that all promises made to people about indulgences were false… only that some made some false promises. There is a huge distinction between these statements. Nor did it go back and change anything about indulgences given in the past. It changed the rules for future indulgences.

…These people have now been in purgatory for 400 years. What do the people in purgatory do now that the requirements for indulgences has changed?

Again it did not change anything for past indulgences. It does not matter if things have changed for indulgences prior after 1967, it did not change for those issued before 1967. Further, we have no idea if any of those people are in Purgatory after 400 years. For all we know they passed into heaven a long time ago. I would also think that God knows what people were told and what was in their hearts and souls. He is a loving God. They will be treated with love and proper judgement as we all will.

I read the document and think its right on. IMHO, if the earlier church was assigning a number of days, months, years on indulgences it was in error. The Church has never known how long anyone will spend in purgatory. I have read Church opinions on t his stating that it could be a split second or it could be a very long time… but know that it exists but not how long it takes the cleanse a soul of its sins. It would seem that assigning some years to an indulgences was a flawed way of saying that the indulgence would forgive a lot of temporal punishment.

Your post makes it sound as thought the Church in 1967 suddenly changed course and admitted that there had been abuses around indulgences. It is of course no secret that there were priests who misused the issuance of indulgences. The Church knew this and was constantly reprimanding those who used them for personal gain … those who sold them. Indulgences were never supposed to be for sale. Generally a person was to do something extraordinary to earn an indulgence… giving to charity could be accepted as something extra ordinary. It was seen as doing something for the common good of all people.

Myths about Indulgences
http://www.catholic.com/library/Myths_About_Indulgences.asp

A good article describing indulgences.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm

 

[Truthstalker]

As Protestants, we believe that the Catholic Church errs in matters of doctrine and that the Reformation was a necessary correction of those errors. So, assuming that the Catholic Church erred, at what time did this begin? In other words, when was the Church essentially doing things right and when, exactly, did it subsequently depart into heresy?

I’d like to avoid the shallow and stock answers usually offered by Catholic and Protestants alike. Serious responses only please.

I think I’ll jump into this thread because maybe it will help address some muddy Tiber water I am encountering.

The Catholic Church has erred. The Catholic Church has admitted it has erred - just not in matters of faith and doctrine. Yet the idea that someone can teach Catholicism to the church but be in error (my friendly neighborhood pastoral associate in charge of adult ed, for example, who refers to “Jesus events” that we have no idea of knowing about what actually happened, or his statement that “Jesus supposedly appeared to Paul”) so that the sheep are not defended against error (the priest hears this stuff but does nothing) to me is a big-time error. Catholicism is not being taught to Catholics. That is a big turn-off to me.

The Catholic Church has erred. Most Councils were convened to correct errors the Church was dealing with - V2 for example, Trent for another one. I am not convinced the Reformation really corrected the errors but rather may have created worse ones. I don’t know Trent well enough to comment on it.

I think it is possible the Church has always had, and always will have, a mixture of truth and error, wheat and weeds, until the end of time. There are some things it will always hold as true that are true, but it is open season on some other things - some things God simply hasn’t made His mind known to the Church on. His guiding the Church and leading her into all truth has not yet ended. The Church dealt with Arianism; now it must deal with liberalism - but these battles are long and arduous, never simple, never easy, never without cost. But a clarity comes out of them.

 

[Grateful4mercy]

I think I’ll jump into this thread because maybe it will help address some muddy Tiber water I am encountering.

The Catholic Church has erred. The Catholic Church has admitted it has erred - just not in matters of faith and doctrine. Yet the idea that someone can teach Catholicism to the church but be in error (my friendly neighborhood pastoral associate in charge of adult ed, for example, who refers to “Jesus events” that we have no idea of knowing about what actually happened, or his statement that “Jesus supposedly appeared to Paul”) so that the sheep are not defended against error (the priest hears this stuff but does nothing) to me is a big-time error. Catholicism is not being taught to Catholics. That is a big turn-off to me.

The Catholic Church has erred. Most Councils were convened to correct errors the Church was dealing with - V2 for example, Trent for another one. I am not convinced the Reformation really corrected the errors but rather may have created worse ones. I don’t know Trent well enough to comment on it.

I think it is possible the Church has always had, and always will have, a mixture of truth and error, wheat and weeds, until the end of time. There are some things it will always hold as true that are true, but it is open season on some other things - some things God simply hasn’t made His mind known to the Church on. His guiding the Church and leading her into all truth has not yet ended. The Church dealt with Arianism; now it must deal with liberalism - but these battles are long and arduous, never simple, never easy, never without cost. But a clarity comes out of them.

Great job!

 

[jmcrae]

IMHO, if the earlier church was assigning a number of days, months, years on indulgences it was in error.

No - this is a very common misconception, and actually this misconception is the reason the Church no longer uses numbers of years to identify partial Indulgences.

The years were referring to the amount of penance that the Apostles would have assigned to someone, that the Indulgence replaces.

So, for example, 30 minutes of prayerful meditation on a passage of the Scriptures represents three years of Apostolic penance. (Fasting in sack-cloth and ashes.) This would be earthly penance, not Purgatorial penance.

Because the idea of fasting in sack-cloth and ashes for months or years on end is completely meaningless to us today (not to mention completely impractical), the Church has made the decision to no longer use any references to these penances, with regard to Indulgences.

The Church has never tried to predict how long someone might be in Purgatory. Indeed, it is a matter of theological speculation, whether it is even possible to experience the passage of time at all, in Purgatory.

 

[rr1213]

Ah, so the evasion begins. I said this:

The question was directed to you. If you can’t answer this question – or won’t – then it is obvious that you concede that the answer to the question “When did the Church depart from Truth into Error?” is …

… never.

The point is to reach a common understanding of what is in question. To do that, we need you to answer my question. From there we can proceed to a reasonable answer.

I concede nothing. With all respect, the purpose of the OP was not for me to answer questions regarding my understanding of Church doctrine but, rather, to see if anyone, presumably Protestants, has a good answer to when the Church purportedly began to err. If there are good answers to the question, I want to see them and investigate them. If nobody can offer me a good explanation…then that tells me something also.

If you believe–as you indeed must as a Catholic–that the Church has not erred regarding doctrine and morals then…great. Ok. Let’s see if anyone else has anything further to add.