B
Byzantine_Wolf
Guest
I think you’ll find most people agree with your first part - especially Orthodox, who hold that in the beginning everyone was a member of the catholic (“universal”) and orthodox (“right-thinking”) church.
The name “Roman Catholic,” at least in the definition that we know it today, didn’t come until much later, in particular after the schism.However, I find it ironic that you say this is not the Church Christ is talking about and then talk about all these various sects. In fact, none of these “sects” you mentioned have any tie to Christ, while both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches do. This is what we call apostolic succession, which I’m sure you’ve heard used before. It in essence teaches that the apostles organized a Church and passed down their teachings, customs, and written commands (which later became the epistles in the New Testament) to that Church.
I believe I brought this up to you before, and I do not recall if you responded, but many of those “sects” you mention are not compatible either with true Christianity nor, for that matter, Islam. The Marcion heresy, for example, believed that the God of the Old Testament was an evil demiurge, and therefore by proxy believes that Allah (who Muslims believe is the same God as the God of the OT) is an evil demiurge. Likewise, the Gnostics were pagan in nature and believed in many demiurges, which is completely incompatible with Islam’s beliefs on polytheism. It is therefore hilarious to me that Muslims often pull these sects and heresies out from history without ever studying in depth what they believed or realizing that their Mohammad and Allah would condemn these same sects for the same reasons Christians at that time condemned them.
But as I stated, the Church which eventually became the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is the Church which Christ founded. The apostles were sent out by Christ to organize the faithful, and they set up bishops and church leaders wherever they went (you can see this throughout all of Acts). We have early Church Fathers who were disciples of the apostles, such as Ignatius and Polycarp who were disciples of the apostle John. Irenaeus, who wrote one of the greatest studies on the early heresies and sects, was a disciple of Polycarp. If you study the lineage of the Bishops of Constantinople (or Istanbul), Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, you’ll find that they all go back down to the original apostles. If you read the works of apostolic fathers before the time of the Council of Nicea, you’ll find a consistent teaching regarding the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and salvation with the cross (let alone that the crucifixion actually happened).
The only way to avoid this is to attempt to give validity to early heresies and sects, but to do so presents intellectual dishonesty regarding what those faiths believed and what the accuser’s own personal faith believes.
Not in the way we know the word “religion” today, which has been demoted from a matter of faith to a club with rules and membership fees. Christ did, however, want to bring people to God. He did not “establish a new religion,” but the Jews, through their disbelief, isolated themselves from the true followers of Christ, who eventually took the name Christian. Nevertheless, Christ gives clear instructions to His apostles as the foundation for the new Israel, the Church, and we can see in Acts Christ’s apostles organizing the Church and carrying out the Commission.
Christ did not want to reform Judaism - He wanted to reform all of mankind
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) and I know that He is God.