I’m not so sure of that. OT Israelites were commanded to destroy all surrounding tribes so as not to be infected and influenced by their religious/sinful practices.
Then there are the Inquisitions and the Crusades which were conversion by force, not peace and example.
It is very apparent from this that you are very unfamiliar with history. I do not mean this as an insult, only an observation. The Crusades, at least the ones authorized by the Church, were defensive in nature, with the goal of protecting the pilgrims who were being attacked on their pilgrimages. There were also efforts to reclaim religious sites that had been conquered. there are a number of resources on this site and others which discuss how the common narrative of the Crusades is nothing short of a work of historical fiction, created and propagated by 15th century “reformers,” seeking to discredit the Church. Many, if not all, of the claims against the Crusades were non-existent until the mid-15th and early 16th centuries, and there is even less historical evidence for them than for the NT.
I can’t agree with that for the reason that many early Christians and ECF’s held beliefs that are much different than what Christians believe today. Some believed that Christ was not divine, some ECF’s such as Origen believed that Hell would eventually be emptied and no one would stay there for eternity, previous popes from not too long ago made it anathema to pray with people of other faiths, our teaching on suicide has changed, etc.
The existence of heretics, like those who rejected Christ’s divinity, has no affect on what was actually taught by the Church. That’d be like using the claims of Mormons to say tat the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in the trinity. Again, only a person not very familiar with Church history would assert that the beliefs of Gnostic heretics reflected the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
Origen did believe that, for a time; and before the Church had officially defined dogma on the subject. Origen, while having many followers, did not speak for the Church as a whole. It is my understanding that he was eventually denounced as a heretic, meaning that he was in Schism with the Church. Again, I’ll point out that you cannot use the teachings of heretics to reflect that teachings of the Church.
As for the teachings on suicide and praying with other faiths, they have not changed. You are also making the very common mistake of confusing discipline with Dogma. Disciplines do not have to do with teh moral law and are therefore subject to change. The teaching on suicide is that if a person hoses to take their own life, of their own free will, and in complete control of their faculties, then they have forfeited their soul. This teaching remains constant. What has happened is that we’ve learned a great deal about the mind, and discovered that most people who commit suicide -aren’t- in control of their minds. They generally have a very serious problem. As such, we’ve rightly stated that there is a chance for salvation for them, as they may not have met the three criteria necessary for their suicide to be a mortal sin. As for praying with other faiths, it was discouraged, but never as a matter of Dogma.
King Herod ordering the deaths of all first-born males, is from the NT, except many scholars argue that it never happened. In addition, tt has been theorized that whoever wrote the NT needed to make the pieces of the puzzle fit and had to explain where Jesus was born in order to be in accordance with the prophecy about the Messiah.
Again, I’ll point out that the NT was written soon enough after Christ’s death that fact-checking was possible. That is part of why people and places are mentioned by name. We cannot repeat this process, since those people are long dead, but had they been fabrications it would have been easy enough to determine that at the time of writing. Instead, we see wide-spread conversion and the heroic faith of countless martyrs, who’d sooner die than renounce Christ.
Also, sorry about the Herod thing. For some reason I read it as Pharaoh. Regardless, as I’ve stated, records from that period are almost non-existent. The amount of history that’s been lost is staggering.
Also, absence of evidence is not a good reason to think something exists. We have no evidence for Ancient Aliens for example, none whatsoever. The reasonable logic to employ is that they simply don’t exist, until otherwise proven. Same goes for the absence of evidence from the OT regarding a lot of the extraordinary events.
I never said that’s why I believe. I simply said that you cannot claim that the absence of evidence is able to disprove something. Also, your argument is utter nonsense. There are a myriad of things, why numbers work, for example, that cannot be proven. And yet we base our entire scientific and mathematical rigor on the fact that they work, and work as we’ve defined them. The same is true of many of the underlying principles of physics. We understand that things work as they do through observation, but we do not understand why or how they work. Similarly, we can infer form the operation of the Church in history that Christ’s claims were true. We may not be able to touch or see his miracles for ourselves, nor may we visit the NT times; but the effects of these truths in our world more than speak to their validity.
This is the last post I’ll be able to give this evening. I hope you enjoy the program.
