[myfavoritmartin;1797257]Church, though I don’t doubt that their is a physicalness to it, in that it is called the “body” of Christ, it certainly is much more than JUST the church at Rome… Here for starter is what some ECF’s had to say about the “church” being something other than or more than the Roman church.
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“Moreover, after the pledging both of the attestation of faith and the promise of salvation under ‘three witnesses,’ there is added, of necessity, mention of the Church; inasmuch as,
wherever there are three, (that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) there is the Church, which is a body of three.” - Tertullian (On Baptism, 6)
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You are only taking half of the whole picture of the early Church fathers and what “Church” means…and taking an eisagesis of Tertullian instead of an exegesis of his writings.
Here is what he says about the Church…
Tertullian
“[The apostles] founded churches in every city, from which all the other churches, one after another, derived the tradition of the faith, and the seeds of doctrine, and are every day deriving them, that they may become churches. Indeed, it is on this account only that they will be able to deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic churches. Every sort of thing must necessarily revert to its original for its classification. Therefore the churches, although they are so many and so great, comprise but
the one primitive Church, [founded] by the apostles, from which they all [spring]. In this way, all are primitive, and all are apostolic, while they are all proved to be one in unity” (*Demurrer Against the Heretics *20 [A.D. 200]).
“[W]hat it was which Christ revealed to them [the apostles] can, as I must here likewise prescribe, properly be proved in no other way than by those very churches which the apostles founded in person, by declaring the gospel to them directly themselves . . . If then these things are so, it is in the same degree manifest that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches—those molds and original sources of the faith must be reckoned for truth,
as undoubtedly containing that which the churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, [and] Christ from God. Whereas all doctrine must be prejudged as false which savors of contrariety to the truth of the churches and apostles of Christ and God. It remains, then, that we demonstrate whether this doctrine of ours, of which we have now given the rule, has its origin in the tradition of the apostles, and whether all other doctrines do not ipso facto proceed from falsehood” (ibid., 21).
This is a blow to your position of what a “Church” is, for as the above quote by Tertullian says the true Church has its “tradition in the apsostles” and moreover “all doctrines do not ipso facto proceeed from falsehood” which again is antithetical to Protestantisms miriad of doctrines on faith and morals.
“But if there be any [heresies] which are bold enough to plant [their origin] in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down
by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; **let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [their first] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men—a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit their registers: as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter” (ibid., 32).
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Tertullian is asking for those Churches that claim to be Apostolic to show their bishops—their pedigree of succession.
Can you show us your bishops? Can you show us your pedigree of succession?
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But should they even effect the contrivance [of composing a succession list for themselves], they will not advance a step. For their very doctrine, after comparison with that of the apostles [as contained in other churches], will declare, by its own diversity and contrariety, that it had for its author neither an apostle nor an apostolic man; because, as the apostles would never have taught things which were self-
**contradictory” (ibid.).
catholic.com/library/Apostolic_Succession.asp
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Again, this is a blow to Protestantism with all of its differing doctrines.
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