This is true. I have relatives who do not understand nor will they recite the Apostles and Nicene Creeds because they say “one holy catholic and apostolic church” because they say “I don’t believe in the Catholic church (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church)”. I have been part of churches-Assemblies of God, non denominational, Roman Catholic and Episcopal who haver recited these creeds. I have seen them recited in Lutheran services as well.
That depends on your view of what is considered “Apostolic.” You can claim your views are “Apostolic,” because they were handed down through a physical line of Apostolic Succession. Or, you can claim your views are Apostolic, because they are consistent with the beliefs and practices of the early Church. And you can claim both, which Catholics do–and I would agree to a certain extent. However, not all Catholic beliefs and practices can be traced to the “earliest Christians.”
Building upon existing Christian belief, or even “tradition” handed down through the centuries is not the issue you placed before us in this thread. You are asking us to look at the “earliest Christians,” and see if their beliefs and practices match that which exists in modernity.
I’m not arguing for any of the solas of the Protestant Reformation. I agree that beliefs and practices entered Christianity that seem to have little connection with the beliefs of the “earliest Christians.” I think this is true on all sides, as gurney pointed out:
At what point in history did the practices named in gurney’s post begin? How are they supported in Holy Scripture? What evidence do we have that each of these things were practiced by the “earliest Christians”?
But apostolic succession isn’t built on a single verse. Yes, Peter was given the “keys to the kingdom” (harkening back to Isaiah 22 where the keys represent authority in an “office”) and the power to bind and lose and was described as the Rock on which the church would be built and that is an important verse. But in addition, Peter and the apostles are again in scripture given the power to bind and lose, and the ability to forgive sins.
JohnnyReb,
My main question here is, specifically which Catholic belief and or practice in your estimation can’t be traced back to apostolic roots?
At what point in history did the practices named in gurney’s post begin? How are they supported in Holy Scripture? What evidence do we have that each of these things were practiced by the “earliest Christians”?
But we did always have the theology behind adoration, what he is pointing out here is a practice which developed inded, but added no “new theology”. Fundamentally, this is not something the Apostles would reject based upon Apostolic theology, thus given it’s orgine with the successors of the Apostles and it’s consitancy with Apostolic teaching from the very first day I would say it can be given said title.
Again, the theology has existed from the first day and the theology exists in all orthodox churches regardless tradition or status with regard to communion with rome. simply put, there has always been a state, condition or place, before one reaches heaven, in which they are purged of all that which would prevent their entry into the new Jeruselem.
Started with the earlist Christians, durring the persecutions and is based upon the theology of redemptive suffering. I.E. your suffering here on this earth can be used to offer real graces which can be used to aid the soul of another (or your self). This is because our sufferings are attached to those of Christ upon the cross. So when one looks at indulgences objectivly, it’s easy to see the Apostolic origins.
Not defined until 1854, but it had long been debated the proof of which was provided by many decenting Orthodox brethern here. There are long apostolic roots to this teaching as well though. One of the earliest Marian “dogmas” is Mary as the second eve, this teaching can be proved from the writings of the earliest Apostles and can be shown not to be geographically localized at some early point, but indeed wide spread throughout the Christian world from the inception of the Church.
Well for start gurney’s point here is a bit of a red harring, there is no co-redemptrix teaching. Personally I don’t know if I subscribe to the points being made by some advocates of this teaching, thus it’s difficult to understand (at least for me) what any true teaching based upon this would be. All I can say is, there are a few points with regard to the communion of saints, but until we have an actual teaching to address then I think it best not to take shots in the dark.
In a sense, another bit of a red harring. Vestaments are merely a natural outgrowth of what people wore every day to services. Essentally, the fathers decided to keep everything about the earliest masses including the very clothing being worn by the celebrants. Over time, naturally this clothing was addorned to show reverence for the gift of the mass which Christ left us. Thus this is fully Apostolic, in this case you could say the Apostles almost literally gave us the shirts off their backs
St. Paul him self advocated this, it’s not a new “teaching” or discipline more accuratly. What it actually is, is the Holy Father instructing Latin Rite priests to follow the teaching and example of St. Paul. Gurney should know though, that the Catholic church is bigger than just our own rite. This dicipline is only a practice of the Roman (or Latin) rite church. Universally practiced among all orthodox breatheren is the celebacy of Bishops.
This language, again has Apostolic origin. That is, infalibility of the Church (as a whole) indeed even that of the Church of Rome specifically (i.e. the successor of Peter).
If one takes communion in any form, then they’ve received the whole thing. Personally I don’t prefer this practice, fortunetly I have yet to encounter it out side of some sort of disease scare. For instance the Diocese of Raleigh did so durring the swine flu scare.
These are personal devotions, which at their core are built upon apostolic teaching. Actually the layity isn’t even required to partake or beleive in them, so I think evelvating these to the status of non-apostolic dogma is a bit much. I will admit they are nearly universally accepted, and personally I believe they should be. I’d suggest praying a rosary to anyone, after that they too will fully understand =)
I understand what you are saying.However,they can ‘view’ it from their own lenses,but all one has to do is study the early church and acknowledge its beliefs and practices were very Catholic. That is one of the first steps many non-Catholics acknowledge when they study early church history,which leads them to the Catholic Church. The old cliche:
I suppose “church planting” may be one way to describe this action, but what is generally lacking outside Catholicism is the consideration of the apostolic origin of these ordinations and the vested interest in maintaining orthodoxy which is readily observable in the Early Church.
I wonder if I am unaware of a nuanced meaning of “interpolation” as it applies to this topic.
It’s so difficult to find anything online which could serve as a suitable historical “source”. I spent more than an hour looking for some mention of the topic on some scholarly website to no avail [If any of you reading this have pointers for performing this task, by all means convey them!]. Here’s a Catholic Encyclopedia article about the epitaph of Abercius, but, objectively, I doubt I would assume objectivity were I in your shoes…
A welcome but disorienting quality, to be sure.
The idea of faith alone does not work, too many believe that they only need faith. They can be “faithful” to Christ but go on sinning and believe they will still go to Heaven. It’s not that the concept doesn’t work for some people but it does mislead many who are fed bad theology and think they can go on living their materialist lives with faith but no works.
Maybe a final redactor…if interpolation seems wrong. It stands opposed to the polity described in other documents. Was it that varied? A monarchial bishop in one area and plurality of elders? I can see Jerusalem. Because I recognize who and what James did.
Careful, remember the date the bible was canonized
Sorry I don’t get the correlation here, I was commenting on your definition of the early church
The common caricature of Catholicism is that of a single pope ordering everyone around, and, to be fair, I suppose there have been some instances in which that wasn’t far from the truth. More often, though, the principles of collegiality and subsidiarity are played out. The Pope is not the bisop of every diocese, after all. I was always amused by the certain sort of people who try to place the recent scandals at the Pope’s feet because he “didn’t do anything.” These are the people who believe whole-heartedly in this caricature such that when it fails in practice before their very eyes and they must choose to either reject it or come to the conclusion (against all the evidence available) that the Pope must be “in on it,” they plow straight ahead…
But none of the Fundamentalists I’ve seen will send legates along with their letters to ensure that their directions are followed. Even though there were some dangling issues in the early centuries to be ironed out, they eventually were, and by a Church which was considered by all parties to possess religious authority - a notion which would be rejected out of hand by most of the Fundamentalists I know who balk at the idea of a Christian holding religious authority over anyone.
That would be a poor decision, I should think. I’m far more used to parrying insults with sarcasm than this polite discourse stuff. I tend to have a sort of in-the-moment approach to these things anyway.
John Chrysostom writes that we have the Scriptures instead of Paul and if we want to know anything we can look to the Scriptures.
St. John Chrysostom says many high things of Scripture here, but never does he put it at odds with Sacred Tradition. He would be a hypocrite to do so, after all, given that in his fourth homily on 2 Thessalonians he says:
For brevity’s sake (and the practial knowledge that none would deny Augustine’s belief in the rest of Sacred Tradition) I’ll leave Augustine alone.
What one might deny is the validity of the either/or approach. You place a false dilemma between unwritten Tradition and Scripture which none of the men you quoted would have endorsed. It is this tendency to divide the deposit of Faith which I do not see in early Chistianity.
And what did these men mean by “faith alone”? That faith apart from the sacraments is salvific? I doubt you could find one father who denies baptismal regeneration. Or perhaps that personal sin cannot condemn people to Hell after a certain point? That notion didn’t appear until Nominalism, if I recall. As was the case with your previous quotes, it isn’t enough to find a snippet here or there which, apart from the context, can be made to seem like it supports a modern doctrine. What matters is what these men actually meant when saying these things. Otherwise, I’m still left wondering how most Protestant notions can be squared with the Early Church.
And nobody wants that.
The historical preponderence of evidence, always leads to the Catholic Church being exaimned and torn down.St. John Chrysostom says many high things of Scripture here, but never does he put it at odds with Sacred Tradition. He would be a hypocrite to do so, after all, given that in his fourth homily on 2 Thessalonians he says:
For brevity’s sake (and the practial knowledge that none would deny Augustine’s belief in the rest of Sacred Tradition) I’ll leave Augustine alone.
What one might deny is the validity of the either/or approach. You place a false dilemma between unwritten Tradition and Scripture which none of the men you quoted would have endorsed. It is this tendency to divide the deposit of Faith which I do not see in early Chistianity.
And what did these men mean by “faith alone”? That faith apart from the sacraments is salvific? I doubt you could find one father who denies baptismal regeneration. Or perhaps that personal sin cannot condemn people to Hell after a certain point? That notion didn’t appear until Nominalism, if I recall. As was the case with your previous quotes, it isn’t enough to find a snippet here or there which, apart from the context, can be made to seem like it supports a modern doctrine. What matters is what these men actually meant when saying these things. Otherwise, I’m still left wondering how most Protestant notions can be squared with the Early Church.
And nobody wants that.
You’re totally right. If we look at it logically, and in the context of the current religious culture, people John Chrysostom and Basil the Great could not have endorsed the current beliefs of “sola scriptura” or “faith alone”. I pick these two out of the examples given because they both were writers of the Divine Liturgy…so therefore they were supporters of all the the things that protestants critique such as vestments, eucharist, confession, and religious rituals in general…etc. You can’t take a quote from 1500 yrs ago and interpret it with today’s lingo…St. John Chrysostom says many high things of Scripture here, but never does he put it at odds with Sacred Tradition. He would be a hypocrite to do so, after all, given that in his fourth homily on 2 Thessalonians he says:
What one might deny is the validity of the either/or approach. You place a false dilemma between unwritten Tradition and Scripture which none of the men you quoted would have endorsed. It is this tendency to divide the deposit of Faith which I do not see in early Chistianity.
And what did these men mean by “faith alone”? That faith apart from the sacraments is salvific? I doubt you could find one father who denies baptismal regeneration. Or perhaps that personal sin cannot condemn people to Hell after a certain point? That notion didn’t appear until Nominalism, if I recall. As was the case with your previous quotes, it isn’t enough to find a snippet here or there which, apart from the context, can be made to seem like it supports a modern doctrine. What matters is what these men actually meant when saying these things. Otherwise, I’m still left wondering how most Protestant notions can be squared with the Early Church.
And nobody wants that.
That is not true at all.None of the church fathers held to notion of faith alone as Protestants hold to since the Reformation. If they held to it or Sola Scriptura,it is rather strange how not one church father defended either novel doctrine.
I need more than an assumption that the Apostles wouldn’t have rejected Eucharistic Adoration. What “theology” of the Apostles points to Eucharistic Adoration? Cite the earliest Christian doctrine of Eucharistic Adoration.
Again, I need specifics. If the theology has existed from the “first day,” please provide your sources. Not exactly sure what you mean by “first day.”
Again, I need specific sources.
I am open to the possibility of the Immaculate Conception. I realize the Blessed Virgin Mary is disregarded to a shameful extent in many Protestant Churches. In the Baptist Church, we rarely heard the name of Mary, unless it was during Christmas. I acknowledge Mary as the first to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of Christ. Eve was disobedient; while Mary demonstrated a beautiful obedience. I realize Mary carried our Savior in her womb; and she suffered greatly seeing her Son crucified. I’ve come a long way in my view of Mary. I just need more proof for the Immaculate Conception.
If I haven’t been convinced of the Immaculate Conception, there is no way to even consider the Co-Redemptrix Mariology. I realize Pope John Paul II spoke of Mary as the “Co-Redemptrix of humanity.” I’m a fan of JP II; but, even so, I’m not convinced.