beachieca:
My question: How do we know and where can we find out what faith was the original one? Being raised Catholic I was obviously taught that the Catholic faith is the one true church. How do we know and where can we prove that? And if that’s true, where do so many other Christian denominations get the history to back up
their belief that their church is the “one true church?”
Thank you
There is really no answer to your question–it’s kind of like asking “which of the people living today is the original human being.”
Catholicism and Orthodoxy can both trace direct descent from the early Church. As I see it, neither of these churches has any grounds for claiming to be more “original” than the other. (There are other Eastern churches that can also make a similar claim and call themselves “Orthodox,” but I’ll try to keep things simple.)
The various forms of Protestantism all arose from some kind of “reform”–some attempt to reverse more recent developments and return to what the “reformers” (rightly or wrongly) thought was the original form of Christianity. In that sense, Protestants have less of a claim to be the “original” church than Catholicism and Orthodoxy do. However, we see ourselves as descended from the pre-Reformation Church (though some radical Protestants–who usually don’t like being called Protestants–claim to have no connection with the Catholic Church and to be either a revival of a true Christianity long vanished or a continuation of medieval dissenting groups). We hold to the faith of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. We think we are also part of the one Catholic Church descended from the Apostles. (Catholicism doesn’t entirely disagree–it says that we are in “imperfect communion” and retain some, but not all, aspects of the Church.)
Most Protestant denominations and local churches would not claim to be the “one true Church.” We claim to be part of that Church, not the whole.
The pastor you talked to is spouting typical fundamentalist bunk. Of course Catholic beliefs and piety are influenced by paganism–why is that bad? (Secularists can make a good case that the whole idea of a virgin birth and a dying/rising god is a pagan idea. We’re all in that particular boat together, though Catholics and Orthodox have more “pagan” elements than Protestants–which I think is mostly a good thing.) The specific arguments about “Babylonian mystery religions,” though, are totally ridiculous. They spring out of fundamentalist exegesis of the Book of Revelation, not out of sound historical scholarship.
The Virgin Mary is unquestionably a Christian replacement for pagan mother goddesses. But again, I don’t think this is bad unless it detracts from the saving role of Christ. People would not hunger so deeply for a mother goddess figure unless there were some truth and reality there. The difference, of course, is that the Virgin Mary was created by her own Son. She is purely human, not divine, but she is (in Catholic theology) transfigured by grace. She fulfills the truth that lay behind the mother-goddess myths and she prefigures what we will all become.
Much of the Protestant hostility to Mary comes from a disbelief in the idea that human beings can be really, truly transformed and divinized by grace. This belief is at the heart of orthodox Christianity, but many Protestants think it is some sort of pagan heresy.
In my opinion, the legitimate Protestant objections to Mary come from the concern that she is sometimes seen as being closer to us or more sympathetic than Jesus. That is a serious error. Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine. No one, not even Mary, can sympathize with our weakness as much as He can. As long as that truth is maintained, I don’t have a problem with Marian piety, although as a Protestant I find much of it alien and only practice it in very restrained ways.
In Christ,
Edwin
