en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites
Gnostics seem to predate Christ and attached themselves to Christianity in the 2nd & 3rd century.
It seems we only know of the Ebionites in the second century and anything earlier is just guessing.
The Ebionites were an anti-Pauline Judaizing sect. :whacky:You realize that the Gnostics were condemned by the Apostles, right? In fact in the Letter to the Romans, in the Latin translation St. Paul actually says to them, “Anathema sit.”(It’s somewhere in Romans 12, I think,)
I actually have never heard of them, but I’ll take your word for it.
There are no such things as “EO rituals” - they retained their Catholic rituals, and continue to retain them to this very day, which is why (unlike Protestants) they don’t have to undergo a “continuing conversion” process when they enter the Catholic Church - because all of their rituals are already Catholic, and (as a consequence of that) all of their Sacraments are already valid.
Their Divine Liturgy is exactly the same in every detail as that of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church. The only difference between them and us is that they deny the authority of the Pope. They only began to deny the authority of the Pope in the 1000s AD - prior to that, they were his greatest defenders. (You should read the Sermon for Pentecost of St. John Chrysostom.)
St. John the Divine (author of the Gospel of John, Epistles I, II, and III of John, and the Apocalypse (aka the Book of Revelation) died in 95 AD.
And the protestants are claiming them as their mysterious hidden proto-protestants? :ehh: Wow. Okay, then.
Why is it when discussing this topic that Catholics insist everyone must be in error at the same time, as if the church were some big light switch.St. John the Divine (author of the Gospel of John, Epistles I, II, and III of John, and the Apocalypse (aka the Book of Revelation) died in 95 AD.
Are you actually proposing that the entire Church went into apostasy within the space of 12 years?
And that it then took the Reformers another 1410 years to begin to speak up and set things straight?
AND… it took the Church… the ONLY Church founded by Christ… to declare that those teaching were heretic, and to reject them.
The Church IS a big lightswitch because Jesus said so:
Not that there was no more Catholic church. But that the Catholic church was influenced by some of those heretics and some of the doctrines that followed were erroneous. Not to derail the thread but transubstantiation is a very gnostic belief. Then some folks believe that too many pagan practices made their way into the church and don’t belong. I don’t think anyone actually believes the universal church disappeared until 1517. If that’s the case then someone is smoking something they shouldn’t be.
Acts? Why Acts? What about the rest of the New Testament? If you read the New Testament from the heart of the Church that produced it, a lot of things become clear. As a convert, this was one of my greatest awakenings.
Right. And the reason we needed a canon of the New Testament was not so that people could start producing Bibles for people to read at home (that didn’t happen for another 1200-1300 years) but rather, so that priests would know from which books they were permitted to read during the Liturgy of the Word at Mass.
Mercy that’s a good point and point of fact when the canon was established the works that were being read in churches played a big role in determining the final canon. Many will agree that the when the canon was officially created it had already been established by the church unofficially for hundreds of years.
Great point Jmcrae. But why did they need to know which ones were permitted to be read? Because they were the ones that contained the teachings of the Apostles.
Right - which is why they went to those most versed in the Holy Tradition of the Apostles - the Bishops and the Pope - to make that decision for them, rather than try to guess it for themselves based on some kind of a burnin’ in the bosom, or whatever.
First of all, light comes from the bulb, not the switch. Except in this case where it’s an oil lamp and there’s a wick, not a switch.
Actually it took the Apostles and those they placed in leadership to correct, heal and in some cases discipline the church when heresy broke out in a New Testament congregation-that is one of the reasons we have the Epistles.
**I did read the conversation and I was responding to your uninformed rant. **First of all, light comes from the bulb, not the switch. Except in this case where it’s an oil lamp and there’s a wick, not a switch.
Second, please show us enough respect to read the conversation and reply to it in context please, not with some cutesy comeback. We were addressing whether or not it was even possible for every believer and/or church to simultaneously possess the same degree of orthodoxy this side of heaven.
Third, even the Pope doesn’t claim that a parochial or diocesan structure was in place in the New Testament church-are you going to tell me next that they had cathedrals and stained glass as well?