bkniceley:
Dont u realize there was only one church back then? The church of rome… the catholic church which u presume it to be. However nowhere in the bible is there a record of roman catholicism or any of the protestant churches of the present day.
Are you asking for documentation that the Catholic Church is 2,000 years old and founded by Jesus Christ?
Ignatius of Antioch was the first to record the use of the name “Catholic Church” in 107 A.D. That’s only 73 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. I don’t know the life expectancy from that time, but it is not unimagineable that some people living at the time that Ignatius’ recorded the name “Catholic Church” would have been alive when Jesus walked the earth. Historians believe that the use of the name was in use for some time before Ignatius recorded it- possibly from the beginning.
“The Church Jesus established was known by its most common title, “the Catholic Church,” at least as early as the year 107, when Ignatius of Antioch used that title to describe the one Church Jesus founded. The title apparently was old in Ignatius’s time, which means it probably went all the way back to the time of the apostles.” - From “Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth”
catholic.com/library/pillar.asp
The Ignatian letters are wonderful proof for those who challenge the fact that the Catholic Church is the Church established by Christ:
(from New Advent)
Contents of the letters It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of the testimony which the Ignatian letters offer to the dogmatic character of Apostolic
Christianity. The martyred Bishop of Antioch constitutes a most important link between the Apostles and the Fathers of the early Church. **Receiving from the Apostles themselves, whose auditor he was, not only the substance of revelation, but also their own inspired interpretation of it; dwelling, as it were, at the very fountain-head of Gospel truth, his testimony must necessarily carry with it the greatest weight and demand the most serious consideration. **Cardinal Newman did not exaggerate the matter when he said (“The Theology of the Seven Epistles of St. Ignatius”, in “Historical Sketches”, I, London, 1890) that “the whole system of Catholic doctrine may be discovered, at least in outline, not to say in parts filled up, in the course of his seven epistles”. Among the many Catholic doctrines to be found in the letters are the following: the Church was Divinely established as a visible society, the salvation of souls is its end, and those who separate themselves from it cut themselves off from
God (Philad., c. iii); the hierarchy of the Church was instituted by Christ (lntrod. to Philad.; Ephes., c. vi); the threefold character of the hierarchy (Magn., c. vi); the order of the episcopacy superior by Divine authority to that of the priesthood (Magn., c. vi, c. xiii; Smyrn., c. viii;. Trall., .c. iii);the unity of the Church (Trall., c. vi;Philad., c. iii; Magn., c. xiii);the holiness of the Church (Smyrn., Ephes., Magn., Trall., and Rom.); the catholicity of the Church (Smyrn., c. viii); the
infallibility of the Church (Philad., c. iii; Ephes., cc. xvi, xvii); the doctrine of the Eucharist (Smyrn., c. viii), which word we find for the first time applied to the Blessed Sacrament, just as in Smyrn., viii, we meet for the first time the phrase “Catholic Church”, used to designate all
Christians; the Incarnation (Ephes., c. xviii); the supernatural virtue of virginity, already much esteemed and made the subject of a vow (Polyc., c. v); the religious character of matrimony (Polyc., c. v); the value of united prayer (Ephes., c. xiii); the primacy of the See of Rome (Rom., introd.). He, moreover, denounces in principle the
Protestant doctrine of private judgment in matters’ of religion (Philad. c. iii), The heresy against which he chiefly inveighs is Docetism. Neither do the Judaizing heresies escape his vigorous condemnation.
