There was no church between the end of the first century and the reformation?

[Bill_Pick]

There is no evidence that the early church was the catholic church that we have today. On the contrary the Catholic church and the first century church are very different. There is great evidence that the Catholic church did not start until the 300 when the Pope and the offices of the bishopric were set up in Rome.

The true Church is made up of all those who have accept Shrist as their personal Savior by faith alone. Eph 2:8-9; John 3:15-19.

Yes ,and the very FIRST CHURCH was the Cathloic Church started by Our Lord Jesus Christ

 

[mario_grgic]

The one true church is not found in any denomination

That is quite true. The church is not found in any denomination. But the holy apostolic universal (aka catholic) church founded by Christ is not a denomination, but one true continuous church holding the entire teaching of Christ, and truths explained and expanded on later by the holy spirit.

Denominations are fragments of the church, that split for various heresies. They may contain fragments of truth but none have it all.

 

[Bill_Pick]

That is quite true. The church is not found in any denomination. But the holy apostolic universal (aka catholic) church founded by Christ is not a denomination, but one true continuous church holding the entire teaching of Christ, and truths explained and expanded on later by the holy spirit.

Denominations are fragments of the church, that split for various heresies. They may contain fragments of truth but none have it all.

Good answer, but do you think they will believe You LOL

 

[Patrick_Cox]

There is no evidence that the early church was the catholic church that we have today. On the contrary the Catholic church and the first century church are very different. There is great evidence that the Catholic church did not start until the 300 when the Pope and the offices of the bishopric were set up in Rome.

Out of interest - you seem to ascribe to the fact that there was a pope in the year 300 AD. In your eyes, was this the first pope of the “new” church you claim started in 300 AD? Who appointed this pope and under what authority? What is your “great evidence” herein? And what happened to the church Jesus built on Peter when Jesus walked the earth? Did this just dissappear off the face of the earth? Or did Jesus not in fact start a church of any sort? I am extremely curious…

 

[Patrick_Cox]

The true Church is made up of all those who have accept Shrist as their personal Savior by faith alone. Eph 2:8-9; John 3:15-19.

You speak of “true” church. By definition there can be only one truth - there can not be many different versions of the truth. So please now explain to me which one of the approximately 30 000 Protestant churches is in fact the full truth… Or is the fact that they all preach different things irrelevant to you? One true church… 30 000 different versions… I am afraid that doesn’t quite correlate…

… and we haven’t even started the whole faith alone vs faith and works discussion! But on that issue - here are a few quotes which clearly state that faith alone is not sufficient. We are also judged by our works:

Sir. 35:19; Luke 23:41; John 3:19-21, Rom. 8:13, 2 Tim 4:14, Titus 3:8,14, Rev. 22:12 - these verses also teach us that we all will be judged by God according to our deeds. There is no distinction between the “saved” and the “unsaved.”

1 Cor. 3:15 - if works are unnecessary for salvation as many Protestants believe, then why is a man saved (not just rewarded) through fire by a judgment of his works?

Matt. 7:1-3 - we are not judged just by faith, but actually how we judge others, and we get what we have given. Hence, we are judged according to how we responded to God’s grace during our lives.

Matt. 10:22, 24:13; Mark 13:13 - Jesus taught that we must endure to the very end to be saved. If this is true, then how can Protestants believe in the erroneous teaching of “Once saved, always saved?” If salvation occurred at a specific point in time when we accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior, there would be no need to endure to the end. We would already be saved.

Matt. 16:27 – Jesus says He will repay every man for what he has done (works).

Matt. 25:31-46 - Jesus’ teaching on the separation of the sheep from the goats is based on the works that were done during their lives, not just on their acceptance of Christ as Savior. In fact, this teaching even demonstrates that those who are ultimately saved do not necessarily have to know Christ. Also, we don’t accept Christ; He accepts us. God first makes the decision to accept us before we could ever accept Him.

Matt. 25:40,45 - Jesus says “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to Me.” We are judged and our eternal destiny is determined in accordance with our works.

Mark 10:21 - Jesus says sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. This means that our salvation depends upon our works.

And these are just some of the verses!

 

[losh14]

There is no evidence that the early church was the catholic church that we have today. On the contrary the Catholic church and the first century church are very different. There is great evidence that the Catholic church did not start until the 300 when the Pope and the offices of the bishopric were set up in Rome.

I address your points using the writings we have available after the Canon of Scripture was closed. These are presented as historical documents, and a summary can be found in "The Teachings of the Church Fathers’ by John Willis, S.J.:

You assert there wasn’t a Pope or “bishopric” (do you mean episcopate?) until 300.
There most certainly was a hierarchical order to bishops.

St. Clement of Rome (d.101 a.d.), Letter to the Corinthians, Ch 42:
“Preaching accordingly, throughout the country and the cities [the Apostles] apointed their first-fruits … to be bishops and deacons of those who should believe”

IBID, Ch. 44:
“Our Apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be contention over the bishop’s office. So, for this cause, having received compelte foreknowledge, they appointed the above-mentioned men, and afterwards gave them a permanent character, so that, as they died, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.”

So we have by the end of the 1st century an episcopate that passes authority from man to man. The authority of the bishops was established over priests and deacons, and the authority of the clergy was established over the laity:

St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. by 117 a.d.), Letter to the Trallians, Ch. 2:
“In the same way all should respect the deacons as they would Jesus Christ, just as they respect the bishop as representing the Father and the priests as the council of God and teh college of the Apostles. Apart from these there is nothing that can be called a Church.”

Letter to the Philadelphians, Ch. 3:
“For, all who belong to God and Jesus Christ are with the bishop. And those, too, will belong to God who have returned, repentant, to the unity of the Church so as to live in accordance with Jesus Christ. Make no mistake, brethren. No one who follows another into schism inherits the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9). No one who follows heretical doctrine is on the side of the passion.”

Letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ch. 8:
“Let all follows the bishop as Jesus Christ did the Father, and the priests, as you would the Apostles. Reverence the deacons as you would the command of God… Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

So there was an episcopate - a college of bishops who worked in community and presided over their specific churches - in place by the end of the 1st century. The papacy - the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and his direct succession from St. Peter - was evidenced shortly thereafter.

St. Irenaeus (d.202 a.d.), Against Heresies, Bk. 3 ch. 3:
“The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in teh Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing in his ears and their traditions before his eyes.”

Why Rome? Other than the place where Peter and Paul were martyred, it did not fall into heresy, unlike the church at Corinth (which had trouble even in Paul’s day), as Hegesippus chronicled (though his chronicles remain only in Eusebius of Caesarea’s “Ecclesiastical History”, written two centuries later).

Why Peter as first Pope, or at least the primate bishop? Scripturally, we take this from two sources: Mt.16:16-18, and the first half of Acts. In Matthew, we consider that the Lord spoke to Peter directly, rather than to the Apostles as a whole or the body of all believers. In Acts, Peter has the clear leadership of the Christian community, a leadership that is not contested until Paul begins his ministry some 20 years later.

You may disagree with the Catholic interpretation of these passages, but this has been consistently taught since at least the 2nd century.

Clement of Alexandria (d.216 a.d.), Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved? Ch. 21:
After quoting Mt 11:12, “Therefore on hearing those words, the blessed Peter, the chosen, the pre-eminent, the first of the disciples, for whom alone and Himself the Saviour paid tribute, quickly seized and comprehended the saying.”

Tertullian (d. 220 a.d.), On Modesty, Ch. 21:
“If, because the Lord has said to Peter, ‘Upon this rock will I build my church,’ ‘to you have I given the keys of the heavenly kingdom’; or, ‘Whatsoever you shall have bound or loosed in earth, shall be bound or loosed in teh heavens’, you therefore presume that the power of binding and losing has derived to you, tha tis, to every church akin to Peter; what sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of the Lord, conferring this personally upon Peter? ‘On you,’ He says, ‘will I build my church’; and, ‘I will give to you the keys,’ not to the church; and, ‘Whatsoever you shall have loosed or bound,’ not what they shall have loosed or bound.”

So the bishops of the Catholic Church were self-referential and self-recognized by the end of the 1st century and the papacy was recognized by the start of the 2rd century.

 

[raumzeitmc2]

The pornocracy demonstrates that the Catholic church utterly lost any attachment to Christian doctrine and practice.

Ah, but then you do recognize that the Catholic Church did, at one time at least, have an “attachment to Christian doctrine and practice!”

But then, by your reckoning, the Church somehow fell into error, despite Christ’s having explicitly promised such a thing would never happen! “The gates of hell shall not prevail.”

I’m afraid Protestants sound very suspiciously like the Pharisees of old, who also refused to accept Christ and His sacred words!

As for the term “pornocracy,” well, you’ll have to more specifically what you mean.

But if by this term you simply mean that there have always been bad people in the Church, I fully agree with you. I’ve pointed this out before:

But please, keep in mind that the reformers themselves complained, bitterly and often, over the worsening morals resulting from their teachings. Listen to Luther from one of his Advent sermons of 1533:

People are more avaricious, unmerciful, unchaste, brazen, and evil now than they formerly were under the papacy. 1 Why is this? Simply because people do not accept the Gospel (Predigt) with joy, but everybody ignores it and is more interested in money and possessions than in the blessed treasure which our Lord Christ brings us.

Because of this, God, in turn, punishes them and says: Do you, then, not intend to thank Me for removing sin and death through the death of my only begotten Son? Very well, if, after all, that is how you want it, I shall prepare enough sin and death for you; and while formerly only one devil possessed and rode you, seven worse devils shall now ride you. (W 52, 13 f – E 1, 14 – SL 13a 6). 2.

In *What Luther Says *(WLS) vol. 2, p. 574, no. 1745,

1. The bolded reads, in the German of the Erlangen edition of Luther’s Works: “unzüchtiger, frecher und ärger sind, denn zuvor unter dem Papstthum.”
2. W 52, 13 f – E 1, 14 – SL 13a 6, refers to various editions of Luther’s Works where this quote appears:

W= Weimar edition of Luther’s Works, or D. Martin Luthers Werke; Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 1883 ff.

E= Erlangen ed. or Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämtliche Werke, 1826, ff. Published at Erlangen. “The first twenty-six volumes were reissued in a second edition from 1862 to 1865.”

SL = Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämmtliche Schriften, Saint Louis ed., 1880-1910. This is a revised second edition of the original, edited by Johann Georg Walch and published at Halle (1740- 1753).

The German title of this sermon is:

Am Ersten Sontag des Advents, Evangelium Matthei, xxi (On the First Sunday of Advent, the Gospel of Mathew, 21).

Full German text in the is here, in the Erlangen- Frankfurt edition, 1862, vol. 1, p. 14.

Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämtliche Werke, Doppelte Hauspostille, Abtheilung 1, Dietrich’sche Ausgage, herausgegeben, Ernst Ludwig Enders, , Zwiete Auflage, Frankfurt am Main und Erlangen, verlag von Carl Heyder und H. Zimmer.

2 volumes in 1. Erste = 1st, Zweiter = 2nd, Band = Volume:
Erste Band, 1862.
Zweiter Band, 1863 (begins on p. 404).

The above quote (in slightly different form) as well as others in a similar vein from various reformers, appears in small pamphlet entitled:

*
The Reformers on the Reformation (Foreign), * Charles F. B. Allnatt, Burns & Oates, 1881.

I recommend you read it. The author gives the reformer’s words in both English and Latin: It begins:

Luther, the prime author of that great" revolution in religion miscalled “The Reformation,” after some years’ experience of its results, declared: —

“The world grows worse from day to day. Men are now more covetous, malicious, and resentful, more unruly, shameless, and full of vice, than they were in the time of Popery."

(Mundus in dies fit deterior; sunt nunc homines magis vindictae cupidi, magis avari, magis ab omni misericordia remoti, magis im- modest! et indisciplinati, multoque deteriores quam fuerint in Papatu.)

• In Postill super Evang. Domin. primae. Adv., ap. Bellarm. in Append. ad Lib. de Summo Pont., c. 23.

“Our Germany, after so great light of the Gospel, seems to be all but possessed by the devil. Our youths are impudent and unruly, and will no longer submit to education; the old men are loaded with sins of avarice, usury, and many others that may not be told.” (Nostra Germania quoque post tantam lucem Evangelii tantum non obsessa videtur a diabolo. Juventus indomita et effrenis est, et impatiens disciplinae, senes avaritia, usuris, et multis sceleribus infandis implicite tenentur.

• Comment, in Gen. xxiii. 9, Op., ed. Wittemb., 1580, tom. vi.

books.google.com/books?id=Na0GHQAACAAJ&dq=%22reformers+on+the+reformation+%22&lr=

See also:

Which is the true church? Or, A few plain reasons for joining the Roman Catholic communion, (1881), Charles F. B. Allnatt, Edinburgh, Ballantyne Press.