What Do Protestants Believe About the Early Church?

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Alex_H said:
When I was attending a baptist church, church history was never taught. We would compare and contrast beliefs of other churches in our bible study groups. We talked a lot about the stories in the bible. Conversations about the reformation or why it happened or who caused it just never came up. I was considering joining this baptist church. But before I did I wanted to figure out what it meant to be baptist. That’s when I looked up the baptist faith on the internet. I learned about when the faith was founded and who founded it. I learned that Baptists broke away from the Church of England. So I started reading about the Church of England on the internet. I learned that the Church of England also broke away from another church, the Catholic Church. So I started reading about the Catholic Church.
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Good for you! Everyone should be so diligent.

“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant” - Bl John Henry Newman (convert)
 
With over 30,000 Protestant denominations, it is very hard to determine just what they all believe. Yes, some are in agreement with others, but it can be difficult to come to a consensus.
 
Alex_H said:
Hi all,

I was curious about something I read here on CAF. The main idea was that Jesus said that the gates of the netherworld would not prevail against his church. They went on to ask the question, do protestants believe that the gates of the netherworld prevailed for 1500 years until Martin Luther showed up?

What do you believe happened to all of those Christians who died before Luther (Or Zwingli, Calvin, Wesley, etc) was able to reform Christianity?

I guess I’m just trying to figure out where protestants think it all went wrong and what happened to those who were not alive to see the time of Luther?
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You might find many conveniently forget the roots in history of protestantism. But opposition posed towards the CC in all her wonderful array is futile because “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against her” - such opposition is synthetic and are not the threads of Divine fabric.
 
Operalan said:
With over 30,000 Protestant denominations, it is very hard to determine just what they all believe. Yes, some are in agreement with others, but it can be difficult to come to a consensus.
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Considering Christian denominations are pretty much only unified in their belief in the Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) it’s is admittedly hard to classify them other than by that core belief.
 
Operalan said:
With over 30,000 Protestant denominations, it is very hard to determine just what they all believe. Yes, some are in agreement with others, but it can be difficult to come to a consensus.
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Overlooking the 30,000 number, the process by which something like 240 separate Roman Catholic churches were also identified.
This is the problem with the misuse of the term, protestant. It seems absurd to me why would one expect different communions and traditions to agree on everything, simply because they are broadly categorized as protestant.
Many of the communions placed under that umbrella were not involved in the protest at Speyer in 1529. Protestantism is not now, and never has been, a single monolithic communion.

Jon
 
JonNC said:
Overlooking the 30,000 number, the process by which something like 240 separate Roman Catholic churches were also identified.
This is the problem with the misuse of the term, protestant. It seems absurd to me why would one expect different communions and traditions to agree on everything, simply because they are broadly categorized as protestant.
Many of the communions placed under that umbrella were not involved in the protest at Speyer in 1529. Protestantism is not now, and never has been, a single monolithic communion.

Jon
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There are reasons that make up the definition ‘protestant’ and these reasons were committed when these churches became ‘protestant’. And when reduced down, these reasons will be very specific, not just a “broad categorization”. It is up to protestants to climb down from their self-made rickety ladders and for us to coax them as if they were cats stuck up trees in need of a surgeon.
 
A good amount of Protestants (I can’t say most) would respect the early church, though I would say that most protestants would not consider a connection with them important or necessary.
 
IgnatianPhilo said:
A good amount of Protestants (I can’t say most) would respect the early church, though I would say that most protestants would not consider a connection with them important or necessary.
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It is possible that they haven’t recently been given any accurate history lessons.

Getting a bit uncomfortable now though, with the whole usandtheying.

Hopefully, they will come (argh, said it again)…

No seriously, we have the New Evangelisation, and this initiation might well help to educate the masses, thus lighting up the wick of truth, for them to find their paths back (argh, said it again).
 
Alex_H said:
Hi all,

I was curious about something I read here on CAF. The main idea was that Jesus said that the gates of the netherworld would not prevail against his church. They went on to ask the question, do protestants believe that the gates of the netherworld prevailed for 1500 years until Martin Luther showed up?
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Can’t speak for “Protestants,” because I don’t know what one is, really. But I can tell you thank Lutherans would laugh at that idea. Christ said, rather plainly, that the gates of hell will never prevail against the church catholic. And they have not.
Alex_H said:
What do you believe happened to all of those Christians who died before Luther (Or Zwingli, Calvin, Wesley, etc) was able to reform Christianity?
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The same thing that happens to Christians now; they lived, they died.
Alex_H said:
I guess I’m just trying to figure out where protestants think it all went wrong and what happened to those who were not alive to see the time of Luther?
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I didn’t “all go wrong.” Some small bits in some churches were misunderstood over time, which obscured the sweet, simple Truth of the Gospel. There was no ‘Great Apostasy’ and the church never went totally off the rails. While the Roman Catholic Church claims to be the only true church on earth, the same was never claimed by classical churches of the Reformation.
 
friardchips said:
There are reasons that make up the definition ‘protestant’ and these reasons were committed when these churches became ‘protestant’. And when reduced down, these reasons will be very specific, not just a “broad categorization”. It is up to protestants to climb down from their self-made rickety ladders and for us to coax them as if they were cats stuck up trees in need of a surgeon.
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Okay. For Lutherans, it is word and Sacrament, the means of grace. I can’t think of a sturdier ladder.

Jon
 
IgnatianPhilo said:
A good amount of Protestants (I can’t say most) would respect the early church, though I would say that most protestants would not consider a connection with them important or necessary.
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News to me. I suppose Lutherans should stop insisting that pastors lead studies on the fathers and martyrs and dispense with learning Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic? All of the classical protestant churches of the Reformation appealed to the fathers and Scripture in their justification for breaking communion with Rome. Could even say they followed the pattern set by your communion and Rome.

Now if we’re talking about the run-of-the-mill non-denominational church down the street? Sure, I guess some (many?) don’t understand the Communion of Saints to which the true church is eternally connected. But they’re not really ‘protestant,’ since they aren’t ‘protesting’ anything.
 
JonNC said:
Okay. For Lutherans, it is word and Sacrament, the means of grace. I can’t think of a sturdier ladder.

Jon
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…However, the bonds of truth draw us back ever closer in healing as what the Church says is binding on earth - it is about building bridges of faith between Churches that needs to be the emphasis - is binding in Heaven.

Listen to the Pope.
 
steido01 said:
News to me. I suppose Lutherans should stop insisting that pastors lead studies on the fathers and martyrs and dispense with learning Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic? All of the classical protestant churches of the Reformation appealed to the fathers and Scripture in their justification for breaking communion with Rome. Could even say they followed the pattern set by your communion and Rome.

Now if we’re talking about the run-of-the-mill non-denominational church down the street? Sure, I guess some (many?) don’t understand the Communion of Saints to which the true church is eternally connected. But they’re not really ‘protestant,’ since they aren’t ‘protesting’ anything.
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Both the ‘Apostles Creed’ and the ‘Nicene Creed’ mention the ‘Catholic Church’; the latter gives more detail: ‘…We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church…’.

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/credo.htm

Some background: vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2.htm
 
Padres1969 said:
I’d argue it started with the Avignon papacy and continued to worsen through the Western Schism and of course the string of morally ambiguous to downright abhorrent popes in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. There were of course a few very bad popes before these eras such as Stephen VI, Benedict IX, Sergius III. And there were some good popes during the era I mention, but the bulk of the protestant issues with the papacy can be traced back to the early 1300’s-mid 1500’s time frame, particularly the tail end of that time when there was a string of over a half dozen bad popes back to back. It was a time when there was a disproportionate amount of abuse from the papacy from Popes like Sixtus IV Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, which led significantly to the weakening of the office both temporally, morally and spiritually.

Now which pope broke the camel’s back specifically varies so to speak, but leading into the Protestant reformation it was a string of abuse by multiple popes that opened the door to the reformation. Now that’s not to say that the gates of hades prevailed against Christ’s overall church. The reformers felt their pulling away was helping resist the gates of hell. And if anything the Reformation helped the Catholic church to finally rectify some of the issues that the reformers had objected to and to resist the evil that had been plaguing it. Just my :twocents:

With regard to the early church, indeed some protestant bodies do see themselves as returning to what they view is more like the early church. Some like the Anglicans and arguably the Lutherans view themselves as a continuation of the church that had existed up until the break with Rome simply outside of Rome’s control and still see themselves as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Indeed as an Episcopal I still profess that ever Sunday using the more or less the same Nicene Creed as Catholic, Lutherans, Orthodox (minus the filioque).
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Thank you for supplying the information about names and dates. Boniface VIII (1294-1303) is the pope Dante meets in Canto 19 of the Inferno, stuck head downward in a crevice in the rock, with only his legs and feet waving around in the air. Would he be included in your list as well? If so, and bearing in mind that Dante was a good Catholic, there seems to be no real disagreement between us on the relative merits of the good and bad popes, though we disagree, of course, on the continuity of the Petrine succession.

Regards
Bart
 
JonNC said:
Yes. We confess these and the Athanasian Creed.

Jon
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Have you got a link to the above (for the purpose of the thread and my own education) please?

Also, what about the Dogmas and Petrine succession - if Lutherans are in full communion then this is great news?! :extrahappy:
 
BartholomewB said:
Thank you for supplying the information about names and dates. Boniface VIII (1294-1303) is the pope Dante meets in Canto 19 of the Inferno, stuck head downward in a crevice in the rock, with only his legs and feet waving around in the air. Would he be included in your list as well? If so, and bearing in mind that Dante was a good Catholic, there seems to be no real disagreement between us on the relative merits of the good and bad popes, though we disagree, of course, on the continuity of the Petrine succession.

Regards
Bart
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I mean if you want to make a list of the popes who did not live up to anywhere near their office you could definitely put Boniface on there. The man craved power and his mistreatment of his abdicated predecessor was despicable. But he’d be down the list IMO.

And as I said, there’s been plenty of bad popes, but far more good ones. The reformation era papacy appears to have been just the largest conglomeration of bad popes in an close time frame relatively speaking to the point that they weakened the office and the church to the point people felt the need to “protest” and “reform” against a church they saw as having lost its way. And indeed the Church somewhat acknowledged that by counter-Reforming in short order into a better version of itself.
 
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