When Did Rome Go Wrong?

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*So the real question is: what ORTHODOX teachings did the church slowly go wayward? *

Right. This is what I am trying to find out from the Protestant perspective. I know there are so many different Protestant perspectives that we could be dealing with a hundred of them before we get through.

But are there 2,3,4 major doctrines taught by the Catholic Church in the early days that Protestants can point to and say, “Aha, that where the apostasy began!”

But if they do say that, then where did the true Church go during all the centuries until Martin Luther? What do Protestants say? Was it dormant? Was Luther the sleeping giant who wakened the true Church? But how can Protestants in general say that when Protestants in general are not even Lutherans?
 
*Nicea325: So the real question is: what ORTHODOX teachings did the church slowly go wayward? *

Right. This is what I am trying to find out from the Protestant perspective. I know there are so many different Protestant perspectives that we could be dealing with a hundred of them before we get through.

Very true.

But are there 2,3,4 major doctrines taught by the Catholic Church in the early days that Protestants can point to and say, "Aha, that where the apostasy began!"

Well I cannot think of any doctrine within the first 500 years,but I can see Protestants rejecting: Papal Infallibility,Mary,etc which were made official much later.

**But if they do say that, then where did the true Church go during all the centuries until Martin Luther? What do Protestants say? Was it dormant? Was Luther the sleeping giant who wakened the true Church? But how can Protestants in general say that when Protestants in general are not even Lutherans? **

The Church Christ built did not go anywhere. Scandals and failures is common all human institutions,secular or religious. What Protestants need to present is where orthodoxy made way for heterdoxy and I cannot seem to find it anywhere. It is the RCC which fought and defended against heterdoxy for centuries to defend orthodoxy.
 
Well I cannot think of any doctrine within the first 500 years,but I can see Protestants rejecting: Papal Infallibility,Mary,etc which were made official much later.

These doctrines were not made official until well after the Reformation.

As I said in an earlier post, questions of authority with respect to Rome are ancient. But the Protestants didn’t just throw out the papacy.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Well I cannot think of any doctrine within the first 500 years,but I can see Protestants rejecting: Papal Infallibility,Mary,etc which were made official much later.

These doctrines were not made official until well after the Reformation.

As I said in an earlier post, questions of authority with respect to Rome are ancient. But the Protestants didn’t just throw out the papacy.
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That may be true with respect to when they were dogmatically defined. However, papal infallibility had been a teaching for a few hundred years prior to the Reformation. Reading the early Lutheran confessional statements, such as the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, for example, clearly show that to the case.

As for other doctrines, on the Lutheran side, there is no hard and fast answer since many of the teachings of Rome at the time were not discarded. As for the Marian doctrines, Lutherans held them for quite a while. They just never made them articles of faith. Teachings which were strictly rejected tended to be those that gained prominence from 500 to 1000 A.D. and were then further exacerbated throughout the medieval period. There is no one single point in time to which we would assert that Rome rejected its continuance with the ancient catholic church. For one thing, we would maintain, obviously, that Rome has some continuity with it, since it is still Christian, has the sacraments, the word, and the creeds etc. The Lutheran reformers, while they castigated individual members of it, never de facto said that Rome was entirely apostate. They saw themselves as being fully in line with the undivided catholic church, and Rome at variance with it on several key points of doctrine.
 
TruneUnity

Now we’ve heard a reasonable reply from the Lutherans.

The Anglicans in some respects might make the same case.

Let’s hear from the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, Church of Christ, etc. etc. As the field widens, doesn’t it become apparent that with other sects Catholicism clearly has strayed much farther than the Lutherans and Anglicans might admit?

The sacraments become less relevant and private interpretation becomes all the more dominant. Hence the proliferation of sects justified by private interpretation, in spite of the call of both Christ and Paul to maintain the unity of the faith.
 
I don’t belong to those groups you’ve mentioned, but I think that many such think things went wrong shortly after the era of the Apostles. ( Although Methodists and Presbyterians, in my experience, don’t think that way. )

I know one item many object to is baptism of infants, or baptism by sprinkling.

The difficulty in discussing such groups, IMO, is they tend to have a pretty poor understanding of early Church history.

As for where the Church went: Some seem to think it pretty much disappeared and then was somehow remade. Others claim remnants remained. Some say a specific remnant (themselves) remained - I think Waldensians claim this? But even many of these would say the Church didn’t disappear, it was just corrupted and reformed.
 
Bluegoat

But even many of these would say the Church didn’t disappear, it was just corrupted and reformed.

I don’t think there are many Catholics who would disagree.

But how many ways can you reform a Church without introducing so much diversity that the unity called for by Christ and Paul is flagrantly defied?

The Catholic Church has always battled against the proliferation of heresies, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But Luther’s break initiated a whole new panorama of quarreling sects that are still multiplying every time a new sect breaks from an older one. It begins to look more and more, as the centuries pass, that Protestants are protesting each other as much, or sometimes more than, they are protesting the Catholics.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Bluegoat

But even many of these would say the Church didn’t disappear, it was just corrupted and reformed.

I don’t think there are many Catholics who would disagree.

But how many ways can you reform a Church without introducing so much diversity that the unity called for by Christ and Paul is flagrantly defied?

The Catholic Church has always battled against the proliferation of heresies, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But Luther’s break initiated a whole new panorama of quarreling sects that are still multiplying every time a new sect breaks from an older one. It begins to look more and more, as the centuries pass, that Protestants are protesting each other as much, or sometimes more than, they are protesting the Catholics.
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I am not sure this paints a fair historical picture, though. For one thing, the other sects that arose out of the Reformation period were not directly related to Luther. Zwingli and the Anabaptists, for example, were teaching their beliefs before Luther made any concerted effort to correct what he perceived to be Roman abuses. The followers of Zwingli would later become the followers of Calvin. The followers of the radical anabaptists like Muentzer would go on to become the followers of the more moderate men like Menno Simons. And of course, the Anglican split with Rome occurred without any influence from Luther at all.

If you trace the splintering of sects that have occurred since then, none of them have come from Luther’s Reformation. All of them have been branches of the Reformed, Anglican, and anabaptist movements, which had nothing to do with Lutheran doctrine. While Luther may have given many of them the gravitas to challenge Rome, doctrinally, they bear very little in common with the German Reformation.
 
Bluegoat said:
I don’t belong to those groups you’ve mentioned, but I think that many such think things went wrong shortly after the era of the Apostles. ( Although Methodists and Presbyterians, in my experience, don’t think that way. )

I know one item many object to is baptism of infants, or baptism by sprinkling.

The difficulty in discussing such groups, IMO, is they tend to have a pretty poor understanding of early Church history.

As for where the Church went: Some seem to think it pretty much disappeared and then was somehow remade. Others claim remnants remained. Some say a specific remnant (themselves) remained - I think Waldensians claim this? But even many of these would say the Church didn’t disappear, it was just corrupted and reformed.
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If humans started to veer onto the wrong path certainly after the time of the Apostles then early Church history might be a rather mute point if things were already going wrong. 🙂
 
TriuneUnity

*While Luther may have given many of them the gravitas to challenge Rome, doctrinally, they bear very little in common with the German Reformation. *

Yes, this is my point. The later groups seem all seem to be as opposed to each other as they are to Rome. By the same token, it can hardly be said that any of them agreed with Luther either, except to the extent of opposing Rome.

They all accept the designation “Protestant” because they all protest. The word “Protestant” was introduced by the Lutherans, and applies to all the later protesters, who seem to have been united in one thing only … their willingness to see themselves as Protesters of the sects that existed before them.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
TriuneUnity

*While Luther may have given many of them the gravitas to challenge Rome, doctrinally, they bear very little in common with the German Reformation. *

Yes, this is my point. The later groups seem all seem to be as opposed to each other as they are to Rome. By the same token, it can hardly be said that any of them agreed with Luther either, except to the extent of opposing Rome.

They all accept the designation “Protestant” because they all protest. The word “Protestant” was introduced by the Lutherans, and applies to all the later protesters, who seem to have been united in one thing only … their willingness to see themselves as Protesters of the sects that existed before them.
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The context in which Lutherans used the term Protestant was wholly different than the context in which it was used by later non-Catholic sectarian groups. The Lutherans did not use it to mean protest of the Roman Church. In 1529, at the 2nd Diet of Speyer, the Emperor passed legislation requiring all princes in Germany to enforce Catholicism as the state religion. The Lutheran princes, of course, objected to this. They were called the Protestant Party, because they protested the decision at Speyer. Hence to us, the term has political, not merely religious connotations. We largely stopped using the term once other religious groups began to use it.

I agree that the later sects ignored most of the doctrine of the Lutheran reformers. From our perspective, that is why they have no relation to us. We saw ourselves as a reform movement from within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The other sects sought to reinvent that church. One can debate whether what the Lutherans did was right; but we tend to chafe at the notion that the sectarian movements that followed the Calvinists and anabaptists are laid at our feet. That is their own disease, not ours.
 
TriuneUnity

Hence to us, the term has political, not merely religious connotations. We largely stopped using the term once other religious groups began to use it.

Yes, the term originates with the Lutherans.

In any case, when the numbers are crunched, I believe that the Lutherans are counted as members of the Protestant contingent, whether or not they call themselves Protestant.

Same for the Anglicans, who may not see themselves as Protestant, but who are counted as such under the Protestant umbrella whenever there is a dvision of population according to Catholics, Protestants, Jews (and now) Muslims.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
TriuneUnity

Hence to us, the term has political, not merely religious connotations. We largely stopped using the term once other religious groups began to use it.

Yes, the term originates with the Lutherans.

In any case, when the numbers are crunched, I believe that the Lutherans are counted as members of the Protestant contingent, whether or not they call themselves Protestant.

Same for the Anglicans, who may not see themselves as Protestant, but who are counted as such under the Protestant umbrella whenever there is a dvision of population according to Catholics, Protestants, Jews (and now) Muslims.
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That’s true. In as much as we are not Roman Catholic. However, the term is definitely loaded so that it needs to be defined as more than not Roman Catholic. If that were the simple bar for determining a Protestant, than the Orthodox would have to be considered Protestant. To us, the term is more associated with the Calvinist movement and its various offshoots. The stress being on a denial of the real presence, a denial of baptismal regeneration, once saved always saved, free will decisional conversion which is once in a lifetime, etc.

The point being, history is far more complex than simply saying “Luther broke away from Rome and now we have 1000 denominations as a result.” This is ahistorical propaganda and nothing more. Those other denominations still would have come about with or without Luther. They just may have been less successful.
 
AmateurPianist said:
Easy:

The date that the original one organization split into multiple organizations became the date that one organization was not the exclusive Church of Jesus Christ in the sight of God.

This would be no later than the date that the Oriental Orthodox split which was in the 400s I believe. It might be earlier if God viewed some other organizations like perhaps the Donatists as also part of the true church.

I can’t of course speak for God in this matter, but that would be at least the methodology I would use.
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The Eastern schism took place in 1054 AD, not in the 400’s. Why would you believe that everyone who broke away from the original Church would still be considered part of the true Church? The apostles warned the early Church that they were not to believe anything unless it came from them or one whom they had sent. The Donatists were certainly not part of the true Church.
 
SteveVH said:
The Eastern schism took place in 1054 AD, not in the 400’s. Why would you believe that everyone who broke away from the original Church would still be considered part of the true Church? The apostles warned the early Church that they were not to believe anything unless it came from them or one whom they had sent. The Donatists were certainly not part of the true Church.
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Yes but the split with the Oriental Orthodox WAS in the 400’s, you know the difference…right?
 
TiuneUnity

*The point being, history is far more complex than simply saying “Luther broke away from Rome and now we have 1000 denominations as a result.” This is ahistorical propaganda and nothing more. Those other denominations still would have come about with or without Luther. They just may have been less successful. *

But Luther gave the impetus to reform, showed Christendom could be broken up by political alliances, setting the example; and so others followed, reforming the reformers ad nauseam.

Christendom today is thoroughly fragmented from disunity and now more than ever prey to the forces of secularism. United we stand, divided we fall.

Satan’s militant strategy: Divide and conquer!

Even inside the Catholic Church it is working as never before.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
TiuneUnity

*The point being, history is far more complex than simply saying “Luther broke away from Rome and now we have 1000 denominations as a result.” This is ahistorical propaganda and nothing more. Those other denominations still would have come about with or without Luther. They just may have been less successful. *

But Luther gave the impetus to reform, showed Christendom could be broken up by political alliances, setting the example; and so others followed, reforming the reformers ad nauseam.

Christendom today is thoroughly fragmented from disunity and now more than ever prey to the forces of secularism. United we stand, divided we fall.

Satan’s militant strategy: Divide and conquer!

Even inside the Catholic Church it is working as never before.
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One could read this history entirely differently. Protestantism in all it’s variations is not the result of Lutheranism, but the result of Catholicism. The non-Lutheran reformation groups that broke off were not doing it primarily because Luther had shown it could be done. He was simply the first in a series of groups that broke away, largely because of conditions created by the Catholic Church - many of them political conditions that made political change identical with religious schism. Such an interpretation fits the historical facts much better I think. People put way too much on Luther’s shoulders.
 
SteveVH said:
The Eastern schism took place in 1054 AD, not in the 400’s. Why would you believe that everyone who broke away from the original Church would still be considered part of the true Church? The apostles warned the early Church that they were not to believe anything unless it came from them or one whom they had sent. The Donatists were certainly not part of the true Church.
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If there is a schism because of differences in theology, which group is the original group? If you divide your perennials, which plant is the original plant? In cell division, which cell is the original cell? You are making assumptions about what the “original” church is.
 
Bluegoat

*The non-Lutheran reformation groups that broke off were not doing it primarily because Luther had shown it could be done. He was simply the first in a series of groups that broke away, **largely because of conditions created by the Catholic Church **- many of them political conditions that made political change identical with religious schism. Such an interpretation fits the historical facts much better I think. People put way too much on Luther’s shoulders. *

It is precisely because Luther got away with it that Henry could see himself getting away with it. No? And when Luther and Henry both got away with it, the floodgates were opened. They are still open.

Christianity is more divided than ever, not exactly what Christ and Paul preached.

I doubt you are going to blame the Catholic Church for all the present divisions in Christianity. 😉
 
Charlemagne_II said:
I doubt you are going to blame the Catholic Church for all the present divisions in Christianity. 😉
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Not all of them, no, but I think the CC carries a lot of the weight of the Reformation.

But I blame sin for the divisions within Christianity. Those without too.
 
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