When did the Church Go off the Rails

[FrankSchnabel]

When did the church go off the rails?

To determine that, a protestant historian must first know what it means to be on the rails. From the our modern vantage point one therefore first has to define orthodox Christianity and look back and see when the Church started officially teaching contrary to it. But there is not much on which protestants can agree, so the whole enterprise is kind of doomed from the start.

But let’s narrow the focus and just look at salvation/justification. Surely, if we look at that one area, we will be able track the ups and downs of orthodoxy over time. And protestants have done that. But such efforts are hampered by a selective reading of the fathers and their conclusions are flawed as a result. If they are honest with the facts, however, they have to conclude that sola fide, if it isn’t an innovation of the 1500’s, was certainly a doctrinal development which didn’t gain any credence until Luther’s time. Elements of it (e.g. antinomianism) existed even back in apostolic times, but the particular package or constellation of ideas which the Reformers put together was never before taught. So in a real sense one has to conclude that the church fell off the tracks from the get go as soon as the last 'postle croaked.

 

[sires6]

Having crossed the Tiber in 2005, I found I was watching the rails…

and they dissapeared into the ground… the ground labeled TRUTH.

 

[CThomas]

Hey, guys. I’m late to this game, but since there hasn’t been as much Protestant response on this discussion thread as usual, I wanted to offer my thoughts.

I want to emphasize a point that was alluded to but that I think deserves much more emphasis. The question of “when” the Church “went off the rails” or what have you strikes me (and I think I’m in accord here with the predominant view among historical Protestants) as essentially misconceived. There was no sudden “moment” when things went from good to bad, on our view. The problem is one that occurred gradually. People and institutions are responding to historical situations, and tend to slightly overreact in one direction or the other in response to heresies or other problems facing the Church. Gradually over time, slight overempheses can compound on each other and drag the institutional Church off course, requiring correction (as we see ad nauseam happened to the Israelites under the old covenant, for example).

I’m a lawyer by profession, and the example I like to use to convey this point commonsensically is the U.S. Constituion. I think most people agree that if you look at what the Constitution actually says and compare it with the doctrines developed by the Supreme Court interpreting the provisions of the Constitution, you’ll find that in many cases, the decisions have distorted the Constitution nearly beyond recognition. One might ask, “When did this happen? When did the Supreme Court go off the rails?” Of course, the answer is, “Never at any particular moment of time.” Some early decisions were rightly decided. Others took a slightly slanted reading of some constitutional provision or other. Later decisions took these minor problems and stretched them a bit. Now, 200 or so years later, we have often developed doctrines that are plainly wrong, built slowly over time through incremental decisionmaking.

This is the model through which I currently view the development of Church doctrine over time. Lots of good and often Godly people doing their best to stay true to God’s word and develop doctrines honestly. Sometimes they screw up, though, and sometimes errors can accumulate and over time become significant. Catholics at least since Newman have agreed that the Catholic Church has developed its doctrines over time, as an oak from an acorn. But Protestants examine these changes over time and see some of them as perfectly right and others as having accumulated error. I think most people if not pre-committed to the view that the Catholic Church can never be wrong in its doctrines and viewing the evidence on a case-by-case basis would tend to agree with that assessment.

Anyway, that’s my good-faith effort to respond to the initial question.

Best regards,

CThomas

 

[Teflon93]

Anyway, that’s my good-faith effort to respond to the initial question.

Best regards,

CThomas

Well, the answer to the Constitutional question is easy: we went off the rails with Marbury v. Madison.

The reason the point in time is necessary was alluded to earlier. Protestants cannot simultaneously hold to a wayward Church early in history,yet reject the Catholic tradition and Scripture they maintain; nor one late in history, and hold to the notion that Christ abides with the Church. Christ either founded the Catholic Church or did not. The Church either binds the faithful or does not. Christ either abides with his Bride or does not.

Our good faith effort is to seek precision in the answer. As a lawyer, I’m sure you appreciate precision.

 

[NotWorthy]

Hey, guys. I’m late to this game, but since there hasn’t been as much Protestant response on this discussion thread as usual, I wanted to offer my thoughts.

…Anyway, that’s my good-faith effort to respond to the initial question.

Best regards,

CThomas

Thank you, CThomas for that response, for it makes sense. But the problem with this analysis (maybe it’s not the analysis, but it’s the attempts churches have made to fix the problem) is the churches that have tried to return to the biblical Church are farther away then closer.

We see Bible based churches and Apostolic churches who all try to return to the 1st century Church. But none of them teach what we find in the Early Church Fathers. They are farther away from the 1st century Church then they claim that the Church of today is.

 

[CThomas]

NotWorthy – thanks. On the question of the Fathers, I think that’s an interesting point. I recently read all the extant writings of the Apostolic fathers through the first 150 years or so after the last NT book was written. My big picture impression was that these writings don’t provide a huge amount of information on the specific doctrinal views of the Church during this time. There’s some good stuff in there, but it’s pretty scanty for a while. A lot of the later Church Fathers do provide a lot more (and I still haven’t read all of them), but I really discount the value of someone writing, say, three or four hundred years after the apostles as being especially likely to adhere to the original vision of Christ. Again – look at how far the Constitutional interpretation has devolved in less than 200 years! (Substantially less in the case of many of the most problematic amendments, which were adopted only after the Civil War!) So I’m reluctant to put too much stock in the later Fathers, and the earliest ones, in the first 100 or so years following the apostles, strike me as frustratingly scanty.

CThomas

 

[NotWorthy]

NotWorthy – thanks. On the question of the Fathers, I think that’s an interesting point. I recently read all the extant writings of the Apostolic fathers through the first 150 years or so after the last NT book was written. My big picture impression was that these writings don’t provide a huge amount of information on the specific doctrinal views of the Church during this time. There’s some good stuff in there, but it’s pretty scanty for a while. A lot of the later Church Fathers do provide a lot more (and I still haven’t read all of them), but I really discount the value of someone writing, say, three or four hundred years after the apostles as being especially likely to adhere to the original vision of Christ. Again – look at how far the Constitutional interpretation has devolved in less than 200 years! (Substantially less in the case of many of the most problematic amendments, which were adopted only after the Civil War!) So I’m reluctant to put too much stock in the later Fathers, and the earliest ones, in the first 100 or so years following the apostles, strike me as frustratingly scanty.

CThomas

I have two thoughts on that:
a) So very little of what they wrote has survived, sadly. It seems that when countries are over-run, the first thing the conquerors try to do is wipe out the culture, which includes as many written works as possible.
b) If you read how the early Church handled what She considered heretical teachings, even from established Fathers (i.e. Tertullian), then the acceptance of writings that are considered “hey, where did that come from?” by us today were probably the established teachings of the time.

My question is from your readings of the complete early fathers (from what source did you get the complete early faithers, btw), was there evidence of:

• the real Presence in the Eucharist?
• Confession?
• Infant Baptism?
• Confirmation?

Thanks!

 

[jmcrae]

I have two thoughts on that:
a) So very little of what they wrote has survived, sadly.

Which is still a lot to read, though. Our Vocations Director has a basement full of the writings of the Early Fathers, and I’m sure I’d never get through just those books all in one lifetime, which is by no means close to all of them - it seems astounding that Thomas has already read everything that exists.

I also have to assume that he is a scholar of ancient languages, since most of the stuff written by the Early Fathers hasn’t been translated into English, yet.

Even the little bit that has been translated into English, though, seems to show a much more Catholic view of the world than otherwise - they certainly didn’t believe in “once saved always saved,” or “faith alone” or anything like that. And in 300 AD, nobody was talking about the Bible, yet - that didn’t arrive for another century.

(Funny story - when I first started reading the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, as a Protestant, here is a transcript of my exact thought process, "This guy is just as crazy as Scotty (my Catholic friend) - you’d almost think they - uh - believed in - uh - the same religion - really, the same religion? Uh. Sure looks the same. Huh. )

 

[reggieM]

IMy question is from your readings of the complete early fathers (from what source did you get the complete early faithers, btw), was there evidence of:

• the real Presence in the Eucharist?

“Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.” —St. Ignatius of Antioch - “Letter to the Smyrnaeans”, paragraph 6. circa 80-110 A.D.

“So then, if the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ, which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life, when it is nourished by Christ’s Blood and Body and is His member? As the blessed apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, ‘For we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones’ (Eph. 5:30). He is not talking about some kind of ‘spiritual’ and ‘invisible’ man, ‘for a spirit does not have flesh an bones’ (Lk. 24:39). No, he is talking of the organism possessed by a real human being, composed of flesh and nerves and bones. It is this which is nourished by the cup which is His Blood, and is fortified by the bread which is His Body. The stem of the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and ‘the grain of wheat falls into the earth’ (Jn. 12:24), dissolves, rises again, multiplied by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally after skilled processing, is put to human use. These two then receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ.” --St. Ignatius of Antioch - "Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely

Named Gnosis". Book 5:2, 2-3, circa 180 A.D. “For just as the bread which comes from the earth, having received the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly, so our bodies, having received the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, because they have the hope of the resurrection.” St. Irenaeus --“Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely named Gnosis”. Book 4:18 4-5, circa 180 A.D.

therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/a5.html

 

[sires6]

Well, the answer to the Constitutional question is easy: we went off the rails with Marbury v. Madison.

The reason the point in time is necessary was alluded to earlier. Protestants cannot simultaneously hold to a wayward Church early in history,yet reject the Catholic tradition and Scripture they maintain; nor one late in history, and hold to the notion that Christ abides with the Church. Christ either founded the Catholic Church or did not. The Church either binds the faithful or does not. Christ either abides with his Bride or does not.

Our good faith effort is to seek precision in the answer. As a lawyer, I’m sure you appreciate precision.

Excellent answer! Excellent!

I too looked at the Early church Fathers and I agree with what you said initially, CT. I too held that they weren’t specific about this thing or that… the reality is that since they were so close to the “real deal” the Apostles and the first teachings, you have to look at what they didn’t say, and what they didn’t cover and what they spoke against.

If you look at it like you do at the gaps in the exactitude of the Constitution, you will see there is latitude. They were following the Traditions as we follow the Constitution. they had the Holy Spirit, the Church (Magesterium) and the Pope to help guide and keep to the straight and narrow, while we have the three branches of the Goverment (see a parallel).

Any time you have a wild hare in either of these groupings (Arianism or self-proclaimed anti-taxationists or any other similar idea) you have a majority in a time period speaking against it or a series of individuals speaking through history with the same voice.

You don’t have this with Protestantism… there is no concerted series of voices that speak “Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura” throughout history, nor one group that speaks with certainty and CLARITY in history. Calvin, Knox, Luther and Zwingli all spoke in different voices, different attitudes and different levels of exactitude.

Throughout history, from the time Christ walked the earth to now, the Church has always said “Eucharist = body and blood” and so with other foundational beliefs of the Church.

I had to ask myself, at one point in my learning, that if I believe one thing about the Church and cannot find it in any other church, am I a Baptist anymore if I am not a Catholic yet? If I believe in transubstantion, can I be what I once was? And if you are a literal interpreter of the Bible, you must read John 6 as he told them to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood, hence the reason so many in the very early Church (it is even hinted at in the Bible) were accused of cannabilism.

And if they were accused of cannabilism, why would it be a “symbolic” measure? There is nothing symbolic about being accused of cannabalism.

If we are the only ones who have said for 2000 years that Christ is present in the Eucharist fully and that this is his body and blood, where does that leave the rest of “us” (those who don’t believe this)?

And that’s not even talking about the Trinity…

Brother, come home. Find your “tipping point” (the place were you are not Protestant anymore but not quite fully Catholic) and step out in faith.

The Church is ringing the dinner bell and it’s time to come home!

 

[LilyM]

Hey, guys. I’m late to this game, but since there hasn’t been as much Protestant response on this discussion thread as usual, I wanted to offer my thoughts.

I want to emphasize a point that was alluded to but that I think deserves much more emphasis. The question of “when” the Church “went off the rails” or what have you strikes me (and I think I’m in accord here with the predominant view among historical Protestants) as essentially misconceived. There was no sudden “moment” when things went from good to bad, on our view. The problem is one that occurred gradually. People and institutions are responding to historical situations, and tend to slightly overreact in one direction or the other in response to heresies or other problems facing the Church. Gradually over time, slight overempheses can compound on each other and drag the institutional Church off course, requiring correction (as we see ad nauseam happened to the Israelites under the old covenant, for example).

I’m a lawyer by profession, and the example I like to use to convey this point commonsensically is the U.S. Constituion. I think most people agree that if you look at what the Constitution actually says and compare it with the doctrines developed by the Supreme Court interpreting the provisions of the Constitution, you’ll find that in many cases, the decisions have distorted the Constitution nearly beyond recognition. One might ask, “When did this happen? When did the Supreme Court go off the rails?” Of course, the answer is, “Never at any particular moment of time.” Some early decisions were rightly decided. Others took a slightly slanted reading of some constitutional provision or other. Later decisions took these minor problems and stretched them a bit. Now, 200 or so years later, we have often developed doctrines that are plainly wrong, built slowly over time through incremental decisionmaking.

This is the model through which I currently view the development of Church doctrine over time. Lots of good and often Godly people doing their best to stay true to God’s word and develop doctrines honestly. Sometimes they screw up, though, and sometimes errors can accumulate and over time become significant. Catholics at least since Newman have agreed that the Catholic Church has developed its doctrines over time, as an oak from an acorn. But Protestants examine these changes over time and see some of them as perfectly right and others as having accumulated error. I think most people if not pre-committed to the view that the Catholic Church can never be wrong in its doctrines and viewing the evidence on a case-by-case basis would tend to agree with that assessment.

Anyway, that’s my good-faith effort to respond to the initial question.

Best regards,

CThomas

Umm … small but significant detail comes to mind though. God didn’t promise the Israelites, nor the writers of the Constitution, what Jesus promised to the Apostles - that both He personally and the Holy Spirit would be with them and the Church built upon them FOREVER, in order to teach it and preserve it in ALL truth and protect it against the gates of Hell.

And if Christ’s own church has gone astray to the point where it teaches error, the gates of Hell have indeed prevailed, since there’s no such thing as a sure authority from which we can learn Christ’s truth. Sad indeed, when Christ promised us precisely that sure authority and precisely His own truth.

And don’t say the Bible is that authority - we all know how THAT gets twisted this way and that by many people who read it. It isn’t self-interpreting, as the Ethiopian freely acknowledged to Phillip and Peter said in his epistle.

Neither say that people just somehow mysteriously get infused with the Holy Spirit and ‘know’ that truth without reference to any outside teaching authority - again, Jim Jones and David Koresh doubtless thought THEY were inspired by the Holy Spirit, as has every heretic through the ages.

 

[pneuma07]

.

I want to emphasize a point that was alluded to but that I think deserves much more emphasis. The question of “when” the Church “went off the rails” or what have you strikes me (and I think I’m in accord here with the predominant view among historical Protestants) as essentially misconceived. There was no sudden “moment” when things went from good to bad, on our view. The problem is one that occurred gradually. People and institutions are responding to historical situations, and tend to slightly overreact in one direction or the other in response to heresies or other problems facing the Church. Gradually over time, slight overempheses can compound on each other and drag the institutional Church off course, requiring correction (as we see ad nauseam happened to the Israelites under the old covenant, for example).

… Now, 200 or so years later, we have often developed doctrines that are plainly wrong, built slowly over time through incremental decisionmaking.

This is the model through which I currently view the development of Church doctrine over time. Lots of good and often Godly people doing their best to stay true to God’s word and develop doctrines honestly. Sometimes they screw up, though, and sometimes errors can accumulate and over time become significant. Catholics at least since Newman have agreed that the Catholic Church has developed its doctrines over time, as an oak from an acorn. But Protestants examine these changes over time and see some of them as perfectly right and others as having accumulated error. I think most people if not pre-committed to the view that the Catholic Church can never be wrong in its doctrines and viewing the evidence on a case-by-case basis would tend to agree with that assessment.

CThomas

     Hi CThomas !

I’d like to follow two lines in commenting your nice post.

Let’s consider gradualism first. This vision appears to be very far from what plenty of guys go on saying, that the (leadership of the visible) Church went off the rails in, let’s put 312, or 380, or, say, 187, or 573 or whenever. And it looks quite in symmetry with the “development” vision you correctly see in Catholicism
( within which Newman’s own masterful exposition was itself a …development of an ancient position).
The above mentioned guys, to be fair, do not see the discontinuity as followed by rigid and perfect conservation. They usually see that, once in 380 or 187 the Church started deviating ( =discontinuty) , She would go gradually astray and astray. The seeming contrast between that position and gradualism shrinks again, IMHO, if you consider that a gradual deviation ( think just of a physical movement) from a straight line has a beginning. You can have a huge deviation, as a sum of many and many minor deviations, only if at a given moment this new sort of movement has a beginning. Or, if you prefer, only if you do have, in a given time, the first minor deviation. Which is a deviation, in itself, since with it the straight line has been already left, and we have gone off rails. That given time is then a discontinuity.
So, we’re, after all, back to our question. It can be formulated
“When did the Church begin going off the Rails ?”, if we prefer, but if you can more or less agree with the paragraph above, the substance is the same as our topic.

If, before giving your own answer to this question, you should prefer to ask “When did the development begin ?”, the answer is very simple, IMHO: from the very beginning.
“Acts” show us more than one good example of developments
( such as the decision of the Council of Jerusalem, or the institution of deacons). .No discontinuity then.

What I’d consider now is “perspicuity”. You do not use this term in the post. Yet, the concept looks central, IMHO, in the exposition. By stating that incremental accumulated deviations have produced in the Church an amount of errors which are more or less manifest to the unbiased observer, you mean those errors appear perspicuous.
In order to assess the nature of a deviation which is not simply self-defeating, I have to consider I know the straight line, or orthodoxy. Perspicuity of error means then perspicuity of truth; I define deviation by showing explicitly or implicitly the straight line.
Now, my first difficulty with this is that the many unbiased guys who do show, often with high confidence, what the deviations of the Church are, show me, explicitly or implicitly, not one but many straight lines, which are different form each other (as their lists of the deviations are)

 

[Teflon93]

What I’d consider now is “perspicuity”. You do not use this term in the post. Yet, the concept looks central, IMHO, in the exposition. By stating that incremental accumulated deviations have produced in the Church an amount of errors which are more or less manifest to the unbiased observer, you mean those errors appear perspicuous.
In order to assess the nature of a deviation which is not simply self-defeating, I have to consider I know the straight line, or orthodoxy. Perspicuity of error means then perspicuity of truth; I define deviation by showing explicitly or implicitly the straight line.
Now, my first difficulty with this is that the many unbiased guys who do show, often with high confidence, what the deviations of the Church are, show me, explicitly or implicitly, not one but many straight lines, which are different form each other (as their lists of the deviations are)

As a stats guy, I like it!

It also begs the question: “If this deviation was made up by certain practices of the Church, as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli were wont to claim, and the Counter-Reformation significantly reduced the abuses of these practices, why did the Protestants still protest?”

In other words, once the alleged “deviation” from Truth was reduced through the Counter-Reformation, why didn’t the Protestants come home then?

 

[CThomas]

Hey, Pneuma. Good to hear from you on this. I think the answer to the question when the discontinuity initially began is that there never was any period of pure orthodoxy unadulterated by confusions and misunderstandings. Even while the apostles walked the Earth, the extant documents are rife with evidence showing errors. The Judaizers were driving Paul up the wall all during this time, of course. Even Peter had a bit of a “relapse” on such issues and needed to be taken to task by Paul. If the Church wasn’t in complete harmony and free of confusion while the real live apostles were here with us, it’s hardly surprising to me that errors would continue to various degrees afterward too. Again, there was never any mgaically “pure” Church, free of error, to depart from.

The lesson I draw from this – and it’s just my honest opinion looking at the history – is that the Lord’s guarantees to the Church do not mean that the Church is necessarily all going to be moving along unanimously and in perfect harmony. It would be great if God’s people could all agree on everything, but in this world of sin and limited knowledge as opposed to in the hereafter it’s natural to expect disagreements and mistakes. And if this was the state of affairs when we actually had the apostles themselves here, it certainly is no surprise to me that it’s still the case now.

This also, I think, provides the basis for my answer to your point about perspicuity. I think the small core of foundational and truly critical doctrines underlying Christianity are, in fact, quite perspicuous, as one would expect. But I fully agree with what I assume is your view that there are many hard questions where it’s not at all obvious what the right answer is. That’s fine with me. Like in every other part of life, God has not chosen to spoon-feed us clear and easy answers to every question about the faith (just as He has not chosen to give us clear and easy answers to any other complex and important areas in life, like science or mathematics). I think it’s our job to take the clear and essential doctrines and stand by them firmly, and with respect to the hard questions, use our brains and do our best to come to our best answers, maintaining humility and a sense of perspective. I think that’s sort of what Paul was telling the Romans when he said not to get hung up on debatable questions – he was telling us that we should tolerate each other’s differences of opinions on those debatable questions (not the essentials of the Gospel, where we know Paul was very forceful that only one answer was permissible).

Catch you later.

CThomas

 

[NotWorthy]

Hey, Pneuma. Good to hear from you on this. I think the answer to the question when the discontinuity initially began is that there never was any period of pure orthodoxy unadulterated by confusions and misunderstandings. Even while the apostles walked the Earth, the extant documents are rife with evidence showing errors. The Judaizers were driving Paul up the wall all during this time, of course. Even Peter had a bit of a “relapse” on such issues and needed to be taken to task by Paul. If the Church wasn’t in complete harmony and free of confusion while the real live apostles were here with us, it’s hardly surprising to me that errors would continue to various degrees afterward too. Again, there was never any mgaically “pure” Church, free of error, to depart from.

Where was the teaching error of Peter’s. It’s simply not there. It was a personal error, as he refrained from eating with Gentiles while Judaizers were around, but he never taught in error. Your conclusion, therefore, is incorrect.

The lesson I draw from this – and it’s just my honest opinion looking at the history – is that the Lord’s guarantees to the Church do not mean that the Church is necessarily all going to be moving along unanimously and in perfect harmony. It would be great if God’s people could all agree on everything, but in this world of sin and limited knowledge as opposed to in the hereafter it’s natural to expect disagreements and mistakes. And if this was the state of affairs when we actually had the apostles themselves here, it certainly is no surprise to me that it’s still the case now.

No, whenever you see in the early Church a theological or moral dispute, there is an authority to resolve the dispute.

Without that authority, you simply have churches splitting up and going their own separate ways. For exhibit A, I’d like to present the Protestant Reformation. The first thing they did away with was authority.

This also, I think, provides the basis for my answer to your point about perspicuity. I think the small core of foundational and truly critical doctrines underlying Christianity are, in fact, quite perspicuous, as one would expect. But I fully agree with what I assume is your view that there are many hard questions where it’s not at all obvious what the right answer is. That’s fine with me. Like in every other part of life, God has not chosen to spoon-feed us clear and easy answers to every question about the faith (just as He has not chosen to give us clear and easy answers to any other complex and important areas in life, like science or mathematics). I think it’s our job to take the clear and essential doctrines and stand by them firmly, and with respect to the hard questions, use our brains and do our best to come to our best answers, maintaining humility and a sense of perspective. I think that’s sort of what Paul was telling the Romans when he said not to get hung up on debatable questions – he was telling us that we should tolerate each other’s differences of opinions on those debatable questions (not the essentials of the Gospel, where we know Paul was very forceful that only one answer was permissible).

Catch you later.

CThomas

I’ve got to ask: What is “essential doctrines”. For instance, to the Catholic Church, from the very beginning, the Eucharist is the most essential of essential doctrines. To most other faiths, it’s simply not there.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

Without that authority, you simply have churches splitting up and going their own separate ways. For exhibit A, I’d like to present the Protestant Reformation. The first thing they did away with was authority.
.

NW brother, what of clement writing to corinth, that letter is FILLED with the appeal to a multiplicity of elders and not a monarchial head…So now that church went from a group of beleivers leading fellows of faith, to your church as it stands with a monarchial authority, so when the reformation happened it was a case of getting the early church back in place. Though to answer the OP it started falling off at the turn of 2nd-3rd century falling from the early church into the roman church.

 

[Teflon93]

NW brother, what of clement writing to corinth, that letter is FILLED with the appeal to a multiplicity of elders and not a monarchial head…So now that church went from a group of beleivers leading fellows of faith, to your church as it stands with a monarchial authority, so when the reformation happened it was a case of getting the early church back in place. Though to answer the OP it started falling off at the turn of 2nd-3rd century falling from the early church into the roman church.

And where precisely was the early Church restored?

Specifics, please.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

And where precisely was the early Church restored?

Specifics, please.

Approx 1520 is where the seed beginnings got planted, in wittenberg. and is being brought more and more on the rails until the return of our Lord.

 

[jmcrae]

Approx 1520 is where the seed beginnings got planted, in wittenberg. and is being brought more and more on the rails until the return of our Lord.

I doubt that. By the end of his life, Luther said, “I sought to get rid of one Pope; today, everyone I meet is a little Pope.” Or words to that effect.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

I doubt that. By the end of his life, Luther said, “I sought to get rid of one Pope; today, everyone I meet is a little Pope.” Or words to that effect.

And you assume I think that is a bad thing?
There should never have been a pope.IMO