You don't think there's currently a sense of a universal church? That we are not all unified as Christians in some sense, regardless of the things that separate us? The question is one of governance, which there was no official governing structure. No formal hierarchy of any sort, just a loose conglomerate joined together by confessing Jesus as Christ.
I was unaware that gnostics founded Catholicism. All this time I thought they were based on the historic tradition of the public declaration of Jesus as Christ, a declaration that alone was sufficient to get the confessor killed if he would not recant.
Damning? For what possible reason would that be damning? The East makes the same claim-simply because that's the way it was-somebody had to do it. I'm dating myself but I had a baseball signed by Willie McCovey of the Sf Giants way back in the day. I have no pictures of the event, no one bothered to write about because it wasn't a particularly relevant matter and any eyewitnesses were older folk and gone now and no one was expected to question it or inspect my life in microscopic detail anyway. But if they wanted to deny that it ever happened they certainly could do so-and I couldn't prove otherwise. Maybe I could point to circumstantial evidence such as the fact that we lived within 60 miles of the park and McCovey played for the Giants and my age is right to have been there at the appropriate time and some old sports magazines report that he sometimes signed baseballs for fans, etc. History isn't always recorded at all, let alone neatly and perfectly. That doesn't damn anything.
Galileo was no more than the prodigy of all that came before him in the west-and so the Catholic Church was the primary reason that he knew as much as he did to begin with. Anyone who asserts that the church opposed education through her many centuries of existence would have to be ignorant of history, or purposefully obtuse for some reason.
Your analogy doesn't make sense, or at least doesn't fit the picture that I'm speaking to. The issue isn't that there is a void of historical information but that the Catholic claims do not fit with the historical evidence we do have. It would be more like if you had a baseball signed by someone who there is no record he played for the Giants and in fact we have pretty solid rosters for the time you claim he did and insisted that it was signed by him during his time as a Giant. The historical record indicates that Rome was a council governed church, not a single episcopate, until around the mid-3rd century. The eastern church also had late-defined ecclesial structures with the beginnings happning around the same time in the mid-3rd century and then becoming more and more divergent as the seat of the empire became more firmly entrenched in Constantinople and the various emperors became more involved in church matters. Neither one of the claims tracks back further, nor does the historical picture of the earliest church fit with the claims of episcopal descent. The idea is a myth rather than an historical reality.
Made no mention of Galileo, but there were plenty of library burnings and destruction of classical philosophical schools and the pseudo-enshrinement of Platonic thought(and later Aristotlean) from the Catholic church. They weren't some noble preserver of academics, and routinely found themselves opposed to legitimate gospel witness(such as the opposition and eventual martyrdom of Jan Hus for preaching in German to Germans).
They don't conflict though. The biggest problem is that the record is sketchy-and you're pretending to know it nonetheless.
All the more reason for God to have placed the authority into one centralized entity.
You're only presuming how the church was-and should've evolved.
Sure, dismiss the larger part of western history so you can justify unreserved Catholic-bashing. The church did, in fact, preserve what learning there was in the west in early centuries and then developed the educational system in Europe. That’s western history 101. Has nothing to do with nobility necessarily, but simple truth. Catholic figures at any point in time and place burning libraries has nothing to do with the fact that every berg in the Roman Empire and beyond in the west came to have schools as that was viewed to be of great benefit to society and humankind and the CC did that and the entire world has benefited by the learning gradually expanded into much of the knowledge the world has today. The presence of the Catholic church and anything it did for better or worse and changes it went through covers a huge time period, involving many centuries. You spend a lot of effort biting the hand that fed us all-just so you can defend the pitifully vacuous doctrine known as Sola Scriptura and distance yourself from the church that shaped the western world for the better overall.
The record is complete enough to make the Catholic claims suspect. There's no pretending, even in the Catholic reconstruction the problem presents itself which is why there always seems to be overlap of the supposed "bishops" prior to Stephen, because what we can reconstruct indicates that Rome was governed by a council of bishops and none of the records indicate that Peter took part in that council(which you would expect if he truly led the church). I'm not sure why you're pretending we're ignorant about the time period, except as an attempt to try to rescue the Catholic myth.
Nope, just evidence that the claims of centralized authority came from temporal power.
I'm not presuming anything, I'm looking at what we know of the early church and re-constructing the most likely scenario. What comes from doing so is the denial of Catholic revisionist histories such as the supposed line of popes(which even if we ignore the fact that there likely was no true pope until Leo at the earliest has been broken during vacancies and times there were multiple popes at the same time).
It's not Catholic bashing, it's recognition of history. The Catholic church is no worse or better than any other human corporation, but it is clearly a human structure built around secular power.
It's not humans taking over the role of God. That effectively happens every time someone takes on the task of interpreting Scripture-regardless of how right or wrong they've interpreted it. It's a matter of God ensuring that His teachings on faith and morals will be kept intact regardless of human sin and weakness. If, for example, a pope were to impregnate a woman and pay to have the fetus aborted, tragic as that would be, it doesn't alter or compromise the fact that the Church is staunchly and officially forever prolife and against abortion-as a matter of doctrine/dogma (while not all denominations even have any kind of official position on it, incidentally). Now, I've debated abortion with Sola Scripture adherents and, as the bible doesn't address the matter of abortion directly or in any way of expressing a command against it, some feel quite free and justified in supporting abortion.
Because you're only piecing together bits of sketchy circumstantial evidence and speculating from there. As is often the case, regardless of how many wish to admit it, Scripture isn't at all clear on many points, even relevant ones. Meanwhile Catholicism has its Scriptural basis as well, and Rome carried a preeminence in status among the churches with the Catholic bishop recognized as having primacy even by the EO. But as to authority, to have the final say or give the official stamp of approval on any given church decision, that was a matter of debate early on, with both sides of that position supported in the east at one time or another. So the question becomes, was the power or authority valid, and was it challenged due to jealousy, etc, which there was evidence for as well. My real point is that God should have such a centralized human-based designated authority somewhere, and at the same time we should never expect any human being to be impeccable.
No, it fit and followed perfectly
Neither is the word Trinity. And Catholic just means "universal", which is the idea. Some people have this fallacious view that they just know how the early church looked and felt and practiced (and how it must remain) and even believe they're closely emulating that today -and that's almost sheer speculation. Just the reverence for and focus on the Eucharist, alone, in both the eastern and western ancient churches is the same now as it was in the early church, as seen in Scripture as well as ECFs, regardless of how more formalized things may or not may not have become since then, while Protestants are all over the board on that matter. In any case, when I read the bible or ECFs or early church histories regarding the Lords Supper and other matters of faith and practice, the "flavor" is quite consistent with the EO and Catholic churches.
Sorry-I had missed your point there. But IMHO that only solidifies the point. Peter, I'm sure, is a saint, an occupant of heaven. But like us all, he continued to sin in this life, while also presumably growing stronger in holiness -in faith, hope, and love. My model for saints, either way, are all sinners to begin with. And the gift of infallibility only means that no error will enter church teachings-in spite of man's sinfulness, weaknesses, limitations, etc. That doesn't mean a pope should proceed in wanton sin-while a few, very few, actually did so with the majority otherwise being quite holy which is meaningful considering there've been over 260 -but it means that he was very human, weak, while nonetheless used as a vessel by God.
I see no reason God should have a human standard of judgment, as if He is incapable of doing so without human intervention. Trying to sweep aside and discredit historical reconstruction because it doesn't suit your myth is no reason to do so. We have enough to come to some reasonable conclusions, and among those is that the various episcopates developed over time and that Rome's claims of authority started meager in Stephen trying to avoid having a regional council called(a claim that was discredited because the council was called, though Stephen's position triumphed at council) and further strengthened by Leo through a late appearing interpretation(that is decidedly self-serving) and then required even further development by Gregory VI and VII and Innocent IX before we get anything approaching the modern Catholic position on the papacy. The claim that this governmental structure was handed down through all of history doesn't make sense of the information that we do have, but that doesn't mean we should discard the evidence we have in order to maintain the claim especially not out of some misguided idea about what God "should" have done.
I don't know what "a human standard of judgment" is meant to imply. I'm only saying that God would have a human designated entity guided by the Spirit to keep His faith fully intact, similar to how readers of the bible often believe the HS guides them. Divine intervention, IOW.
Just don't like revisionism or sloppy self-serving scholarship. Reminds me of the Jesus Seminar.
God acts with reason, for one thing. The doctrine of Sola Scriptura is unreasonable-a man-made tradition. And with the information we have, we do at least know that the Catholic structure was in place early, even if in relatively nascent form. The life of the church is like a person in any case, subject to growth and change. To assume that a freeze-frame vision of the church locked into some semi-imagined lines is how it must always be is a bit naïve-if that's what you're considering. She doesn't need to dance to anyone's tune-except for God's. And while her people may fail miserably at that at times, they won't fail when it comes to ensuring that His "deposit of faith" remains intact. The Reformers managed to butcher that part pretty bad.
That's a claim, a claim not supported by the historical picture nor clearly elaborated in Scripture but instead rests on the thinnest speculation that ignores both immediate and larger context of Matthew 16 in order to support. Ekklesia in Matthew does not mean governmental structure/designated clergy but speaks to the entire congregation of believers. Most of the theology surrounding the Catholic claims started to take shape shortly before Leo 1, finding its fullest justification in Augustine against the Donatists in order to legitimize using legal censure against clerical enemies in order to preserve temporal authority.
The only revisionism is that of Catholic myths.
That's just like...your opinion, man.
Yes, we're all saints-or hopefully so at the end of the day. But saints as honored by Catholic-and the Eastern churches as well- are simply those who the church feel confident to name has having "made it", that are residents of heaven IOW, and whose lives here on earth serve as models to encourage and instruct us all. And as you should know, Catholicism teaches the Bible to be God's word, inerrant in those matters that He wants man to know for the purpose of his salvation. As you should also know, many misinterpret the bible on important matters, with much disagreement at times even between those who regard the bible as the sole rule of faith for determining Christian truths.
