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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
Why are there even denominations to begin with?
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fhansen
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If any truth caused me to change my views, that would only be a positive thing. And it's happened more than once-as it should.
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It’s speculative to say it refers to an apostate church.
It clearly does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church or any Nicene denomination and I expect members will refrain from accusing the Roman Catholic Church of being the “harlot of Babylon” or calling the non-Sabbatarian majority of Protestant churches the “Daughters of Babylon” because this behavior towards fellow Christians who accept the Nicene creed would be unacceptable.
Particularly since the Nicene Creed itself, which is the unifying document showing the correct interpretation of Scriptural verses pertaining to the Holy Trinity, was written by non-Sabbatarians and the 27 book New Testament canon and all major English translations of the Bible including those used by the founders of your denomination were written by non-Sabbatarians, thus you would be invalidating your own sources.
It of course has no relevance to the Orthodox Church since we were never under the control of the Roman Catholic Church.
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The issue of course being the articles you link to are debunked conspiracy theories which contradict both the Bible and History.
On the issue of the word Easter, this word is used in German and English but not Dutch to refer to the Feast of the Resurrection.
But the Romans did not call it that in Latin, neither did the Greeks, nor the Syriac or Aramaic Christians, for the word is not in use outside of the Germanic-speaking lands - rather the word used for the Feast of the Resurrection is Pascha (from the Greek pronunciation of Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover - this is because Christ is called our Paschal Lamb in the New Testament).
Thus even if the word Easter had pagan connections it would be irrelevant since most Christians speaking in most languages don’t use the word Easter to refer to the feast in question, it being used only in English speaking connections.
And the link to Ishtar collapses spectacularly when you realize that those Christains adjacent to where Ishtar actually was worshipped, who reject Sabbatarianism and are sacramental, liturgical Christians, including the Syriac Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Antiochian Orthodox, the Chaldean Catholics, the Maronites, and the Armenians, and the Hagiopolitan Greek Orthodox of Jerusalem (which includes numerous Arabic-speaking Christians in Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Sinai) all refer to the feast in question as Pascha.
However, even in English speaking countries where the word Easter is used, aside from the fact that historical connections to Ishtar have been debunked, the argument remains logically fallacious, being an example of the Nominal Fallacy.
Let’s walk through the logic tree on this, because this will show us why critical thinking is important. The idea that Easter is sinful requires us to accept that (a) celebrating the resurrection of Christ our True God is unscriptural because (b) the name for the feast on which He is resurrected is in (c) a minority of the places where it is celebrated, (d) exclusively Germanic-language speaking countries and at that (e) not all Germanic languages, Dutch for instance calls it Passen, from Pascha, (f) might be related to the name of a Pagan deity based on the name given in the 19th century by neo-Paganist Romanticists, that the feast should not be observed, even though (g) no Christian who calls the feast of the Resurrection Easter has any intention of referring to Ishtar or 19th century neo-Pagan fertility rites?
The entire conspiracy theory is a stack of logical fallacies based upon incomplete information - if you were to read the Latin documents that establish the date for the feast of the Ressurection under the Georgian calendar and many other things, you would not find the word Easter in any of them - you do not find it in the Greek New Testament or in the practice of any Christians outside of the German speaking world.
Also the other tropes mentioned by those who try to claim that Easter is Pagan are not actually part of the formal liturgical worship of Christ our Risen God, but are rather cultural articles that people celebrate with the feast, such as the Easter Bunny and Easter Egg hunts. They are not only entirely harmless, but actively beneficial, for they help make children excited about the holiday. In my childhood, they helped me understand the importance of the Resurrection of our Lord, as did the hymns such as “Christ our Lord Has Risen Today” and “He Lives!” and now having converted to Orthodox, I have realized psalms such as “Arise O Lord” also referred to the resurrection of Christ our God, and the Paschal Troparion has become my favorite hymn in Slavonic chant “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death!”
The danger in not celebrating the Resurrection is in losing focus of the centrality of the Resurrection to the Gospel. As St. Paul said, if Christ had not risen today, Christians would be the most pathetic people to have ever existed - our hope is in the life of the world to come and that hope is reflected in the fact that God became man, died for us on the Cross, and on the third day rose from the grave.
In the Orthodox Church we focus on the Resurrection every Sunday, because that is what we are celebrating when we worship on Sunday (when we worship on the Saturday Sabbath, we are focused on the repose of Christ in the tomb, our departed loved ones, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, due to the typological connection between her womb, which contained Jesus Christ, the Word of God before He was born, and the Holy Sepulchre, which contained the same Christ, the infinite creator of all, while he rested following His passion on the Cross before returning to life on the First Day.
Also for this reason when anyone dies, the comforting greeting we give to them is the same greeting Christians give each other at Easter: “Christ is Risen!” to which the reply is “He is risen indeed!”
Since
Let there be light!
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Well, if I outline or even try to explain, it could be seen as flaming or worse, so I let people read/view and decide..
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That’s actually not true. In the early church, the Western Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East / Ancient Church of the East were united in communion, and were Christianity - there were no schisms among Christians.
All of the bishops were autonomous, with regional bishops serving as the primus inter pares (First among equals) - this is still how the Orthodox and the Church of the East are structured, and it is also the structure that was implemented by the Church of England when it became independent of Rome, and by some of the Lutherans, whereas others implemented related systems of organization that moved autonomy down to the parish.
In England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland however, after the Protestant Reformation the Roman Catholic Church was viciously persecuted, with Penal Laws denying Catholics the write to vote and imposing other civil disibilities, and in some parts of the UK Catholic clergy could be executed. Likewise, Rome was extremely harsh to Protestants and Orthodox. This situation was extremely unfortunate.
Then under Oliver Cromwell, all non-Puritans were persecuted in the UK, including Anglicans.
After the Restoration of the Monarchy, persecution was reduced, but then due to anti-Catholic prejudice, James II was deposed, and replaced by the Dutch monarch William of Orange, but after his death and a brief reversion through Queen Anne the monarchy passed to George I of Hannover - in the process of this increased toleration developed, but Roman Catholics continued to be officially discriminated against into the 19th century. And still are, technically, even today, in that while the laws were changed so that a woman can inherit the throne even if she has a brother, neither could inherit the throne if they were Roman Catholic or were married to a Roman Catholic. Even though the British monarchy is mostly symbolic, this is still discrimination of the sort that would be unconstitutional in the US under the First Amendment.
Likewise it appears that marriage to an Orthodox might also be prohibited - Prince Philip was required to convert from Orthodoxy before marrying Queen Elizabeth II, memory eternal, which has always bothered me, on the other hand there are elements in the reign of King Charles III which are highly favorable to Orthodoxy such as the fact that he was annointed with oil which one of our churches, the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, supplied, while cantors from that same church sang the appropriate hymns in Byzantine chant that had previously been used in the coronation of the Byzantine Emperors, the Greek monarchs and the Russian monarchs, to which the British monarchs are also related, and the British monarchy has donated large amounts for the restoration and preservation of the monasteries on Mount Athos in Greece and elsewhere, some of which were dilapidated and really benefitted from the efforts of King Charles personally when he was Prince of Wales.
So as an Orthodox, I like that, although I would be happier if the Churches of England and Scotland were fully disestablished (its establishment is arguably connected to it having been forced to accept female bishops) and would be happier still if the only restrictions on religious affiliation for the monarchy were profession of the Nicene Creed, as a means of ensuring someone who denied the Trinity could not become monarch of the UK.
In the US unfortunately we are unable to make such a requirement on our presidents, although in theory almost of them have been Trinitarians (the largest number were Episcopalians, but with the decline of that church lately most have either been Methodist or Presbyterian). John Adams was a Unitarian, albeit one who still believed in the New Testament as divinely inspired, and Thomas Jefferson was a deist who believed in Jesus Christ only as a godly philosopher and believed the New Testament had been corrupted.
That’s why Christ established His Church - if you read Acts and 1 Corinthians, that is literally the function of the Church.
That’s also why we confess the existence of the Church in the Nicene Creed (the Christian Forums Statement of Faith), which is the Scriptural document which explains who Jesus Christ is. CF Statement of Faith
That document is extremely useful also because it provides scriptural references for each article in the Creed. If it had not been for that statement of faith I would not have joined the forum, because I believe the Nicene Creed is the normative standard for Christianity, but they went an extra mile and provided scriptural references which are extremely useful because as a result any time I want to explain to someone what I believe, I just show them the CF Statement of Faith page, which links to the relevant Bible verses.
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Huh? You can't spell out actual sources in a post about a topic, but you can link to such claims without sources? I am not sure that is accurate.
If your contention is that Sunday is pagan in origin, I am not sure why you could not attempt to spell out sources regarding that, since you say they exist.
If you are documenting historical facts about a day and refrain from claims that folks are worshiping other gods, etc. then I am not sure what the issue would be.
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I would assume Adventists do not believe that, since, setting aside the name, which is irrelevant (the nominal fallacy), the first day is the day on which according to Scripture God created the Universe, rose from the dead and descended on the Holy Apostles in the upper room. I did see some members of the WWCOG attempt to argue that our Lord did not rise from the dead on the First Day but these were not credible, since they disagreed with all four canonical Gospels.
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In the 5th century AD there were two major schisms within the Christian Church.
The first occurred as a consequence of the Nestorian Controversy.
Nestorius was the bishop of Constantinople. The short version here is that Nestorius taught that Jesus' Divinity and humanity were to be regarded as in some sense separate. Nestorius, famously, took issue with calling Mary "Theotokos", a Greek word which translates to "birth-giver of God"; Nestorius insisted that Mary should only be called "Christotokos" or "birth-giver of Christ". What many took issue with was that Nestorius was saying was that the Divine Person of God the Son, and the man Jesus Christ, were to be regarded as in some way different: Nestorius argued that the Divine Person of the God the Son was united to the human Jesus. This was seen as a denial of the unity of Jesus' person. That Jesus, in His Person, is Himself God the Son.
There are lingering questions about to what degree Nestorius actually believed in what would come to be called "Nestorianism"; however his own statements leave open the very real possibility that Nestorius was, at least partly, what would later be called Nestorian. This resulted in a Council in 431 held at Ephesus which concluded with the condemnation of Nestorius and his teachings.
The broad consequence is that this also led to the condemnation of theologians who were influential on Nestorius, most famously Theodore Mopsuesta. This became an issue because Theodore was massively influential for the Persian Church based out of Edessa; as such this resulted in a large schism. The Church of the East, also known as the Assyrian Church, is sometimes called the Nestorian Church--while not so much interested in Nestorius, the influence of Theodore of Mopsuesta, and Babbai the Great one of Theodore's students, led to a break between the Church of the East and the "Western" Church--the "Western" Church adopted the Council of Ephesus, while the Church of the East rejects the Council of Ephesus.
That, right there, was the first formal break in the unity of the Christian Church.
And this has happened, in different ways, over the centuries.
In the 16th century a German monk and priest named Martin Luther posted a list of formal arguments against what he saw as abuses concerning the sales of indulgences which was happening in Saxony (part of the Holy Roman Empire). Luther wasn't interested in breaking from the [Roman] Catholic Church, he actually wanted to defend the Catholic Church against abuses, as such he dedicated his 95 Theses against the sales of indulgences to the Pope. This, however, led, ultimately, to Luther's condemnation through a Papal Bull which pronounced him a heretic; as such Luther--and those who agreed with his religious reforms--to being regarded as a schismatic group. This resulted in the start of the Protestant Reformation. Luther's reform movement inspired several other reform movements, with varying degrees of opposition to formal Catholic teaching and practice at the time. Leading to the Reform tradition which included Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and John Knox (e.g. the Swiss and Dutch Reformed Churches, and the Scottish Presbyterians); the diverse Anabaptist groups which resulted in the Mennonites and later Amish. In the same century, basically unrelated to what was happening in continental Europe, King Henry VIII of England decided to cut ties with the Pope and declare the English Church independent of Rome, resulting in the Anglican tradition (which, in the US, includes the Episcopal Church).
In the 17th and 18th centuries new religious movements arose. In Great Britain those who wanted to purify the English Church of what they saw as things which were "too Catholic" resulted in groups of Puritans (English Reformed, i.e. Calvinists) and Separatists. Various non-Conformist religious movements arose, such as the Baptists and the Quakers.
John Wesley, an Anglican minister, is largely single-handedly responsible for the American Methodist movement. And, less explicitly the entire Wesleyan tradition which in the 19th century resulted in the Holiness Movement (e.g. the Church of the Nazarene) and then later the Pentecostal movement (e.g. the Assemblies of God, the Church of the Foursquare Gospel).
It's impossible to talk about denominations without talking about history.
In the 20th century some Evangelical Protestants have tried to do "non-denominational" Christianity--which are effectively independent congregations which, nevertheless, follow the theological traditions laid down in the Second Great Awakening and the Neo-Evangelical movement. Non-denominational churches are, still, basically just denominations.
The only way to be a Christian and not be part of a denomination, or theological tradition, or specific historic communion would be to build a time machine. If you live in the 21st century, then being a Christian means being a Christian in a specific type of way.
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Confused-by-christianity
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Thats what i meant by catholic.
thanks for your reply. I love your interest in the history !!!
nice post.
Whats your answer to the question "why are there so many denominations?" ??
My basic guess of an answer is that each people are reading for themselves and making up their own mind? In the early days, that was not happening.
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Yes, precisely, @Confused-by-christianity prodromos expressed it better than I could, and as Orthodox Christians our way is where someone else has said what needs to have been said we don’t repeat it. When new Orthodox books on theology are written, their function is inevitably simply to explain the existing doctrines to new generations as language develops, but the most definitive guides to scriptural interpretation remain the writings of the early Church.
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fhansen
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But what you've offered is just the same bogus self-serving "scholarship" that determined that Catholcism was promoting sun worship because their main day of worship was now the Lord's Day, the day of the sun=Sunday. But nowhere can one ever find the slightest trace of sun worship teachings in Catholicism past or present. Likewise, never in all the years that I've been Catholic have I ever heard anyone teach about Easter eggs and bunnies and fertilty rights etc as having any association to the faith or Christ's passion, death, and resurrection.
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In the early days, indeed even in the early Protestant reformation when access to Scripture was widespread, Christians, driven by humility, did not like the idea of schism. But what happened over time, was due to to Pietism, which downplayed the importance of doctrine and wreaked havoc on the Lutheran and Calvinist churches in particular as our Lutheran friends @MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis and @Ain't Zwinglian can attest, and also the steady increase in schisms, particularly among Reformed Christians and Anabaptists in response to minor doctrinal differences (an extreme case of this can be seen in the case of the Mennonite Anabaptists, where there are a vast number of Amish and Old Order Mannonite denominations which separated over minor differences in opinion on issues such as whether to use cars or horse drawn carriages, how to paint horse drawn carriages, whether to paint the bumpers of cars black, and so on) - the net result of this was the normalization of schism, so that people no longer regarded setting up a denomination to teach their preferred theology as a last resort, rather than trying to align themselves with Christians who were of a like-minded denomination or accepting the doctrine of their church.
A further complication is that schisms tend to happen every time a denomination attempts to force a change in worship or certain areas of doctrine on its members. I myself was made to feel unwelcome in the very church in which I was baptized because I believe what that church taught when I was a child concerning human sexuality.
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Well then why not accept the Sabbath as its clearly the only day the Creator bless and made holy for man as Christ declares, on that there is no question for any believer.
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Well look what happens when I even try.... The Timeline to 1844 came from Bible Scholars and believers not William Miller
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