The conversation is beginning to spread out in multiple directions again, so I'll try to respond in a broad sense.
One problem I see with your argumentation recently, is that you are torching quite a lot of strawmen--and overlooking context. Let's take a few.
I don't know enough about Orthodoxy, but I would point to icons specifically (by God's grace I will never pray to an image) and the banning of credo-baptism, which used to be the primary form of baptism and then, at the very least, existed side by side with paedobaptism.
By God's grace, nobody will ever pray to an image. The Orthodox certainly don't. St. John of Damascus gives pretty much our definitive statement on the nature and use of icons in worship. Nobody prays to images. We pray to God. We do not worship and serve creatures. We do, however, venerate those in whom God's likeness has been perfected. And thus it's really more proper to say we venerate
Christ in his saints than to say we venerate the saints themselves.
And to suggest that credobaptism was "banned" is kind of silly, don't you think? Come to an Orthodox service on the Saturday before Pascha (Easter) and you'll see plenty of adults baptized.
I know you say this with sarcasm, but you have a serious underriding presumption: that God would protect the institutional Church from all error for all time. However, this is not true, and if your underriding presumption is wrong it throws everything built upon it into question.
Actually there was no sarcasm intended. And no, I've never suggested that God would protect his "institutional Church" from
all error for
all time. Rather, I believe that Christ will guide his Church into all truth, because Christ
is truth. Clearly people have been wrong on key points from the beginning. It has taken centuries to sort out and sift through the opinions and teachings of many generations of Christians, to sort true doctrine from heresy, and to determine what is allowable on a spectrum of belief and practice.
In other words, I believe that what we would see as time marched on, would be the Church coalescing around the truth as "iron sharpened iron" and false beliefs and practices fell away. But I absolutely do not claim that nobody in the Church has ever erred or made a mistake.
*** Now, I'll address baptism since you've brought up more details about it. We can get into more depth, but as the thread isn't about infant baptism I'll try to keep it brief. In short, I've studied this in great detail some years ago, when I first concluded that the Presbyterians were correct and the Baptists were not.
For example, for the first full 200 years of the church, all we have recorded is either the baptism of believers, or warning against baptizing children. We even have a list of baptism instructions (the Didache) that goes into detail what to do if there isn't enough "running water," yet contains no such directions about handling infants. Plus, we have doctors of the Church for the first 400 years, who had Christian parents, yet they were unbaptized as children.
So, we have the first 200 years where there is only an argument of silence in favor of paedobaptism, while there is actual historical evidence that it was not practiced and discouraged.
Again, I've read more papers, debates and books on this than I care to revisit. Unless major historical summaries are all wrong, the earliest recorded, explicit mention of this practice is from Tertullian--this is true, he warned against it. But why? Visiting the broader context of his writings, he generally also warned against baptizing even younger adults. He was part of the stream of thought that took a very rigid approach to handling sins committed after baptism, which led naturally to a postponing of baptism until a later age. Tertullian of course eventually even left the Church and joined a heretical sect that took an extremely rigorist and harsh attitude toward post-baptismal sins. He is thus not properly even considered a church father by the Orthodox, because he left the Church.
Now, why would he bring up a point in opposition to a practice that wasn't a concern? The obvious answer is that infant baptism was already being practiced. Where, and how widely, etc. cannot be answered with certainty. But the next recorded mention of it was by Origen, who claimed the practice had apostolic roots. He, too, is not considered a Church father due to his more extreme philosophical views. Cyprian then mentions infant baptism also as an established and ancient practice.
So, you seem to have pulled out the one isolated reference that supports your position. Your "actual historical evidence" amounts to the isolated opinion of one man who whose baptismal views led him into a heretical sect...and the fact that he voiced opposition at all shows that there was something there to oppose. His rejection of infant baptism was tied to ideas of post-baptismal sin that soon after, came to also be identified as erroneous by the larger Church. Thus, what I see, is the Church working exactly as one would expect it to. Over time, correct belief and practice are sorted out and established as normative, and erroneous views fade into the background or at least into relative obscurity.
Then, we have the next 200 or even 300 years where the practice was in question as it grew increasingly widespread.
So, for the first four, or even five centuries of Christianity, where every essential Christological and soteriological doctrine was expounded upon, they just happened to have baptism all wrong?
"Every" essential doctrine by your own count, perhaps, but there were still more Ecumenical Councils to be held. The Church's doctrines on Christ's two wills, and on the nature and purpose of icons, are just as soteriological as what preceeded them.
Nobody has said the had baptism "all wrong." Yes, the practice was in flux. Yes, it changed over time and from place to place. It took time to sort out what was right from what wasn't. It isn't like there weren't dubious views of the Trinity and Christology in the years before they really came to be expounded upon.
What's easier to believe, that the early church had it wrong for 400 years or so when it got all the important stuff right, or that baptism was got all wrong with a bunch of other stuff that didn't exist for the first 400 years (Mariology, icon worship, purgatory, and other widespread unbiblical doctrines.)
There's a very compelling historical argument here. I just can't ignore it.
Yes, but GOd allowed his church by your own definition to get baptism wrong for over 400 years. Why wouldn't that be just as jaw dropping?
I love how you just kind of slip things in, under the radar. I will exercise my line-item veto power and point out (again) that nobody worships icons, and that the "widespread unbiblical doctrines" are unbiblical only by
your opinion. And I've already said that I believe that infant baptism was practiced from much earlier times than what you're claiming, and it was common enough not to warrant any particular opposition. And if people were wrong about the particulars of baptism (Constantine apparently was, having waited until his dying days to be baptized himself), it is not as jaw-dropping as the idea that God failed to do something about it.
If it is, but the more compelling argument from the Bible and tradition is that it's not. Then, we have other doctrines which by your own admission don't make a ton of sense, but because the other stuff is right they gotta be right. Now, if you think certain doctrines are clearly wrong and opposed to tradition (i.e. baptism) it is easy to see how the idea that the institution is always right all the time just doesn't fly, especially when by your own admission the institution got things wrong.
The trail of strawmen continues, as once again, I have never said that "the institution" never got anything wrong. I believe the "more compelling argument from the Bible and Tradition" is that infant baptism is proper. I think Baptists start from the wrong questions anyway. The real question to be asking, to frame the whole matter, is "What does the Bible teach about covenant initiation," of which baptism is the Christian fulfillment. Viewed that way, infant baptism cannot help but be the correct practice. It's as clear and obvious to me, and always was, as apparently the Real Presence is to you. I hear Baptist arguments against paedobaptism and I have to wonder "Are we reading the same Bible?" But then you probably feel the same way in return
God, in His wisdom, just let the true Church to screw up baptism for its first few centuries of existence, meaning 20 generations or so of people died with this central doctrine messed up.
Maybe, the way God guides His church is not as neat and tidy as you would like it to be, and the way He does it holds a lot more mystery than you may be comfortable with.
It isn't neat and tidy at all. Which is part of the reason I find Orthodoxy credible. We're as dysfunctional as Church history itself
False. Tertullian opposed it in one of his orthodox works AND the practice was not wide spread for centuries, by your own admission.
...
Find an earl;y prayer for the dead from the first five centuries of the church that is akin o the prayers to Saints, Mary and etcetera.
...
You mean the same church that was split over the day to celebrate Easter?
Wow, your statement about the Church having no disagreement about aq list of stuff only to find only one thing on that list actually applies, is pretty sad. I don't want to be disrespectful, but you need to withdraw this point.
I don't need to be disrespectful either, but I think you're trying to make me say what you want me to say. Or, I just suck at expressing myself. I've already addressed Tertullian. I'm not sure what you mean by your second question, unless you are showing what nobody denies, namely, that the formalilzed and ritualized expression of prayers for and to Mary and the Saints grew and evolved and deepened over time. There's no argument here. I believe the basis for it was present from the start, and its expression deepened and widened. In some cases I think it grew to such extremes as to be almost comical. But I accept that as part of the ebb and flow of life within the Church. It takes lots of time for things to be sifted through.
The argument over the date of Easter is really irrelevant. It was resolved by allowing each group to observe its own date. The essential matter is that all agreed that it was proper to celebrate Pascha/Easter as the central holiday of the liturgical year. So they differed on the date. Is this significant?
The points you bring up do not challenge our claim to be in communion with the Church through the ages. You seem to have a misconception that Orthodoxy believes itself to be pure, pristine, with no record of error or mistake or scandal. This is not the case. It is a divine-human organism that most of the time, looks all too human. But at its heart is the Eucharist, the very presence of Christ himself, who is Truth. So yes, Christ will guide his Church into all truth, because he is the Truth.
