I already know by now, after going over the matter numerous times over a period of years, that if there was a solid statement in scripture or in the writings of the first to third century church that God wants Christians to have a Pope... or that the church in that time held all the views of Mariology... or that God wants Christians to pray to the souls of the saints and to angels... I would have seen it presented by now.
Uh wait just a second. The Orthodox reject the doctrines of the Papacy and also several Roman Catholic doctrines concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary. So with all due respect, you have no basis for making such a statement, since it is clear you are conflating our positions with those of the Roman Catholics.
The reason why we have forums for discussing this issue in our denominational forum is to, among other things, prevent the conflation of our doctrinal positions with those of the Roman Catholics.
And a scriptural basis does exist for all Orthodox doctrines, because we regard scripture as at the center of our apostolic tradition. However, we also regard the writings of the Orthodox church fathers (who include some persons not recognized by the Catholics and exclude others, and in the case of still others, for example, St. Augustine is venerated but his specific approach to original sin is rejected in favor of the approach of St. John Cassian, who, like St. Augustine, was strongly opposed to the heretic Pelagius and to Pelagianism, but who in his opposition to Pelagius was, in my opinion, more careful. Thus our view is that St. Augustine was in error when saying that original sin is the result of concupiscience.
And this error in turn resulted in another Roman Catholic error, that being the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
I am particularly frustrated by the fact that the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox despite representing the second and sixth largest denominations, as well as the Assyrian Church of the East, which prior to the genocide of Tamerlane was the largest church in the world in geographic terms, spanning almost all of Asia, are continually being glossed over and ignored in the course of the ceaseless false dichotomy between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, which ironically also tends to gloss over the very excellent work of Martin Luther, the high church Anglicans such as the Caroline Divines, Archbishop Laud, the non-Jurors, and the Oxford Movement and subseuqent Anglo Catholics, and also most of what John Wesley wrote and taught, which has managed to be ignored or displaced by most Methodists (for example, Wesley desired that Methodists fast on Wednesdays and Fridays according to the tradition of the Apostolic Church but this is not usually done) and also desired that the Litany be prayed in Methodist churches on Wednesdays and Fridays, and that the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer be continued (he even prepared a recension of it for use by the Methodists in North America), and unfortunately very few Methodists are doing this.
My frustration, as someone of a traditional liturgical Congregational background who fell back on Orthodoxy, but who has sought to make a career out of importing Orthodoxy into Protestantism in order to compensate for the doctrinal drift caused by errors such as the innovative 19th century doctrine of Premillenial Dispensationalism, which was unheard of before John Nelson Darby began to preach it within the Restorationist denomination of the Plymouth Brethren, which like most Restorationist churches was not, in my opinion, entirely successful at accomplishing its stated purpose.*
There is a need to stop rejecting doctrines based on a perceived association with Roman Catholicism and a need for a Patristic resourcement. One can derive the essence of the Apostolic faith by the overlap in the doctrinal positions of the Oriental Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox, the Assyrian Church, and the Roman Catholic church, and this area of overlap comfortably encapsulates the more traditional Protestant churches such as the High Church Anglicans and the Confessional Lutherans, and this can be the basis for ecumenical reconciliation on the basis of a shared sacred tradition as a means of defending the faith against revisionists who want to endorse a range of errors such as Nestorianism, Iconoclasm, female bishops, homosexual marriage, abortion, a rejection of the Eucharist and of the baptism of infants, a failure to properly recognize the sanctity in virginity and holy celibacy, and many other horrible errors.
*I would argue that only the Stone-Campbell movement among Restorationists has been much of a success when it comes to reimplementing a large portion of early Christian practices, but even there has what I regard as some major failures, for example, the anti-creedalism of the Stone-Campbell movement, which I strongly disagree with since the Nicene Creed in particular is an essential tool in ensuring Christian unity and provides a litmus test whereby non-Christians such as the neo-Arian Jehovah’s Witnesses can be readily identified as heretical; fortunately the Stone Campbell movement has not, to my knowledge, had a problem with Arianism, but I still regard the decision of Stone and Campbell to oppose creeds to be profoundly misguided and frankly that the Church of Christ and the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ has avoided a problem with Arianism almost comes down to luck (I would prefer to say it is providential, but that they somewhat rode the whirlwind, and the risk of Arianism could have been entirely avoided simply by continuing to use the Nicene Creed, particularly considering that excluding Arianism was a primary reason for its composition in 325 and its revision in 381, so a major point to recognizing the creed doctrinally, and to incorporating it into worship, is to prevent people from developing errant understandings of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ.
