Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: BibChr; TPartyType; OrthodoxPresbyterian
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11583b.htm

Paulicians

Excerpts: Jesus' work consisted only in his teaching; to believe in him saves men from judgment. The true baptism and Eucharist consist in hearing his word, as in John, iv, 10. But many Paulicians, nevertheless, let their children be baptized by the Catholic clergy. They honoured not the Cross, but only the book of the Gospel. They were Iconoclasts, rejecting all pictures. Their Bible was a fragmentary New Testament. They rejected St. Peter's epistles because he had denied Christ. They referred always to the "Gospel and Apostle", apparently only St Luke and St. Paul; though they quoted other Gospels in controversy.

The whole ecclesiastical hierarchy is bad, as also all Sacraments and ritual. They had a special aversion to monks. Under the apostles and prophets were "fellow-workers" (synechdemoi) who formed a council, and "notaries" (notarioi), who looked after the holy books and kept order at meetings. Their conventicles were called, not churches, but "prayer-houses" (proseuchai). Harnack sums them up as "dualistic Puritans and Individualists and as "an anti-hierarchic Christianity built up on the Gospel, and Apostle, with emphatic rejection of Catholic Christianity" (Dogmengeschichte, II 528).

Since Gibbon the Paulicians have often been described as a survival of early and pure Christianity, godly folk who clung to the Gospel, rejecting later superstitions, who were grossly calumniated by their opponents. Conybeare (op. cit. ) thinks they were a continuation of the Adoptionists. Dr. Adeney calls them "in many respects Protestants before Protestantism" (The Greek and Eastern Churches, 219). This idea accounts for the fact that the sect has met among modern writers with more interest and certainly more sympathy than it deserves.

78 posted on 02/25/2003 6:39:14 PM PST by Destro (Fight Islamic terrorisim by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies ]


To: Destro; OrthodoxPresbyterian; TPartyType
Thank you, very illustrative. So to sum up, a quick count:

My one posting: apposite Scriptures cited = eleven

Your two responses: apposite refutational Scriptures cited = zero

Sometimes the offhanded is the most revealing, isn't it? But we're just living our two mutually exclusive religions, aren't we? God-centered Biblical Christianity on the one hand, man-centered tradition-bound sectarianism in your case.

Your living illustration showed more than ten posts from me could have done. Thank you.

Dan

82 posted on 02/25/2003 7:39:14 PM PST by BibChr ("If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples" [John 8:31])
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 78 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson