I believe that God wrote His work through the Apostles, so there was no vacuum. Of course there was preaching and teaching all along from the Apostles. It is perfectly reasonable for an Apostle to interpret his own writings. One problem is that those interpretations can then be reinterpreted and reinterpreted ad infinitum all the way up until today. I just don't necessarily believe in those reinterpretations based on just the say so of the reinterpreter.
Surely you don't think that St. Paul would respond, "Well, my friend, it's Scripture, so your interpretation of it is as good as mine... just read it and figure it out by referring to other Scriptures, with the Holy Spirit to guide you."??
I see it as interesting that the Church is perfectly happy with Apostles interpreting what they wrote in scripture, but on the thought that God Himself might interpret His own inspired word through other scripture, this idea is wholly unacceptable. Jesus interpreted His own words within scripture in a parable. However, "God" is barred from doing the same thing by the Church.
This is why I, like a stuck record, keep asking Protestants to show me evidence from the early centuries of the Church that there was serious controversy about the things that Protestantism says the Church invented or perverted.
What do you require for controversy? Several of the early Fathers wrote things that were rejected by the majority of the Church, some of which would be accepted by today's Protestants. Since they were summarily dismissed at the time, the claim is "no controversy". Sometimes it seems that the standard is that if the Reformation was legitimate it would have happened right away. I don't agree with this.
The Church DOES indoctrinate. To my knowledge, dissenting views were not welcomed or encouraged, even to the point of not allowing people to read the Bible because of the threat it posed to the interpretation of the Church. It doesn't make sense to me that any hierarchy that is right should be so afraid of its own members reading their own defining written work. It doesn't appear to me that the early years were particularly an era of "free thinking". Conformism was and is the rule of the day, and why not? It was/is an efficient system. If there is no disagreement, there are no problems.
I think it took all that time before the pressure cooker blew. I don't believe the Reformation just "happened" overnight. It was a gradual process that reached a zenith when it did.
If these things [mainly extra-scriptural Traditional practices] were all perversions, surely the teaching of the Apostles would have had enough staying power to last at least a couple of centuries, and the "true followers of the Apostles" would have raised a holy ruckus over these things. Yet, all we hear is historical static.
That is certainly possible. I'm not sure exactly when or how these types of practices got started. And I don't know if anything could have really been done about it at the time or not. I know that the Jews executed blasphemers, and the Apostolic Church has also done the same, but I'm not sure what the practice was in the early years. (I know that Protestants have also done some unfortunate things, so I didn't mean to make it sound one way. I'm just not sure if the early Church handled such dissension the same way the Jews did.)
And that reminds me, at the time of Jesus, it appears that the then version of "God's Church" was fairly corrupt. Jesus came and righted the ship, but it does show that just being in charge does not make a hierarchy correct. All humans are still fallible.
Some say that this is because the Church suppressed it -- but then we would have the Church's record of *its* side of the story, telling about these heretic proto-Baptists and the crazy things they believed! :-)
Unless the penalty was as above. Ouch! :) Even the threat of excommunication, I would imagine, would be plenty enough to quash much dissent. I don't think it's "unfair" for the Church to want to rid itself of dissenters for the legitimate purpose of unity. But if one had been born and raised into an Apostolic faith, then I can imagine it being pretty tough to work up the moxie to publicly dissent.
"I believe that God wrote His work through the Apostles, so there was no vacuum. Of course there was preaching and teaching all along from the Apostles. It is perfectly reasonable for an Apostle to interpret his own writings."
And....? Wouldn't their interpretations that they did through their extensive preaching throughout the known world have held the day? Wouldn't these understandings of Scripture have been carefully passed on to every new Christian and every new generation?
"...but on the thought that God Himself might interpret His own inspired word through other scripture, this idea is wholly unacceptable."
Not true. The model that we have before us has always been one of using Scripture to understand Scripture. It is in the prophets regarding the Pentateuch, it is in the NT regarding the OT, and it is in the Fathers everywhere -- correlating, comparing, harmonizing, enlightening.
Goodness, after following the content of some of my friendly verbal duels with Kosta regarding OT - NT continuity, you should know that about the patristic approach.
God is not barred from doing anything -- I don't know where you get that idea. The Church passes on what it understands to be the Apostolic teaching -- what else should it have done?
"What do you require for controversy? Several of the early Fathers wrote things that were rejected by the majority of the Church, some of which would be accepted by today's Protestants."
All along, we do not accept the writings or teachings of any one man -- I would hope you would agree with that approach. What I am looking for is evidence that there was an active movement combating the things about Orthodoxy that modern Protestantism rejects. Could you choose one of the Fathers you mention, looking at his writings as a whole, and say that his faith was fundamentally the same as yours -- i.e. could you say, "this guy is one of ours?"
If the faith of the Apostles had any staying power, and if their faith was the same as that of Protestantism, I think we would find evidence for it in the early centuries. The Mormon explanation for this phenomenon is that immediately after the Apostles, God removed grace from the earth until there was a more fitting time for it. Protestantism has never made an historical case for the existence of their distinctives in the early centuries.
"The Church DOES indoctrinate. To my knowledge, dissenting views were not welcomed or encouraged..."
In other words, Christianity was hijacked extremely early (maybe in the first generation after the Apostles) by men of false views and practices.
"even to the point of not allowing people to read the Bible because of the threat it posed to the interpretation of the Church."
Maybe true of medieval Catholicism, but not true at any time in the undivided Church or in the Orthodox Church. St. John Chrysostom -- Patriarch of Constantinople and a model bishop to us Orthodox, writing in the 4th century at a time of turmoil and controversy with Arians said these things that I jotted down in my journal (forgive the excessive abbreviation -- I only wrote down the key phrases):
"Hearken ye, as many as are [living in the world], and have the charge of wife and children, how to you too he {St. Paul, that is -- St. John is here preaching on Colossians} commits especially the reading of the Scripures...
...Procure books that will be medicines for the soul. If ye will not any other, yet get you at least the New Testament... for your constant teachers.
This is the cause of all evils, the not knowing the Scriptures."
Do you approve? Does that sound like the banning of Scripture? I would also point out that in those days, having writings in one's home involved great expense, since books had to be copied by hand.
Keep also in mind that these were formative years -- there were still controversies and heresies. The practices of the day were furthermore certainly by the 4th century ones that you would believe to be as seriously wrong as you believe us Orthodox to be today. There is no evidence that anyone tried to suppress the reading of Scripture. On the contrary, we have the most prominent preacher of the day urging his faithful to read the Scriptures to their families in their own homes. Yet no Reformation happened.
"And that reminds me, at the time of Jesus, it appears that the then version of "God's Church" was fairly corrupt."
That is true. It it the history of the Church, from the time it was established outside the gates of the Garden of Eden, that there have been fallings away, remnants, and calls to repentance and a return to the true faith. It is all through the OT. We Orthodox can certainly point to our own history and show many, many times of people's hearts growing cold, followed by revivals and flowering of belief and piety. This is a fact of human existence.
At the time of Christ, the officials in charge of the Hebrew religion were certainly corrupt.
But implicit in that is my original question: doesn't it seem funny that over the period of 1500 years, that there is no record of visible and organized churches that held Protestant beliefs until the Reformation itself? Basically, by Protestant standards, the official Jewish religion was corrupt, Christ came and reformed it (so to speak),then *that* Christian church became corrupt and full of false beliefs and practices within a century or two, it remained corrupt and full of false beliefs and practices for 15 centuries, then the Reformation happened, and true Protestant Christianity has been active and visible and growing ever since.
What went wrong? Why were the Refomers able to start a Christian movement that lasted and expanded to cover the globe, while Christ and the Apostles couldn't?