Posted on 06/07/2007 4:07:42 AM PDT by markomalley
Excellent resource!
That’s just a silly statement and I think you should clarify it. Notice I said “clarify.”.
LOL, you blew my irony meter out when you posted that you want the flaming to stop as you refer to Protestants as "schismatics."
Ummm...when did modern English get started?
Pope is merely an English rendering of the Latin "papa" (or Father).
Peter implied it (1 Pet 5:13) -- She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark. (how would Mark be his son unless he was Mark's father?)
Paul explicitly stated it (1 Cor. 4:15) -- For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
You do realize that the Patriarch of Alexandria is also identified as "pope," right?
The term "pontiff" was a term of state (a State-recognized religious office), not purely of religion. It was used by the Roman Emperor until the time of the Emperor Gratian. The title went vacant until Pope Damasus I in 366 AD. (note: Constantine died in 337 AD. Constantine did NOT make Christianity the official State religion of Rome. Theodosius I did so in 391 AD).
Oops, sorry, I forgot...historical reality doesn't exist outside of Hilsop.
No, I thank you! Seriously.
Please re-read what I wrote. I never used the term Protestant, now did I? I used the term 'schismatic.' Nowhere did I explicitly state or implicitly infer that all or even most Protestants were included in that term. If you take a look at my post 43 explains this in great detail. The short version is found in a definition of the term 'schismatic:' A schismatic is a person who creates or incites schism.
I certainly wouldn't use an inflammatory term like that against Protestants, as a whole. If I was unclear about that, my apologies. I'll try to anticipate potential misinterpretations in the future.
I went back and checked in the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the statement from St. Ignatius is from one of the non-spurious Epistles (though a list of spurious ones is given, the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans is not one among them).
Something else to remember is that in the Early Church, especially during and after the reign of Constantine, the works of heretics were both known and denounced by some Father or another, and usually by several. Thus we see the condemnations of the Arians, Nestorians, Manachaeans, Donatists, Iconoclasts, Gnostics, and others. Yet for many of these so-called 'invented' doctrines, we see little to no condemnation during the Patristic Age. (I say 'little' because on one issue or another, a small number of Fathers may have taken a contrary opinion, especially on things not specifically yet decided upon.)
Luke
Excellent post, thanks!
I guess that that is the trouble.
Morphing croquet into cricket and then into baseball and trying to tell everyone that the rules of baseball are really the way croquet was intended, and that anyone who plays croquet as it originally was is wrong.
If people want to split from the Church and create their own belief systems, then that is their free will. Just don’t claim that you are really the Church as originally intended. You want to be your own Pope and indulge in your own personal interpretation of Scripture, then that’s your free will.
Just be careful of what Jesus said about the little children. Exposing them to false doctrines could be the equivalent of keeping them away from Him.
"Pope" comes from the Greek "papas" ... "Daddy".
The Latin word pontifex ("pontiff") simply means an important religious leader, in any religion. All Christian bishops are pontifices in church Latin.
The Latin Vulgate translates the term for "Jewish High Priest" (Kohen Gadol in the Hebrew; I'm not sure what it is in the Greek) as pontifex Judaeis, the "pontiff of the Jews".
The title pontifex maximus ("supreme pontiff"; the usual title of the head of the Roman state religion) was not given to the Bishop of Rome by Constantine, but by Theodosius the Great, almost a century later.
Theodosius was also the man who was such a sincere Christian believer that he ended the Olympic Games because they were "too pagan".
I have no idea why you think a Christian emperor giving the title of "supreme bishop" to a Christian bishop proves there was any change of doctrine, and I doubt you do, either.
What do you bet that the words "at Rome" are not in Irenaeus' original autograph but were added by later dishonest Latin translators.
Irenaeus would have known from Paul's Epistle to the Romans that the church in Rome was alive and well before Paul or any apostle had been there. Neither Peter nor Paul founded that church. If Irenaeus was confused on that point, then his credibility in the rest of this paragraph is called into question, that is, if he actually wrote that paragraph at all.
If there is no break, if there are no groups of folks not admitted to one another's communion, then there is no need for a proper name. We say "blue sky" not "Blue Sky" to differentiate it from some other sky and to give it a proper name.
It's a "vibe" thing. When Ignatius wrote the Church didn't NEED a proper name, there was only one Church and it was one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. (obviously, as my usage here shows, there is an honorific or reverential capitalization.
I suppose that's a thought that can be aimed in either direction, with equal sincerity if not equal accuracy. But there is something to it in my experience. I cannot believe of how much I deprived myself by not converting earlier. It's like I was sticking my toe in a nice bath and thinking that was all that taking a nice bath had to offer. I DID have a reasonably clean toe and it felt pretty good, but, wow! the difference once I got all the way in!
If there is no break, if there are no groups of folks not admitted to one another's communion, then there is no need for a proper name. We say "blue sky" not "Blue Sky" to differentiate it from some other sky and to give it a proper name.
I hear you.
But that doesn't mean that I agree with you.
Even in Ignatius' time, there were heresies and schisms. The gnostics were all the rage. The Marcionites were getting ready to pop onto the scene. Those heresies were written about in the epistles (See, for example, Titus 3:10).
This really came to light for me when I was living in a relatively remote area in Northern Italy. Naturally, the area was 99.9% Catholic. To them, you were either Christian or not Christian. They had no appreciation for the differences between Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Pentacostals, Calvinists, and so on. It was either Christian or not Christian. Out of the Americans living in that little villiage, I was the only one who even spoke a little Italian, so I was stuck doing translator duty sometimes. I remember on more than one occasion, the villagers asking folks if they'd like to go to Mass in their church rather than driving all the way to the base. It was extremely difficult to convey to them, for the Prosestant Americans living there, that they weren't interested because they weren't Catholic...but, yes, they were Christian. I think I finally got the point made to them.
These kinds of things got me thinking: if the Catholic Church is what she claims to be (and, before anybody asks, She is...), then She truly is the Universal Church. Why should we need to add a qualifying adjective to the word "Church" or "Christianity" to describe Catholicism? Isn't Catholicism generic Christianity? Aren't the heresies that resulted in schism new innovations that tainted that generic Christianity and watered it down? So why should we be the ones to apply the qualifiers and the modifiers? Shouldn't those who split from us be required to do so? There is little that irks me more than to hear "Catholics and Christians!" As if there is a difference! "Catholics" are "Christians"
Is not one of the titles for the Holy Father the "Vicar of Christ?" Not the "Vicar of Christ for those who practice Christianity according to the Latin Rite"...
Having said this, I don't want any Protestant out there to think that I am personally attacking them...I am not. I am NOT calling individual protestant Christians schismatics (well...with very, very few exceptions). I am NOT calling individual protestant Christians heretics (they weren't the one who split with the Church). So please don't anybody take that I am making an attack on them...because I'm not.
But I am just sick and durned tired of having to qualify MY beliefs. The beliefs passed to ME and to YOU from the apostles. If somebody grew up ignorant of the apostolic faith, they may honestly believe the way they believe and practice is correct...as long as Christ is preached, I'm still thankful for the faith they have. If somebody grew up improperly or inadequately catechised, again, I'm sorry that they're missing out, but as long as Christ is preached, alleluia! But that doesn't erase the fact that the faith handed down from Christ, the faith preached by our Holy Father, is the subset that must be qualified. It is the standard. The others should be the ones to qualify themselves. Again, where Christ is preached, I'm thankful. But that fact doesn't change the objective truth.
When Ignatius wrote the Church didn't NEED a proper name, there was only one Church and it was one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
Got some news for you...it still is.
(/rant)
I hope the above helps you understand where I'm coming from. Don't know if you'll agree or not, but it is what it is.
Well, what would be the evidence of such tampering though? We'd have to find other, older manuscript traditions that didn't have those words, and then maybe we could conclude they are not original. I'm not aware that any such MSS exist.
But I think the evidence leans against tampering, because as you can see from the original passage (linked above), there is not just one throwaway reference to Rome but a whole line of Irenaeus's argument. He goes on in the same chapter to enumerate the bishops of Rome after Peter and Paul were there...Linus, Cletus, Clement, and on and on. He basically says that the Apostles appointed people in a direct line right down to the catholic Church (and yes he uses those words) of his day.
So if this reference to Rome is forged, then it's not just a matter of two words.
Roger that!
Perhaps you need to think too.
-Theo
In a collection of conversion stories put out by the coming home network, I am really stunned by how so many Protestants, as protestants, saw no reason not to slip from one denomination to another because few had (or even claimed!) any authority, but were merely associations of like-minded people.
And then there were the Orthodox Presbyterians who seemed quite comfortable with the idea of excommunication.
In our culture, people are simply not used to thinking of the possibility of one visible Church.
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