“Can you read?”
Let me get this straight. So, I offer you quotes of a Roman “Pope” denying the primacy of Rome, and your argument is that “Well, the non-Roman Catholics still agree with us!”
And you’re asking ME if I can read?
What do you think my NEXT argument is going to be? It won’t be refuting Romanism, it’s been done, apparently. So my next step is to refute the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic claims, so that you DON’T convert to them!
“Eusebius presents the lists as evidence that orthodoxy had a continuous tradition from the earliest times in all the great Episcopal sees and that all the heretical movements were subsequent aberrations from the mainline of Christianity.
Looking behind the lists, however, a different picture emerges. In Edessa, on the edge of the Syrian desert, the proofs of the early establishment of Christianity were forgeries, almost certainly manufactured under Bishop Kune, the first orthodox Bishop.
In Egypt, Orthodoxy was not established until the time of Bishop Demetrius, 189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so to Peter and Jesus.
Even in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch completely lost their list; “When Eusebius’s chief source for his Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch, he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in Rome and ten in Alexandria. http://reformation500.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/historical-literature-on-the-earliest-papacy/
I don’t know about you, but it’s looking to me like the Eastern Orthodox aren’t any better than the Romans when it comes to this stuff.
“Gregory was not a Bishop of Rome”
POPE Gregory the First was not a Bishop of ROME?
[So, I offer you quotes of a Roman “Pope” denying the primacy of Rome, and your argument is that “Well, the non-Roman Catholics still agree with us!”]
You provided none.
“Gregory was not a Bishop of Rome”
Sorry, typo, extra “not.”
“I don’t know about you, but it’s looking to me like the Eastern Orthodox aren’t any better than the Romans when it comes to this stuff.”
Yes, you found a webpage denying the explanation of Apostolic Succession written by a 4th century Greek bishop, so the webpage must be accurate.
And every single church that traces itself to the first century believes these things because THE CHURCH always has. But YOUR church must be right in their completely idiosyncratic and novel understanding, because it can trace itself all the way to the 1850s.