blue-duncan: "Then extend the same courtesy to those who affirm their church pedigree with the same kind of interpretive history."
The claim of the Catholic/Orthodox Church that the church always and everywhere believed thus and so fails due to the Church intentionally eliminating manuscripts and beliefs hated by those in power.
Around circa 490 at the beginning of the Dark Ages, Gelasius I sought to consolidate power under Rome, assert papal supremacy and enliven a practice dating back to at least St. Philastrius circa 380 of cataloguing heresies, dogging and condemning heretics and destroying documents, even ancient manuscripts containing things they hated even if they were loved by the earliest Christians.
We can clearly see control being asserted (and manuscripts being destroyed) even earlier under the Papacy of Damasus I (circa 366) in this document, The “Decretum Gelasianum de Libris Recipiendis et non Recipiendis”:
the works of Tertullian...
These and those similar ones, which Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus and Bonosus, who suffered from similar error, also Montanus with his obscene followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus the Manichaean, Faustus the African, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Novatus, Sabbatius, Calistus, Donatus, Eustasius, Jovianus, Pelagius, Julian of Eclanum, Caelestius, Maximian, Priscillian from Spain, Nestorius of Constantinople, Maximus the Cynic, Lampetius, Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and the other Peter, of whom one disgraced Alexandria and the other Antioch, Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and what also all disciples of heresy and of the heretics and schismatics, whose names we have scarcely preserved, have taught or compiled, we acknowledge is to be not merely rejected but eliminated from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and with their authors and the followers of its authors to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever.
Were it not for Ethiopia where it was rediscovered in 1775, Enoch would have been lost until it was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the copies there being carbon dated to about 200 b.c. IOW, the Book of Enoch is much older even than that, i.e. ancient by any measure.
Now the Church includes it in its collected writings - but for more than a 1,000 years it was "eliminated" because the Church hated it back in 380!
Who knows what else the Church "eliminated?"
In other words, because of their actions - for which we have strong archeological evidence - the claim of "always and everywhere believed" cannot be authenticated. Therefore, I strongly agree with you, blue-duncan, that alternative interpretations of church history should be treated with courtesy.
“I strongly agree with you, blue-duncan,”
Well, here it is almost 12:00P.M. and you are the first. I don’t know whether to call it a day and take this win or look at this as the beginning of a roll and take my chances this afternoon. So many decisions!!
Good evidence.
The notion that the Greek and/or Romanist churches are transcendent and without change or error is, of course, laughable. No doubt we will see much “kicking against the goad”.
***The claim of the Catholic/Orthodox Church that the church always and everywhere believed thus and so fails due to the Church intentionally eliminating manuscripts and beliefs hated by those in power.***
Heresy almost broke the early Church many times. Heretical beliefs were strongly dealt with both because they would divide the Church into factions, much as the Reformation did to the Protestants, but even more so because they were wrong and anti Christian.
***A well established example of the elimination of documents and beliefs is the Book of Enoch which was rejected by the powers that were in the Church (Philastrius, circa 380) even though the early Christians loved it and relied on it - as is evident by its being quoted in Jude and terms and phrases in Enoch being used in many other places throughout the New Testament.
Were it not for Ethiopia where it was rediscovered in 1775, Enoch would have been lost until it was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the copies there being carbon dated to about 200 b.c. IOW, the Book of Enoch is much older even than that, i.e. ancient by any measure.
Now the Church includes it in its collected writings - but for more than a 1,000 years it was “eliminated” because the Church hated it back in 380!***
Which Church authority hated it and banned it at what time?
***alternative interpretations of church history should be treated with courtesy. ***
How would you approach somebody that strongly believed that the world was flat and that the sun moved around the earth?
kosta50: “I will stay with “Orthodoxy is pure Christianity” because it’s the same orthodox faith that subsisted in the the same catholic and aposotlic Church from the beginning.”
blue-duncan: "Then extend the same courtesy to those who affirm their church pedigree with the same kind of interpretive history."
A-G: I strongly agree with your request, blue-duncan .
Why am I not surprised that you use as your source Tertullian.org? Let's first look at who was Tertullian. Born around mid 2nd century, he was a foremost Greek and Latin theologian, who is credited with many a Christian signature terms, such as Trinity, orthodoxy, etc.
At some point in his productive theological life he embraced Montanism. Without going into too many tedious details, for the lurkers, let's just list what the Montanists believe and it will tell us everything about who Terutillian was:
(1) Montanists believe that their prophesies are higher than the ;prophesies of Christ's hand-picked Apostles. (2) They believe that those who fall from grace cannot be redeemed through repentance. (3) The Montanists are ultimate Gnostics who do not even consider themselves the "mouthpiece of God" but as God speaking Himself. (4) They believed in being possessed by the Spirit. (5) Many if not most Montanists were sabbatarians, believing that Jesus resurrected on a Saturday and celebrated Easter on 14 of Nisan, rather than on Sunday. (6) They also denied that God is three Persons but one Person (Sabellian heresy).
Do our Calvinist friends here share these views?
Then, of course, the very document Alamo-Girl posts under the name Decretum Gelasianum attributed to the Bishop of Rome Damasus I of 366 AD (he didn't use the title Pope; his successor Siricius was the first to use that title) is exposed as pure fiction by the fact that it mentions "blessed pope Leo" who became the Pope in 440 AD—74 years after the supposed Decretum Gelasianum!
This fraud is further exposed with statements like "likewise the works of blessed Augustine Bishop of Hippo," given that S. Augustine would have been 12 years old at the alleged Decretum in 366 AD!
So, the evidence here offered is undoubtedly exposed as fraud whose credibiity is exactly zero.
Then it bemonas that the works of such individuals as Simon Magus are among the ones allegedly burned. Who was Simon Magus? He is also known by the pseudonym Samaritan proto-Gnostic. He was considered to be the first heretic by the earliest of Church writers. Acts 8:9-24 mention Simon Magus offering money to the Apostles for miraculous powers they had. He is the person worshipped in Simonianism, a Gnostic sect, that considers Simon Magus divine. Truly the kind of belief the Church should include as "Christian."
I wonder if any of our Calvinist friends, share the sadness over Simon Magus being rejected by the Church.
Then there is mention of Ebion. It was actually no other than Tertullian who erroneously traced the name to a fictional founder of the Jewish sect known as Ebionites, who denied the divinity of Christ, His resurrection, His virgin birth, or His atonement..
I wonder what our Calvinist friends to whom Alamo-Girl appeals think about this.
Then another one on the list is one other than Montanus, whose heresy Tertullian (the same Tertullian used as a source of this despicable article referenced at Tertullian.org).
Then there is Sabellius, already mentioned, and then Arius, who considered Christ to be a lesser God than the Father, and is heresiarch of Arianism. Or Donatus, the heresiarch of Donatism, even Pelagius (who would have been only 12 years old in 366!)., and Nestorius (who wasn't even born yet!), who in his days of adulthood taught that Christ was two different Person in one body!
Now the Church includes it (the Book of Enoch) in its collected writings - but for more than a 1,000 years it was "eliminated" because the Church hated it back in 380!
FALSE! Enoch is to be found as canon only in the Ethiopian Oriental Orthodox Church, which never stopped using it! The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church do not have Enoch as part of their scriptural writings!
The Ethiopian Church was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959, which separated form the Church in 451 AD, both of which are (and the Ethiopian name for the Church actually means) monophysite, recognizing only one, divine, but not human nature of Christ, although Coptics have in recent years revised their teaching, denying their monophysite doctrines as "perceptual" and not real.
Do our Calvinists friends recognize only one, divine, nature of Christ, but deny His human nature?
Next time you buy into any of this, think what company you are choosing.