Late is a relative term. How many days would our exchange require twenty / fifty / five hundred years ago? Thank you for the time and the well stated comments. I'm going to reply to a couple of points, rather than each and every one, just to keep things from getting confusing. If there's something I omit, it's not an intentional dodge on my part.
The article leaps dramatically into a point of my argument: How does one trust the documentation which forms the history of the church ....(snip Because of this, I find most of church history to be unreliable.
How indeed to we trust (know how to know what we think we know?) Epistemology make my (sparse) hair hurt, sometimes. I seem to recall some wag once saying that history is just one "damned thing" after another. And, the "victors" write a great deal of the history. As I Southron, I am aware and sensitive of that fact.
Yet, a complete dismissal of church history because of suspected and even proved frauds is throwing out the baby with the bath water. When I first came to Christ (born again in my early twenties) I really felt that I had become a part of something much larger than myself - a family, if you will and just like I am interested in what my physical ancestors did, I was interested in what my spiritual ancestors did.
Perhaps, I am unusual in wanting that connection with the past, but I don't think so. Regardless, I could easily get detailed information about church history going back for maybe five hundred years, but the previous fifteen hundred - not so much.
For many years, I squelched my desire to know until other dissatisfaction brought it back to the table. So I began to at least consider that what little I had been told could possibly be wrong.
So, did my reading of, for example, the Canons of the Third Ecumenical Council make me abandon my sola belief and enter the Orthodox Church? No. It did not. I had many things that had to be reconciled before I could do that. But, an understanding of what happened there, why it happened and how it happened spoke not only to the "mere facts" but also to the way the church was conscious of itself as a continuation of what the what Christ established on this earth and was very vigilant to guard against the perversion of the truth.
Well. I said I would address a "couple" of your points and I get stuck on one. I don't know if my personal testimony is worth much, but there it is. I may do another post on another of your worthy points at a later time - especially "solo Christianity" (my words) - very interesting
Western hat-tip ; )
How indeed to we trust (know how to know what we think we know?) Epistemology make my (sparse) hair hurt, sometimes. I seem to recall some wag once saying that history is just one "damned thing" after another. And, the "victors" write a great deal of the history. As I Southron, I am aware and sensitive of that fact.
I have spent most of my life reading old documents. As a Conservative, and to satisfy my logical bend, I must satisfy myself of the record first.
Yet, a complete dismissal of church history because of suspected and even proved frauds is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
And there FRiend, is where we will inevitably part. When one cannot trust the stewardship of anyone or any organization, due to the evidence of bald faced manipulation of documentation pursuant to the second part, what would make one likely to accept their authority at all? Simple logic says to retire to the documents of the first part, wherein the offending parties have had no real participation, in which to manipulate anything...
If you caught a contractor lying to you in the course of a job, for what reason would you continue to believe his work is of quality? It makes no sense at all. One would naturally revert to the original contract, and if the contractor cannot abide within it's terms, the contractor would be dismissed, and probably with great prejudice.
Hence the particular need to go back to the original contract(s), and therefore, sola-scriptura... And in the light of the Scriptures alone, the priesthood falls away... The hierarchy falls away, the Mass/Eucharist falls away... Praying to saints falls away...Mariology falls away... the Christian calendar falls away... the Christian sabbath falls away...
All the better to see God.
Claims to historicity do about as well with me as when Mormons ask me to "feeeel" my way through their blasphemous book. That just ain't how this game is played.
[...]spoke not only to the "mere facts" but also to the way the church was conscious of itself as a continuation of what the what Christ established on this earth and was very vigilant to guard against the perversion of the truth.
I appreciate your walk in faith, but I will not follow. If the things you say are true, then there should be evidence thereof in the original contract(s). There simply is not any such evidence.
Throughout the Bible, God's main argument, all the way along, is that He gives man a means to worship Him, but that man continues to bolt on stuff that He never sanctioned.
From the women weeping for Tammuz in God's own Temple, all the way to the Nicolaitans in the Revelation, the concept is ALWAYS the same: "Worship God in spirit and in truth..." Yet in nearly every instance, that doesn't happen BECAUSE of hierarchy, because of corrupt priesthoods, and teaching the people lies.
It is only natural, therefore, to be suspicious of such as these.