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The bible is only part of it. No sola scriptura for us.
Yes, I always find it curious when sola scriptura church people sort of accuse Catholics of practices that are not in the Bible. Well...yeah. They follow Scripture AND Tradition. That's not a secret, and it's part of what makes it the Catholic Church.
Many in the evangelical camp only count somebody as a "Christian" who meets a certain subjective threshold since for them, the word "Christian" is synonymous with "a person who is definitely going to heaven when they die".
Others will concede that there is no objective way to determine any particular individual's eternal destination, so to make such a determination about the state of another person's soul seems just a bit presumptuous...
All Catholics seem to believe that. The church must teach you that.
There were other churches before the Roman church took hold, you know. There were Syrian churches that had no connection with Rome, and there were the churches in Greece and Turkey, the latter of which was where the term "Christians" was first used. Then you had the Mar Thoma Christians in Kerala, India, to whom Christianity was brought by the apostle Thomas, and who only had the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of Jesus's sayings, until the 15th century when Portuguese Catholics showed up, found them with crosses decorated with elephants and treated them badly for not being under the thumb of Rome when they may well have predated the Vatican.
I am not Catholic, but I am not anti-Catholic, either. However, it is clear that some Catholics are not taught accurately about the history of Christianity.
Yes, the Church did teach (not sure if still in effect) that the Catholic Church was the first church and is the only true church. As a child, you wouldn't question that and "faithful" adults probably wouldn't either. I took World Religions in grad school, and the subject never came up.
I never knew that Protestants were under the illusion that a Catholic president would actually take instruction from the Pope - it seems wild to me that that was a common belief. The Pope is just a figurehead, even to Catholics.
I never knew that Protestants were under the illusion that a Catholic president would actually take instruction from the Pope - it seems wild to me that that was a common belief. The Pope is just a figurehead, even to Catholics.
It was just an early version of the conspiracy theories that are rampant in the evangelical world today, especially among fundamentalists (recently I learned that some evangelicals reject the label "fundamentalist"; since I come from fundamentalism and we were happy to embrace the label "evangelical" I never particularly understood that).
I read an account of JFK's presidential campaign and that was an actual concern.
Here's a relatively modern account of the situation (behind a paywall past the first few paragraphs but you can get the gist of it):
^I had not heard of that Moses/Hebrew theory and I think I'm OK with not exploring that further.
Interestingly, in Diarmaid Macculloch's history of Christianity, he acknowledges that there does seem to be some documentation about Peter's bones and tthat his original gravesite was commonly known before it was moved to its present location. I can't recall all the details, and right now I am about 300 miles from my bookshelf.
But we are pretty darn sure Peter did not go to Rome, put on a big hat and sit down in a fancy chair in a basilica named for him. It took centuries for the office of Pope to develop into what it is now. Meanwhile, the church did grow and thrive elsewhere.
We know he went to Rome, a 1st century letter from the elders in Rome told us he died there. It did not say he was a pope, and as it was telling the people in Corinth to behave, we can be very confident popes did not exist in the 1st century, otherwise they would have used Papal authority for this. It is also probable bishops did not exist, despite the letter allegedly being written by an alleged bishop.
Catholicism in it's early form may not have existed until the 2nd century AD, but it is still one of the earliest existing Christian sects.
We know he went to Rome, a 1st century letter from the elders in Rome told us he died there. It did not say he was a pope, and as it was telling the people in Corinth to behave, we can be very confident popes did not exist in the 1st century, otherwise they would have used Papal authority for this. It is also probable bishops did not exist, despite the letter allegedly being written by an alleged bishop.
Catholicism in it's early form may not have existed until the 2nd century AD, but it is still one of the earliest existing Christian sects.
I replied to this in another thread that is more directly pertinent to the topic.
I replied to this in another thread that is more directly pertinent to the topic.
The first two points are just ad hoc assertions that do not address what 1 Clement does not say.
As for επίσκοπος, that just means overseer, so yes, THAT position is not only as old as Christianity, it is older. It is not even religious, even Homer uses the word in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. But there is no evidence the many overseers were bishops as we use the term now, someone who must answer to a bishop in Rome.
Many in the evangelical camp only count somebody as a "Christian" who meets a certain subjective threshold since for them, the word "Christian" is synonymous with "a person who is definitely going to heaven when they die".
Yes, to paint a totally accurate picture of the whole thing. Many of those who question Catholic's Christendom also question other Christian groups for various reasons. For instance, I grew up in a Church of Christ stronghold area. There were folks among them that believed that you couldn't be saved if you went to an "apostate" church. Which was every church that wasn't actually named "Church of Christ". Doctrine aside. Churches of Christ "set up" is one of autonomous congregations. The ones who took the name thing as a disqualifier to heart usually had a sign outside that said "Church of Christ meets here"....
There were other Churches of Christ who might let your name slide but would have doctrinal disqualifiers.
For instance, Baptists weren't saved because they didn't get Baptized with the knowledge that Bapitism is what did save them.
Sorry for belaboring the point and for picking on the CofC... but Catholics aren't alone in this exercise.
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