how do Protestants explain history?

[Katzpur]

Heresy is any Christian belief that is at odds with the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Well, that's more or less what I was getting at. Pretty much everybody is a heretic to somebody else. The word is really pretty subjective.

 

[Kirran]

@Adamski - what do you make of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, then? And the Church of the East?

Why is the RCC right, and the church that split from it in the political squabblings of the Roman Empire wrong?

 

[Rise]

Micah 6[8] He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Take care.

Matthew 23:13
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in."

Matthew 23:15
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Matthew 23:19
You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

Matthew 23:33
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Mark 7:8
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

Mark 7:13
thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.

1 Timothy 1:6-7
Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

James 3:1
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.


Jesus did not have patience or kind words for people who, claiming to be experts in the Word of God, led people to destruction by teaching lies contrary to the Word of God.

Let's talk about the first thing the Lord requires of you in Micah 6:8 which you ignored: Justice.
Justice is is based on truth with a desire to protect the innocent from harm: Jesus displays righteous anger at people who are doing harm to His people by nullifying, in a sense rejecting, the Word of God for the word of man.

How about the third thing on that list? There was nothing humble about those kind of people either. They think they have nothing to be taught. God Himself spoke through both the Scriptures and Jesus, yet they thought their own ideas were more true than the Word of God. There's a reason Jesus said we must come to him as a little child, with humility recognizing our own lack of wisdom, to enter into the Kingdom of God.
Which category of person do you fall under right now?

You're free to state what you believe is true about history and try to defend that based on the evidence you present - but don't claim to be an expert in the 2nd century development of the Bible, then go state blatant falsehoods about the Word of God which I can prove to be historically wrong, and appeal only to your own sense of authority to justify your statements.
That's why I say God help anyone who was mislead sitting under your teaching, because not unlike the Pharisees before, you arrogantly teach things that would aim to undermine people's trust in the Word of God, things which can even be proven to be wrong based on natural evidence alone.

 

[Kirran]

Matthew 23:13
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.a"

Matthew 23:15
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Matthew 23:19
You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

Matthew 23:33
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Mark 7:8
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

Mark 7:13
thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.

1 Timothy 1:6-7
Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

James 3:1
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.


Jesus did not have patience or kind words for people who, claiming to be experts in the Word of God, led people to destruction by their teaching by teaching lies contrary to the Word of God.

Let's talk about the first thing the Lord requires of you in Micah 6:8 which you ignored: Justice.
Justice is is based on truth with a desire to protect the innocent: Jesus displays righteous anger at people who are doing harm to his people by nullifying, in a sense rejecting, the Word of God for the word of man.

How about the third thing on that list? There was nothing humble about those kind of people either. They think they have nothing to be taught. God Himself spoke through both the Scriptures and Jesus, yet they thought their own ideas were more true than the Word of God.
Which category of person do you fall under right now?

Had you only made a claim about what you thought was true about history, and were willing to argue for that case based on what you know about history, then there's be no problem - but you can't claim you are an expert in something, go state blatant falsehoods about the Word of God which I can prove is historically wrong, and then appeal to your own sense of authority as a reason why you don't need to support your claims with historical facts.
That's why I say God help anyone who was mislead sitting under your teaching, because not unlike the Pharisees before, you arrogantly teach things that would aim to undermine people's trust in the Word of God, things which can even be proven to be wrong based on natural evidence alone.

Being Jewish, isn't he screwed already, as far as evangelical Christianity goes?

Although perhaps not quite so roundly as an idol-worshipper like myself

 

[Glaurung]

Well, that's more or less what I was getting at. Pretty much everybody is a heretic to somebody else. The word is really pretty subjective.

But there is a historic faith attested since antiquity. The Chruch Fathers, the Ecumenical Counsels, the Creeds. You can't escape this history, you have to denounce it on the mere say so of your church's founder.

So while what you say has some validity, that doesn't mean that all claims to the truth are equally credible.

 

[psychoslice]

I don't think there is such thing as the true religion, Catholics or whoever, to think you are better than another is just wrong, if you think like that then you need to give up your belief, its no good for anyone.

 

[siti]

But what was happening with these "heretical" groups is that they were not only using their own set of scriptures but that they were also formulating some teachings that simply could not be traced back as being taught by Jesus, the apostles, and those who came after them. These groups made their claims of authenticity of course, but correctly or not, they simply defied the teachings that were correctly or incorrectly passed down through the ages.

Responding to the bit I underlined...certainly true in some cases - and some were profoundly and very dangerously fanatical - but quite a lot of them were simply reacting to teachings of the emerging...established Roman Church that could not be traced back to Jesus' and the Apostles' (reported) teachings - e.g. most of the early Church era "heresies" centered around the Trinity (certainly not explicit in Jesus teachings or the Apostles), others were quartodecimans who believed that Jesus' death should be commemorated on the date of the Jewish passover (a perfectly valid interpretation of Jesus' instruction to "do this in remembrance of me" - Luke 22:19), still others differed over the applicability (or not) of the Law as set out in the Hebrew scriptures (Jesus and the Apostles clearly equivocated on this matter in the scriptural accounts), the canon of scripture, Church leadership, the doctrine of original sin (and the related freewill vs. predestination problem) and whether devotion to religious icons constituted idolatry...

...all of these fairly serious and perfectly reasonable questions resurfaced in the reformation, so to say there is "no history" for Protestantism is fallacious (they just didn't call themselves Protestants or Calvinists or Presbyterians or whatever) - but the history (of the teachings) goes back as far as that of the Roman Church itself and is equally well attested - in the Church's own records - even if these sincerely held Christian beliefs were denounced as heretical. In fact, in many ways, the early Roman Church is defined as much by what it rejected as what it affirmed. Indeed, Iraneaus' magnum opus was titled "Against Heresies" - what "heresies" was he "inspired" to write five books against if there were not a significant body of Christian believers who thought differently about their religion?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

As acts 8 says you can't understand the bible without an authoritative teacher

Because the author is banking on rampant illiteracy. Once you are literate, why yes, yes you CAN understand the bible without blindly believing what some clergy person is telling you.

Again none of the reformers had a direct mission from God like the apostles

The apostles weren't chosen by God either. Jesus picked up 12 random dudes and called it a day.

That is what the Pharisees were doing when they made the word of God no effect by teaching the word of men as though it were authoritative, contradicting the word of God by the decrees of men.

To be fair to the Pharisees, though, EVERYTHING they had was written by men, including scriptures.

This is basically the same thing the Roman Catholic church did: Declaring they have authority, on behalf of God, to rule and make law, and declare what God's word means.

Is this not what EVERY founder of a denomination does?

 

[Brickjectivity]

This kind of thing feels like ignoring history. Catholic missionary says "We have an authoritative apostolic chain that validates us" yet is completely dissonant with the original Jewish texts, but I am in the wrong because I have a Protestant background. It is merely a poor justification to ignore the very serious issues that Protestants face. We are snake handlers, tongue speakers, laughing revivalists and Science avoiders; but they only say "You should have been a Roman Catholic. Everything is wonderful on our side." Thanks, really, but everything is not wonderful on your side or we wouldn't be where we are. Go ahead and give more lip service to the "We are all one big family" while you use our problems to justify your dysfunctional hierarchy. That is how it seems to me.

 

[Katzpur]

But there is a historic faith attested since antiquity. The Chruch Fathers, the Ecumenical Counsels, the Creeds. You can't escape this history, you have to denounce it on the mere say so of your church's founder.

So while what you say has some validity, that doesn't mean that all claims to the truth are equally credible.

Historic doesn't necessarily mean "true." Remember, it's the winners who write the histories. And just to be clear, I would never denounce anything on the mere say so of someone else.

 

[metis]

Is this not what EVERY founder of a denomination does?

Exactly. Every denomination has leaders and rules that those inside generally accept, but there's the strong tendency to denounce the leadership and rules in another denomination or religion.

Also, let me add that there's always going to be some internal dissent within any group, and that's not all bad as sometimes it's good to question some teachings, even if they're basic. And contrary to the belief of some, there always has been and hopefully always will be dissent within the CC. The early church "fathers" certainly didn't always agree, and it's good that they didn't.

Where the CC and some other denominations ran across a significant problem in this area is when they got tied to the political leadership of the day whereas any dissent that was considered threatening to the church got cracked down on by the political authorities as well, and this not only happened with the CC but also within some of the Protestant groups. The churches that Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin started went to war with each other over this, plus they also went after Jews and other elements that didn't conform and comply.

So, your point above is well-taken-- at least by myself.

 

[metis]

...all of these fairly serious and perfectly reasonable questions resurfaced in the reformation, so to say there is "no history" for Protestantism is fallacious (they just didn't call themselves Protestants or Calvinists or Presbyterians or whatever) - but the history (of the teachings) goes back as far as that of the Roman Church itself and is equally well attested - in the Church's own records -

As I mentioned in response to Kelly's post, there always has been dissent, but it simply is improper to call this dissent "Protestantism". "Protest", yes; "Protestantism", no.

Indeed, Iraneaus' magnum opus was titled "Against Heresies" - what "heresies" was he "inspired" to write five books against if there were not a significant body of Christian believers who thought differently about their religion?

I never said otherwise, and as a matter of fact I alluded to it several days ago in this thread.

It seems that you may be conflating what I said versus someone what someone else may have said here, so you might want to check back on previous posts.


See my post #57, for one example.

 

[siti]

As I mentioned in response to Kelly's post, there always has been dissent, but it simply is improper to call this dissent "Protestantism". "Protest", yes; "Protestantism", no.

No - I didn't say this was "Protestantism" I said it was history of faithful Christians protesting (about some of the same things that faithful Christians "protested" about to bring a bout the Protestant Reformation - remember the OP suggested that "Protestantism" had "no history" for 1500 years and frankly that contention is BS (as I - and others) have shown - patiently so far. But you correctly summed it up when you said earlier that the development of the Church was an evolution. Failure (or even slowness) to adapt will render a species (of biological or 'spiritual' organism) anachronistic and eventually lead to its extinction - then it matters not a jot how long the species has been around and how "grand" its history might have been.

I never said otherwise, and as a matter of fact I alluded to it several days ago in this thread.

It seems that you may be conflating what I said versus someone what someone else may have said here, so you might want to check back on previous posts.
See my post #57, for one example.

I did try to demark my comment clearly thus (...) indicating that the first bit was my response to your comment. The second bit (although building on the first) was more of a general remark on the topic and not limited to responding to your post I kind of thought I had made that clear by referring directly to the question of the OP.

 

[metis]

Failure (or even slowness) to adapt will render a species (of biological or 'spiritual' organism) anachronistic and eventually lead to its extinction - then it matters not a jot how long the species has been around and how "grand" its history might have been.

So, do you think the RCC and the Uniate churches are likely to go extinct?

BTW, the Lutheran theologian Martin Marty believes that the early church almost was wiped out on three different occasions, and I gotta feeling that, since it survived those, it's likely to survive in the future as long as there's humans walking on Earth. Will it continue to evolve? Of course it will, but it's too difficult to predict at this time what it may look like in, let's say, a thousand years. And I feel much the same way about many if not most of the Protestant groups.

I did try to demark my comment clearly thus (...) indicating that the first bit was my response to your comment. The second bit (although building on the first) was more of a general remark on the topic and not limited to responding to your post.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[siti]

So, do you think the RCC and the Uniate churches are likely to go extinct?

Certainly they will eventually, whether that happens simultaneously with human extinction or long before that depends on two things that I cannot predict - 1. how long it takes the human species to render itself extinct - (we're working really hard towards that goal at present - but that's not the subject of this topic) and 2. whether, as you say, they continue to evolve sufficiently to remain relevant as long as there are "humans walking on Earth". I don't think pinning their validity on highly dubious claims of Church "historicity" helps them either way.

On the other hand, the state of the "Protestant" movement (~40K denominations and counting) probably bears out the worst fears of the early Church Fathers about the tolerance of dissent and potential fragmentation of "the Body of Christ".

But - and this is my conclusion as far as this topic is concerned - that (fear, dissent and fragmentation) IS the SHARED history of both the "orthodox" and "protestant" Churches. For one side to claim that history exclusively is to disregard both the factual content and and the spiritual import of that history.

(And I'm not even a Christian)

 

[1robin]

Basically Protestantism didn't exists for over 1500 year after Jesus how can they believe it is the true Christian faith when there is no archeological or historical evidence for their belief system

Thanks

Ok, this is very simple. Protestantism is not another faith. It has 90% - 95% in common with Catholicism. It's foundation is Judaism. It is simply a set of ideas including a majority of which it shares with other mainstream Yahweh based faiths. Your question is pretty much a non-starter.

As far as historical evidence goes. Which scripture are you asking evidence for?

 

[Rise]

Is this not what EVERY founder of a denomination does?

No, and I already explained why. But I believe I can state it more simply:

The Roman catholic church claims they have the God given authority able to make laws which bind up men, laws which are not found in the Bible.
The Rabbis traditionally believe, as the Pharisees did, that they also have this authority.
Mormonism also gets into this, but they put a different spin on it by claiming they have new prophetic revelation which contradicts the Bible (Not just the book of mormon, but ongoing "prophecy" by their leaders).

No protestant, by definition of why they were founded, believes they have the authority to bind another man by a law of their own creation by claiming it to be the law of God. Because, by definition, the Bible is their authority of what God expects of us.

A protestant will say "God wants you to do this, because the Bible says so, and this is why I can prove the Bible says that".
What you will not see them doing, which sets them apart from the other religions I mentioned, is: They will not say "God wants you to do this, because our denomination leader says so, or historically this is what our denomination leaders have said".

Where your confusion probably stems from, is the issue of differing interpretations about what the Bible commands amongst protestant leaders.
What you must recognize, is that there is a categorical difference between someone who says "I believe the Bible says this, and this is why" versus someone who says "I cannot be wrong when I declare the Bible says this because I am head bishop of such and such denomination; because my position in this denomination means I have the authority from God to declare what is true". The later kind of excuse doesn't fly in protestantism. But you will find it in Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, and even Rabbinical Judaism.

The later is, by the way, why we have Karaite Judaism. They reject Rabbinical law and believe they are only obligated to follow what is written in the Bible, because it is God's law.
One well known Karaite ended his Rabbinical training because he realized one day it was wrong when the Rabbi told him "If there is a disagreement between what God says and what the Rabbi says, then God is wrong". He had enough spiritual sense to realize the absurdity of that statement the moment he heard it.

Exactly. Every denomination has leaders and rules that those inside generally accept, but there's the strong tendency to denounce the leadership and rules in another denomination or religion.

As I just restated, you seem unwilling to recognize the categorical difference between someone who makes an organizational rule that they acknowledge is only the rule of men, versus an organization that tries to declare their man made rules are actually the decrees and commands of God to His people.

Almost no protestant leaders historically even try to do the later, and if they do they are always universally outcast by the rest of protestantism as being un-Biblical cult leaders.

By definition, once you engage in that kind of behavior you no longer fall under the label of protestant, based on the reason why protestantism was founded, because you are no longer appealing to the Bible as your authority - but instead are appealing to your own authority, and claiming your authority comes from God.

 

[Glaurung]

Historic doesn't necessarily mean "true." Remember, it's the winners who write the histories. And just to be clear, I would never denounce anything on the mere say so of someone else.

In the end we can only asses assess what is true on the balance of credibility. I don't believe God failed in his promise. Matthew 16:18 I'm not going to believe that the first eighteen hundred years of Christian doctrine is one big error. It's just not credible.

 

[metis]

But - and this is my conclusion as far as this topic is concerned - that (fear, dissent and fragmentation) IS the SHARED history of both the "orthodox" and "protestant" Churches. For one side to claim that history exclusively is to disregard both the factual content and and the spiritual import of that history.

But the RCC does not claim that it is exclusive, especially since they recognize the other churches that were a product of apostolic succession. Plus, even though the Protestant churches aren't from that lineage, they are not viewed as being somehow "pagan". Matter of fact, the current pope made that quite clear just a few weeks ago when discussing various matters with members of the Evangelical Church.

 

[metis]

As I just restated, you seem unwilling to recognize the categorical difference between someone who makes an organizational rule that they acknowledge is only the rule of men, versus an organization that tries to declare their man made rules are actually the decrees and commands of God to His people.

The only time that this has happened is when the pope speaks ex cathedra, and in order for that to be done, such pronouncements must have historical precedent and not violate the scriptures, plus it must be done in conjunction with the bishops.

When it comes to theology, the church is much more loosey-goosey than most imagine-- much like the Roman traffic cop, if you know what I mean.

By definition, once you engage in that kind of behavior you no longer fall under the label of protestant, based on the reason why protestantism was founded, because you are no longer appealing to the Bible as your authority - but instead are appealing to your own authority, and claiming your authority comes from God.

The Bible was not the "authority" in the early church-- the church leaders were. See, what you are doing is putting forth a Protestant position that probably you were brought up in as I was, but it simply isn't historically true, nor true even according to the scriptures themselves.

BTW, just a reminder that I am neither Catholic nor Christian, plus I really don't have theological beliefs in this arena. But I do have interests in real history and also encouraging people to have an open mind.