Quote:
Originally Posted by bearbear
Catholics reject Sola Scriptura however don't they? The apostolic churches like Catholics and Orthodoxy are so leavened that staying in them is dangerous. However, if they had prevented leaven from entering the church starting from the council of Nicea then I would be Catholic. I think God's original intention was there to be one church and there are certain advantages of this that Protestants overlook.
For example if someone is in an adulterous affair and that person receives church disciplines via ex-communication in Protestantism, that person can just find another Protestant church to attend and take communion and no one would be the wiser. However, in the early church, the elder would let the bishop know and that person would be prevented from taking communion until they repent for the sake of their own soul.
Something like this was formalized for the "lapsi" who under extreme persecution by the Roman empire would break down and deny the faith via sacrificing to pagan gods to save their own life. There was a great controversy in the early church whether or not the lapsi could be forgiven and take communion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsi_(Christianity) |
Obviously I left Catholicism due to "leaven." I was about 13-14 when I decided that I would
never again enter that dark Confessional box. And btw the Whole Lump of Christianity has been leavened to a certain degree. None exempted. (Mt 13.33)
The Council at Nicea was as crucial as the Jerusalem Council in AD 50. The latter demanded that the whole church be circumcised according to Moses. The former demanded that Jesus, the Only Begotten Word of God, was neither God nor eternal. This does not mean that everything at Nicea was positive, and for that matter not everything in Acts 15 was positive.
Your concept of "one church" is an organizational one to prevent sin and heresy from entering the church and spreading. This has ALWAYS been their justification. The true oneness of the church, however, is not physical or organizational, but rather invisible and spiritual.
Using a political analogy, if local officials are corrupt, citizens can get redress at a state level, and if state officials or laws are corrupt, citizens can get remedy at the federal level. But what happens when the Feds, or in our case when church leadership at headquarters is corrupt, where do the saints find justice or righteousness? Did I not just explain every "storm" in LC history? Supposedly, whether the MOTA or the Pope or whoever "misaims," the Head of the body would step in to correct things. Obviously from church history things never happened that way.