Apostacy and the Recovery of the Church and the Churches

[Acolyte4236]

Originally Posted by Raptor

That´s not quite what I was asking. Neither was I implying that those that came before were not reliable. It´s really a genuine question, not an argument (not yet, anyway). But now that you mention it, you added "tried and tested", how? Is the test just a matter of time, longevity of teachings....so the test of time? Is it popularity, common teachings? So, tradition passes the test? "Can you show me the scriptural basis that teaches us that to understand the word of God we need to rely on what has been taught throughout church history?"

I take tried and tested to mean that the Church so judged their teachings to be correct. You seem fine accepting certain traditions from the church down through history. Take the designations of the Gospel names and authors. We have no manuscripts prior to 200-250 which designate the texts with those names. We rely on church tradition to know their authorship and such. Much the same is true with respect to the formal canon of scripture, that is the actual list of which books are inspired. That too is a tradition passed on from the church. But if you want to reject all tradition, but I don't recommend doing so.

[Acolyte4236]

Part of the problem as I see it is that Lee, like so many others posited an apostasy thesis, that the church fell away and he was the self appointed individual to put humpty dumpty back together again. This is a fundamental weakness in Lee's position as it is for all restorationist sects. They all need an apostasy thesis to create the space for their claims.

Of course scripture records only two ways to have divinely authorized ministers-Either a person is commissioned directly by God, which is authenticated by miracle and prophecy, e.g. Moses, or someone is commissioned by someone else who was directly commissioned by God.

Now because of the apostasy thesis, the second option is not open to him. That means to make his claims work, Lee needed miracles and prophecy, which like the JW's he didn't have, at least to my knowledge. Now as Hebrews makes plain, a man cannot take the office to himself. So without miracle and prophecy, Lee has taken the office of minister to himself.

That rules him out just from the get-go.

To put my cards on the table, I am (Eastern) Orthodox. And I don't need an apostasy thesis like Lee does because when you're existence is attested without question in the public record, you don't need to posit an ad hoc gap to legitimate yourself.

So this brings us full circle. Since I think God continues a portion of the apostolic ministry that he founded through the bishops of the church to our own time, it does not follow that the teaching of the Church will be filled with inconsistencies. The assumption trades on the idea that the Church is just a purely human entity. If it has an apostolic ministry, then this assumption is false.

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

Contemporary Christian orthodoxy is built upon the orthodoxy of the past few centuries. And that Christian orthodoxy was build upon the orthodoxy from previous generations and centuries. And if we dig back far enough, as noted by Acolyte4236, we can trace a line of orthodoxy proceeding from the earliest of 2nd generation teachers, scholars and apologists. Some have dubbed these as "the church fathers", who are believed to have personally known some of the twelve apostles, or to have been significantly influenced by them. And there is a traceable line of orthodoxy that proceeds from there. So by the time we get to the earliest of the ecumenical councils and formations of the earliest creeds and statements of faith, we find that they were not inventing new doctrines or teachings, but only reaffirming and reiterating what was passed down from the scripture writing apostles.-

This topic is huge, it´s very hard to write about its entire scope, let alone define or describe in detail. It´s not a simple issue where we can just refer to this "body of orthodox knowledge" to get our answers. Some kind of theological Alexa, to which we can just refer our questions to and get back the correct, balanced, scriptural answers and interpretations. Where do you start? Plus it is not a simple, straighforward resource, it is full of intrinsic controversies too. For example Athanasius of Alexandria, 4th century:

• christian theologian
• church father
• chief defender of Trinitarianism
• against Arianism
• deacon and assistant to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria
• during the First Council of Nicaea
• writings well regarded by Church fathers in West and East
• labeled as the "Father of Orthodoxy"
• first person to identify the 27 books New Testament books used today

[Acolyte4236]

Originally Posted by Boxjobox

If one considers the 7 churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the mystery woman in Revelation, and 1st John, Timothy, parables of Jesus, I would think there is quite a lot of ground for an “apostasy thesis”. Common sense in looking at scripture and looking at modern Christiandom should set an alarm off in any seeking Christian who wishes to hear what the Spirit is speaking to the churches. Lee failed in his ministry and a desire to restore a scriptural assembly not because of his “apostasy thesis”, but due to so many things that are discussed here.

Problems in particular churches or even their apostasy doesn’t constitute a general apostasy. To think so trades on the fallacy of composition, reasoning from the part to the whole.

Second, plenty of biblical material runs contrary to the thesis of a general apostasy. First, much of the gospel material is referring to the apostasy of Israel in the first century (“We have no king but Caesar.”) and not the church. Furthermore, the faith is delivered once for all, which precludes a general apostasy, not to mention material in say Matt 16 that the gates of hades cannot prevail against the church. Those all preclude a general apostasy that Lee, the JW's, the Mormons and the rest posit and require for their claims to even get off the ground.

As to Lee, he failed for many contributing reasons, but not least of which was the fact that because a general apostasy did not take place nor could, Lee wasn’t the church. He was just another self appointed Johnny come lately, reinventing the wheel in some cases and creating more problems, practical and theological, in others.

[Boxjobox]

Perhaps it would be beneficial for you to define your understanding of “church” and “churches”. What in your thinking constitutes “the church” and then how are you using the concept of “churches”?

[Boxjobox]

My view would be that there is a vast difference between the well understood teachings of the apostles, and particularly Paul, and the “orthodoxy” that came about 4 centuries later. That’s as far as I will go on the subject for your sake. Acolyte4236 speaks of this matter in reference to Lee, the church, the churches and apostasy or lack there of. For me, Lee was in the same vein as the Orthodox Church- great swelling teachings that drew souls away from that which Paul established and encouraged the saints to follow. What one considers the church and churches has very much to do with the present situation in modern Christianity, which is something we are all grappling with. I would say that the difficulty in grasping what Paul teaches and practices is all related to the deep fog that 4th century orthodoxy put over the scripture.

[Boxjobox]

Acolyte4326 uses the terms church and churches in discussing modalism. There is a definite need to have an understanding of how and why they are using these terms because church and churches imply associations of some sort. Untohim, you say Acolyte4326 IS an EOC. As our old friend WL would say, “Why are you married to Mr Smith but you call yourself Mrs Jones? If Church and Churches are denominated along the lines of doctrine and their particular orthodoxy then our discussion of modalism will probably go in certain directions and not others- such as, what was the foundational presentation in scripture as opposed to what was the orthodoxy that emerged from men’s ideas and associations made, say, 4 centuries after that fundamental organism called the church and the churches in the scripture emerged.

[Acolyte4236]

Boxjobox,

As I indicated previously, I am Orthodox. And that means that I define the Church in terms of the ministry begun by Christ and the Apostles and perpetuated through the succession of bishops and their teaching as evidenced in the history of Christianity in at least the first thousand years. Given my remarks about the biblical material in Matt 16, Jude 3, etc., it goes without saying that I think the church is an actual society of people which is detectable in history and is preserved from apostasy as Jesus promised.

As I asked previously, what exactly is your objection to Athanasius’ doctrine of theosis?

As to your gloss on how dogma is formed I find that to be rather unhistorical. It is rather sociological rather than theological. I use the term dogma in a rather specialized sense, namely teachings handed on by Christ and the Apostles that constitute the essence of Christianity.

As to denominations, I suppose we need to clear the floor here. Denominations is a protestant classification system created in the 19th century to explain how different Protestant bodies could all constitute visible churches, on Protestant principles. The Orthodox are not Protestant and in fact pre-Protestant and as an ancient body simply doesn’t count as a denomination. For that matter neither do Rome or the Copts.

As to our “particular Orthodoxy” this is something that of course the Orthodox do not grant. Orthodoxy isn’t a sectarian take on common theological material. From our point of view, the Orthodox Church preserves what constitutes Christianity per se. And unlike the LC or any other modern sect, we actually can show existence and continuity with the early church in terms of worship, ministers and doctrine. This is why we don’t need an apostasy thesis. For example, if you go visit Thessaloniki and the church Paul founded there, the church still exists and it isn’t Presbyterian, Baptist or Lutheran, let alone LC. It is Orthodox.

Consequently, while you seem to want to create distance between the early church and the Constantinian era, for us, there is no distance since we are the same church both before and after, guided by the same apostolic ministry. To complain about the “ideas of men” presupposes that the Church via the apostolic ministry is not guided by God and is merely a human creation. That begs the question. What is more, for my part, to complain about technical expressions in the fourth century misses a whole host of points.

First, it was the church that judged those expressions to be correct and excluded others. Second, even by the fourth century there was still no formal canon of scripture such that an a priori rejection of 4th century judgments as you seem to imply would entail rejecting the formal canon in large measure you accept. It does no work to point to a large amount of agreement on most of the books you accept, since to do so is an acceptance of those books based on the authority of the Church and her tradition rather than the authority of any given individual. If the church lacked the requisite authority, then there is no need to cite her judgments or that of her bishops.

What is my point here? My point is to point out that people got into the LC in large measure because they accepted an apostasy thesis along with this idea that the church can just be any association of people that crops up out of nowhere. This is why all sectarian groups require an apostasy thesis of some kind. If they had existed from the start, they would be able to demonstrate their historical existence but they can’t. And so they make an ad hoc appeal to apostasy to justify their existence. But the Church doesn’t require such an account, since the Church has continued to exist for 2000 years without interruption.

[Boxjobox]

The history of the church is quite interesting to consider, in that it is very much wrapped around the presentation of the foundational church found in scripture and the development of theology that followed. I would say, from the foundational church time for a couple of centuries., various and sundry teachings developed, as well as a clergy-laity system, the ignorant masses and the learned intellectual elite, the rulers and the ruled, the shepherds and the flocks. By the 4th century it seems positions were understood. When the Roman Emperor adopted Christianity and wished to make that the state religion, he demanded that the church rulers would hammer out a cohesive, unified belief system.

Needless to say, I have little respect for the spiritual standing of those participants in those councils that made universal decrees of doctrine, if for none other reason than the resultant enforcement of those decrees was anything but Christian. Yes, the process created a universal orthodoxy, but created an entity that was vastly different than that which was from the beginning, and filled it with teachings of men, which resulted in strange practices, which resulted in a pseudo Christian church. All that was done in an age of mass ignorance of the common people and a marriage of the intellectual religious elite with the political elite. This pseudo Christian church carried on for centuries, until some finally Protested.

I will fast-forward to today, where, for the most part, we all can read, we all can have full access to scripture, we can all inquire into history, and, again for the most part, are not under religious/ political tyranny. We have before us, what is presented as the foundational church in the scriptures, the accounts of the life of Jesus, the teachings of the apostles, and the present state of the Church and the churches. We are, I think, at a crossroads that will determine the veracity of “ the church” for future. Currently, I would say the whole concept of “ the church” and the Christian faith is under tremendous attack and abuse both outward and inward. I for one, don’t find the orthodoxy you speak of as being that which was from the beginning, but rather warped by that which occurred during the 4th to 6th century. That time frame and the players involved set a course for a millennium. The resultant manifestations of that time and the Protest that followed, create the Christian situation of today. Lee came about and, I applaud him for this, reintroduced the concept of the local church, which, yes did consider the other manifestations of Christian assembly as apostasy. Yet his original thought was a recovery from what had resulted from 1500 years of bad practice.

You mention the church in Thessaloniki as an example; I would say that is an example of a local church, yet, I would say that the orthodox teachings as a result of that 4-6th century period, would be entirely foreign to that which was from the beginning, which we can read of in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. The church, the churches, orthodoxy, Protestantism, the LC, Lee, all orbit around that 4-6th century timeline, so there needs to be a compare and contrast view from that history and the foundational church.

[Sons to Glory!]

Originally Posted by Acolyte4236

As to denominations, I suppose we need to clear the floor here. Denominations is a protestant classification system created in the 19th century to explain how different Protestant bodies could all constitute visible churches, on Protestant principles. The Orthodox are not Protestant and in fact pre-Protestant and as an ancient body simply doesn’t count as a denomination. For that matter neither do Rome or the Copts.

How would you classify the Christians Broadbent detailed in his seminal book, "The Pilgrim Church"? That is, Christian gatherings who met together for many centuries (starting as early as the 3rd or 4th centuries), but were apart from the large, organized group like the RCC or GOC?

[UntoHim]

Boxjobox, Acolyte4236 and others,

I have branched these posts off into another thread. Let's continue this line of discussion here.
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