Royal Oddball 2:9 wrote:Evangelion wrote: I don't think so. The manuscript evidence is distinctly in its favour.
Can you clarify what you mean by "manuscript evidence"?
I mean the Greek manuscripts from which our Bible was translated.
Evangelion wrote:Well, I take the Catholic Church's claims on this subject about as seriously as I take the JWs' claims that they're the only people with the true interpretation of God's WOrd.
Well, we're definitely in agreement there, but I think it's significant that the Catholic Church would refer to the church in the second century as "the Catholic Church."
I don't. Firstly, there was no "Catholic Church" as we know it today. Secondly, the word "catholic" comes from a Greek word, and simply means "universal", "broad", "comprehensive", or general."
We use it today in reference to the Catholic Church, but in the era of Eusebius it had no such connotation; it was simply a common, everyday word which was used in religuous and secular contexts.
It did not refer to a specific denomination.
Remember, apostasy and anti-christs, precursors to the RCC, were creeping into the church before the end of the NT.
Very true.
Evangelion wrote:Any Protestant who does this is wrong, on two grounds:
- Constantine did not establish Christianity as the state religion; he merely introduced a number of policies that favoured it. Christianity did not become the state religion until AD379, when it was instituted by the Christian emperor Theodosius.
- The church was still formulating her doctrines in Constantine's day; indeed, he presided over the most divisive and catastrophic Christological debates of all time: the Arian controversy.
I could add more on this subject, but the two points above will suffice for the moment.
Okay, assuming your history is correct here, when Theodosius established Christianity as the state religion in 379AD, under which denomination was it established?
It was not established under any denomination at all, for there were no distinct denominations at this time (though there were a handful of heretical sects and cults.)
Theology was still in a state of flux, the official doctrine of the nature of Christ had not yet been agreed on, and the official definition of the Trinity was still a long way off. (It was finally created at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381, by the three Cappadocians: Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa.)
The church was a heterodox entity during the 3rd and 4th Centuries; by this I mean that it tolerated a variety of different doctrines, including some that were mutually exclusive. There was no official document which stated precisely what you had to believe in order to be called a true Christian.
Even Eusebius himself had heretical leanings; he favoured the Arians during the Council of Nicea, and for many years afterwards. Yet despite this, he remained at the emperor's side as a trusted advisor.
Was it not referred to as the Holy Roman Catholic Church?
No. The first historical reference to a "Holy Roman Catholic Church" appears in the 8th Century, with the rise of the emperor Charlemagne. He established the "Holy Roman Empire" which gave birth to the entity we know today as the Roman Catholic Church. In Charlemagne's day, that church was still part of a larger body; this all changed in the Great Schism, when the Catholic Church emerged as an independent body in her own right.
And, assuming the Catholic Encyclopedia is simply making things up, there're still plenty of other documents that support this claim, particularly the Eusebian texts. What do you make of those?
I refer you to my previous comments about the meaning of the word "catholic." In Eusebius' day, it did not mean what it generally means to modern readers. People were spoken of as belonging to the "catholic church" because there was only one church, and everyone belonged to it;
ergo, it was the "universal" (or "catholic") church.
Look up "catholic" in a dictionary ([url=
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=catholic]
here[/ur], for example) and you'll see that I'm right about the meaning of this word.
Also, what do you make of the fact that none of the baptisms recorded in the NT mention something similar to "Father-Son-Holy Spirit" but rather something along the lines of "Jesus Christ" or the "name of the Lord"? Assuming Matt. 28:19 is original, none of the apostles did what Jesus said. Can you give me a better reason for that other than my argument that Matt. 28:19 wasn't what Jesus told them to do?
Yes. I simply accept that the Bible often uses a form of shorthand when recording events. It does not always tell us every word that somebody spoke, or every single action that they performed.
Take
Acts 2, for example. We are told that Peter preached to the crowd; we are even told many of the things that he said. But we would be wrong to assume that this is
all he said, for the later verses of the chapter tell us that "many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation."
It is the same with the New Testament baptisms. Sometimes we are told exactly what they said, as in
Acts 8:37:
- And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
No mention of being baptised in Jesus' name here, by the way - or even in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Sometimes we are not told what they said, as in
Acts 16:33:
- And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.
No mention of any spoken formula whatsoever!
The bottom line is that the Bible sometime uses abbreviations wherever the writers considered this expedient and appropriate. I personally believe that in many cases, the phrase "baptised in the name of Jesus" is merely a short-hand description of the full baptismal formula in
Matthew 28.
However, taking into account the example of Philip in
Acts 8:37, I am equally aware that on some occasions the formula was not used at all.
By the same token, I have no doubt that some people were baptised with a formula which merely mentioned Jesus' name, ie. "I baptise you in the name of Jesus."
