The Papacy and Islam

New Partnership with Muslims In his message to the predominately Muslim nation of Kazakhstan twelve days after the horrors of September 11th, 2001, the Pope declared, “‘There is one God’. The Apostle proclaims before all else the absolute oneness of God. This is a truth which Christians inherited from the children of Israel and which they share with Muslims: it is faith in the one God, ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ (Lk.10:21), almighty and merciful. In the name of this one God, I turn to the people of deep and ancient religious traditions, the people of Kazakhstan.”1 He then gave a false Gospel. Building a “civilization of love”, he said, is the task of Christians and Muslims. His exact words were,

“This ‘logic of love’ is what he [Jesus] holds out to us, asking us to live it above all through generosity to those in need. It is a logic which can bring together Christians and Muslims, and commit them to work together for the ‘civilization of love’. It is a logic which overcomes all the cunning of this world and allows us to make true friends who will welcome us ‘into the eternal dwelling-places’ (Lk.16:9), into the ‘homeland’ of heaven.”2

His final prayer was for a partnership between “Christians and Muslims”. His words were,

“And in this celebration we want to pray for Kazakhstan and its inhabitants, so that this vast nation, with all its ethnic, cultural and religious variety, will grow stronger in justice, solidarity and peace. May it progress on the basis in particular of cooperation between Christians and Muslims, committed day by day, side by side, in the effort to fulfil God’s will.”3 I In spite of the catastrophic events of September 11th, the Pope has continued faithfully the Roman Catholic Church policy of affirmation and approval of Islam. The Vatican speaks officially of the Roman Catholic Church having the same God and faith of Abraham as the Muslims,

“The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. ‘The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.’”4

The Roman Catholic Church officially declares that the One God of Holy Scripture is also the God of Islam. It also esteems the moral life of Islam, the affirmation of which follows, “The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, whose faith Muslims eagerly link to their own.

Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devotedly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.”5

It is clear from this official recognition that the Church of Rome’s estimation of Islam has experienced a fundamental change. The Biblical commandment not to venerate any strange god has been broken by Rome in order to credit Islam and its adherents with holding to the faith of Abraham. Patently, this novel re-assessment of the Muslim faith represents a major shift in the political policy of the Vatican. These official statements are carefully constructed religious discourse. They are aimed at engendering a new mood of respectful rapprochement and mutual understanding between the Papacy and Islam. As a device of diplomatic exchange, they show clearly that a new interfaith-ecumenicity is being propounded by Rome with the singular objective of embracing Islam and its peoples within a new international community of religious life and faith, a community incidentally, in which Rome enjoys priority as founder and senior partner.

Christians believe in One God, in which One Godhead there exists Three Persons. Islam rejects this concept as blasphemous. The Qur’an declares, “Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one God, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve”(Surah 5:73)6. The Bible proclaims Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross in place of the believer, "In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”7 Islam passionately rejects the crucifixion of Christ Jesus. Thus the Qur’an declares, “And their saying: Surely we have killed the Messiah, Isa son of Marium, the apostle of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so (like Isa) and most surely those who differ therein are only in a doubt about it; they have no knowledge respecting it, but only follow a conjecture, and they killed him not for sure” (Surah 4:157).

The Bible proclaims Christ Jesus as divine, being the brightness of the divine glory, and the express image of God. In the Qur’an Christ Jesus is debased to being solely an apostle of Allah. Thus the Qur’an states, “O followers of the Book! do not exceed the limits in your religion, and do not speak (lies) against Allah, but (speak) the truth; the Messiah, Isa son of Marium is only an apostle of Allah…” (Surah 4.171) Christ Jesus declared, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”8 “I and my Father are one.”9 “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”10 A religion that rejects Christ’s divinity is dead in its sins. It is an absurd blasphemy that the Pope declares that the one, living and subsistent God of the Bible is the same one as the infidel god of Islam.

The Gospel and the Qur’an’s religious philosophy In the Bible the Gospel is as the Apostle John declared,

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”11 “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.”12 The whole purpose of the God of Scripture is clearly seen in the reason why the Gospel of John was written, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”

This is totally different from the god of Islam who orders fighting, war, and punishment, by murder, crucifixion and amputation. The following is just a sample of the primary concept of fighting for Allah that the Qur’an requires:

“And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.” Surah 2.191

“And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.” Surah 2.193

“…let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world's life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward.” Surah 4.74

“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,” Surah 5.33 “Those who believe fight in the way of Allah,…” Surah 8.39

The commandment of the Lord is as different as darkness and light, for He says, “Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”13

While many individual Muslims may deplore atrocities committed in the name of Islam, it cannot be denied that these atrocities are justified and encouraged by Islamic teaching. Even the most moderate form of Islam is incompatible with Biblical truth.

RCC dogma on Islam changed Nonetheless, after six centuries of condemning of Islam and two centuries of Crusades against the Muslims, modern Roman Catholicism is welcoming and affirming the religion of Mohammed. Rome now accepts Islam as having the same faith of Abraham as herself. How can the Roman Catholic Church espouse a religion that utterly rejects the Trinity, the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel? Clearly, the Roman Catholic Church still plays the adaptable chameleonfor since Vatican Council II, she has in Muslim circles embraced Islam to the extent that she calls praiseworthy that which she once had denounced as evil and the object of war. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a “War of the Cross,” or a Crusade, to retake the holy lands from the infidel Muslim Turks. Several versions of his speech at the end of a Church Council have survived. Although we cannot be sure of the exact words the Pope used, the substance however is the same. The heart and mind of papal power in twelfth and thirteenth centuries is seen in these sentences, “All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.”14

The present Pope and his Church uphold the teaching that the definitions of all Roman Pontiffs pertaining to faith or morals of the Roman Pontiff are “irreformable by their very nature.”15 If the present Roman Pontiff, John Paul II, has proclaimed Muslims to be acceptable as believers, then by that same proclamation, Urban II and the whole line of Crusading Popes have been proven to be damnable heretics, since they condemned Muslims and fought against them!

The ecumenism of the Papacy with Islam is of grave concern for the true body of Christ to consider. The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II sees himself as the one capable of bringing in a New World Order, in which Rome will be the Mother and Lawmaker. Through his Vatican II documents the Pope declares, “The encouragement of unity is in harmony with the deepest nature of the [Roman Catholic] Church’s mission .”16 On an highly emotional spiritual level there has been a great common-ground meeting place between Rome and Mecca in the town of Fatima in Portugal. To quote a Catholic news organization, “Our Lady of Fatima is really Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Mohammed On October 23, 1995, Iranian television began running stories that the apparitions in Fatima, Portugal in 1917 were religious phenomena of Muslim origin.”17 Islam teaches that men can achieve favor with God by what a person does. On the Fatima site in Portugal May 13th 2000, the Pope proclaimed a message that could be readily accepted by both Muslims and Catholics. “‘Pray, pray much and make sacrifices for sinners; many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them’....”18 Heroic deeds to win the approval of God appeal to the natural man, including the devout Muslim; it is, however, light years away from the Gospel of grace. The Pope’s message, and the message and veneration of heroism in Islam are a total negation of the Gospel, “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us....”19 In practice both systemsa mammoth one billion adherents eachare totalitarian, synthesizing spiritual and civil power in their doctrinal presentations and cultic practices. The global hierarchy and infrastructure of the RCC, however, is far more developed than that of Islam.20 The bringing together of both under the Roman Pontiff, who calls himself the Vicar of Christ, would make for a political powerhouse of vast consequences.

Pope’s message echoed by Bush and Muslim Leaders The drawing of governments and religions even more closely into a global coalition before a politically constructed god has already begun. Rome has many times shown herself as the one to whom all can come for unity within her. Islam as such is still accepted as a valid religion, and the terrorists of September understood to be fallen from their religion, rather than upholding its teachings. In the words of President George W. Bush, “These murderers have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their evil deeds. And we cannot let it stand.”21 The Muslims themselves are giving the same message. For example, the Associated Press reported, “An international Muslim religious ruling endorsed the morality of the U.S.-led military effort against terrorists…The ruling…was written by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the widely respected chairman of the Sunna and Sira Council in Qatar, along with three colleagues in Egypt and one in Syria. The new fatwa cited the words of God in the Quran and authoritative Hadith…‘All Muslims ought to be united against all those who terrorize the innocents, and those who permit the killing of non-combatants without a justifiable reason,’ the fatwa said…

The five jurists also said Muslims have a duty to speak up about the faith's anti-terrorism stand.”22 This spin on Islam is perfectly in line with what Pope and the Vatican declared, “together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”23 It looks as if the Pope, the politicians, and the Muslims continue to conceal successfully the history of Mohammed and the contents of his Qur’an.

A Trumpet Call to the True Church The Pope's profession of a ‘civilization of love’ in his rapprochement with Islam represents only another tactical re-appraisal of circumstances and opportunities for Rome. It is merely the old idol of humanistic sentiment religiously recycled and held out to the world as the cohesive force that will unite all sincere religious people in a concordat of international condemnation against the kind of anti-social fanaticism that led to the September 11th horror. The profound danger for Evangelical people is that they, unthinking, might come to embrace Rome’s claim to be the true spokesman for Christ on this earth, a lie which is deeply embedded in this new thrust for interfaith ecumenicity. The Pope is not a first among equals as a bishop. Frankly, he is not even a bishop in the biblical sense of the term. Karol Wojtyla is the head of a totalitarian hierarchy. Its position as the restored Holy Roman Empire is depicted in the Bible. He is an absolute monarch. He has his own secular government of Vatican City and more property worldwide than any other person on the planet. He has territorial dominions, cardinals, ambassadors worldwide, a detective force, legislature, jurisprudence, laws, advocates, taxes, banks, foreign treaties, ambitious plans and policy, more than any other secular Prince. But he differs from other secular leaders: his spiritual commerce goes hand in hand with his civil power, claiming infallibility and international recognition. The Pope in his own laws declares, “There is neither appeal nor recourse against a decision or decree of the Roman Pontiff.” His arrogance is not just in spiritual matters, but in secular affairs also, for he claims supreme power as much as any totalitarian ruler, “The First See is judged by no one.”24 “It is solely the right of the Roman Pontiff himself judge…those who hold the highest civil office in a state...”25 This Pope desires partnership with Islam. His claims echo II Thessalonians 2:4, “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God” and Isaiah 14:14, "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be likemost High.”

Had not Holy Scripture warned us of this we would rightly be afraid. The Sovereign God remains sovereign. His purposes may be the purification of the Bride of Christ Jesus, the remnant pilgrim Church on earth. The Lord Jesus Christ did not elect the Pope as His Vicar on earth; rather He and the Father gave to the Holy Spirit of Truth to that position.

If contemporary Evangelical leaders and their disciples discount and ignore these utterly basic prophetic and historical facts, they must understand they are placing themselves outside the stream of historic biblical Christianity. They are willingly divorcing themselves from great men of the faithWycliff, Huss, Luther, Tyndale, Calvin, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Bradford, Foxe, Bunyan, Newton, Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley, Spurgeon, Ryle, and Lloyd-Jones to mention just a few. It is impossible to hold to the Gospel of Christ and simultaneously accord any legitimacy to the accommodations of the papal system. The Lord of Glory Himself will not allow such behavior to go unpunished. If Evangelicals to continue to fraternize with Rome, it will mark a major, irrevocable betrayal of the Gospel testimony toward the poor deluded adherents of Romanism and leave them languishing in the claws of the devil. In other words, in simple terms of loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ, those claiming to be believers must “Come out of her that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”26 There is no common ground between the religion of apostasy and the Gospel of the Apostles. In spite of papal declarations of a truce and vacuous “Evangelical” alliances with the enemies of Christ, “Enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed,” Genesis 3:1, is an epitomized history of conflict which, from the moment of the Fall, has been waged between the children of light and of darkness, between those who adhere to the Gospel of grace and God’s righteousness, and those who are ranged on the side of the Devil by their love of accommodation and compromise. At this moment of history the Ecumenism of accommodation, with the Pope leading the pack, accepts Islam as a great religion. The true believer must decide where he or she stands. “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve.”27 •

Richard Bennett of “Berean Beacon” WebPage: http://www.bereanbeacon.org Permission is given by the authors to copy this article if it is done in its entirety without any changes. Permission is also given post this article in its entirety on Internet WebPages.

1 Homily of the Pope, in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Sunday, 23 September 2001. Accessed 9/28/2001. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/2001/documents/hf_jpii_hom_20010923_kazakhstan_astana_en.html 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Catechism of the Catholic Church, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994) Para. 841 Hereafter Catechism 5 Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, No. 56, Nostra Aetate, Austin P. Flannery, ed.(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B Eerdsmans Publ. Co., 1975 & 1984) Vol. I., pp. 739-740. Hereafter Vatican II. 6 All quotes from the Koran are from this site: http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/ 7 Ephesians 1:7 8 John 8:58 9 John 10:30 10 John 8:24 11 1 John 1:5 12 John 17:3 13 Luke 6:35-36 14 Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, 1, pp. 382 f., in A Source Book for Medieval History, Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal, eds. (New York: Scribners, 1905). 15 Vatican II, No. 28, Lumen Gentium, Vol. I., p. 380. 16 Vatican II, No. 64, Gaudium et Spes , Vol. I, Sec. 42, p. 942. 17 www.zenit.org/english/asia/za980513.html Accessed 11/1/2001 18 www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_p.../hf_jp-ii_hom_20000513_beatification-fatima_en.htm accessed 6/1/00. 19 Titus 3:5. 20 For a brief overview of the Islamic position, see Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War onAmerica (Roseville, CA: Prima Publ, Forum, 1999, 2001) Introduction, pp. x-xv. For a study of RCC infrastructure, see 2001Catholic Almanac (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publ., 2000) Part III: The Church Universal. 21 Reported on cnn.com 10/12/01 “Bush Gives Update on the War on Terrorism”. 22http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011012/ts/attacks_fatwa_1.html Associated Press, Saturday October 13, 2001. 23 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Para. 841. 24 Code of Canon Law, Latin-Eng. ed. (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1989) Can. 1404. All canons taken from this work. 25 Can. 1405. 26 Revelation 18:4. 27 Josh 24:15

Even that doesn't really get at it, in my opinion, because I don't worship an idea of God; I worship God through (or by way of) my idea or concept of God

It doesn't matter if it is your idea or a communal idea; it is still an idea. An icon of Christ is precisely that — an icon, an image, an idea of Christ; no one really thinks that's what He really looked like.

God. My idea of God is developing, since I am learning more and more about God

It will continue developing, because God is perfect and we will never know Him as he really is. So, by that approach, we will be worshiping an "idol" (our idea of God) forever.

What assures us that we are worshiping the "true God" is Christ. If we worship Christ, we know that we worship His Father and His Spirit, or simply the true, Triune God.

That's why Christ said that we can come to the Father only thorough Him. he is the only mediator between us (men[kind]) and God the Father.

This is reflected in our Creed "God of God, true God of true God..." wisely chosen words of the Fathers.

Otherwise, "true God" would really become a relativistic concept that would be all inclusive, no only of the Abrahamic God (Jews and Muslims), but of Hindu's Brahman who is described by upanishads in vedas as a singular:

[U]nchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this universe...This Supreme Cosmic Spirit or Absolute Reality called Brahman is said to be eternal, genderless, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, and ultimately indescribable in the human language. It can be at best described as infinite Being, infinite Consciousness and infinite Bliss. Brahman is regarded as the source and essence of the material universe. It is pure being."

If we admit that anyone who worships a divine Monad (one God) is no different than we are, then Christ himself is an idol and not true God.

Thus, we cannot for the sake of political correctness or "fairness" or cultural sensitivity or any kind of religious tolerance fad assume that all faiths that profess one single God are true faiths or that their God is true God, even though it is not like our God or is even inimical to Him.

“There are Scriptural passages indicating such a perspective.”

I don’t doubt that there are passages which could be read by some to demonstrate such a concept, especially if one were motivated to read those passges in that manner. But if in fact that’s what those passages mean, it does appear that from, again, an historical perspective, Christianity had fallen into apostacy within the lifetime of people who had actually known Christ, which, as was pointed out before, seems unlikely. In all honesty, it would seem to me preferable to simply state, for those in “ecclesial communities”, that theosis absolutely can be found outside The Church rather than to posit an “invisible” church.

This is part one. Whether or not I'll finish addressing the rest, don't know. I type really slow, I'm working my way through a bunch of different sources & my stamina isn't always dependable anymore.

The idea that the Church is merely the set of all believers was unheard of until the 16th century. That should help us rightly interpret the passages in Scripture that speak of the Church.

From your perspective, it is innovation. I'm gonna move some of your text out of place.

Interestingly, in the East, especially by the 7th century, but earlier too, one reads comments from members of The Church about bishops, priests, monks and laity who were members of hierarchial, ecclesial, eucharistic assemblies which were not part of The Church. These writers were quite clear that they did not accept that the eucharist, or any of the sacraments of these "ecclesial groups" was in any way valid or efficacious...but they never wrote that these people were ipso facto damned.

From the perspective of these "outsiders", I'm sure they believed that they were the ones who got it correct. Whether or not any of them took the same position about the body as the Reformers is probably not knowable. Christ would know whether or not they were in His flock, kept in a different pen. If the Early Church Fathers had declared all members of these groups to be ipso facto damned, it would support innovation later adopted by the Church.

In the Great Schism I tend to lean toward the Orthodox position. I've wondered if my position has to do with personal experiences with a lot of Roman Catholics & a dearth of contact with Orthodox Christians. I also considered whether or not it had anything to do with my upbringing, where there might have been some anti-Rome teachings slipped into Sunday school & Catechism. I don't remember a thing said about Rome from either the pulpit or in Sunday school & Catechism taught me to see those who follow Rome to be my brothers in Christ. Personal experience taught me that many of Rome's children did not see me in the same way. Children do learn more from their parent's actions than by their parent's words, don't they?

All that said, when I said there was innovation by the Church, it was not only on the side of Rome. Either a see has autonomy over its portion of the flock or it does not. Is everyone required to be circumcised or not? The wrestling match over the actual structure of the Church's hierarchy makes the Catholic position about hierarchy interesting to those of us on the outside looking in. You tell us it is there, you're only working out the finer details of its flowchart and... a few other things. Meanwhile, a Lutheran Rite pops into the fold... kind of.

So are you saying that Paul's statement, "What you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:23) is false?

+Paul skillfully used the occasion to preach Christ. That's all.

The Greeks Fathers speak of other religions as having sporoi ("seeds") of truth, but not truth itself. If we assume that we do not know true God, then we truly worship idols and our faith is no closer to true God than any other. That's not what Christianity professes.

If so, do you also think Jesus spoke falsely when He told the Samaritan woman "You worship that which you do not know" (John 4:22)?

The rest of that verse says "we [Jews] worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews."

As Christians, we cannot agree with that; neither can we assert that Jews know because they steadfastly reject Christ; nor can we say that salvation cames from the Jews, but a Jew whose followers are all Gentiles.

“From the perspective of these “outsiders”, I’m sure they believed that they were the ones who got it correct.”

I don’t doubt that for a minute!

“Whether or not any of them took the same position about the body as the Reformers is probably not knowable.”

It is, actually. Virtually all of them believed that their group was The Church. If one looks at their structure, these groups were in virtually every observable institutional aspect, just like The Church. But their theologies were off from that of The Church.

“At any rate, every one of them claimed to be part of The Church Christ would know whether or not they were in His flock, kept in a different pen.”

Not really. They claimed they were “The Church”, not part of it or part of some amorphous invisible church.”

“If the Early Church Fathers had declared all members of these groups to be ipso facto damned, it would support innovation later adopted by the Church.”

Yes, had they said that, it would have supported the later Latin position, but the consensus patrum didn’t.

“Either a see has autonomy over its portion of the flock or it does not.”

Now you see, that’s a very Orthodox point of view, in broad sweeps. Pre-supposing bishops in the Apostolic Succession, correct teaching (which is to say non-heretical) and valid sacraments, the Latins would argue that a local diocese does not have autonomy of any sort as all dioceses are subject to the immediate jurisdiction of the Pope. The fullness of The Church can thus only be found in those dioceses collectively which are in communion with Rome. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, takes the position that the fullness of The Church is found in a single diocese.”

“Meanwhile, a Lutheran Rite pops into the fold... kind of.”

Ah, that’s an excellent example of what I am talking about; hierarchial, liturgical, centered on a eucharist and yet not looked upon as “The Church”, as a general proposition at least, by either Orthodoxy or the Latin Church. The consequences of that view for the theosis of Lutherans, however, are very different, a “who knows?” with a shrug from Orthodoxy and, traditionally, damnation from Rome.

By the way, I find some Lutherans amazingly Orthodox in both praxis and mindset. really a shame they didn’t join up with Orthodoxy back in the day.

Ha! Part two. A, your references to +Ignatius of Antioch certainly ought to settle the question of what the early Church believed The Church is, at least from an historical perspective. As you point out, the notion that there is some sort of "invisible" Church is simply unknown until the Protestant Reformation, again at least from an historical perspective.

I tend to go with it being a mystery to men instead of "invisible".

One will search the writings of the Fathers and the acts of the Councils in vain for anything like an invisible Church concept.

I see more support for it in Scripture than the structure which Rome built upon the foundation. Don't bother with a two wrongs not making a right scold. I'm impervious to it. LOL We're talking about people who discovered their feet had somehow managed to land on both sides of the Great Schism, with a fervent desire to do God's will, unwanted by both sides. IMO, when they made the cut, through necessity, they didn't cut deep enough. They didn't address entanglement between church & state.

I suspect that the idea arose after the reformers broke with the Latin Church which, at least then (and even into my lifetime) and for about 5 centuries before that, was quite adamant that there was no salvation outside of the Latin Church; indeed it taught that there was no salvation absent submission to the universal immediate jurisdiction of the Pope. In the East one doesn’t see this idea as firmly and universally accepted. In other words, among the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox there was not and is not any consensus that theosis/salvation is found only within the bounds of The Church. This is not to say that in the East we say that theosis is found outside The Church. We say simply that we know it is found within The Church, don’t know if it is found outside and can’t presume to limit the economy of salvation. For Orthodoxy, membership in The Church/theosis is not necessarily a closed system.

Part of me wonders if any of the Patriarchs sent a letter to Rome, along the lines of, "we tried to tell you"... all wrapped up in diplospeak, of course.

But the reformers were acting within the context of a Latin system and mindset which condemned to hell anyone who wasn’t "in" The Church, and the Latin Church at that. Since they were clearly not "in" and since being "in" was the sine qua non of salvation, they certainly had to come up with something and thus this idea of an invisible church came up. Apparently the reformers were as convinced as the Latins that membership in a "church", if not The Church as the Latins would have it, was indeed necessary for salvation.

I agree.

So the issue was and is where salvation is found. Where the reformers went off the rails, in my opinion, was in the thoroughly innovative idea of what constituted The Church.

Bottom line, The Church, the Ecclesia, is a visible, hierarchial, Eucharistic institution within which we can be saved. There is no other "Church" or "church". To say otherwise is simply a 16th century innovation. To say with certitude however that theosis is NOT found outside the visible institution of the Ecclesia (let alone that it is only found in communion with the Pope of Rome) is simply itself outside the 2000 year old consensus patrum.

You & I will have to agree to disagree on the stickier points.

Excuse me but aren’t you the one who is always claiming the gospels were not written down for the first 300 years? It was all by oral recital

No. The Gospels and the Epistles were written in the 1st century. Th oldest complete canon of the NT we have is a 4th century copy of copies of the originals (which don't exist lor exist but have not been found yet).

The oldest copies of the 1st century originals are 2nd and 3rd century shreds (i.e. "fragments") most of which contain only parts of the books of the NT, some only a dozen verses.

Thus we really don't know what the originals looked like. But we do know that they vary from fragment to fragment. The oldest fragment of all is dated c. 125 AD and contains the Gospels of John. The heading doesn't say "According to John." All it says is α (alpha, used as number 1, for first page). Someone added "According to John" in subsequent copies.

Typical fragment (shred) of a 2nd century portion of John (18:36 - 19:7)

The oldest complete copy of the NT can be found is Codex Sinaiticus, mid 4th century

This may give you a better idea what the oldest "Gospels" look like. So, while there is no doubt that Gospels/Epistles were written in the 1st century, based on the surviving accounts of early church Fathers, we not only don't have even fragments but we don't even have complete copies of the copies of the copies all the way to the 4th century!

Now, unlike the Masoretic scribes, the Christian scribes were not nearly as neat, so various copies vary in content and every other possible variation. Even the two oldest complete bibles (Sinaiticus, already mentioned, and Codex Vaticanus) show considerable variation, which only gets worse with the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus, which is heavily redacted and edited.

It was the last source that was used for the so-called 'Majority Text' or MT (a flood of Greek language copies of copies with their own redactions, additions and deletions, three of which eventually ended up on Tyndale's desk in the 16th century.

Tyndale used two 13th century completely unreliable copies of the Majority Text to create what is known as Textus Receptus or TR. Tyndale used Latin Vulgate Bible as the source of those parts missing Greek text, and even translated part of the John's Revelation from Latin into Greek (with multiple errors!) and passed his TR as a "genuine Greek text."

TR was, in turn, used by the English as a "genuine" Greek text (!) to make the (in)famous King James Bible that all the English speaking countries use as 'true' word of God!

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