Replies

"Last I looked, Syriac/Aramaic were Semitic languages, not Eastern European,..."

This is true. I was not connecting Syrian with the Indo-European strain of Languages, but early translations of NT MSS into European dialects as early as the 2nd century are on record in good manuscript evidence studies.

My point in all of this is that Roman Catholic (and now should I take it to include Orthodox Catholic???) will discard libraries full of manuscript evidence, if that evidence in any way appears to indicate that the Holy Spirit accomplished anything by common Christians who were never under the authority of their religious system(s). I have gone round and round with Roman Catholics especially who, for their own authoritarian purposes, compress the the 2nd and 3rd centuries into oblivion -- that period between the death of John the Beloved and the Council of Nicea.

Rome (What about the Orthodox??) cannot stand the thought that there were just plain common Christians who were personally leading more and more people to Jesus Christ -- that there were congregations of believers forming, and pastors arising, who were NEVER connected with bishops (or with their immediate predecessor) who went to Nicea for the Council. Just as you could travel through the mountains of West Virginia today and find a congregation of believers known to nobody outside of that valley, and the pastor of which was called of God to preach His Gospel, and never went to one of the big seminaries, and never made connections with any denominational headquarters anyplace. And you can find such congregations ALL OVER THE WORLD. I have seen them in four Asian countries, just like that, with my own eyes.

Those little, but stable and growing congregations of believers who meet, and study the Scriptures, and pray, and listen to the preaching of God's word, and love one-another, and help one-another, and give of their incomes to help missionaries preach in other places, and on and on. And they love the Lord Jesus Christ, and God blesses them. And their preachers, who may have never seen a seminary classroom, are obviously blessed of God in their ministries to people, exhibiting true spiritual discretion and discernment, and heavenly wisdom. No seminary, no denominational headquarters, no outside human benefactors, no well-known friends. BUT BLESSED OF GOD BEYOND MEASURE(!), and striving to make Christ known as far as they possibly can with the resources God has provided them.

Rome (and perhaps the Orthodox???) would have us to believe that the fruit of the Apostles and those that heard the Apostles didn't include many, many such autonomous congregations in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. And am I to believe that there were never hand-written copies of any of the Epistles that had been written by the apostles to the churches of Asia Minor floating around these congregations?

I have served underground in Communist China, and I have seen entire books of the New Testament that had been hand copied on to pieces of wood bark by persecuted Christians who could not get a copy of the Bible. An old Chinese Christian sister who has suffered terribly for her faith opened an old storage chest in my presence, and took from there two old Gospel tracts that had survived since the 1920s although they had been mimeographed on paper about the same density as bathroom tissue. She had them in cellophane, and she also had Scripture portions there that she had copied by hand from memory during the Cultural Revolution while exiled to a farm. Am I to believe that there were not hundreds, perhaps thousands of common Christian believers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries doing the same thing? Yes, we KNOW that many, many of them could at least read and write Greek, as well as other languages and dialects.

But Rome (perhaps the Orthodox too???) can not tolerate God having used some of His most common children in the preservation process of His Words. If Rome cannot control the process, then it is either illegitimate, or it just could not have happened at all, and will be discarded from encyclopedia entries, or ridiculed in some others. This is why we often see the remark on this forum to the effect that the Roman Catholic Church was the originator of the Bible; that we would have no Bible if it were not for the RCC. This is why we see Roman Catholic contributors to this forum try to convince us that there were NO Christians except Roman Catholics in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. This kind of history is needed by them to help secure their own authority over their own members. But it is not true history; it's not even reasonable to believe that kind of history. It would be similar to saying that since the officially recognized church in Massachusetts in the 17th century was the Congregational Church, that no believers outside of the Congregational order were meeting (but they were), evangelizing (they were), building congregations (they were), winning the Indians to Jesus Christ (they were), carrying on missionary endeavors in Pennsylvania and Virgina, etc. Others were doing these things while being persecuted by the Congregational ministers who had the backing of the governmental authorities. Read the histories of Christianity of that era and in that place written by the Congregationalists, and you would think that they were the only people who existed there! If you read the histories written by Rome of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, you would think that there were only Roman Catholics and heretics. That is precisely what Rome wants us to believe (What do the Orthodox say???). But it was the Roman Catholic Church as a system and as an authority that didn't exist in the 1st through 3rd centuries. No, not till the Council of Nicea did there come into being a system that we know now as the Roman Catholic Church. That does not mean that there were not men who had begun to develop some of the early tenets of faith that we now identify with Rome, but that doesn't mean that the overall system came first.

"I was not connecting Syrian with the Indo-European strain of Languages, but early translations of NT MSS into European dialects as early as the 2nd century are on record in good manuscript evidence studies."

I am sincerely interested in seeing these, if they exist. Could you provide a cite to them either in cybher or book form?

"My point in all of this is that Roman Catholic (and now should I take it to include Orthodox Catholic???) will discard libraries full of manuscript evidence, if that evidence in any way appears to indicate that the Holy Spirit accomplished anything by common Christians who were never under the authority of their religious system(s)."

Unless you are referring to the various heretical sects which arose in the first 3 centuries of The Church, records from which are numerous and were mostly preserved by Eastern monastics not the Church at Rome, I would appreciate some cites to this manuscript evidence.

"I have gone round and round with Roman Catholics especially who, for their own authoritarian purposes, compress the the 2nd and 3rd centuries into oblivion -- that period between the death of John the Beloved and the Council of Nicea."

Any Roman Catholic who does that knows nothing of their Faith. Personally, I've never met such a person, certainly none here.

"Rome (What about the Orthodox??) cannot stand the thought that there were just plain common Christians who were personally leading more and more people to Jesus Christ -- that there were congregations of believers forming, and pastors arising, who were NEVER connected with bishops (or with their immediate predecessor) who went to Nicea for the Council."

Oh, neither the Romans nor the Orthodox, nor the Monophysites for that matter, deny that there were such groups running around. They were well known from the 1st century on. They were at the time and are now called heretics.

Your experiences here in the States and in China are touching and no doubt very real. As a Greek I can appreciate what the Chinese are up against. We spent over 400 years under the heel of the Mohammedans where the only way to teach the Faith was by night in the famous "Secret Schools". But throughout it all, we maintained the ecclesiological systemn and beliefs of the Apostles and their immediate successors. Kosta's people spent even longer under the Turks!

"This is why we often see the remark on this forum to the effect that the Roman Catholic Church was the originator of the Bible; that we would have no Bible if it were not for the RCC."

I think you'll find that the Romans assert, truthfully, that it was "The Church" or the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" which did the preserving and compiling...and they are right. They do not claim that it was the particular church at Rome which did this all alone. Because you know little about the actual history of the Church before the Reformation, I can see how you might misinterpret what the Latins have to say.

"This is why we see Roman Catholic contributors to this forum try to convince us that there were NO Christians except Roman Catholics in the 2nd and 3rd centuries."

Again, neither Rome nor Holy Orthodoxy state that there were not groups outside of The Church, which called themselves Christians. They were heretics.

"Rome (and perhaps the Orthodox???) would have us to believe that the fruit of the Apostles and those that heard the Apostles didn't include many, many such autonomous congregations in the 2nd and 3rd centuries."

Not at all. The teachings of the Apostles undoubtedly were preached in those heretical assemblies, but the fruit they bore was rotten and they died out.

"This kind of history is needed by them to help secure their own authority over their own members. But it is not true history; it's not even reasonable to believe that kind of history."

Here's a suggestion. Read the works of St. Ignatius of Antioch. They are all excellent, but pay particular attention to his epistle to the Smyrneans. +Ignatius was the successor but one to +Peter as bishop of Antioch; he was a friend and disciple of +John, knew the Mother of God and was the child who sat on Christ's lap. His late 1st, early 2nd century discussion of the structure of The Church and especially his definition of The Church, as well as his Eucharistic theology pose an insurmountable problem for virtually all of Protestantism and its revisionist history of the early Church. While you're at it, read the contemporaneous writings of +Clement of Rome and +Polycarp.

"If you read the histories written by Rome of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, you would think that there were only Roman Catholics and heretics."

Like I said, read the above Fathers.

"No, not till the Council of Nicea did there come into being a system that we know now as the Roman Catholic Church."

Do you know why the Council of Nicea was called, what it taught and who was there? Do you deny the teachings of the Council of Nicea? I think that's a fair question, FB!

Rome (What about the Orthodox??) cannot stand the thought that there were just plain common Christians who were personally leading more and more people to Jesus Christ -- that there were congregations of believers forming, and pastors arising, who were NEVER connected with bishops (or with their immediate predecessor) who went to Nicea for the Council.

We are aware of these people. They were the ones the Fathers described as the heretics, who had gone out from Mother Church and formed their own little sectlettes, each adhering to its own version of truth and quarreling with the others. And you are quite correct that they became the Bogomils, Waldensenes, Cathars, Albagensians, Macedonians, Montanists, Paulicians, etc., and any number of other groups going by their own quaint little label necessary to distinguish them from Holy Church.

The one thing these people definitely were not was part of the Great Church that encompasses the true luminaries of Christendom such as Sts. Jerome, Augustine, Basil, Gregory, and Cyril.

An old Chinese Christian sister who has suffered terribly for her faith opened an old storage chest in my presence, and took from there two old Gospel tracts that had survived since the 1920s although they had been mimeographed on paper about the same density as bathroom tissue. She had them in cellophane, and she also had Scripture portions there that she had copied by hand from memory during the Cultural Revolution while exiled to a farm. Am I to believe that there were not hundreds, perhaps thousands of common Christian believers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries doing the same thing?

Yes, because again, there was no paper until after AD 1100! Apparently you have no conception of the expense of vellum, papyrus, and parchment. A single parchment Bible, with perhaps hundreds or over a thousand pages, would take hundreds of sheepskins to produce, which then had to be soaked, dehaired and defatted, stretched and dried, and cut, then bound together, and the book written upon it by hand over a period of probably a year. The notion that everyone among these heretical sects was off reading their little bibles is just total nonsense, when you realize the enormous amount of money needed to just make one Bible for one family, let alone thousands. There is a reason there were so few books in circulation prior to the invention of the printing press.