[Claud]

9) Have you read an objective history of the early church? I refer to one that would explain the great diversity of viewpoints to be found in the writings of the first centuries, and that accurately explains the controversies, struggles, successes and failures of those early believers?

I would like to hear what said sources are.

It's a bit funny, ain't it, that all the Apostolic Churches, including the Orthodox and Oriental Churches who dispute vigorously the Papal claims and have no truck with Rome, nevertheless seem to shy away from the Reformation doctrines like the plague.

Why is that, Dr. White? Were they *all* corrupted? Every single one of them? Did the Ethiopians all fall prey to the same "Romanism" that affected the Byzantines and the Malabarese and Armenians?

You can make a case that the Church Fathers are not as clear as we'd like. But to portray them as all over the map on core doctrines like the Eucharist is hogwash.

Someone of you Reformed Christians do me a personal favor and post one of the Fathers who is supposedly denying the Real Presence. Have at it. Their writings are all over the Internet...shouldn't be hard to find. I have seen enough of said quotations to know they are almost always twisted and wrenched out of context to support a Reformation position, and when you dig down deeper they are found to *assert* the very thing they are cited to disprove.

Enough idle chitchat. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work here!

[AnalogReigns]

None of the Orthodox and Oriental Churches fully accepted (nor really understood, since he never wrote in their languages) the works of St. Augustine. They don’t even regard him as a Saint (in the titled sense of the word) and hence certain degrees of the Pelagianism (called semi-Palagianism) which he valiantly battled, were, after the 4th Century, incorporated into their beliefs. Starting at that time—probably mostly due to cultural and lingual issues, and the ensuing collapse of the Roman Empire, you already had the beginnings of an East/West split.

Distinctive Reformation doctrines are based firmly on Augustine’s (and Aquinus’ and other Western Catholic scholars’) reading of St. Paul. This is one reason there never was a reformation in the Eastern churches—they didn’t have the patristic and scholarly background for it.

Semi-Pelagianism was also incorporated into the Roman church of the Middle Ages, especially in the late, or high medieval period, especially through the penitential system. However Luther, Calvin and other scholars had Augustine and other Church giants to back them up, in their teachings from scripture about repentance and salvation.