Actually Rome has massively misread the scriptures, cherry picked passages from the church fathers and developed a false historical narrative.. and Rome gets away with it because their members have been brain washed to believe every thing Rome does is infallible ...
First: I'm a bit puzzled by the Protestant idea that any given Protestant can pick up their favorite English translation of the Bible--or even the Greek Scriptures (with an imperfect knowledge of the languages/dialects, the traditions, and the idioms of the time, and with uncertainty as to which Greek manuscript to follow... since there are inconsistencies between them)--look up what a contemporary lexicon says is the meaning of a given word in the Koine Greek (most defer to Strong's Concordance, I suspect--and his views were influenced by his Protestant background and by his strict adherence to the KJV), take it as absolutely certain, and then turn around and pronounce the Catholic Church to be wrong, heretical, unbiblical, and the rest of the standard anti-Catholic litany.
Your polemic would be valid if we were not dealing with something so obvious, and as it is you are basically arguing that this is a highly ambiguous issue, and that Protestants cannot be right based despite the evidence they present from scholarly sources, seeing as you have been presented with such.
Note that a RC is not presuming what Rome presumes of her popes, that of possessing a charism of personal infallibility in his conclusions, if not his arguments, but instead the veracity of his truth claims must rest upon the weight of the evidence.
In this case you might as well argue that one must be a tenured Cath language scholar to know how “hiereus” and presbuteros/episkopos are used in the NT, and how the latter came to be given the distinctive title of the former. While it is obvious and well substantiated that this was never the case in the NT, and that this was a later development based upon imposed fallacious functional equivalence.
Ultimately it would seem the RC premise is, as asked of others, that an assuredly (if conditionally) infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth (including writings and men being of God) and to fulfill promises of Divine presence, providence of Truth, and preservation of faith, and authority.
And that being the historical instruments and stewards of Divine revelation (oral and written) means that such is that assuredly infallible magisterium. Thus valid dissent from such is excluded, and any who knowingly dissent from the latter c. Does this fairly represent what you hold to or in what way does it differ?
Then, when challenged with the writings of the Church Fathers.... many such people reply with the bizarre rejoinder that, "Oh, well, obviously we can't trust THEM, since they were simply Catholic "shill" who were toeing the party line! And they're probably mostly forgeries, anyway!" Mm-hmm.,
While you are somewhat using extremes, the questions are, Why make writings of so-called "church fathers" determinative of doctrine, or what Scripture means, when Rome herself judges them more than they judge her, and can disagree with them? Are any of them writing wholly inspired Scripture?
Do they actually consistently speak with unanimous consent even as to Peter being the Rock of Mt. 16:18, or the nature of the Real Presence? Just how true is the often claimed "unanimous consent” of the fathers?,
How come you can sanction RCs invoking them when they have been exposed as misrepresenting them?
Do some, as Jerome, demonstrate reading into Scripture what is not there in order to support erroneous belief?
The question goes back to authority, whether Scripture provides for ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome, and thus implicit assent to such, so that a faithful RC is not to ascertain the veracity of RC teaching by examination of evidences (for that reason). Or that the veracity of Truth claims rests upon the degree of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power? Upon what basis did the NT church begin?
Excluding all sources of data which conflict with your preconceived notions really isn't logical... or honest, for that matter.
Indeed, so why do RCs dismiss, as you have, the data that refutes the idea of presbuteros or episkopos denoting a unique sacrificial function, and being distinctively titled "hiereus" in the NT church?
"Catholicism corrupted Christianity, and it did so almost completely by the 400's A.D." Really? And the "gates of Hades will not prevail" against the "pillar and foundation of the truth" bit? Forgive me if I'm skeptical of such claims..
Again, you are using extremes but which do not exclude the validity of more moderate claims, and are engaging in a false dilemma. For while it is clearly manifest that Rome is the most major substantial and critical deformation of the NT church , the only one true church is the body of Christ, since that alone 100% consists of true believers, while the visible church consists of both wheat and tares who express their faith.
Meanwhile, Scripture, history and tradition only mean what Rome says they do in any conflict, and thus your argument is not on the basis of evidence, but what Rome says.
So... Protestants on this board: do you agree with the young modalist's conclusions? If not, WHY not? I ask, because a good many arguments against Catholic teaching are sounding AWFULLY SIMILAR to that sort of reasoning,
Arguments against false leaders can also sound basically similar to what describes sound ones, as it is the details that differ. And the reason that evangelicals have historically been manifest as unified in core truths and contending against those who deny them, including Sabellianism, is because these enjoy strong Scriptural support. Likewise they contend against Cath traditions such as praying to created beings in Heaven since they fail of such.
Re: the definitions of "presbyteros" and "hiereus":...the word "presbyteros" is used almost exclusively (with the caveat that bishops are, in fact, priests, in the Catholic understanding--so technically, "episkopos" can also refer to those who are priests--though not "merely" priests).
Wrong again! "Presbyteros are, in fact, NOT priests except as part of the general priesthood of all believers. As shown , presbyteros/episkopos denote those in the same office, (Titus 1:5-7) and giving them the distinctive title "hiereus" which is ONLY used for sacerdotal Jewish or pagan priests was a latter development, based upon the imposed functional equivalence.
The word "priest" in the Catholic Church was never meant to convey a meaning identical to the word "priest" in OT/Jewish understanding; they have similarities, but they also have striking differences.
Basically wrong, as basically they both uniquely have chief control of the Divine worship, and offer sacrifices for sin as one of their primary ordained functions, which presbyteros are NEVER shown doing. All believers offer sacrifices, while presbyteros are never even shown dispensing bread as their ordained function, let alone transsubstantiating bread and wine to be offered as a sacrifice for sin, and eaten in order to obtain spiritual life. Which is not what Scripture manifests this to mean, while only the metaphorical understanding is consistent with the totality of Scripture. .
and since the word "presbyteros" (which, yes, can also be translated "elder") was always rendered as "sacerdos" [i.e. "priest"] in every Latin Scripture text I can find
If that is all you can find then i wonder what or where you are looking. I read that Jerome translated the Gk. presbuteros as "presbyteros" in the Vulgate, but translated Old Covenant priests as "sacerdos," and this online comparison btwn the Vulgate and the Douay Bible shows that.
The Early Church used the word "presbyteros" to describe "ordained man [i.e. recipient of Holy Orders], delegate/assistant of the bishop"; and since the word "presbyteros" (which, yes, can also be translated "elder") was always rendered as "sacerdos" [i.e. "priest"] in every Latin Scripture text I can find (which date back to at least the 4th centure A.D., and which are much older than Webster's Dictionary, BTW! :) ), both in the OT and the NT. So... is anyone going to say that all these Latin texts are "simply corrupted by Romanism" and/or "obviously wrong"? If so, then how would one PROVE those sweeping claims to be anything other than self-sealing, circular, wishful-thinking nonsense?
How is .anyone going to say that all these Latin texts are "simply corrupted by Romanism?" By allowing (don't you dare!") that such could occur, and researching the matter. As even a Catholic forum provides (http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=744379.0), while presbyteros could not be semantically translated into the English words "senior" or "elder" without losing its meaning, but which meaning senior" or "elder" convey (while the morphologic translation into the old English word preost evolved into 'priest"), the Latin word sacerdos is the semantical equivalent of the Greek word hiereus (priest) but has no semantical equivalent in a number of modern languages, including English. Yet while "sacerdos" has no morphological or lingual relationship with the Latin word for “presbyter,” presbyteros took on the meaning of sacerdos due to imposed functional equivalence, as explained and substantiated.
The Catholic Encyclopedia (Priests) admits "presbyter soon lost its primitive meaning of "ancient" and was applied only to the minister of worship and of the sacrifice (hence our priest)" and "priest took the meaning of "sacerdos."
In Cyprian's [c. 200 – September 14, 258] writings there is no passage where sacerdos must, and not many where it can, be equivalent to presbyter. - Studia Biblica Et Ecclesiastica, Volume 4, p. 258 ,, Oxford University.
In the general idea of primitive times the whole congregation took part in the priestly office: when a particular usage of [iereus] or "sacerdos" first came in , and for several general generation afterwards, it meant the bishop and the bishop only.... "Summus sacerdos" is freely used of bishops by Jerome, though the title was forbidden even to metropolitans by an African canon. But in any case the new extension of "sacerdos" to the Christian presbyter was too closely in harmony with existing tendencies not to take root at once... Pope Innocent [401–417] speaks of presbyters as "secundi sacerdotes": and from this time onward bishop and priest tend more and more to be ranked together as joint possessors of a common "sacerdotium." - The Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 1, edited by Henry Melvill Gwatkin, James Pounder Whitney, p. 157
Since the word "presbyter" came to be synonymous with the idea of a priest, it is important to understand at the outset, that the sacerdotal function—including leading prayer, offering of sacrifices, and the conducting of other sacred rituals—was originally described by terms like sacerdos in Latin, iereus in Greek, kohen in Hebrew. When the word "priest" appears in the New Testament, the usual word for it in Greek is iereus, and not presbyteros. Only considerably later, when presbyters took on the role of sacerdos/iereus, did the term presbyter evolve into "priest" as we use the word today. - http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Presbyter
Thus it is clear that presbyteros being given the title used distinctively for priests was a later development, and Cath translations as the Douay accommodated this.
Final note: some Protestants (even on this board) have presented some gross distortions of Catholicism, in efforts to attack it... which really does strike me as the "straw man" phenomenon. Is it too much to ask that opponents learn what the Church ACTUALLY teaches,
Sometimes true, but much typing has been done here educating them on things their church actually does teach, while exposing the typical RC recourse to Prot. strawmen, as well as
And as often before, giving the RCs more rope results in the reproof of their polemics becoming more complete, as has been the case with you here by the grace of God.