Do you have a recognized historical name for the historical manifestation you claim ? Lutheran, Calvinist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, etc.? Catholic works well.
NKP_Vet: There are no opposing views when ALL the Church fathers, the greatest theologians who ever lived, WERE ALL CATHOLIC! Why is that so hard for people to understand.
Me: But would the "Church fathers, the greatest theologians who ever lived", especially the Early Church Father, recognize what the Catholic Church is today?
It includes any who basically do as i described, from Calvary chapels to most SBC and Reformed to many holiness Pentecostals. But Catholic does not work well.
Note that my "historical manifestation" refers first to the visible NT church, that being where those in the one true church (as it alone only consists 100% of true believers) expressed their faith, along with a number ot tares.
Secondly, historical manifestation refers to later visible churches which basically preached the gospel of the NT church which Peter (Acts 10:36-43) and Paul (Rm. 3:10-51) preached, with baptism confessing that faith, it being a living faith which characteristically follows its Object
And is not seen praying to created beings, or "priests" offering the Eucharist as a sacrifice for sins, and that event being the source and summit and center of church life around which all revolved, and looking to Peter as the first of a line of infallible popes in Rome, etc .
As the post-apostolic church suffered its progressive deformation, the body of Christ continued as a remnant of believers, per usual, within the visible organizational institution, whose deformation and corruption finally necessitated the incomplete Reformation. In which remnant type believers, along with the inevitable tares, were able to once again express their faith in organized organic bodies, even though the visible church is yet imperfect.
Glory of God.