...and one who can't count. 4th century is the 300s. So 300 years after Christ....and only a few decades after the last great persecution.
So answer me this. If Gregory of Nyssa got this wrong....then *why the flip didn't anyone correct him*?
Find me one theologian of the 300s that said "Gee Greg...you're flat wrong on this one." ONE.
So either the whole church..every single Christian theologian was corrupted *at the same time*....
OR, more likely,
you are the one who was wrong and this is what the early Church believed from the beginning.
Oh but wait...I can think of two people who "corrected" Gregory of Nyssa. Luther. 1500 years after Christ. And you. 2000 years after Christ.
I'll take 300 over a couple of millenia, thank you very much.
"He that discerneth these things, every fellow-believer, let him pray for Abercius"
Carved right in stone, the evidence of prayers for the dead. Christians who were buried in the first centuries asked the people reading their gravestones to pray for them.
Why? Why would they do that?
That the best argument you can put forth? It wasn't 500 years. It was really 300 Years?
That is unconvincing. It was still hundreds of years after the lives of the apostles.
If Gregory of Nyssa got this wrong....then *why the flip didn't anyone correct him*?
I wasn't there and can only guess, as could you. Historically, anyone opposing the established Pagan/Christian church was tortured and or executed. Everyone supporting this church was OK with them.
You might as well ask, when Rome added a class of demigods, mirroring the paganism from Greece, why didn't anyone correct them? When they made dear Mary into a demigoddess and gave her false titles, why didn't anyone correct them?
So either the whole church..every single Christian theologian was corrupted *at the same time*....
I already addressed this in my earlier posts. God has ALWAYS had his people that knew and believed the truth in faith - even when Rome was killing them for following God. Men, women and children, slaughtered as martyrs by Rome, for believing what God said. So your statement is not true.
There are more important questions you did not ask.
Where is it supported in the Scriptures?
Where is the evidence this was believed in an unbroken chain from the time of Christ and His Apostles??
as to this comment...
you are the one who was wrong and this is what the early Church believed from the beginning.
This should be the easiest claim to support, if it were true. Simply show that the early church did believe this from the time of the Apostles on. Show an Apostle teaching this. Show it happened before 100ad, during their lives.
That would support your claim.
I'd love to see it FRiend.
And just how do we know he was not? Or that his views had the so-called "unanimou s unanimous consent ” of the fathers? For Catholicism destroyed much she did not like (while making use of forgeries ), while it is estimated that we only have available a small percentage of all that so-called "church fathers" as estimated to have penned.
However, with its unsurpassed numbers of manuscripts (which makes the Islamic allegation that the church radically changed the Bible to be impossible) we have the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed, and which must be the determinitive standard today.
And the idea that such a doctrine as Purgatory would not be clearly taught is absurd, when the second coming and the believers transformation, and the judgment seat of Christ is clearly taught.
Thus RCs primary appeal is to vain tradition, and then trying to force Scripture, like an abused servant, to support it! Woe.