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unworthyseraphim -> RE: The New Testament Church and Apostolic Succession (9/22/2005 12:51:52 PM)
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This thread has grown.
Alaloosie (#101): You assert that the neither the EOC nor the RCC nor any other ancient communion looks like the NT Church. You further assert that the early Church was non liturgical and that it did not use leavened bread. All of these assertions are demonstrably erroneous.
1. Not looking the same: Did Jesus ever compare the Kingdom of God or any aspect of spiritual life to a seed...like a grain of wheat, barley, mustard, etc.? Please perform the following experiment. Take a handful of corn go out into a prepared field. Plant the corn. Water as needed. Return to the field in one month and dig up the seed. I doubt you will find it. Instead where you planted the seed will be these tall grassy stalk things that look nothing like the seed at all...obviously no relation...better to pull them up and start over.
2. The NT church was of course liturgical. The worship of the both the Temple and the Synagoge were (and the synagoge remains) liturgical. In Acts we find that much of the early preaching was done in Synagoges...did those who believe sudden jump up start clapping their hands and singing Maranatha worship choruses. Didn't the early church in Jerusalem gather at the Temple at its liturgical hours of prayer? Doesn't the book of NT call the meeting and worship of the Church liturgy (lieturgeo) or identify its service as liturgically priestly (hierourgeo)?... BTW it does: Rom. 15:16, Heb 1:14, Heb 10:11, Acts 13:2. Early Christian worship borrowed a great deal form both the synagoge and the temple...this is an indesputable fact. The service of the synagogue became the foundation for the service of preaching and instruction, known as the liturgy of the Word. And the Temple liturgy is foundational to the Eucharistic celebration known as the Divine Liturgy. The earliest known liturgy in the Church is attributed to St. James, the one who presided at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. To be sure it has known a little revision and enlargement over the centuries...but not much, and an analysis of the language used in its oldest parts can be affirmitively dated to at least the second century. That Christian worship was not some freeform tent meeting can be shown from the Didache, an early Christian writing that dates to around 70 AD. The only free form praying that it allows is when a prophet is present to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. And even that had limits. Read it for yourself to see. So as you may surmise, liturgy, perhaps a bit simpler in some respects than is practiced now, but liturgy nonetheless was the normative mode of worship and instruction known to the Church from the day of Pentecost.
3. No leaven. The Orthodox Church has always used leavened bread for consecration in the Holy Eucharist. It has no memory of ever useing anything else. Indeed even Rome used leavened bread as late as the 8th century. This is because in the NT when Jesus broke bread with His disciples at the Mystical Supper (last Supper) the bread he used is called "artos" ordinary leavened bread. Unleavened bread is called azymes. The bread He used was artos not azymes. Some may argue that on occasion the term artos is used generally enough to mean any kind of bread leavened or not. And that is true...but this continuity of historical practice argues hard against that interpretation in this case. Consider the Syrian Church which has not been in communion with Orthodoxy since the fifth century, and whose liturgical language is Aramaic...the native language of Christ and the Disciples. They are the descendants of the first Jewish converts and they have no memory of ever having used unleavened bread. Indeed their translation of the Gospels (which dates to the 2nd or 3rd century if not earlier) in Aramaic leaves no doubt. Thier words for either kind of bread admits no abiguity. One word means leavened the other means unleavened bread...only. And they translate "artos" as leavened bread, not unleavened. So the weight of the evidence "artos" in the Gospels, no record or memory in the ancient communions of the Middle East of a change in practice, the unambiguity of a very early Aramaic translation, and record of an 8th century change of practice in Rome argues very hard that leaven bread was used in the early Church no matter how badly it upsets certain modern day expectations and interpretations of the Gospels.
I_Believe (#82) You wrote: "Which of those who claim to be "the church" and have the same claim to Apostolic Succession is correct in the areas where they disagree? Remember, they all claim that their doctrine was passed down from the Apostles. "
That's really part of this disucussion of how do you know whose succession was successful. Which relates to RCJames question in (#82). First who are these ancient communions: Rome (and those in communion with her), The Eastern Orthodox Communion, and the non-Chalcedonian communions, Copts, Armenians, Syrians, Chaldeans, and Malankara (Mar Thomas): The Orthodox, Syrians, and the Copts all worship and believe almost exactly alike, the only difference is in regard to the Christological formulation espoused by the Council at Chalcedon. The Copts rejected it for their own formulation, which was similar in many respects, the Syrians never really got involved with that council and have no formal opinion on it per se, but seem to prefer the thinking of the Copts without actually accepting their formulation. Neither the Copts nor the Syrians have signed on to any of the other great councils, but they don't see the need to, the things taught by those councils have never been doubted in their communions. The Armenians are originally a daughter church of the Syrians but identify more strongly with the Coptic Christological position. The Chaldeans tend to embrace a Netorian Christology, but otherwise worship and believe, much like the Orthodox. The Malankara Churches were founded by St. Thomas and were originally part of the Syrio-Chaldean (non nestorian) communion but got seperated by a long time by the winds of history. They are less adamant one way or the other but tend to follow Syrian practice...when they are not following the Roman example (its a little confusing). Rome and Orthodox have a 1000 years of shared history, theology, and practice. Orthodoxy disagrees with the supremacy of the Roman pontiff, the insertion of the filioque in the Creed, the dogmatization of certain beliefs in Rome in recent history, certain forms of piety common to Rome, and a rejection of a scholastic mindset (like that of thomas aquinas) regarding spiritual life and theology.
Boil it all down and you've got two major areas of difficulty, The papal claims and theological approach of Rome, and how to best theologically describe the union of the Human and the Divine in Christ. Everything else the ancient communions all are virtually in complete agreement on: Holy Trinity, liturgy, hierarchy, canon of Scripture, real presence, communion of the Saints, role of Mary, prayers for the dead, sacraments, ascetical life, icons, etc. Take your pick. You have three basic camps: Rome, Orthodoxy, or Non-Chalcedonians.
Here is the Christological problem: Do you believe the second Person of the Trinity has two distinct natures—one divine and one human and that these two natures exist inseparably in one person. Or do you belive that in Jesus there were not two natures (divine and human) but one (divine), that in Christ's Incarnation, the humanity of Jesus swallowed up like a "drop of vineger in a sea" of divinity... Or This doctrine, that Christ operated with but one will, although he had two natures. Or that Christ is perfect in His divinity, and He is perfect in His humanity, but His divinity and His humanity were united in one nature called "the nature of the incarnate word". The Chalcedonian questions come to this, is Christ: that Jesus Christ was ‘one Person’ made known ‘in two natures’, or is He ‘from two natures’ now joined in ‘one incarnate nature’. So unless one is a Eutychan, Nestorian, or a monothelite, then these are the two "big" positions. As you can see any difference that matters on the ground is difficult to recognize. There is a difference...one is the more accurate/safer expression than the other though they both seem to be trying to say much the same thing.
Those are the differences that substantially matter between the ancient communions. Gorsh..not quite the theological mish mash mess some thought it might be. hmmm.
rcjames (#87): You wrote: Are you really saying that unless one is EOC or RCC that they cannot say what a Christian is? or be one?
Well you might want to include most of the Non-chalcedonians...but strip the velvet off the glove...yeah...that's pretty much it. We wouldn't go so far as to say one couldn't be a Christian (in some sense) though...we would probaly couch it in terms of being outside the visible historitcal fold of the Church. Sort of one of the Lord's sheep that has not made it inside the safety of the fold yet. A page from early church history may illustrate our understanding better. We affirm that outside the Church is no salvation, and that union with the Church and hence with Christ is in the washing of regeneration...baptsim. And in the Church while it is normative for priests to baptise, in emergencies others can as well (part of that charismatic succession thing). So from this one might deduce that baptisms performed outside the Church are meaninless. But that would not be true. In the Roman persecutions Christians would sometimes be mocked in the arena by actors performing or recieving fake comic baptisms, but on occasion it was reported that sometimes those actors went into the water pagans, but came out of the water Christian...illumined suddenly, change, and they preached Christ boldly and unfeined..until the soldiers or beasts were set upon them. Now if a fake baptism can sometimes produce a real Christ, what are we to say to a heterodox baptsim by one who is doing as well as he knows to obey and serve the Lord? Seems likely that those are more likely to "take" on average. So we decline to speculate on their actual status as Christians. That is for the Lord to determine. We do note, that if they are outside the formal bonds of His Church, and have an imperfect knowledge of teh faith.
rcjame (#107) While I would agree fabricating chains of succession (which partiuclar fabrications were you refering to) is not an indication of apostolicity but you've yet to establish how using non-scriptural points of reference cannot serve as "valid" proof. Non-scriptural is not the same as antiscriptureal. Theres a whole lot that is real and true that is not mentioned anywhere in the NT. You object in other posts to self-kept records. I suppose the insinuation is that that makes them defacto untrustworty. But if the Church in earlier ages did not keep records of its life and problems, trimupths and difficulties...then who else was supposed to so you could feel comfortable over a 1000 years later with the veracity of the record that does exist?
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