Merry Christmas. I’d start by disagreeing with your list of authorities.

to oversee the flock

This is just a rephrasing of authority without content. What is “overseeing”?

to teach the gospel

That’s not an authority that is a duty. And I agree that is a duty of the church.

to baptize

That’s a duty that is given to all Christians. The Catholic Church doesn’t disagree that baptism is a sacrament performed individually and anyone, even a non-Christian can baptize. So your own church agrees with my take on that one.

Just to point this out, if the church had the ultimate authority to baptize there wouldn’t be objections to infant baptism as a fraud, since clearly the church is organizing these baptisms.

to forgive sins

I’d argue that scripture no where gives that authority to the church. I think you will find the verse generally used to justify this is rather ambiguous.

Jesus says that if someone doesn’t listen to the church, he is to be as a “gentile” or “tax collector”.

No he doesn’t, reread Matt 18:15-20 again. He says that if a person wrong another (or in general depending on manuscript), and the two belong to the same church. that person goes through several steps then the church has the authority to render judgement. At the end of that judgement, “let him be to you as gentile and a tax collector”. That’s the right for a particular church to excommunicate from a particular church. You are reading much more into that verse than what it says.

Church fathers

I might nitpick some of your examples from the early fathers, but I’ll grant that by the late 2nd century multiple people had made extreme claims about the authority of the church. Other people disagreed. Most of Ignatius’ letters show a divided leadership, with members having multiple authorities. Ignatius represents one faction, and argues for a single bishop with absolute authority. I’d argue he’s from a different faction than Clement, but that might take us too far astray.

So the fathers establish that with 150 years of Jesus’ death you have lot of people making strong authoritarian claims and others disputing them. The side that makes the authoritarian claims pulls together and ultimately becomes the vast majority of the Christians, the Catholic church. They in later centuries ally with the state and use massive state terror to further unify, all but wiping out the church at the very least. As an aside, this is a point of dispute among baptists (and I’m using baptist here inclusively) as to whether there was any surviving church, a few individuals in a sea of heresy or there were faithful remnant churches with the later being the most common position.

And I don’t think it is unreasonable to suppose that Ignatius would have fully supported this program. Yes, he makes this claim to authority as having been the successor of the apostles. Others who disagree with him on other areas of theology make similar claims. Still others dispute what it means to be the successor or if that is the right standard. In the end the positions pull together and Ignatius’ side wins.

What’s your point? That’s what Baptists have always believed. Since at least Foxe’s book of Martyrs (which even the Anglicans used to support) the position has always been that the wrong side won. They never disputed that the groups that became the Catholic church made those claims.

All Protestants, even the Presbyterians, would say this was one of those early heresies that started to lead the church astray. Protestants are unified in absolutely rejecting the idea of city wide bishops with unlimited authority which is what Ignatius is teaching. So either Ignatius is wrong about how the church should be structured or Protestantism is false.

1. Scripture explicitly says that the apostles were given certain kinds of authority:
* to oversee the flock
* to teach the gospel
* to baptize
* to forgive sins

2. Jesus says that if someone doesn’t listen to the church, he is to be as a “gentile” or “tax collector”. Paul explicitly says that “dissent” and “schism” are mortal sins. These concepts implicitly imply an authority.

3. St. Ignatius and Clement (1st generation bishops after the apostles) in their writings both clearly indicate a belief that they were passed on an authority in their ordination as bishops (at the hands of the apostles).

So, it is explicit and implicit in scripture that Christ gave specific kinds of authority to the apostles. So the authority DID exist, and the Catholic Church claims (and did claim, at least since the time of Ignatius) that the Magisterium of the church has inherited, through successive ordination, the authority given to the apostles.

So, do you think the Catholic Church is wrong and this authority has been lost?

First off I find it kinda weird you are using the same story as Bryan. His version sounds more like him. Further it sounds like a right wing reformed guy.

Your version is a bit different. Most Mormons believe the keys were lost soon after the apostles and the faith reconstructed from the fragments. Baptists believe there never were any keys, the lack a sacramental theology entirely. The argument between you and they should have been whether the church lost sacramental authority early, or never it had it to begin with.

In terms of the churches of man being mainly apostate, from early on; every Baptist believes this. Baptismal salvation, and the tendency of some churches toward episcopacy happened within the first 100 years. That’s why Landmark Baptists stand behind Montanus: strict discipline, rejection of the “power of the keys”, rejection of episcopacy (I actually don’t agree with Baptist theology that Montanus did reject this but, that is the claim), austerity… So why would you need Mormons to tell you the church fell almost immediately into serious error?

Martin Luther: By What Authority?

This is actually Catholic propaganda. Martin Luther personally disagreed with the canon, in a way that reformers had been concerned about for a while. He expressed his concerns about many books but took only mild action of rearrange the standard order of books.

The obvious implication was he made a suggestion that the apocryphal books be excluded. But that didn’t happen during his life. It took centuries and a wide consensus to change the canon. Which is why the Geneva bible and the KJV both included apocryphal books. In 1826 after centuries of denominations deciding that Luther had been correct then and only then, were the books pulled. The authority to make that change came from a consistent consensus over an extended period of time, across denominations and nations of the faithful.

While I personally if I could have voted would have gone the other way, that was a model for good church governance. The parties involved showed faith and humility.

As an aside the same thing happened at the same time on the Catholic side. The actually canon in use and the canon that had been approved by the councils were different. I..e. the church wanted to drop Prayer of Manasseh, 3 Esdras, and 4 Esdras. They were dropped from the Vulgata Sixtina and the Catholic faithful rejected that bible. The church was responsive (funny what having an opposition party does) and they were back in along with many other changes to the Clementine Vulgate, which Catholics loved for centuries. And to save you the trouble, they are not in the Nova Vulgata this time around the faithful are OK with going with the councilor canon.

The Fruit of the Reformation

The use of criminal justice system, state terror and that failing genocide as a means to resolve disputes ended. If the Reformation accomplished nothing else putting down the murder machine was easily worth it. Early Christians like Justin Martyr had written

Religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Torture and piety are widely different; nor is it possible for truth to be united with violence, or justice with cruelty. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion (Lactantius, Instit. div. V. 20).

For the first time in over 1000 years that opinion is held even by Catholics today. And it was that Reformation that created that freedom.

Sins like laying on of hands and claims to apostolic succession were eliminated. Paul was baptized by Ananias but we never told who baptized Ananias. A church is where regeneration occurs not where some magic spell has been cast. It is not just that doctrines like simony or indulgences no longer exist, but people’s hearts and minds have changed so greatly that these sorts of scams would be impossible. No one believes they can buy other people’s shares in heaven.

The bible has been carried over the world again, and published in over 2500 languages. There more study tools published every decade now then in the whole Christianity prior to the 20th century.

As for your concerns about unity. I see parachurch organizations able to cross between churches. Relationships of love and friendship not power and money.

Take for example the UBS (original language versions of the bible):
Roman Catholics participate in the UBS process the same as Protestants. Jehovah’s witnesses and Adventist translations are pulling from the same UBS text. And not only across denominations: from the ESV (conservative) to the NRSV (NCC) to the very liberal scholars version to even atheist translations like Price the UBS/NA is the standard. Asian and African churches are pulling from the same source. The Jewish Publication Society is a member of the UBS and the NJPS (1985) is pulling from the UBS Hebrew which means that even the Jews are part of this ecumenical unity. humanity was are able to publish unified collection of books on an important topic which is authoritative to all Christiandom! We don’t have this breadth of consensus on the creeds.

And no one is being burned at the stake to achieve these consensus. It is easy to create consensus through the use of mass terror. Stalin, Hitler, Franco, Saddam Hussein all had united societies. In the United States today people that are actively Catholic, are Catholic because they want to be part of the church and believe in what is doing. I can say that only because of the Reformation.

The “Fruits of the Reformation” are:
Religious Freedom — The right of each individual to join or not join any church from any sect from any religion.
Church Freedom — The right of a church to govern itself without interference from the state.
Bible Freedom — The right of each individual to read and interpret the bible for themselves and have access to all the tools they desire to do this.
Soul Freedom — The right to draw conclusions from those interpretations on matters of practice free of coercion.

When Did Christ’s Church Lose The Authority He Gave Her?

The way I was raised, “The church” has never had authority. Churches have the obligation to preach and to spread the gospel. The regenerate form associations of care, and that is the local church. Supra structures (like denominations) are authorized only so far as they assist churches in their core mission and should be looked upon suspiciously. They certainly don’t have any “authority”.

I suspect that’s true for most of the “fundamentalists”. On the other hand even if the church did have authority, 311 when it agreed to be a state church would have caused it to lose it, Matt 4:8-11. So I agree with the “Fundamentalist” picture. And yes I agree that none of the creeds nor the canon get their authority from the church.

BTW I was never a fundamentalist. What you are calling fundamentalism is just plain baptist theology. Fundamentalism distinguishes itself from neo-Evangelical baptists based on secondary separation, not the sorts of issues you are raising.

Canon
I’d actually put the canon later than you have it. The Baptist argument is that God raises up a bible to make the scriptures available. The church canon, which essentially became the Vulgate canon had authority for the churches of the Vulgate era. In the 4th century God was raising up the Wulfila, which has a different canon (it doesn’t have Acts for example).

Truth vs. Heresy

I was raised on the faithful remnant theory, so some of those “heresies” were actually seen as ancient baptist by some in the congregation. I felt comfortable going to church as a modalist, I knew that wasn’t the official position but we had only to subscribe to Apostle’s and Nicene creeds. What I do know that the church would gladly have given membership to a Monophysitist and never would have granted membership to a paedobaptist, so… I’d say they don’t believe all those choices are correct.

In terms of my current beliefs I think the diagram is still wrong:
(http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2011/08/christian-origins.html ). I’m creating a new version incidentally with the reformation in it.

The Burden of Proof

I’d say the proof is some of the truly grieves sin the church engaged in. Calling the evil the good is the very definition of moral corruption. And further puts to lie the idea of inerrant on matters of faith and morals. Innocent III is on par with Pol Pot. It sounds like a gross understatement to say that the decision to exterminate everyone who lived within an entire region because he had a different religious opinion would be grounds for separation. Even when attacking mixed cities they showed no mercy, you’ve heard the expression “kill them all, and let God sort them out”. It was one of Innocent’s commanders ( Arnaud-Amaury) who first said it. He bragged about it to the Innocent, “Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt, as Divine vengeance miraculously…” who approved.

To call that God’s command makes it a false teaching. We are specifically commanded to avoid churches that teach falsely (2 Ti). That is proof.

I may respond to the rest later but…

Rob
Chicago..

Thanks again for the thought and time you put into this as well as your irenic tone. It is good to step back every so often and let things ruminate. Reason alone cannot convince anyone of divine truth–it always takes grace–and this is what we both mutually pray for. We know that Christ is the Truth and wants us to know Him in spirit and truth.

You did a good job at called to communion. I know things can get contentious but overall it was a discussion that avoided polemics. I would say, as you take a break and get back to work (which is a good thing to do, I say this to myself as well), try to see past the myriad human failures of the various Catholic leaders over the centuries. Focus on the doctrine and don’t be distracted by anything else (even if you think the other stuff is important vis-a-vis judging something’s “fruit”). How do we know what divine revelation is? How has God communicated it to us? How can we have certainty that what we have is truly divinely inspired? What has the Church over the millennia taught about grace, faith, love, hope, justification, and so on?

God bless you and your family, and I look forward to hearing from you again. Send me an email anytime as well.

Blessings to you and yours,
Curt

Yes it applies to her leadership. I qualified with “on earth” because I believe that the Church as Christ’s Mystical Body is composed of members who have fallen asleep in Christ (aka the Church Suffering in Purgatory and the Church Triumphant in Heaven) and so speaking of them as in need of continual conversion doesn’t make much sense as their souls are with God awaiting the final Resurrection.

Good answer…

Does “her members here on earth are all sinners in need to continual conversion” apply to her leadership as well? The Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

Cheers
Curt