[Cruciform]

Originally Posted by elisabeth e

How have you substantiated that what you perceive is only one thing?

The documented historical, liturgical, and doctrinal continuity between the early Apostolic Church and the beliefs and testimony of the early Church Fathers (as recorded in the Patristic writings). Ignatius, a Christian bishop in Antioch and a personal disciple of the Apostle John, for example, wrote around the time of John's death (c. 100 A.D.), when those who had personally heard the Apostles' preaching were still very much alive. As Ignatius famously wrote:

"Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8).

The early Fathers wrote voluminously about the teachings and practices that they had received from the Apostles. This is the very Church that Ignatius and his fellow Church Fathers began to commonly refer to as "the Catholic Church." It is a term applied to the Apostolic Church by those who received its teachings and practices from the Apostles themselves.

Here is a chart showing the chronological relationship between the Apostles and the early Church Fathers.

And for a look at the various doctrines believed by the early Christian Church, see here. (See if their beliefs strike you as more "Catholic," or more "Protestant.")



Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

[Cruciform]

Originally Posted by elisabeth e

Those are claims. What is the evidence for those claims?

Already answered (Post #76).



Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

[Cruciform]

Originally Posted by Untellectual

Cruciform, Two things that are different are not the same thing.

Post #68.



Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

[dave3712]

Originally Posted by Cruciform

The documented historical, liturgical, and doctrinal continuity between the early Apostolic Church and the beliefs and testimony of the early Church Fathers (as recorded in the Patristic writings). Ignatius, a Christian bishop in Antioch and a personal disciple of the Apostle John, for example, wrote around the time of John's death (c. 100 A.D.), when those who had personally heard the Apostles' preaching were still very much alive. As Ignatius famously wrote:

"Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8).

Cruciform
+T+

The word catholic as used here meant Universal?
Universal, in the sense that all christians were on bread, but oposed to the idea of an organized singular body of members all submitting to one authoritative teaching?

Rather the Social Evolution of what transpired was expressed in Revelation as a prediction of the growth, development, and maturation of the church seems most probable:





Rev. 1:11 (A voice in my head) saying, I am the Alpha and Omega, (the Macrocosm of external Reality and Microcosm of mind within), the first and the last, (the reality of Universe and its image, i.e.; Truth within the Mind: [John 14:6]): and, what thou seest, (as a final cryptic overview of the gospel message) write in a book (to conclude the New Testament), and send it unto (each of the present) seven (fledgling) churches which are in Asia, (but which each shall grow, mature, and develop over all the world as one Christianity, experiencing similar seven stages of understanding which shall be, i.e., shall accompany, each new social paradigm within in this Western Culture); unto:
(1) Ephesus, (from the Age of the Apostles through the earliest church), and unto (2) Smyrna, (when the martyrs did suffer the Tribulation instigated by Diocletian 303-13), and unto (3) Pergamos, (the 313AD recognition of Christianity by the Edict of Toleration by mandate of Emperor Constantine), and unto (4) Thyatira, (the first Papacy @ 467 AD after the formation of Universal Roman Catholicism in 380AD), and unto (5) Sardis, (The Reformed Catholic Church), and unto (6) Philadelphia, (Protestantism, beginning with the Edict of Luther in 1624 AD), and unto (7) Loacidea, (the Humanistic Christianity of the New World).

[dave3712]

Originally Posted by Cruciform

I could say precisely the same to you. Here, I'll provide a visual aid:

CHRIST'S HISTORIC CHURCH
[ "Church" => "Catholic Church" ]

Both labels "Church" and "Catholic Church" apply to the very same entity---Christ's historic Church (Mt. 16:18). A change in labels in no way alters the nature of the entity itself. It is exactly the same entity.

This will be my last post on this point. You can either grasp it or you can't. I cannot make it any clearer for you.



Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

The Universal Church is distinct in that from the appearance of the Holy Comforter in 54AD, throughout the following 1000 years, until the great Schism which divided the one universal church into the Roman Catholic and the first of the protestant movement, i.e.; Eastern Orthodox in 1054AD, the one church could be consider Catholic.

Today, this singular Catholic Church, reformed and changed as it may be, is not the same entity as the millennia church:


Rev. 2:20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, (Thyatira, Church of Rome), because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, (tolerating a homosexually deviant sect), which calleth herself a prophetess, (proclaiming insight into doctrines of celibacy), to teach and to seduce my servants, (particularly the altar boys), to commit fornication, (to engage in pedophilia and sodomizes), and to eat "things" sacrificed unto (phallic) idols.

Rev. 2:21 And I gave her, (this sect within the Universal Catholic Church) space (of 400 years, 1054-1492AD) to repent of her (pedaphilia), fornication; and she repented not.


It is no coincidence that the sexual crimes within the church began at the very end of those thousand year, which marked the separation from His church of prudent monastic believers from what continued on only in name as Universal:


Pope Sergius III who was pope from 904-911, just as the 1000 years was concluding.

Pope Sergius III was said to have slept around with married women. Such a sexually immoral person, Papal historians call the period from then until about 964 a "pornocracy".

The entire period saw popes that were controlled by various women and the Counts of Tusculum.

Pope John X (914-28) (thought to be the son of Sergius III, and Marozia the daughter of Theophylact the Count of Tusculum at the time) who was influenced by Marozia, Irmengared of Ivrea and Bertha of Tuscany.

Pope John XII (955-64) was deposed by Prince Otto I because of his life of sexual immorality. Apparently he was considered to be perverted even by the standards of the time.

And how about Benedict IX (1032-44, 1045, 1047-8; you're reading that right, this man was pope three times)? He was known for sleeping around and doing sexually immoral things.

　

[dave3712]

Originally Posted by Untellectual

I don't trust the story about Constantine. Neither that it is legitimate nor that if it were what it would mean.

If we did not have this historian's written report, eye witness to the words of Constantine and his 12,000 soldiers, you would hold the absence of such a requirement, i.e.; that jesus be seen coming on a cloud against me as well.

You have taken the enviable position of winning against me either way, while supplying nothing but a person doubt.

You agrument against the event, and the scripture, and the FACT that indeed, one, and only one, mandatory universal church did reign over all the Roman world for 1000 years until the Great Schism of Greek Orthodox was record in our history.

[elisabeth e]

Originally Posted by dave3712

If we did not have this historian's written report, eye witness to the words of Constantine and his 12,000 soldiers, you would hold the absence of such a requirement, i.e.; that jesus be seen coming on a cloud against me as well.

Jesus was not seen coming on a cloud as reported by Eusibius, who was also not an "eye witness."

Furthermore, your 12,000 soldiers claim seems to be another of your numerological hackjobs (trying to make it seem conformant with biblical numbers)

During the battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had 100,000 troops under his control. However, more than half had to be left to keep order on the Germanic and British frontiers, leaving him with 40,000 under his control. Constantine began a march on Rome. As Constantine made it into Latium, he had circa 50,000 troops under his control, after defeating Maxentius's best general Pompeianus, at Brescia and Verona.

The deathbed claim is the stuff of legends and fails to meet any burden of justification for your claims.

It is simply a self created folktale.

[dave3712]

Originally Posted by elisabeth e

Jesus was not seen coming on a cloud as reported by Eusibius, who was also not an "eye witness.".

Nonsense.

Eusibius, (an official historian of that time), was an eye witness to the confession of Constantine, concerning the reason he defended the martyrs after the battle of 312.

People who wish to discredit this fulfillment of the prophecy squirm and wiggle and denigrate Eusibius because what he reoot=rted DOES support my contentions and the Bible.


Mar 14:62
And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.



Sign From Heaven?

Meteor Changed History:

A team of Swedish geologists has found what it believes is the crater made by a meteor that streaked across the sky and crashed into the Earth in 312 AD.

If they're right--and carbon dating has already backed them up on it--this is a meteor whose presence may have changed the history of the world, asserts the BBC News Online.

The scene: Central Italy in the year 312 AD. The main character: Constantine, who was preparing to invade Italy in a battle with Maximinus Daia for control of Rome.

The plot:
A celestial vision that changed history.
Before the battle, Constantine looked heavenward and saw a blazing light streaking through the sky.
He interpreted the shocking sight to mean only one thing:
It was a message from the Christian God, a kind of celestial vision.

Constantine... ordered his soldiers to paint the "Chi-Ro" symbol of Christ on their shields.

Eusebius, who was one of the Christian Church's early historians, wrote about the conversion of Constantine.
He, (Constantine), described the vision as a "most marvelous sign" and "a trophy of a cross of light in the heavens above the Sun, and bearing the inscription 'conquer by this.'"

The battle for Rome was very lopsided. Maximinus' troops defending the city were four times as strong in number as Constantine's troops.

But Constantine was the victor, and he became the Roman emperor.
He ordered that persecution of Christians cease and gave Christianity official status--a big boost for a fledgling religion.

Fast forward to 2003:
The Swedish geologists, led by Jens Ormo, located the crater that they say was formed by the impact of a meteor as it slammed into the Earth.

Radiocarbon dating places it around the year 312 AD.

Ormo speculates that Constantine's celestial vision was actually that meteor.
Such meteors occur only once every few thousand years, but Constantine had no way of knowing this.

Ormo told the BBC News that the meteor would have smashed into the Earth with the force of a small nuclear bomb and would have been accompanied by a mushroom cloud and shockwaves.

And here is where the BBC News ponders this fascinating question: What if the meteor hadn't streaked through the sky above Italy on that day just before that decisive battle?

http://www.bibleheadquarters.org/Arc...turesTrue.html

[Untellectual]

Originally Posted by Cruciform

Post #68.

Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

I am telling you that your idea does not fit my objection.

[Untellectual]

Originally Posted by dave3712

If we did not have this historian's written report, eye witness to the words of Constantine and his 12,000 soldiers, you would hold the absence of such a requirement, i.e.; that jesus be seen coming on a cloud against me as well.

You have taken the enviable position of winning against me either way, while supplying nothing but a person doubt.

You agrument against the event, and the scripture, and the FACT that indeed, one, and only one, mandatory universal church did reign over all the Roman world for 1000 years until the Great Schism of Greek Orthodox was record in our history.

Some believe what Constantine did was not a work of God, but a product perhaps of his own imagination.

[Cruciform]

Originally Posted by Untellectual

I am telling you that your idea does not fit my objection.

Then please either start making sense, or stop wasting my time.



Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

[Untellectual]

Originally Posted by Cruciform

Then please either start making sense, or stop wasting my time.

Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

I believe I make sense. You are accusing me of not making sense.

[Cruciform]

Originally Posted by Untellectual

I believe I make sense. You are accusing me of not making sense.

Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

[elisabeth e]

Originally Posted by dave3712

Nonsense.

Eusibius, (an official historian of that time), was an eye witness to the confession of Constantine,

Nonsense?

You want to know what is nonsense? Trying to contort hearsay into an eye witness account.

Yes, Eusibius HEARD Constantine make the claim. He was not an eye-witness to the event and cannot VERIFY the claim. Eusibius' report is hearsay.

Originally Posted by dave3712

Mar 14:62
And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.



Sign From Heaven?

Meteor Changed History:

A team of Swedish geologists has found what it believes is the crater made by a meteor that streaked across the sky and crashed into the Earth in 312 AD.

If they're right--and carbon dating has already backed them up on it--this is a meteor whose presence may have changed the history of the world, asserts the BBC News Online.

The scene: Central Italy in the year 312 AD. The main character: Constantine, who was preparing to invade Italy in a battle with Maximinus Daia for control of Rome.

The plot:
A celestial vision that changed history.
Before the battle, Constantine looked heavenward and saw a blazing light streaking through the sky.
He interpreted the shocking sight to mean only one thing:
It was a message from the Christian God, a kind of celestial vision.

Constantine... ordered his soldiers to paint the "Chi-Ro" symbol of Christ on their shields.

Eusebius, who was one of the Christian Church's early historians, wrote about the conversion of Constantine.
He, (Constantine), described the vision as a "most marvelous sign" and "a trophy of a cross of light in the heavens above the Sun, and bearing the inscription 'conquer by this.'"

The battle for Rome was very lopsided. Maximinus' troops defending the city were four times as strong in number as Constantine's troops.

But Constantine was the victor, and he became the Roman emperor.
He ordered that persecution of Christians cease and gave Christianity official status--a big boost for a fledgling religion.

Fast forward to 2003:
The Swedish geologists, led by Jens Ormo, located the crater that they say was formed by the impact of a meteor as it slammed into the Earth.

Radiocarbon dating places it around the year 312 AD.

Ormo speculates that Constantine's celestial vision was actually that meteor.
Such meteors occur only once every few thousand years, but Constantine had no way of knowing this.

Ormo told the BBC News that the meteor would have smashed into the Earth with the force of a small nuclear bomb and would have been accompanied by a mushroom cloud and shockwaves.

And here is where the BBC News ponders this fascinating question: What if the meteor hadn't streaked through the sky above Italy on that day just before that decisive battle?

http://www.bibleheadquarters.org/Arc...turesTrue.html

Oh, so you've reduced Constantine's story to a misunderstanding of what he was seeing.

Remember when I talked about Apophenia?

How is the confusion of a meteor streaming through the sky as a sign from Jesus any more significant than those who see Mary in a piece of toast?


Maybe you also think that thunder is G-d bowling?


Let's try to be serious for a minute. A meteor through the sky is not Jesus sitting on the right hand of power.

[elisabeth e]

Originally Posted by Cruciform

The documented historical, liturgical, and doctrinal continuity between the early Apostolic Church and the beliefs and testimony of the early Church Fathers (as recorded in the Patristic writings). Ignatius, a Christian bishop in Antioch and a personal disciple of the Apostle John, for example, wrote around the time of John's death (c. 100 A.D.), when those who had personally heard the Apostles' preaching were still very much alive. As Ignatius famously wrote:

"Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8).

The early Fathers wrote voluminously about the teachings and practices that they had received from the Apostles. This is the very Church that Ignatius and his fellow Church Fathers began to commonly refer to as "the Catholic Church." It is a term applied to the Apostolic Church by those who received its teachings and practices from the Apostles themselves.

Here is a chart showing the chronological relationship between the Apostles and the early Church Fathers.

And for a look at the various doctrines believed by the early Christian Church, see here. (See if their beliefs strike you as more "Catholic," or more "Protestant.")



Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

I'd like to talk about this more, but not in this thread.

I don't believe that "catholic" is intended to be a title or proper name in Ignatius' quote.

"Catholic" means complete or whole.

Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the the whole church.

The context is a juxtoposition of a bishop as a leader of a group v Jesus as the head of the group of groups. I think there is an ideal here in which the developing church decided to draw from later and took the name as a representation of the ideal.

It seems to be a loaned concept.


We could go deeper into it, but I don't want to do that here, because of the several discussions already taking place.