What happened between 33 AD and 1517 AD? Or maybe more accurately, between 70 AD and 1517 AD since the New Testament was likely complete by that date and most of the original Apostles were dead. That is a big span of time: 1,447 years.
If you're a Protestant, at some point in those 1,447 years, you think the Church went awry. Dates vary, and I've had a hard time finding most Protestant histories pointing to a specific date at all. It seems to be assumed that by 1517, the Catholic Church was hopelessly corrupt and Luther was justified in breaking from it to start afresh.
Some will point to the Edict of Milan by the Emperor Constantine in 313 granting official sanction to the Church as the start of troubles. Some will wait until 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica by the Emperor Theodosius I which made Christianity the religion of the empire. If we accept either of these dates, even allowing for several decades for the rot to become critical in the Church, that would mean over 1,000 years of the Church being adrift in heresy.
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If we blame Constantine, we place all of the Ecumenical Councils of the Church in the "corrupt period" of the Church. Therefore, the assumption would be that the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedon Definition, and numerous others doctrines and dogmas that Christians seem to hold dear would all be suspect.
Such a view also calls into serious question Christ's promise that "the gates of hell shall not prevail" against his Church. It makes one wonder if God is really all-powerful and if Paul's words to Timothy that God "desires all men to be saved and to know the truth" are accurate?
So what's the issue? Protestant groups can generally trace their lineage and the forks along the way as their initial group splintered and split. They can tell you what the issues were that caused those divisions. But they can't point to the critical juncture in Church history when the Catholic Church went astray.
Don't get too comfortable with believing that 1517 and the abuse of indulgences is the issue, because if so, you are left with transubstantiation, baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, the saints, the immaculate conception, the assumption, and purgatory. All of those were firmly established by the 16th century and were not controversial until the Protestant revolt started to pick up momentum.
I am not aware of any Protestant sect that accepts all of those teachings, so you must have an earlier date in mind. But your group did not start until later. This seems like a bad way to try to find the truth about God.
St. John Henry Newman, in his An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, wrote:
History is not a creed or a catechism, it gives lessons rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad masses of colour rise out of the records of the past. They may be dim, they may be incomplete; but they are definite. And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.
Then, at the end of the next paragraph, we have his often-quoted line:
To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.
In other words, if you look at the history of the Church, you cannot escape that it is the history of what we recognize today as the Catholic Church. Any other interpretation is simply not credible. Even Protestant scholars tend to admit that, because to deny it is akin to being a flat-earther. You’re just ignoring overwhelming evidence.
This history, and starting to see it not as bad news, but as a lineage to the Apostles, the early Church, and to Christ himself, was certainly a big part of my journey across the Tiber. Once you feel free to read Augustine and Chrysostom and you start to see they have some pretty good things to say, it’s a slippery slope to Rome.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Grace & peace,
Chris
I hope more people can learn from history. It is there for all who seek the truth. Thank you for this informative post!