Parent: JesusWordsOnly
Protestants Agree For 1400 Years No One Had The Correct Salvation Formula
Protestant historians agree. For over fourteen centuries after the death of the apostles, the Protestant story agrees that Paul was never followed by the official churches, either East or West. It was Luther who alone in this period first discovered Paul in what eventually became a large-scale movement. "But when we say Luther 'rediscovered' this [salvation] doctrine, we are implying that the doctrine had been lost or obscured between the New Testament era and Luther s day . I will label this the Luther Rediscovery The
"The truth of the New Testament churchgathering was lost for 1400
years....Luther, Calvin, and others were used of the Lord to
rediscover the truth of salvation by grace at the end of the dark
ages." AteewdHy HeMewufer Vol. 99, No. 26
However, in this Luther Rediscovery Thesis, this departure from true Christianity includes the post-apostolic era in both East and West. This Luther Rediscovery Thesis brands all the churches founded by the twelve apostles as quickly having become heretical. It is not merely the Roman Bishop who strays. Rather, all the bishops everywhere all simultaneously became heretical. This has to include what we know today as the Eastern Orthodox who never were under the control of the Roman Catholic Church. At the outset, the Orthodox bishops were far more numerous and territorially larger than Roman Catholicism. They grew independent from the bishop of Rome ( i.e ., whom we today call pope). They even later excommunicated the Roman in 1054 for his innovations on the apostolic faith. These Orthodox Christians existed in Egypt, Ethiopia, Carthage, Turkey, and numerous other regions of the Middle-East.
Thus, the Luther Rediscovery Thesis insists the Orthodox-although independent from the RCC-departed simultaneously into heresy.
The Luther Rediscovery Thesis also teaches the early church leaders in the Western territories between 125-325 A.D. simultaneously turned heretical. This cannot be attributed to Roman Catholic corruption. There was not yet any papacy at Rome that could exert its influence as binding over Polycarp, Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, Justin Martyr and many others in the West. These voices are simply students of the apostles, not disciples of the bishop (pope) of Rome. In fact, none of these men knew of a Roman papacy as we do today. There were no Roman catechisms to which they had to conform. Such catechisms came much later-after the emperor Constantine (post-325 A.D.) and his successors gave muscle to the words of the bishop of Rome. Thus, the Luther Rediscovery Thesis must also explain how in the Western pre-papist Roman church these early leaders from 125-325 A.D. quickly abandoned apostolic teachings if the apostles shared Paul's peculiar doctrines.
- The first use of the title pontiff or pontifex summits for the bishop of Rome dates to the Sixth Century. This is recorded in Niermeyer's Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, citing the Leonine Sacramentary of the late sixth century. The term papa from which pope derives in English means father. It was used early on of any priest. It is impossible to say early on the title papa had the connotation we give it today. The notion of superiority of the bishop of Rome, justified on the successor-to-Peter principle, first was asserted in the late half of the second century. However, this attempt was "strongly criticized even by friends of Rome such as Irenaeus of Lyon." (B. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy (New York: Columbia Press,
- at 12-14, viz, 12-13.) The papacy error of ignoring Paul in the early post-apostolic churches everywhere. Tertullian skewered Marcion's similar claim, saying:
[I insist that] no other teaching will have the right of being received as apostolic than that which is at the present day proclaimed in the churches of apostolic foundation. You will, however, find no church of apostolic origin but such as reposes its Christian faith in the Creator [being the same in the Hebrew Scriptures as in the new]. But if the churches shall prove to have been corrupt from the beginning, where shall the pure ones be found? Will it be amongst the adversaries of the Creator [i. e., Marcion saying the God of the New is not the God of the Old]? Show us, then, one of your churches, tracing its descent from an apostle, and you will have gained the day. (Tertullian, Against Marcion, 1.23.)
late discovery previously not taught in any early apostolic church. Here, Paulunists assume there was 1400 years of darkness. Neither Paul's salvation doctrine nor most of his unique doctrines can be found in the apostolic early church. Instead, Paul's major doctrines were ignored for 1400 years until Luther 'rediscovered' them. Tertullian's logic is right. It is absurd to believe that the early bishops at diffuse and separate churches which had been founded by the apostles could reject Paul's doctrines unless such rejection was indeed the orthodox view of the original twelve apostles themselves.
The lesson for us is we need to steer back to Jesus' words as the sole test of orthodoxy. If you cannot find justification for a doctrine in Jesus' words or the inspired Scripture that preceded Jesus, then you do not have to follow it. If a doctrine is proposed, whether from Paul or anyone else, that does not line up with Jesus' words or the inspired Scripture that preceded Jesus, then it is not possibly a prophetic voice. We must not fall into the same trap the Young Prophet suffered when he trusted the Old Prophet who permitted him to do what God previously prohibited. ((1Kgs. 13).) We must not elevate such a voice to respect as Two Paths
