I’m glad you’d like to hear from oth­ers, but I’d actu­ally like to hear your answer to Garry’s ques­tions. He did bring up a lot of good verses that seem to point towards a falling away, and of course didn’t all the Reform­ers, the founders of most Protes­tant churchs, beleive that their had been a falling away, or apos­tacy? If they felt like the Catholic church was still the true church that Christ estab­lished, with the same doc­torin and author­ity, why would they “protest” it? Do you believe that their was a falling away? if no, then I’ll assume that you’re Catholic, because that is the stance of the Catholic Faith. If yes, you believe their was a falling away, how do you think we can get back to that true Chris­tian­ity found in the Bible. Of course by studing the life of Christ in Bible is the obvi­ous answer, but as you’ve clearly shown us, many Bible verses can be inter­preted to mean a wide range of things. I’d like to hear you say more.

Not as alive as I would like to believe?? Wow, you mean it was a dead chuch that put together the Holy Bible upon which all Chris­tians base their faith? You mean it was a dead church that spread the Gospel through­out the known world and estab­lished it as the anchor of a vast major­ity civ­i­liza­tions? Was it a dead church that con­verted emper­ors, per­formed count­less mir­a­cles, and wrote exten­sively about the faith, writ­ings we still have today and upon which nearly every denom­i­na­tion looks to for insight to what the early church believed? If you rip this foun­da­tion out and say it was all apos­tate, then there is no true Chris­tian­ity — that true Chris­tian­ity was only meant for the 12 Apos­tles and maybe a few stray believ­ers after them negates your faith and mine. If they were not alive whose fire has changed the world, then how would you define an alive church?

Gary, I’ll com­ment more about the scrip­tures if I can find time. How­ever, as most of my schol­arly expe­ri­ence is in his­tor­i­cal the­ol­ogy, let me com­ment about a few things regard­ing your under­stand­ing of the reformation.

To paint Luther and Calvin as rad­i­cal reform­ers is not accu­rate at all. Nei­ther were Hus nor Wycliff. In fact, many of their cri­tiques of Roman Catholi­cism are echoed by the ear­lier schism between Rome and the East. The state­ment “They saw that the church in their time and the Church in New Tes­ta­ment times were not the same.” is patently false. They viewed that Roman Catholi­cism had wan­dered into to error and their schisms were an attempt to restore the faith TO the Roman Catholic church. In fact, gen­er­ally speak­ing, the errors that they addressed are *later* devel­op­ments, par­tic­u­larly 1000AD and later. Luther and Calvin both held that, in some sense, the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ. Both kept the his­toric litur­gi­cal struc­ture of the Mass and both move­ments excom­mu­ni­cated those who aban­donded the his­toric doc­trines of the Church such as the doc­trines pro­fessed by the 7 ecc­u­meni­cal coun­cils (though Calvin is pretty tough against icons) and even the ever-virginity of Mary! In an accu­rate pic­ture of his­tory on sees that the Reform­ers did three things:
1. Kept *most* of the his­tory, prac­tice and the­ol­ogy of the Roman Catholic church.
2. Cor­rected some real abuses (espe­cially litur­gi­cally)
3. Sys­tem­atized their new churches around their own per­sonal philosophies.

Dave,
I did answer Garry’s ques­tions. He asked what I would tell the Reform­ers and I told him we’d have a lot in com­mon (but see Nathaniel’s com­ment above for another prob­lem with pre­tend­ing that Calvin and Luther sup­port Mor­mon claims).

Garry asked what I thought of the verses and I told him. As you say, many Bible verses can be inter­preted in many ways. And by the way, on the cen­tral issue of the life of the Church dur­ing the first 15 cen­turies of her exis­tence, see Nicode­mus’ com­ment above. Major dit­tos to that.

Your assump­tions: Hoo boy. You guys just keep fir­ing blanks. I don’t argue for or against the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, because I’m nei­ther Protes­tant nor Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church split off from the East­ern Ortho­dox Church about 400 years before the Ref­or­ma­tion. Check out the time­line <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.saintignatiuschurch.org/timeline.html&quot; rel=“nofollow”>HERE. You’re miss­ing a lot of Chris­t­ian history.

But all three branches of the Chris­t­ian faith — Catholic, Ortho­dox and Protes­tant — are united in cen­tral beliefs. Those beliefs are best summed up in the Nicene Creed, which is why it is said in litur­gi­cal churches every week to affirm what Chris­tians have held to be true for all 20 cen­turies of our existence.

Since you’d like to see me answer ques­tions, how about you answer the ques­tion I put to Mor­mons before all these com­ments. If you don’t like how I’ve edited the Nicene Creed, tell me how you would do it.

Of Amos 8:10ff:

This pas­sage is fairly pop­u­lar among the writ­ers in the first 300 years of Chris­tian­ity. Amos 8:10 is uni­ver­sally seen as a ref­er­ence to ful­fill­ment of the Jew­ish Feasts in the Pas­sion of Christ. This is found in Ire­naeus (Here­sies, 4.33.12), Ter­tul­lian (Apol­ogy 7.10), Cyprian (On Jeal­ousy and Envy 2.23), Lac­tan­tius (Insti­tutes 4.19 and 8.46). More speci­fi­ally, Gre­gory Thau­matur­gus points out that while the Feasts of the Jews are made into sor­row in com­par­i­son with the joy of our own repen­tance found in Christ who is pro­claimed in the Annun­ci­a­tion (Sec­ond Homily on the Annun­ci­a­tion). Finally, Tur­tul­lian really fleshes out (no pun intended) Amos 8:11 by con­nect­ing it with the para­ble of the prodi­gal son. The prodi­gal hungers for the Word of the Lord and trav­els all around seek­ing for it, but it is only found by return­ing home. It is here that the prodi­gal is filled by the fat­ted calf, which Ter­tul­lian explains is Christ and more specif­i­cally the Eucharist as his very body and blood.

Yet the inter­pre­ta­tion of Amos 8:10ff as refer­ring to the cor­rup­tion of the Church is nowhere to be found. Surely if this is the case *some­one* would have men­tioned it!

Isa­iah 24:5… wow, where to begin. The verse basi­cally says “Peo­ple did bad stuff and now the earth suf­fers.” It doesn’t really refer to any­thing with speci­ficity. Its a BIG jump from here to “The Church was cor­rupt after the apos­tles.” Its like tak­ing your car to a mecanic where he says “you need to change your oil more fre­quently or your car will get engine dam­age” and you take it to mean “Chevy is part of the illu­me­nati and is try­ing to rule the world.” Any argue­ment from this verse is sim­ply non sequitur.

Hi Grace and Gary, Gee, where to begin? Gary’s post is loaded with false assump­tions regard­ing Church his­tory, the great­est of which is that the Catholic Church was THE only Church until the Reform­ers split off due to its apos­tasy. This is typ­i­cal protes­tant “Church his­tory”… after the last apos­tle died the entire Church went to Rome in a hand­bas­ket and depend­ing on your denom­i­na­tion the New Tes­ta­ment Church was restored to its for­mer pre-Rome dogma, doc­trine and apos­tolic prac­tice by your leader. When Joseph Smith came on the scene there were sev­eral “restora­tion move­ments” hap­pen­ing, includ­ing the Stone/Campbell move­ment, from which one of the founders of Mor­monism came. Unfor­tu­nately, the whole premise and assump­tion is flawed. There have always been apos­tates and schisms and here­sies, even in apos­tolic times while the apos­tles were still alive and teach­ing and writ­ing. Not one of them ever sug­gested that that was indica­tive of the ENTIRE Church being apos­tate or “in cap­tiv­ity” or how­ever you want to frame it. “They saw the their Church and the Church of the NT were not the same.…”? And how would one know what the Church of the NT looks like? The BIG ques­tion for Gary would be “If St. Paul walked into a Mor­mon Church would he rec­og­nize it as apos­tolic and Chris­t­ian”? Church his­tory and the NT say no. (I might humbly sug­gest he lis­ten to our radio pro­gram archives on the top­ics of dogma, sacra­ment, icons, liturgy, wor­ship, creeds and sola scriptura)

s-p,
I’ve been think­ing about sola scrip­tura a lot with all this, so I def­i­nitely need to go check out your archives. I feel inclined to lay a lot of blame on that one prac­tice right now, but maybe I’m just being crabby.

Other things that this exer­cise has made me want to brush up on and know more about:
* Apos­tolic suc­ces­sion — those were just happy words, but in light of the accu­sa­tions I’ve been hear­ing, it sud­denly seems to carry great weight in the defense of the Church through­out her ven­er­a­ble lifes­pan
* the Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cils — inter­est­ing to me to note that the mind­set that life ended with the last apos­tle and mag­i­cally picked up again at the Ref­or­ma­tion (or with the Great Awak­en­ing, or with this leader or that one) neatly exises the peri­ods of the mar­tyrs, the monas­tics, the church fathers and the coun­cils. That hardly seems like it can be an acci­dent. A church built with­out those pil­lars to sup­port it would always be flimsy and doomed to repeat mis­takes, I would think.

Garry, Dave et al — if you’re still out there, s-p’s always-thought-provoking radio pro­gram is Our Life in Christ — http://www.ourlifeinchrist.com.

Hi Grace and all, We have pro­grams on our audio archives on apos­tolic suc­ces­sion, Ortho­dox eccle­si­ol­ogy, the Creeds, “East and West”, and the Petrine doc­trine which out­lines the 7 Coun­cils and the role Rome played in them which would be per­ti­nent to those whose take on Church his­tory is that Rome con­trolled the ancient Church. (AND the sola scrip­tura series…) This is impor­tant stuff for any­one who wishes to dia­logue with an Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian about the valid­ity of any mod­ern claims to Bib­li­cally restor­ing a Church they view as hav­ing gone totally apos­tate in the early centuries.

I think the hon­est answer to Garry’s ques­tions is that most of us regard the pas­sages as he men­tions as speak­ing to the dan­gers of apos­tasy. It hap­pens. Whole nations have dis­ap­peared into apos­tasy. Think of the numer­ous pauline epis­tles that warn the recip­i­ents of false teachers.

But since Mor­mons have a dif­fer­ent gospel, it’s nat­ural for them to say we rep­re­sent apos­tates, while we would rec­og­nize that Mor­mons fell for an Apos­tate. Tech­ni­cally, we Ortho­dox wouldn’t call Joseph Smith an Apos­tate, because he was prob­a­bly not a bap­tized trini­tar­ian chris­t­ian to start with, but nev­er­the­less, the growth of a sect, attract­ing thou­sands of Chris­tians from Amer­ica and Eng­land, would nec­es­sar­ily rep­re­sent just the kind of falling away, of fol­low­ing a False Teacher, that these scrip­tures warn about. False teach­ers spring up all the time, and have, since the beginning.

Finally, the Reform­ers while cas­ti­gat­ing the Romans, NEVER went as far as the Mor­mons do, in say­ing that ALL of Chris­ten­dom fell into apos­tasy. But there is a sim­i­lar­ity of tem­pera­ment. Protes­tants tend to see every­thing before Mar­tin Luther as dark­ness and con­fu­sion. This is why Joseph Smith is such a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally Amer­i­can Protes­tant sectarian.

Garry,
I took the rare step of delet­ing your last com­ment. While you weren’t rude or abu­sive, you were tak­ing advan­tage of my blog to pros­e­ly­tize your church (for 4 or 5 screens), and since I mod­er­ate the con­tent on the blog, I’m going to spare my read­ers that. I’m sorry if that seems unfair, but … my blog, my rules.

Besides, you’re really just tak­ing a lot of words to say very lit­tle. You didn’t address the com­ments of oth­ers, you merely typed in a lengthy apolo­gia which doesn’t clear up any­thing. I already know that the Mor­mon church holds het­ero­dox ideas — that’s been what all this has been about. Given that the Mor­mon church’s the­ol­ogy runs counter to the 20 cen­turies of Protes­tant, Ortho­dox and Catholic beliefs, the bur­den of proof is on the LDS and the lan­guage has to go out­side of self-reference to be cred­i­ble. You didn’t pass that test.