/lit/ - Literature

Patrick Burke likewise finds the claim to a monarchical episcopate in Rome to be flawed. He says:

>There is no evidence for a monarchical episcopate at the end of the first century except in Asia Minor and Syria, and even in this region the evidence that it was still in process of development

Francis Sullivan echoes the statements of Dupay when he says:

>“There is broad consensus among scholars that the historical episcopate developed in the post-New Testament period, for the local leadership of a college of presbyters, who were sometimes also called episkopoi to the leadership of a single bishop…Scholars differ on details, such as how soon the church of Rome was led by a “monarchical” bishop, but hardly any doubt that the church of Rome was led by a group of presbyters for at least part of the second century

With this string of quotations, I have attempted to show that the general consensus among Roman Catholic scholars is that the notion of an episcopate originating with Peter is virtually non-existent in the academic world. We could go on listing quotes from other Catholic scholars (Klaus Schatz comes to mind), but the above quotes are representative of Roman Catholic scholarship and represent various theological perspectives and time frames in the Catholic tradition. Thus to attribute this interpretation to a “Protestant Interpretive Paradigm” does not account for the myriad Roman Catholic scholars who reject the claims that Dr. Liccione makes, labeling those claims “pious romance.” The Roman Catholic claims regarding the monarchical episcopate and Apostolic Succession are not “plausible” to even the majority of the RCC’s own experts.

>>19955049
>The presbyter-bishops described in the NT were not in any traceable way the successors of the Twelve apostles
I'm not clear on this. Being described in the NT seems a credible enough connection, but also any Christian church at all traces back to the Apostles in some way. This is all very interesting information, I'm just trying to parse certain aspects.

>>19956137
>Being described in the NT seems a credible enough connection
The NT doesn't describe apostolic succession, and certainly not in the way formulated a century or two later.

>but also any Christian church at all traces back to the Apostles in some way
In some way, being the operative phrase.

I can't speak for these scholars entirely, but what specific verses are catching you up here? I can attempt to clarify because it sounds like you have certain passages in mind.

protestants will write 500 paragraphs seething about catholicism to deflect from everyone noticing they have have no connection to early christianity

>>19956154
No, in fact I was thinking from his wording that he had certain passages in mind and that knowing what those might be would serve towards understanding his claim. I certainly have my doubts on the validity of Catholicism, including there being an office of priesthood, but also can't deny the inner whispers of potentially being mistaken. Thus, I'm simply wishing to be as careful as possible when I read such thing as this, despite my immediate easy agreement with by far the bulk of it.

>>19956196
yeah no shit, protestants are just catholics without the pope

inb4 some retard goes hurr what about X american protestant group

every single anglo*d protestant movement is not christianity

>>19956205
He may be referring to the church at Rome, which according to Paul himself existed before any apostles got there. While the NT makes zero connection whatsoever between Peter and Rome, even later tradition doesn't suggest Peter actually founded the church at Rome.

There is no indication any apostle founded the Roman church.

>>19956196
>>19956217
>catholic theological arguments
Go pay your indulgences :^)

>>19956235
Oh, ok, it may be those references. We really don't know who founded that church, nor what it's structure of leadership was, beyond some unknown names being greeted and whatnot by Paul, and obviously lacking any references to Peter being there by him. The closest we can come to Peter being potentially associated is his own vague reference to writing from Babylon. There's an incredibly foggy gap between the NT and solidly documented church history that will likely never be definitively solved. I'm glad for these close looks being given, however.

>>19956267
>There's an incredibly foggy gap between the NT and solidly documented church history
This in itself it proof that apostolic succession and papal authority didn't exist. That's not an argument from silence either. If these things existed, then they were important. There would be evidence of them.

>>19956241

a declaration of fact is not an argument

>>19956279
>proof
I can't see it as reaching quite that standard, but it's the bet I hedge nonetheless, from the clearest picture I can see through the overall data we have (especially the NT itself). Obviously the persecutions and destruction of Jerusalem are contributors to the fog of the era, and it seems *apparent* that the movement was hijacked at some point surrounding it becoming part of the government.

>>19955049
Ok, where is the see of Peter then?

>>19956280
>my opinion is fact
>can't make any supporting arguments

>>19956338
When did Peter claim to be a pope?

>>19956347
This speaks volumes itself.

>>19956338
>Catholic Church murders tortures and executes people for disagreeing with them
>this is proof that it is the true church
Hey maybe the fact that as soon as people were free to read the Bible themselves and not be executed for thought crimes, they stopped being Catholic and started being protestant indicates your religion isn't as true or original as you think it is. Your forced consensus by unchristian means isn't an argument.

>>19955049
Church Tradition does not depend on XXI century "scholarly" opinions

>>19955049

>>19956458
The actualities of Christ's true church are not dependent on fabricated Catholic "Tradition™".

>>19956394
>Let people interpret the Bible however they want!, could something bad happen?.
>Person X says that the resurrection was something symbolic that never happened and that Mary's virginity was an allegory and she was never really a virgin.
Don't you see why the Catholic Church is needed?.

>>19956394
>Catholic Church murders tortures and executes people for disagreeing with them
Protestants are delusional.

>>19955049
Peter founding the Papacy sounds more believable than a man rising from the dead though. Why isn't such rigorous scrutiny applied consistently? If it's just a bullshit romantic forgery from the middle ages, why wouldn't this be true all the way down for all the other incredulous articles of faith? Are you only a tactical sceptic?

>>19956347
>When did Peter claim to be a pope?
He himself didn't, Jesus choose him which it's different.

>Your pic
Authority.
Christ founded a Church to teach all nations in His name, and it must be a Church teaching with authority, as her Master did. In spite of all its faults the Roman Catholic Church is the only one which could reasonably be thought to have developed out of what Christ established, not some random theologians 15 centurias later.

>>19956525
This is such bullshit logic I feel embarrassed for you. You're just equivocating two things without considering their merits or circumstances in any way. And historians don't claim miracles are subject to historical analysis incidentally

>>19956583
>And historians don't claim miracles are subject to historical analysis incidentally
But you say that miracles ARE subject to historical analysis for traditions outside of Christianity.

>>19956583
>without considering their merits or circumstances
It's more likely that a guy had a centralized cult than that another guy was a revenant. So if by looking at the evidence we conclude he did not have a cult as centralized as its successors claim it was, there is no reason this sort of scholarship could not be turned against any other claims they make.

>>19956600
>But you say that miracles ARE subject to historical analysis for traditions outside of Christianity.
Where did I say this? Please quote me exactly.

>>19956608
You're speaking in obtuse generalities to avoid confronting the fact that the evidence for apostolic succession is literally embarrassing. I'm not interested in engaging hypotheticals to avoid the facts. You are being disingenuous. Either engage the scholarship itself or stop posting.

>>19956805
>the evidence for apostolic succession is literally embarrassing
This is also the case for the resurrection. So you're opening a can of worms doing historical criticism is all I'm saying.

>>19956892
Miracles aren't subject to historical inquiry. And either way the two topics aren't dependent on one another no matter how you try to force it. Nothing about this changes the fact that catholicism is fake.

>>19956338
Christ never said "you are the rock" in Matthew 16:18. He says "and this is the rock". If you would care to read the entire chapter, you could see that he is referring to the confession of faith made by Peter.

Both Chrysostom and Augustine corroborated this view.

>"John Chrysostom (d. 407), in his 52d Homily on the Gospel according to Matthew, wrote:

What then saith Christ? “Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas. Thus since thou hast proclaimed my Father, I too name him that begat thee; all but saying, As thou art son of Jonas, even so am I of my Father. Else it were superfluous to say, Thou art Son of Jonas; but since he had said, Son of God, to point out that He is so Son of God, as the other son of Jonas, of the same substance with Him that begat Him, therefore He added this, And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church; that is, on the faith of his confession."

>"And this he heard from the Lord: Blessed are you, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, but my Father which is in heaven. See what praises follow this faith: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church. What means, Upon this rock I will build my Church? Upon this faith; upon this that has been said, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Upon this rock, says He, I will build my Church (Homily X on the First Epistle of John)"

>>19955049
Fake and gay

>>19956923
Let me guess, you are using a Protestant Bible.

>>19956934
Matthew 16:18, Douay Rheims Bible:

"And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Still doesn't say "You are the rock." Were Augustine and Chrysostom using Protestant Bibles?

>>19955049
Why there is a Catholics vs Protestants instead of a Catholics/Protestants vs Atheists, Jews and Muslims.

Can't you guys forget about your differences for a common adversary?.

>>19956955
Catholics aren't Christian

threads like these are basically 'could batman beat spider-man'

u all should be deeply ashamed of yourselves for taking any of this seriously

>>19956948
The verse is about Peter. Christ could point out, for example, a group of disciples but he explicitly chooses Peter, why? How do you explain that?.

>>19956971
Wow shit those goalposts went flying.

>>19956960
The question of a line of succession is completely historical and has nothing to do with anything supernatural. Is this a bot post or did you not even kind of read the thread?

>>19956959
>let's ignore the 1500 years of history that Christianity had before the Protestants arrived, they are not valid, valid is the interpretation of a theologian of the 40 thousand different Protestant denominations
This is your mind on Protestantism

>>19956981
The catholic church at best started existing in the 6th century. There was never any unified theology even through the middle ages. No historian would assert that. Read history and not your shitty cults propaganda. Actual history of Christianity had nothing in common with catholic fantasy.

>>19956971
Because Jesus was with Peter at the time and talking to him? Why do the fathers disagree with you? When did Peter go to Rome?

>>19957014
Because you're seething you delusional Prod lmao! Are you actually crying?

>>19957027
Why are all e-Caths like this

>>19955049
>>19955054
The Pope is not the "king of Christians"; read The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church by Hans Urs von Balthasar.

>>19956217
>catholics without the pope
Nah the biggest difference is that Protestants see sacraments as symbolic in contrast with essentially all of the Church Fathers.

>>19957031
That's not true that protestants have a unified view of the sacraments. Calvinism is explicitly not symbolic/memorial. Anyway who gives a shit what the church fathers think? They were credulous nutjobs. One castrated himself. None had any concept of what the time of christ was actually like, and they lied about knowing the apostles. Get better role models.

>>19956975
>question of a line of succession is completely historical


and completely meaningless, like whether hulk could beat up superman

>>19956923
The Apostles arguing among themselves isn't presented as a serious ecclesiological discussion it's just them aggrandizing their egos.

>>19957039
There isn't a single Protestant denomination I know of that believes that the Eucharist is real like Catholics and Orthodox do.

>who gives a shit what the church fathers think
They're insanely relevant if you want to know what books of the Bible got accepted as canonical, which should be of utmost important to Protestants who lean on sola scriptura.

/lit/ - Ecclesiological Debates

You guys can go twist the verse of the Petrine confession in Matthew all you want, but Peter was told 3 times to take care of the lambs in John. 3 times. Peter, feed my sheep. I think the evidence is pretty strong. Combined with the fact that 1 Peter ends up with a greeting from a presumably local Church "She who is in Babylon". No way this was not Rome. All right, add all of that to the verse in Matthew. I think the Scripture is pretty clear on this. not to talk about the Tradition of the Church (which is sacred and authoritative).

>>19957056
>They're insanely relevant if you want to know what books of the Bible got accepted as canonical, which should be of utmost important to Protestants who lean on sola scriptura.
The church fathers didn't determine the canon you stupid retard.

>There isn't a single Protestant denomination I know of that believes that the Eucharist is real like Catholics and Orthodox do
I don't care what you personally know about protestants. You clearly don't know much about anything.

>>19957063
>The church fathers didn't determine the canon you stupid retard.
They were the ones who were outlining arguments for the other bishops at the Councils. Are you being intentionally coy?

>>19957068
By the time there were councils they were talking about books that were already in use for literal centuries by congregations across the world that were reading scripture without any councils input or approval.

>>19957068
There are numerous Old Testament canons that are near identical to the Protestant canon and much older than the canon decided upon at the council of Trent:
-The Bryennios List (Corresponds exactly to the traditional 22 book OT canon)
-Melito's Canon (Identical to the Protestant OT, except it omits Esther.)
-Cyril of Jerusalem (Similar to the Protestant 22 book canon, although it includes Baruch as part of Jeremiah)
-Athanasius (Similar to Protestant canon, although it emits Esther)

What makes the canon decided upon in 1546 at Trent superior to these?

>>19956990
who authored the history your encouraging
others to read, dudebro.

>>19957056
>>19957060
e-prots just got filtered

>>19957072
WRONG
congregations didn't exist >literal centuries
instead of seething, study,read,listen
thousands of disbanded ,unorganized, disjointed rebel groups can't be right.

>>19955049
>With the Imprimatur of Thomas A. Boland, Archbishop of Newark
lmao they were busy with more than Chruch history over there in Newark
All you did was post modernist errors

>>19955049
The most damning evidence against the strict Biblicists is that the chain of custody of the Bible is interrupted. This doesn't seem to worry Catholics for some reason. Their solution is to conflate faith in the Bible with faith in God, as if one follows the other. It seems to be inconceivable for the simple-minded Catholic to even entertain the possibility that one might believe in God while remaining suspicious of the Bible. The fact of the matter is that it goes against the programming of the Catholic to imagine himself free to find his own conception of God. It terrifies him to think himself equal to a number of long-dead scribes who may or may not have actually penned some words which led our hapless Catholic to God. He prefers the sterile and preconceived God of the Bible because it precludes anything but interpretation of others' words. Otherwise, instead of kowtowing to the papacy (while keeping it fat and bloated with tithe, of course), he may be forced to think for himself. For our poor, servile Catholic, whose conception of God is equal to an illiterate peasant in powerless Africa, this freedom is what terrifies him most, because the freedom to think and to conceive for himself is accompanied by the burden of culpability for the decisions he makes. The Bible, for our slovenly Catholic, is a crutch.

>>19957072
The Church Fathers are our source for the early Church, and represent her arguments in an educated form. Many of them, first of all, held positions of authority in the church, such as priests or bishops. They lead their congregations. Yes the canon was the creation of a very long process of consensus, but the opinions of the church's elders weighed heavily on which books were regarded as spurious and which were not. It was they who organized various texts into these categories.
There isn't really a way to seperate the early Church, at least the proto-orthodox movement, from the Church Fathers. They were one and the same, the latter being an intellectual expression of the former.

>>19956971
Matthew was angry about the essentially Pauline version of Christianity presented in the gospel of Mark. In which the disciples were depicted as idiots who didn't understand Jesus at all. So he reworked it into a new gospel which presents his more Jewish form of Christianity. As probably taught by James and Peter. To lend legitimacy to this view he needs to emphasize the connection of the apostles with Jesus and he increases their role in the story.
Remember that Matthew, like all the gospels, was written at least 50 years after the death of Jesus. Potentially 80 years. There's no way this guy was an eyewitness. It's my view that the passage about Simon Peter is an invention and he got his nickname Cephas for a more mundane reason.

>>19956340
All prot arguments just boil down to randomly quoting scripture out of context, they are basically atheists

>>19958754
What is the context missing in those quotes. Please explain in great detail what is missing.

>>19958626
My source is Pheme Perkins, NOAB 5th Ed. What is yours?

>>19958754
>NoOooOOo you can't use the bible to back up your arguments.

>>19958751
>muh scholarship

Why are catholics so afraid of simple scholarship and casual investigation of their claims?

>>19958777
read the bibliography of said work. Very important to go deeper than Spark or Cliff
forced conjecture
1 Timothy 2:12

>>19960410
So I should attribute authority to scholars or not? You're confusing me. My scholars, with the consensus opinion, are cucks and liars, but some random retard fringe scholar should be imputed utmost authority in all things?

>Found the daily Schismo Thread so early in the day
Schismos upon the second coming of Christ will be unrecognizable to Him, being in a state of Schism with the One True Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church. Your teeth will engage in much gnashing.

>>19960580
Christ
>who are you people
Catholics
>it's us, your "Church™"
Jesus
>what, I can't hear you, your voices are unrecognizable
Catholics
>ax ur moms she know

>>19960580
Calling anyone else schizo and posting this is some amazing projection. Why is lit full of you freaks?

>>19958754
And attacks on the Catholic foundation. They try to pretend it somehow didnt exist for 1500 years to give themselves legitimately.

>>19960686
Not them but she said "schismos" not "schizos", referring to "schismatics" from the "One True Chrich".

>>19960786
>them/she
how many trannies do you hang around with?

>>19960704
People not in your cult, and no academic in the world, would never assert the catholic church of today is contiguous with the early Church. You sound deluded to suggest as much.

>>19960791
None, I just assume all Catholics and atheists here are either girls or mtf.

>«PROTESTANT» CONSENSVS IS THAT CATHOLICISM IS «FAKE».


WOA...

>>19960918
>Catholic
>clueless
>Tripfaggot
>faggot
Whoa

"Protestants" remember the reality of nothing, and ignore the truth of everything, hence why "Protestantized"/Judaized individuals are both antignostic, and antiCatholic.

>>19961021
>>19960918
Well with the arrival of schizophrenic catholic tripfaggots, this thread has officially descended into pure meme bullshit. Good to see catholics got btfo so hard this time they had to wait for their mentally ill attack dogs to save them by nuking the thread.

Okay but how could I make money out of this debate?
Any fellow entrepreneurs?

>>19961143
This is the real question

>>19960909
you're literally mentally ill bro
a mentally sane person cannot say what you just said

>>19956241
>im allowed to sin and be greedy chasing material wealth because predestination or something bro

>>19961299
The difference being you are employing a strawman that not only doesn't characterize Calvinism, but is explicitly refuted by the theology. On the other hand, Catholic sale of indulgences is literally real and just as bad as it sounds.

>>19955049
>The presbyter-bishops described in the NT were not in any traceable way the successors of the Twelve apostles
What? You're saying the elders of the Church, talked about as the contemporaries of the apostles in the NT itself, were somehow not connected to the apostles? Where could these presbyter-bishops possibly have come from then?

>>19956923
>Council of Jerusalem
Do we know for a fact that Peter didn't preside over it? I thought the passage was ambiguous?

>>19961431
I don't see any evidence of the 12 apostles starting known churches in the nt. Aside from Paul of course. Which church does the nt say Peter started?

>>19961446
Haha cope.

>>19961431
Have you actually read the NT? The 12 apostles preached exclusively to Jews while Paul and others started gentile churches. The Jew churches never took off. There is no instance of any of these majority Jew churches existing. The 12 failed in their mission and only got revived later as a disingenuous way for others to claim authority via succession. I'm reality the only apostle who started churches were Paul and various unnamed others.

I mean this is what the Bible straight up says. The 12 went to the jews and didn't succeed. Given this, what churches did they start?