Watchman on The Church Fathers...

[Cepha]

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Watchman (and I quote...)

"The church fathers to me are the Apostles as well as Paul who is my Apostles since I am a Gentile, and the first century disciple that had direct contact with the Apostles such as PolyCarp, Irenaeus ect.... and yes, I do believe their teachings."







Polycarp and Irenaeus?

You "believe" their teachings?

Ok, let's see "what" they taught...

[Cepha]

Watchman, do you believe "these" teachings?

Irenaeus

"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).

"But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul—that church which has the tradition and the faith with which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world. And it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (ibid., 3:3:2).

"Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time" (ibid., 3:3:4).

"Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth, so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. . . . For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant conversation, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question?" (ibid., 3:4:1).

"t is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the infallible charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also incumbent] to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth" (ibid., 4:26:2).

"The true knowledge is the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient organization of the Church throughout the whole world, and the manifestation of the body of Christ according to the succession of bishops, by which succession the bishops have handed down the Church which is found everywhere" (ibid., 4:33:8).

"But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (Against Heresies 3:3:2 [A.D. 189]).

"Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church" (Against Heresies, 3, 1:1 [A.D. 189]).

"But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the succession of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church [of Rome], because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (ibid., 3, 3, 2).

[Cepha]

Let us focus on "this" teaching by Irenaeus and notice something here about how he talks about The Pope of The Roman Catholic Church and defends it...






Ireneaus
The blessed apostles [Peter and Paul], having founded and built up the church [of Rome], they handed over the office of the episcopate to Linus.

Here, he clearly states that The Church is built up "in" Rome and singles out The Church "of Rome" as The Church founded by The Apostles Peter and Paul...they (Peter and Paul) handed over the position as Bishop (which is what episcopate means) to Linus.





Now, who was Linus?

Saint Linus (d. ca.76) was the second Bishop of Rome, according to Irenaeus, Jerome, Eusebius, John Chrysostom, the Liberian Catalogue and the Liber Pontificalis; he was succeeded by Anacletus.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Linus











So who was Linus in Christian history?

He is the 2nd Pope of The Roman Catholic Church!

Not only that, Saint Paul mentions him in Timothy!

2 Timothy 4:21
Do your utmost to come before winter. Eubulus greets you, as well as Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brethren.









Is this a "Catholic" teaching that Linus was a direct student of The Apostle Paul?

NO! Irenaeus himself said this!


Ireneaus
Paul makes mention of this Linus in the letter to Timothy [2 Tim. 4:21]. To him succeeded Anacletus, and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was chosen for the episcopate.

To this Clement, Evaristus succeeded . . . and now, in the twelfth place after the apostles, the lot of the episcopate [of Rome] has fallen to Eleutherius. In this order, and by the teaching of the apostles handed down in the Church, the preaching of the truth has come down to us"









Who are these men? Anacletus, Clement? Evaristus? Eleutherius?

They were Popes #'s 3, 4, 5 & 13!

So, what is Ireneaus stating here?









He is literally listing The Popes of The Catholic Church!

First Century
St. Peter (c.33-67AD)
Linus (? 67-76)
Anacletus (? 76-88)
Clement I (? 88-97)
Evaristus (? 97-105)

Second Century
Alexander I (? 105-15)
Sixtus I (? 115-25)
Telesphorus (? 125-36)
Hyginus (? 136-40)
Pius I (? 140-55)
Anicetus (? 155-66)
Soter (? 166-75)
Eleutherius (? 175-89)

www.britannia.com/history/resource/popes.html







;D

[Cepha]

The Church Fathers...the final nail in the coffin of Anti-Catholicism...once Anti-Catholics let them in to their psyche, it's a wrap for their Anti-Catholicism. They have no room to continue to "not" believe in The Catholic Church.

Almost all Protestant and Anti-Catholic Theologians and Laymen who've converted to Catholicism say the same thing...it was The Church Fathers that brought them to Catholicism. Once history showed to them that The Catholci Church was The Church founded by Christ and headed by Peter, they could no longer honestly deny The Catholic Church's legitimacy.

Amen.

The Fathers have spoken and as we all know..."Fathers Know Best!"

[Cepha]

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Watchman (and I quote...)

"The church fathers to me are the Apostles as well as Paul who is my Apostles since I am a Gentile, and the first century disciple that had direct contact with the Apostles such as PolyCarp, Irenaeus ect.... and yes, I do believe their teachings."






After reading Irenaeus's teachings, do you still "believe" him?

Or are you now going to abandon his teachings?

Or, choose to accept some of them and ignore the rest (cafetirially)?

[teresahrc]

Cepha, you have outdone your self with the graphics! Hilarious. Come on watchman, you gotta admit those "Hi-Ya" guys are really funny.

[Cepha]

Mar 1, 2009 14:04:28 GMT -5 @teresahrc said:

Cepha, you have outdone your self with the graphics! Hilarious. Come on watchman, you gotta admit those "Hi-Ya" guys are really funny.

Thank you, thank you!

(bowing)

I hope he answers the questions about The Church Fathers that he says he accepts their teachings...he seems to be completely ignoring me...

Hey!

Teresa!

Why don't you ask him the same questions I just did and we'll see if he's just ignoring me...or the truth altogether!

Irenaeus..."prover" of The (Roman) Catholic Church's claim to being led by Peter, The Popes of The 1st Century and supported by The ECF's (Early Church Fathers) who walked with The Apostles and who were directly taught by The Apostles!

[teresahrc]

Watchan,

What sayest thou about St. Irenaeus' statements on the Church at Rome?


You know, (sorry this is a cheesy saying) that everything in the Bible is true, but not everything that is true is in the Bible (like everything that happened after the first Apostles were martyred and many other things that are not specifically mentioned in scripture)

[Cepha]

Mar 2, 2009 18:35:16 GMT -5 @teresahrc said:

Watchan,

What sayest thou about St. Irenaeus' statements on the Church at Rome?


You know, (sorry this is a cheesy saying) that everything in the Bible is true, but not everything that is true is in the Bible (like everything that happened after the first Apostles were martyred and many other things that are not specifically mentioned in scripture)

Not to mention all the things that Jesus taught that "aren't" in The Bible,
but that The Apostles knew and passed on by Apostolic Tradition...





John 21
24
This is the disciple who testifies of these things,
and wrote these things;
and we know that his testimony is true.
25
And there are also many other things that Jesus did,
which if they were written one by one,
I suppose that even the world itself
could not contain the books that would be written.
Amen.

[Cepha]

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;D

[Cepha]

Mar 2, 2009 18:35:16 GMT -5 @teresahrc said:

Watchan,

What sayest thou about St. Irenaeus' statements on the Church at Rome?

Yeah Watchman, what sayeth thou?

[Cepha]

Mar 3, 2009 20:21:42 GMT -5 Cepha said:

Mar 2, 2009 18:35:16 GMT -5 @teresahrc said:

Watchan,

What sayest thou about St. Irenaeus' statements on the Church at Rome?

Yeah Watchman, what sayeth thou?

Hello? lo, lo, lo, lo, lo???

Anybody out there? there? there? there? there?

[teresahrc]

I think he painted himself into a corner and is gone, waiting for the paint to dry?

[Cepha]

It's ok...he answered it (but not here).

He said that he had "nothing" to say about Saint Ireneaus and his defenses of The Catholic Church or on his citing The Popes of The Catholic Church.

You gotta love The Church Fathers, don't cha?

[teresahrc]

Millennialism
The term millennialism comes from the Latin mille anni, which means “a thousand years.” Within Christianity, millennialism is the teaching that Jesus will have an earthly reign of one thousand years on earth. Millennialists differ as to whether the earthly reign of Christ precedes or follows the second coming. Postmillennialism, which has largely died out today, teaches that Jesus will come at the end of the thousand years. Premillennialism, which is popular among most fundamentalists today, teaches that the thousand years begin with Jesus’ Second Coming, which, according to their teaching, immediately follows a seven-year period called the tribulation. Premillennialists can be further divided into three camps: posttribulationists, who teach that Christians will go through the tribulation, midtribulationists, who teach that Christians will go through half of the tribulation, and pretribulationalists, who argue that Christians will not go through the tribulation at all.
In the early centuries, millennialist teachings entered the Church through the Zealot party of Judaism. The Zealots expected a military Messiah who would rule the world for a thousand years, with his capital at Jerusalem. In the second century, a new convert named Montanus claimed to be a special emissary of the Holy Spirit. He announced that the New Jerusalem would shortly descend from heaven into a town in Phrygia. Montanus thus became the first Christian date-setting millennialist with a large following. Montanus’ most famous follower was Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, but according to St. Augustine, Tertullian later left the Montanist movement and returned to orthodox Christianity. In AD 230, the Synod of Iconium declared that baptisms performed by the Montanist sect were invalid. The Council of Constantinople in AD 381 supported the Synod of Iconium and further declared millennialism to be a heresy—not just because of Montanus, but because of other heretical teachers, such as Apollinarius, so it was a general rejection of millennialism, not just of Montanus’ teachings. Because millennialists used Revelation to support their claims—although Revelation contains no statement that Jesus will reign on earth for a thousand years—the Church was slow to accept Revelation as scripture. To this day, Orthodox churches do not use Revelation for scripture readings during worship. End-times groups have sprung up periodically throughout history, presenting the Church with massive pastoral problems when the end-times prognosticators finally fail. This has kept the historic Church on guard against end-times preachers.

The Protestant Reformers, with the exception of Calvin, all considered millennialism to be a heresy. They needed to deal with the issue, because the Protestant Reformation came right on the heels of a period of end-times hysteria that ended in disappointment. (Calvin made no statement on the issue—the issue was not current in his day, and he was incidentally the only Protestant Reformer who did not have a clerical background.) Lutherans are explicitly forbidden to be millennialists, theoretically on pain of excommunication.

Modern millennialism is largely based on the teachings of John Darby, who lived in the nineteenth century. He was a disaffected Anglican priest who left the Church of Ireland and joined the Plymouth Brethren. He taught, among other things, that the British were the ten lost tribes of Israel, and that the church had vanished from the face of the earth in the early centuries and needed to be restored from scratch. He made a translation of the New Testament to support his teachings, which is known as the Darby Version. The Plymouth Brethren spread the doctrine through fundamentalist churches, who at the time were unaware of Apollinarius, Montanus, the Synod of Iconium, the Council of Constantinople, and the position of the Protestant Reformers.

At present, millennialism is strongly rejected as a heresy by Orthodox churches and somewhat less strongly by Lutheran churches. Millennialism is tolerated in most other churches, where it is a minority view, but they consider it more a pastoral problem than a heresy. Millennialism is the majority view in fundamentalist churches, which often consider millennialism to be a test of orthodoxy and sometimes even a prerequisite for membership. Modern millennialists argue that only the Montanist form of millennialism was rejected by the Council of Constantinople, that their doctrine is not the millennialism that the early Church and the Reformers rejected, and they cite Christian authors in antiquity to support this view—most of whom were considered heretics in their own age. Modern millennialists used to be quite passionate about their viewpoint, but over the last few decades, they have become more tolerant of historically orthodox teachings about end times, which they term amillennialism. This tolerance probably stems from the fact that the modern millennialist system, like its historical antecedents, has repeatedly failed in its interpretation of world events.

www.kencollins.com/glossary/theology.htm#millennialism

[teresahrc]

I was really tired of talking about Millenialism/Premillenialism.

[Cepha]

Mar 2, 2009 21:02:51 GMT -5 Cepha said:

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;D

.

[teresahrc]

Cepha, it said the video was no longer available.

[Cepha]

Apr 10, 2009 7:40:36 GMT -5 @teresahrc said:

Cepha, it said the video was no longer available.

The video is playing fine now.

It's "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen.


;D