{"id":28656,"date":"2014-04-22T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=28656"},"modified":"2015-03-19T21:35:28","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T04:35:28","slug":"catholic-church-established-33-or-300","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2014\/04\/22\/catholic-church-established-33-or-300\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Church: Established AD 33 or AD 300? (5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the moment on this blog, I am responding<\/a> to a reader who commented on a post I wrote about Mary, Ark of the New Covenant<\/a>. In my earlier\u00a0posts, I dealt with her comments concerning Our Lady, but in her closing\u00a0paragraph she made a number of assertions concerning the origins of the Catholic Church.\u00a0In these last\u00a0two\u00a0posts I would like to respond to these final\u00a0assertions:<\/p>\n

I would suggest you do… more research about the origins of the roman catholic church which comes from pagan origins when it was founded in Rome by Constantine about 300AD. This is well known in history. Constantine was the first pope, and he mixed paganism with Christianity and that is how the Roman catholic church was born. You will find many parallels between the Roman catholic church and paganism.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In this particular post I think I’d like to spice things up with a little help from\u00a0Barney Stinson<\/a>. Since Monica has challenged me to investigate history…<\/p>\n

\"Challenge\"<\/p>\n

Let’s take a look at each of the assertions in turn…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Assertion #1: Constantine started Catholicism and was first Pope<\/h2>\n

I’m afraid to say that comments such as Monica’s are fairly common among Evangelicals, but they’re demonstrably false. This is not, in fact, “well known in history”<\/em><\/span>\u00a0but more akin to The Da Vinci Code<\/a>. If Monica thinks she has evidence to substantiate this assertion, then I would appreciate it if it were presented.<\/p>\n

My guess is that her information has come from, at best, anti-Catholic historical commentary. I would suggest that she has never really encountered the Early Church Fathers<\/a>, nor read much at all from the primary and secondary sources from the early centuries of Christianity. Had she been exposed to these original sources, assertions of this kind wouldn’t be made. It’s just bad history to assert that Constantine “founded”<\/span><\/em> the Catholic Church or that he “was the first pope”<\/em><\/span>. In fact, when you hear people make these kind of assertions…<\/p>\n

\"Legendary\"<\/p>\n

I’ll present some primary sources in the next post and we’ll look at the actual writings of the Christians who lived in the centuries prior to the rise of Constantine and we’ll see what they have to say to us.<\/p>\n

Assertion #2: This took place around AD 300<\/h2>\n

I’m not sure of the significance of the date of AD 300 which Monica mentioned.<\/p>\n

In AD 300, Christians were still openly persecuted. It wasn’t until the Edict of Milan in AD 313 that Christianity even became legal. Although during his time as Emperor Constantine was a patron of the Church, he didn’t become a baptized Christian until his deathbed in AD 337. In fact, Christianity didn’t become the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, as is commonly asserted. It was only under Theodosius, fourteen<\/em> emperors later, that it became the state religion following the Edict of Thessalonica in AD 380.<\/p>\n

There are a number of problems with conspiracy theories concerning Constantine:<\/p>\n

1. Integrity of the Scriptures<\/strong>
\nI assume Monica is a Bible Alone<\/a> Christian. If Constantine had such control over the Church, how can she possibly trust the Scriptures? If Constantine was the powerful architect of this new pagan religion, why didn’t he tinker with the Scriptures to make them more Pagan-friendly?<\/p>\n

The canon of Scripture wasn’t fixed prior to Constantine’s rise to power. How can Monica trust that the correct books are in her Bible if the Church had been taken over\u00a0by the evil Constantine? While we’re on this subject, I’d be interested to know how Monica explains the assembling of the canon of Scripture without mentioning Sacred Tradition<\/a>, Catholic bishops or Church Councils. Personally,\u00a0I don’t think it can be done<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Integrity of the Christians<\/strong>
\nTo credit Constantine with the complete usurpation of the Christian faith reflects extremely poorly on the Christians of that generation. Those believers, as well as their forefathers, had undergone terrible persecutions\u00a0and many had even suffered mutilation\u00a0and martyrdom. Why does she think that these battle-hardened witnesses of Christ would so easily capitulate and allow the Emperor to hijack and distort the\u00a0religion for which they were previously willing to give their lives?<\/p>\n

However, it gets even worse than that. If one subscribes to this theory concerning Constantine, not only did the Christians fail in defending their apostolic faith, the historical record provides no evidence that they raised any kind of defense at all! There are no writings in the early centuries in which we find doctrines which come close to resembling that of Protestantism.<\/p>\n

\"Disappointed\"<\/p>\n

So, in the absence of any other compelling evidence, I will personally\u00a0put the founding of the Catholic Church around\u00a0Jerusalem in AD 33<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Assertion #3: Catholicism is basically just paganism<\/h2>\n

Monica said that “<\/span>You will find many parallels between the Roman catholic church and paganism”<\/span>. <\/em>Aside from the allegations against Mary as “Queen of Heaven”<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(which I dealt with in an\u00a0earlier post<\/a>), Monica named no other parallels. However, when I’ve heard that assertion made by others in the past<\/a>, it’s usually concerned stuff like the celebration of Easter (rebutted here<\/a>). When making assertions like this, it’s important to note that just because there is some vague similarity between two things, it doesn’t mean that they’re causally related – that link must be proved.<\/p>\n

If one accepted Monica’s premise, I see three resulting problems:<\/p>\n

1. Other Christian Doctrines<\/strong>
\nKnowledge of Monica’s own beliefs would be useful here since I’ve often found inconsistencies among those who make such arguments. However, since she didn’t identify herself to the contrary, I’m going to assume she believes in the Trinity, the doctrine which states that the Father, Son and Spirit are three Divine Persons of the one triune God.<\/p>\n

The problem is that\u00a0I’ve met some Unitarian Christians who claim that isn’t the teaching of Scripture and that the Trinity is, in fact, an import from Paganism! Would Monica accept this assertion, or would she demand proof?<\/p>\n

2. Criticisms of Christianity<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Atheists and those who seek to discredit the Christian faith often claim that Jesus is simply a rehashing of old myths<\/a>. Would Monica accept such an assertion or would she require evidence\u00a0of a link?<\/p>\n

3. Commonly Accepted Paganism<\/strong>
\nI’ve notice that, at every single Christian wedding I’ve attended, the bride has carried a bouquet down the aisle and the couple have exchanged rings. What’s that got to do with anything? Well, both the bridal bouquet and the use of wedding rings are imports from Paganism!<\/p>\n

\"What\"<\/p>\n

If bouquets and rings\u00a0can be “baptized” and put to the service of the Christian faith, doesn’t that mean other things could too?<\/p>\n

I won’t say anything more on the subject of Paganism since it’s rather hard to rebut something without first hearing the specific charges.<\/p>\n

Up Next…<\/h3>\n

In the final part of this series\u00a0I’ll be assembling a post\u00a0I wanted to write for some time. I intend to look at some primary sources and set the historical record straight concerning Christianity in the pre-Constantinian Church…<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/a> | Part 1<\/a> | Part 2<\/a> | Part 3<\/a> | Part 4<\/a> | Part 5 | Part 6<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the moment on this blog, I am responding to a reader who commented on a post I wrote about Mary, Ark of the New Covenant. In my earlier\u00a0posts, I dealt with her comments concerning Our Lady, but in her closing\u00a0paragraph she made a number of assertions concerning the origins of the Catholic Church.\u00a0In these last\u00a0two\u00a0posts I would like to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2603,2602,51,2969,1436,2604,2241],"class_list":["post-28656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","tag-conspiracy","tag-constantine","tag-early-church-fathers","tag-featured","tag-history","tag-new-ark-response","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28656"}],"version-history":[{"count":64,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86638,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28656\/revisions\/86638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}