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Oldest Christian Church?


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I recently made a post in which I presented information to support a point of thelogy from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and said it was the largest and oldest Church in the world. I said this because there has been some accusation that a few of my views about Christianity aren't really "Christian." I was simply pointing out that they (views) are, indeed, as Christian as can be. But, it brought up the point in the thread about the oldest church. I.E.,

I don't know about the biggest, but as far as the oldest I thought it was the Armenian Apostolic Church or at least oldest known?
I found this at Wikipedia, I think it was written by a church representative... The earliest accounts of the introduction of Christianity into Armenia date from the 1st century, when it was first preached by two Apostles of Jesus, St. Bartholomew and St. Thaddeus. The Armenian Apostolic Church has been in existence since the days of the apostles and therefore has a rightful claim as one of the oldest denominations in Christianity. Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in 301, when St. Gregory the Illuminator converted Tiridates III (the King of Armenia) and members of his court. St. Gregory is reported to have been imprisoned by the King in an underground pit, called Khor Virab, for 13 years after which he healed the King of an incurable disease, and thereby converted to Christianity.Christianity was strengthened in Armenia by the translation of the Bible into the Armenian language by the Armenian theologian, monk and scholar Saint Mesrop Mashtots.Here's another post:
But that has been created, molded, and changed over time. How does one bishop laying his hands on another bishop and making proclamations make them more qualified to make judgments and decrees about what the bible says?This is a whole other debate but Catholicism is one of the most hypocritical of all christian religions. Did this laying of hands give them the authority to add and remove book from the bible, create traditions and rules that were not begun until much after the time of jesus, go on the crusades and kill millions of infidels, have the inquisition, touch little boys, etc.What is a modern day, non-leadership role, everyday catholic's justification for followign a religion that is repsonsible for something like the Crusades? I'm honestly curious.Finally if numbers had anything to do with, Christianity would long ago have been denounced.
Whew! That's a lot of fodder for discussion! A couple things to start. 1 - There are 22 Catholic churches, the Latin Rite Church, (Roman Catholic headed by the Pope in Rome) is only one of them. They are all equally ancient, though the Roman is most numerous. In many of the Eastern Rites, priests marry, hell isn't considered a permanent condition and there are differences in the Canon of Scripture. (Bible) They are all equally ancient, however, all trace their origins directly back to actual apostles and disciples of Apostles. 2- about this: Did this laying of hands give them the authority to add and remove book from the bible, If you have a church, you get to decide what writings are in your own Canon- there was no "Bible" after the Resurrection or in 70A.D. when everyone had to leave Jerusalem, of course, yet, the Church was already pretty well established (see Acts of the Apostles.) There was a Jewish Canon, and the Jews themselves removed some books fom their own Canon after the fall, at the Council of Jamnia, (I believe - check my spelling) . The Christian Church retained those books and over the next 100 years by use and tradition, certain post-OT writings came to be accepted as Canon ofr the Christian Church. These are the 72 books found in all Christian Bibles, especially Latin, including the 1611 KJV, up until 1885 when an American Protestant took out some of the books, leaving the 66 in what is called the "Protestant" Bible.A disclaimer: The present Canon of Scripture was in place, but not "officially" set until Constantine ordered it so in the 4th century, and included a book no one wanted included - a "popular novel" of his time we call Revelations. The Church Fathers didn't want it - it was forced on them. There is a wonderful website I like to promote, been around since the net was invented by Al Gore (yes, that was a joke) Early Christian Writings.com, it isn't Catholic or any other thing, just very good and has some of the oldest documents around.The History of Christianity and the Bible are fascinating topics, maybe we could discuss and not debate? As for the rest: I am Roman Catholic. As far as my Church being the most hypocritical, all I can say is: it's a human institution, possibly the oldest continuous institutionalized entity on earth. That means there is going to be a lot of failure of individuals and the Institution. It is also a great and wondrous spiritual entity - and great and wonderful things have been accomplished by many many of it's members. That is - it's just like all of us - flawed and capable of miracles, evolving and improving and taking a few steps forwards and a couple back. But whatever you think, the greastest body of Christian literature, tradition and thought have been retained by this Church for, well, pretty much two-thousand years. And those are nice writings to be able to reference.
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I have a new contender for the oldest independent Christian Church:

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the Church of Egypt that, according to tradition, the apostle Mark established in the middle of the 1st century approximately 42 AD. The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodoxy, and the See of Alexandria. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The head of the church is the Pope and Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy See of Saint Mark, currently His Holiness Pope Shenouda III. More than 95% of Egypt's Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria
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I have a new contender for the oldest independent Christian Church:
The Catholic Church (those particular chruches in full communion with the See of Rome) date directly back to the Apostolic Period making them equally as old as the Coptic Orthodox Church which was founded in the same period.
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I have a new contender for the oldest independent Christian Church:
I have been doing some studying of the earliest Christians and was a little surprised to see how much contention there was even with the very earliest Christians. Many of the most respected leaders became the heads of heretic movements later in their lives. I will share some more details as the discussion progresses. If you read just about any thread on this site, eventually it will get around to bashing the Catholic Church. Many great sins have been committed in the name of the Church but the failures attributed to the church were due to the failures, weaknesses, and evil of men. They were not due to the teachings and writings of the earliest Christians. I was raised a Catholic but left the church when I left for college. I joined a protastant church and really began studying the bible. The more I studied the history of the Church the more I ended up in old Catholic Documents. I finally found some definative answers (and they actually made sense) to questions the protastants ignore or argue about, or splinter over. I will leave it at that for now. I am not sure where the OP wants the discussion to go.
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I think we were starting to discuss the authority of the Catholic Church in determining what is "Christian". It started in the John 14:7 thread. That started to go the route of determing which Christian church is the biggest and oldest.

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Who cares? Why does it matter?
Well if you're going to take something like Christianity as the greastest guide, authority in your life wouldn't you want it to be the one most closely linked to the one that the originators intended? This being Jesus and the twelve apostles.Say there is a law in a church, like catholicism...I don't know one off the top of my head. But regardless if that 'rule' was put into place by st. blah blah blah in 1123 AD, then that isn't part of the bible at all, jesus didn't say do it, st. blah blah blah did.Or something like praying to the virgin mary. Or going to confessional, or taking communion everyday. None of that is Biblical, it's Catholic yes, but the two aren't synonyms.
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Well if you're going to take something like Christianity as the greastest guide, authority in your life wouldn't you want it to be the one most closely linked to the one that the originators intended? This being Jesus and the twelve apostles.Say there is a law in a church, like catholicism...I don't know one off the top of my head. But regardless if that 'rule' was put into place by st. blah blah blah in 1123 AD, then that isn't part of the bible at all, jesus didn't say do it, st. blah blah blah did.Or something like praying to the virgin mary. Or going to confessional, or taking communion everyday. None of that is Biblical, it's Catholic yes, but the two aren't synonyms.
Actually, that's not quite true. The Petrine Doctrine clearly grants supreme authority over the Church on Earth to Peter. Before becoming Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger actually wrote a chapter on Petrine Succession in Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today. The relevant portion of that chapter can be found online here.So if Jesus Himself told Peter that whatever he holds true on Earth will be held true in Heaven these institutions certainly have biblical authority.
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Last summer I was in Ephesus, saw the place where Paul argued the Gospel with the merchants.It was equally Holy as the church I attend in Palm Springs, built in the 1980s.

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Last summer I was in Ephesus, saw the place where Paul argued the Gospel with the merchants.It was equally Holy as the church I attend in Palm Springs, built in the 1980s.
Are you insinuating that they are trying to make a fact that the older the church = the more holier it is?
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Actually, that's not quite true. The Petrine Doctrine clearly grants supreme authority over the Church on Earth to Peter. Before becoming Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger actually wrote a chapter on Petrine Succession in Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today. The relevant portion of that chapter can be found online here.So if Jesus Himself told Peter that whatever he holds true on Earth will be held true in Heaven these institutions certainly have biblical authority.
Sure. Now, let's say hypothetically that Peter than decided to cross what Christ taught. What would happen then? Easy. He would no longer be teaching christianity, and he would have gone off. He also would not have gone to heaven. Jesus didn't just take off into the clouds with the understanding that anything goes- they were left with a definite path, a definite course from God through Jesus, that they were to pass on to others. "Go ye into all of the world and preach the gospel(What gospel? The gospel of christ) He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved, he that believeth not is damned." It really is that simple.
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Sure. Now, let's say hypothetically that Peter than decided to cross what Christ taught. What would happen then? Easy. He would no longer be teaching christianity, and he would have gone off. He also would not have gone to heaven. Jesus didn't just take off into the clouds with the understanding that anything goes- they were left with a definite path, a definite course from God through Jesus, that they were to pass on to others. "Go ye into all of the world and preach the gospel(What gospel? The gospel of christ) He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved, he that believeth not is damned." It really is that simple.
Surely you have enough faith in Christ to know He wouldn't be foolhardy enough to choose someone who would not be the right rock upon which to build His Church. Jesus said to Peter "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven," knowing full well to whom he was saying this and the ramifications of doing so.
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Surely you have enough faith in Christ to know He wouldn't be foolhardy enough to choose someone who would not be the right rock upon which to build His Church. Jesus said to Peter "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven," knowing full well to whom he was saying this and the ramifications of doing so.
] "Upon this rock I will build my church"- you leave out that little part of the scripture. What is the indication there? It's still Christ church. What would be the ramification of crossing what Christ taught? Hell. No man is given the ability to cross the scriptures- don't YOU think that Peter would understand this,that this would be understood? Not to mention the fact that really, Peter wasn't much of an apostle, and you could then postulate that Christ was just saying that he left the Church in the hands of the common people, which makes sense because that's what the Church actually is- the people.
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Last summer I was in Ephesus, saw the place where Paul argued the Gospel with the merchants.It was equally Holy as the church I attend in Palm Springs, built in the 1980s.
That's because the Church is it's people, not it's buildings. Physical location means nothing.
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Not to mention the fact that really, Peter wasn't much of an apostle, and you could then postulate that Christ was just saying that he left the Church in the hands of the common people, which makes sense because that's what the Church actually is- the people.
could someone copy and paste this reply into a new reply so that lois can see it, because he has so maturely decided to put me on 'ignore' for no real reason other than he has his panties in a wad because I don't agree with him. Thanks.Lois:Isn't that a pretty broad interpretation that since Peter, in your opinion wasn't a 'good' apostle that he gave the church to Peter with the intention of it being the 'common man'. If you can make this jump, I guess it would explain how you take just giant leaps with your interpretation of other scriptures, facts, and general realities.
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] "Upon this rock I will build my church"- you leave out that little part of the scripture. What is the indication there? It's still Christ church. What would be the ramification of crossing what Christ taught? Hell. No man is given the ability to cross the scriptures- don't YOU think that Peter would understand this,that this would be understood? Not to mention the fact that really, Peter wasn't much of an apostle, and you could then postulate that Christ was just saying that he left the Church in the hands of the common people, which makes sense because that's what the Church actually is- the people.
Boy are you going to love me. Lois is wrong, of course, he is just spouting his church's propaganda - but - Catholics are also just repeating the Latin Rite (Roman Catholic) Church's proaganda, which is also (yeah, I am Catholic but the truth is the truth) not correct as far as I can see.But we have to go back.First, the so-called Petrine Doctrine doesn't hold up in the face of recorded history. If you read Acts, you will find that James was the head of the Church in Jerusalem not Peter, which means he was the head of the whole Church. We have to keep remembering that when the events happened that are depicted in Acts and referred to by Paul in his letters, there was no Scripture - just the OT, the NT didn't exist yet, it was being written during and after the events it records. The apostles, whichever were doing what, couldn't "follow the Bible" because there wasn't one. Peter and the other Apostles scattered and were the heads (Bishops) of local church bodies. Peter lead the Church in Rome.The Christian churches were just all the Christian Churches until the schism, when Rome decided they should be in charge - and cited the passage the Petrine Doctrine is based on. So, what of Matthew 16:18? What does it really say?You can go here and look at the verse and the Greek, but what you will find if you take it all apart is that the translators keep ignoring one of the words - that word is ei - and it means "if." Let's put the whole thing in context. Simon had a nickname, "rock," which meant at the time "stubborn." Or "Thick-headed." (When my father was young, it was popular to call someone a "rockhead.") Now, Jesus has asked the disciples who people say He is. They give various answers but it is Peter who says "You are the Christ the Son of the living God." Jesus says no person could have told him that, the information had to come directly from God, here is where the passage starts. The classic KJV translation is:And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.But this is not really what the Greek is. First there is that pesky ei, that everyone ignores - it is usually idiomatic and is part of an "if....then" kind of construction. I'm not going through the whole thing, but after about thirty hours of working on this passage a couple years ago, word-by-word, it is obvious that what Jesus actually said was something like:"(..in the same way you know that I am messiah...)I tell you, if you are a rock, then that is the rock I'll need to restore the ecclesia so that they will prevail over death....."It's like saying, "Hey, if your a stubborn guy, I want all the stubborn guys I can get." (BTW, the word translated "build" really has the connotation in Greek of "restore" or "rebuild." So, as much as I love my Church, and I do, Jesus never said anything about Peter being the one the Church is built on. Jesus was saying that Christians will be the ones who get their information directly from the Source/Father/Spirit, as Peter did. BTW, it never says anything in the Bible about the Bible being the sole, only and absolute source for anything. In fact, it says quite the opposite.
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The Catholic Church (those particular chruches in full communion with the See of Rome) date directly back to the Apostolic Period making them equally as old as the Coptic Orthodox Church which was founded in the same period.
And also those NOT in communion with Rome, but be that as it may....I was saying that the Coptic Orthodox, would seem the oldest independent Christian Church - as 47AD would be quite a long time before the Christianity was established in Rome or before there was a schism that made others independent bodies.
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I have been doing some studying of the earliest Christians and was a little surprised to see how much contention there was even with the very earliest Christians. Many of the most respected leaders became the heads of heretic movements later in their lives. I will share some more details as the discussion progresses. If you read just about any thread on this site, eventually it will get around to bashing the Catholic Church. Many great sins have been committed in the name of the Church but the failures attributed to the church were due to the failures, weaknesses, and evil of men. They were not due to the teachings and writings of the earliest Christians. I was raised a Catholic but left the church when I left for college. I joined a protastant church and really began studying the bible. The more I studied the history of the Church the more I ended up in old Catholic Documents. I finally found some definative answers (and they actually made sense) to questions the protastants ignore or argue about, or splinter over. I will leave it at that for now. I am not sure where the OP wants the discussion to go.
The OP wants the discussion to go wherever people take it. I'd really like to hear some of what you've read, and I agree there has always been contention amongst Chirstians as to what Jesus meant, including during His life on earth. I was talking a while back about reincarnation and how it was accepted by many of the Jews of Jesus time, apparently what Jesus taught and what was taught by the early Church Fathers, like Synesius and Origen. What we all think of as heresy - is easily could be dogma.
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Boy are you going to love me. Lois is wrong, of course, he is just spouting his church's propaganda - but - Catholics are also just repeating the Latin Rite (Roman Catholic) Church's proaganda, which is also (yeah, I am Catholic but the truth is the truth) not correct as far as I can see.But we have to go back.First, the so-called Petrine Doctrine doesn't hold up in the face of recorded history. If you read Acts, you will find that James was the head of the Church in Jerusalem not Peter, which means he was the head of the whole Church. We have to keep remembering that when the events happened that are depicted in Acts and referred to by Paul in his letters, there was no Scripture - just the OT, the NT didn't exist yet, it was being written during and after the events it records. The apostles, whichever were doing what, couldn't "follow the Bible" because there wasn't one. Peter and the other Apostles scattered and were the heads (Bishops) of local church bodies. Peter lead the Church in Rome.The Christian churches were just all the Christian Churches until the schism, when Rome decided they should be in charge - and cited the passage the Petrine Doctrine is based on. So, what of Matthew 16:18? What does it really say?You can go here and look at the verse and the Greek, but what you will find if you take it all apart is that the translators keep ignoring one of the words - that word is ei - and it means "if." Let's put the whole thing in context. Simon had a nickname, "rock," which meant at the time "stubborn." Or "Thick-headed." (When my father was young, it was popular to call someone a "rockhead.") Now, Jesus has asked the disciples who people say He is. They give various answers but it is Peter who says "You are the Christ the Son of the living God." Jesus says no person could have told him that, the information had to come directly from God, here is where the passage starts. The classic KJV translation is:And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.But this is not really what the Greek is. First there is that pesky ei, that everyone ignores - it is usually idiomatic and is part of an "if....then" kind of construction. I'm not going through the whole thing, but after about thirty hours of working on this passage a couple years ago, word-by-word, it is obvious that what Jesus actually said was something like:"(..in the same way you know that I am messiah...)I tell you, if you are a rock, then that is the rock I'll need to restore the ecclesia so that they will prevail over death....."It's like saying, "Hey, if your a stubborn guy, I want all the stubborn guys I can get." (BTW, the word translated "build" really has the connotation in Greek of "restore" or "rebuild." So, as much as I love my Church, and I do, Jesus never said anything about Peter being the one the Church is built on. Jesus was saying that Christians will be the ones who get their information directly from the Source/Father/Spirit, as Peter did. BTW, it never says anything in the Bible about the Bible being the sole, only and absolute source for anything. In fact, it says quite the opposite.
You realize it took you 4 paragraphs to say exactly what I said? "You could postulate that christ was saying that he left the church to the people." I got that without any knowledge of the things you had to reference- why do you think that is?
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You realize it took you 4 paragraphs to say exactly what I said? "You could postulate that christ was saying that he left the church to the people." I got that without any knowledge of the things you had to reference- why do you think that is?
Because you like to make unjustified leaps of faith while others like to, you know, find justification?
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No. It's called understanding guided by the Holy Spirit.
Yeah, like he said.Unjustified leaps of faith
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Well if you're going to take something like Christianity as the greastest guide, authority in your life wouldn't you want it to be the one most closely linked to the one that the originators intended? This being Jesus and the twelve apostles.Say there is a law in a church, like catholicism...I don't know one off the top of my head. But regardless if that 'rule' was put into place by st. blah blah blah in 1123 AD, then that isn't part of the bible at all, jesus didn't say do it, st. blah blah blah did.Or something like praying to the virgin mary. Or going to confessional, or taking communion everyday. None of that is Biblical, it's Catholic yes, but the two aren't synonyms.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I don't care what church was first or what church I belong to... The Bible is my foundation.
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