- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms
- 15.II.2023
- Why do Protestants claim the Catholic Church started at the council of Nicaea? (I know it didn’t but how do I refute this)
https://catholicapologetics.quora.com/Why-do-Protestants-claim-the-Catholic-Church-started-at-the-council-of-Nicaea-I-know-it-didn-t-but-how-do-I-refute-thi-24
- Submission accepted by
- Theo Fessenden
- My answer
- There are two versions about what it means to be a Protestant.
Not counting the High Church type, who may struggle whether a conversion should be to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox, or whether to do it on one's own or along with other Anglicans or Lutherans similarily hoping for a future reunion. Such people aren't Catholics actually, but they aren't intentionally Protestant. So, I'll say what Protestant means, when you actively opt against either Catholicism or Orthodoxy (which I never did all that much while in Protestant confessions, I was more the High Church type).
The historical position of the Reformers is, Catholicism started out as the visible manifestation of the Church of Christ which essentially is invisible. It then got corrupted over time. Popes were Antichrists to both Luther and Calvin. For some, the Seventh Council was promoting idolatry.
On this view, usually, one does not state that the Church started with a specific council centuries after the apostles, but one notes "cracks" in the apostolicity "arising" over the centuries. Protestantism on this view offers a renovated home to move to, to avoid the insanitary conditions where you were living.
The other Protestant view is Restorationism.* At a certain point, the Great Apostasy happened.
Protestantism or the own brand of Protestantism, in that case is either the Remnant, which didn't apostatise, which remained socially invisible for centuries, or which manifested serially in very different sects, which somehow are all of them assimilated to the own one (c'mon, Donatists, Paulicians, Albigensians and Waldensians were not united between them, nor with Ruckmanite, King James Only, Baptists!), or the own sect is God finally restoring His Church.
On either view about the own sect, the "faults in Catholicism" are considered as much earlier in Restorationism. Mormons may put the "great apostasy" at just after the Apostles died (plus the original Church having an extra lifespan into sth like AD 450 in the Americas). More usually, the trouble is identified as starting at Nicaea, or when many preferred Pope St. Cornelius over Antipope Novatian. Or when Constantine coopted the Church into the Imperial power and polluted it. Or all three, or any combination of two of them.
Back in the 16th C., there was some hope in Protestant circles to prove things like Marian doctrines (some of which are since dogmas) or Sacrifice of the Mass were very late "additions" ... as that hope wanes, the other idea, a shorter timeline of apostolicity undiluted, broken by an Apostasy, gains traction.
Because, if one admitted that:
- things like that were there well before Nicaea II in 787,
- and there is no way Catholicism in 325 could have not been the Church of Christ,
then one would logically have to conclude, either that they are to be accepted, or at the very least, that it is non-essential even if correct to reject them.
This may seem as an accusation of most or all Protestants of such conviction making up whatever argument floats their boat, but these ideas really do have promoters, and lots of people have genuinely heard them as part of their Christian education.
I think the best way to refute this is to point out that “Constantine creating a hybrid of Christianity and Paganism” comes from Hislop, who wrote The Two Babylons as anti-Catholic propaganda, and pretty totally lacking competence in Assyriology.
* Restorationist denominations:
Credits for video:
Most Believers Don't Know THIS and it's SHOCKING
Ruslan KD, 1 Feb. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyVtPrmPmpU
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