Part V of XIV
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Part V: All Paths Lead to Rome
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__:> +======================================================================+ | PART V | | ALL PATHS LEAD TO ROME | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + *
"I left the Catholic Church," people say. "I'm free of Rome."
Are you?
Trace nearly any church on earth back far enough and you hit the same gate: the imperial, creedal Church of the fourth century -- the Church that silenced the Gnostics, fixed the canon, and wrote the creed. Every branch below broke with that Church on SOMETHING. Not one of them went back past it.
THE TREE #
EARLY JESUS MOVEMENTS (1st-2nd c.)
| many communities, many gospels -- Valentinians among them
|
+--X GNOSTIC CHRISTIANS -- condemned (c. 180 onward), outlawed
| (380 onward), texts buried late 4th c., found 1945
|
+--X MARCIONITES, EBIONITES, others -- condemned, extinct
|
+==> PROTO-ORTHODOX / CREEDAL CHURCH
| Nicaea 325 ... Thessalonica 380 ... Constantinople 381
| Canon: Festal Letter 39 (367), Hippo (393), Carthage (397)
|
+--> CHURCH OF THE EAST ("Nestorian") -- splits after
| Council of Ephesus, 431
|
+--> ORIENTAL ORTHODOX (Coptic, Armenian, Syriac,
| Ethiopian) -- reject Council of CHALCEDON, 451
|
+==> CHALCEDONIAN IMPERIAL CHURCH
|
+--> EASTERN ORTHODOX -- EAST-WEST SCHISM, 1054
| (Rome's twin: same first seven councils)
|
+==> ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH (the Roman line)
|
+--> PROTESTANT REFORMATION -- Luther, 1517
| kept: Nicene Creed, Trinity, 27-book NT
| cut: 7 deuterocanonical OT books ->
| 66-book Protestant Bible
|
+--> LUTHERAN (1517 ->; Augsburg 1530)
|
+--> ANABAPTIST (Zurich, 1525)
| +--> Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite
|
+--> REFORMED (Zwingli 1520s; Calvin,
| Geneva 1530s-40s)
| +--> Presbyterian (Knox, 1560)
| +--> Puritan / Congregational
|
+--> ANGLICAN (Act of Supremacy, 1534)
| |
| +--> BAPTIST (Smyth & Helwys,
| | Amsterdam, 1609)
| |
| +--> METHODIST (Wesleys, from
| the 1730s; US church 1784)
| |
| +--> Holiness movement
| |
| +--> PENTECOSTAL
| Topeka 1901;
| Azusa St. 1906
|
+--> AMERICAN REVIVALISM
2nd Great Awakening c. 1790-1840
|
+--> LATTER-DAY SAINTS
| Joseph Smith, 1830
|
+--> MILLERITES (1830s-1844)
| +--> SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST
| organized 1863
|
+--> BIBLE STUDENTS (C.T. Russell,
1870s) -> JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
(name adopted 1931)
==> carries the creed and/or the canon forward
--> breaks away, but takes Rome's Bible with it
--X cut off, outlawed, buried
WHAT EVERY BRANCH KEPT #
BRANCH NICENE CREED? CANON INHERITED FROM ------------------- ---------------- ------------------------------ Eastern Orthodox yes the imperial church (wider OT) Oriental Orthodox yes (pre-451) the imperial church (wider OT) Roman Catholic yes itself; fixed at Trent, 1546 Lutheran yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Reformed/Presbyt. yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Anglican yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Anabaptist in substance Rome, minus deuterocanon Baptist in substance Rome, minus deuterocanon Methodist yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Pentecostal in substance Rome, minus deuterocanon Seventh-day Advent. Trinity, yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Latter-day Saints NO the Protestant 66 (KJV) + LDS Jehovah's Witnesses NO the Protestant 66 (NWT)
Look at the right-hand column. Every single one. The 27 books of the New Testament that you hold in your hands today -- whatever church you attend -- are the 27 books listed by Athanasius in 367 and confirmed by councils at Hippo and Carthage. The Protestants threw out seven Old Testament books (Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch) but kept Rome's New Testament word for word.
The Gospel of Truth is not on any of their shelves. The Gospel of Philip is not on any of their shelves. Every one of them kept the library of the men who burned the Gnostic library.
THE ORTHODOX #
Yes, the Eastern Orthodox split from Rome in 1054. So they are not Rome's children.
Here is why it doesn't matter: they are Rome's twin. Same first seven ecumenical councils. Same Nicene Creed (minus the Western "filioque" clause). Same bishops who condemned the Gnostics -- Athanasius is a saint in both. The 1054 schism was a quarrel over power and one clause in the creed. It was never a quarrel over the Gnostics. On that, East and West were always one.
THE PROTESTANTS #
Luther broke with the Pope. He did not break with Nicaea. He did not break with Irenaeus. He did not open the canon -- he narrowed it. He even called the Letter of James "an epistle of straw" in the preface to his 1522 German New Testament, but he kept it.
Every Protestant denomination after him was born the same way: an argument about church government, baptism, sacraments or holiness -- fought out inside the same creed, using the same 27 books.
Baptists broke from Anglicans. Methodists grew out of the Church of England. Pentecostals grew out of the Methodist holiness movement. Each one sincerely believed it was getting back to the original faith. Each one stopped at the same wall: the fourth century.
THE BAPTIST "TRAIL OF BLOOD" #
Some Baptists claim they never came from Rome at all. A 1931 booklet by J. M. Carroll, "The Trail of Blood," says a chain of true churches -- Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, Paulicians, Albigenses, Waldensians, Anabaptists -- ran unbroken from the apostles to modern Baptists, outside Rome the whole way.
It is a moving story. Historians do not support it. Those groups did not share Baptist doctrine (the Albigensians, or Cathars, were dualists who rejected water baptism entirely), and there is no documented line of succession linking them. Baptist historians themselves trace the denomination to English Separatists in Amsterdam under John Smyth and Thomas Helwys around 1609.
And notice: even the Trail of Blood booklet uses the Protestant Bible. Even the "chain outside Rome" ends up holding Rome's canon.
THE ADVENTISTS #
The Millerite movement predicted Christ's return for 1843-1844. When October 22, 1844 passed -- the "Great Disappointment" -- a remnant regrouped around Ellen G. White and Sabbath-keeping, and organized as the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863.
They deserve credit: they saw that the Sunday rest came from Constantine and the councils, not from the Bible (see Part VIII). Here is why it doesn't save them: they fixed the day and kept the rest. Same Trinity. Same Protestant canon. They corrected one of Rome's edits while reading Rome's Bible.
THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS AND JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES #
These two branches shout the loudest about breaking free. Latter-day Saints teach that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three distinct beings. Jehovah's Witnesses teach that only the Father, Jehovah, is Almighty God, that Jesus is his first creation, and that the holy spirit is God's active force, not a person. Both reject the Nicene Trinity outright, and both call themselves a "restoration" of the original Christianity that was lost.
Yes. And here is why it doesn't matter.
Look at what they restored FROM. Both inherited the Protestant 66-book canon. Latter-day Saints read the King James Version and add their own scriptures on top. Jehovah's Witnesses read their own New World Translation of the same 66 books. Both were born out of nineteenth-century American Protestant revivalism. And that revivalism descends straight down the Roman line.
They redecorated the house. They kept Rome's foundation. They kept Rome's books.
You cannot restore the original faith using the library its destroyers approved.
THE POINT #
ROME (Nicaea 325 / Thessalonica 380)
^
Orthodox --------+ Every road you walk in Western
Lutheran --------+ Christianity was paved in the
Anglican --------+ fourth century -- by the same
Reformed --------+ hands that buried the gospels
Baptist ---------+ of the Gnostics.
Methodist -------+
Pentecostal -----+ The only road that does not
Adventist -------+ end at Rome is the one that
Latter-day Saint + goes BACK PAST IT:
Jehovah's Witn. -+
ROME --> 380 --> 325 --> 180 -->
VALENTINUS --> PAUL --> JESUS
(recovered: Nag Hammadi, 1945)
A true restoration goes back past Nicaea. Back past Irenaeus. Back to the voices in the jar.