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It does not matter who founded these churches.

November 7 2009 at 6:39 AM
Tomas  (Login TomasSedlacek)


Response to Who founded Ebionites and Nazarenes? The Catholic Church?

 
Some churches have one founder, some two or more. What matters is whether a church belongs into God's church or not. God's church had divisions already in the first century. Paul mentioned people following Paul or Apollos or Peter, criticized them for that, but did not consider them unsaved.
It is true that the Ebionite churches had errors, they taught observing the Law of Moses, even circumcision, condemned Paul, some even taught against the virgin birth of Jesus, but none of these errors meant they were unsaved. There are only about ten doctrines necessary for salvation, and as far as I know they believed in all of them. Though there were apparently also Gnostics who called themselves Ebionites, and those could have been unsaved. Many Gnostics taught that Jesus did not come in the flesh, and that is a doctrine necessary for salvation, that he did come in the flesh. So most, if not all, Gnostic churches were false gospels.
We do not know who founded the Catholic church, that information is lost to history. But it is not a continuation of apostolic teaching. Clearly some men came, introduced many wrong teachings, and started the Catholic church. Some of these false teachings are even rejected by the modern Catholic church. This includes the teaching in the quotes you included in your post, that one must be in the Catholic church to be saved. Nowadays you teach correctly that there are saved Christians in other churches also. Though today's Catholic church goes to the other extreme, teaching there are also saved non-Christians, including among Jews and Muslims. Other false teachings of the second century Catholic church that are now correctly rejected by today's Catholic church include for example pacifism, ban on things like colored clothes, wigs, dyeing of hair, women not veiled in public, people going to entertainments, charging of interest, shaving of beards, incense, lawsuits against even unbelievers, praying not to the east, wearing perfume, becoming politicians. On the other hand, they allowed slavery. None of these teaching were from the apostolic church, they came from the people who founded the Catholic church and their followers. Likewise other errors that are still continued by today's Catholic church, which we have been discussing here for years. And certainly today's Catholic church has many errors that were rejected by the second century Catholic church, but entered that church in later centuries.

 
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