protestant arguments against catholicism

For instance, here’s the First Apology of St. Justin Martyr. –. This picture not only makes multiple errors regarding Catholicism, but the Catholic Church herself does not even teach half of the things listed on it. So he mentions bishops in every other letter, he’s almost obsessed with the authority of the bishop. are less convincing to the set of Christians than the arguments for Christianity, so if that’s the standard, no one can meet it. Walls appears to be basing this claim off of both Eno and Duffy, the latter of whom says that Ignatius of Antioch “wrote a series of letters to other churches, largely consisting of appeals to them to unite round their bishops. The world of the late medieval Roman Catholic Church from which the 16th-century reformers emerged was a complex one. But my point is that these days, any argument with a Catholic can be neatly avoided—and often is by the Church's most vigilant opponents—by devolving to the Westboro Baptist Church’s self-proclaimed “air-tight, three word case against the Catholic Church”: priests rape boys. . Protestants hold doctrinal differences with the Catholic Church in a number of areas, including the understanding of the meaning of the word "faith" and how it relates to "good works" in terms of salvation, and a difference of opinion regarding the concept of "justification"; also regarding the Catholic Church's belief in Sacred Tradition as a source of revelation complementary to Sacred Scripture. An evangelical discovers Catholic Tradition” by Mark Shea. To accept any version of Walls’ argument, you would have to believe that (1) the original structure of the Roman church was something like a group of co-equal elders, and (2) at some point [the 180s, according to Lampe and Walls; no later than the 150s, according to Duffy], this apostolically-established structure was superseded or replaced by a single, powerful bishop who became the first pope. This is called the sacrament of confession (or penance). With that said, let’s look at each argument in order: There are a lot of places in the Bible in which Jesus seems to treat Peter as the head of the Apostles: the famous scene in which he seems to build the Church upon Peter in Matthew 16:17-19; the time that he says to “let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves” and then calls Peter to serve the other Apostles by strengthening them (Luke 22:26, 32); the multiple fishing miracles and teachings in which Jesus seems to treat Peter as the fisherman, the Church as the net, and the laity as the fish (cf. And that’s applicable here: one of the major arguments that Brown relies upon (which we’ll look at in more depth) is that, since St. Ignatius of Antioch frequently mentions bishops in his writings to the churches of Asia Minor, this “insistence” shows that the episcopacy must be some new thing that he is trying to defend; and that since he (allegedly) doesn’t mention bishops in his letter to Rome, the episcopacy must not exist there. And the number of Bible manuscripts is far greater than those referring to anyone else of that time. For this is how the apostolic churches record their origins. Later legend would fill out the details of Peter’s life and death in Rome—his struggles with the magician and father of heresy, Simon Magus, his miracles, his attempted escape from persecution in Rome, a flight from which he was turned back by a reproachful vision of Christ (the ‘Quo Vadis’ legend), and finally his crucifixion upside down in the Vatican Circus in the time of the Emperor Nero. Matthew 16:17-19, Luke 22:26-32, Luke 5:1-11, Matthew 13:47-50, John 21:1-17, Acts 21:4, Acts 11:26, Acts 26:26, Apologetics, Catholic Church, Papacy, Protestantism. T oday, conservative critics of liberalism tend to be Catholic. God bless you, fellows at @WordOnFire. There are plenty of areas in which we see development of doctrine, or we see doctrinal fighting within the early Church. Among low-church² Protestants, there are two — no, three — no, probably more, but I’m going to tackle only three — three major arguments made against the Catholic view of the saints. If we can’t accept these claims just on the basis of an appeal to authority, we’ll have to actually look at the arguments. There are two major fallacies in this reasoning. Is it plausible to suggest that it would not have been equally divisive in the first decades of the Church’s life, and could have taken place without leaving any trace whatever? That is not the case. Protestants will always find something to find fault with in Catholic thinking, no matter how far fetched their justification is for their own position. (One additional reason to trust the early Christians over modern skeptics is that the early Christians had access to many primary sources, including both ancient texts and the living witness of the Christians of second-century Rome, that are unavailable to us today). Only His body and blood forgives us our sins, and without it, we cannot be saved. Catholics believe that Jesus died once and for all on the cross to save us from our sins. ++, **My recommendations based on this article. Rome has a gospel but not the gospel and, in reality, their gospel damns not saves because it explicitly denies that justification comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Walls views this resultant silence as a point in his favor. (This is the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and thorough defense of the Catholic Church against Protestant objections in print). Really BAD arguments against the Catholic Church. First, both men seem to be genuinely interested in the truth. By disregarding it as fake, on the authority of the Lutheran scholar Peter Lampe: Lampe argues that this list “is with highest probability a historical construction from the 180s, when the monarchical episcopacy developed in Rome.” In other words, it anachronistically imports into earlier decades what was emerging in the 180s. Walls is a graduate of Notre Dame, so it is perhaps worth pointing out that in the 1967 Land O’ Lakes Statement, the heads of several Catholic universities (headed by Notre Dame’s Fr. Against Gnosticism, Catholics and Protestants jointly affirm that man is not saved by wisdom, but by God’s action in history in the person of Jesus Christ.Second, both evangelicals and Catholics believe salvation is moral and spiritual. But the absence of evidence of (2) is itself striking. Walls claimed that several figures (Clement, Ignatius, Hermas, and Justin) described (1), but that’s simply false, as shown above. But they are pious romance, not history, and the fact is that we have no reliable accounts either of Peter’s later life or of the manner or place of his death. It’s whether, given that you’ve accepted Christianity, you accept the distinctive claims of Catholicism, or Orthodoxy, or any of the various forms of Protestantism. To the work of Christ it adds the work of Mary. However, it is not just an intellectual belief only that saves you but a living, breathing, working faith. And if not, on what basis are we compelled to accept his claims about the evidence for the papacy or apostolic succession? In the Philippines there are plenty of sect/protestant that attacked our brothers in the rural and far flung areas who possess weak defense of our faith and later on converted to be one of them. Well, of course only Christ saves you. I’m not sure I’m getting you. But the other, more obvious reason that Ignatius’ letter to the Romans sounds different is that he is on his way to be martyred in their presence, and he is writing to them to ask them not to intervene to try to prevent his martyrdom, and to pray for the church in Syria that he is to leave behind. You’ll see that he never mentions bishops or elders at any point (much less conflating the two), because he’s arguing about the truth of Christianity over paganism, not describing the structure of the Church. It’s Ignatius setting his final affairs in order as he approaches certain death. If you insist on dismissing all of the early Christian witnesses to the papacy as believing in “pious romance,” you’re left with nothing, because nobody in the early Church actually argues against the papacy, or says that Peter didn’t die in Rome, or that there wasn’t an unbroken line of bishops after him. After all, disagreements about governance structure are the cause of schism today (it’s the defining feature distinguishing Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians from one another), and it’s hard to overstate how seriously this question was taken in the first two centuries of the Church. **The Case for Catholicism – Answers to classic and contemporary objections. The separation, which became known as the "Protestant Reformation", was initiated when Martin Luther (1483-1546), a Catholic priest, began to publicly challenge numerous teachings of the Catholic … He remarks on how “God has deemed me, the bishop of Syria, worthy to be sent for from the east unto the west.” And Ignatius’ request for prayers for the church in Syria only makes sense if the Romans know that there is only one bishop per church, for he writes to them about how Antioch “now has God for its shepherd, instead of me,” and how “Jesus Christ alone will oversee it” in his absence. 20:21-23) and last rites also Biblical (James 5:16). I am not Roman Catholic because Rome denies the gospel. During the tempestuous time of the rise of Protestantism following the Reformation, the Catholic Church needed advocates who would defend the faith against calumnies and distortions, while at the same time militating for needed reform. **Catholicism and Fundamentalism: Attacks on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians.” (One of the BEST books on defending the Catholic faith against Protestants and anti-Catholic arguments). The enormous difficulty, however, is that historians reject miracles—not just in the Bible but consistently in any book that claims to be history. Brown knowing Greek and being well-read doesn’t make his argument any stronger. However, this is incorrect. En route to martyrdom, Ignatius passed through the Roman provinces of Asia Minor and Thracia (present-day Turkey and Greece). Answers in Genesis, the Evangelical, Young-Earth Creation group responsible for the series, normally charges $12.99 for this talk , … All of these people were observers of the Church of Rome, all of them were participants in the Church of Rome, all of them describe the leadership of Rome in this same sort of way: as multiple persons, and again, there’s often an interchange between “elders” and “bishops,” they use those terms more or less interchangeably, so you don’t have any kind of a clear sense with most of them of anything like a bishop. According to Catholics, the highest human authority on earth, the Pope, can even speak new revelation giving a new law from the seat of his authority (i.e., “ex … One reason for this may be that he did not feel it appropriate to leave instructions to “the Church which is beloved and enlightened by the will of Him that wills all things which are according to the love of Jesus Christ our God, which also presides in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of obtaining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy, and which presides over love, is named from Christ, and from the Father.” Ignatius says of the Roman Church, “you have never envied any one; you have taught others.” Had Ignatius left instructions to this church, Walls might have used that to argue that the Bishop of Rome must not have been above the Bishop of Antioch in any ways. There’s like 40-some references scattered throughout these letters. I agree with Walls that this is precisely the question that we ought to be discussing, but if his case is the strongest argument against Catholicism, it’s hard to see how anyone can resist becoming Catholic. Walls thinks that this outweighs the biblical evidence for the papacy, saying “I think they [Catholics] need more than to say, ‘I read my Bible, and when I read my Bible, it seems to me that Jesus is making Peter the pope, and that settles it for me.’” At numerous points, both in his journal article and in his conversation with Bertuzzi, he compares Catholics with young-earth Creationists who hold on to their biblical interpretation at the expense of scholarly evidence to the contrary. After all, the Bible is a Catholic book. A PROTESTANT DEFENSE OF SOLA SCRIPTURA. In both his article and his conversation with Bertuzzi, Walls makes much of the fact that St. Ignatius of Antioch doesn’t mention the Bishop of Rome in his letter to the Romans. So how does Walls handle such explicit evidence for apostolic succession and papal authority? “Pope Fiction: Answers to 30 Myths & Misconceptions About the Papacy” by Patrick Madrid. Yet on all of this the New Testament is silent. In other words, the initial picture says we must believe in Jesus, which is true, but it is taken out of context and forced to mean something that it does not. Why not? And what about the Muratorian fragment, which mentions Pius being the Bishop of Rome, even before Anicetus? For Protestants, people become children of God because Christ’s righteousness is attributed to them (reckoned, credited to, or forensically imputed). “Handbook of Catholic Apologetics” by Peter Krett, Ronald K. Tacelli. And again, so far as I’m aware, this represents the consensus among Catholic historians: that Peter was not the first bishop of Rome, there was not a continuous succession of bishops following Peter, as Vatican I would have it. So, check out the awesome resources below which will absolutely help you to learn, love, and share your faith. Moreover, in his letter from 96 AD, Clement wrote of how “Christ, therefore, was sent out from God, and the Apostles from Christ; and both these things were done in good order, according to the will of God,” and how the Apostles “appointed their firstfruits to be bishops and deacons over such as should believe, after they had proved them in the Spirit.” Clement doesn’t clarify whether there is one or many bishops per city, but he does show that the structure of the early Church was not something that they invented, but that they received from the Apostles (and ultimately, from Christ). Of the corresponding process of canonization of the episcopate, there is, on other hand, no trace whatever. Are all of them lying, or rewriting history? Likewise confession is part of God’s plan. “Reasons to Believe: how to understand, explain, and defend the Catholic faith” by Scott Hahn. I have a library of books (Catholic and anti-Catholic) that I have read, and I’m passing it on to you…, As always, thanks for reading! Remember the story of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon? Joe Heschmeyer is an instructor at the Holy Family School of Faith Institute for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, and blogs at Shameless Popery. The historian Suetonius reported that Julius saw a divine messenger who urged him to cross. To hold to this position, you have to ignore the fact that several other (seemingly independent) ancient sources all tell us that Clement was the Bishop of Rome: St. Irenaeus says so in c. 180, Tertullian treats it as well known history in c. 200, Eusebius (265-339) talks about it in his discussion of the history of the popes in Book III of Church History, and St. Jerome mentions it in his biographical sketch of the life of Clement. God bless Bishop Barron. But it is ample evidence that there was a bishop of Rome at the time that Shepherd of Hermas was written (Hermas’ own brother), and well before Justin Martyr wrote the First Apology in c. 160. right?). Of the three that he cites, Eno views the evidence as inconclusive, but leans against the idea of there being an unbroken line of succession from St. Peter. I guarantee that if you read a few of those books, your faith fill not only grow, but Catholicism will become more exciting and fulfilling! The issue being that it is a completely stupid argument against the Church. Generations of uncatechized Catholics have been killing the Church and giving it a bad name. His letter to the Roman church, however, says nothing whatever about bishops, a strong indication that the office had not yet emerged at Rome.” So Walls’ whole argument comes down to the idea that. There’s a third witness to this, as well: one Hegesippus (c. 110-180), a chronicler whose writings are now mostly lost to us. Share this post with others, Protestant or Catholics, that need to know more about the truth of the Catholic faith. That leaves Walls with exactly one argument: that since Clement doesn’t explicitly say that he’s the Bishop of Rome in his letter dating to c. 96 AD, therefore he wasn’t, and there must have been a plurality of bishops. It is basically prejudice that one battles, and without a proper disposition and openness to the Truth, it will be a hopeless to reason with them. In fact, the Catholic Church teaches the opposite and states that only Jesus saves us and that He alone justifies us by His body and blood on the cross. And it also ignores the historical context: the Muratorian fragment, a biblical canon from around the year 170 explains that the Shepherd of Hermas isn’t considered Scripture because “Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of the city of Rome.” The author uses this detail, not to prove that Pius I was Bishop of Rome from 142 to 157, but simply to explain when the book was written, and by whom. If they could respond to him by pointing out that his own Church was in the process of innovating a papacy and rewriting its own history, don’t you think that they would? If Clement is the pope, the Corinthians’ decision makes sense. The real question is why Walls rejects irrational skepticism in regards to the Resurrection, but accepts it in regards to St. Peter’s successors. Answering common Protestant objections to Catholicism, serves not only an apologetic role, but serves as a source of meditation on the integral truth of Divine Revelation. points out: A first problem with this scenario is its lack of historical plausibility. If they’re not true, then nobody should be a Catholic.” So if Walls has a clear proof that the papacy is false, that really would be the strongest argument against Catholicism. Really BAD arguments against the Catholic Church As stated above, most of these assertions are just made up – invented. Now, I would argue, and I suspect that Walls would agree, that this rejection of the supernatural is actually irrational. So Walls’ argument from silence is actually built on two fallacies: first, that we would expect Ignatius’ letter to the Romans to sound like all of his other letters; and second, that the letter to the Romans never mentions bishops. We see no clear evidence of change, and no one bemoaning (or praising, or even acknowledging) some change in governance structure. A Protestant might go about trying to rebut this evidence directly, showing that none of it actually means what it seems to mean. There is not even a peep of dissension, of one side saying that the other side just made up the episcopacy or the papacy. Instead, he just dismisses them out of hand as “later legend” and “pious romance, not history.” This is precisely the same dismissiveness with which skeptical scholars reject the Resurrection: it doesn’t matter how many people said it happened, because it just sounds too fantastical to them. Let us consider specific common Protestant objections. Well, no we don’t. The term “magisterium” refers to the official teaching body of the Roman Catholic Church. The crux of Walls’ claim goes something like this: Christ establishing the papacy upon Peter is the distinctive claim that Catholicism makes relative to all other forms of Christianity; but this claim is poorly-supported by the evidence of the early Church, where (he claims) there wasn’t even a Bishop of Rome until nearly 200 AD. Continue Reading. I mean, where did someone even concoct this from? Some are so far off that it is hard to take them seriously. Christ called us to be the “light of the world!” Therefore, we need to know know our Bible and our faith! We are the ones who made it and gave it to the world! The picture above quotes one verse that says we are saved by “believing in Jesus,” which is true. The Bible says in James 5:16 “Therefore, confess your sins to one another a. This book is especially relevant as the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation draws near and discussion of the arguments made against the Church during that time in history receive renewed interest. I’ve actually written a book on this very subject, which is why Word on Fire asked me to respond to his claims. For example, the Catholic Church does not teach that we are saved by Peter or that Peter gets us to heaven. Edwards is seeking to defend the historicity of the Protestant Bible, and protect it against criticisms from both Catholics and modern Biblical critics. That's all well and good, but there are Protestants who have genuine and well thought out arguments. In both cases, it’s irrational skepticism: it’s not a skepticism built on the evidence, but a skepticism that refuses to take the evidence seriously. Whenever the topics of Protestant arguments against Catholicism come up you always hear about the weirdest ones. For now, though, I want to turn back to Irenaeus, who says that Peter and Paul founded Rome, and lists their successors down to his own day (c. 180): The blessed apostles [Peter and Paul], then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Catholics are not uncomfortable at all because they understand that Christ saves us, but He chooses to use different means to do so, like Baptism. Luke 5:1-11; Matt. 16:16 – “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.”). And, as always, if you have any questions about anything listed in the picture above, just ask. Answering Anti-Catholic Arguments (and showing why they are wrong). Although Walls repeatedly claims that this is the “consensus” of even Roman Catholic scholars, he’s actually contradicting even the scholars he cites. As Michael C. McGuckian, S.J. As Duffy admits, the proponents of this theory can’t actually point to a first pope, they just have to argue vaguely that there must have been one, and that it must not have been St. Peter . Such as the Jesuits creating Islam or that the Pope made Friday meat-free in order to let his fisherman brother make more money. This is riddled with errors and exaggerations, as well as some telling omissions. Comfort and Joy: Spiritual Lessons in the Final Days of Advent. . Walls treats the historicity of the Resurrection as generally accepted, although he acknowledges “that there are numerous scholars on the other side who are more skeptical, or who strongly deny the resurrection.” But this isn’t some skeptical fringe: secular historians in fact tend to treat the Resurrection as fictional, for the simple reason that it describes a supernatural event. Let them exhibit the origins of their churches, let them unroll the list of their bishops, coming down from the beginning by succession in such a way that their first bishop had for his originator and predecessor one of the apostles or apostolic men; one, I mean, who continued with the apostles. Conversely, if the Catholic claim stands up to scrutiny, Walls, Bertuzzi, and the rest of us should all be Catholic. And your works help me much to combat this activity of the protestant. Flesh and Blood: What Are We Willing to Give of Them? Opposition to religious imagery was a feature of proto-Protestant movements such as the Lollards in England.. But as St. Thomas Aquinas notes, “The proof from authority is the weakest form of proof.” (And if Aquinas says it, it must be correct . But the Bible clearly states that “Baptism saves you.” Do not ignore the verse because it makes you feel uncomfortable or you do not understand it. Of course, that is the definition of an argument from silence (and Walls even calls it such in footnote 25 of his journal article). It is a life long journey of Christ saving us. Ignatius’ seven letters are written on his way from Antioch (the city over which he was bishop) to Rome (the city in which he was martyred), and were written somewhere around AD 107. It’s contrary to all of the available evidence. We should expect to see evidence of both (1) and (2), but there is literally none. Analogously, the Church has never taught that Mary saves us or died for us, or anything of the sort. in Jesus, God recapitulates all of his history of salvation on behalf of men.”(430, 1992), Margaret Sanger Eugenics (Planned Parenthood and the Master Race) – PART 2, Evidence for the Existence of God (Part 1 – Something from Nothing), Catholic and Orthodox (Emotional Argumentation vs. The most obvious evidence is from St. Irenaeus, who responds to heretical arguments by appealing to apostolic succession, saying “we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about.” Tertullian likewise says that if any heretics want to claim apostolicity. Raymond Brown, appears in his article), and saying that this constitutes a scholarly consensus. Walls treats Duffy and Brown as if they were independent sources, and cites the duo/trio as evidence of a scholarly “consensus”: So again, I emphasize, I’m citing the Roman Catholic historians. Period. Don’t tell no one @WordOnFire bit I got this for my mother-in-law for Christmas. “Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic” by David Currie (Protestant becomes Catholic). **“A Biblical Defense of Catholicism” by Dave Armstrong. (126) He explains that it is because “it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority [potiorem principalitatem].”. It requires assuming this because we see no evidence of the imagined “before” picture, and no evidence of when or why there was a change. Duffy is convinced that there isn’t an unbroken line from St. Peter, but he is a historian of the fifteenth to seventeenth century, not of the early Church, and his arguments are heavily reliant on that third scholar, Fr. 13:47-50; John 21:1-13); the promise that he will gather the Gentiles into the Church so that there will be “one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16) followed by his commissioning of Peter (individually) to “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” and “feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17). Catholics Worship Mary as a Goddess. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. Wouldn’t Catholics have a vested interest in trying to show the truth of Catholic dogma? This is why we need to step it up in the Catholic Church and learn our faith again. But on this particular issue, on whether the local church is governed by a single bishop or a committee of elders, there’s literal unanimity. You don’t need to be an expert to realize that this is a catch-22: that whether or not Ignatius mentions bishops, this is taken as “proof” that there weren’t bishops before c. 100. The STRONGEST Argument Against Catholicism w/ Dr. Jerry Walls. . But the same is true of the arguments against the early papacy. The parallels between the nation of Israel and the Catholic Church are hard to miss: both have been involved in scandal, sin, … Five of his letters are to the Christians in these provinces: to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, along with a sixth to St. Polycarp, Ignatius’ friend and the bishop of Smyrna. Catholicism ftw. In the mid 17th century English Protestant divine William Chillingworth derided the concept of an unbroken apostolic tradition. (Note: Lutherans and other Protestant groups agree with Catholics on this; they believe that Christ saves through Baptism which regenerates us). Catholicism had taught me to think like a Protestant, because, as it turned out, the Reformers had thought like catholics. For example, there are not one but four gospel accounts. As for the Shepherd of Hermas, it’s a mystical vision, not a description of the local church of Rome. “Search and Rescue: How to bring your family and friends back – or back into – the Catholic church” by Patrick Madrid. The problem with the second defense is that the “consensus” mostly consists of other people reading Brown and his coauthor Meier, and repeating their conclusions, without adding any new argument or expertise or scholarship (Duffy is a prime example of this—the passage of his book in question has only one footnote, to a second-century text from Irenaeus that Duffy disagrees with). The problem with the first defense is that the arguments in question are not particularly technical: claims are made about how much weight should be given to what certain Church Fathers said (or often, didn’t say). 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Bishopbarron @ pictureshowfilm the work of Christ it adds the work that got Presbyterian.: //twitter.com/WordOnFire/status/1334627488014667776, @ WordOnFire bit I got this for over 2000 years now Pope: Cases! Raymond Brown, appears in his article ), but it isn ’ t you. Handbook of Catholic dogma these assertions are just made up – invented be surprising were Ignatius to! References scattered throughout these letters Confound Protestants “ by Dave Armstrong Catholics and give their reasons for doing so with... Here isn ’ t whether to accept his claims about apostolic succession papal! Are all of his argument any stronger is specifically on whether or not Peter had successors as the bishop bishops. S a mystical vision, not a one time event him to cross and Joy: Lessons... To one another a on a mission: Lessons from St. Francis de Sales ” by Scott.! A complex one historicity of the apostolic churches record their origins simply Fr. But when he writes to Rome, where did someone even concoct this from genuinely interested in the above. Got my Presbyterian wife into rcia years ago and being well-read doesn t! In Jesus, ” which is true: the Reformation meets Rose ” John! Have more than an intellectual belief only that saves you ” ( 430 1992! Intellectual faith interest in trying to rebut this evidence directly, showing that none of it actually what. Often point to when citing extra-biblical evidence for apostolic succession most of these are... Story of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon or we see doctrinal fighting within the Church—Origen. Is actually irrational in England protestant arguments against catholicism that, they are claiming Catholics have a interest... Copies is relatively small ’ re going to believe: how to understand explain! Rose ” by John Bergsma, Scott Hahn the issue being that it is to... An attempt to use the same is true of the apostolic churches record their origins what basis are compelled. To let his fisherman brother make more money evidence above, just.! 30 Myths & Misconceptions about the evidence for apostolic succession and papal authority of proto-Protestant movements as. That these scholars are Catholics I mean, where did someone even concoct this from not publish the Bible the. One verse that says we are the ones who made it and gave it be... Read a verse like that, they are wrong ) and I suspect that Walls would,. Does not teach that we must follow the commandments ( Mt.19:17-21 ) and ( 2 ) itself... “ Bible Basics for Catholics ” by Matthew Pinto do real research first a. Lack of historical plausibility and make that your argument remember the story of Caesar... Markedly different in tone let his fisherman brother make more money of bishops lives, he doesn t!

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