The
NT came out of the
Catholic Church – the
Apostles and
their disciples – guided by the
Holy Spirit (John 16:12-15).
[QUOTE="Brakelite, post: 1373242, member: 8521"What gave Rome precedence over the other churches that grew all around them? Nothing more than the false lying word of a worldly emperor and a counterfeit fraudulent document purported to be written by Constantine.
WRONG.
You guys sing the
SAME tired,
revisionist song in
post after post -
thread after thread. The
REALITY is that the Church in
Rome was considered the
PRIMARY See centuries
BEFORE Constantine:
Ignatius of Antioch
You [the See of Rome] have envied no one, but others have you taught. I desire only that what you have enjoined in your instructions may remain in force (Epistle to the Romans 3:1 [A.D. 110]).
Irenaeus
But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles. Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. WITH THAT CHURCH, BECAUSE OF ITS SUPERIOR ORIGIN, ALL THE CHURCHES MUST AGREE, THAT IS, ALL THE FAITHFUL IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition (Against Heresies 3:3:2 [inter A.D. 180-190]).
Tertullian
[T]he Lord said to Peter, "On this rock I will build my Church, I have given you the keys of the kingdom of heaven [and] whatever you shall have bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven" [Matt. 16:18-19]. ... Upon you, he says, I will build my Church; and I will give to you the keys, not to the Church; and whatever you shall have bound or you shall have loosed, not what they shall have bound or they shall have loosed (Modesty 21:9-10 [A.D. 220]).
Cyprian
With a false bishop appointed for themselves by heretics, they dare even to set sail and carry letters from schismatics and blasphemers to the Chair of Peter and to the principal church [at Rome], in which sacerdotal unity has its source" (Epistle to Cornelius [Bishop of Rome] 59:14 [A.D. 252]).
The Lord says to Peter: "I say to you," he says, "that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church" . . . On him he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was [i.e., apostles], BUT A PRIMACY IS GIVEN TO PETER, WHEREBY IT IS MADE CLEAR THAT THERE IS BUT ONE CHURCH AND ONE CHAIR. So too, all [the apostles] are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church? (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4 [A.D. 251]).[/QUOTE]
It still astonishes me how the Gothic nations, all utterly pagan and idolators that covered all of Europe after pagan Rome's fall, all converted to Christianity in the space of less than a century. Thus one would imagine would have been only of God, yet they all were, according to the Romans, heretics... Arians. Doesn't that make you wonder? Makes one wonder even more that the Catholic faith and the Nicean doctrine had to be implemented by force upon those so called Arians, first by the approval of Constantine and his authority over the church, then by the armies of Clovis. The "Arian" nations that held out were destroyed, the Goths, Heruli and Vandals.
At first, the popes found it difficult to achieve religious primacy vis-à-vis the other archbishops around the Mediterranean. One prime example is Milan. The Roman emperors, all being pagans, would not aid them in enforcing it. To some extent, the situation changed with Constantine’s conversion. He favored Christianity, making it the state religion, yet he saw himself as the head of all the churches. This however, still did not elevate the pontiffs over their colleagues in Constantinople, Alexandria, or Jerusalem. Or for that matter Antioch. And so Catholicism invoked the doctrine of Petrine primacy. They had to. That was their only option. The later emperors, especially in the West, accepted it, but only ecclesiastically. A complicating factor was the breakup of the Roman Empire and domination by Germanic peoples. These were Christians, though not Catholics, who refused to acknowledge the pope’s supremacy or to obey his unbiblical dogmas. This problem was partly solved with the assistance of King Clovis in Gaul, who became a Catholic and used military force to impose his new religion. Thirty years later, Justinian I, reigning in Constantinople, decided to reunite the Roman Empire. To this end, he recognized the pope as the head of all the churches, with a view to gaining support in Italy. (This is the means by which the dragon gave the Papacy his power, his seat, and his authority). He sent his great general, Belisarius, first to crush the Vandals in North Africa and then the Ostrogoths in Italy, together with their Germanic religion. But after Justinian died, the other archbishops ignored his elevation of the pope, whom they no longer accepted as their superior. To add to the pontiff’s woes, another Germanic people, the Lombards, then invaded Italy and tried to dominate him, at a time when weak emperors in Constantinople were no longer able to save him. Thereupon he turned westward and petitioned the Franks to provide the necessary troops. At that time, too, the forged Donation of Constantine was produced, procuring not only deliverance from the Lombards but also "gave" him the Papal States, a temporal kingdom that lasted more than eleven centuries, until 1870.
After that comes the finale, an even more ambitious scheme of world domination, in league with a global superpower.
