Is the Apostle John a Heretic?

I have no idea what you mean by the phrase 'transmission of Scripture', unless you mean Bibles being handed on from one generation to the next. But since there was no complete edition of the Bible prior to Jerome's Vulgate in the 5th century, I don't see how that term takes us forward with regard to what happened before, which is what this thread is concerned about.

 

I've already read and responded to both of these and I ask again: if Clement of Rome (to take but one example quoted by the article you reference) was so bad, how come he isn't smacked down by the Apostle John, who was still very much around then. How come Ignatius, a disciple and appointee of John, cites the same sort of epicopal government as mentioned by Clement with approval?

 

Within 10 years or so, so not "well after".

Though Polycarp in his letter (to the Philippian church) cites Ignatius with approval: he refers to Ignatius as 'blessed' (v.9) and refers to Ignatius' letters as being full of "faith and endurance and every kind of edification which pertains to the Lord" (so he did have access to the Letters). So, I think that trying to insert some kind of division between Ignatius and Polycarp is a forlorn exercise: if Polycarp is,as you say, in line with the NT, then so is Ignatius, with his emphasis on episcopacy, which means that that too must be 'in line with the NT' situation; the two men, as one would expect as two disciples of the same Apostle, stand or fall together.

Except that, as demonstrated above, the 'authoritative clergy' is not unique to Clement and Rome but applies in the East too, and appears to have its roots in the immediate post-Apostolic (in the cases of Ignatius and Polycarp) and Apostolic (in the case of Clement) periods.

On the contrary, you have a system that's been in place since the NT period

 

For someone to be able to oppose another, ten years after you've died is "well after".

Not necessarily. As I said, it was very subtle. The NT mentions bishops, and it of course was a kind of authority. Ignatius begins "turning the volume up" on this authority, and at first glance, it does not look like any deviation from the NT. The whole message of the letters is on Christian living, faith and endurance. It's just now that a little leaven has been added, and Jesus warned us about this, because of the fact that it can be so easy to miss. It again is when you see the whole pattern overall, as we can by seeing what this trend eventually grew into that you realize the error. Remember what the article said:
This wrong teaching about the very nature of the leadership and government of the church gave Christian leaders, in the form of Priests and Bishops, such authority that whatever else they ended up teaching was accepted virtually automatically as being from the Lord. Polycarp could not see this coming right away. (Though he came face to face with it years later when opposing Rome).

I wasn't singling out Rome in this case (though that is the same root of the Roman supremacy doctrine, and the East simply broke away when they got tired of Rome's additions). Still, it set the stage for the kingly offices of both East and West.
also, Clement is not apostolic, but just as post-Apostolic as the others.

So again, bishops-as-high-priests was the "handed down" oral teaching/deposit of faith of the Apostles, or basically, the "unwritten NT". And also, stuff like keeping Easter on a separate date from the Jews (Which is precisely what Polycarp opposed! ) Again, why did they completely leave it out? Hebrews, which deals with the OC system and its relation to the NT would have been the perfect place to go into this. And if it was to be left out and transmitted orally, why did these postapostolic fathers begin writing it?
Looks like a doctrinal development to me!

 

Time does not permit, but just two points to pick up on from your post:

1. As an Anglican I don't regard the threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter and deacon as being 'wrong teaching' (surprise, surprise!), so I don't particularly have a need to try to prove that this was 'leaven' creeping in by the back door.

2. Obviously Clement wasn't an Apostle, but what I meant by saying that he was of the Apostolic period was that, when he wrote to Corinth, John (and possibly other Apostles) was still alive and therefore he belongs to the Apostolic rather than post-Apostolic period.

 

Not so.
If I publish a series of sermons on the First Epistle of Corinthians in commentary form, will you accept it as authoritative as the ECF? Why or why not?

 

I doubt if you would find me describing the working of the mammary glands in relation to the provision of milk for mammals contained in a commentary of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. :laugh:

I disagree with your last statement.
I read everything with a critical or analytical mind (at least I try to). It is true (according to the Word), I accept it. If it is false (not according to the Word) I reject it. That is being fully sola scriptura, and I would put myself in that category.
I trust that no one is gullible enough to read everything of the ECF and believe everything that they have to say. How could they, since they contradict each other. There must be some kind of authority by which they go by. By what standard is some information rejected as false and some accepted as true? Is the RCC standard? the Bible? the ever-changing Oral Tradition standard. Even that is not consistent. Whatever it is, there must be a standard. We know that Christ didn't live to the ripe old age of 80, and yet one of the ECF claimed he did. Where is the standard of truth? Do you believe everything you read?

I apply the same rule to modern commentaries. It would be just as bad if a person would be gullible enough to believe everything that he reads in modern-day commentaries. No one is perfect--some less than others. Reject the error; accept the truth; use the Bible as your guide. That is sola scriptura.

The agreement is that the Bible is our sole authority in all matters of faith and doctrine.

My perspective, for example, is molded by a study of the Scriptures.
The Charismatics persepective, for example, is molded by their experiences more than the Scriptures.

Tradition has no place in my belief system. It is sola scriptura only.

 

Except that you belief system has to be molded by something in addition to Scripture, otherwise you would be in full agreement with everyone else who claims to be sola Scriptura.

No, because you haven't been discipled by one of the Apostles or ann immediate successor of theirs. (I'm sure it would be pretty good, nonetheless.)

 

What a joke! Most of the ECF were not discipled by one of the Apostles either. Most of the Apostles were dead by 70 A.D., except for John who lived until 98, or a little past that date. I am discipled by what the Apostles wrote--the Bible, which is far more important and authoritative than all the ECF put together.

 

No joke - Polycarp, Ignatius and Papias were.

 

It seems that the source of this information is Eusebius, and I've just read through his third book (which is where he adresses that time period), and he does not say that Ignatius was a disciple of John. Not only that, he acknowledges that there was a second John ("the presbyter"), and that Papias confessed that this was who he had come into contact with. (while he had only "received the words of the apostles from those that followed them".

But then Papias was connected more to Polycarp, who we're not questioning. But it still stands that Ignatius living at the same time could still overexalt the status of the bishop, and not be "opposed" by John (who probably wasn't alive when the letters were written), or Polycarp (who may not have noticed the subtle shift in power). Looking at the account, it looks like he legitimately got the position, and then ascribed more to it than was originally intended.

But isn't the argument being made that every teaching/practice of the EOC or Anglican Church was an authoritative "oral apostolic tradition"? what we're discussing is the position of power they received through teachings like this.

That still doesn't guarantee that his teaching on the bishop as priest was apostolic.

True. But it has been claimed in the past that there was no opposition to any of the teachings of the second century, therefotre "proving" Vincent of Lerins criteria of antiquity, ubiquity, universality, or however that went. there was some opposition, but the power structure was by even this early time great enough to quash it, so the so-called "unity of the church" appeared to be maintained.

That's not my view. But it you look at the whole history of the church, it was full of corruption. Political fornication with the Roman empire, Persecution of various people, Augustine and his doctrines and sexual hangups which influenced the later RCC, etc.
Looking at the Church as a corporate organization only, the options become:

1) only the whole system was right in all it did (all of that stuff was really some oral tradition from the apostles passed down, and gradually written by successive writers)
1a) It is only valid until the schism of 1054, afterward, only the EOC is right
1b) The Roman Church has authority to add all of the new doctrines, so the East is wrong
2)The "trail of blood" of every sect the big poweful churches persecuted 9despite their doctrine being different from each other, and from baptists or other modern sects),
3) Christ's promise that "the gates of Hell shall never prevail" failed, so now we must choose either 1 or 2.

But if it's not about a continuous institution, then none of those alternatives are necessary.

But you're not claiming thse "traditions" were commentaries on scriptures. You're claiming they were basically 'scriptures' that were never written, so to speak; separate teaching the apostles passed down orally only.
But this is a good point. Just like there are certain additions to the text of scripture that were later discovered to be commentary (for those who are not KJVO), likewise, the so-called "traditions' were just that: commentaries. Bein that the apostles did not make "commentaries" on their own writings, these commentaries then originalted later, in retrospect. this is the same thing that happened with the Jewish "oral tradition" they later wrote down as the Talmud/Mishnah, and likewise claim this is the "oral teaching pased down from Moses".
So we today (who have the whole scriptures) can look to the scriptures themselves; not somebody's interpretations of them.

 

This is only a problem if one believes that the entire corpus of Johannine NT literature was written by the one John, the Apostle. Many scholars believe, for example, that whilst the Gospel and 1 John were written by the same guy, 2 & 3 John were written by John the Presbyter, and jury's out as to who wrote Revelation, although I'm inclined to believe it was the Apostle. But if there were two NT Johannine authors, it matters not for these purposes; it's still the case that Ignatius was discipled by one of them and thus we have a direct mentoring linkage with an author of the NT.

Supposition; see my comments below on Clement

Not exactly, no, for the first millenium and certainly not thereafter.

There's a greater guarantee there than we have today that our individual interpretations of Scripture are Apostolic. And it is noteworthy that other NT authors (eg: John (x2?) alive at that point make no effort to slap Clement down. There's no message in Revelation for example to the church of Rome complaining about nascent episcopacy.

 

I don't quite follow all you're tying to say here, and what I can gather sounds speculatory. It seems the "further define" of the later Church is what you are assuming was taught by the apostles, but just never written by them. You say they MAY have said we understand communion to be such and such. Then you jump to "this story is already accepted by the churches", and thus needs no more defining. But all of that is speculatory. What it looks like from the historical data we have is that the later church gradually added intepretations of the communion, and a more strongly defined "real presence" grew out from this.

I never knew that Bible-believers (including Catholics and Anglicans) questioned whether all the Johannine writings were from the same person. I know I've heard the question raised by Muslims, "higher critics", and other skeptics who question everything. I think most here in evangelical circles hold them all to be the same.

Since I've always found it hard to believe that John, who was already pretty much grown when he was with Christ (had to be born before 20AD, and thus in his mid-to-late 70's in the 90's; did people even live that long then? That's generally beyond active age in our day, though it's probably changing as health improves); I'm wondering if this second John was the one who came into contact with the second century fathers. Maybe some mistook him for the Biblical John, or maybe he even impersonated him. In that case, the ECF's are further removed from the Apostolic age than we thought. This would go along with the whole notion of a "period of darkness" between AD70 and the second century. Everyone else died before then, and it seems strange that noone else wrote between then, and John waited almost 30 years to write his epistles and Revelation. (And if there is so much of a cloud as to which one wrote what, then this should not be so improbable).

But the power associated with the offices had been added long before the end of the first millenium, so the questions remain. I'm sure the other four patriarchs live almost as kingly as the Pope, so is that what the Apostles intended for the bishops?

Where in Revelation would that be? Revelation was a book of prophetic symbols, and let's say the emerging "catholic" church was the Great Harlot, then in a sense, this could have been in reaction to what was then growing out of Rome. (I've actually sort of moved away from this sort of retrospective interpretation in favor of what it must have meant to the original readers, but for the sake of argument, that could have been a way an indirect rebuke could have been given).

2 and 3 John are small, and 2 mentions gnosticism, and significantly enough, 3 mentions a leader trying to take too much control. This apparently was the trend within the church (while the gnostics were pressing from without). All Clement really did was make that one comment about the bishops as priests. Compared to all the other stuff coming in, that was really not as important or even necessarily noticeable, because it was not as blatant as what Diotrophes or the gnostics were doing. Again, it was a subtle part of a very slow trend, and as Dodd&Dugger (CG7D version of trail of blood) point out, they penned these epistles in sincerity, but not by guidance of the Holy Spirit.And also, Clement's epistle could have been written after John died (the dates are not really certain), or while he was exhiled. Plus, as your side argues regarding tradition, the epistles were not exhaustive, so if these new leaders were deviating, you might not see every one of them mentioned by name. Plus the fact, again, if you're willing to entertain the notion of two Johns, the only John alive at that time might have been the second one, and the epistles and Revelation written before then.

 

Still, the simplest exegesis of scripture is a symbolic one. In order to uphold this "real presence" doctrine, you have to do all sorts of logical wrangling, and pick up a piece of bread or vial of juice and say "this looks like regular food, and is physically no different than the bread or juice that had been on the shelf next to it when purchased, but there is something else here that you can't see". Yet this is not articulated in the text of scripture, but we see the interpretation slowly become more articulated over the centuries afterward.
I have been mentioning a logical principle called "Occam's Razor". I have always held this principle, but did not know the name of it when debating this stuff before my year long break (I had seen the name in science books, but did not retain what it was). I learned the name in other online technical theory discussions this past year, and it came in handy for this debate.
This states that in cases like this when we cannot see point 0, and we have to basically reconstruct the history leading from 0 to the present, we should assume the simplest explanation of the data we have. And that is that the doctrine deveopled. You only say that "it was a fully formed interpretation that the apostles handed orally only, but then the ECF's began writing more and more about it", because you choose to follow a certain church body, and IT tells you this; having concocted it to justify their practices and authority that are not quite articulated in scripture. I'm sorry, but with that same principle, this looks too fishy. Of course, men will concoct anything to justify themselves. And then they tell you "by faith", and "the Church is an object of faith" to top it off. As it is, the world we are supposed to witness to thinks we will "believe the sun is a big chocolate square if we are told to believe that", and it's hard enough to get them to believe in God or the supernatural, (which they liken as being as unprovable as a "flying spaghetti monster" or "pink unicorn" or "purple martian ice cream truck"), so we do not need to add all this stuff that's not even expounded in scripture.
Sorry, but I do not see any reason to trust those men.