Lack of a better place

Could be. Its really hard to say both had issues.

 

I like to say that the Orthodox Church is a branch of the One, Holy Apostolic Church.

 

A few years ago I went back into the Ante-Nicene Fathers and researched the use of "catholic" every single time it was used to see if it had originated with a different meaning than used by Rome today.

I found out that it did. Individual churches claimed to be the "Catholic" church in contrast to those they regarded as apostate. Obviously their single church was not "universal" but it was first used to identify themselves with what was regarded "the faith" or doctrine and practice which was regarded as authentic apostolic and recognized as such by all they conceived to be true churches. It did not begin as a title but rather as a description of orthodoxy.

 

Yes. This is true but for one aspect; they consider themselves to be connected with other Catholic "orthodox faith" Churches. They weren't independent of each other as we see in Clements leter to the Corinthians and Ignatius letters to the 7 churches he wrote to.

 

There was once someone from that group who used to post here. Called himself "A_True_Christian"
These are disciples of Darwin Fish, who broke away from the Biblical Discernment Ministries, which seems to be a respected "anti-everyone" group among IFB's (focusing on "psychoheresy", CCM and "modern compromise/lack of separation", etc and just about every evangelical leader is featured as "compromising" in some way).

So this Darwin Fish guy just took it beyond even BDM's level of separatism, and said they were apostate for accepting others as saved who did not have "100% true dosctrine". There's no longer any line of "essentials/non-essentials"; there is an absolute block of truth on every possible subject, and you must agree on it all to be saved.

It's nothing but one-upmanship.

 

GE:

I love your signature line,

"The Christian is committed to a lifelong fight against the world, the flesh and the devil. Mortification is his asault on the second." - JI Packer

 

Ah, yes...we could all instead be alike....and all wrong in the same way...

 

>A few years ago I went back into the Ante-Nicene Fathers and researched the use of "catholic" every single time it was used to see if it had originated with a different meaning than used by Rome today.

>I found out that it did. Individual churches claimed to be the "Catholic" church in contrast to those they regarded as apostate. Obviously their single church was not "universal" but it was first used to identify themselves with what was regarded "the faith" or doctrine and practice which was regarded as authentic apostolic and recognized as such by all they conceived to be true churches. It did not begin as a title but rather as a description of orthodoxy.

Thanks for reporting this research. It is worth remembering and saving. It is so useful to be able to save urls to on line info . . . if my files were only better organized.