Paulicians: Early Baptists, Other Denomination, or...?

HP: In view of the necessitated inferences of original sin, it would clearly appear that IF in fact it was their desire to free themselves from such error, in the process they irreversibly entrenched themselves in the error they were, according to you, trying to avoid. How could have they been blinded as to the necessitated implications of the original sin that Augustine introduced into the church?

Oh well, possibly there might be some seekers of truth that would once again see the error of necessitated sin and evil inescapably tied to the false notions of original sin, and find their way clear to fairly examine the truth afresh.

 

There was no freedom of error to walk into. Nor did the truth start at this point. The truth needed expressed in a way to show the error that had never been stated before. The truth always was in place for God is truth. When error arose it was not for God that they wrote the doctrines, but it was for the teachings of the Church. All doctrines fall under the word of God and when error arose, the church needed to be clear as to what they held and what was error.

You tried to make a unsupported view that the Church once did not hold to sin as they do now. You based this on little or small amount of writings showing such doctrine, in the early years. Yet this is poor support. 1st..there were some that can be quoted nearly word for word, holding the same as we do now. True the numbers are few. But....With your logic we would also need to remove The Trinity, Hyper Static Union and many other doctrines that were wrote in the 3rd and 4th century.....and not found at all in the early years, till the error arose that caused them to be wrote.

 

HP: Great question. Would to God that they would see to the return at least to the parts of their heritage that is in line with truth.

 

HP: That is simply not the case, nor the basis of my beliefs. Even Pelagius was exonerated before more than one council, as I recall, in his denial of original sin as stated by Augustine, basing his opinion upon the well established notion that no such Augustinian idea had ever been upheld as established doctrine of the church prior to Augustine.

 

And again you recall wrongly.

No less then 6 months ago, you were shown this view to be wrong. I, myself posted for your viewing pleasure, the lines from the council. The only thing that Pelagius was blamed wrongly for was, that some of his followers quotes were changed to him. Yet he would not deny what they said....thereby agreeing with them.

This was the same time you made the false claim no one had ever read Pelagius work. At this time, you were given sources to view his work on your own. If I remember right, some of his work was posted on the BB ..again..for your pleasure.

 

HP: Perhaps you would be so kind as to refresh my memory?

 

HP: Let me be more specific. I would like to see where I stated that ‘no one had ever read Pelagius.’ That is an outright falsehood. Challenging one to show from his own words is not synonymous with stating no one has read his words.

There were at least three councils, as I recall, convened against Pelagius, two of which exonerated him. From which do you conveniently choose to quote?

Since when does refusing to deny someone else stated something equate to believing what someone else states? That is an interesting idea.

 

I'll have a stab at this one. I've noticed that many American Baptists, at least the ones represented here, tend to be - how can I put it - quite anti-Catholic in their theology and ecclesiology, compared to their British brethren with whom I'm familiar. There is a tendency to reject Catholics as Christian and to brand the Catholic Church as being apostate and false. Now, this creates its own problems, because until the Reformation, the Catholics and Orthodox were pretty much (with the exception of groups like the Waldenses and Hussites) the only manifestation of Christianity that there was, which kind of makes a mockery of Jesus' claim that He would build His Church and the gates of Hell would not prevail etc in Matt 16:18; also it poses a problem when the question is asked "How did people get saved prior to 1517?" It therefore becomes necessary to construct an Alternative Christian History(TM), outwith the Catholic-Orthodox system. Fortunately there are quite a few groups in the history which were opposed to, expelled from or persecuted by the Catholics and Orthodox: Montanists, Donatists, Pelagians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathars etc, from whom one can build this ACH. The only problem is is that all these groups are on record as being heterodox or heretical, so it becomes necessary to endeavour to attribute orthodoxy to them by saying that their heresies were in fact false calumnies concocted by their Catholic enemies and in fact they held to all the doctrines that modern Baptists adhere to (Oh, that's the other thing: they were all Baptists really).

So there you have your DIY-kit for Landmarkism...enjoy!

 

Are you reading the Key itself? or the translation added with the comments etc? I hope we can read the Key translated on a Word-to-Word principle.

Saying that Jesus is the newly created Adam may have meant the Humanity of Jesus started from the newly created human embryo, having nothing to do with Mary. Paulicans didn't deny the deity of Christ and believed in the Trinity ( Read the article by Dr Cassidy which I posted)
Jesus was enfleshed with the newly created Adam, I believe.
The Ovum of Mary was not designed to be fertilized with the Word of God, but it was designed only for the sperms of man.
When Jesus was born, He was enfleshed with the perfect human embryo by Holy Spirit.

Jesus said "Before Abraham was, I am " John 8:58.
Abraham was delighted to see His days. Jews were angry, asking "Have you seen Abraham?"
Where is that Jesus gone if Jesus was merely born of Mary? the Jesus whose days Abraham saw, and Moses esteemed it better to work for ( Heb 11:26).
So, there is a lot of misunderstanding and distortion unless we hear from the Paulicans directly.

 

[FONT=바탕]The Paulicians I[/FONT]
[FONT=&#48148]During the darkest days of the Papal strangle hold on "Christendom" there existed a group of Bible believing Christians that stood tall for the faith once delivered unto the saints. The Paulician churches were the most maligned of all the enemies of the Roman system. In 1891 a Paulician book entitled "Key Of Truth" was discovered by the Armenian scholar Frederic Cornwallis Conybeare (1856-1924), and published in 1898. For the first time the Paulicians were allowed to speak for themselves. The Paulician churches were of apostolic origin, being planted in Armenia in the first century A.D.- according to their tradition, by the apostle Thomas. It is also quite evident that the Montanists, Novatians, and Donatists were perpetuated in the Paulicians. Schaff, in his History of the Christian Church (Volume II, page 92) states, "In spite of this strong opposition the Novatian sect...propagated itself in various provinces of the west and the east down to the sixth century." "In Phrygia it (the Novatians) combined with remnants of the Montanists." "A remnant of the Donatists, as we learn from the letters of Gregory I, perpetuated itself into the seventh century." (Volume III, page 153). In his classic, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon notes that the faith of the Paulicians stemmed from the first century and was a branch of Antiochan Christianity. They managed to survive for such a long period of time largely due to the fact that Armenia is a very isolated and mountainous region located mainly in modern Turkey, but also extending into present day Iran and the old Soviet Union. It lies between, and to the south of, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The name Paulician did not come into general use until the 7th century and was applied because of the emphasis placed by these people on the epistles of Paul, and their adoption of Pauline names for their leaders. The Paulician movement rose to prominence during the 7th century, but existed long before they were called by that name. At the request of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, all of the Eastern Emperors persecuted the Paulicians. Even the Armenian-born Emperor Leo III permitted the Paulicians to be attacked, with the exception of his allowing many of them to migrate to Thrace, where he granted them a city in southern Bulgaria called Philippopolis (Plovdiv) and a certain amount of religious freedom in 970 A.D. The doctrines of the Paulicians were obscured by the writings of their enemies, notably Photius and Sideliotes,which Gibbon called "malice and poison." However, the discovery of their book, "The Key Of Truth" has done more to shed positive light on these people then any other discovery of this millennium.[/FONT]


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Paulicians II

According to their own writings the Paulicians claimed to have originated with Christ and the Apostle; accepted the Bible as the sole rule of faith; recognized only believers baptism by immersion; rejected transubstantiation; rejected ceremonialism; rejected penance as unprofitable and absurd; had no hierarchy or clerical office; they were strong Trinitarians; opposed all image worship (called the "holy relics" "JUNK"!); believed in holy living. They sound pretty good to me! The accusations against the Paulicians were the most strident in the attempts of their enemies to discredit them. The first of these false accusations was that they were Manichaeans. Manichaeism was a semi-christian gnostic sect founded by Mani in 240 A.D. in Babylon. It was a combination of Persian Zoroastrianism and Gnostic tenets. It is true that one of the leaders of the Paulicians (Constantine) had been a Manichaean prior to his conversion. W. A. Jerrell writes in his history, "From the time he got acquainted with these writings (the Gospels and Paul's Epistles) it is said he would touch no other book. He threw away his Manichaean library and exploded and rejected many of the abused notions of his countrymen." Paulicians taught the two natures of the believer, and this biblical teaching has been twisted by their enemies to be the "dualism" of the Manichaeans. The major reason for the charge of Manichaeism - stigmatization, something the Roman church did very often to all who opposed them. The second charge is that the Paulicians rejected parts of the Bible. However, it must be noted that the Catholic church used the Old Testament to support their concept of a formal "priesthood" and the "church-kingdom-state." When the Paulicians reject those false doctrines, it was charged they rejected the Old Testament, a false accusation. When the Paulicians rejected the Roman dogma of the primacy of Peter, they were accused of rejecting the writings of Peter, i.e., 1 and 2 Peter, another false charge. The next charge was that the Paulicians rejected the ordinances. In fact, all that they rejected was the Catholic sacraments. It was also claimed that they were adoptionists, i.e., that the human Jesus was adopted by the eternal Word at the time of the baptism of Jesus (that is, that Jesus was not truly the eternal Christ, but was only used by Him during the incarnation). The charge most likely arose out of the Paulicians opposition to Mariolatry and the "Mother of God" teaching of the Catholic church. Like the Nestorians, who delineated the natures of Christ in their opposition of such heresy, the Paulicians were unjustly accused of being adoptionist. There were other charges, most of them merely ridiculous, i. e. that they were cannibals, making cakes from meal and the blood of infants; that they conducted their prayer meetings naked; they practiced incest; and taught marriage was a sin (in spite of the fact that every one of their leaders was married!). It is apparent the first century churches of Armenia remained in the backwaters of "mainstream" Christianity for many years, relatively unchanged in their New Testament simplicity. Nevertheless, such churches had a profound influence upon some major developments in Christian and world history. One of those was the Iconoclastic Movement. The Iconoclastic Movement began in 726 when the Eastern Emperor Leo III, who ruled from 717-741, issued an edict against the worship of images and pictures, followings with a persecution of image worshipers and the wholesale destruction of icons, images, and paintings. Thus began a controversy which lasted until the reign of Theodora in 842. The Paulicians, like other non- conformist groups, were very much opposed to the veneration of images, a practice which had been going on since Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 325, and returned with (supposed) pieces of the cross and nails used in the Lord's crucifixion. The emperor Leo was himself from the Isaurian Mountains, part of the Taurus chain, and Armenian. "Leo was virtually a Paulician, and it has been maintained that his successor, Constantine Copronymus, 741-775, was a 'pure Paulician'" (Newman, A.H. A MANUAL OF CHURCH HISTORY, Volume I, page 381). It is doubtful that Leo was actually a Paulician, for he was a ruthless man in many ways, but he certainly held some Paulician sentiments. The greatest impact of the Paulician movement was seen in its spread into Eastern Europe. The first Paulician emigrants settled in Thrace about 775. Thrace is an area which comprises part of Macedonia (present day Greece) European Turkey, and Southern Bulgaria. During the comparative respite of the iconoclastic period, a vast amount of missionary work was done by Paulician preachers. The Gospel was preached all over Asia Minor, into Bulgaria, and as far West as Bosnia. During the severe persecutions of the ninth century, many Paulicians fled to the Balkans, where many churches were established. As mentioned previously, in 970 a large number were settled in Souther Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, the Paulicians came to be called "Bogomils", a word thought to mean "friends of God". These dear Christian people spread across the land with their simple (New Testament) brand of Christianity. Further Byzantine persecutions sent many Westward into Serbia where the Serbian Orthodox Church pushed them into Bosnia in the twelfth century. Pope Innocent III, in 1203, tried to eradicate these Bible-believing Christians in Bosnia, who were now often called "Cathari," meaning "pure ones." In 1291 a Dominican and Franciscan Inquisition was launched against them, the end result of which was to once again weaken the barrier against the onslaught of Islam, and by 1400 much of this area fell under the control of the Ottoman Turks. Paulicians also found their way into Europe, particularly Southern France in the Languedoc region, and had a profound influence in the revival of the ancient Christians there. When Bogomils from the Balkan countries fled to Europe, they met many believers of like faith - the Albigenses.

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They were "heretics" because the RCC labeled them so. They spoke out against the heresies of the RCC and were quite vociferous in doing so. Is it any wonder that they were labeled heretics by the writers of history--mostly their enemies.
Most of them (but not all) were "Baptist-like" in their doctrine. One of the Baptist distinctives is soul liberty--the right to believe as the Holy Spirit directs. There is room for differences. No two Baptist churches are going to believe exactly the same thing, unless one is a clone of the other. It wasn't even so in New Testament times. There was never a church with so many errors (doctrinal and otherwise) as the Corinthian church. Christ writes to seven churches in the book of Revelation; each one having their own particular problems--some of them doctrinal. Biblical churches are not denominal churches. There were no denominations in the time of Christ.
Even under such a broad name of "Waldenses" (the people of the valley" some of the churches had gone astray in doctrine by the twelfth century, though most of them still adhered to the Word of God. They were diverse independent, "Baptist-like" churches.

 

The Way of Life website should be the last place any history enthusiast should go to get educated on Church History that was my mistake as a former IFB. You wouldn’t go to an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor for counseling on a brain tumor would you?

These sects were indeed heretical. In a nut shell, over time these sects developed a very warped concept of God and Christ…how the Holy Spirit, Christ and God co-existed…whether or not Christ was actually God in the flesh and many others. For the most part they adhered to the Orthodox view of the sacraments…Eucharist (actual body and blood of Chrust), Baptism…ect.

It wasn’t until the Early Church Fathers started writing against their views and labeling them heretics, did these sects start rejecting the teaching authority of the Church…


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So, instead of quoting from a reliable source who documents his information by quoting from other older sources we should look to the revisionist history of the Catholic Church. This is your view. Right?
The Catholic Church continually harps on the ECF instead of the Bible, when it comes to doctrine, the reason being the ECF themselves were doctrinally unsound. Ireneus, whom you referred to, claimed that Christ lived to the ripe old age of 80. How much of his work can be trusted?
Even Origen (of whom some say was the father of Arianism) was labeled as a heretic by the RCC itself. Most of the ECF held to variuos and sundry heresies. As I noted, the history of the Paulicians was written by their enemies, people who held to heresies in which they, as Bible-believing people, spoke out against.

 

This is why I asked you if the book is the translation of the Key of Truth on the principle of Word-to-Word translation.
Have you read such book without being filtered thru other human heads?

How come there is so much difference between your interpretation and that of Dr Cassidy?
If you have ever read the posts by Dr Cassidy, you won't disbelieve his writings that much. He was often on the thread of Bible Translation of this board.

Moreover, sometimes even one documents are not sufficient to understand the thoughts and beliefs of the whole group of people.

Today, the interpretation of Dead Sea Scroll differs among the denominations and religions. Many people interpret that the Masoretic Text is correct, while the others say Septuagint is correct.

Likewise, we have to examine thoroughly what they wrote, instead of what Roman Catholics are talking about them. RCC all the time distorted what their dissdents believed, accused them of what they didn't say, of what they didn't believe.

If we have some more chances to compare thoroughly, I am sure that there are big, big differences between what RCC taught the people and what Paulicians were actually.

This was the case with Nestorius when Bazaar Heraclides was discovered in 1895. Nesotirus was not that much stupid as Roman Catholic described so far.

 

Quotations from Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent


This time is described by GregoryMagistros, who, 200 years later, was in charge of the persecution of similar people in the same district.


He writes: "Prior to us many generals and magistrates have given them over to the sword and, without pity, have spared neither old men nor children, and quite rightly. What is more, our patriarchs have branded their foreheads and burned into them the image of a fox. . . . others again have put their eyes out, saying, 'you are blind to spiritual things therefore you shall not look on sensible things' ".


The Armenian book entitled "The Key of Truth "*, mentioned above as having been written between the seventh and ninth centuries, describes the beliefs and practices of those called Paulicians, of Thonrak, at that time; and although there were doubtless many differences in the numerous scattered churches, yet this authentic account given by one of themselves, is applicable to most of them. The author is unknown, but writes with power and eloquence as well as with deep feeling and earnestness.


He writes to give to the new born children of the Universal and Apostolic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ the holy milk whereby they may be nourishied in the faith. Our Lord, he says, asks first for repentance and faith and then gives baptism, so we must follow Him and not do after the deceitful arguments of others, who baptise the unbelieving, the reasonless, and the unrepentant.

When a child is born the elders of the church should give counsel to the parents that they may train the child in godliness and faith. This should be accompanied by prayer, the reading of the Scriptures, and giving the child a name. When anyone is baptised it should be at his or her earnest request. Baptism should be in rivcrs, or other water in the open air.

The one to be baptised should, on his knees in the midst of the water, confess his faith before the congregation present, with great love and tears.


The one who baptises should be of blameless character. Prayer and the reading of Scripture should accompany the act. Again, the ordaining of an elder requires great care lest anyone unworthy be chosen. {* "The Key of Truth" translated and edited by F. C. Conybeare.. This document was found by the translator in 1891 in the library of the Holy Synod at Edjmiatzin, and he has added valuable annota

 

( continued from Pilgrim Church)

It must be ascertained whether he has perfect wisdom, love, which is chief of all, prudence, gentleness, humility justice, courage, sobriety, eloquence.

In laying hands - see glossary on him, which is to be done with prayer and the reading of suitable Scriptures, he is to be asked, "Art thou then able to drink the cup which I am about to drink, or to be baptised with the baptism with which I am about to be baptised?"

The answer required of him shows the dangers and responsibilities that such men accepted, which none would take on themselves unless there were an earnest love and a will to suffer to the uttermost in the following of Christ and caring for His flock. The reply is;

"...I take on myself scourgings, imprisonment, tortures, reproaches, crosses, blows, tribulation and all temptations of the world, which our Lord and Intercessor and the Universal and Apostolic Holy Church took upon themselves, and lovingly accepted them. So even do I, an unworthy servant of Jesus Christ, with great love and ready will, take upon myself all these until the hour of my death".


Then, with the reading of many Scriptures, he was solemnly and earnestly commended to the Lord, the elders saying: "We humbly supplicate, entreat and beseech Thee, . . . bestow Thy holy grace on this one, who now is come and asks of Thee the grace of Thy holy authority . . make him resplendently pure from all evil thoughts... open his mind to understand the Scriptures".


Writing of images and relics the author says: "...Concerning the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not of any other holy ones, either of the dead, or of stones or of crosses and images.


In this matter some have denied the precious mediation and intercession of the beloved Son of God, and have followed after dead things, and in especial after images, stones, crosses, waters, trees, fountains, and all other vain things; as they admit and worship them, so they offer incense and candles, and present victims, all of which are contrary to the Godhead".

The conflict which these churches of God in the Taurus Mountains - see glossary and adjacent countries maintained with their persecutors in Constantinople led to their laying more emphasis on some portions of Scripture than on others.

The great professing Church had incorporated Paganism - see glossary with its system by the gradual introduction of the worship of the Virgin Mary, and had brought the world into its ranks by its practice of infant baptism.