The Pure Church of Imagination Land

Every person who teaches or believes an opinion on matters of Christian faith and morals not in conformity with Church teaching, (technically known as a heretic) claims to be returning to an original Church uncorrupted by Church teachings.

I know of no exceptions, that is, I know of no prophet who claims to be teaching a new doctrine that improves upon the past and is disconnected with it. Even Mohammad, who repudiates nearly all other Christian teachings, claims the books of the Bible were once valid, and are now corrupt, and that his recital is a return to the purer and older faith.

Since the Old Testament and the New alike are replete with warnings against false prophets, lying spirits, false teachers, and since Our Lord himself warns against the leaven of the Pharisees and the substitution of the customs of men for the commandments of the Lord, these claims cannot be dismissed without careful consideration.

One would think the first thing to be considered would be the Patristic Writings. All a man concerned with the return to the uncorrupted beliefs of the Early Church need do is quote the writings of the Early Church, and note what the Fathers anathematized, and show that the modern Catholic or Orthodox Church supports what was once anathematized, and anathematizes what she once supported.

In my admittedly limited experience, I have yet to see this done.

I have not come across heretics quoting passages from the Early Fathers to show that their position was once the orthodox belief of the Church, and only later was ignored or suppressed.

I have, in contrast, seen anathematized writings quoted to show that the opinions expressed therein were once current (though the claim that they were official is never made) and I have also seen apocryphal writings dismissed as witnesses that the opinions expressed therein were ever current, because the writing was thought unworthy of inclusion in the canon.

But far more often, the authority of the Early Fathers is ignored: as if history consisted of time from the Creation to the writings of the later Prophets, as covered in the Old Testament, then a small gap, then the Advent of Christ and the events in the Acts of the Apostles as covered in the New, and then a long gap where nothing was written and nothing was said worthy noticing, until the rise of the founder of the breakaway Church, whose words are studied with care.

The lack of interest in the Early Church writings, and the scarcity of them, gives the imagination scope for inventing rather than investigating an imaginary Early Church, which, by no coincidence, resembles the heresiarch’s fancy rather than historical fact.

The earlier the date of this imaginary pure Church, the fewer writings and records need to be explained or explained away.

The earlier this imaginary pure Church is pushed, the less and less I find such an argument convincing, because the greater and greater is the claim of insight being made by the heresiarch: he claims to know the minds of men long dead better than their immediate students knew them. In some cases, they claim to know the message of Christ better than those who learned that message at His feet.

The older the date on the claim, the less believable it is. I am more willing to believe an argument that the Church of AD 1400 went astray than that the Church of AD 400 or AD 40, because the earlier the date, the more outrageous the claim, because the greater and more immediate the corruption.

In a game of Russian Telephone, the boy who hears the message first is, statistically speaking, less likely to be suffering from accumulated errors than the tenth or twentieth boy in line. In the case of the heresiarch, a boy not in the game, who does not even know the names of the boys who were third in line from the source, claims to have an uncorrupted version of the message straight from the source.

It is less unbelievable to say the followers of a student of a disciple of an apostle of Christ mistook or corrupted the teaching of Christ than to say that the disciples of the apostles mistook or corrupted it; still less the apostles; still less Christ Himself.

Ironically, these makes the claim of Mohammad or Joseph Smith more feasible than the claim of Luther or Calvin or Sun Myung Moon, since a prophet claims authority directly from God, whereas a mere theologian claims to have deduced the original and uncorrupted teaching of the Church using no other source than official Church teachings, and the reflections of natural reason. Prophets are supposed to be able to confirm their authority with signs and wonders. By that standard, Mary Baker Eddy (whose church to this day makes weekly, if not daily, reports of miracles, which they claim to be confirmed by multiple witnesses or doctor’s testamonies) is a more believable prophet than Mohammad, who healed no sick, opened no blind eyes, and raised no dead. Of course, by that standard, the healings of Lourdes, which continue to this day, and to this day have no scientific explanation,  confirm with signs following the prophetic authority of the original Church.

There is also a general problem with the theory of the corrupted Church: If the one, true, catholic, and apostolic Church Christ founded is corrupt and heretical, then Christ is forsworn of his word to send a comforter to guide his disciples in to all wisdom, or, to be precise, that the Church disobeyed this spirit.

This problem is not fatal to the claim of the heretic, because, honestly, it may be so. Men disobey God. Indeed, the common reading of the Book of the Apocalypse warns of an abomination within the nave of the temple itself: this is often read to refer to the Church herself becoming Apostate, deceived by the false prophets and the Beast spoken of darkly by the Apocalyptic riddles and figures.

But then again, if we are talking about any point before Doomsday, the charge of an Apostate Church is difficult to square with scripture.

If the Church of Christ lasted less than 300 years, so that Constantine corrupted it even before the Bible was finalized and before the Nicene Creed written, than God is foolish limited in his powers.

If the Church lasted less than 30 years, so that with the assumption of Saint John, the last Christian departed the world never to be seen again until the Sixteenth or Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century, than God is more foolish.

If the Church failed during Pentecost, so that none of those baptized of the Apostles of Jesus were true Christians, God is a most enormous fool, because His Church, prophesied never to have the gates of Hell prevail against it, did not prevail a space of 50 days.

AND, by the same logic that says God Himself cannot keep His Church uncorrupted past the ascension of Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit or the assumption of John. We have no reason not to assume that the newer and shinier prophet, whoever he might be, Mohammad, or Joseph Smith. or Mary Baker Eddy, or Rev. Sun Myung Moon did not found a newer and shinier church with any more staying power than the first.

Anyone who says that the Catholic Church was corrupted within three centuries or one, or in one generation, or one decade, or fifty days after Jesus ascended, by what right can that one next claim that the revived church resisted corruption for a season, a decade, or a century or three, or however old it is now?

By the fruits of the spirit, perhaps?

Does the allegedly revived Church have the same unchanging and unyielding teachings about matters of faith and morals as it had since the moment of revival, such as believing as strongly in the perpetual virginity of Mary as did Martin Luther, or being as opposed to contraception and abortion as all Christian denominations before 1934 were? Are the Anglicans as enthused and devout to the Thirty Nine Articles as they were in the days of Elizabeth or Henry VIII? Are they are opposed to divorce and remarriage as Christ?

Of course, by this standard, the Catholics may no fare too well. While our official doctrines are clear on this point, the unofficial way we live our lives too often gives a lie to such doctrines.

If all who claim to be Christians lived as Christians should live, why, then, neither the scoffing of apostates nor the question of heretics seeking the true light of faith we are not providing them would be answered, and completely.

This is as true for Orthodox and Catholic as for Protestant: if the fire of divine love was in the denomination where we find ourselves now, we would have the motivation to depart and seek God’s reflected countenance elsewhere would be confined to honest theological differences, not to that restless sense that ones’ shepherds are leading us astray.  The most august Archbishop should be as filled with the zeal and holy spirit no less than the most charismatic snake-handling enthusiast.