Quote Originally Posted by Columcille View Post
That is about right. Historically speaking, one cannot seperate the Catholic and Orthodox Churches' long track record. When people left the Catholic Church, many were trying to connect to historic Christianity by appealing to Augustine's writings. Luther was an Augustinian monk at one time, Calvin quotes Augustine in his Ins***utes. As such we see splinter after splinter, Methodists came out of the Church of England, the Church of England came out of the Catholics. Is it no wonder that there does not seem to be any Christian Church alongside the Catholic and Orthodox that produced writings to support an apostolic succession of teaching? Are we to ***ume, through no trace of Baptist ministers or Church of Christ ministers previous to the Reformation, that such Christians were in hiding and in essence withheld the saving message of the Gospel in the face of persecution and the refuge and promise of Christ that his Message would endure?
You speak of apostolic succession as if it is a measuring rod of Christianity - but of course this is not a supportable theory. The Scriptures do not support this notion. And, actually there is no Scriptural evidence to support the notion that Catholicism is the heart of Christianity or that one must have come from Catholicism, or belong to a church club that can trace its roots back to Catholicism in order to be considered Christian. If you like, go back and reread what I've just written and delete Catholicism and insert Protestantism, and the notions and conclusions are just as faulty.

Suppose a lost WWII survivor in the jungles of some pacific island, who never even heard of Christianity, found a Bible, read it, became indwelt by the Holy Ghost, and died without ever seeing another living soul for 50 years. He was never baptized, he never received communion, etc., but he did know, love, and believe on Christ the Son of the living God and His finished work on the tree of Calvary. And now this survivor has eternal life with the Father. This man could receive it all, without ever knowing what a Catholic is, or a Protestant. But he would know that he was a Christian. Think outside the box.

Actually, this would mean there is no such thing as a Catholic Christian or a Protestant Christian. These are misleading terms added to a valid concept - that valid concept is that of a Christian. Matthew 5:37 NIV, "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." And so it is for adding a word to Christian (such as Catholic or Protestant) thereby changing the meaning of Christian as defined in the Bible.