Again, there is the tautological error here. "The CoC is the NT church, so any NT church is the CoC." But it doesn't actually demonstrate the truth of this claim. You surely must realize that basically every denomination makes a claim to the NT church, and
all protestant denominations say that the scriptures support them in this claim.
The point that is interesting is this "Beginning of the Catholic Church". There were some shaky points earlier but this is where things go off the rails.
Quote:
In Jesus' plan for His church, He is to be the only head, and no man-made laws or earthly headquarters are allowed. No officers may oversee more than one local church.
Certain congregations began to exalt one elder above the others. As new churches began, this exalted "bishop" would assume the oversight of several churches in a region called a "diocese."
Where is this in the scriptures? We can scroll up a bit and find things about the church.
There's this offhanded claim - "Note that 'elder' is just another name for an overseer or 'bishop' and a shepherd or 'pastor.' " This should start the caution flag in the mind. If there's multiple words, should we consider that they mean different things? Are they always used the same way (spoiler: no, they are not). But after this extensive reference to scripture, you get these wholly unscriptural and unsupported claims - like : "The oversight of each eldership is limited to the one local church where they have been appointed." The author makes no effort whatsoever to qualify or support this. It's just taken for granted. Much like the emphasized claim above.
But it's confusing - why is bishop in sarcastiquotes? It's a scriptural term. And in the table of practices this is completely absent. There's a reason. The three-fold clergy structure of bishop-presbyter-deacon is not only apparent in the scriptures, it's also witnessed to extensively from the very beginning. The epistle of St Clement to Corinth talks about bishops, the office of the episcopate, and the practice of apostolic succession in 95 AD. St Ignatius of Antioch writes about this sometime between 105 and 140 AD. The reason the episcopacy isn't on the table is because the beginning of it is on the pages of the NT. That right there is enough to shut the whole thing down. The is no evidence whatsoever in history that supports the other side. Everything we have in history points to the three-fold clergy - bishop leading a group of presbyters, supported by the deacon, with one assembly in each city - being the only structure the church has ever known. If you have any evidence to the contrary, this would be a great time to show it.
The pattern continues with the table. It makes the offhand statement "This historical information can be documented by checking encyclopedias or church history books, including Catholic sources." That's not how this works. This person is making claims, they need to support it. No Catholic source is going to say that icons or infant baptism began in the 4th century.
There is a reason that every source you bring up looks like it was made in geocities in the late 90s. This isn't serious scholarship or theology.
