well, that's, um, hmm,...

WTF?!?!?!!!!1111!

Now, that's interesting...

http://catholicoutlook.com/rpv.php

Think about that.

You want fries with that liturgy?

Thomas:

Sorry it has taken so long for me to write a response; I was writing one before, but I forgot to save it.

To be quite honest, a lot of the things that you bring up are things that I wonder about too and which seem kinda strange to me too.

However, as I look at it, evidence seems to say that the early church did have the veneration of icons, the veneration of the virgin mary, and some other things. So, I have to wonder why they did and why we don't. Is it because they were wrong or misguided in what they did, or perhaps is it because we don't properly understand the truth of the Christian faith? Perhaps what we believe is not the same thing as the early church fathers believed. And, well, if that is so, that is a problem, for then how can we say that what we believe in is truly Christianity as Christ delivered to his apostles and as the apostles delivered to their successors?

Another thing that I have been looking at, is the view of the church that the early church had. Did they have the view that is common among evangelical Christians today, that the church was not a visible church on earth, that it is just made up of all the people who believe certain things? That it can be made up of people who differ as much as Baptists, Reformed folks, charismatics, and Anglicans do in their theology and praxis? Or, did they believe that the church was indeed visible on earth, and that to be a member of the body of christ, you had to be a member of that visible church that visible body of Christ, and conform to a standard of the church (such as the creeds)? Or perhaps they believed something else...

And, concerning tradition and scripture, I think I may not have made this clear in my earlier post: As I look at it now, I think scripture is a part of tradition, so it makes no sense to say that one looks at scripture without tradition, or that one can have a truly christian tradition without scripture. Rather, Scripture is the highest source of truth in Tradition, and is to be interpreted in accordance with the rest of Tradition, whatever Tradition one holds, whether Orthodox, Catholic, Vanilla Evangelical, Reformed, or Charismatic, or whatever else. However, one must ask, which of these was the one held in the early church, and thus which one is truly Christianity as the apostles and their successors viewed Christianity?

If the historical church was wrong, where did it go wrong? And how do we know that they were wrong, and that we are right?

Hmm, I have more to say, but I'll get to more in a later post. Sorry if this post isn't so very clear; if you would like me to clarify something, please ask.