Yeah, well all of this is made up anyway so I guess it doesn’t bother me that much.
I know what you are trying to say but I do not speak that way.
I am part of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles, incorruptible, unbroken, back to the beginning of the Church–on Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended onto the theantropic body of the Church of Christ and his Apostles, where it has been maintained in an unbroken line for two thousand years.
This is a good picture that shows this history and the one church that has never deviated:
timeline-of-church-history_orig.jpg (1033×549) (saintsophias.org)
In conversational terms often called the “Eastern Orthodox” church, and many of us use that term particularly in English speaking venues because of the historical nature of it–more appropriately we say the “Holy Orthodox” church “Eastern” is how the Westerns tried to label us in their schism.
And what exactly and precisely makes your group the One True Church and not say the Coptics? Or the Latter Day Saints?
Or the Jews?
Fair enough
ETA But if you click on the diagram it does not indicate why the Coptics veer away from the one true path or why they cannot makes the same claim. I clicked the link. It failed to answer my questions.
It would take a lot of time to discuss that and I am no theologian. I am not sure either under the rules of this board if that is a topic for this discussion–I do not see a Religion forum here.
I can get some links for it for anyone genuinely interested, but an unbeliever not genuinely interested I suspect has little interest in reading theology written by Priests and Bishops.
If I could say it briefly as I can: we believe the Church began on Pentecost and God gave humanity the Church as a living body intended to perpetuate on. We believe there are practices and beliefs that were followed by the initial Church fathers.
We believe that there are matters of dogma–on which all churches must agree or be deemed schismatic, and we believe that outside of dogma bishops, priests and lay members can have differences of opinion.
Most importantly for understanding the splits, we believe that the early Church Patriarchs came to decisions in deliberative councils. There is no evidence the Patriarch of Rome sat as King ruling over subjects. The Patriarchate of Rome was recognized as the first among equals in the ancient Pentarchy and given special respect for that reason, but he was just one Patriarch among a group of them.
There were great ecumenical councils–seven of them, where the leaders and thinkers of the church met and discussed things with one another until they could apply expertise and wisdom and divine inspiration to agree on a collective interpretation. We believe this is the only way dogmatic changes can occur. We were involved in all seven of those councils and we collectively maintained agreement in all seven.
In later eras different patriarchates, especially Rome, decided that this ancient custom was no longer the way of it and that the Roman Patriarch / Bishop was supreme and the rest of the Church basically feudal vassals to him. There is no theologic basis for this–for there to be such an interpretation you would need to go far afield of the agreed theology of the seven councils. Once the Roman Patriarch went too far in this belief, the remaining Patriarchates of the Pentarchy deemed him to be in schism, and we are no longer in communion with Rome. As they abandoned the path we were on, it is they who are in schism, not us.
Most other surviving groups of Christians split off of Rome at later times, so they are schismatics of the schismatic.
So why can’t the Coptics claim to be the One True Church? Last time I checked, they had a Patriarch and were not in communion with Rome either.
Coptic is really complicated “above my paygrade.” The understanding traditionally is the Copts had a disagreement about the “fundamental nature” of the trinity, and this was not reconciled with the other churches in the ecumenical councils and thus they became schismatic.
In modern times we actually now doubt this history. Record keeping of historical events is not necessarily perfect–the Copts fell under Muslim conquest very early in Christian history and remained largely separate and out of normal communication with the rest of Christianity for over 1000 years. Beliefs about old accounts became entrenched but there were few dialogues to resolve it.
Starting in the 1900s the leaders of the Orthodox and Coptic churches had many meetings and I believe the consensus reached is that much of our difference was terminology and not doctrine. The Churches now recognize one another in baptisms and marriages, I don’t think they have achieved full communion but it is very close and expected to happen some day.
I bet you there are a lot of versions of this diagram with different labels on that one straight line.
They call it the restoration. Their goal was to return to the true church of Christ. I guess your feel they failed in that?
I do think that the eastern Orthodox and Coptic churches have a decent claim on Christian orthodoxy.