Published in Pasugo, Mar-Apr 1992
APOSTASY IS A defection, a falling away from what one believed in, as apostasy from one’s religion, creed, or politics. Thus, one becomes an apostate as soon as he departs from his former belief, whatever it was. What undergoes change is not the person nor his nature but his beliefs.
In the field of religion, apostasy is one of the most controversial and confused terms. Reformers accused the Catholic Church of having departed from the original teachings of Christ. The Catholic Church turns the table on them by calling them apostates or separated brethren.
This article will determine the issue of who really departed from the truth or from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Two things must be made clear: a) what Christ and the Apostles taught and b) if the bishops who succeeded the Apostles in the administration of the Church continued such teachings or not. If they did, then there was no apostasy; if they did not, then there was an apostasy.
Christ’s Teachings Are In The Bible
Not all the things done by Christ and the Apostles were written (cf. Jn. 20:30-31). In fact there were some things that God did not want to be written (cf. Dan. 12:4; Rev. 10:4). The Apostles wrote down what they witnessed (cf. 1 Jn. 1:1-4). All such writings were inspired by God, should be used for doctrine, correction, instruction, and they make man perfect (cf. II Tim. 3:16-17). What were written are enough and nothing should be added to them nor subtracted from them (cf. Rev. 22:18-19) for what are written were written so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing we might have eternal life through His name (cf. Jn. 20:30-31). Apostle Paul adds that we must not go beyond what is written (cf. I Cor. 4:6). And if the Apostles did give instructions by word of mouth, such instructions were taken from what they had witnessed and such things they wrote down (cf. I Jn. 1:1-4).
Thus, the teachings of Christ and the Apostles on which we must remain if we are to be true Christians are written in the Bible, and for as long as we remain in them, we are truly Christ’s disciples (cf. Jn. 8:31) or Christians (cf. Acts 11:26).
The Process of Apostasy
The process of apostasy or the turning away from the teachings of God as written in the Bible, was already at work even during the times of the apostles (cf. II Thess. 2:7). Apostle Paul warned the Christians in Galatia that those who teach doctrines different from what the Apostles already taught be accursed (cf. Gal. 1:6-9). But for as long as the Apostles were still alive and in control of Church administration, such forces of iniquity did not succeed in enticing the entire living members of the Church away from what the Apostles taught them (cf. II Thess. 2:7).
With the death of the Apostles, however, something happened to the Church of Christ:
“For the years after the record in Acts ends, evidence for the history of the Christian Church becomes more scanty. There began to be passing references to it in pagan writers. These writers make it seem likely that the Roman Emperor Nero blamed the Christians for the burning of the city of Rome in A.D. 64. It is also very likely that Saint Peter and Saint Paul were put to death at Rome about this time… .
“When the original Apostles died, the leadership of the Church was taken over by local pastors known as bishops. Under them were ministers of lower rank, known as presbyters and deacons. The Church organized the area of the Roman Empire into provinces. The bishops at the head of the Christian communities in the large cities such as Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage ranked highest.” (The New Book of Knowledge, vol. 3, pp. 280-281)
Thus, when the Apostles died, not much was recorded on what went on in the Church of Christ but during this period of silence the administration of the Church fell into the hands of the bishops.
Apostle Paul describes the bishop as he was in the first century Church of Christ. His qualities are detailed in I Timothy 3:2-7 as:
“…blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?). Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” (King James Version)
Apostle Paul further says that a bishop should be “holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.” (cf. Titus 1:9)
Thus, among other things, a bishop in the first century Church of Christ is a husband of one wife and a teacher of things taught by the Apostles and Christ, things that are written in the Bible.
The bishops that took control of the Church administration in the second century were of a different breed. They were priests who were not allowed to marry and taught things not coming from the Bible. Moreover, the bishops of the first century Church were not monarchical:
“In Acts 20:28, …the fact that there were several bishops in one community excludes the monarchical concept of the term…” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2, p. 585)
In spite of this clear evidence from the Bible that the original bishop in the Church of Christ was not monarchical, Catholic Church authorities inject the idea that the monarchical episcopate which prevailed in the second century must have come from oral tradition:
“Therefore, since there is no clear evidence in NT for a monarchical episcopate, this office, which was firmly established by the early decades of the 2d century must have been based on oral apostolic tradition going back ultimately to Christ.” (Ibid.)
A monarchical episcopate is defined as “one single bishop assisted by priests and deacons” (Ibid. p. 589), a thing that did not prevail during the time of the Apostles. In spite of this difference in administration between the first century Church of Christ and that of the second, Catholic authorities reject the first and accept the second:
“The testimony of Ignatius from the first decade of the 2d century, along with the evidence of the writers from the second half of that century and the earliest catalogs of bishops in the principal Churches – all of which trace a line of succession of individual bishops back to the apostolic age – satisfies most Catholic theologians that this form of Church government was the only one ever recognized as normal and regular.” (Ibid.)
This control of the Church administration by the bishops who began to teach different doctrines was the fulfillment of what Apostle Paul prophesied concerning the overseers (bishop):
“Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” (Acts 20:30, KJV)
Soon after the bishops took over the administration of the Church in the second century, the doctrines of this Church began to be infected with poison:
“At first the history of the Roman Church is identical with the history of the Christian truth. But unhappily there came a time when streams of poison began to flow from the once pure fountain.” (The World’s Great Events, vol. 2, pp 163-164)
From Church of Christ To Catholic Church
The great apostasy did not consist in the destruction of the first century Church of Christ and the establishment of another one. It consisted in the deterioration of the Church established by Christ. As already mentioned, there was a sort of “news blockout” during the years immediately after the death of the Apostles. During this period the bishops took over the administration of the Church. When events began to be recorded again, what was revealed was a Church very different from what Christ founded:
“For fifty years after St. Paul’s life a curtain hangs over the church, through which we strive vainly to look; and when at last it rises about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church-fathers, we find a church in many aspects very different from that in the days of St. Peter and St. Paul.” (The Story of the Christian Church, p. 41)
The differences between what used to be the Church of Christ in the first century and the Church that was revealed in the second to the fourth centuries are profound:
“It is necessary to note that we should recall the reader’s attention to the profound differences between this fully developed Christianity of Nicaea and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth….What is clearly apparent is that the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth was a prophetic teaching of the new type that began with the Hebrew prophets. It was not priestly, it had no consecrated temple, and no altar. It had no rites and ceremonies. Its sacrifice was ‘a broken and contrite heart’. Its only organization was an organization of preachers, and its chief function was the sermon. But the fully fledge Christianity of the fourth century, though it preserved as its nucleus the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, was mainly a priestly religion, of a type already familiar to the world for thousands of years. The center of its elaborate ritual was an altar, and the essential act or worship the sacrifice, by a consecrated priest, of the Mass.” (The Outline of History, pp. 552-553)
These profound changes, made on the original teachings of Christ, dealt great violence on the teachings of the Bible for the purpose of enhancing the interests of the Catholic Church:
“Jesus too, being a Galilean, was of Aryan stock, a remarkable man whose teachings had, in the course of centuries, been deformed out of all recognition in the interests of the Catholic Church.” (The Vatican in the Age of Dictators, p. 168)
Adding insult to injury, Catholic authorities acknowledge such changes without shame and even with pride:
“We Catholics acknowledge readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the Gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn.” (The Spirit of Catholicism, p. 2)
“ ‘Without the Scriptures’, says Mohler, ‘the true form of the sayings of Jesus would have been withheld from us….Yet the Catholic does not derive his faith in Jesus from Scripture’.” (Ibid. p. 50)
Hence, those responsible for this apostasy of the first century Church of Christ were the bishops under whose administration these profound changes took place. The first bishop identified as having introduced changes into the Church was Ignatius, bishop of Antioch who was martyred in Rome about 110 A.D. He was the first to use the term Catholic Church in reference to the Church of Christ:
“The name Catholic as a name is not applied to the Catholic Church in the Bible. ..St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Christians of Smyrna about the year 110, is the first to use the name ‘The Catholic Church’ …” (The Question Box, p. 132)
This same Ignatius introduced the doctrine that Christ is both God and man. “He asserted unequivocally both the divinity and humanity of Christ, the Savior.” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7, p. 353)
Ignatius is one of the so-called Antenicene Fathers who were divided into three groups, namely:
1. Apostolic Fathers – supposedly had personal contact with the Apostles or were instructed by their disciples. To this group belong Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyna, and Clement of Rome.
2. Greek Apologists – born of the Church’s reaction to paganism. To this group belong Justin Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenaeus.
3. Theologians – to this group belong Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and Cyprian.
These Church Fathers were the source of the teachings that the Catholic Church taught and implemented beginning the second century and formalized by the decrees of the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. Such persons were not immune from errors and yet, the apostatized church approved their teachings:
“Obviously much that Christ and the apostles preached was in time reduced to writing. Hence there grew up a library composed of men called ‘the fathers of the Church’. They were called so because in apostolic days the word ‘father’ also meant teacher of spiritual things, and these were among her earliest teachers. But, unlike the apostles, all of whom enjoyed infallibility, they were not immune from error nor inspired as the scriptural writers had been. In so far as they dealt with questions of faith and morals, much of what they wrote was approved by the Church, and thus, became part of written tradition.” (Whereon to Stand: What Catholics Believe and Why, p. 142)
As a result of the teachings of these early Church Fathers, the Church of Christ or Christianity became Roman Catholicism, the last and the greatest of the mystery religions:
“On that dies Domini, or Lord’s Day, the Christians assembled for their weekly ritual. Their clergy read from the Scriptures, led them in prayer, and preached sermons of doctrinal instruction, moral exhortation, and sectarian controversy…
“By the close of the second century, these weekly ceremonies had taken the form of the Christian Mass. Based partly on the Judaic Temple service, partly on Greek mystery rituals of purification, vicarious sacrifice, and participation through communion, in the death-overcoming powers, of the deity, the Mass grew slowly into a rich congeries of prayers, psalms, readings, sermon, antiphonal recitations, and, above all, that symbolic atoning sacrifice of the ‘Lamb of God’ which replaced, in Christianity, the bloody offerings of older faiths. The bread and wine which these cults had considered as gifts placed upon the altar before the god were now conceived as changed by the priestly act of consecration into the body and blood of Christ, and were presented to God as a repetition of the self-immolation of Jesus on the cross. Then, in an intense and moving ceremony, the worshippers partook of the very life and substance of their Saviour. It was a conception long sanctified by time; the pagan mind needed no schooling to receive it; by embodying it in the ‘mystery of the Mass’, Christianity became the last and the greatest of the mystery religions.” (Ceasar and Christ, pp. 599-600)
From Persecuted Church To Persecutor Church
The first century Church of Christ suffered persecution at the very moment of its inception. Christ was Himself crucified by the Jews; Stephen the deacon was stoned to death with the approval of Saul who was to become the Apostle Paul later. After the Jews came the Roman emperors, from Nero (54-68) to Diocletian (284-305). The persecution was in progress when the Church of Christ developed into the Catholic Church in the second century. Thus, those faithful to the Church of Christ in the first century were killed and wiped out by the second century in the Roman persecution. By the second century the Church of Christ had already apostatized into the Catholic Church but the Roman persecutions continued, and those getting killed were no longer true Christians but followers of the bishops called Catholics. Among the victims was Ignatius himself who began calling the Church of Christ Catholic Church. Even Popes were killed. A former Jesuit priest says:
“Between the death of Simon Peter the Apostle in A.D. 67, and the year 312, there were thirty-one popes, successors to Peter as bishops of Rome. Not one of the first eighteen popes died in bed. All perished violently.” (The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Church, p. 3)
These two centuries of intermittent persecutions led to the killings of thousands of Catholics still called by historians as Christians.
Emperor Constantine (306-337) stopped the persecutions, legalized and favored the Catholic Church and assumed control over it. Thus began a pro-Christian imperial policy which later turned into a policy of persecution of heretics and pagans:
“This pro-Christian imperial policy…began with Constantine, who favored the Christians and only tolerated paganism, hoping it to die a natural death. His three sons, however, who succeeded him at his death in 337, took a more resolute stance. This was especially true of Constantius, who was left sole ruler in 350. He aimed at total extirpation of paganism; he ordered the temples closed and imposed the death penalty for participating in sacrifices.” (A Concise History of the Catholic Church, p. 68)
“Meanwhile, Gratian was taking steps to stamp out paganism, and in 391 and 392 Theodosius issued stringent laws against idolatry. Sacrifice to pagan gods, whether in public or in private, was to be regarded as treason, and paganism gradually died out during the following century. The legal triumph of the Church over heresy and paganism and its evolution from a persecuted sect to a persecuting state church were complete.” (A Survey of European Civilization, p. 95)
Thus, the persecuted Church of Christ of the first century which became the persecuted Catholic Church from the second to the fourth century became allied with the Roman emperors in the fourth century and started persecuting not only pagans but also its own members who dared to refuse allegiance to it or who questioned its authority and teachings, members classified as heretics.
History records that by the 13th century, this persecution by the apostate Church surpassed in cruelty the persecutions done by the Roman emperors.
“The Inquisition lasted over two hundred years…If men or women or children refused to accept Christianity, they were tortured until they died.
“Even the early Christians, before Constantine, who were tortured and killed and fed to the lions in Rome, and who are known to us as Martyrs, were not treated more cruelly than the non-Christians during the Inquisition. (How the Great Religions Began, p. 214)
Conclusion
The true Church of Christ established by Christ in Jerusalem in the first century followed a set of tenets which Christ received from God, which the Apostles received from Christ, and which the Apostles committed into writing. Such written words make references to the Old Testament so that the true Church of Christ also recognizes the Old Testament as words of God. God commands that nothing should be added to nor subtracted from what has been written in the Holy Scriptures.
For as long as the Apostles were at the helm of Church administration, the Church followed to the letter all the commandments written in the Bible. But with the death of the Apostles, the bishops took control of the Church and they introduced teachings not drawn from what is written in the Bible but from tradition, writings of the so-called Church Fathers, theologians, and other sources.
By the second century, the bishops change the name of the Church, injected new doctrines into it, changed its hierarchy so that what emerged by the year 120 A.D. was a Church radically different in form and content from the Church during the time of Apostle Peter and Paul.
The apostasy did not consist in the establishment of a new Church but in the introduction of teachings foreign to it and not written in the Bible. The Church of Christ during the time of the Apostles became the Catholic Church of the bishops in the second century, persecuted by the Roman emperors until the fourth century, allied itself with the Roman emperors from that time on and became a persecutor Church, killing both pagans and alleged heretics with unspeakable cruelty.
This is the Church that turned away from Christ’s teachings as written in the Bible, the Church that took on teachings of men, the Church that apostatized, the Church that calls itself The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church.
Bibliography
Books:
Adam, Karl. The Spirit of Catholicism. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954
Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1977.
Brunini, John Gilland. Whereon to Stand: What Catholics Believe and Why. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1961.
Conway, Rev. Bertrand L. The Question Box. New York: The Paullist Press, 1929.
Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, Part III: Ceasar and Christ. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944.
Ferguson, Wallace K. and Geoffrey Bruun. A Survey of European Civilization. Bostan: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962.
Gaer, Joseph. How the Great Religions Began. London: The New American Library Limited, 1956.
Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman, D.D. The Story of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1969.
Martin, Malachi. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
Rhodes, Anthony. The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
Wells, H.G. The Outline of History. New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1931
General References:
New Catholic Encyclopedia, vols. 2 and 3. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1967.
The New Book of Knowledge, vol. 3. Connecticut:Grolier Inc., 1983.
The World’s Great Events, vol. 2:From BC 207 to AD 1190. New York: P. F. Gollier & Sons Corporation, 1948.
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