The Path Paved With Good Intentions

I’ve been at college full time for a couple of weeks now and it’s been a great experience.  One of the classes I really enjoy is church history and we’ve covered the history of the church up until the reign of Pope Leo I. As we’re going through our textbook one of the course requirements is to write a 2 page paper on a point or fact in the text we find interesting and impacting on church history. My first paper that I handed I decided to write on the development of the Roman Catholic Church.

One of my lecturers has a saying that goes something like “Everything heads toward decay”. This of course is not just true in the physical sense but also the spiritual. I guess you could say he had a very pessimistic view of churches as a whole but it is rarer to see a church move from error to truth than to see it slip away from the truth into error. Unfortunately, slipping into error doesn’t require one to take massive giant leaps. It is often small steps, so small in fact that it’s hard to say “Now is the exact point they entered heresy”. The same is true with the Catholic Church. It’s hard to say when it was and when it wasn’t but most would say that be the time of Pope Leo I it had all the general fittings we would ascribe to the Catholic Church.

There are several factors that helped pave the way to Catholic Church and none of these things in of themselves were “wrong”.

The Universal Church

One of the key contributions to the development of the Catholic Church is the sense of unity the early church had. Churches worked together and supported each other and had a sense of oneness that we have so very little of today. From the writings of Ignatius we see very early early on the sense of unity. He was the first to call the church “Catholic” which means “universal” and from his writings up until Cyprian we see this drive towards this concept of unity amongst all the churches. With Cyprian’s writings we come across the quote “He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother”. It’s hard to say what he really meant by this comment. It could be that he was talking in a spiritual sense (i.e. the invisible church) but regardless of his intentions it’s easy to see how statements like this help shift the church in the Roman Catholic direction.

Hierarchical Leadership

It was not very long after the founding of the church that a hierarchy started to develop within the church government. By the time of Ignatius we see that the Bishops and Elders were split into two different roles with the Bishop at the top, Elders following and Deacons coming last. This development occurred early on as it was understood that the role of a Bishop and Elder were two different offices as opposed to clear scriptural teachings regarding the fact they are synonymous roles. With time the hierarchy developed and the roles in church leadership became a prominent position not only within the church but within the community. At first in the early church it was non uncommon to have slaves as elders in a church with their masters as members. However with the development of the hierarchy it became less and less likely for the lower classes to have such positions.

Authoritative Positions

Even earlier than the above developments we see an emphasis on submission to church leadership. We see this from the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Cyprian and so forth. Submission to church leadership was important in the early church’s eyes and alongside the developing hierarchy it is not hard to see how the two combined can become a force to be reckoned with. Submission was seen as important to help keep unity within the church as well as help protect it against error. With time there arose a dichotomy between the laity and the clergy and they were eventually seen as two separate rather than interconnected groups.

Apostolic Succession

Thanks to the works of Cyprian and others the focus on Apostolic succession became great in the early church. The intention behind Apostolic succession was to guard against error. It was figured by the early church that if they could trace a decent back to the Apostles they would have themselves an untainted and pure line of descent that would guard themselves against error. After all it was figured if someone allowed another to succeed them you would think they would only allow one who shared their beliefs into that office? Obviously their mentality did not produce the fruits they were seeking after.

First Among Equals

The last and defining point of the Catholic Church is the rise in power of the Roman Bishop to whom now we would call the Pope. It’s not hard to see this occur after looking at the focus on church hierarchy and the authority given unto them. In the early church there was several key churches that had been assigned some sort of authority I guess you could say. However with time and for various reasons these authoritative churches fell out of the scene and left only the church in Rome for others to seek guidance. Alongside the writings of Jerome and Cyprian we see an emphasis on the Roman Bishopship.

Conclusion

So with these points in mind we can see how the Roman Catholic Church came into being. While some of these points were probably not the best step there are some that were actually really good steps but combined together all these tiny steps started heading down the wrong direction. Though they may have had good motives as the saying goes “The path to hell is paved with good intentions”. Now as with all things the development of the Catholic Church was a complicated task and it wasn’t just due to the church in of itself moving towards this direction but external forces did also come into play which I did not deal with in this post. A further shift in the authority of the church for example is when it became the Roman state religion in 381AD.

Application

As individuals and as churches we need to be very careful with the steps we take. Each individual step doesn’t seem like a big deal now but after the succession of many little steps we may be in a position we couldn’t have imagined seeing ourselves in all those years before. I thought I’d add this thought in since I didn’t really elaborate on this point last week but we really need to judge our motives when we make dramatic shifts on our position on some thought. This application doesn’t just apply to music but most every area of our lives. The steps we take regarding our jobs, our friends, our entertainment and our hobbies all can cause a shift in the wrong direction if we are not careful. We need to be discerning and we need to be careful about every decision we make.

So, until next week, God bless!

---

When you comment, please keep these guidelines in mind. You can find an explanation of our commenting guidelines here.

1. Stay on topic.
2. Post your own material.
3. Links must be supplemental and thoroughly relevant.
4. Be concise.
5. Use your real name.

Stay connected by subscribing to our RSS or email feed! Or print this post.

Copyright © 2012 InFocus | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice