(August 18, 2015 at 4:21 am)abaris Wrote:(August 18, 2015 at 4:08 am)Randy Carson Wrote: Notice that Ignatius does not take pains to introduce the term "Catholic Church"; instead he uses it in a manner suggesting that the name was already in use and familiar to his audience.
Might that be because catholicus or katholikos were actual words - simply meaning the whole? And I simply love the way you brush over the at least dozens of different branches of christianity back then. Branches like Arianism, so influencal with certain peoples that they had the power to seriously threaten what you understand to be the Catholic church. Combined with not looking at the archeological and historical evidence on pre Constantinian christianity, it makes your wilful ignorance even more obvious.
J.N.D. Kelly (Protestant)
"As regards ‘Catholic,' its original meaning was ‘universal' or ‘general' ... As applied to the Church, its primary significance was to underline its universality as opposed to the local character of the individual congregations. Very quickly, however, in the latter half of the second century at latest, we find it conveying the suggestion that the Catholic is the true Church as distinct from heretical congregations. . . . What these early Fathers were envisaging was almost always the empirical, visible society; they had little or no inkling of the distinction which was later to become important between a visible and an invisible Church" (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed. [San Francisco: Harper, 1978], 190f).
