Paul reshaping the church

[athrock]

So just because in 180AD Irenaeus believed the Pauline tradition of Christianity rather than one of the Gnostic traditions, it doesn't make it any more valid than the alternative flavours of Christianity of the day.

How do you come to this conclusion (on your own, btw...this is not orthodox Christianity, for sure)?

Peter taught Clement of Rome as well as Ignatius.
Paul knew Clement and probably Ignatius.
John taught Papias, Polycarp and Ignatius (who was the third Bishop of Antioch after Peter and Evodius).
In turn, Polycarp taught Irenaus who taught Hippolytus.

All of these men knew one another, wrote to one another, visited one another, commended one another, etc.

So, when someone comes along from outside these lines of Apostolic Succession and teaching strange doctrines, they were rejected because they were not teaching those things which were handed on (Gr. tradere - "tradition") of the Apostles.

Apostolic Tradition was CLEARLY valid whereas these "alternative flavours" (aka heresies) were not. Irenaeus noted the problem (and the cure) when he wrote:

"1It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about....Surely they wished all those and their successors, to whom they handed on their authority, to be perfect and without reproach.” (Against Heresies 3.3.1, [A.D. 180])

And Tertullian wrote:

"Moreover, if there be any [heretics] bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, so that they might seem to have been handed down by the Apostles because they were from the time of the Apostles, we can say to them: let them show the origins of their Churches, let them unroll the order of their bishops, running down in succession from the beginning, so that their first bishop shall have for author and predecessor some of one of the Apostles or of the apostolic men who continued steadfast with the Apostles. For this is the way in which the apostolic Churches transmit their lists: like the Church of the Smyrnaeans, which records that Polycarp was placed there by John; like the Church of the Romans where Clement was ordained by Peter. In just the same way the other Churches display those whom they have as sprouts from the apostolic seed, having been established in the episcopate by the Apostles" (The Demurrer Against the Heretics 32.1, [A.D. 200]).


Sorry, Aractus, but the Baskin-Robbins flavors of Christianity which you judge equal to orthodox Christianity found today in the Catholic Church didn't make the cut for the very simple and profound reason that they had no Apostolic origins.