The Magisterial Protestant

Apostolic succession, is the doctrine that for a church to be considered a true church, that is, one with true and saving sacraments. The sacraments need to be administered by a pastor who has been ordained by a bishop that can trace his ordination back to someone ordained by the Apostles. Essentially apostles like Paul, ordained bishops like Timothy and eventually Timothy ordained other men and those men ordained other men and so on and so forth. This forms an unbroken and physical line of laying on of hands. The present day Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Assyrian, Oriental and Anglican churches all claim that they can list the ordinations of their bishops back to one of the original Apostles ordained by Jesus Christ our Lord. I will be presenting the case that Lutherans, the Reformed and other protestants have a type of presbyteral succession which should also be seen as valid. Should you even care? Lets quickly read what some of the early church fathers thought:  Saint Clement, bisho...

Who God is, possibly the most foundational doctrine of the Christian faith and yet many Christians do not understand the doctrine of the Trinity. Here are the basics as explained by the first 4 ecumenical councils Nicaea 1, Constantinople 1, Ephasus and Chalcedon. A brief summary is found in the   Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed  .  The definition of the Trinity is given as: We believe in one God and there are three persons that share that one being (essence) that is God, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. This singular being of God can also be called the divine nature/divine essence and the three persons share the divine essence. As stated by the Nicene creed " The Son is Homoousios (of one substance) with the Father". Now this one divine nature (or essence) is what makes God, God. It is Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, etc. and because of the shared divine nature the members of the trinity share one divine will. Meaning they all desire the same things and...

  For my articles going forward an elementary understanding of the history of Christianity would be beneficial. By no means is this in any way exhaustive, it just gives a general time line of events. I am providing this because a good amount of Christians have a big gap in their knowledge of what happened between their new testament and 2024. Its almost as if we know Jesus died 2000 years ago but no clue as to how the church looked like for the past 2000 years THE APOSTOLIC ERA(33- 325) The year is 33 AD and our Lord Jesus is 33 years old and is crucified by the Roman empire, he rises from the dead and commissions his disciples to spread the Gospel to all nations. He's disciples do this and begin planting churches. Whenever a church had an issue they would write a letter to the apostle that established it and the apostle would write a letter back responding to the issue (These letters make up majority of our new testament). The apostles are killed and leave behind successors, to ru...

As modern day Christians we tend to see ourselves as individual Christians bound by the 21st century and within our specific denomination. We tend to believe that, that's all Christianity is and has always been. This is more a evangelical protestant mindset than a catholic or orthodox one. However Christianity is more than 2000 years old, we live in a tiny spec of Christian history and we tend to forget the existence of billions of Christians who came before us. The most notable of which are the Church fathers. The apostle John wrote five of our New testament books and is known as Jesus' most beloved disciple. He passes away around the year 99 AD, 66 years after our Lord Jesus was crucified. Similarly to how the apostle Paul had a man he discipled called Timothy (to whom 2 of our new testament books are written to 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy ) the apostle John had his own two disciples of a similar nature, Ignatius and Polycarp. 1 Timothy 2:1-2  You then, my child, be streng...