Something that has always put me off protestant churches was the problem of legitimacy...

Also appstolistic succession is not ever nentioned in the Bible

I meant the 5 solas which are held by all prots, in the specific

Just so you knkw a lot of prots don't follow sola fide and sola scriptua

If the Bible were so easy to read, we would not have had so much division

Because most people don't follow what it says and instead think they know what God is like without reading the Bible.

For example you say women have to obey their husbands which most nowaday Christians reject even though the Bible specifically says it
Ephesians 5
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

I have no particular denomination yet, but the catholic faith doesn't seem right for me.
They can say that they're not praying to the saints or Mary all they want, but if you're on your knees holding your hands, you're praying.
Also, faith and works doesn't sit well with me. Jesus's sacrifice is the only thing that gets you into His kingdom.
Not to mention that the catholic church has done many despicable things.
I've been to catholic mass, I've asked God over and over to lead me to the truth, and I'm still not feeling that it is the one true church.

That is, if you see the church as an institution rather than a universal body of believers. That isn't to say that the church can't have institutions or structure of any kind, but I can't see it that Jesus himself would create a single, institutional church without leaving behind any kind of structure, rites, laws etc. For that church

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Also they may be reading a false Bible version

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This

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The issue of legitimacy never made sense to me. The original word we now translate as church didn't mean a legal institution, or even an institution, it meant the body of believers.

The gates of hell shall never prevail against Christians. Whatever institutions they may instigate, that's a different issue.

An institution saying it has sole authority to decree rightness is (1) saying that we can't come to the Father through Christ against biblical teaching, (2) is obviously going to be corrupted and attract corrupt people.

Don't abdicate your responsibility to have a personal connection with the Father through Christ and the Holy Spirit to some institution. Institutions won't save you, ritual will not save you. If you think like that, you're thinking like the Pharisees.

You know the Talmud says to ignore any miracles or heavenly signs and only count as legitimate the decisions of the majority of their elders. Yeah, I noticed the magisterium sounds a lot like that. If God moves me to do something, Imma do it, regardless of institutions. That's why the legitimacy of any Christian institution is always non-existant. People can be a part of the body of Christ, but an institution is always something else.

...

Are they actually a sub-denomination of protestanism?

Reporting in for Anglicanism. Our bishops are ordained from an Apostolic line, this is true, no matter what Catholics say.

We are theologically Lutheran-ish, but we don't have problems like other protestants with Tradition.

-Few restrictions, yet theologically sound
-Based apologists like CS Lewis and Peter Hitchens

-Degeneracy
-Hemorrhaging followers to the Lutherans, the Catholics and the Continuing Anglican movement.
-Being a very open church has its ups and downs

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Salvation is by grace alone through Christ alone. Faith and works are gifts of justification, mainly they are they evidence of having accepted the grace of God. This is Catholic theology.

Book of common prayer article of religion xxv disagrees with you and denies the sacrament of ordination. If you don't believe ordination is a sacrament then you can't ordain hence no apostolic succession

I am pretty sure works are supposed to be a testament of faith you give to God (not that he needs one since he knows everything, but it's about your intentions and your desire for his love more than anything); the idea that you use works as manifest evidence for others to see is a protestant one. Other people are not God and therefore cannot know if you have faith by looking at your works.

I find it funny that you "people" dare show your face around these parts

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Boy satan, atleast TRY to be a bit subtle next time and dont look like a complete failure.

No. That is the heresy of pelagianism to say by ones own works one is saved. Orthodox catholic doctrine states that works are a gift of justification that follow from accepting God's grace. They come from God not from man. Sure this is similar to what some prots may claim but those prots will then contradict that by saying works are not justification so I ignore them.

We don't like you papists either

Talmudic legalism again, how original

That was unfortunate, wasn't it?

Ekklesia does not mean "CHURCH" as in the institution of a Church.
Ekklesia, the greek word translated most often into English as "(the) Church" just means assembly.
It doesn't refer to a man-made institution or organisation, it refers to the spiritual assembly of all believers, visa vie: where two or three gather in My name, there I am with them.

And that the gates of hell shall not prevail … well, yeah. Even if every Catholic priest, bishop and pope was deaded and every other apostolic equivalent, and every church building demolished, every block of land sold, every crucifix and every rosary burned, and so on … do you REALLY think the Church had been prevailed against? The Church is God's people, not some corporation chill, I'm using the term with its real meaning that claims "a direct line" from Peter and the other apostles exists in its bishops and other office holders. WE are the Church. Ergo, every last believer will have to be hunted down and killed before the Church has been prevailed against, and not even three generations of Kims has succeeded in that goal in one country.

And while we're on it: the line of apostolic succession, which, by magic, makes this guy who is Bishop of some place a direct successor to the original guy who held that office and was an apostle, ergo and ipso facto, that guy is an apostle by succession. Bishops, like everyone else, get elected. Granted it's by a select few (eg; the conclave), or maybe even only by one, their Archbishop, but it means this claim to "succession" isn't even a spiritual succession – as in the apostle Peter anointed Linus as HIS apostle, and Linus anointed Cletus, and so on. At least hereditary kings have some form of lineage. No, here it's the persistence of the post's existence, I guess. "We can trace a line of elected Bishops of Rome back to Christ's own apostle." Really? THIS is the entirety of the great claim to being "Princes of the Universe"?

It IS true that aside from the Anglicans and, more tenuously, the Lutherans, most protestant church congregations are headed by a dude they either elected themselves – the same way Popes are – as Presbys do, or someone they employed from the phone book, the person who assembled that congregation in the first place, or the person who evangelised the locals and forged by suffering the congregation … and aside from the phone book thing, all are methods the earliest churches used to appoint their bishops, teachers and deacons. In each case, their protty prayers would have been the same prayers for God to direct their choice as the Conclave uses, in purpose if not form at least, so, really, if the same Holy Spirit informs both, how are they so different?

God did not come in human form to establish a renewed hierarchical temple with a reinvigorated priesthood to renew the old corrupted one, he came to tear it down and replace it with Himself as head priest, and with believers' bodies as the Holy of Holies, that is, the seat of the Spirit of God. To wit, we believers are the royal priesthood, we are all now the ones who are supposed to be doing the priestly duties, not hiding in lay organisations waiting for a priest to fart us into action. Hierarchy and rigid memberships to a specific organisation and successions are not what Christ was establishing, and certainly not what the Book of Acts or any of Paul's letters describe.

So, you can see from this, OP, that the "problem of legitimacy" is a paper tiger in this protestant's eyes. The legitimacy of any congregation (I don't say "church" for there is not 100,000 "churches" but one Church) is rooted in the Spirit that exists in the congregants' hearts as true believers whom Christ "knows". Now, you may say, "But the host, user, the hoooost. If not one of His own priests celebrates the Eucharist, how will Christ know where to turn wafer into flesh?" … and there we can have an entirely different discussion. Suffice to say that if the Elders of a congregation anoint and lay-on of hands a leader from amongst them, and they have the same Spirit, they are repeating the same pattern the New Testament describes. We are not a religion of very carefully performed rituals, we are a spiritual union with our God. He knows whom He has called out from the world.

But, look, I get it, these are controversial ideas for some people. If such loose ideas about who is "in" and who is "out" of the Church is too discomforting, by all means, join an apostolic church and cling to the idea that your membership, that your name on the church roll is what grants you your election into salvation, not the Spirit who lives within you, and not the fact that Christ can say, "You, in life, I knew. Welcome into your rest."

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Well said

As fun as it is to argue who's in succession, we're all screwed if we allow Marxism to flourish in any Church. We will end up being ruled by a despot like the Kims, and they will persecute us for the reason that we serve another King.

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The scribes and Pharisees could trace their legitimacy back to Moses, that didn't make them right. What said.

If everyone accepted the Bible at face value, there would be no division. (We would all be IFB).

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You should look into reformed protestant covenant theology for an answer to your question. Here is a pretty easy book from a 1689 baptist.
Specifically look at how the Church is the "spiritual offspring of Abraham". As a spiritual offspring, our organization, unity, and succession is not primarily physical by the laying on of hands. If the Church were the physical offspring then the state of Israel would be the true Church, but we all agree in principal to a discontinuity between the two covenant peoples.
So if the Church is the spiritual offspring, then it means that when we are looking for the true church, we ought to look for the operation of the Holy Spirit in it. This operation is evident in the people by; the renewed life (Romans 8:5-6), the preeminence of Christ in all things (John 16:13-14), the fulfillment of or duty to preach the gospel (2 Timothy 4:5), the right teaching of doctrine (1 Corinthians 2:15-16), and the right ministration of the holy ordinances (1 Corinthians 11:17-21). These criteria have lead me to the reformed baptist church as the most pure, but remember there is room for some diversity even within the Church universal.
I hope this helps.

But "baptists" are also divided among themselves???

You can't be protestant if you aren't protesting the Catholic Church. Protestants are called protestant because they're protesting the church to reform it. Baptists want nothing to do with Catholicism and could care less what they "reform".

Nice meme

I'm sure all those l*therans and c*lvinists all would to join the Church if the pope would just give in to their demands. Ha.

(8)  "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

If our gospel be Paul's our churches alone are legitimate

Start arguing any time

OP doesn't want a debate.
If you do, then start your own thread.

I read that as an admission to having no argument

How is truthfully answering a specific question from OP about what my denomination believes attacking you?

But that's wrong, see

I will try to help at least give you some resources to start out. I'm phone-posting so I have limited ability to copy and paste. First of all, the anti-Nicene Christian written record is scant in comparison to later periods so you have to adjust your expectations somewhat. Defending the Church against Protestantism (or if you suppose the early Church were Protestant, against Catholicism) wouldn't have been an explicit focus for them since they were unaware of these later controversies. In addition, there no real complete systematic expositions of the Christian faith from this period. So if you think, "why didn't they right more clearly or in more volume about topic X?" keep some perspective.

First, the succession of popes is clearly set out by Irenaeus (he also gives a succession for the Church of Smyrna). He does not explicitly discuss papal prerogatives here, but that's not the purpose of the passage. The purpose is an appeal to antiquity of the established Catholic churches versus the newness of the heretics.

newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm

Aren’t they sort of like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Apostolic succession is not hard to prove, and probably not what you think it is. It is just the idea that bishops derive episcopal authority from their ordination by other bishops, and that this line of succession traces back to the Apostles. Putting this in opposition to "apostolic tradition" is wrong. If a bishop deviates from the apostolic tradition by falling into pertinacious heresy, they are still validly ordained, but they lose their authority as a Catholic bishop. So apostolic succession and tradition worl together. You can see this in Irenaeus' Against Heretics and Tertullian's Prescriptiom against Heretics.

Another early patristic passage is from the Epistle of Clement of Rome, where Clement tells the Corinthians that they can't depose the lawfully appointed clergy and set up their own. Not very low church at all.

The idea of "improvement and deviation" is not really an accurate description of Catholic doctrine. Catholics do not teach in contradiction with apostolic teaching. There is an idea of doctrinal development, which is that things that were not taught so explicitly in the New Testament may be drawn out and expanded upon. The most obvious example is the Trinity, which is not explicitly taught in Scripture, but the principles behind it are.

This short book by Adrian Fortescue is an argument for the papacy from early sources. His cutoff point is the Council of Chalcedon, so if you insist of the arbitrary cutoff of 325, you can just ignore the later sources I suppose. The book is public domain, but I can't find any free online copies other than this page (click Full View to read the book).

catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100645762

...

baptists are secret catholic order sent to make real protestants look bad

I think there are multiple views of this, since I have seen many say it is the idea priests have their priesthood by ordination the line of which goes back to the apostles.
And this is where apostolic succession as you define it becomes impossible to prove. Not only because most bishoprics don't even claim knowledge of each previous bishop, let alone prove it, (thus making the line of succession an unfalsifiable empty claim), but also because the apostles ordained no bishops. The apostles ordained elders, who together as a group ruled individual churches, not bishops who alone lord over priests (another novel office). This is seen in scripture, for example Philippians 1:1

Why doesn’t anyone ever print the Popes quote on this photo? The second he was handed this thing in a very awkward public setting, purposefully being set up and put on the spot, he held it in his hands looked down at it and said, “This is wrong.”

This is not a different view. This is just a corollary to episcopal apostolic succession. Priests are ordained by bishops who trace their ordination back to the apostles, so priests also trace their ordination back to the apostles.

Apostolic succession is not any more impossible to prove than any other historical fact. We don't have lists of lines of ordination for all clerics, but we do for the pope for example, and papal succession is just as much a verifiable historical fact as the succession of American presidents or the kings of England. For bishops that have no record of their complete line of ordination, we still know their orders are valid because we know how ordinations were done throughout history, and know that the ordination would have been valid at each step of succession. Episcopal consecrations are performed together by multiple bishops and if there were doubt about a bishop's ordination, it would be known and rejected by their brother Catholic bishops. The idea that apostolic succession cannot be known is a conspiratorial mindset.

You are reading Presbyterian views into the text that are simply not stated. The term priest (from "presbyteros" meaning elder) and bishop ("episcopos" meaning overseer) are both used in the NT. The argument is that the terms are used seemingly interchangeably in places, so therefore the Catholic distinction between priest and bishop is false. That's a fallacy because even if those  terms did not carry their current sense, that does not mean that the distinct offices that they designate did not exist. Further, if we suppose that the terms did have the same meaning, it doesn't contradict Catholic doctrine to refer to a bishop as a priest since bishops are also priests. We also see the distinction between bishops and priests early in the church fathers

The idea of "elders, who together as a group ruled individual churches" as contradicting bishops and priests is fallacious. In the New Testament era, the Church was small and dispersed, so the diocese and the parish would have been equivalent. Secondly, a diocese can have multiple bishops. Even today the Diocese of Rome has multiple bishops beside Francis.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Rome

Having multiple bishops, priests elders or whatever word you use does not mean that they are all equal in authority. Pope Francis is the chief bishop of Rome and the other bishops, while still his brother bishops, are auxiliary bishops.

That's a false dilemma. Someone who is orthodox does not become a bishop just by being orthodox. They have to be ordained a bishop. A bishop that becomes a heretic loses his jurisdiction as a Catholic bishop although he still retains holy orders.

It's a big assumption to say that no matters of faith are taught symbolically in Scripture. If that were so, then the book of Revelation (which as you say is full of allegory) could not teach much of anything, and you would be forced to discard it as Luther did. Further, the Bible never claims to be the only source of our doctrine, and it's a big assumption to assume that it is. The early Church (including in the first century) didn't treat Scripture as such.

That's a big jump. What he's saying is that constructing a religion from scratch based entirely on our personal interpretation of source documents is going to result in radically divergent opinions about how that religion should work. And that is not obvious enough from common sense, we have proof from the Protestants interpreting the same Bible into 30,000 Protestant denominations.

Then it isn't a succession of episcopal office but priestly mark.
The list of papal succession is anachronistic and self contradictory. For example, it counts Alexander VI, but he titled himself sextus on account of Alexander V, who was from the line of Pisa, and is titled an antipope.
As I said, that is an unfalsifiable empty claim.
No, it's just a logical look at history.
No, I'm letting the text speak for itself. There is never any distinction made between overseers and elders, and certainly none within the office. One must read the later development of monoepiscopacy into the New Testament to have it there (which, of course you do, since if Jesus did not establish bishops, all the claims of Rome are false).
As you just said, it meant elder. Presbyteros attained the meaning 'priest' centuries after the New Testament with the evolution of a Christian priesthood. Christians called their clerics elders, so when they came to see them as priests, elder came to mean priest.
Yes, but the former is not used in reference to a Christian office (hiereus is used only of Jesus, or the Jewish priests, or pagan priests), and the latter is used synonymously with presbyteros (which also had a non-priestly old covenant backround).
Not seemingly interchangeably, outright interchangeably, i.e. Titus 1:5-7

Well they aren't called priests, and they are absolutely never distinguished. If we derive our ecclesiology from the text instead of looking for ways to fit our ecclesiology into the text it won't matter how compatible our ecclessiology is if it isn't what the scriptures are actually giving us.
Yeah, in the ones where it had already developed, but you're ignoring the handful of fathers where it hadn't, not to mention Jerome, who said in the days of the apostles there was no difference between the two.
Again, it doesn't matter if you can find ways to fit the Roman Catholic hierarchy into the bible, it still has nothing to do with the bible.
But having no distinction between them does
No it isn't, because if the episcopacy is dependent on valid ordination then it is independent of orthodoxy, and they will remain bishops so long as their ordination remains valid, otherwise it wouldn't be dependent on valid ordination.
So holy orders do not make bishops?

One which I did not espouse
You can go ahead and find another source for your theology if you don't want a divine religion. For my part, I want my faith to be based on what God has revealed.
But they did treat it as the only source of revelation
It's the logical meaning of the words.
Is that what he said? I thought he said we need a living (changing) authority (specifically, the papacy) because otherwise we can know nothing objectively. Hence why he says this authority can reject theories and determine the meaning of documents. It makes the pope the foundation of one's epistemology, the final authority to which all else (including the very word of God) is subject and disqualified upon contradiction. What he's saying is that the reason he believes the bible and the early church show a papacy is the papacy tells him to see it.
We certainly don't see that with sola scriptura, since groups which hold to it are the most united of those who claim to be Christian (compare with groups who oppose the principle, such as Romanists, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses).
False witness.

come home (whatever race) man

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How do I lend legitimacy to one's faith in the triune God?

The real issue is what the hell a "church" is, what you think is, what it thinks it is, and why anyone would lend allegiance to it over God and his words.

If someone is Christian then they are part of the only Assembly; if they are anything else before being a Christian, such as catholic or baptist, they likely aren't Christians.

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It comes down to whether you have faith in the word of God or not. If you can't bring yourself to trust that it is telling the truth, you will have nothing left worthy of trusting in. But God cannot lie.

Hebrews 6:13-20
For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself,
Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.
Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:
That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;
Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.

Luke 11:9-13
And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?
Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

Isaiah 45:22-23
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, 1 John 4:1 tells you believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God. As some believe the word of God, and some do not. And Jesus also said ye shall know them by their fruits.

If you believe the word is true, they are out there, they have always been until he returns. Even in times when it may seem like nobody else believes or has any respect for these things, God has yet reserved 7000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

This was a great post. Read it whole