Blessed Sunday
I wanted to share this message before you watch the video. It might be another point but still related, and all these claims come from one source.
If it is said that doctrines such as baptism, the Eucharist, the priesthood, and church tradition are not part of the apostolic faith, but rather errors and deviations that entered the Church at an early stage, then there are historical questions that cannot be ignored:
When did this deviation happen?
Who objected to it at the time?
Where are the documents that recorded this objection?
Where are the communities that preserved the correct teaching throughout the centuries?
If the Church misunderstood baptism, the Eucharist, the priesthood, or church tradition, then where is the historical evidence showing the existence of a Christian stream that preserved the original faith against this alleged deviation?
When a historian studies the early centuries, they do not find a historical vacuum. Rather, they find churches spread across Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Rome, and North Africa. They find the letters of the Fathers, their homilies, commentaries, and writings, and among them they find broad agreement on foundational matters such as baptism, the Eucharist, episcopacy, and apostolic tradition.
There may be differences in certain rites or theological formulations, but the overall picture remains remarkably consistent across geographically distant regions and different cultures.
Therefore, the question is not: Can individuals or groups make mistakes? No one denies that.
Rather, the question is: Is it reasonable to claim that the apostolic faith disappeared from the churches known in history, from the writings of the Fathers, from the liturgies, and from the councils, and then reappeared centuries later without leaving a continuous historical chain transmitting it from one generation to another?
This does not mean that everything ancient is necessarily correct, nor that truth is measured by the number of its followers. But any historical claim that the true apostolic faith disappeared for many centuries and then later re-emerged is required to provide historical evidence for that claim.
The antiquity of an idea alone does not prove its truth. But whoever claims that the faith of the early Church was radically different from what is witnessed by early Christian sources cannot simply reject what exists in history; they must answer:
Where was this faith throughout those centuries?
Who carried it?
Where were its churches?
Where are its writings?
And where are its traces in history?
Here in the video shared his Holiness Pope Shenouda III false ideas of Protestants
In the Coptic Orthodox Church, Christian knowledge is received through the life of the Church as a whole, not through Scripture alone in isolation. Its main sources are Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, the teachings of the Church Fathers, the Ecumenical Councils, the Divine Liturgy, the lives of the saints, and the apostolic teaching authority of the Church. These are not separate or competing authorities, but one unified apostolic faith handed down from generation to generation. The Bible is central, yet it is read and understood within the Church that preserved it. Through worship, doctrine, prayer, and holy living, the Church continues to guard and transmit the truth revealed in Christ. AI translated from his holiness pope shenouda III from original Arabic
#PopeShenouda #Copticfaith