In Christianity, the Great Apostasy is the notion that mainstream Christian Churches have fallen away from the faith founded by Jesus and promulgated through his Twelve Apostles.
A belief in a Great Apostasy has been characteristic of the Restorationist tradition of Christianity, which includes unrelated groups emerging after the Second Great Awakening, such as the Christadelphians, Swedenborgians, Non-Denominational, Latter Day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals, and Iglesia ni Cristo. These groups hold that traditional Christianity, represented by Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy, has fallen into error and thus, the true faith needs to be restored.
The term has been used to describe the perceived fallen state of traditional Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, sometimes claiming that it changed the doctrines of the early church and allowed traditional Greco-Roman culture (i.e., Greco-Roman mysteries, deities of solar monism such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, pagan festivals and Mithraic sun worship and idol worship) into the Church on its own perception of authority. Because it made these changes using claims of tradition and not from scripture, the Church – in the opinion of those adhering to this concept – has fallen into apostasy. A major thread of this perception is the suggestion that, to attract and convert people to Christianity, the Church in Rome incorporated pagan beliefs and practices within the Christian religion, mostly Graeco-Roman rituals, mysteries, and festivals.Socrates, Church History, 5.22, in
The term is derived from the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which the Apostle Paul (or someone writing as Paul) informs the Christians of Thessalonica that a great apostasy must occur before the return of Christ, when "the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction" (chapter ). The Catholic Church, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, as well as Dispensationalists, have interpreted this chapter as referring to a future falling-away, during the reign of the Antichrist at the end of time.
Overview
Some modern scholarsSee Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp. 17, 19–20; Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition, U California Press, Berkeley, 1998. believe that the Christian Church in the early stages picked up pagan oral teachings from Jewish and Hellenistic sources, which formed the basis of a secret oral tradition, which in the 4th century came to be called the disciplina arcani. Mainstream theologians believe it contained liturgical details and certain other pagan traditions which remain a part of some branches of mainstream Christianity (for example, some Catholic theologians thought that the doctrine of transubstantiation was a part of this).G. G. Stroumsa, Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, 2005.Frommann, De Disciplina Arcani in vetere Ecclesia christiana obticuisse fertur, Jena 1833.E. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, London, 1890, Chapter 10. Important esoteric influences on the church were the Christian theologians Clement of Alexandria and Origen, the main figures of the Catechetical School of Alexandria.Jean Danielou, Origen, translated by Walter Mitchell, 1955.
Restorationists teach that the Papacy slowly became corrupted as it strove to attain great dominion and authority, both civil and ecclesiastical."The Council of Chalcedon (415 AD) made the following declaration in Canon 28: 'The Bishop of New Rome (Constantinople) shall enjoy the same honor as the Bishop of Old Rome, for the former possesses the same privileges.'" (Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils, Schroeder, p. 125)."He (Theodore I, bishop of Rome, 642–649 DJR) was the first Pope officially styled 'Sovereign Pontiff,' and the last whom the bishops called 'brother.' The preeminence of the first See and the extension of the Pontifical authority were becoming more necessary in proportion as the Church spread further her conquests." (Darras, Vol. II, p. 232). For example, they say, it reinstated the pagan ceremonies and obligations of the Collegium Pontificum and the position of Pontifex Maximus and created Christian religious orders to replace the ancient Roman ones such as the Vestal Virgins and the flamines. It brought into the church the ancient pagan festivals and made them 'Holy Days'."The church took the pagan philosophy and made it the buckler of faith against the heathen. She took the pagan, Roman Pantheon, temple of all the gods, and made it sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday. She took the pagan Easter and made it the feast we celebrate during this season. Sunday and Easter day are, if we consider their derivation, much the same. In truth, all Sundays are Sundays only because they are a weekly, partial recurrence of Easter day. The pagan Sunday was, in a manner, an unconscious preparation for Easter day. The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom. Balder the beautiful, the White God, the old Scandinavians called him. The sun has worshippers at this hour in Persia and other lands. ...Hence the church in these countries would seem to have said, "Keep that old pagan name. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified." And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus. The sun is a fitting emblem of Jesus. The Fathers often compared Jesus to the sun; as they compared Mary to the moon, the beautiful moon, the beautiful Mary, shedding her mild, beneficent light on the darkness and the night of this world – not light of her own; no Catholic says this; but – light reflected from the sun, Jesus." Source: PASCHALE GAUDIUM, by William L. Gildea, D.D., in The Catholic World, Vol. LVIII., No. 348., March, 1894., published in New York by The Office of the Catholic World., pp. 808–809. Catholics as well as the Reformers pointed to the office of the Papacy as responsible for the fallen state of the church as they considered the conduct of those in power had grown so spiritually or morally corrupt that it was called the Antichrist power by those within as well as outside of the church.Every Reformer, without exception, spoke of the papacy as Antichrist" – R. Allen Anderson, Unfolding the Revelation, p. 137Arnulf Bishop of Orleans (Roman Catholic) "deplored the roman popes as 'monsters of guilt' and declared in a council called by the King of France in 991 AD that the pontiff, clad in purple and gold, was, 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God'" – Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 8 vols., reprint of the 3d (1910) ed. (Grand Rapids Mich.: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co., n.d.).Martin Luther states, "We here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist ...Personally I declare that I owe the Pope no other obedience than that to Antichrist." (Aug. 18, 1520) Taken from The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 2., p. 121 by Froom. (In response to a papal bull [official decree]): "I despise and attack it, as impious, false. ...It is Christ Himself who is condemned therein. ...I rejoice in having to bear such ills for the best of causes. Already I feel greater liberty in my heart; for at last I know that the pope is antichrist, and that his throne is that of Satan himself." – D'Aubigné, b. 6, ch. 9.
Protestant views
Reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin and others disagreed with the papacy's claim of temporal power over all secular governments and the autocratic character of the papal office, and challenged papal authority as a corruption from the early church and questioned the Catholic Church's ability to define Christian practice.See Luther, Smalcald Articles, Article four
Reformed perspective
The defenses of the right belief and worship of the church resided in the bishops, and Protestants theorize that the process of unifying the doctrine of the church also concentrated power into their own hands (see also Ignatius of Antioch, who advocated a powerful bishop), and made their office an instrument of power coveted by ambitious men.John Wesley speaking of the office of the Papacy he said, "He is in an emphatical sense, the Man of Sin, as he increases all manner of sin above measure. And he is, too, properly styled the Son of Perdition, as he has caused the death of numberless multitudes, both of his opposers and followers... He it is...that exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped...claiming the highest power, and highest honour...claiming the prerogatives which belong to God alone." Taken from Antichrist and His Ten Kingdoms by John Wesley, p. 110. They charge that, through ambition and jealousy, the church has been at times, and not very subtly, subverted from carrying out its sacred aim. For the Reformers, the culmination of this gradual corruption was typified, in a concentrated way, in the office of the pope who took on ancient titles such as Pontifex Maximus and supreme power in the church.
Calvin, Luther, and multiple later churches and preachers have held that Scripture points out the Catholic Church as the fallen church of biblical prophecy.1689 London Baptist ConfessionChapter 26: Of the Church. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.Clarke, Adam. Commentary on the Old Testament Vol IV p. 596.
Martin Luther believed and taught that the church had strayed and fallen away from the true teachings of the scripture. He challenged the authority of the pope of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge,Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says, 3 vols., (St. Louis: CPH, 1959), 88, no. 269; M. Reu, Luther and the Scriptures, Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1944, p. 23. and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood.Luther, Martin. Concerning the Ministry (1523), tr. Conrad Bergendoff, in Bergendoff, Conrad (ed.) Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958, 40:18 ff.
Although Lutherans and Calvinists hold that the Ecumenical Councils of the early and medieval church are true expressions of the Christian faith, some assert the councils are at times inconsistent with one another, and err on particular points. The true church, they argue, will be mixed with alien influences and false beliefs, which is necessary in order for these impurities ultimately to be overcome and the truth to be vindicated.
The Westminster Confession of Faith (Calvinist), states:
The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a church on earth, to worship God according to his will.
Dispensationalist perspective