Why Do We Have to Play the Game By THEIR Rules

I don't quite understand why what I am saying is so utterly controversial. Let's forget the whole Secret Mark issue for a moment.

Most scholars study ONE PARTICULAR interpretation of Christianity. It happens to have been passed on to us by the Roman Church and St Irenaeus. Irenaeus claims that he knew Polycarp and Polycarp knew St John and that - at the same time - the Roman See was connected to St. Mark and his tradition and Roman tradition said the same thing.

He also pulls out a number of other witnesses out of his hat for how 'all churches' at 'all times' held 'all the same things' to be true about Christ.

... except of course 'the heresies' who he presents as a jumbled, confused group of wicked people who taught a whole bunch of different things as - of course - they inspired by the wicked Devil instead of the Holy Spirit and the true God of Israel, Jesus Christ and his Father etc.

I am not saying that there shouldn't be some people who study this tradition and this claim. I am not saying that there shouldn't be even 'lots' of people engaged in this research.

But is it too much to have someone tie together all those 'other traditions' who didn't fall under the umbrella of Polycarp's 'St John' and the 'St. Peter' Irenaeus claims always was associated with the Roman See.

For it always seemed odd to me that someone else seemed to identify Antioch as St. Peter's See.

If there really was this united Church as Irenaeus claims how did there end up being TWO thrones associated with the same saint into two of the most prominent Sees in Christianity.

Just imagine that for a moment - two McDonalds restaurants claiming to be Ronald McDonald's original store. Two Disney parks each claiming to be the original founded by Mr. Disney himself.

Or two cities in the same country claiming to be its true capitol.

Call me crazy but this sort of thing has happened time and again in history and it leads to one thing - war.

Yet at Irenaeus' time there is no mention of Antioch any longer being St. Peter's see. What? Did the Antiochenes just give up their claims? And what about their authority? If they claimed to perpetuate the original authority of the head of the Church what about another group of people in another city claiming to be the real See of St. Peter made them realize that they had it all wrong?

I know scholars don't like to 'rock the boat' but there can be only one answer here - Irenaeus had some political backing which so threatened the Antiochenes that they quietly decided NOT to challenge these new claims of Irenaeus.

I have developed this argument time and again at this post and it always goes back to the idea that the wicked Emperor who ruled the Roman Empire at the exact same time as Irenaeus and this 'new See of St. Peter' got off the ground happened to have a beloved mistress who was a Christian who happened to be very much involved in the politics of the Church of Rome.

I think Commodus helped establish Roman Christianity and I have presented a number of posts which support this suspicion.

Now all of these investigations serve as a launch pad to argue that Irenaeus wasn't exactly trying to be truthful when he argued that beyond the Church based in Rome there were all these crazy, confused lunatics disagreeing with one another.

I have endeavored time and time again to demonstrate that there was indeed a basic unity to the Church of St. Mark based in Alexandria which DID NOT and STILL DOES NOT believe that Mark was a subordinate figure to St. Peter.

If you want to keep reading this post I will finally convince you that the 'baptism on behalf of the dead' - the ritual identified in the Secret Gospel of Mark (LGM 1) was the original rival baptism to that promoted by Irenaeus in Rome.

Keep reading my blog and I might even manage to change your mind about the fundamentals to your faith or your inherited presuppositions.

Same thing aren't they?