I have a friend who is a Historian of another religious form I will refrain from offering his name so that the content of what he writes will be the forfront of any discussion that his conclusions generate. I intend to write a rebuttle to his conclusions but before I do I wanted to give you all the opportunity to critique his critique. It is a lengthy post so I am not sure which is the best way to post it.
I was given permission by him to use his name for he stands by his work but prudence tells me to deal with the subject matter.
The copy he sent me is at the bottom of the post as an attachment.
WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY
ALBIGENSIAN CATHARS:
A BROKEN LINK IN THE CHAIN OF BAPTIST SUCCESSIONISM
HISTORY 300
BY *************
Dec. 8th , 2008
ABLIGNESIAN CATHARS:
A BROKEN LINK IN THE CHAIN OF BAPTIST SUCCESSIONISM
Modern followers of the Baptist religion in the United States have asserted for over a century that their religion was not born out of the Reformation, but rather has existed since apostolic times. It is further asserted that although the name “Baptist” is used in modern times, they have been known by other names throughout history; Donatists, Paulicans, Bogamils, Cathars, Albigensians, Waldenese, etc. It is through these names that they have asserted that they are not part of the religious separation of the Reformation, but rather a parallel religion that rivals Roman Catholicism in tracing its Christian belief back to apostolic times. Baptists assert a constant “successionism.”
Successionism is part of the Baptist ecclesiology known as “Landmarkism”. A doctrinaire ecclesiology started in the 1850’s by J.R. Graves. Landmark successionism was reinforced when Graves published A Concise History of Baptists written by G.H. Orchard in 1855. This history gave way to more historical pamphlets and books written by other Landmarkers, most notable J.M. Carrol’s pamphlet, The Trail of Blood which is still in circulation today. One of the common factors in this successionism has been the assertion that the 11th century heretics, the Albigensians, were in fact proto-Baptists. That the reason for the inquisition and coinciding crusade against them in southern France was due to the fact that they were proto-Baptists and the Roman Catholic Church, being corrupted, attempted to eliminate them in order to suppress what Baptists believe to be the correct practice of Christianity.
Were the Albigensians a link in the chain of successionism? To answer this we must look at the practices and doctrine of the Baptists as defined by the proponents of Landmarkism and compare them with the doctrine and practices of the Albigensians.
I
“Landmarkism” is an ecclesiology that supports the major premise of the sole validity of the Baptist churches. Through this ecclesiology, Landmarkers assert that they are not a product of the Reformation, but rather a parallel religion that did not derive from Roman Catholicism as other Protestant religions did. The name is derived from the title J.R. Graves gave to an essay, in 1855, of J.M. Pendleton’s entitled An Old Landmark Reset.
J.R. Graves is considered the most prominent advocate of the Landmark movement. A publisher in Memphis, Tennessee, Graves used his position and publications to attempt to reform the Baptist churches and re-establish the practice of Baptists refusing to recognize non-Baptist ministers. Along with A.C. Dayton and J.M. Pendelton, Graves formed what Baptists have considered the “The Great Triumvirate” of the Baptist churches.
The basic tenants of the Landmark movement mirror most modern Protestant movements. First is the “Believers Baptism,” in sharp contrast to “Infant Baptism” practiced by Roman Catholicism. Believers Baptism contends that only those who are capable of making a conscious choice to follow “Christ’s teachings” are truly able to either accept or decline baptism. Further, Landmarkers asserted that there were only two basic beliefs regarding baptism: (1) baptism is for the remission of sins, and (2) baptism is an expression of obedience towards salvation, death, burial and resurrection. Graves asserted that no other religious organization practiced baptism by “Immersion”, and therefore those religious organizations did not perform valid baptisms.
The Second tenant is “Trinitarianism”, the religious doctrine asserting the divinity of Christ established at the Council of Nicea in523 A.D. This doctrine created at an ecumenical council, to combat the Arian Heresy, is the basis of most Christian doctrine. It asserts that Christ was fully man and fully divine. The council declared that although Christ was born man, that being of God also made him fully divine. That Christ was of the same essence as God. That he shared the same substance as God and the Holy Spirit. This was defined as Homoousian to patri (The same substance as the father).
Third of Landmark Baptists is the belief in the Divine inspiration and the Canons of the Bible. This includes the New Testament as well as the Old Testament. Although this is similar to Roman Catholicism, it differs in the number of Books in the Old Testament that are considered “Divinely Inspired”. The Baptists accept the Protestant version based upon the King James Bible that claims that certain books of the Old Testament are apocrypha.
The final key belief is that each church was egalitarian. Each church from apostolic time is totally independent, and that no hierarchy exists. The head of the church was Christ himself, and that there was no need for a human patriarch.
It was this fourth belief was the basis of the successionism argument: “To deny the continuous existence of Christ’s church (kingdom) is, implicitly, to deny Christ, and to trust Christ as a trustworthy savior is, implicitly, to believe in the continuous existence of His Church.” This tenant is the belief that in order for the church to be a true Christian church, it must have historical succession dating back to apostolic times. To establish the validity of the assertion two methods were used: (1) proof by definition, and (2) proof by history.
Proof by definition involved looking at various historical religious communities and drawing conclusions based upon practices and doctrines of those communities and how they mirrored the modern Baptist ecclesiology. As Graves stated in his polemic writing Old Landmarksim:
Nor do we admit the claim of the “Liberals” upon us, to prove the continuous existence of the church, of which we are a member, or which baptized us, in order to prove our doctrine of church succession….When the Infidel can prove, by incontestable [sic] historical facts, that his kingdom has been broken and removed one year, one day, or ore hour from the earth, then we surrender our Bible with our position.
In 1855, Graves published A Concise History of Baptists written by G.H. Orchard. This text was written by Orchard to support a claim he made in 1823, “that from the days of John the Baptist, until now…. our denomination had had an existence.”
Unable to find any historical text that would support his thesis, Orchard “began to read and make ;extracts from authors on the subject of my investigation’ namely,’ the views of the different parties’ or denominations. After some years of reading, ‘ I resolved’ he said, ‘ on throwing my materials into chronological order, to exhibit the feature of a connected history’” Graves took this step further by asserting that any religious group persecuted since the “great apostasy of the Roman Catholic Church” would have been proto-Baptists and therefore links in the chain of successionism. As Graves claimed, “That not in one country alone, but in many kingdoms, successions of Baptist communities have come down to us from the apostles, all striped and scarred and blood covered.” This was summarized as the term “Trail of Blood”. The Baptists have been called by various names throughout the ages, and that these groups were proto-Baptists. Such “nicknames” include: Cathari, Novatianists, Donatists, Paulicians, Acephali, Paterines, Petrobrusians, Henicians, Arnoldists, Albigenses, Waldenses, Lollards, Anabaptists, and Mennonites.
The term “Trail of Blood” coined by Graves would become the title of a pamphlet ( and later text) written by J.M. Carroll, a Baptist minister from Texas, in 1931. Carroll’s works would become far more popular than Graves. Carroll’s work can be summarized as an extension and scholarly modification to the successionism issue. The basis of the text is Carroll’s lectures given on the issue of Baptist successionism and he even provides illustrations in the form of a “graph” that follows “The Trail of Blood”. However, it does not deviate from the standard Landmark successionism view. It claims the same chain of successionism that Graves and Orchard established and is probably the best known work of Baptist successionism.
Carroll follows the methodology of Graves and Orchard by using quotations from non-Baptist authors. This could be attributed to Graves’ reasoning on non-Baptist writers:
[They] certainly could have no objects, save fealty to the truth of history, to pen a line favorable to Baptists, and no motive but scholarly honesty, to concede to Baptists a church existence far anterior to their own, and that of the Catholic.
It would be conceded by any judge or jury that my case was an incontestable one, should I sustain it, beyond a doubt, by the witnesses of my opponent!”
However, many of the quotes that Graves and Carroll used are taken out of context. In addition, Carroll cited in his 1931 work a quotation of Cardinal Hosius Stansilaus from a supposed work by the Cardinal “Apud Omnia” in which the Cardinal allegedly wrote that the Baptists had been in existence for at least 500 years before the Council of Trent. The Cardinal never created such a work, and the quote cannot be found in any of his published works.
It is through this methodology that Orchard, Graves, and Carroll started declaring the Albigensian to be proto-Baptists. The Albigensians were persecuted by the Catholic Church and therefore, Graves concluded, they became declared heretics for practicing a pure form of Christianity that the Catholic Church had forsaken when it became corrupted.
II
The Albigensians were Cathars who lived in the region of modern day southern France. The Cathari were given different names depending on the region in which they resided. In northern Europe they were called, “Publicans.” In Italy they were called “Patarines.” In some areas they were called “Bulgars” due to their connection with Balkan sects. The Albigensians were named due to an incident where some of the Cathari leadership accepted an invitation to debate the local Catholic clergy in Lombard, near the town of Albi in Languedoc. However, the Albigensians never referred to themselves by the name given to them by their detractors, but rather referred to themselves as the “Good Christians” and referred to followers as “Good Men”.
At first the Albigensians were considered a minor heresy that was not much of a threat to the established religious authority of the Roman Catholicism. However, the movement grew to include members of the nobility of Languedoc who afforded protection to the Albigensians as well as patronage that provided for growth of the movement. In response the Catholic Church instituted an inquisition and later a crusade to eliminate this religious movement and re-establish Catholic supremacy in the area.
The Albigensians were Dualists. In the beginning they were classified as “mitigated dualist.” These mitigated dualists believed in one God, but that God had two sons, Christ and Lucifer. After Lucifer’s fall, he went on to create the Earth out of the Chaos and everything upon it. The material was sole creation of “evil”. In addition, Lucifer then created Adam and Eve. They were given life with the aid of an angel sent by God. After the creation, Lucifer thrust the spirit of the Angel into the body of Adam.
After contact with Bogamils, a dualist sect from the Balkans, the Albigensians were almost totally converted to “absolute dualism”. The ecclesiology of this movement claimed that Lucifer was not God’s son, but rather a parallel God whose domain was “evil”. The Old Testament was cited as examples of an evil God at work. Along with mitigated Dualists, the Albigensians clearly rejected the Old Testament and also asserted that Judaism was a creation of the evil God.
In a debate held in 1165, the Bishop of Albi, along with Church representative and lay authorities, debated with a spokesman of the Albigensian sect at Lombars.:
In the first instance, the bishop of Lodeve, commanded thereto by the bishop of Albi and his assessors, asked those who chose to be called Good Men whether they accepted the law in Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Old Testament and the doctors of the New Testament. Before the whole assemblage they replied that they did not accept the law of Moses, nor the prophets, nor the Psalms, nor the Old Testament, but only the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, the seven canonical Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the apocalypse.
The absolute dualists asserted that angelic beings had triple constitution: body soul and spirit. After “the Fall” of Lucifer, some of those beings who were cast out with Lucifer had their souls imprisoned in corporal bodies of mankind. In response, the good God sent an angelic being named Christ down to Earth to redeem the lost beings. Christ never assumed human form, due to the fact that all things material were inherently evil, but rather cast an illusion to human eyes. Absolute dualists also asserted that his mother, Mary, was also an angelic being who preceded him into the material world, and she also never assumed human form.
This absolute dualist belief was upheld by mitigated dualists, however, there were a few that admitted that Mary and Christ had assumed human form, but taught that they abandoned it on ascension to heaven.
The Abligensians were not an egalitarian society. There were “Good Christians”, those who had receive the ritualistic baptism known as the consolamentum, and the non-baptized followers known as the “Good Men”. The Catholics referred to the two classes as the “Perfecti” and the “Believers”.
The Perfecti were the leaders of the movement. Only they were allowed to preach and interpret scripture. Only they were allowed to say “the Lord’s Prayer”. They dressed in absolute black and proselytized in hopes of gaining new converts. They were supported by the believers which enabled them to lead quasi-ascetic lives. They formed the Hierarchy of the movement which mirrored Catholicism in hierarchal structure with Bishops established by a special repetition of the consolamentum.
The believers made up the majority of the movements population, believing that salvation was only achievable through the consolamentum. Most believers chose to wait until death to receive the consolamentum. The nobility of Languedoc who protected the Albigensians were believers. No charges brought before the Inquisition were able to prove otherwise.
The consolamentum was a baptism ceremony that elevated a Believer to the status of Perfecti. The Albigensians believed that water being of the material world poisoned the ceremony and made it invalid. Instead, the consolamentum was a sacramental ceremony using the “imposition of hands”.
In the Albigensian baptismal ceremony, the candidate would be called into the middle of a large gathering of Albigensians in which the ranking Perfecti would utter long prayers, with the Lord ’s prayer being pronounced several times. The Perfecti would instruct the candidate on the tenants and customs he had to observe. The Perfecti then asked the Candidate if he was willing to accept this. Once the candidate answered affirmatively, the gathering would close upon the candidate each putting their right hand on the believer shoulders while the Perfecti would hold the Gospel above his head. After repeating the Lord’s prayer seven times, (which only the Perfecti were allowed to do) the Perfecti would then read from the Gospel of John.
With this, the candidate was now considered one of the “Good Christians”. Most often this was done on the deathbed, but many chose to become Good Christians and proselytize. The Albigensians considered those who had undergone the consolamentum to be without sin and able then to shed their mortal bodies upon death so that the angelic soul could go to heaven.
Upon receiving the consolamentum, the Good Christian would then dress in black robes to be easily identified. However, following the establishment of the Inquisition and the Crusade, the Perfecti would discard this garb and would only be identified by a black thread worn next to the clothing.
The ascetic lifestyle of the Albigensians was also rigorous. They were prohibited from eating meat, cheese, eggs and milk. Some have asserted that this is in connection with a belief in metempsychosis that was practiced by some Cathar sects. This assertion comes mostly from their opponents, and there is currently not enough evidence to confirm that this was a standard practice or belief among the Albigensians. Confirmed dietary restrictions among the Albigensians, however, include fasting on bread and water three days out of every week.
Physical contact between the sexes was also heavily regulated. Physical touching was avoided as much as possible. It is even asserted that they prohibited marriage and practiced homosexuality. However, a Franciscan monk of the 13th century, James Capelli, called such charges outlandish and false.
For men and women observing the vow and way of life of this sect are in no way soiled by the corruption of debauchery…Actually, the rumor of the fornication which is said to prevail among them is most false…They are wrongfully wounded in popular rumor by many malicious charges of blasphemy from those who say they commit many shameful and horrid acts of which they are innocent.
Although the limitation of physical contact between the sexes was practiced, even Capelli stated that they did this as an act of asceticism and were “most chaste of body”.
III
On June 24th, 1851, at the Cotton Grove convention, J.R. Graves asked the question:
“Can Baptists, consistently with their principles or the Scriptures, recognize, those societies not organized according to the pattern of the Jerusalem Church, but possessing different governments, different officers, a different class of members, different ordinances, doctrines and practices, as churches of Christ?”
The answer was unanimously answered in the negative. It is with three of the above standards that we can approach question of Albigensians being a link in the chain of successionism: (1) class of members, (2) doctrines, and (3) practices.
In the Landmark Baptist tradition, there is an enduring sense of egalitarianism. All members are equal. All can interpret Scripture. All can recite and lead various Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer. Baptism does not endow anyone with a special position in relationship to God.
The Albigensians, however, were very set in a two caste system. Only the Perfecti could Interpret Scripture. Only Perfecti could recite the Lord’s Prayer correctly. Those who had received the consolamentum would find salvation and be able to communicate with God. The Believers were not allowed to Interpret Scripture. They were not allowed to lead anyone in the Lord’s Prayer because the belief was that since they were tainted with the material evil, God would not hear them.
By this comparison one can conclude that Landmark Baptists and Albigensians were in opposition in the area of “class of members”. One might even argue that the Albigensians were closer to Catholicism with its established Priesthood, than with the Baptists. The Albigensians even had bishoprics whereas there is no such establishment in the Baptist religion.
The Trinitarian beliefs of the Landmark Baptist are well documented. They believe that there is only on God, and that He created the Heavens and the Earth. They believe that He alone created Adam in his own image and then created Eve from his rib. They believe that Jesus Christ was born of Mary, became man, was crucified, and rose on the third day for the redemption of mans sin. That it was a second redemption given to man, the first being the Great Deluge. They believe that Baptism and Sola Gratia (Grace Alone) are all that is needed for Salvation. Baptists believe in Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) and that the Old Testament and the New Testament were divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The Albigensians had Dualistic beliefs. Albigensians believed that the world was created by an evil God or angel, that Adam and Eve were created by the evil God and all that was material was in essence evil. The majority of Albigensians believe that Christ did not assume the material form of a man, but rather it was an illusion, that his mother was also not man, but rather another angelic being. That Christ did not share the same substance as the good God. Albigensians believed that the Old Testament and also the Jews were products of the evil God.
In this comparison there is little doubt that the Albigensians were in no way similar to the Landmark Baptists. Dualism and Trinitarianism drastically contrast each other. Whereas Dualism asserts two separate and omnipotent entities, Trinitarianism asserts three entities in one. The doctrines are incompatible.
In the matter of baptism, Baptists believe that the only proper way to baptize someone is through “Immersion”. But, even that is not sufficient. As Graves held about a candidate’s baptism, “Having established the fact that the subject does not profess any private faith he may entertain, but always the faith of the denomination baptizing him.” In addition, Graves asserts that Baptism is in no essential to salvation; rather, “Salvation is essential to baptism.”
The Albigensians clearly believed that baptism was necessary for Salvation. That without the baptism a person was still bound to the evil of the material world and the material body. In addition, Albigensians believed that baptism that involved water would poison the baptism due to the fact that water was a substance of the material world and therefore invalidate the process due to its creation by evil. The only valid baptism was by “the laying of hands”.
As is clearly shown, neither would have recognized the others method of baptism. Not only were the practices different, but the purpose was also different. The Albigensian ceremony removed all previous sin from that person and thus was a necessary step in attaining salvation. The Baptists believe that baptism was in no way essential for salvation, but rather “salvation is essential to baptism.” In addition, the difference in mode would make the Landmarkers even more apt to proclaim the Albigensian ceremony invalid. Graves stated , “The unwarranted substitution of sprinkling for baptism itself invalidates the claim of Pedobaptist Societies to be considered churches of Christ.” This comparison alone is probably the most significant factor that disputes the entire successionism argument. The practices do not allow for the Landmarkers to recognize the practices of the Albigensians as valid nor done with “the right understanding”.
IV
As with all societies in history, the vanquished are unable to correct any assumptions made about them. However, with studious pursuit and diligence, it is possible for later generations to look at a society and determine aspects of the culture. Although the argument of the successionism faction inclusion of Albigensians can be attributed to a zealous, yet uninformed desire, one must understand that the information now available was unknown at the time of the formation of the ideology. To his credit, Graves published what was considered at the time “modern historical methodology.” However, the resources used came from what are now considered biased and incomplete research in modern historical methodology.
Using Graves own methodology of comparison, the assertion of Albigensian Cathars being proto-Baptists is proven false. From the basic doctrine of Dualism to the elaborate baptism ceremony, it is fairly evident that Landmarkers should not consider the Albigensians as a link in the chain of Baptist successionism. The Albigensians do not fit into the standard set by the Landmarkers. As to why they were included at all is a matter outside the scope of this research.
What can be concluded from the research presented is that the Albigensians were not proto-Baptists. Although both sects believe in “Believers Baptism”, the basics of class of members, doctrine, and practices are clearly separate. Therefore, the inclusion of Albigensians as proto-Baptists is incorrect using the methodology presented by Graves. The Albigensians are a broken link in the chain of Baptist successionism.
Albigensian.doc- Attachment contains Bibliography and cite sources.
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