Do the local churches lack historical tradition?
User u/xdPandaPlayz1324 made a comment in another thread about the local churches lacking historical weight or being outside the broader historical scope of Catholicism or Protestantism. I would be curious y'all's thoughts/refutations of his comments and claims.
His comment: "There is a major historical difference between Protestantism ("leaving the catholic church") and movements like Witness Lee’s.
Even though Protestants broke from Rome, they still emerged from the historic Christian tradition that had already existed for over 1500 years. Their theology, canon of Scripture, creeds, understanding of Christ, doctrine of the Trinity, forms of worship, and even the categories through which they argue theology all developed within the broader historical framework of the Catholic Church and the ancient Church before the Reformation.
So while Catholics and Protestants disagree seriously on authority and doctrine, they are still arguing within a shared historical and theological inheritance that traces back to early Christianity itself. There is continuity there, even through schism. If the Catholic Church wasn't the true church, then the protestants that split from it wouldn't be true either.
Witness Lee’s movement is fundamentally different in character because it is restorationist. It is based on the idea that the true expression of the Church was largely lost and then uniquely recovered through a modern theological system centered around the “local church” and Lee’s interpretations. That makes the movement much more dependent on the authority of a single modern teacher and his framework rather than on a continuous historical tradition carried across centuries of Christian life, debate, councils, liturgy, and theology. We are then faced with dilemna that we have to find out when did we "lose" the expression. I don't think anyone can answer this question as there isn't really any set time period. Mainly because it has never happened.
That is why comparing Catholicism to Witness Lee is not really symmetrical. Catholicism’s exclusivist claims emerge from a Church that sees itself as historically continuous with the earliest Christians and whose doctrines developed organically over nearly 2000 years. Witness Lee’s claims emerge from a modern movement claiming to restore what mainstream Christianity supposedly lost."