Rod Dreher is just getting around to Carl Trueman’s review of Brad Gregory’s Unintended Reformation, a book featured here in a series of posts. The quotations are juicy in a no rocks, peaty, neat sort of way. Both authors observe the singular defect in Roman Catholic apologists — the denial of glaring realities out of commitment to theory or logic or sense of having found it.
First Carl:
The problem here is that the context for the Reformation – the failure of the papal system to reform itself, a failure in itself lethal to notions of papal power and authority – seems to have been forgotten in all of the recent aggressive attacks on scriptural perspicuity. These are all empirical facts and they are all routinely excused, dismissed or simply ignored by Roman Catholic writers. Perspicuity was not the original problem; it was intended as the answer. One can believe it to be an incorrect, incoherent, inadequate answer; but then one must come up with something better – not simply act as if shouting the original problem louder will make everything all right. Such an approach to history and theology is what I call the Emerald City protocol: when defending the great and powerful Oz, one must simply pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Rod adds:
Trueman points out that it’s simply not true that Catholicism today offers a unified doctrinal front in the face of Protestant disarray. That really is true, and something that Protestants who despair of the messes in their own churches don’t see when they idealize Rome. As Trueman points out, the Roman Catholic Church is enormous, and contains within it believers — even priests and theologians — who believe and teach things completely opposed to each other, and even to authoritative Catholic teaching. I have spoken to Catholics in Catholic educational institutions who are afraid to voice public support for Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality for fear of being punished by the Roman Catholic authorities who run those institutions. The institution of the papacy has done little or nothing to arrest this. Maybe there’s not much it can do. The point is, though, that having a Catechism and having a Magisterium presided over by a Pope is no guarantee that your church won’t fall into de facto disarray. Roman Catholicism on the ground in the United States is effectively a Mainline Protestant church.
That is not an argument against Catholic ecclesiology, strictly speaking. But it’s something that Catholics who defend it against Protestantism must account for. And it’s fair to ask why it is that having such a strong hierarchical and doctrinal system has produced at least two generations of American Catholics who don’t know their faith, and who are no different from non-Evangelical Protestants, or non-believers.
Back to Carl for one more shot:
Dr. Gregory sets out to prove that Protestantism is the source of all, or at least many, of the modern world’s ills; but what he actually does is demonstrate in painstaking and compelling detail that medieval Catholicism and the Papacy with which it was inextricably bound up were ultimately inadequate to the task which they set – which they claimed! – for themselves. Reformation Protestantism, if I can use the singular, was one response to this failure, as conciliarism had been a hundred years before. One can dispute the adequacy of such responses; but only by an act of historical denial can one dispute the fact that it was the Papacy which failed.
Thanks to the death of medieval Christendom and to the havoc caused by the Reformation and beyond, Dr Gregory is today free to believe (or not) that Protestantism is an utter failure. Thanks to the printing press, he is also free to express this in a public form. Thanks to the modern world which grew as a response to the failure of Roman Catholicism, he is also free to choose his own solution to the problems of modernity without fear of rack or rope. Yet, having said all that, I for one find it strange indeed that someone would choose as the solution that which was actually the problem in the first place.
When you think about it, denying the mess of history is odd for folks who say Protestants are docetic in their ecclesiology (as in we deny its visibility or physicality). As much as we may spiritualize communion, Protestants have no trouble admitting the errors of our churches. Where we draw the line is with our nations.
Old Life 
Mark Greengrass’ recent “Christendom Destroyed” amply documents the failure of the Medieval Church to maintain its privileged position in the face of the numerous centrifugal forces that gave rise to the crazy quilt of perpetually warring European nation states. Scotus (Gregory’s culprit), Occam, and nominalism don’t rate a reference.
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Nothing written above contradicts anything Bryan has ever claimed and leaves his arguments untouched.
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From a commenter at Dreher’s blog:
The Reformation is when we began to get things right. It is as simple as that. The Reformation led directly to the work of Sir Isaac Newton and as Jacob Bronowski put it so accurately, by the time he was through it no longer mattered what any Pope thought about anything. And it still doesn’t.
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This touched a deep chord (G 9b5, I would imagine). Thanks for posting.
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So an Eastern Orthodox Christian, Protestant Christian, and Roman Catholic Christian walk into a bar..
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D. Hart,
In addition to Trueman’s firm rebuttal of Gregory’s narrative, I would highly recommend this rollicking review written by Columbia’s Mark Lilla. It is probably one most brilliantly acerbic reviews I’ve read. Even a bit Mencken-esque, I dare say.
Here’s a taste of Lilla, in the midst of skewering Gregory’s incessant bemoaning of Western Civ’s destruction, as seen in our present age of Wal-Mart and transsexuals:
This picture of our present will be familiar to anyone who reads the American theocons, left-leaning Radical Orthodoxy figures such as John Milbank, and occasionally Charles Taylor. Whether you find it plausible will probably depend on the kind of day you’re having: it expresses a mood, not an analysis. But unless you do accept it, very little in Gregory’s book will make sense to you, since it is essentially a five-hundred-page connect-the-dots puzzle that begins with the way we supposedly live now and works back to the Big Bang of the Protestant Reformation. Its method is an inverted Whiggism—a Whiggism for depressives.
I highly recommend the rest. Lilla expertly calls out the Roman metanarrative, and does so with the gloves off.
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Seth, I had forgotten that brilliant review. My favorite line, directed at MacIntyre, the most influential of the RC declinists, is “After Virtue is catnip for grumpy souls.” Though most people on the left won’t acknowledge him, Richard Weaver should not be forgotten (though I like to think he meant well.
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I think Evangelical discontent is definitely understandable, and my observation of those friends and acquaintances who have broken with their Evangelical moorings whether to Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, Wittenburg, or Geneva, it is those who have gone to Rome that feel the need to play historical gymnastics in their apologetics. I don’t see this among cradle Catholics, who don’t seem to be bothered by the tensions, or even blatant historical contradictions of their communion. I don’t experience this from even the most staunch EO apologists.
I think it all goes back to what sean has emphasized again and again – Rome is about the Mass, and this is the only truly unifying feature of Roman Catholicism. Roman apologists who want to argue for an internally consistent Rome that corresponds to historical facts are selling a bill of goods. Whenever Catholic apologists, especially the CtC crowd starts going ad fontes by trying to prove the merits of Rome from historical (or theological) sources, their Protestant slip starts showing.
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I hadn’t seen that, Seth. Thanks.
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Trueman’s isn’t as much a review as a counterattack, the well-worn laundry list of Catholicism’s warts. He gives little clue of what Gregory’s book is actually about, that the Reformation spawned not just theological anarchy and schism, but the rise of modernity and its attendant abolition of the transcendent.
Thus, the Reformation has not so much undermined the possibility of a Christian consensus organized around the proper authority of the Catholic Church as it has ushered in a pallid and existentially unsatisfying secularism. Modernity, in its naturalistic myopia and “hyperpluralistic” array of governmentally protected competing and incommensurable claims, has simply failed to provide socially cohesive and engaging ways to ask and answer the Life Questions.
From a better, more principled rebuttal
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/06/the-reformation-wrongly-blamed
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I love that phrase “the abolition of the transcendent.”
Good article, Tom.
“One can, and indeed one should, argue about theological truths. But it is how we Christians argue with one another that may well determine the future of Christianity. “
I think there is a lot of truth in what Radner says here.
Thanks for the link, Tom.
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Thanks for the link, Seth.
Couple of highlights:
But the deeper you delve into this book, the more you begin to feel that you are watching a shadow-puppet play on the wall of some Vatican cave. . .
Hieronymus Bosch must have been high. . .
And that’s how we got from Wittenberg to Wal-Mart. . .
At this point a narcotic haze descends on the book. . .
Yeah, it might be a hatchet job, but if Gregory’s tome is anything like the Called to Confusion dialectic, he deserves it. It’s not that contra the Troll, we’re obsessed with romanism, but why let some good laughs go to waste. Of course the academic bufoons and baboons are offended, but they don’t expect much from the hoi polloi anyway, other than
ignorantimplicit faith, so why disappoint them?LikeLike
Jed, yes and no about the Mass. I was surprised to hear a couple of the participants in the Notre Dame conference raise questions about the Mass and liturgy as means of providing unity to a polarized church. For one fellow (a bishop or priest) the liturgy had become too refined and remote from real life concerns. For the woman on the panel, the pain of seeing only men at the altar was becoming too much to bear.
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vd, t, this was not Trueman’s argument:
That view of the Reformation is actually yours whenever you try to go from Beza to Locke to Jefferson. When will you understand that some Protestants care about Jesus and what he did, and want to get rid of all the clutter that Rome puts in front of Jesus.
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Mrs. W., sure, you’ve got so much transcendence by locating the divine in dead people’s bones.
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Are you saying that prots have a hard time admitting national faults? Is that really true post-colonialism? I realize that evangelicalism in the US tends to be tied up with patriotism in sometimes unhealthy ways, but do you think going overboard on nationalism is generally a protestant weakness? Or am I just misreading you entirely?
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sdb, I was trying to be a tad humorous and admit that Protestants have their issues. And I am serious that outside the bounds of 2k, Protestants take their nations more seriously than their churches. Christian nationalism or civil religion is a serious error. But lots of nostalgia for Israel, holy land, and divine right monarchs.
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I see… that’s what I get for posting before my morning coffee. I agree that nationalism/civil religion is a major problem, I’ve just never thought of it as a distinctly protestant one…are the Irish, Spaniards, and Russians less prone to nationalism than say the Dutch, English, and Germans?
One of my gripes with the kind of historical analysis done by Gregory (and others involved in pushing various forms of western declinism) is that they make what seems to me to be the same mistake made by the folks who wanted to attribute all that is grand and wonderful to the reformation. You take whatever you like about today (or dislike) and you look at a chain of events preceding where we are. Then tell a story going forward about how (for example) the protestant reformation was a causal agent leading us linearly to our global hegemony (fractious state abolishing the transcendent…whatever).
The problem I see is that these stories tend to ignore pretty compelling counter examples. The reformation “caused” secularism…in France and Russia? As we’ve gotten more Catholic in the US, have we grown less secular? Industrial success and wealth can be attributed to the protestant work ethic…in Japan and Singapore? Maybe the sexual revolution unfolding today has a lot less to do with nominalism than the invention of the antibiotics and birth control pills. Perhaps the fracturing of denominations into dozens of competing sects has less to do with ecclesiastical theories and a lot more to do with increased free time, access to information, religious freedom and tolerance, and that american entrepreneurial spirit. This could explain why Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism have developed so many novel forms in the US after remaining relatively stable in other countries.
Maybe economics, politics, and technology don’t explain everything either, but it seems to me that emphasizing the history of ideas at the expense of these other factors is a mistake too. But I’m no historian, so perhaps this is an obvious point and folks like Gregory are more careful about this sort of thing than I am giving them credit for.
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I wonder what brought Gregory back into the foci of the blogosophere. DGH and C.Trueman provided their thoughts years ago when his book came out. I guess it shows Trueman stands the test of time, you gotta hand it to the one who Mortifies Spin with his First Things presence and the diddy at the beginning of his podcast (to say nothing of his and Pruitt’s abuse of poor Mrs. Aimee Byrd, who has a new book (you go girl!)) the guy does make the rounds, and I dont say that just because we root for the same team (read fellow OPCers). Its not like I’m a fan of the Orthodox Presbyterian who runs THIS illustrious blog..(wink).
There I go
Who’s next.
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SDB, great point.
DGH received acclaim for his contribution precisely because of the balance and level of scholarship he brought (so said the WSJ, and I agree). Not easy to do, it shows a scholars breadth of knowledge when he/she can treat the other side with charity as DGH does in his published works.
But when in the combox, man, do his gloves come off 😮
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Notre Dame=College RC. At the end of the day, if you’re practicing, you have the Mass and if you’re really devout you have Mary and the Rosary. These are the ties that bind.
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sdb, nationalism may not be a Protestant problem exclusively. But it is a Protestant problem.
What you say about Gregory being the inverse of the glorifiers of the Reformation is exactly right. The old fashioned RC historiography is anti-Whig. And the papacy fits the bill. While the modern West celebrates the Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment and French Revotion, the papacy stuck in its heels and resisted and condemned them all.
Then came Vat 2.
Doh!
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sean, show me Jesus.
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That was my complaint. Lots of noise and distractions and finally no Jesus-Bultmann
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AB, the continued interest in Gregory’s book may well be because so many of the chattering classes consider pluralism to be an awful development. Just today, thanks to a Real Clear Religion link, I read the following from a PCA writer:
What has the possibility to unite us is the recognition that there is a greater enemy on the horizon. The issue that dwarfs our doctrinal squabbles and our persistent concern of how to treat issues of sexuality and gender is the issue of pluralism. Nothing comes close to that issue in being a challenge to our church’s future. The social stigma that is already attached to us for claiming that “Jesus is the only way” will be magnified many times for our children in a society increasingly willing to identify minority opinions as “bigotry” and “hate speech.” Pluralism will threaten not simply our orthodoxy, but the willingness of many to remain in this church.
http://byfaithonline.com/the-state-of-the-pca/
BTW, in addition to the other threads devoted to Gregory’s book, DGH noted the Lilla review in a thread of its own.
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Sean, no Jesus? Huh? At the recent funeral Mass there was an ascending Jesus doll smack up front and center.
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AdD,
Thanks,
I’ve had Dr. Gregory’s book on my mind since almost the day it came out and getting the callers’ feedback several years ago was interesting, contrasted with DGH’s reviews here at OLTS. I remember looking around amazon in 2012 and it said that book was coming out, so I listened to it using my kindle to read it to me while I drove to work. Never did I think we would still be discussing it here in 2015. Grace and peace.
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The Caller response was of course a huge Amen, but even they couldn’t shy away from a few parting shots for good measure:
AB, you might like the work I cited earlier in the thread, Christendom Destroyed. I have the Kindle version, not sure about audio.
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Dan, I will look into it.
My many thanks. Now to someone else, I’ve posted to much (emoticon).
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PS this trick is how i get any text on my phone (website, kindle, anything) to read to me while i drive. It’s great, and I get through a lot of stuff my busy life as dad, deacon, and daily data churcher doesn’t afford me. but (all about) i digress
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 15, 2015 at 6:45 am | Permalink
vd, t, this was not Trueman’s argument:
“The fact that it is, in its larger structures, a traditional Catholic historical evaluation hardly undermines it. Protestants have their own, more positive version: The Reformation gave us back our consciences, granted us freedom, unleashed reason, and so on. Furthermore, everyone will agree with Gregory that new religious and political identities took hold in Europe after the breakup of Western Christendom, identities that marked a profound reorientation of cultural consciousness.”
That view of the Reformation is actually yours whenever you try to go from Beza to Locke to Jefferson. When will you understand that some Protestants care about Jesus and what he did, and want to get rid of all the clutter that Rome puts in front of Jesus.
I said it was a rebuttal, and a principled one. But Trueman skipped over Gregory’s actual argument and instead used the occasion to attack the Catholic Church, specifically the papacy.
Not a rebuttal. The Protestantism that can only justify itself by attacking Rome is worthless. Gregory did a better job of justifying Protestantism than Trueman did.
Yes, I understand your Jesus-talk, although these incessant attacks on Catholicism show none. It’s not love of Jesus, it’s theological rabies. In fact, that was Ephraim Radner’s trumping argument
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/06/the-reformation-wrongly-blamed
that how Christianity as a whole deals with its theological differences is what’s most important, via the love of Christ, which is not in evidence here.
It’s really worth a read.
Further, I would back Gregory insofar as Protestantism lacks the intellectual resources to fight this creeping materialist anti-transcendent modernity–which is why Thomism and natural law are getting a closer look. “Because Christ said so” may have worked when Protestantism was in charge of America [and to a lesser degree, the Western World], but is now dumbfounded in the face of the onslaught of modern secular “progress.”
As for the infidel Jefferson, I don’t care much; Locke is a more Christian thinker than he’s credited for; as for Beza and liberty, whatever you know you ain’t tellin’, for obvious reasons.
.
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Tom – that how Christianity as a whole deals with its theological differences is what’s most important, via the love of Christ, which is not in evidence here.
Erik – I don’t see you loving Darryl.
Love Darryl.
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Tom – Further, I would back Gregory insofar as Protestantism lacks the intellectual resources to fight this creeping materialist anti-transcendent modernity–which is why Thomism and natural law are getting a closer look. “Because Christ said so” may have worked when Protestantism was in charge of America [and to a lesser degree, the Western World], but is now dumbfounded in the face of the onslaught of modern secular “progress.”
Erik – Someone who doesn’t care what Jesus said is going to care what Thomas Aquinas said?
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vd, t, keep swinging but watch out for those rakes: “Trueman skipped over Gregory’s actual argument and instead used the occasion to attack the Catholic Church, specifically the papacy.”
Trueman’s point, and you should understand this the good historian that you are, is that Gregory (like many RC apologists) fudges the historical record. BG leaves out the very crisis of the papacy in the 14th and 15th centuries that produced any number of calls for reformation.
What’s up with that?
Thomism and natural law getting a closer look? Not among most Roman Catholics. Haven’t you heard? Vat 2 went resourcement and said the church needed a broader philosophical tradition than Thomism.
Double what’s up with that?
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Like his cats most assuredly do. Yo.
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I’ve never met anyone who changed their mind on something as a result of a natural law argument. I’ve seen people become persuaded that Christianity is true or return to church and then use natural law arguments to buttress their newfound convictions, but I’ve never seen NLAs change anyone’s mind.
You know what will change people’s mind about the sexual revolution? The end of antibiotics. When STIs become death sentences and the age of “routine surgery” comes to an end, you will see society re-exert its will to restrain sexual expression. Technology has made consequence-free sex a reality for a lot of people and NLAs aren’t going to change their will (as evidenced by the fact that RCs, where NLAs have some traction, are to the left of prots on matters of sexual ethics).
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Andrew,
Cats are into self-love.
That’s what makes them so great.
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Erik,
Welcome back, brother.
Cordially,
J. Spicoli.RainmanV. StubingAB
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Darryl,
“At the end of the day, if you’re practicing, you have the Mass and if you’re really devout you have Mary and the Rosary.
– sean, show me Jesus.”
Mass – http://www.catholictv.com/mass-prayers-responses along with the gospel and other readings and of course the Eucharist
Looks like Jesus is shown there.
Rosary – prayers involved:
Sign of the Cross, Apostles’ Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Fatima prayer, Hail Holy Queen.
Looks like Jesus is shown
Mysteries to meditate upon:
The Joyful Mysteries
The Annunciation: The Archangel Gabriel “announces” to Mary that she shall conceive the Son of God.
The Visitation: Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist.
The Nativity: Jesus is born.
The Presentation: Mary and Joseph “present” Jesus in the Temple where they meet Simeon.
The Finding in the Temple: After losing Him, Mary and Joseph find young Jesus teaching the Rabbis in the Temple.
The Luminous Mysteries (The Mysteries of Light)
The Baptism in the Jordan: The voice of the Father declares Jesus the beloved Son.
The Wedding at Cana: Christ changes water into wine, his first public miracle.
The Proclamation of the Kingdom: Jesus calls to conversion (cf. Mk 1:15) and forgives the sins of all who draw near to him.
The Transfiguration: The glory of the Godhead shines forth from the face of Christ.
The Institution of the Eucharist: Jesus offers the first Mass at the Last Supper with his apostles, establishing the sacramental foundation for all Christian living.
The Sorrowful Mysteries
The Agony in the Garden: Jesus sweats water and blood while praying the night before his passion.
The Scourging at the Pillar: Pilate has Jesus whipped.
The Crowning with Thorns: Roman soldiers crown Jesus’ head with thorns.
The Carrying of the Cross: Jesus meets His mother and falls three times on the way up Calvary.
The Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross and dies before His mother and His apostle John.
The Glorious Mysteries
The Resurrection: Jesus rises from the dead.
The Ascension: Jesus leaves the Apostles and bodily “ascends” to heaven.
The Descent of the Holy Spirit: The Apostles receive the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire in the upper room with Mary.
The Assumption: Mary is taken bodily–assumed–into heaven by God at the end of her life here on earth.
The Coronation: Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Looks like Jesus is shown
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vd, c, that’s a violation of the second commandment (your first).
You walked right into it.
But how shall they hear without
the Stations of the Crossa preacher?LikeLike
Andy,
Just Andy.
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Clete,
So you would argue that Paul missed the boat in not bringing his puppet show along to the Synagogues?
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 15, 2015 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
vd, t, keep swinging but watch out for those rakes: “Trueman skipped over Gregory’s actual argument and instead used the occasion to attack the Catholic Church, specifically the papacy.”
Trueman’s point, and you should understand this the good historian that you are, is that Gregory (like many RC apologists) fudges the historical record. BG leaves out the very crisis of the papacy in the 14th and 15th centuries that produced any number of calls for reformation.
What’s up with that?
Thomism and natural law getting a closer look? Not among most Roman Catholics. Haven’t you heard? Vat 2 went resourcement and said the church needed a broader philosophical tradition than Thomism.
Double what’s up with that?
a) Proving my point that Trueman simply counterattacked and ignored Gregory’s actual thesis about the Reformation
b) I was referring to Protestantism’s new look at natural law, even your own VanDrunen. But you knew that. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, although I’m starting to think your henchmen are the exception.
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Zrim, proves my point, fake jesus very similar to mythological jesus.
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Erik,
No he preached Christ and the gospel. Just as it is preached in the prayers and readings (that include Paul’s epistles) of every Mass which was my point.
The Rosary isn’t a required devotion – I was just pointing out that it’s silly to say someone who practices it isn’t being “shown Jesus”.
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Cletus van Damme
Posted May 15, 2015 at 4:34 pm | Permalink
Erik,
No he preached Christ and the gospel. Just as it is preached in the prayers and readings (that include Paul’s epistles) of every Mass which was my point.
The Rosary isn’t a required devotion – I was just pointing out that it’s silly to say someone who practices it isn’t being “shown Jesus”.
It’s hard to get the truth past “the anti-Catholic firewall.”
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SDB,
I’ve never met anyone who changed their mind on something as a result of a natural law argument. I’ve seen people become persuaded that Christianity is true or return to church and then use natural law arguments to buttress their newfound convictions, but I’ve never seen NLAs change anyone’s mind.
The older I get, the more I’m convinced that while natural law arguments have some value, they are really insufficient unless you already accept the basic moral framework that natural law seeks to establish. This is what we should expect. People will take natural revelation and twist it into natural law arguments that support what Scripture condemns. People can and do twist natural revelation to make all sorts of deviancy natural and therefore God-approved.
This is why we need Scripture.
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“It’s hard to get the truth past “the anti-Catholic firewall”
You mean the cradle and/or practicing anti-catholic firewall. I understand that you’re unfamiliar.
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Tom,
Calling me a henchman isn’t loving me.
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Tom/Clete,
With all this “showing of Jesus”, why is the biblical literacy of most of the Catholics I’ve known up there with that illiterate guy who hangs out in the library coffee shop setting up drug deals?
He’s not a reader.
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I’ve bought and sold many Catholic Bibles.
Most are in pristine edition with little to no sign of ever having been opened, much less read.
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Robert
Posted May 15, 2015 at 4:49 pm | Permalink
SDB,
I’ve never met anyone who changed their mind on something as a result of a natural law argument. I’ve seen people become persuaded that Christianity is true or return to church and then use natural law arguments to buttress their newfound convictions, but I’ve never seen NLAs change anyone’s mind.
The older I get, the more I’m convinced that while natural law arguments have some value, they are really insufficient unless you already accept the basic moral framework that natural law seeks to establish. This is what we should expect. People will take natural revelation and twist it into natural law arguments that support what Scripture condemns. People can and do twist natural revelation to make all sorts of deviancy natural and therefore God-approved.
This is why we need Scripture.
Not sure that’s fair to valid natural law arguments. If natural law is true, “twisted” arguments claiming to be natural law can be revealed as such.
As for “needing” scripture, the prevailing argument around this blog is that the Bible doesn’t address all the contingencies of life on this mortal coil, so this is the sort of confusion you guys need to settle among yourselves.
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vd, t, sure, if Mel Gibson can believe it (or even Edgardo Mortara — see what I did there?).
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 15, 2015 at 5:04 pm | Permalink
vd, t, sure, if Mel Gibson can believe it (or even Edgardo Mortara — see what I did there?).
I always see through what you’re doing. So do a lot of others.
Erik Charter
Posted May 15, 2015 at 4:55 pm | Permalink
Tom,
Calling me a henchman isn’t loving me.
Tough love. After a brief reformation, you’re returning to your wicked ways, butting into conversations with ad hom drivebys on Darryl’s interlocutors. Sorry to see this.
And with that, I’ve had my say on Trueman’s “review”/attack. If there’s anything actually on topic said, perhaps I’ll have a little more. The Ephraim Radner [an Anglican, I believe] piece is very good, something there for everyone.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/06/the-reformation-wrongly-blamed
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Tom, an article from 3 years ago with one tweet and two facebook likes isn’t moving the hearts and minds of presbyterians. That said, thanks as always for your contributions. You’re a good sport, we like you, you and your dirty words. Downright adorable, yo.
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Seriously, before I was born. Love it. Here’s saturn from my garage last night. May you and I both get the 7 people who read our comment exchange here to click on our youtube link, and thus show up in the statistics.
Andy. Out.
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Tom – Not sure that’s fair to valid natural law arguments. If natural law is true, “twisted” arguments claiming to be natural law can be revealed as such.
Erik – Read the newspaper.
If Bob & Steve want to marry and have kids, who are you to tell them who they can and can’t love?
It’s not “natural”, but it works for them.
Prove it’s wrong without using “Thus Saith the Lord”.
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Tom,
Prove I haven’t loved you.
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Tom,
Was your cinematographer 3’6″?
I think I saw up your nose.
I did like the song, though.
If it’s out there, Andy will track it down.
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Heeeeyyyy, man! Why you gotta be so down on protestantism, Tom?
Here,inhale, I got plenty of cheetos in the pantry, yo.
And exhale.
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AB
Posted May 15, 2015 at 5:45 pm | Permalink
The Cookies – She’s Alright
squelchers
Uploaded on Oct 16, 2009
The Cookies – She’s Alright – 1981
Seriously, before I was born
Works out perfectly. We were ahead of our time. 😉
For your listening and pleasure, one-stop Cookies shopping. The audio-only tracks are actually the best, done at my studio.
http://squelchers.net/Cookies/Cookies.htm
________________________________
Erik Charter
Posted May 15, 2015 at 5:58 pm | Permalink
Tom – Not sure that’s fair to valid natural law arguments. If natural law is true, “twisted” arguments claiming to be natural law can be revealed as such.
Erik – Read the newspaper.
If Bob & Steve want to marry and have kids, who are you to tell them who they can and can’t love?
It’s not “natural”, but it works for them.
Prove it’s wrong without using “Thus Saith the Lord”.
No, dear boy. That’s not what natural law means–what you’re doing is called the “naturalistic” fallacy. You really have to look something up for a change instead of firing off comments at the speed of light. Hint: Try the Witherspoon Institute on this, named after the famous Presbyterian. Learn something, then you can participate at an adult level.
Good to see you’re limiting yourself to only 3 comments in a row per hour. That’s the Old Life spirit!
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Comments open, and only we the reformed protestants get to play moderator of this blog. You, an RC apologist trying to moderate here is like Tim Whatley telling jokes to Jerry, except you haven’t coverted to our ways. At least, not yet..:twisted:
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Tom,
Unless you have a Cliffs Notes version neither I nor the culture is going to buy Natural Law for what ails them.
And I far in the 3 comments rule’s general direction.
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Spell check censored me, but Monty Python fans know what I meant.
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Tom,
Your mistake is that you presume people to be philosophical. They’re not.
Some people can still understand, “live like this and you’re going to hell”.
That’s the biblical message: Repent! And turn to Christ.
It will never be politically palatible.
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Hi Erik,
You should check out Ed Feser on natural law. He has a blog and he has written a couple of books too, in fact his book, The Last Superstition pretty much saved my faith. http://edwardfeser.com/books.html
Bryan Cross, has written an article that may help. Here’s an excerpt:
“Natural law is not based on or derived from divine revelation, and is therefore not based on religion. Our grasp of the natural law can be improved or diminished by the communities in which our moral understanding takes shape. And religion can illumine or distort our perception of the natural law in certain respects and to varying degrees. But even so, we know natural law through the rational capacity we have as human persons. So seeking to conform civil law to the natural law is not necessarily imposing religious beliefs on anyone, even if a truth belonging to the natural law is also believed and taught within one or more religions.”
Here’s the entire article. http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/05/two-questions-about-marriage-and-the-civil-law/
Hey Tom,
I saw that your video, heard your southern accent and then read that you are originally from Florida. I’m from the Fort Walton/Destin area( gulf coast) and have been in California since 1985.
If you are ever in Orange County I would really like to meet you and your wife. I live way out in San Bernardino County but was received into the Church through a parish( Anglican Ordinariate approved by B16) that is for now, located in Irvine.
Oh and if Mrs. Webfoot in in S. Cal, I’d really love to meet her too!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone.
P.S. Greg, you have a very pleasant voice and a respectful and kind demeanor, I’m pleased to know you:)
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AB
Posted May 15, 2015 at 9:55 pm | Permalink
“Good to see you’re limiting yourself to only 3 comments in a row per hour. That’s the Old Life spirit!”
Comments open, and only we the reformed protestants get to play moderator of this blog.
Apparently your “blog discipline” isn’t working. All is as it was before. Double, since you’ve enlisted as one of Darryl’s droogs as well.
It’s nice to see that Erik has undone his schism and come crawling back to Old Life, though. A rarity among Protestants.
To return to the topic [someone has to], natural law, Erik, you claimed to be reading VanDrunen’s book on natural law, but if you were, you clearly didn’t understand a word of it if you repeated the “naturalistic fallacy.” That’s a shame. Perhaps your mind has got too 😈 here at Old Life.
Your inserting yourself into this discussion has completely disrupted it. I was responding to Robert.
Moderate away, Andrew. Rabies theologorum remains the rule among you folks, not the exception.
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“Unless you have a Cliffs Notes version neither I nor the culture is going to buy Natural Law for what ails them”
Or as the cool kids say tl;dr. NLA arguments have no power. NL, our conscience, etc… may accuse but it has no power to reform. Power over sin comes from holy spirit and the battle is not over until we enter that everlasting rest. Sin is restrained by consequences though. Natural law arguments won’t usher in victorian sexual norms, but the collapse of antibiotics might. We aren’t fatter today because we are more gluttonous and don’t get NLAs, we are fat because food is cheaper than dirt. Food was a third of income in the 30’s and a quarter of that now. Go back to 1930’s prices and you’d see people buying into norms about gluttony. Same for other virtues. Create immediate incentives and folks fall mostly in line.
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Tom,
Now you’re definitely not loving me.
I read Van Drunen the longer (and shorter) but have never been overly impressed with Natural Law arguments.
The West is too rich. People can buy their way out of the short term consequences of violating natural law. Long term consequences are another matter, but absent God awakening someone to their sin, people are not long-term thinkers.
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Tom,
Just imagine you, me dgh, and Erik having beer after 18 holes, the nick names we would give each other. Try to have fun, things arent so so bad.
g’night.
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Tom,
Let’s play a game.
I’m a gay man who wants to marry his partner.
You try to talk me out of it using Natural Law alone.
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Tom,
Ps,
I like your music.
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sdb
Posted May 15, 2015 at 11:57 pm | Permalink
“Unless you have a Cliffs Notes version neither I nor the culture is going to buy Natural Law for what ails them”
Or as the cool kids say tl;dr. NLA arguments have no power. NL, our conscience, etc… may accuse but it has no power to reform. Power over sin comes from holy spirit and the battle is not over until we enter that everlasting rest. Sin is restrained by consequences though. Natural law arguments won’t usher in victorian sexual norms, but the collapse of antibiotics might. We aren’t fatter today because we are more gluttonous and don’t get NLAs, we are fat because food is cheaper than dirt. Food was a third of income in the 30’s and a quarter of that now. Go back to 1930’s prices and you’d see people buying into norms about gluttony. Same for other virtues. Create immediate incentives and folks fall mostly in line.
Actually, natural law claims to be good for man, and subject to proof in the real world, for the natural law does not claim to be a “special revelation” from God like scripture, but a “general revelation” of His will in the fabric of nature [esp human nature] itself.
Re sex, the strongest argument isn’t necessarily that homosexuality will kill you [although it’s clinically contraindicated]
http://catholiceducation.org/en/marriage-and-family/sexuality/the-health-risks-of-gay-sex.html
but that a properly ordered sex life is the best life for human beings–and certainly their children!
As for pooh-poohing natural law’s effect on the “culture,” forget the general “culture” for the moment— the Bible couldn’t even stop the Episcopalians and the PCUSA from going gay!
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Tom,
My partner and I practice monogamous gay sex and we’ve adopted some unwanted kids who are doing well.
Next argument.
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TVD:
It’s hard to get the truth past “the anti-Catholic firewall.”>>>>>
It is hard, but not impossible. A person has to want to accept the possibility that what he or she has been taught about Catholicism may be wrong.
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Robert:
I’ve never met anyone who changed their mind on something as a result of a natural law argument. >>>>>
Robert, you might be interested in reading this article.
——————————————————–
“Reason led me to acknowledge natural law, which led me to begin rejecting some of my former ways of thinking and acting. Reason alone was enough to lead me to change the direction of my life. Then quite amazingly, natural law and reason working together led me to recognize and acknowledge God’s existence. And once I acknowledged God’s existence, again there was only one reasonable thing to do: I asked Jesus Christ to take the throne of my life, and I began to reject the emptiness of my self-centered ways.”
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/03/14510/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=b6f6ee6726-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-b6f6ee6726-84156489
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Tom,
Scratch that. I perused your link and don’t think I can pull off that roll play.
Let me concede that Natural Law arguments have SOME weight. I think the problem is that a lot of people who hear them are either (1) young, and think they are the exception to the rule, or (2) old and hardened to sin.
How many boomers do you know who have been living according to lies for going on 70 years now? Natural Law is going to wake them up?
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Tom/Mrs.,
Why do both of you assume we reject Catholicism because we misunderstand it?
Should we assume that you reject Reformed theology because you misunderstand it?
What do we misunderstand?
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Susan,
webfoot is a Washingtonian:
I didn’t see Greg on this thread, but I heard from him in the last 8 hours. He continues to do quite well for himself, good guy, not so terrible as his handle suggests.
Who’s next?
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ab, favorite movies, “All the Disney princess movies.”
That explains it.
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Better hope Greg doesn’t see that “Little Miss Sunshine” reference. That film had Steve Carrell playing a suicidal Proust scholar with a porn habit.
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If Mrs. Web foot is really the wife of an evangelical missionary she may have created career problems for him…
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MW needs to teach TVD to Let it go..Dont hold back any mooorrrreee!.
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Tom,
If natural law is sufficient to teach us so many things, why the need for an infallible interpreter and a 3000 Q&A Catechism?
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Leave it to Peter Berger to express a more nuanced version of how modernity got us to where we are than the tiresome MacIntyre/Gregory declinist theory:
Secularization theory was not completely mistaken. It does fit some parts of the world better than others (notably western Europe), and some groups (such as an international intelligentsia; I call it the “faculty club culture”). Most of the world today is as religious ever, with powerful religious explosions (such as Evangelical Protestantism and resurgent Islam—respectively through huge numbers of conversions and through very high fertility). Looking at the controversial theory from my present vantage point, I would say that its/our basic mistake was what logicians call the fallacy of pars pro toto—taking the part for the whole. Modernity inevitably generates a powerful secular discourse, without which essential parts of a contemporary society could not exist, first of all those based on science and technology. One cannot fly an airplane on principles of Islamic law nor use the Talmud as a handbook for heart surgery. I have argued that a theory of pluralism should replace the untenable secularization theory. But there are two pluralisms that must be managed politically: Religious pluralisms as commonly understood—several religions co-existing within the same society, and the pluralism of several religious discourses co-existing with the powerful secular discourse. I think that these insights lead to a very useful new paradigm for modernity and religion.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/05/13/desecularization/
Of course, no paradigm can replace the CtC paradigm, but that aside…
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A person has to want to accept the possibility that what he or she has been taught about Catholicism may be wrong.
Ummm, since we were born and raised in the Roman communion, does that mean what Rome taught us about Rome was wrong?
Basically she didn’t teach much, at least in high school compared to grade school – thank you Vat. 2 – and so we learned more once we got out from rude prots and cats that went on in higher Roman education.
Double hmm.
Wait a minute. Does that mean Rome can be both right and wrong? At the same time even?
The
chameleoncomplexio oppositorum can sidestep/duck the scriptural admonition to let your yea, benayyea and nominally forsake the forked tongue syndrome?RudeInterested minds well accustomed to the Jesuitdeceitfulnessdialectic want to know.(Likewise when the official Roman Catechism says the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, where do we get off saying the
rudeprots have beenrudelybeating a straw horse since therudeReformation?)cheers
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AB
Posted May 16, 2015 at 9:37 am | Permalink
Susan,
webfoot is a Washingtonian:
About me
Gender Female
Industry Religion
Occupation Missionary
Location Kingston, Washington, United States
Introduction I travel a lot and meet many people. My desire is to see people, especially children, come to faith in Christ. I love music and have played woodwinds since I was 10 years old. Oboe is my main instrument. I love the oboe.
Interests travel, missions, music, the oboe, and more
Favorite Movies Little Miss Sunshine, Raising Arizona, All the Disney princess movies, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Shrek 1 and 2, The Knight’s Tale, Mrs. Brown, Monster’s Inc., Esperando la carroza, All Cantinflas movies, Robin Hood – Disney cartoon version
Favorite Music classical, Rescue – an a cappella group, Funky – a Christian Reggaeton group, The Cookies-a fine, yet virtually unknown rock group, Mahalia Jackson, Bach’s b minor Mass
Favorite Books The Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, Augustine’s Confessions, On marriage and Family Life – St. John Chrysostom, I Heard the Owl Call my Name, Eagle Feather, The Trumpet of the Swan, Waiting for Snow in Havana, Charity and Its Fruits, Faith in a Hard Ground-G.E.M. Anscombe, Summa Theologica- Saint Thomas Aquinas
I didn’t see Greg on this thread, but I heard from him in the last 8 hours. He continues to do quite well for himself, good guy, not so terrible as his handle suggests.
Who’s next?
D. G. Hart
Posted May 16, 2015 at 9:55 am | Permalink
ab, favorite movies, “All the Disney princess movies.”
That explains it.
That’s not only disgraceful and cheap, both of you, it’s downright creepy stalking her like that. How antinomian.
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Nuh uh. Googling someone to find out who they are?
She lays serious acusations against what I believe.
Prudence dictates we do a little research.
She chose to publish her likes online. There”s no shame on her part, and you dont get to moderate. Step off.
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Bob S
Posted May 16, 2015 at 5:57 pm | Permalink
“A person has to want to accept the possibility that what he or she has been taught about Catholicism may be wrong.”
Ummm, since we were born and raised in the Roman communion, does that mean what Rome taught us about Rome was wrong?
Basically she didn’t teach much, at least in high school compared to grade school – thank you Vat. 2 – and so we learned more once we got out from rude prots and cats that went on in higher Roman education.
That’s actually a fair criticism: Peter Kreeft observes the crisis of catechesis in his
http://chnetwork.org/2011/10/hauled-aboard-the-ark-conversion-story-of-peter-kreeft/
But this does not excuse ex-Catholics for embracing the tenets of Protestantism without learning the tenets of their own faith!
Neither does it excuse Protestant “theological societies”–especially run by accredited scholars–for misrepresenting Catholic doctrine.
Instead of condemning the ignorance of others, I hope some of you will be open to Dr. Kreeft [an accredited scholar, a philosophy prof at Boston College] making you question the possibility of your own ignorance.
If you’re spreading lies about Catholic doctrine, you owe it to the truth [and to God] to stop.
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TVD, even BC agrees:
Tom is the latest Old Life contributor who is shocked — SHOCKED! That posting a bunch of personal information about oneself online doesn’t entail complete privacy.
Never mind that we have no clue who Mrs. Web foot is.
I never have any clue exactly who Tom is grandstanding for.
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Tom,
So you’re ticked that we misrepresent Catholic doctrine that so few lifelong Catholics understand?
Maybe this is a “you” problem as opposed to an “us” problem?
Maybe shift your focus to educating your brothers and sisters.
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Tom,
In your own words, what exactly is the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification? How does a Roman Catholic know with certainty that they are going to heaven when they die?
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AB, not sure why you didn’t just ask me directly, but I do hope you are okay. Don’t mean to make serious accusations against what you believe. Not my intention at all. Like Machen said, if we do not agree, maybe we can at least be friends. I already think you’re my brother. That is a truth claim. You can get there by sola scriptura and the Nicene Creed, or by Scripture and the traditions of the Church, Vatican II, the Nicene Creed, our common humanity, or however. It’s not just sentimentalism with no truth to it.
Bob S., I really don’t know how to respond to what you say. Tom gave you an excellent response. He has a better handle on what your specific concerns are. I was addressing what I said about not knowing what Catholics believe to the Protestants. There are fire walls that keep an understanding of Catholicism out. My opinion, and kind of how I explain my own barriers to understanding that needed to be moved out of the way. You have a whole different set of concerns than I ever did.
Peter Kreeft is excellent.
Thanks, Tom, for your comment. My husband is the best man I know, and what he does he doesn’t do because it was a good career move. We belong to a faith mission, and God does take care of us. It’s not a salaried position. That’s our tradition.
Funny, but my husband just walked in the door and handed me a package from Amazon. Know what it was, guys? Peter J. Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli’s book Handbook of Catholic Apologetics. When I told my husband what it was, he smiled and said , “That should be interesting!”
Susan, as you now know, I live in Kingston, WA. 🙂 Sometimes we get down your way. It would be nice to meet up.
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Mrs.,
How is your husband going to continue as a Prot missionary if you’re a Catholic? Whoever still gives him money should be living in a van down by the river with me.
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Mrs. Webfoot,
I return the sentiment. My self assessment is my spiritual condition is quite healthy, despite the effects of abiding sin.
Be well.
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Erik Charter
Posted May 16, 2015 at 8:33 pm | Permalink
Mrs.,
How is your husband going to continue as a Prot missionary if you’re a Catholic? Whoever still gives him money should be living in a van down by the river with me.
Man, don’t you ever shut up? These are real people’s real lives you’re jerking with.
As for your questions to me, responding to your 80 comments a minute only helps you bury comments people have worked half an hour on. After you’re done apologizing for your thoughtlessness to her, thank Mrs. Webfoot for her kind recommendation of
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Christian-Apologetics-Peter-Kreeft/dp/0830817743
Any further “questions” to her or me without reading that means you’re not sincerely seeking answers, you’re just jerking around.
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Oh, ok. So we must pay the entrance fee when you are here, as RC apologists, seeking answers about the reformed. Makes sense, thanks for clearing it up.
You want to learn about us, we’re free. Kind of like the grace of God.
Love Erik Charter, yo.
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If the two of you and your disruptive and infantile comments disappeared tomorrow, nobody could even tell, except that the blog would be readable. You are the reason Darryl put in a comments limit, not me or Susan or anyone else.
I’ve put up with you jerking on me with a certain amusement, but when you start jerking nice Catholic ladies who are just sincerely sharing their faith, you’re crossing a Christian line bigtime. You love your religion more than you love Jesus, and that’s not how it supposed to be.
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TVD,
That’s sweet, but if I were Susan or Webfoot, I would feel patronized by that comment.
Just sayin’
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Tom, I hope that people read Hauled Aboard the Ark – Conversion Story of Peter Kreeft. It is beautiful. I identified strongly with his story, especially in several parts. For me it wasn’t St. John of the Cross – whose writings are read by many Protestants, even. For me it was St. Thomas Aquinas. No, I do not understand much of it. No matter. Kreeft’s book Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas is helping Aquinas help me understand. He has a way of making very complex ideas accessible to the non-philosopher.
http://chnetwork.org/2011/10/hauled-aboard-the-ark-conversion-story-of-peter-kreeft/
——————————————————————-
Then one summer, on the beach at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I read St. John of the Cross. I did not understand much of it, but I knew, with undeniable certainty, that here was reality, something as massive and positive as a mountain range. I felt as if I had just come out of a small, comfortable cave, in which I had lived all my life, and found that there was an unsuspected world outside of incredible dimensions. Above all, the dimensions were those of holiness, goodness, purity of heart, obedience to the first and greatest commandment, willing God’s will, the one absolute I had discovered, at the age of eight. I was very far from saintly, but that did not prevent me from fascinated admiration from afar; the valley dweller appreciates the height of the mountain more than the dweller on the foothills. I read other Catholic saints and mystics, and discovered the same reality there, however different the style (even St. Thérèse “The Little Flower”!) I felt sure it was the same reality I had learned to love from my parents and teachers, only a far deeper version of it. It did not seem alien and other. It was not another religion but the adult version of my own.
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Tom, and as for loving our religion more than Jesus, have some Machen:
FWIW, Mrs. Web, I appreciated reading your blog. It gave a human face to our conversation, and I think I understand better the importance of Marian doctrine over in our Mark conversation.
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I affirm Mary is the mother of God.
I shared with Tom my notes on this which I read before finding theology blogs.
Old stuff. Same Thing. Different day.
Webfoot is a pleasure to have around, I hope she (read: you webfoot) feel welcome.
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Tom,
If I’m infantile will you at least love me like a baby?
A Prot missionary with a Papist spouse actually gives you a really good opening to give Prots crap.
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Thx for that, Mrs. Webfoot. Kreeft:
There is the sacramental, the transcendent, the mysterious experience of God–the peace that surpasseth understanding–that goes far beyond debating theological errors. The difference between the temple and a mere synagogue, where the Pharisees would debate the fine points of The Law to the point of absurdity.
Theologizing is good, it quiets the restless mind. But as Sproul writes
http://verticallivingministries.com/2012/05/15/r-c-sproul-on-thomas-aquinas-was-he-the-most-brilliant-of-all-the-theologians/
One anecdote about St. Thomas is virtually beyond dispute. Toward the end of his life he had a powerful mystical experience that dramatically affected his work. Again we turn to Maritain for his account of it:
After this experience Thomas Aquinas wrote no more.
When one’s theologizing–straw–becomes more important than God, something is out of whack indeed. Theology is a way to God, but it’s just a means, not an end.
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Tom,
If it takes you & Mrs. Web foot 30 minutes to make a comment, let me give you some advice — think faster.
Me & Andy can have 5 complete conversations in that amount of time.
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Tom,
Yeah, but at least me & Andy haven’t been blocked.
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Erik, that’s Mr. Andy Dufresne, the accountant we accountants all aspire to be like.
Of course, Tom. Jesus himselfs says, He is the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through Him.
Yo.
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Tom,
For all we know “Mrs. Webfoot” is a 47-year-old dude named Butch writing from the Hoboken public library. We owe nothing to someone hiding behind a fake name. Who knows who or what “she” is or if her story is true.
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Erik’s right, see, we can all come clean with our name and who we are and our web presence.
Erik, TVD is the chivalrous protector of Susan and Webfoot. A very interesting turn in the life of OLTS, indeed.
Good times, noodle salad.
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Mrs. Webfoot,
Mystics and revivalists don’t go over well here.
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and with the women in our midst, i must post (click at your own peril)
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Tom,
The same guy who celebrates mystics gives the OPC crap over Terry Gray?
It’s been a week now, how are you coming on reconciling Pius XII with your critique of the OPC?
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Yep, so saith Barth
vd, t, “disgraceful and cheap.”
Hey now.
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Mrs. W. “Then one summer, on the beach at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I read St. John of the Cross. I did not understand much of it, but I knew, with undeniable certainty, that here was reality, something as massive and positive as a mountain range.”
Jesus?
Please keep your bizarre mysticism to the Roman Catholic blogs you frequent. Pretty please.
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Erik, and our avatars don’t keep getting erased…from existence.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 16, 2015 at 10:42 pm | Permalink
vd, t, “disgraceful and cheap.”
Hey now.
I saw what you did there, Hank. 😉
It was disgraceful and cheap, though, Darryl. You should really call off your dogs and at least do your dirty work yourself.
D. G. Hart
Posted May 16, 2015 at 10:48 pm | Permalink
Mrs. W. “Then one summer, on the beach at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, I read St. John of the Cross. I did not understand much of it, but I knew, with undeniable certainty, that here was reality, something as massive and positive as a mountain range.”
Jesus?
Please keep your bizarre mysticism to the Roman Catholic blogs you frequent. Pretty please.
See, it’s much better when you do your own dirty work. Has that genuine Old Life superciliousness that your epigones lack.
Although Mrs. Webfoot was actually talking about Thomas Aquinas, but it looks like you didn’t read that far.
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TVD, your presence here more than makes up for the epigones’ lack of charm.
Never leave us, brah. You and that horrendous avatar.
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Oh, D.G. Hart, you know the beach thing was part of Kreeft’s testimony. I haven’t read St. John of the Cross. I started reading the Summa and had a similar experience. It had to do with the first way, the first of the 5 proofs of the existence of God.
It was a kind of mystical experience, but not unlike the kind of reaction I have when I look at a great work of art or listen to great music like Bach’s Mass in b Minor. Nothing bizarre about that, or Kreeft being amazed at St. John of the Cross.
If you want to know the Jesus part of Kreeft’s testimony you will have to read it for yourself. It’s there.
————–
AB, you know, I am not offended by a friend who calls me a nice Catholic lady. That is a high compliment indeed, and a high standard that I hope to live up to. Nice. Catholic. Lady. Nothing wrong with any of that. Nothing wrong with sharing my faith, either.
..and now I will wish you a good night, AB, and God bless. You too, D.G. Hart. Oh, and Erik, how did you know my real identity? 🙂
Jeff, thank you for reading my blog! It makes for good reading if you are having trouble sleeping.
🙂 Thank you for your kind comment, and as far as the rest of you guys go, you did put a smile on my face and I thank you for that.
God bless us, every one.
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@Susan
I’ve read Feser, but I have never found his work particularly convincing. I hear his books are better than this blogposts, natch, and I’m glad you’ve found them helpful.
@Tom
I understand the claims of Natural Theorists, I just don’t see much evidence of them convincing those not already convinced (anecdotal contradictions not withstanding). Dreher, Millman, and Jacobs had an interesting go around on this topic a while back based on David Bentley Hart’s essay. Here’s Dreher,
Multiple links seem to trigger the spam filters, so here is a link to Millman’s final comment. You can trace the discuss backwards from there if you are so inclined.
As far as mainliners go. I don’t understand what they have to do with anything. Neither embrace Sola Scriptura. I’ll state my anthropological question again… if natural law arguments have such force, why are those formed within the Thomistic tradition (RCs) more liberal on matters sex ethics in the US? Concomitantly, why do countries with larger fractions of RCs have broader support for liberal sexual ethics?
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sdb
Posted May 17, 2015 at 5:44 am | Permalink
@Susan
but I have never found his work particularly convincing…
@Tom
I just don’t see much evidence of them convincing those…
As far as mainliners go. I don’t understand what…
Your personal opinions and observations are noted. They are not debatable, or even discussable. They are patently true, for you.
I’ll state my anthropological question again…
This is a “theological society” blog, not an anthropology blog, although it’s hard to tell when it comes to its attacks on the Catholic Church. Which is a category error. As opposed to Presbyterianism
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/16/church-of-scotland-votes-accept-ministers-same-sex-civil-partnerships
Catholic doctrine is not decided by vote.
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vd, t, “Catholic doctrine is not decided by vote.”
The Nicene Creed was an encyclical?
Trent was a meeting of one?
Papal infallibility at Vatican 1 was a memo?
Wherever you go, RC doctrine comes from council. Councils vote.
Why the hostility to voting? I thought you and David Barton were on the same page.
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I figured out Mrs. Webfoot’s real name: Tokyo Rose.
I
And I’ve got Tom nailed down to either Eddie Haskell, Greg Marmalard, or Doug Niedermeyer.
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Darryl calls off his dogs:
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/5973127
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Tom,
Until you can show us an imprimatur your personal opinions and observations are noted. They are not debatable, or even discussable. They are patently true, for you.
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Webfoot, okay, noted.
Erik, as DGH showed, TVD has posted on this blog as early as 2010, (all about) I am only since September 2012 on the thread with the most comments of all time, and no one beats Zrim or Brad for their tenure. This blog is much better with you around, don’t listen to Tom complaints about yours or my presence (I know you don’t). There’s only one moderator here, and we know what baseball team everyone roots for the moment they show up.
Play ball, and go warriors.
Who’s next?
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Tom,
I sense you have no great affinity for Called to Communion, but as you become “more Catholic” your apologetic grows to resemble theirs more and more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
“With all this theological confusion there just MUST be an infallible interpreter to sort it all out. Certainly Jesus would have given us that.”
You start from your needs and reason to the Catholic Church vs. examining the Motives of Credibility and finding them to be unquestionably true. I have yet to see you wrestle with the MOC at all.
Tell us about how the church has had “wondrous sanctity” throughout history for starters.
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Andy – don’t listen to Tom complaints about yours or my presence (I know you don’t)
Erik – In fact, those complaints motivate me.
One of the things that brought me back is the realization that people who lie, people who betray, and people who annoy weren’t leaving the world just because I left Old Life. They continue to follow you around. Might as well take them on here.
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motivates me too, erik.
your hiatus should show everyone likes you, even TVD and his presence at your blog. as for liars on the internet, my new favorite meme:
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Erik, awkward alert. Maybe you are now to snark what the newly converted junkie is to personal holiness. But instead of wearing your new found piety on your sleeve and pointing out the snarky planks in other’s eyes (while still snarking, ahem), you could just carry on quietly in your new found ways?
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Steve,
Stay grumpy, my friend.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 17, 2015 at 7:33 am | Permalink
vd, t, “Catholic doctrine is not decided by vote.”
The Nicene Creed was an encyclical?
Trent was a meeting of one?
Papal infallibility at Vatican 1 was a memo?
Wherever you go, RC doctrine comes from council. Councils vote.
Actually, you’re correct for a change, although unlike your religion, Catholicism isn’t a representative democracy, and as such, completely subject to the fads of the culture, where the unimaginable is a reality 10 years later.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-17/church-of-scotland-allows-gay-clergy-in-civil-partnerships/6475548
There goes your “parent church.” Here today, gay tomorrow.
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Tom,
You’re right.
The church limits the vote to guys like the Bishop of Bling.
Gold bathroom fixtures or a huge tub?
So many decisions.
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One of the things that brought me back is the realization that people who lie, people who betray, and people who annoy weren’t leaving the world just because I left Old Life. They continue to follow you around. Might as well take them on here.
No need to lie about it EC. You paid a thousand buckaroos, you need to get your money’s worth.
If the two of you and your disruptive and infantile comments disappeared tomorrow, nobody could even tell, except that the blog would be readable. You are the reason Darryl put in a comments limit, not me or Susan or anyone else.
Well, yeah that’s true, Tom. But your comments aren’t so penetrating many times either.
(But hey, I’ll leave if you will. That would be one way to clean up all the combox froth and filth.)
I’ve put up with you jerking on me with a certain amusement, but when you start jerking nice Catholic ladies who are just sincerely sharing their faith, you’re crossing a Christian line bigtime.
Mrs. W is a kindly old soul who is over here patronizing and fronting for the deceiver and accuser of the saints. She may or may not know it, but that’s the beauty of Romanism. Ignorance is the mother of devotion. What else explains her turning a blind eye to what her own catechism says about the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass for the sins of the living and the dead?
Or is it deceitfulness, instead of just being dense?
You love your religion more than you love Jesus, and that’s not how it supposed to be.
Stay
finelytuned/ watch closely.Peter Kreeft observes the crisis of catechesis
(hey if catechism worked for prots at the time of the Reformation, it ought to work for us too. Biblical truth? What’s that?). . .One crucial issue remained to be resolved: Justification by Faith
Alone, the central bone of contention of the Reformationalong with Scripture Alone. Luther was obviously right here: the doctrine is clearly taught in Romans and Galatians. If theRomanCatholic Church teaches “another gospel” of salvation by works, then it teaches fundamental heresy. . . .RomanCatholicism taught that we are saved by faith, by grace, by Christ, however, few Catholics understood this. . .But Kreeft is too crafty for his own good.
The Reformation for the nth time was all about the good news of salvation from sin by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone, taught in Scripture alone to God’s glory alone.
Alone. Not with the magisterium, tradition, the pope, Mary, the saints and the sinner’s good works all thrown into the dubious mix.
Which means Roman Catholics “do in fact believe a whole other religion”; Romanism “teaches fundamental heresy”. So woo hoo, Kreeft is not a liar there.
If you’re spreading lies about
RomanCatholic doctrine, you owe it to the truth [and to God] to stop.Stop what? Connecting the dots? When the blind are leading the blind, somebody ends up in the ditch. Consider the replies to your diatribes and the other parrot judgement roman responses a towtruck.
You’re welcome
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Tom,
The OPC ain’t Dutch. No parent church.
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Bob,
Technically not true. I haven’t been billed yet.
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Bob,
Join me in asking Tom to tell us what the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification is.
It bores him, but it shouldn’t since he’s getting long in the tooth.
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Bob S
Posted May 17, 2015 at 4:52 pm
“If the two of you and your disruptive and infantile comments disappeared tomorrow, nobody could even tell, except that the blog would be readable. You are the reason Darryl put in a comments limit, not me or Susan or anyone else.”
Well, yeah that’s true, Tom.
Let’s leave it there. I have no problem with you.
Whatever you have to discuss with Mrs. Webfoot, do it with her.
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TVD,
If you are going to defend not only her character, but Roman doctrine, which essentially you do, then you are going to get tarred as a papist parrot/tool/fellow traveler, like it or not.
While at first you may have wanted to come off as evenhanded, the record is pretty clear that you are a
papistpartisan like the rest of us.Be honest and don’t lie like the rest of the romanists, wilfully or otherwise please.
cheers
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The over/under on that alliance was about 3 minutes…
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PS
Whatever you have to discuss with Mrs. Webfoot, do it with her.
But that’s just it. She doesn’t want to discuss the central idolatry of the Roman church, the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, which justifies all those who faithfully attend and partake of the mystery.
True, her church only officially admits the second, not its G&N consequences, i.e the first and third members of the thesis.
But then this is prot site, not a rug for romanists to wipe their feet; a prot combox, not a soapbox for papists to spout error unopposed.
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Bob S., I’m just not in tune with your conscience, which is what you use to judge truth. Since I don’t share your conscience, I do not share your analysis of the Catholic Church. I don’t even share your analysis of the Reformed tradition.
Even the OPC modified the WCF to take out the parts about the pope being the antichrist.
I could ask you to provide Scriptural support for the phrase “justification by faith alone”, but then all our heads would explode. Hint: The phrase is in Scripture, but not where you want it to be.
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@Tom Help me out. Is this a theological insight?
Perhaps if I reframe my questions you’ll take a break from refereeing someone else’s blog and condescend to answer my questions?
1) who would think that sects that reject sola scriptura would be swayed by biblical arguments against ssm? Your posting about apostate sects that have now gone gay is a red herring. What I am I missing? Is it that the ecclesiology of the RC church keeps this kind of thing from happening? I’m not so sure that is true across all dioceses and certainly isn’t true on the down low in the seminaries. Modernity, wealth, multiculturalism, consumerism, entrepreneurialism is a challenge for all traditional forms of religion.
2) If natural law has such great persuasive power, why doesn’t it get much traction among RCs? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious why you think NLT is persuasive given the actual beliefs of RC adherents. Several threads back, I asked Ken the same question. He first accused me of making up the stats about US RCs being to the left of the general US population on matters of sexual ethics and RC adherence correlating positively with support for liberal sexual ethics world wide. Then he changed his tune and suggested that it was because “red necks” in the south are all homophobic and not very catholic. You have advocated NLT here quite a bit. I’m really interested in why you find it a promising way forward.
I do not believe that the bible has much to say about political or cultural issues and it is mostly useless to appeal to the bible to convince an unbeliever to reform his behavior. In other words sola scriptura is not an alternative to natural law. Is it that you think there is no alternative to natural law, so for all its faults it is the best we can do?
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Lol.
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Chapter XI
Webfoot, easy. Chapter 11 comes with footnotes:
sdb
Posted May 17, 2015 at 8:11 pm | Permalink
@Tom Help me out. Is this a theological insight?
As for pooh-poohing natural law’s effect on the “culture,” forget the general “culture” for the moment— the Bible couldn’t even stop the Episcopalians and the PCUSA from going gay!
Perhaps if I reframe my questions you’ll take a break from refereeing someone else’s blog and condescend to answer my questions?
1) who would think that sects that reject sola scriptura would be swayed by biblical arguments against ssm? Your posting about apostate sects that have now gone gay is a red herring. What I am I missing? Is it that the ecclesiology of the RC church keeps this kind of thing from happening? I’m not so sure that is true across all dioceses and certainly isn’t true on the down low in the seminaries. Modernity, wealth, multiculturalism, consumerism, entrepreneurialism is a challenge for all traditional forms of religion.
2) If natural law has such great persuasive power, why doesn’t it get much traction among RCs? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious why you think NLT is persuasive given the actual beliefs of RC adherents. Several threads back, I asked Ken the same question. He first accused me of making up the stats about US RCs being to the left of the general US population on matters of sexual ethics and RC adherence correlating positively with support for liberal sexual ethics world wide. Then he changed his tune and suggested that it was because “red necks” in the south are all homophobic and not very catholic. You have advocated NLT here quite a bit. I’m really interested in why you find it a promising way forward.
I do not believe that the bible has much to say about political or cultural issues and it is mostly useless to appeal to the bible to convince an unbeliever to reform his behavior. In other words sola scriptura is not an alternative to natural law. Is it that you think there is no alternative to natural law, so for all its faults it is the best we can do?
Actually you have the gay Protestant churches claiming same-sex marriage is compatible with “love” and “Jesus” and all, and that the Bible doesn’t really mean what it appears to say on the subject.
This is the problem when scripture gets thrown open to “conscience.”
As for the natural law, we might say that when an interpretation of scripture contravenes the natural law, perhaps the interpretation is wrong. Even Calvinists seem to admit there is a natural law.
This seems interesting, Darryl.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30040560?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21106440154981
David VanDrunen, “The Use of Natural Law in early Calvinist Resistance Theory.” Heh heh.
So before you saddle me with deflecting your humbuggery on natural law, why don’t y’all settle this among yourselves first, and then get back to me.
As for you repeating Darryl’s favorite means of attack on the Catholic Church, polling the socio-sexual attitudes of American Catholics, I continue to reject the premise, for reasons given over and over: The people don’t promulgate doctrine, the magisterium does. This is why Catholicism remains intact, and “Protestantism”–even Presbyterianism–is splintered into almost uncountable factions.
Look, I’m sorry Presbyterianism is going to hell in a handbasket, and may not even exist in another 100 or 200 years. In particular, I like Machen and the OPC’s “fundamentalist” attempt to hold the line against modernity and its moral nihilism. I don’t have to embrace your religion to want it to succeed. I’m a Manhattan Declaration type.
Unfortunately, you sola scripturists can’t even use the Bible to hold you together, because the other side of that Reformation coin is “liberty of conscience,” so that means there isn’t just one Bible, there are millions.
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vd, t, you keep claiming something that doesn’t make sense: “The people don’t promulgate doctrine, the magisterium does. This is why Catholicism remains intact, and “Protestantism”–even Presbyterianism–is splintered into almost uncountable factions.”
On the one hand, if the bishops promulgate doctrine, have authority, have charism, why don’t the laity listen? Not sure if you go to church or not now. At one time you said you weren’t. So what is the sound of 5,000 bishops teaching? Could it be the results of the Pew Forum? I mean, if an Ivy League school turned out graduates who couldn’t get into graduate and professional schools, would you not say the university was pretty shabby about teaching? That something was out of whack?
On the other hand, how many bishops actually teach? And if they believe what the magisterium has taught, why aren’t they doing more to address a real deficiency among their students?
Or could it be that teaching just doesn’t matter? That would put many Roman Catholics in the position of indifferent to doctrine. Machen called them doctrinal indifferentists. Not good. That’s how the PCUSA and Church of Scotland got the way they did.
So you can’t keep pointing to the deficiencies of Presbyterians when you won’t allow the same point for Rome. Presbyterian teaching hasn’t changed. Roman Catholic teaching hasn’t changed. Most church members in both communions are seriously deficient in Roman Catholic and Presbyterian teaching respectively.
Asserting the superiority of Rome seems pointless if not downright perverse.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 17, 2015 at 9:27 pm | Permalink
vd, t, you keep claiming something that doesn’t make sense: “The people don’t promulgate doctrine, the magisterium does. This is why Catholicism remains intact, and “Protestantism”–even Presbyterianism–is splintered into almost uncountable factions.”
On the one hand, if the bishops promulgate doctrine, have authority, have charism, why don’t the laity listen?
Did they ever? That’s not the point.
Not sure if you go to church or not now. At one time you said you weren’t. So what is the sound of 5,000 bishops teaching? Could it be the results of the Pew Forum? I mean, if an Ivy League school turned out graduates who couldn’t get into graduate and professional schools, would you not say the university was pretty shabby about teaching? That something was out of whack?
Yes. I’m sorry you missed it, buried under dozens of your henchmen’s disruptions, but I stipulated the crisis of catechesis with SDB just the other day, re Peter Kreeft’s conversion story
http://chnetwork.org/2011/10/hauled-aboard-the-ark-conversion-story-of-peter-kreeft/
So yes, you’re quite right. But that failure is irrelevant to the attempt to delegitimize Catholicism. That is the category error.
On the other hand, how many bishops actually teach? And if they believe what the magisterium has taught, why aren’t they doing more to address a real deficiency among their students?
Or could it be that teaching just doesn’t matter? That would put many Roman Catholics in the position of indifferent to doctrine. Machen called them doctrinal indifferentists. Not good. That’s how the PCUSA and Church of Scotland got the way they did.
Agreed. The difference is that the “indifferentists” have taken over your parent Church of Scotland and the PCUSA, and now they are likely lost to error forever, beyond any hope of reformation.
So you can’t keep pointing to the deficiencies of Presbyterians when you won’t allow the same point for Rome. Presbyterian teaching hasn’t changed. Roman Catholic teaching hasn’t changed. Most church members in both communions are seriously deficient in Roman Catholic and Presbyterian teaching respectively.
Asserting the superiority of Rome seems pointless if not downright perverse.
As for Rome’s “superiority,” it’s more that it meets its own truth claims per Nicene Creed, of being “one” church, and “catholic” [universal]. The Church–the Mass–is the same in Boston or Borneo. “Protestantism,” which represents the other half of Christianity, is “one” or “catholic” only by torturing those concepts beyond any reasonable definition. Even “Presbyterianism” would have trouble making its case to any disinterested observer.
In any religion, church, sect or denomination, that the “faithful” are notoriously unfaithful is a fact of history and of human nature. That is a different category from truth claims. The Golden Calf didn’t make Yahweh a false God, or Moses a false prophet. If the Mormons or the JWs or Mars Hillers poll as more conforming to their sect’s theologies, does that make those theologies true?
Of course not. Polls are useless here in your “theological society,” which is why I continue to object to that premise. According the polls, you’re not Presbyterianism–they are. [But I happen to agree that you are, which is why I waste my time on you and not them. ;-)]
Thx for the substantive reply.
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Wrong. DG Hart wrote the case to glowing reviews.
Otherwise, good comment, TVD. You ar e sounding more like a henchman with every day. Keep up the good work
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Found this Gem of an article just now for our RC interlocutors:
Tom,
You’ve asserted nothing more than that the RCC is a really big denomination (made possible by a 1000 year head start).
Until you wrestle with the Motives of Credibility and prove them one by one you’ll never get beyond that.
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Tom,
You also continue to assert that Darryl judging Rome by its fruit is a category error.
Was Jesus also making a category error when he instructed his followers to judge trees by their fruit?
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How the article I linked to, ends:
AB, thanks for the WCF chapters with their Scriptural proof texts. Just a few things for tonight.
1. Here is the work I did based on the Williamson book. I didn’t make it through the whole book, but I did answer the questions through Chapter XI – 3-6. Then I joined the Catholic Church. Weird, huh? It was a good study. You may be interested. The last part I just copied the answers from the back of the book because I didn’t want to leave that part unfinished.
http://westminsterconfessionoffaithstudy.blogspot.com/search/label/Westminster%20Confession%20of%20Faith%20Study
2. I’m wondering why Matthew 12:36-37 was not included. Maybe it’s there and I didn’t see it. I did skim the passages and read a few, but I may have missed it. Here, Jesus says:
Mt. 12:36-37
I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
3. Then, I am wondering why Paul left out sanctification in this verse. It goes predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. What happened to sanctification?
ROM 8:30
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
4. How is the righteousness of the law fulfilled in us?
Romans 8:4
4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
When I did the study, I used the WCF from 1646 with Scripture proofs. It worked, mostly. I liked the website that I got it from.
Take care, AB, and thanks for the comment.
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Mrs. Webfoot,
I’ll take a look as I’m able. Williamson’s book is indeed the classic primer on WCF.
Even better is this:
www[dot]amazon.com/The-Theology-Westminster-Standards-Theological/dp/1433533111
By Dr. JV Fesko, or this:
www[dot]amazon.com/Justification-Understanding-Classic-Reformed-Doctrine/dp/1596380861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431929887&sr=1-1&keywords=justification+classic+reformed
Just replace the [dot] with a “.” and off you go.
For thoughts on vatican 2 (which i brought up) from this here darryl’s blog, there’s a lot to read. you could start here:
https://oldlife.org/2013/12/genie-bottle/
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vd, t, what you call a category error is actually the Reformation. Rome wasn’t working so Protestants tried to find a work around (specifically the papacy). The rub for you and so many RC apologists is that the papacy but supplies the unity and is responsible for the abuse — as in a teaching authority that gives real unity. The papacy is almost exactly the opposite of what you would imagine if you came up with the doctrine of subsidiarity.
As to the oneness of Rome, can you really take Nicea and leave out holiness and apostolicity? The magisterium wasn’t all that holy in the 15th century (not to mention that unity wasn’t immediately evident). And as much as the teaching of the apostles may be disputed, folks like Luther and Calvin didn’t see the bishops doing a lot of heavy lifting with the apostles.
Category mistake or no, continuing to point to Rome’s unity and Protestantism’s disunity seems like some kind of mistake since it just reassures Roman Catholics that everything is okay when it isn’t.
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Tom,
Even Calvinists seem to admit there is a natural law.
The issue isn’t whether there is a natural law or not. The Reformed affirm general revelation, whether you call it natural law or not, and the ability of human beings to discern right and wrong from it. The issue is whether or not natural law arguments are in themselves sufficient to convince anyone. Paul seems to take a rather dim view of it, at least with regards to matters religious. People suppress the light of natural law that they do have, maybe not in every area, but across the spectrum.
So while we could easily say that deep down all people know that homosexuality, for example, runs contrary to natural law, sinners tend to ignore that and come up with all sorts of arguments in favor of homosexuality based on the natural order. And it isn’t completely self-evident if we depend on natural revelation alone that those arguments are false. If they were, no one would try to make them.
That’s the point about natural law arguments being convincing mainly for those who have already accepted the general theistic, and specifically Christian theistic underpinnings of natural law. If they don’t do that, the only elements of natural law they will find convincing are those that they aren’t consciously suppressing. Natural law arguments tend to convince those who are already convinced.
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No! That is exactly the point. The bishops (i.e., overseers, shepherds, etc…) are primarily about teaching and protecting (spiritually) God’s people. If their teaching isn’t getting across to the laity, that is a big problem. An even bigger problem is that the chaos you see in the RC pews is because people are following their teaching, but their teaching is not inline with sound doctrine. This is why what is going on in the diocese of San Jose is an example of such a big problem. This isn’t just some priest with no teaching authority going off the rails, it is the diocese office saying that chastity isn’t what they are working toward.
As many of us (Darryl, Jeff, and myself) have noted several times now, our goal is not (and never has been) to “delegitimize” the Roman Catholic church. Our goal has been to point out the problem with the Called to Communion project:
1) They point to the M.O.C as providing a sound basis for accepting the truth claims of the RC church. We’ve pointed out that there are serious problems with the conclusions they draw from the mocs – the church isn’t holy and unified. This is the point of highlighting the warts – not to show that protestantism is true, but rather to show that it is not illegitimate to protest.
2) They suggest that sola scriptura is problematic because it has ushered in ecclesiastical chaos, has no (and indeed cannot have a) biblical basis, and undermines certainty. Our response has been more or less that
(a) ecclesiastical chaos reigns in the RCC, so sola scriptura is unlikely the culprit. Further, when other religions move to the US, we see them sprout new sects suggesting that sola scriptura is not the cause.
(b) the biblical basis rests in the example of Christ’s use of the scriptures to judge the tradition that handed down the scriptures.
(c) The question of certainty (and the unity that purportedly follows) is undermined by the understated (by the callers) theological breadth of the RCC and overstated (by the callers) theological breadth of protestants. One must apply just as much discernment (private judgement) to sift through sound and unsound teachers as prots.
3) They claim that prots are in schism because of their ecclesiastical structure. They fail to note more parsimonious explanations for the variety of protestant sects that (mostly) arose in the US during the 19th century. The explosion of Christian sects (and other religious sects) has more to do with political freedom and multiculturalism – people have broken away from the RCC because the church lost its power to stop them. People are continuing to break away too (the RCC in Latin America has shed nearly a third of her members since 1970 and the church is imploding in Ireland and NE US). It is still not clear to me why leaving the RCC to be spiritual but not religious is worse than a group of baptist splitting because one group want to start using the NIV and the other wants to hold on to the KJV. Again, in the US the RCC is hemorrhaging members at a rate comparable to the mainline. I don’t note this to disprove the truth claims of the RCC. The point here is that the ecclesiastical structure of Rome is not superior to prots at holding things together and disseminating her beliefs to the faithful.
4) RC tradition provides a sound foundation for adopting and promulgating Natural Law Theory which is the only hope for a flourishing society. The reality is that her own members don’t even buy it, so it is hard to see how it is going to transform “society”. Note that sola scriptura is not an alternative to NLT (that really is a category mistake).
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To me, the fact is a one world government envisioned by the CTC’s constant refrain of Jesus’ call for unity in John 17 is in some ways commendable, but if their goal is achieved and the 16th century break over justification within Christendom was somehow today poof, gone, many if not all of the problems facing Christ’s church still exist.
The ability for me and my roman catholic neighbor to sing kumbaya together simply doesn’t solve either the problems facing RCs and prots alike, nor the problems we individually face.
So Tom resorts to calling in outside help to gain perspective here on what we write, degenrates to calling us pharasaical, when there is another option out there: maybe a organizational unity isn’t what God has in mind for the Christian religion – are we better divided as we are than unified under one tent? I think so. Is it lamentable I can’t eat the in the Lord’s supper at a catholic mass, nor they in my OPC auditorium? Sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together on a whole host of issues to promote the Gospel. Don’t mistake me here, I’m with Machen, these Roman Catholics can be our friends, very good friends, just not brothers: because make no mistake, Sola Fide, justificaiton, the article, the hinge upon which the entire church turns, is anathema to the Roman Catholic, so again, no Kumbaya.
Tom appears to be wrestling with Genevan truth claims more here in this thread than we’ve seen. Tom, pray for the Christian Religion
Both Bryan Cross and Darryl Hart are smart, give them credit where credit is due. But Bryan is wrong in his vision and approach, and Darryl is not just some guy with an internet connection. Human with frailties he may be, but anyone who spends this much time and doesn’t pick up DGH’s calvinism book is just looking for a good time at someone else’s expense. I don’t get why TVD continues here, although why do any of us. He just appears to be flailing, as JC has noted on several occasions, but we like his presence all the same.
Who’s next?
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sdb, 1) ding
2) ding
3) ding
4) ding
ding ding ding ding
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Robert, how does what you say about natural law and homosexuality apply to other facets of creation and natural law? If you’re saying natural law is insufficient to make arguments against homosexuality then does that also mean natural law is insufficient for questions pertaining to murder and theft? Sorry, but if nobody needs the Bible (or “specifically Christian theistic underpinnings of natural law”) to know theft is wrong then nobody needs it to know that homosexuality is contrary to nature either. If they do, then what’s the point of natural law?
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Zrim,
Good question, and I’m not sure I know the answer. Basically what I am saying is that treating natural law as some neutral thing that we can all use to convince others seems a bit wrong-headed if we suppress it. Even in the examples that you give, there’s no universal agreement as to what constitutes murder and what constitutes theft. Is abortion a violation of natural law? I would say yes, but who is going to be convinced by that argument if they don’t accept certain presuppositions.
This is why, with all due respect, I think that the confidence that some have in the adequacy in natural law alone to govern society seems misplaced. I’m not saying I have the answer or that theonomy is the answer, but it seems a bit naive to believe a natural law argument against murder or abortion or homosexuality or theft is going to be all that convincing when the culture is effective atheist. Biden (not the best example of a deep thinker, I know), a RC, ridiculed Thomas during his SC confirmation hearing for believing in natural law. I myself have had natural law discussions with nonbelievers with no success. That may reflect on my own abilities than anything else, but in any case, I think confidence in running society by natural law is a bit misplaced, at least if you think that such a society has any staying power. Is there an example of a government that has been run entirely by natural law and that doesn’t have a majority population that is at least generally friendly to Christian theism. I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
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Robert, if Muslims and Jews (and others) oppose homosexuality then how can you say one needs specifically Christian theistic underpinnings of natural law to arrive there?
It’s not that natural law is inadequate but the abiding reality of sin within its readers that’s the problem. But if you think that natural law is inadequate then why aren’t the neos and theos right about the need for the Bible for civil life? But reading the Bible is just as subject to the abiding sin within its readers as natural law is. You can’t just say, “Don’t believe my appeals to nature? Well, the Bible settles it. See?” That doesn’t even work among those who have “specifically Christian theistic underpinnings,” i.e. when appealing to the Bible to make Protestant points to Catholics.
Not neutral, common. And just because someone can twist what’s common doesn’t mean things are going neutral. All it means is that someone is twisting what’s clearly revealed in nature. And if they do that, what makes you think they won’t do it when you break out the Bible?
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No, Mrs. W you are not in tune with your own argument.
You have denied that, for all practical purposes, the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead, which is the official position of your adopted church.
And at the same time you are more than happy to chide prots for their egregious misrepresentation of your one true church.
And try to deflect discussion to the real presence or something else, like how rude people are that disagree with you.
IOW since when do you get to contradict the RCCatechism.
You don’t like me disagreeing with it, but you seem to be able to do whatever you want.
Hypocrisy thy name is papist.
In short if you want to get any traction with anybody that has their wits about them, much more happened to grow up in that communion, a little more consistency and honesty when it comes to the propaganda would go a long ways.
Further, the prot “propaganda” has been interacting with roman propaganda for a lot longer than just five minutes ago when you discovered the Emerald City for the first time.
We know, you are excited, but calm down and get a grip on yourself. According to His Holiness, only prots can have private judgement. As a brand new romanist or otherwise, you need to stick to the papal parrot judgement of the RCCatechism’s forked tongue.
While baptism erases all sin 1263, the sacrifice of the mass, the center of the church 1324,1343 needs to be offered for the sins we commit daily 1366,1367, 1414. So if you don’t get baptized and take communion/worship the eucharist 1378, 1478, you don’t get to go to heaven. Unless somebody offers enough masses for you after you are dead and in purgatory 1030, 1371.
Or something like that.
IOW Rome reduces Christianity to a carnal
messmass, ( if you can’t see, taste, feel, hear or smell it, it’s not real or religious enough to suit them). Salvation from sin is boiled down to partaking of the sacrament ex opere from Rome’s pseudo Levitical priests who continue to offer Christ in sacrifices upon their altars.But Christ on the cross said “it is finished”.
I’ll take him for his word over yours or the pope’s, thank you very much.
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Romans 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
Without = by itself, alone
Deeds of the law = good works, sanctification.
This is not that difficult is it, W?
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D.G. Hart:
Rome wasn’t working so Protestants tried to find a work around (specifically the papacy).<<<<
Now, I am not hoping for Protestants to fail. I am certainly not hoping for Catholicism to fail. However, what is the condition of Protestantism at this point in time?
Again, I am not hoping for failure, but Protestantism – by that I mean here those who are in the Reformed tradition -, at least in the US and Europe, is on the ropes. Will the faithful remnant, which is getting smaller and smaller all the time, be able to stay together and stay focused on evangelism and church planting?
I hope that it can, but you must know what a desperate situation groups like yours are in. Just saying “back at ya’” to Catholics is not going to do anything to reform the Reformation.
I appreciate the efforts of guys like Sproul and in the past, Machen.
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Robert, just for the record, Biden has a forked tongue re: natural law:
” Four years ago, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joseph Biden (D-DE), was concerned that another Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, didn’t believe in natural rights. Biden told Bork, “As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the Constitution. . . . My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity.”
Today, Biden is concerned that Thomas does believe in natural law.”
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Mrs. W. your point might — MIGHT — make sense if you lived in 1880s Spain. But you don’t. And in case you missed it, the recent survey conducted by Pew did not bring good news for Roman Catholics (and showed that evangelicals are doing much better). Here’s how one of your pundits put it:
Now you can keep asserting that Roman Catholicism is so much healthier than Protestantism. Those listening to you reserve the right to snicker.
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Romans 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
Without = by itself, alone
Deeds of the law = good works, sanctification.
This is not that difficult is it, W?>>>>>>
What happened to Romans 8:30? My question had to do with sanctification in the Golden Chain. Is there a link missing between justification and glorification?
…and what you say is not that difficult has been a difficulty for Reformed teachers since the time of Luther. You know why, right? If not, I will inform you, but I want to give you a chance to tell me what the contradiction between Scripture and the Reformers has been.
Luther’s original attempt at solving it was an epic fail.
BTW, the Church agrees with justification by faith. She does not even object to adding the word “alone” as long as it is not added to the text of Scripture itself as Luther did with his German translation. The objection has to do with Luther’s particular interpretation, which was something no Christian theologian had ever taught, not even Augustine.
So, taking good works out of Pauline theology of justification does not help when you take into account the whole counsel of Scripture. Making an absolute distinction between justification and sanctification is obviously a problem, no better illustrated than by your Golden Chain.
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No Mrs. W you need to pay attention to your own schtick.
Again.
You talked about heads exploding if anybody tried to prove justification by faith alone from Scripture.
Well, yours just did, if not your argument.
Rom. 8:30?
1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
There ya go.
More on justification being apart from and in complete absence of the good works of obedience to the moral law.
Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
Galatians 3:11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
I know, Rome doesn’t believe anything if even that unless the Bible says it explicitly. No good and necessary consequences for her. So no faith alone and no trinity.
Thanks for sharing.
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mrs. w. “the Church agrees with justification by faith”
Are you pontificating again?
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Enjoying watching the back and forth here, webfoot. Since you like to talk here, and have done some thinking and writing, any thoughts on Filioque? The western church is soooooo correct here, wouldn’t you say? Howz that for prot/cath unity, Boom!
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Well, D.G. Hart, my point was about the condition of Reformed Protestantism. What measures are being taken within the movement to correct errors and bring about greater internal unity?
If you succeed in destroying Catholicism, you will still have yourselves to worry about.
BTW, snickering is not an answer. It is a dodge.
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AB, I agree 100%! …and I did long before I joined the Catholic Church. 🙂
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D. G. Hart, it is not nice to make me smile! 🙂
No, not pontificating. Just proving that I have done my homework. I could refer you to the CCC, but that would take the fun out of your having to look it up yourself.
Now I will take my leave for awhile. Thanks for the nice discussion about important topics. You know I’m just a nice Catholic lady, and a good old soul.
BTW, it is a gorgeous day, here. I hope it is where you live as well. Take care.
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Mrs. w., I serve on session, Christian Ed. Committee, Church Revitalization Committee (presbytery), Christian Education (presbytery). I’m trying.
What are you doing about Roman Catholicism? Have you yet acknowledged its problems and weaknesses? Not that I’m so special, but I point out Reformed Protestantism’s weaknesses all the time. It’s ho Machen’s Warrior Children misbehave.
But you scold us and then pay, pray, and obey?
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Web: What measures are being taken within the movement to correct errors and bring about greater internal unity?
What if those are invisible measures?
Jesus did say to Peter, after all, that “I will build my church” rather than “you will build my church.”
Perhaps the hoped for unity of Eph 4 is something that God does rather than something that we do. Or put another way: If the Spirit must convict men of sin and renew their minds to believe, then is it far-fetched to think that the Spirit must also bring about … wait for it … the unity of the Spirit?
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Mrs. W., please explain why I should look at the catechism when it is not even part of RICA for church members (how could it be at 522 pp?)? Your idea that Rome’s doctrines are what makes Rome tick is exactly what I say about Protestantism. But when I say that you object and say we are divided.
Turn about is fair play.
You want to convert? Fine. Now talk to the people who really need your help. I’m not living in mortal sin. But if your church’s teachings are true, a lot of people are on your side of the Tiber. Don’t make this about sporting scalps. Souls are in jeopardy out there.
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Zrim,
Robert, if Muslims and Jews (and others) oppose homosexuality then how can you say one needs specifically Christian theistic underpinnings of natural law to arrive there?
Well in the specific case of Muslims and Jews, I would say that they are closer to Christian theistic underpinnings than Eastern religions, for example.
It’s not that natural law is inadequate but the abiding reality of sin within its readers that’s the problem.
Okay, that’s a better way to put it.
Not neutral, common. And just because someone can twist what’s common doesn’t mean things are going neutral. All it means is that someone is twisting what’s clearly revealed in nature. And if they do that, what makes you think they won’t do it when you break out the Bible?
My issue isn’t so much that people are twisting, it is this assumption that natural law is sufficient to guarantee a well functioning broadly civil society apart from a shared “worldview.” (I know, a horrible term around these parts at times.) Let’s just look at the U.S., which if anything is becoming less civil and less governable. And we’re supposed to be a country based on natural law (see Constitution and the Declaration). I would argue that part of the problem is that the very worldview assumptions that make natural law a reasonable basis for governing society (ie, theism, specifically a broad Christian theism) are no longer as broadly shared as they once were.
I guess all I’m saying is that natural-law-based 2K is not the cure-all any more than theonomy is. Sin’s going to muck things up very badly either way.
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Webfoot, this morning’s bible devotion had me in Romans 5, consider these words of Holy Writ:
Now, the following quote is from a guy who is unorthodox. However, it was my first encounter of a christian theology outside the fundamentalism I was raised in. I want you (And tom, if you are reading, I believe you are) to consider the word acceptance. What I find is that everyone not of our persuasion ultimately wants the reformed they find here to say, “hey, you know what, we disagree, but you are awwwlllright.” Well, we can only say that so much, first of all, we don’t really know anything about anyone (ok, maybe a little about taste in movies) but we are all just internet strangers. This quote came back to me because the verse above is what Tillich uses to expound his You are Accepted sermon, just know that whatever it is you seek here, you really shouldn’t be looking on the internet for, if you have a faith community that works for you, go there. If you want to chat and feel you have something to prove, by all means, continue. However, I think I saw all this around 18 in my high school class when Tillich was explained to me. There really is nothing new under the sun (eccl 1:9). Take care.
D. G. Hart
Posted May 18, 2015 at 6:28 am | Permalink
vd, t, what you call a category error is actually the Reformation. Rome wasn’t working so Protestants tried to find a work around (specifically the papacy).
Yes, but they replaced it with something that works even less well. Trueman asserts that the medieval papacy was a failure, but the papacy is still ticking along just fine, thank you. OTOH, the Reformation made every man a pope, every man’s conscience his own magisterium, so now instead of one Bible, there are millions.
Forget “Protestantism,” which became so diverse and diffused that it means little more than “not-Catholic.” Presbyterianism can’t even stay coherent, either theologically or ecclesiastically. With its schism upon schisms, it is in no sense even a “church” anymore, let alone a “catholic” one.
That’s a shame, but schism is built into its structure [or lack of one].
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does not sound like the TVD of yesteryear..
I’d be curious for your response on why you hope to be in Hell, TVD. Is that still true?
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What is it with people joining a new church and become a public apologist 5 minutes later? Is that even the least bit wise? They even hid the Apostle Paul away for a time before letting him go public.
I’ve attended a Lutheran Church for a few months now, but I have no plans to become a Lutheran apologist for years, if ever.
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Tom – But the papacy is still ticking along just fine, thank you
Erik – What about Pius XII’s retrograde statements on evolution.
How’s that paper coming?
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On Charlie Rose tonight:
“We conclude with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.”
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Tom – With its schism upon schisms, it is in no sense even a “church” anymore, let alone a “catholic” one.
Erik – Interesting that your church disagrees with you in that they accept our Trinitarian water baptisms.
Has been the case at least since Augustine and the Donatist controversy.
Tom the Donatist?
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 18, 2015 at 6:28 am | Permalink
vd, t, what you call a category error is actually the Reformation. Rome wasn’t working so Protestants tried to find a work around (specifically the papacy).
TVD:
Yes, but they replaced it with something that works even less well. Trueman asserts that the medieval papacy was a failure, but the papacy is still ticking along just fine, thank you. OTOH, the Reformation made every man a pope, every man’s conscience his own magisterium, so now instead of one Bible, there are millions.
Forget “Protestantism,” which became so diverse and diffused that it means little more than “not-Catholic.” Presbyterianism can’t even stay coherent, either theologically or ecclesiastically. With its schism upon schisms, it is in no sense even a “church” anymore, let alone a “catholic” one.
That’s a shame, but schism is built into its structure [or lack of one].<<<<<
D.G. Hart, you are doing your best to help your church stand. I respect you for that, and I will pray for you. Like it or not, you are my brother and I am your sister, and I will gladly put you on my prayer list – that God will guide and help you in all you do.
I agree with Tom, though. He puts into words what I was seeing in Protestantism. It breaks my heart to admit it. No, not everyone will return Home.
Take for example the battles over justification by faith alone. It was all so unnecessary.
…and in my RCIA class we were each given a copy of the CCC and a Catholic Bible and encouraged, even pressured, to read both. Most of the lessons were based on the CCC. We also used the Catholicism series by Fr. Robert Baron and the Symbolon put out by the Augustine Institute.
What am I doing for my Church? All that you accuse me of for now – pray, pay, and obey as God enables me by His Holy Spirit and His gifts.
…and Bob S., seriously? 😉
GOS-NCL out…
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Mrs. Webfoot,
Can we time how long ago you were “seeing that in protestantism” with a stopwatch?
Has your bishop advised you to seek out this new ministry?
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PS
…and I’m writing a Mass. Well, not the words, of course…For unaccompanied solo woodwind.
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vd, t, “the papacy is still ticking along just fine.”
By the same logic, the U.S. republic is ticking along just fine. Glory, glory, hallelujah.
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Mrs. W., why not address Peter Lawler’s concerns? Why don’t you see what he sees? Why constantly change the subject to what you see in Protestantism?
Your silence on the problems in the U.S., not to mention what the German bishops are doing, makes talking to you pointless.
I suggest you pray for your church and all the people living in mortal sin by your church’s teaching. I am a separated brother. I’m good.
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Mrs. Is in the honeymoon phase (or what the Reformed call the cage phase).
See also the movie “Shallow Hal”.
Poor judgment by Tom pointing her here.
Susan is jealous.
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Yes, but they replaced it with something that works even less well. Trueman asserts that the medieval papacy was a failure, but the papacy is still ticking along just fine, thank you.
And romanists are free to disagree and disregard as they please on the ground.
That’s a shame, but schism is built into its structure [or lack of one].
You’re walkin by sight, laddie.
What is it with people joining a new church and become a public apologist 5 minutes later?
Come on, Charter. Where’s the love? Mrs. W. can’t answer the questions and she doesn’t want to.
What’s the big deal?
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Bob,
No idea what that means.
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Bob S
Posted May 18, 2015 at 10:45 pm | Permalink
Yes, but they replaced it with something that works even less well. Trueman asserts that the medieval papacy was a failure, but the papacy is still ticking along just fine, thank you.
And romanists are free to disagree and disregard as they please on the ground.
And presbyterianists don’t merely disagree with their church’s theology, they take over both the church and the theology.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11611563/Church-of-Scotland-plan-for-gay-ministers-offers-possible-template-for-Anglicans.html
Ecclesia semper reformanda.
Damned right. Semper, semper, semper. Simony was corrupt, of course, but its reformation itself became deformation.
The Reformation needs to own Benny Hinn and Peter Popoff and every one of those bastards on that endless list of frauds. “Protestantism” lacks any authority over them: The cure to the corruption of Christianity, of the Catholic Church, of the catholic church, was worse than the disease.
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Tom,
the Reformation owns neither the apostate Roman church – there is no true unity outside of the truth, otherwise known as apostolic doctrine determined by the apostolic NT – nor the anabaptist anarchists aka arminian evangelicals where every man is right in his own eyes.
If that scandalizes you, oh well. There are a lot of things about Jesus that stumbles unbelievers.
But one thing is necessary.
How can a man be justified before God?
W. says by faith with works because “sanctification” is missing from the golden chain of Rom. 8 and “alone” is missing from Rom. 3:28:
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
You want a visible infallible church that shelters
sodomitespedophiles maybe I won’t report you to the Inquisition. The civil magistrate? That’s another story. There’s a reason why my hometown diocese as many others, went bankrupt. It isn’t because “Blessed are the poor”.cheers
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Tom, don’t be a Tellarite:
Tom, the handwriting was on the wall for the PCUSA and the Chruch of Scotland a long time ago. Just like it was for Rome. None of them preach the gospel.
I know, nominally they are supposed to, but for those of you who can’t get past what you can only see, there is no hope.
Rom. 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
The eschaton has not yet been immanentized.
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Bob S
Posted May 19, 2015 at 1:06 am | Permalink
Tom,
the Reformation owns neither the apostate Roman church – there is no true unity outside of the truth, otherwise known as apostolic doctrine determined by the apostolic NT – nor the anabaptist anarchists aka arminian evangelicals where every man is right in his own eyes.
If that scandalizes you, oh well.
The Reformation owns, and is itself, scandalized by all the above.
The Catholic Church must answer for its corruptions, of course, from its simony to its inability to deal with its Lavender Mafia. [Do look that one up.]
But “Protestantism” must answer for all the Elmer Gantrys, Mark Driscolls, not to mention openly gay Presbyterianism.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/gay.marriage.and.the.shaking.of.the.church.in.scotland/54169.htm
True, the dam has broken.
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D.G. Hart:
Mrs. W., why not address Peter Lawler’s concerns? Why don’t you see what he sees? Why constantly change the subject to what you see in Protestantism?>>>>>>
Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, there is a big push in our churches to evangelize. RCIA is part of that. Catholic radio and TV are part of that. Catholic blogs are part of that. Catholic Answers, Word on Fire with Fr. Baron, and so forth. All of this is part of the New Evangelization that Pope St. John Paul II initiated. The CCC is as well. The synod on the family is another part of the New Evangelization. There is a push for people to enter religious orders, too. There are calls to prayer for all of this.
I think that Lawler is trying to get people off their rears and out preaching the Gospel. Good for him! There is a great need. St. John Paul II saw that the Church was in trouble and he took measures to help set her on a better track. She couldn’t keep losing people in such great numbers. There are serious problems, many of which are being addressed.
I don’t know anything about him other than the article you linked to. Don’t know if he has much of a following.
Why change the subject to Protestantism? Good question. I guess I find it sad that Protestants not only oppose the Catholic Church but also one another. The opposition to Catholicism part I get, though I think it’s not so good. It’s the Protestant infighting that is, to me, a tragedy. Don’t know what can be done. I think that Tom is right. It’s a foundational problem. It’s always been this way.
Also, I guess I don’t know why you are so critical of Catholicism, since you are not Catholic. There must be a reason. Is it just because of the Called to Communion group? Are they drawing a lot of people away from your church, so you want people to know that the Catholic Church is not all sweetness and light? If so, I can understand that. If my love for the Church seems over the top, your criticism seems a bit excessive.
Anyway, take care, D.G. Hart. I did the best a kindly old soul can do for now.
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vd, t, “The Reformation needs to own Benny Hinn and Peter Popoff and every one of those bastards on that endless list of frauds.”
But Warren Throckmorton is working on David Barton.
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vd, t, there you go again. Does Rome have to answer for Michael Sean Winters, Richard McBrien, and Garry Wills?
In point of fact, the OPC and PCA have done something about gay Presbyterianism. In case you missed it, we separated from the liberal church as a form of discipline. At least we did something. Your side?
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Mrs. W., as Jeff Cagle explained, I’m a critic of Christians who are triumphalist and I have never seen more triumphalism than since I’ve been reading Roman Catholic sources, from apologists to historians. The Crusades? No problem the Muslims started it. Garry Wills? No problem, he’s not a real Roman Catholic. Immaculate conception of Mary? No problem, it’s what the magisterium says.
All I hear is how superior Rome is. Bryan Cross started it. Well, if that’s your claim, you better match it. Funny thing is, lots of us who aren’t gullible don’t see the superiority, the conservatism, or the intelligence.
If you want to go on with your Roman Catholic life and try to serve God and love your neighbor, fine. But so many converts like you are doing exactly what evangelical converts do — wear it on their sleeve. But at least evangelical converts talk about Jesus.
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Robert, nobody’s saying that “natural law is sufficient to guarantee a well functioning broadly civil society.” There are no such guarantees.
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Gotcha’ D.G. Hart. You prefer the defeatism of Protestantism. Not talk about Jesus? The Church is His body. How can I help but talk about how He has triumphed through her?
Is she perfect? No. In fact, she has apologized for the Crusades, and has done horrific things in the past and probably will in the future. You have no idea what my background is or what I know or don’t know about the Church.
I do know that Protestantism is a bit like playing American football, but without agreed upon rules and everyone is his or her own referee. You just get on the field with a ball and beat one another up and say you are playing the right game. However, no one ever wins, so there is never any reason to claim victory.
Protestantism is not Christ’s body, so there is precious little to be triumphalist about. When Protestants talk about what Christianity has done right – and there is plenty – they usually have to rely heavily on what Catholics have done.
In fact, I did talk about Jesus. I presented 3 Scripture texts and asked questions about them. Your friends spent their time mocking me, mocking the Church, and the texts got buried somewhere.
The Golden Chain has a missing link for Protestants. Let me say it clearly. Protestants accuse Catholics of confusing sanctification with justification. Yet in your Chain, justification is sanctification. …and I can’t blame people for wanting to bury that truth in a mountain of irrelevant comments.
That is a huge problem for you. …and your best known apologist is a Thomist, and should return to the Church, but he can’t. How would he explain it to his followers?
Then there is the little matter of being justified by your words when you stand before Christ. Auburn Ave. people have read it. It’s in the Bible after all, and in Jesus’ own words.
So, I did talk about Jesus. You guys want to talk about other stuff. I get it. You cannot have anyone too happy about their faith. That is a problem for you, both that Protestants would be happy and especially that Catholics would be joyous.
Well, the Apostles in the book of Acts and throughout the whole New Testament seemed happy, even in the face of persecution. They even seemed triumphalist.
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Mrs. W., does it not worry you that many Roman Catholics are living in mortal sin (according to the polls) and your bishops/shepherds are talking more about religious freedom and poverty than they are about the treasury of merits?
In other words, please explain why you take Roman Catholic teaching on salvation (and Protestant departures) so seriously but your bishops do not.
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So, you are asking me why the chaos that is Protestantism bothers me, but the sinfulness of Catholic believers doesn’t bother me? I should be bothered as much by both of them. So, you are more consistent and more righteous in your position than I am in mine. Did I understand you?
You are assuming that I joined the Church mostly because of the chaos of Protestantism. It is this ongoing chaos, with no way to resolve disputes or even to apply any kind of church discipline that showed me it cannot be the true Church expect in the sense that the Catholic Church says – separated brethren.
Since I came to believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church, and that Protestants are really part of her but not in full communion, it was easy to go from there.
I am not saying that there is no goodness, no good works, nothing good in Protestantism. That goodness and those good works are righteous and are done in the love of Christ because of who He is. I could tell you about some amazing Protestants who have gone into very hard places and preached the Gospel and ministered to the orphans and widows, thus practicing true religion. I am not saying that God has abandoned Protestantism and all groups who preach the Gospel and do good works in Jesus’ Name. No, not at all.
I am saying that Protestantism learned all that from our Mother, the Church, the Bride of Christ, the body of Christ. God uses many godly Protestants to extend His kingdom. No doubt about it, and no denying it.
Is Christ’s body pure? Of course not. There are many Christians of all kinds – including many Catholics – who are not living as they should. Do I worry about that? Yes, and no. I will not lose my faith over the sin of another, even if that person bears the title of bishop or evangelist.
Protestants are taught to look at the man and follow him. Oh, I know it is supposed to be all about Jesus, and for many it is. Catholics are taught to look to Christ and follow Him. The man will be flawed, just as all of us are. Christ has no spot or blemish. Catholics are told not to follow the man, but to follow Christ.
What is the purpose of the saints both for Protestants and Catholics? They show us that God’s will for us it to be saints not in name only, but also in reality. The goal of the saints is to be saints, to live saintly lives.
…and on focusing on bishops who are or have been sinful ignores the fact that there are many good, godly bishops in the Church.
You seem to think that because bishops are also sinners like the rest of us, the Church cannot possibly claim infallibility. So, you are fixing your eyes on men an not on Christ, who is able to build His Church, purify her, and present her spotless before His Father.
You are in effect saying that the Holy Spirit cannot keep the body of Christ from doctrinal error. You are also saying that just because the Holy Spirit led the Church in the book of Acts in a direct and infallible way through the decisions of Church leadership, we cannot expect Him to keep doing that in our day. You would say that sure, the Holy Spirit kind of leads, but it is always flawed and full of error.
So you must do that job the Holy Spirit is unable to do without you. Trouble is that Protestants have no way to determine what is and what is not doctrinal error.
So, yes it bothers me that we are not more saintly, even some bishops. It does not shake my faith in the day of Pentecost.
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Mrs. W., “I am saying that Protestantism learned all that from our Mother, the Church, the Bride of Christ, the body of Christ. God uses many godly Protestants to extend His kingdom. No doubt about it, and no denying it.”
Actually, the papacy was at an all time moral low in the 15th century, culminating in Alexander VI. If you think that Protestants went heavy into that kind of ecclesiastical abuse, think again. In fact, if not for the Protestant Reformation, not Counter Reformation. The thanks we get, but you have blinders on and only see things in a self-reassuring way.
I’m not concerned about the sins of the bishops. You really don’t get the point. If the polls are right, lots of bishops are overseeing people who are going to hell because they are living in mortal sin. Why wouldn’t that situation prompt a more concerted episcopal effort to bring back into the fold the sheep? At least, cut down their time in purgatory?
You act like your switch puts you on the winning side. Actually, you just raised the stakes. To whom much has been given . . .
When will Rome act like it’s been given much?
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Mrs. W: In fact, I did talk about Jesus. I presented 3 Scripture texts and asked questions about them. Your friends spent their time mocking me, mocking the Church, and the texts got buried somewhere.
That does seem to happen. On the bright side, it is an equal-opportunity problem, as my own attempt to engage in a Scriptural way likewise got buried.
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Elmer Gantry? How is it that Presbyterians are now accountable for characters in works of fiction? I suppose Puritans are equally responsible for what happened to that poor Prynne woman. But the Catholics, they have to answer to Dan Brown.
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Mrs. W.,
You said:
You are assuming that I joined the Church mostly because of the chaos of Protestantism. It is this ongoing chaos, with no way to resolve disputes or even to apply any kind of church discipline that showed me it cannot be the true Church expect in the sense that the Catholic Church says – separated brethren.
I am afraid that this is a splinter/log situation, especially since your Church doesn’t exactly have the
best
track record when it comes to “Church discipline”. Just sayin’.
Also, what is this “Protestantism” you’re talking about? You seem believe that it is one conglomeration of like-minded churches that all oppose Rome – a wild band of slathering, unprincipled, anti-intellectual Anglo-Saxon individualists who detest smells, abhor bells, and sicken at the thought of “tradition.” This is similar to your instance upon referring to your denomination (est. 1563) as “the Church,” as if your denomination is in any way more consistent than other denominations. Even your use of the neologism “separated brethren” is telling, given that not too long ago, we “separated brethren” were known as “heretics,” and your denomination’s officials, well, kinda murdered them.
All of this could (and probably will) be brushed off as me picking the low-hanging fruit, but it’s worth remembering, Mrs. W., before you start pigeon-holing anyone who doesn’t believe Padre Pio could fly like a Boeing 747.
Also, always a question that comes up when talking to the Triumphalists: What gives with Eastern Orthodoxy?
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 19, 2015 at 6:27 am | Permalink
vd, t, there you go again. Does Rome have to answer for Michael Sean Winters, Richard McBrien, and Garry Wills?
In point of fact, the OPC and PCA have done something about gay Presbyterianism. In case you missed it, we separated from the liberal church as a form of discipline. At least we did something. Your side?
Nothing wrong with a Protestant church that another schism won’t cure.
And no, Catholicism doesn’t have to answer for Michael Sean Winters, Richard McBrien, and Garry Wills. They are not part of the magisterium. They’re just some guys who type stuff. You keep eliding the key distinction between a church and its members. Your premise is false.
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Joining the Catholic Church because of “the chaos of Protestantism” isn’t a very good reason.
Just join a Protestant church that isn’t in chaos and ignore the other ones.
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So Tom,
Darryl shouldn’t bring up Winters, McBrien, and Wills because they’re not the church.
But it’s fair for you to bring up the PCUSA because Darryl’s an Orthodox Presbyterian?
I don’t get it.
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Among Padre Pio’s gifts was “the ability to read hearts”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pio_of_Pietrelcina
Patron Saint of the Revivalists!
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vd, t, no offense, but you’re just a guy who types. But no Roman Catholic publication/website is publishing you.
Sorry for the reintroduction to planet earth.
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Mrs. W – I am not saying that God has abandoned Protestantism and all groups who preach the Gospel and do good works in Jesus’ Name. No, not at all.
Erik – Since Tom can’t do it, maybe you can tell me what the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification is. How does a Roman Catholic know with confidence that they are going to heaven when they die?
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Mrs. W – I could tell you about some amazing Protestants who have gone into very hard places and preached the Gospel and ministered to the orphans and widows, thus practicing true religion. I am not saying that God has abandoned Protestantism and all groups who preach the Gospel and do good works in Jesus’ Name. No, not at all.
I am saying that Protestantism learned all that from our Mother,
Erik – Actually, no.
At the time of the Reformation the Pope was more concerned with fleecing the sheep with phony sales of indulgences to pay for St. Peter’s Basilica.
How are you caring for orphans and widows at the same time you’re fleecing them?
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Mrs. W – I will not lose my faith over the sin of another, even if that person bears the title of bishop or evangelist.
Erik – Tom tells us above not to sweat Wills, Winters, & McBrien because they’re not the church.
Now you say not to sweat bishops, either?
What do you sweat?
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Mrs. W – Protestants are taught to look at the man and follow him. Oh, I know it is supposed to be all about Jesus, and for many it is. Catholics are taught to look to Christ and follow Him. The man will be flawed, just as all of us are. Christ has no spot or blemish. Catholics are told not to follow the man, but to follow Christ.
Erik – (Picking self off the floor)
Have you heard of the Pope?
WE follow men?
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Darryl,
People in the Church know what sins are mortal, but some/many( not all or most, though we are warned that the road is narrow), don’t want to give up their sinful ways, at least, not for now( “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet”, kind of situations I assume). The whole reason for the Church is to make us saints. And God is merciful……He gave us Himself in the Eucharist,after all, making us partakers of His Divine life( 2 Peter1:3,4)
Also to note is the New Evangelization that is calling all Catholics( reverts and converts) to communion.
“Our own time, then, must be increasingly marked by new hearing of God’s word and a new evangelization. Recovering the centrality of the divine word in the Christian life leads us to appreciate anew the deepest meaning of the forceful appeal of Pope John Paul II: to pursue the mission ad gentes and vigorously to embark upon the new evangelization, especially in those nations where the Gospel has been forgotten or meets with indifference as a result of widespread secularism” (Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini no. 122
Also, Darryl, if there wasn’t a divided Christendom, you wouldn’t speak in terms of group against group, and so the parable would apply to individuals( which it does) and therefore make sense:
“And unto *whomsoever* much is given, of *him* much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.”
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Guys, read this thread on the protestantism subreddit on reddit.com:
87 comments later, and the convo goes ok. i want to see webfoot or Mrs. Vader or Tom Van Dyke go into www[dot]reddit.com/r/Reformed/ or www[dot]reddit.com/r/reformedfightclub and see if their treatment there is better than here, i doubt it will be.
these roman catholics, so confused in their understanding, keep coming to us for answers. and we just find more and more coming to us for answers.
they multiply, like agent smiths in the matrix.
don’t worry RC’s, we understand you want to learn from us. keep at it, you’ll get us someday, i hope.
peace to all you rc’s on your faith journey. take care.
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Mrs. W – You seem to think that because bishops are also sinners like the rest of us, the Church cannot possibly claim infallibility.
Erik – No. We say you can’t claim infallibility because in no way does Scripture promise you or any church or spiritual leader that.
Mrs. W – You are also saying that just because the Holy Spirit led the Church in the book of Acts in a direct and infallible way through the decisions of Church leadership, we cannot expect Him to keep doing that in our day.
Erik – Wasn’t Peter in church leadership? Didn’t Peter err and receive a rebuke from Paul?
Mrs. W – So you must do that job the Holy Spirit is unable to do without you. Trouble is that Protestants have no way to determine what is and what is not doctrinal error.
Erik – How do you know the Holy Spirit is not working through Darryl and the OPC? Judge him and the OPC in light of Scripture. Do you judge your church in light of Scripture?
You are making Susan look like Karl Barth.
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You gotta love Dreher’s original post that started this:
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 19, 2015 at 4:35 pm | Permalink
vd, t, no offense, but you’re just a guy who types. But no Roman Catholic publication/website is publishing you.
Sorry for the reintroduction to planet earth.
Ah, getting personal again.
My purpose here is to give some of the best minds in Protestantism their chance to set the record straight. I don’t seek out error, I seek the truth as you see it. But even if we stipulate your hermeneutic, that a church should be judged by its fruits, your church fails far more miserably than the churches you attack. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
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Erik,
There you guys go again, watching the religious procession go by complete with its bells, and croziers, and crucifixes, and scrolls, and statues, and priests and you grab those scrolls, leaving the rest. This is unreasonable. The true faith is of course going to be reflected in those scrolls, but why do you expect the scrolls to exhaustively account for the faith? ( Remember that was from Chesterton, not me! 🙂
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vd, t, how could my church fail “far more miserably” than “yours” when we are .0001 the size of “yours”? If you’re going to make fun of small, you need to own up to large.
Plus, you didn’t address the point — Michael Sean Winters is recognized by many Roman Catholics as a pundit of some kind. You? But you want me to think that you are more representative? That’s like you thinking the OPC is more representative of Presbyterianism than the PCUSA.
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This is the first time I’ve read Michael Sean Winters. He identifies as being on the Catholic left. Can someone tell me what progressive doctrine(s) does he hold that is against Catholic faith and/or morality. Thanks for your help.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/bring-dogma
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@Susan
You wrote, “People in the Church know what sins are mortal, but some/many( not all or most, though we are warned that the road is narrow), don’t want to give up their sinful ways”.
Your parenthetical is false. According to the General Science Survey, 50% of Catholics in the US do not believe that gay sex is wrong at all, 67% think it is OK for unmarried couples to cohabitate. Both are part of upward trends indicating that the fraction is going up even as the people are leaving the Catholic church in droves (nearly a third of Catholics in Latin America have left the church). Also note that on all of these moral questions RCs do worse than protestants taken as a whole (including mainliners!).
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Tom – But even if we stipulate your hermeneutic, that a church should be judged by its fruits, your church fails far more miserably than the churches you attack.
Erik – Based on what standard?
What is your pay grade, anyway?
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Susan,
I’ll take the scrolls.
That other stuff’s not worth jack squat. Dog & pony show.
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Susan,
One correction. The priests are human beings and therefore have the dignity that comes with that.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 19, 2015 at 5:22 pm | Permalink
vd, t, how could my church fail “far more miserably” than “yours” when we are .0001 the size of “yours”? If you’re going to make fun of small, you need to own up to large.
I’m speaking of the Reformation, which laid claim to being the “true” church, then spit and schismed and schism and split. Or I’m talking about “Presbyterianism.” Your micro-denomination doesn’t even move the meter, and in fact, it had a schism in its first year!
Plus, you didn’t address the point — Michael Sean Winters is recognized by many Roman Catholics as a pundit of some kind. You? But you want me to think that you are more representative?
I do address the point: I reject your premise, and your tactic of trolling for Catholic dissenters who do not speak for the church, no matter what Many” Catholics think.
That’s like you thinking the OPC is more representative of Presbyterianism than the PCUSA.
Actually, I’ve been charitable in doing so, accepting your claim to being the “true” Presbyterianism/Calvinism/Reformed faith. But using your tactic that you use to undermine Catholicism, the 1.8 million-member PCUSA is far more representative than your OPC of only 30,000. By your standards, Presbyterianism is in far worse shape.
Did you honestly not follow that? It’s a formal argument, not a theological truth claim.
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@Tom
“And no, Catholicism doesn’t have to answer for Michael Sean Winters, Richard McBrien, and Garry Wills. They are not part of the magisterium. They’re just some guys who type stuff. You keep eliding the key distinction between a church and its members. Your premise is false.”
Not so sure about Fr. McBrien, a church theologian who sits in the “doctor’s chair” even while not infallible. He retained his post with his Bishop’s blessing. Perhaps though Bishop McGrath is of San Jose is a better example, whose traveling gay mass for which chastity is not the goal seems to run counter to Church teaching (depending on how you understand the application of the magisterium…at topic of some debate).
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@Tom You wrote, “I’m speaking of the Reformation, which laid claim to being the “true” church…”
This is not quite correct. They didn’t claim to be the true church, rather they noted that all churches are a mixture of truth and error. Re-read the WCF and Belgic confession on the definition of the church if you want to know what the reformers said. Also note that schism doesn’t mean the same thing for prots. One can move freely between denominations without “converting”. Not true for movement between RC and EO.
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“My purpose here is to give some of the best minds in Protestantism their chance to set the record straight.”
Then what on earth are you doing around here?
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Susan,
How did God miss the memo on the importance of images in worship in His instructions to the Jews?
Surely He or your Church must be misinformed.
What Apostolic writings do you see commending these things to believers?
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Tom, a minor nit, but the PCUSA is down to 1.667M members as of 2014, and it’s rate of decline is increasing year on year (4% decline in 2013, 5.54% in 2014), and number of congregations has dipped below 10k for the first time. Every 1.75 days another church leaves the PCUSA (mainly for Evangelical Covenant Order of presbyterians, or Evangelical Presbyterian Church). Further doing the math on members, approx 255 members leave every day, or 11 every hour, or basically betwen the time stamp of your last comment 6:16PM and mine now going live 6:29 pm, 2 more people are no longer on the PCUSA rolls. Things are a changin’
Tom – Actually, I’ve been charitable in doing so, accepting your claim to being the “true” Presbyterianism/Calvinism/Reformed faith. But using your tactic that you use to undermine Catholicism, the 1.8 million-member PCUSA is far more representative than your OPC of only 30,000. By your standards, Presbyterianism is in far worse shape.
Erik – You continue to make the fundamental mistake of linking the PCUSA and the OPC. They have no relations.
McBrien, Winters, and Wills have formal relations with the Roman Catholic Church (or at least did, McBrien died in January). They are (were) members in good standing, able to receive communion.
Maybe your beef is not with us, but with their bishops? Devote the time you spend here to writing their bishops.
Find an OPC member akin to McBrien, Winters, and Wills and bring them to us and we’ll have apples and apples.
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sdb
Posted May 19, 2015 at 6:16 pm | Permalink
@Tom
“And no, Catholicism doesn’t have to answer for Michael Sean Winters, Richard McBrien, and Garry Wills. They are not part of the magisterium. They’re just some guys who type stuff. You keep eliding the key distinction between a church and its members. Your premise is false.”
Not so sure about Fr. McBrien, a church theologian who sits in the “doctor’s chair” even while not infallible. He retained his post with his Bishop’s blessing. Perhaps though Bishop McGrath is of San Jose is a better example, whose traveling gay mass for which chastity is not the goal seems to run counter to Church teaching (depending on how you understand the application of the magisterium…at topic of some debate).
Thx for the clarification on O’Brien. Yes, dissent is allowed, although for the clergy, sometimes a line is crossed and they’re ordered to shut up. This was true of Teilhard de Chardin and John Courtney Murray, who accepted the church’s authority to do so.
As for Winters and Wills, they do not move the meter. Darryl’s reliance on them to attack Catholicism invalidates his efforts.
______
sdb
Posted May 19, 2015 at 6:20 pm | Permalink
@Tom You wrote, “I’m speaking of the Reformation, which laid claim to being the “true” church…”
This is not quite correct. They didn’t claim to be the true church, rather they noted that all churches are a mixture of truth and error. Re-read the WCF and Belgic confession on the definition of the church if you want to know what the reformers said. Also note that schism doesn’t mean the same thing for prots. One can move freely between denominations without “converting”. Not true for movement between RC and EO.
Then “catholic” has no meaning. Dump Nicea. Further, because of the sacrament of the Eucharist, Lutheranism and Anglicanism are far away from the merely symbolic “Lord’s Supper” of Calvinism. That one might “move freely” between Protestant denominations is a relative claim, what with “fencing the Lord’s Table” and the like.
As for the Confessions, since they can be amended, they are provisional, unless you want to claim they’re the work of the Holy Spirit. If you do, that’s a truth claim, and I don’t litigate those. I might think Joseph Smith’s Golden Plates and Angel Moroni are a bunch of baloney, but I don’t go there.
___________________________
sdb
Posted May 19, 2015 at 6:21 pm | Permalink
“My purpose here is to give some of the best minds in Protestantism their chance to set the record straight.”
Then what on earth are you doing around here?
Ah, good to know at least one warrior child didn’t have his funny bone removed. 😉
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sdb,
Speaking of Martin & Douthat:
http://literatecomments.com/2014/12/13/a-public-service-announcement-inconvenient-facts-about-21st-century-roman-catholicism-for-which-bryan-cross-his-friends-at-called-to-communion-have-not-fully-accounted-for-in-their-call/
Things said by Ross Douthat and James Martin for which Traditionalists have not fully accounted in their Call:
1. Martin quotes Douthat as saying that “the church is stained by scandal.”
2. Martin quotes Douthat as saying that Catholics have suffered “moral betrayals by their leaders.”
3. Martin quotes Douthat as saying that Catholics are in danger of suffering “a theological betrayal.”
4. Douthat says that the Church has changed its teachings on Limbo.
5. Martin locates authority in the whole church (including the laity) and stresses several times that we must look at how the Holy Spirit is working in the church today — no mention of any superior paradigm centered on an infallible Pope.
6. Douthat says that the “conservative/progressive binary” can be “disastrous for the faith.”
7. Douthat says “just saying ‘the magisterium has spoken, the case is closed’ is not generally an argument that suffices to persuade, within the church or outside it.”
8. Douthat refers to “the unhealthy papolatry that sometimes built up under John Paul II” and suggests that such “papolatry” needs to be “cured”.
9. Douthat expresses sympathy with the notion that “the Vatican is not the church entire.”
10. Douthat expresses sympathy with the notion that “many worthwhile experiments in Catholic history have been undertaken without a stamp of approval (quite the reverse, indeed) from the hierarchy.”
11. Douthat says of progressives that “they had already decided that what any specific pope says about sex or marriage can be taken as provisional, subject to the future revision by the Holy Spirit.”
12. Douthat says that conservatives “believe there are things the church can’t change, can’t teach, without effacing its basic claims to authority, continuity and faithfulness to Christ.”
13, Douthat says that many “bishops and theologians think that the proposal to allow divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist absent an annulment isn’t just ‘pastoral’…but essentially changes the church’s view of marriage’s indissolubility in ways that don’t just conflict with natural law but with divine law, with the words of Jesus himself.”
14. Douthat says that “the direction that Pope Francis may be pushing (are) fraught with a distinctive kind of peril for the church.”
15. Douthat says that “on rare occasions, the cause of Catholic truth may need to be served by resisting Peter, perhaps even to his face.”
16. Martin reminds us (referring to Vatican II) that the church is not simply the hierarchy, it is the entire “People of God.”
17. Martin talks about how it is important for “council fathers” to be able to read the “signs of the times” as they did at Vatican II.
18. Martin quotes “Nostra Aetate” in saying that “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in (religions other than Catholicism),”
19. Martin notes that “That (Nostra Aetate) stands in stark contrast to statements from popes and councils in other parts of the magisterium, over the centuries, too numerous to mention.”
20. Martin notes that “‘Dignitatus Humanae’, the document that guaranteed the ‘right to religious freedom’, that is, to worship and believe as each person desires…is also in stark contrast to the former church dictum, ‘Error has no rights.’”
21. Martin notes how, at Vatican II, “there were several documents written by preparatory commissions that essentially restated church teaching as it then stood. Once the council was convened, however, and the bishops began their discussions, and saw that they could speak freely, those original documents were heavily revised and often scrapped entirely.”
22. Martin continues, “Had there been no discussion, there would have been no change. And, at the time, many of these issues were almost too shocking to consider. Now they are church teaching.”
23. Martin cites John Noonan describing how “various teachings have changed (and) how these changes have helped the church.”
24. Martin notes how Jesuits owned slaves in colonial Maryland.
25. Douthat says that some matters can absolutely be too dangerous to discuss “when the person encouraging the discussion has supreme teaching authority in the church.”
26. Douthat notes that Catholics have debated “(in the) not at all distant past”, “whether to integrate theories of racial and eugenic hierarchy into Catholic moral teaching.”
27. Douthat notes that “every power and principality of our age – every establishment, political and judicial and cultural – is on the side of change in these internal church debates.”
28. Martin suggests a hierarchy of authority (from lowest to highest):
(A) a pastor proclaiming from the pulpit his opinion on a political matter in the community
(B) a papal encyclical
(C) a document from an ecumenical council
(D) the words of Jesus in the Gospels
Note no mention of a pope speaking ex-cathedra (i.e. infallibly)
29. Martin says that for him “the essentials are contained, first, in the Gospels and, second, in the Nicene Creed.”
30. Martin says that “tradition is holy” and “change can be holy too.”
31. Martin reiterates that the church is “we, the entire People of God.”
32. Douthat questions the validity of several aspect of pre-Vatican II Catholicism :
(A) “The ritualistic spirit of Eat meat on Friday, go straight to hell, do not pass go.”
(B) “The God-as-accountant image inherent in say these seventeen different prayers to thirteen different saints and receive in return exactly 4,544 days off Purgatory.”
(C) “The culture of shame and silence around sexuality.”
(D) “The punitive visions of hell immortalized by James Joyce.”
(E) “The pomp and circumstance embraced by the princes of the church.”
He says that all these things are “grounded in real aspects of the pre-1960s church, which were in need of correction and reform.”
33. Douthat speaks of the “traditionalist” church as “the church of lace and legalisms…that the current pontiff is particularly quick to critique.”
34. Douthat says that today’s Catholic Church “has more in common with, and I speak from experience, certain forms of Mainline Protestantism and megachurch evangelicalism.”
35. Douthat says that “we’ve become a church of long communion and short confession lines.”
36. Douthat says that “(we’ve become a church of) Jesus-affirms-you sermons.”
37, Douthat says that “(we’ve become a church of) marriage preparation retreats (like mine) where most of the couples are cohabiting and nobody particularly cares.”
38. Douthat says that “(we’ve become a church of) widespread popular attitudes toward the divine and toward church teaching that mostly resemble H. Richard Niebuhr’s vision of a God without wrath, men without sin, and a Kingdom without judgment.”
39. Douthat suggests that admonition is no longer given in the church.
40. Douthat suggests that “not only individual pastors but the church itself promises absolution irrespective of amendment.”
41. Douthat quotes Cardinal Kasper’s remark that certain forms of moral heroism are “not for the average Christian.”
42. Douthat says that “conservative Catholics inhabit a kind of sociological bubble, in which we don’t see the burdens the church imposes clearly.”
43. Douthat believes that there is a “clear and pressing danger of a church that no longer even tries to teach the truth.”
44. Martin says that “too many Catholics, at least in this country, feel…that the church no longer speaks to some important parts of their lives.”
45. Martin says that American Catholics sense “a shift from a teaching church to a listening church.”
46, Martin says that “we must listen to the workings of the Holy Spirit among the People of God, which includes the bishops and the pope. And by trusting in that Spirit, we will not be led astray.”
On most of these statements, points, and assertions we get from Traditionalists…crickets.
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Tom – As for the Confessions, since they can be amended, they are provisional, unless you want to claim they’re the work of the Holy Spirit.
Erik – Given Vatican II, what exactly is not provisional in Catholicism?
Can you separate dogma from discipline for us? No other Catholic apologist has seemed to be able to.
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“Then “catholic” has no meaning. Dump Nicea. Further, because of the sacrament of the Eucharist, Lutheranism and Anglicanism are far away from the merely symbolic “Lord’s Supper” of Calvinism. That one might “move freely” between Protestant denominations is a relative claim, what with “fencing the Lord’s Table” and the like.”
The reformed confessions stipulate a real presence…one that is spiritual. Zwyngli lost in the confessions. Of course the hoi polloi is another matter, but that is unfortunately true for rcs too. Jeff Cagle’s exegetical analysis on the which call thread is worth looking at. The RC turn to Aristotle was a big mistake. Transubstantiation is hard to defend. The EO view is much more defensible (real presence but details a mystery) than importing categories no one would apply anywhere else.
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Erik,
The point was that no one has the authority to divorce the scrolls from the religion. Priests are men and do have basic human dignity, but they also have the priesthood by apostolic succession, a fact mentioned in the scrolls that were nabbed.
sdb,
“Your parenthetical is false. According to the General Science Survey, 50% of Catholics in the US do not believe that gay sex is wrong at all, 67% think it is OK for unmarried couples to cohabitate. Both are part of upward trends indicating that the fraction is going up even as the people are leaving the Catholic church in droves (nearly a third of Catholics in Latin America have left the church). Also note that on all of these moral questions RCs do worse than protestants taken as a whole (including mainliners!).”
This is depressing. I don’t like those statistics, and I hope they are wrong. The whole picture looks very bad. We have a world that isn’t very religious or moral anymore. But I don’t know if it’s true that Protestants are doing better than Catholics in practice, and I don’t they know if they know any better why acts are immoral. For instance, sodomy is a violation of natural law, so if homosexuals cannot commit this act without violating God’s law, then heterosexual couples cannot either being they are under the same law.
Do Protestant pastors get explicit and involved Protestant when they do premarital counseling….do they instruct against this for the sake of the souls about to be married? The real point about what divides us though, is not who is living more morally, but who really knows what that means anymore. Contraception is a grave sin, but how many Protestants believe it is a matter of private choice? It would be great if all Christians were consistent with their faith, but without a constancy of beliefs to fall back on, the more confused and sinful the society becomes. Say what you will against the Church, her moral teachings are consistent, and the more Roman Catholic anyone’s beliefs and practices are, the more moral the society.
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Erik,
This is the last one for tonight.
“How did God miss the memo on the importance of images in worship in His instructions to the Jews?”
Catholics don’t worship images, so if you want to critique at least know the view of those you oppose. God didn’t miss he memo, He sent one to the Jews:
“You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide. 18″You shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat. 19″Make one cherub at one end and one cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat at its two ends.
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sdb, do you get the impression that these converts haven’t done much research? And all that certainty.
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vd, t, why is quoting Michael Sean Winters a tactic if your defense of David Barton is above board? You do seem to have a sliding scale.
Let’s say 70 % of the PCUSA doesn’t affirm Nicea. That’s roughly 1.2 million. Heck the Lefevrists are larger than that. And with Roman Catholics in the U.S. totaling about 75 million and the Pew figures showing what they do, how is Presbyterianism in worse shape. Again, if you want large numbers the stakes for wrong go up. Welcome to the big leagues.
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vd, t, “As for Winters and Wills, they do not move the meter. Darryl’s reliance on them to attack Catholicism invalidates his efforts.”
That’s like your opinion. They receive communion and are respected in the Roman Catholic church. No one — no offense — has ever heard of you. Don’t tell me, you’re the Machen of Roman Catholicism?
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Susan, “The whole picture looks very bad. We have a world that isn’t very religious or moral anymore.”
The penny dropped.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 19, 2015 at 8:35 pm | Permalink
vd, t, “As for Winters and Wills, they do not move the meter. Darryl’s reliance on them to attack Catholicism invalidates his efforts.”
That’s like your opinion. They receive communion and are respected in the Roman Catholic church.
“Respected in the Roman Catholic Church?” Butch, that’s so not true.
National Catholic Reporter:
Garry Wills Please Go Away
by Michael Sean Winters | Feb. 14, 2013
lifesitenews.com
Bishop Finn: National Catholic Reporter should not call itself Catholic
You’re starting to make David Barton look good.
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Susan,
Catholics don’t worship images, so if you want to critique at least know the view of those you oppose. God didn’t miss he memo, He sent one to the Jews:
God also told the Jews not to bow down to these images of cherubim and other such things.
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@Susan
The GSS data is indeed sobering. On birth control, actual practice does not differ. Statistically every woman of childbearing age uses it. The exceptions are too rare to show up in surveys.
To be sure adherence matters. On issues of domestic violence, the lowest rate is among conservative prots who attend more than once per month. Nominal conservative protestants have highest rates. Mainliners (nominal and active) and nons are in the middle. To be sure socioeconomic status is relevant here. RCs weren’t in this study AFAIK but I imagine the trend between adherence and benefit holds.
” without a constancy of beliefs to fall back on, the more confused and sinful the society becomes. Say what you will against the Church, her moral teachings are consistent, and the more Roman Catholic anyone’s beliefs and practices are, the more moral the society.”
That’s a really interesting hypothesis. The link I gave also included international data. They found the opposite. As the fraction of the population that was RC increased, the fraction who approved of ssm and cohabitation increased.
It might be interesting to watch how the needle moves as Latin America goes pentecostal at different rates. Already two countries are minority RC. Did corruption, domestic violence, drug abuse,etc improve relative to nations that saw lower conversion rates? A good empirical test of your hypothesis.
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Robert,
“God also told the Jews not to bow down to these images of cherubim and other such things.”
Right, but Catholics don’t bow in order to worship but to show respect to the substance that the signs point to( the people, or angels…). There is no latria going on, only dulia.
sdb,
wow, you know a lot about statistics!
“It might be interesting to watch how the needle moves as Latin America goes pentecostal at different rates. Already two countries are minority RC. Did corruption, domestic violence, drug abuse,etc improve relative to nations that saw lower conversion rates? A good empirical test of your hypothesis.”
It will be interesting to watch Latin America. Funny thing….when I told my former pastor that I was becoming Catholic because of her claims, he mentioned that Pentecostalism was growing in Latin America. Was I supposed to influenced to adopt Pentecostalism just because?
It was like he had just said, “squirrel ! “, because I wasn’t converting based on consensus or popular movements. Every positive aspect that Pentecostalism has is part of the spiritual and theological tradition( and current teaching) of the RCC. You can’t reinvent the wheel, but you can build a new car out of all the parts.
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Susan,
O.K. Now follow up with the New Testament passage with the specific instructions for your images, statues, relics, etc.
No one said you worship them. As the Heidelberg teaches, they’re a poor substitute for catchesis and preaching.
Also watch the Werner Herzog doc on You Tube on how they lead to idolatry in Latin America.
You were Reformed. You know better.
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Susan,
Penecostals don’t obey the Pope and I thought that’s what made Catholicism the best religion.
What good are the other things that Pentecostals took with them if they didn’t take him?
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Tom,
How can you hold he OPC responsible for schism from the PCUSA AND hold the OPC responsible for what The PCUSA does?
Lord help you if you ever have an ex-wife.
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vd, t, so if Wills and Winters are not legitimate, then doesn’t the 1.2 billion figure need to be revised? Wills and Winters are hardly alone. I mean, we’re still not sure of your church status. But we do know that what you say doesn’t count. No one except us agreeable Protestants is taking seriously what you say about Roman Catholicism.
But you take Barton seriously as a historian?
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@dgh – yep. This is the problem with the CTC approach… It usually doesn’t end well.
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Seth:
I am afraid that this is a splinter/log situation, especially since your Church doesn’t exactly have the
best track record when it comes to “Church discipline”. Just sayin’.<<<<<
The Catholic Church has a great track record of being one Church. That is important, since Jesus has only one body, one bride. He is only one Lord. There is only one faith. There is only one baptism. There is only one God and Father of all.
Protestantism and all groups that are not Catholic have a great track record of being anything but one.
It’s simple math.
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@Susan – what can I say, I’m a licensed professional…don’t try this at home!
How bizarre. I guess if you want to join the winning team?
JPII and Francis disagree with this, and even if they weren’t speaking ex cathedra, their
“ordinary” teaching demands the submission of your intellect and will. Remember that Rome doesn’t claim to have spoken authoritatively much less infallibly on every question and allows that they can learn from non-RC sources (christian and not). Thus it is possible that even those lowly pentecostals have novel insights to the Christian faith that Rome can learn from. Triumphalism and pride are corrosive to faith.
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“There is no latria going on, only dulia.” Well, that is simply false. Plus, you have hyperdulia going on with Mary. Besides the distinctions being unavailable in holy writ, the distinctions within RC itself are indistinguishable. This is evident in the categorizing of saints according to petition as each saint is regarded with his/her own particular gifting/power that he/she bestows upon the worthy petitioner. This is nothing less than polytheistic practice; of the moon, the sea, fertility, war, fertility etc.. The practice is so indivisible as regards Mary, that she continues to be elevated, including co-redemptrix, as the ‘orthodoxy’ tries to catch up with the practice(worship)
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Susan,
Nabbed scrolls?
Are you married to Dan Brown?
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What I have noticed about the non-Catholic churches in Latin America is that they tend to keep the same moral values as when they were Catholics. IOW, they may be Protestants now, but scratch the surface and you will find a Catholic worldview.
As I think about it, that may be the biggest factor in my conversion, actually. I hadn’t really thought of that. I adopted the Catholic worldview, so now I’m actually Catholic. Maybe that’s why Protestantism doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Huh.
…and if you want to know where former Latin Catholics end up, I can tell you where some of them are.
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@Mrs Webfoot
You are still not adequately allowing for the fact that the RCC is currently hemorrhaging members at a rate as high as any protestant sect. Thus far your defense has been that most of these aren’t Christians any more as if this is a mitigating factor. But, (1) it isn’t true – most of the “spiritual but not religious” still identify as Christian, but have major problems with the institution (the cover up of abuse, lying about assets, and threatening victims with excommunication for bringing charges certainly hasn’t helped) and (2) it is still schism. Further, since the unity is not a unity of behavior but a unity of doctrine (as the CTCs tell us those who knowingly reject something that the church teaches excommunicate themselves and are thus separated), it seems that the ecclesiastical structure of the RCC has been as impotent at staunching division as prots.
You can blame sola scriptura, priesthood of all believers, nominalism, or rejection of the episcopate, but these lack explanatory power for what is happening in your own sect (and other non-Christian ancient sects that have seen similar division once landing on our shores). A better explanation is religious freedom, wealth, consumerism, individualism, and pluralism (i.e., classical liberalism/Americanism) are corrosive to church unity.
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sdb:
Triumphalism and pride are corrosive to faith.<<<<<<
Nonsense. There is nothing more corrosive to faith than unbelief and defeatism. You talk as if Easter Sunday had never happened. You talk as if Jesus was not able to build His Church. You talk as if the gates of hell overcame her.
Remember, the Catholic Church views all believers in Christ as one Church, as part of her, right now.
The very obvious triumphs of the Christian faith – the whole Church, not just one little part – are worth talking about and worth using as a defense of Christ’s sufficiency.
But Francis is the first pope in my memory who really seems to believe it from the heart and not just as part of his theology that we are one in Christ and that he really wants people to come Home. If people decide not to, he still loves them. Maybe ‘cuz he’s Argentine and I get him. Es un viejo choro.
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TVD
Posted May 19, 2015 at 8:54 pm | Permalink
D. G. Hart
Posted May 19, 2015 at 8:35 pm | Permalink
vd, t, “As for Winters and Wills, they do not move the meter. Darryl’s reliance on them to attack Catholicism invalidates his efforts.”
That’s like your opinion. They receive communion and are respected in the Roman Catholic church.
“Respected in the Roman Catholic Church?” Butch, that’s so not true.
National Catholic Reporter:
Garry Wills Please Go Away
by Michael Sean Winters | Feb. 14, 2013
lifesitenews.com
Bishop Finn: National Catholic Reporter should not call itself Catholic
You’re starting to make David Barton look good.
D. G. Hart
Posted May 19, 2015 at 10:02 pm | Permalink
vd, t, so if Wills and Winters are not legitimate, then doesn’t the 1.2 billion figure need to be revised? Wills and Winters are hardly alone. I mean, we’re still not sure of your church status. But we do know that what you say doesn’t count. No one except us agreeable Protestants is taking seriously what you say about Roman Catholicism.
But you take Barton seriously as a historian?
No, Professor, but I used to take you seriously as a historian. Now I’m not so sure.
Are you still going to continue to argue Winters and Wills against the Catholic Church? Because it’s garbage, on every level.
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@Mrs.Webfoot The challenges that Rome face are not an argument that therefore one should be protestant, and anecdotes are not contrary evidence. The data is not consistent with your assertion that pentecostal Christians in Latin America hold to the same moral values as Roman Catholics in.
What is going on in the US? Simmons is worth looking at. From Dreher’s reflection on this issue:
I think Dreher may be on the wrong track with his Benedict Option (though his views on this are continuously evolving), but I think he is right about the challenges Christians face more generally.
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Mrs. Webfoot,
Protestants have bad moral values except for what they learn from Catholics?
You’re analyses are starting to sound like Bobby’s.
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Yikes! “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”.
Huh? Easter Sunday doesn’t mean we aren’t pilgrims awaiting our everlasting rest.
Curious. Certainly this is the protestant view. I thought we were separated brethren and outside of the church.
Double Curious. This is what they said about JPII (sans the Argentine part).
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Tom,
When gave you ever taken Darryl seriously as a historian?
You’ve bitched about him here since day one.
List his books you’ve read.
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sdb, what I said was based on the merits of Christ and His ability to do what He says He is going to do.
Matthew 16:13-20
18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
It is not triumphalist to present evidence in the Church of how Christ has been glorified in her. It is not inappropriate to remember her sins, either, or to call her to greater holiness now.
Think of this, too. Do you sing A Mighty Fortress is Our God? Would you call it triumphalist? In part, you own your Protestant faith to that hymn. It’s even in the Presbyterian hymnal I am quite sure.
sdb:
Curious. Certainly this is the protestant view. I thought we were separated brethren and outside of the church.<<<<
Maybe you didn’t know this.
Protestants, Pentecostals, and all non-Catholics who practice Christian baptism – trinitarian – are separated brethren.
Here is part of the Decree on Ecumenism – Unitatis Redintegratio. If you are a non-Catholic believer in Christ, this is talking about you.
"It follows that the separated Churches(23) and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html
About Francis, I have read more from him and about him than some others because he is Jesuit and Argentine. Now the hard core Calvinists will not like this, but his friendship with Luis Palau made me like Francis right out of the box. At that time I had no interest in becoming Catholic. I just thought he was humble – as you pointed out – and genuine.
Palau says that Francis told him to preach the Gospel and lead young people, especially, to Christ. This was before he became pope. Francis told him that most of them were basically pagans, even though they would claim to be Catholic.
So, I think that Francis is good for the Church. The good thing that Pope St. John Paul II did was initiate the New Evangelization. It has been good for the Church, even the separated brethren part. The Church was complacent for too long, especially in Latin America. Now she has to get her act together and preach the Gospel. That’s a good thing.
Don’t know what the future holds for any of us, but I do know that Christ wins and His Church in all that means will stand. It’s His promise after all.
In fact, Pope St. John Paul II preached a great sermon in Santiago de Chile back in ‘87. In it he kept emphasizing the need to look to Christ, and only to Him. It was especially meaningful given the political situation of the country back then. Anyway…
I wasn’t Catholic at the time.
Yes, in many ways the Church is a mess, but for some reason, Jesus loves her, gave His life for her, and continues to give His life to her. It’s easy to see her as she is now and not how she will be in glory.
Take care
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Then there is the little matter of being justified by your words when you stand before Christ. Auburn Ave. people have read it. It’s in the Bible after all, and in Jesus’ own words.
There we go again
in arrogant and annoying ignorance as usual and par for ex prot papists. A swing and a miss.For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call [with their mouth?]upon him.
For whosoever shall call [see above] upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Rom. 10:10-13
. . . for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Matt. 12:34
For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Matt. 12:37
For by our words, we confess what we believe in our heart. That we have no hope or righteousness of our own, but that God in his mercy will justify and forgive us for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ who died in the place of sinners.
(Not our righteousness, not Mary’s, not the pope’s or the saints. Not going to mass and worshipping a piece of bread or bowing down to a statue.)
Which just goes to show the appalling and damnable ignorance, never mind hubris of your average patronizing “ex-prot” convert from Bry on down over here smarmily lecturing us about coming “home”.
The stench of hypocrisy is so thick, you could cut it with a 2×4, never mind the doug fir contact lens that are all the rage for these apologists.
It really is sad.
My purpose here is to give some of the best minds in Protestantism their chance to set the record straight. I don’t seek out error, I seek the truth as you see it. But even if we stipulate your hermeneutic, that a church should be judged by its fruits, your church fails far more miserably than the churches you attack. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
Snicker. The bestest mind of the rest outdoes himself. How do we shoot ourself in the foot when it’s stuck in our mouth? Brush our teeth at the same time we are cleaning our gun?
Prots at least claim Scripture as fundamental.
Rome redefines the Word of God to include the Tradition and the Magisterium.
But the apostolic oral traditions are lost; likewise the list of infallible ex cathedra
excrementsstatements of little papa. There is and will be no even uninspired table of contents for what romanists are required to believe. (Enter stage left, implicit/ignorant faith.)If that isn’t an opportunity for tyranny, abuse and soul murder, what is?
Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Catholics don’t worship images, so if you want to critique at least know the view of those you oppose. God didn’t miss he memo, He sent one to the Jews:
It’s called the Book of Hebrews, Susan. The ceremonial worship has been abolished/fulfilled in Christ. That was the significance of the curtain in the temple being torn upon Christ’s death.
As for the distinction between doulos and latreia, what give us any optimism about your powers of distinction in light of your past record here? IOW just calling a dog a cat to avoid the leash law won’t wash. Mary is the Co-Redemptress after all.
Think of this, too. Do you sing A Mighty Fortress is Our
GodInfallible Church? Would you call it triumphalist?Is the mass a wicked and accursed idolatry?
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Sean,
I honestly don’t see what the problem is. The world functions in the way of etiquette and ceremoniousness. Servatus is a kind of honor that is required. If your were in the presence of the Queen of England, I’m pretty sure you’d bow, offer her your arm, serve her before serving other guests, etc.
But you wouldn’t worship her as deity because you have knowledge that she is not that. Hyperdulia is fitting Mary, the mother of Jesus and everyone knows that she the mother of God and not God.
I don’t accuse Reformers of worshiping the bible, St. Paul, the statue of John Knox at St Giles, or Calvin or Luther( or his famous toilet) through the medium of a portrait, so it’s really not fair to do this to Catholics. Once you have been informed how a revealed religion can be self-consistent, you should accept her knowledge of herself.
Christian doctrine developed, and if it was able to make correct dogma along the way, keeping itself propelling strongly forward, but at the same time couldn’t recognize paganism in it’s midst, it would not have survived as an internally consistent entity.
Here’s Newman: ” Corruptions indeed are to be found which sleep and are suspended; and these, as I have said, are usually called “decays:” such is not the ease with Catholicity; it does not sleep, it is not stationary even now; and that its long series of developments should be corruptions would be an instance of sustained error, so novel, so unaccountable, so preternatural, as to be little short of a miracle, and to rival those manifestations of Divine Power which constitute the evidence of Christianity. We sometimes view with surprise and awe the degree of pain and disarrangement which the human frame can undergo without succumbing; yet at length there comes an end. Fevers have their crisis, fatal or favourable; but this corruption of a thousand years, if corruption it be, has ever been growing nearer death, yet never reaching it, and has been strengthened, not debilitated, by its excesses”
Speaking more to what you charged:
“For instance: when the Empire was converted, multitudes, as is very plain, came into the Church on but partially religious motives, and with habits and opinions infected with the false worships which they had professedly abandoned. History shows us what anxiety and effort it cost her rulers to keep Paganism out of her pale. To this tendency must be added the hazard which attended on the development of the Catholic ritual, such as the honours publicly assigned to Saints and Martyrs, the formal veneration of their relics, and the usages and observances which followed. What was to hinder the rise of a sort of refined Pantheism, and the overthrow of dogmatism pari passu with {439} the multiplication of heavenly intercessors and patrons? If what is called in reproach “Saint-worship” resembled the polytheism which it supplanted, or was a corruption, how did Dogmatism survive? Dogmatism is a religion’s profession of its own reality as contrasted with other systems; but polytheists are liberals, and hold that one religion is as good as another. Yet the theological system was developing and strengthening, as well as the monastic rule, which is intensely anti-pantheistic, all the while the ritual was assimilating itself, as Protestants say, to the Paganism of former ages.”
Link to that whole portion( ch 12) of the essay.
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter12.html
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Mrs. W. simple maybe. Definitely simplistic.
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Mrs. w. “I hadn’t really thought of that. I adopted the Catholic worldview, so now I’m actually Catholic.”
You’re going to have to work on that conversion narrative if Bryan is going to include you on his scalp pole.
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Mrs. W., have you ever heard of the martyrdom of Perpetua? Have you ever thought “to die is gain”?
You are interweb proof that Luther was right about the theology of glory.
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vd, t, “Are you still going to continue to argue Winters and Wills against the Catholic Church? Because it’s garbage, on every level.”
Don’t bruise your foot stamping it.
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Mrs. w. But remember what another apostle says:
Where’s your Peter now? If Peter was THUH GUY, why didn’t Paul get the memo?
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Susan, no Protestant does this with Paul, Knox or even TKNY:
Or this:
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Statements to the effect that everything good in protestantism can be found in the RCC are not boasting in Christ or resting in his triumph over sin and death. It is ugly chest thumping and pride. You’re evidently a new convert in the honeymoon phase. Good for you. I’ve seen many others take the same path sprout up fast and lose their faith. A very public example is Dreher who is thankfully EO now. Reading about the ongoing unfolding of his faith journey and what his pride did to his faith when it ran into the buzzsaw of the abuse scandal is sobering. Defending your conceit with spiritual quips about Jesus is a recipe for spiritual disaster.
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Mrs.,
What is the gospel? How does a person know they are going to heaven when they die?
Tom? Susan?
I know I can count on you, Susan.
What is the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification?
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Webfoot & Susan: I don’t get into these RC discussions much but it’s evident you aren’t even being reasonable human beings. Look, we could “get it” if you admit obvious weaknesses and problems with RC while stating your allegiance and explaining why you have an allegiance to your church; lots of intelligent and respectable people have done so. But you come off like cult members.
If you are going to do that kind of thing, do it for someone who’s won the Super Bowl four times. Scoreboards are always objective.
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It’s the height of charity that we call Roman Catholics Yankee fans. We are saying you are playing baseball just like us fans of the ‘stros or the fish:
RC apologists, You do see when we say RCs and Presbys alike play ball, we are charitable. Right?
Mud, this reminds me of Kenneth’s blind allegiance and over the top triumphalism. Web/Suz/Tom only help our cause as they continue, I hope they know that.
Next
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MONEYBOX
COMMENTARY ABOUT BUSINESS AND FINANCE.
MARCH 14 2013 2:41 PM
How Rich Is the Catholic Church?
Nobody really knows, because religious groups don’t need to follow regular accounting and disclosure rules.
By Matthew Yglesias
Pope Francis placing flowers on an altar
Pope Francis puts flowers on the altar inside St. Mary Major Basilica
Photo by AP/L’Osservatore Romano
Pope Francis is not just the spiritual leader of one of the world’s major religions: He’s also the head of what’s probably the wealthiest institution in the entire world. The Catholic Church’s global spending matches the annual revenues of the planet’s largest firms, and its assets—huge amounts of real estate, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Vatican City, some of the world’s greatest art—surely exceed those of any corporation by an order of magnitude.*
But it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to understand exactly how rich the church is. That’s in part because church finances are complicated. But it’s also because, in the United States at least, churches in general are exempted from the financial reporting and disclosure requirements that otherwise apply to nonprofit groups. And it turns out, that exemption may have undesirable consequences.
The main thing we know about Catholic Church finance is that in cash flow terms, the United States is by far the most important branch. America is a rich country with a large population of Catholics. What’s more, America’s Catholic population is a religious minority. That’s meant that, rather than using political clout to influence the shape of mainstream government institutions, as in an overwhelmingly Catholic country such as Brazil, the Catholic Church in the United States has created a parallel state: a vast web of schools, hospitals, universities, and charities that serve millions of clients.
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Our best window into the overall financial picture of American Catholicism comes from a 2012 investigation by the Economist, which offered a rough-and-ready estimate of $170 billion in annual spending, of which almost $150 billion is associated with church-affiliated hospitals and institutions of higher education. The operating budget for ordinary parishes, at around $11 billion a year, is a relatively small share, and Catholic Charities is a smaller share still.
Apple and General Motors, by way of comparison, each had revenue of about $150 billion worldwide in Fiscal Year 2012. Legally speaking, there is no such thing as “the Catholic Church,” which is why these finances get so complicated. As far as the law is concerned, each diocese is a separate legal entity, incorporated in the states where it operates. Generally speaking, they are organized as what’s known as a corporation sole—a legal corporation wholly controlled by the individual bishop rather than a board of directors—and not officially part of any larger transnational spiritual organization. This has led to conflicts during the sex abuse scandals. Lawsuits have caused disputes about how deep the church’s pockets go and who should pay.
On several occasions, abuse-related litigation has inspired dioceses to declare bankruptcy, which offers a rare window into the internal financial organization of the institution. Individual parishes, though operating under the umbrella of the relevant bishop, have a fair degree of financial autonomy. They conduct separate fundraising and maintain separate expenses. That way, parish donors can feel they’re bolstering their particular community and not an impersonal bureaucracy. But it’s common for parish investment funds within a single diocese to be pooled. When a diocese declares bankruptcy, this raises the question of whether pooled parish investment funds are available to be seized by the bishop’s creditors or whether they exist separately.
As a fascinating article in this month’s American Bankruptcy Institute Journal explains, the status of parish investment funds depends on some very subtle details. Both the Diocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Wilmington ran pooled investment funds in which a single account simply noted how much each parish had contributed. The difference is that in Wilmington, Del., operating funds were also mingled into the pooled account, whereas in Milwaukee they were kept separate. That small difference ended up costing Wilmington parishes $74 million in exposure to Episcopal creditors. At the same time, as a matter of Canon Law individual parishes can be wholly “suppressed,” merged into other parishes, or otherwise divided up, essentially at the discretion of the bishop—notwithstanding the existence of separate bank accounts. This authority suggests that the diocese does indeed wholly own and control its parishes, but church officials take advantage of the ambiguity, sometimes claiming to fully control its parishes, sometimes—for legal reasons—arguing that the parishes are wholly independent entities.
Given America’s diverse religious landscape, the Catholic Church is hardly unique in taking advantage of the First Amendment to engage in some opaque accounting. It’s simply the largest player in this game. Lawrence Wright’s recent Scientology exposé, Going Clear, reveals egregious exploitation of religious privileges for the personal financial benefit of church leaders. Or consider the case of the Tennessee pastor arrested on money laundering and drug charges only because a local TV news investigation revealed that he was using donations to pay off what amounted to personal debts.
The legal framework that allows for this funny business has been constructed in the name of religious freedom but hardly seems required by that important principle. America has a robust ecology of secular nonprofit groups that manage to abide by fairly stringent accounting and disclosure standards. These help donors know where their money is going and reassure residual claimants that there’s some consistent theory of whose assets are whose. Religion is big business—the Catholic Church the biggest of all—and it deserves to be treated as such in the relevant ways.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/03/catholic_church_and_pope_francis_religious_institutions_are_exempted_from.html
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Susan, I nor any number of those with Charism, can’t understand why you can’t see what the problem is. You can create categories of extreme hyperdulia if you’d like, but there’s a real problem with rank paganism and polytheistic superstition in the pews, and RC dogma and practice have added to, not taken away from this reality.
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Susan,
Sean gets at a real problem with RC doctrine in the area of the saints and Mary. Even if we grant the sophisticated distinctions Rome makes, how much of that filters down to the pew? Not much, if any. The saints and Mary cult, in my observation, is a bit more toned down here in the U.S.; how much of that is due to this being a majority Protestant country is anyone’s guess. But go look at what happens in the rest of the world. What is done in those countries is not discernibly different than pagan polytheism in many cases. This does not concern you?
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By the way, it would take me about another 10 mintues to figure out how many are the CTCers paying attention? threads have been written since late 2012, but so far in 2015, I count 34, with a total of 2,913 comments. I think in the last few years, there were some real monster threads in the 800/900 comment range.
How many more days before Rod & Carl v. Brad (let charity leak) thread falls off the front page of 10 latests olts posts, and this too enters the annals of history…
Any guesses on total number of comments on CTCers paying attention threads? It’s like a big jar of jelly beans, guess the number, anyone? I’m gonna say 10,000.
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I’m way off, going backwards, we have 10,002 comments starting 2014 through today:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XRti7eclKpOAIg0fjJ2tuTUeg32065b8qW77p1KQ9GA/edit?usp=sharing
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What Muddy, Sean, and Robert said. Your religion (at its global norm) is superstition and syncretistic paganism, prima facie. It is magic and mazes. It has no sure way of salvation. It is almost as far removed from biblical Xianity as can be imagined. You should be flattered that DGH gives you as much attention as he does.
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235 blog posts are the ctcers paying attention, we average 81.33 comments per post. our max were 586, 607, and 623.
keep up the good work, fellas. check my math at the link above
next
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Over/under on number of comments by EC and AB? 12%?
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Mrs. W.,
The Catholic Church has a great track record of being one Church. That is important, since Jesus has only one body, one bride. He is only one Lord. There is only one faith. There is only one baptism. There is only one God and Father of all.
Really? What about the Great Schism? What about the Reformation, the Sedevacantists, or the Papal Schism of 1378? Please. All of these are failures of being “one Church”. Maybe in your white-washed narrative you guys were lovey-dovey and Hakuna Matata, but there are a lot of bodies buried in the back yard.
Again, you’re part of a denomination that really began at the Council of Trent as a reactionary group to the Reformers. You will find no great Edenic church prior to the Reformation. Instead, you’ll find dead Cathars, Three Popes, and Papa Sergius III. No unity – definitely a pornocracy.
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Chortles,
Roughly equal to the number of Anti-Keller tweets you’ll send today. #obsessed
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Seth,
I’ve been thinking the same thing. As long as “one” is defined as “whoever’s still left” you will always be “one”.
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We can’t stop until we have a comment for every one of the 33,000 prot denoms.
No slowing down down Cwlu!!
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Erik, my timeline is an open book of peace, love, and understanding. And I was trying to be nice by positing a figure so low as 12%.
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EC, get baptized, don’t get dry, and hang on for a wild ride.
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AB,
So much for word and sacramentssssssss.
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Chortles,
#passiveaggressive
If you’re coming after me (and Andy) – bring it.
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Robert, if rank-and-file RCs aren’t getting contraception, dulia?
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cwl, flattered by my attention?
what are you saying? This is fascinating. Not only is Roman Catholicism a religion deeply entangled in the making and history of the West, and had a really hard time adjusting to modernity (Judaism and Islam did also), but we have real live Roman Catholics who can screen all that clutter and become the Tom Cruises of their communion.
Where else do you get a show like this?
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DG, I mean no one in their local churches or orbits is taking this seriously — they have to come here to get their papist mojo on.
EC, maybe passive-aggressive is a synonym for unification. I love everybody. But I can count, too.
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I want to thank all you guys and Susan for this really good discussion. Yes, it gets a little ugly at times, but that is the nature of theological discussions, I suppose. Family feud? 😉
Back a ways in the discussion there were comments about idolatry in the Catholic Church related to statures. I know that’s hard for Protestants.
I would like to point out, though, that the removal of statues from your churches has not done anything to stop idolatry. So, I would suggest that statues are not a problem per se. In fact, Protestants do use images in their churches. Some of the most beautiful stained glass windows are in Protestant churches, and they often depict Biblical scenes with Biblical characters, even Jesus. Also, during advent, statues of the nativity, the Holy Family, the 3 Kings, and so forth are used. So, Protestants must not really believe that having statues and other images is a violation of your 2nd Commandment.
It is the veneration of such statues and what they represent that you object to – and I think because you do not understand what veneration means. It does not mean worship, but I am straying from the point I wish to make.
Idolatry is a heart issue. Having or not having statues or even having them and venerating them does not automatically lead to idolatry. Otherwise, why in the Reformed tradition is idolatry a constant theme? It must be a problem for you, even though you do not venerate the images you have in your churches.
Why do you burn candles in your churches, or have a cross if such images are the equivalent of idolatry and therefore a violation of your 2nd Commandment?
Besides, Catholics also warn against idolatry. We are taught not to worship the image, but to contemplate the mysteries of Christ.
You might be interested in Elizabeth Scalia’s treatment of the subject of idolatry in modern life. You might be surprised, even, and find yourself agreeing with a Catholic! So, beware.
http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Gods-Unmasking-Idols-Everyday-ebook/dp/B00CYWXFNG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
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Chortles,
Count this:
When D.G. needs a deputy I’m sure he’ll send you a plastic star you can wear on your shirt.
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Mrs.,
No stained glass windows in Reformed Churches.
You need to argue against Reformed theology if you’re going to be effective here – not “Protestantism”.
Since you referenced Luis Palau earlier I’m guessing Reformed is not your background.
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Sean,
I disagree with you about paganism and superstition in the pews. If it exists in people, it doesn’t follow that the Church condones it. I’m scrupulous but the faith shouldn’t remove the doctrine of hell for my sake.
If you think veneration of saints and prayer to the dead (who are alive with Jesus in Heaven) is polytheistic and pagan then of course what you witness and hear is going to set off alarms. Did you ever consider that the way the church exists today is perfectly consistent with how it began 2000 yrs ago? It didn’t begin as a bible study, so why do you believe a reduction of its elements will give you a faithful picture of Christianity? Everything that Christianity has was added to it through the centuries but those elements existed as truth in those other places, so Christianity wasn’t baptizing pagan elements, it was gathering up pieces as from a great shipwreck. Now it all exists in the fullness of Catholicism.
St. John Damascene in defence of the further developments:
“As to the passages you adduce,” he says to his opponents, “they abominate not the worship paid to our Images, but that of the Greeks, who made them gods. It needs not therefore, because of the absurd use of the Greeks, to abolish our use which is so pious. Enchanters and wizards use adjurations, so does the Church over its Catechumens; but they invoke devils, and she invokes God against devils. Greeks dedicate images to devils, and call them gods; but we to True God Incarnate, and to God’s servants and friends, who drive away the troops of devils.” [Note 18] Again, “As the holy Fathers overthrew the temples and shrines of the devils, and raised in their places shrines in the {377} names of Saints and we worship them, so also they overthrew the images of the devils, and in their stead raised images of Christ, and God’s Mother, and the Saints. And under the Old Covenant, Israel neither raised temples in the name of men, nor was memory of man made a festival; for, as yet, man’s nature was under a curse, and death was condemnation, and therefore was lamented, and a corpse was reckoned unclean and he who touched it; but now that the Godhead has been combined with our nature, as some life-giving and saving medicine, our nature has been glorified and is trans-elemented into incorruption. Wherefore the death of Saints is made a feast, and temples are raised to them, and Images are painted … For the Image is a triumph, and a manifestation, and a monument in memory of the victory of those who have done nobly and excelled, and of the shame of the devils defeated and overthrown.” Once more, “If because of the Law thou dost forbid Images, you will soon have to sabbatize and be circumcised, for these ordinances the Law commands as indispensable; nay, to observe the whole law, and not to keep the festival of the Lord’s Pascha out of Jerusalem: but know that if you keep the Law, Christ hath profited you nothing … But away with this, for whoever of you are justified in the Law have fallen from grace
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Mrs. – . Otherwise, why in the Reformed tradition is idolatry a constant theme? It must be a problem for you, even though you do not venerate the images you have in your churches.
Erik – No, it’s a problem for Yahweh worshippers. Read your Bible.
Not many candles (if any) in Reformed churches either.
You’re Tokyo Rose again.
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Erik, I’m 33 with 3 young mouths to feed (under age 9), I’m not one for an internet fight see here, the sport I’m into is golf, which is a gentlemen’s sport, and while there’s plenty of Schadenfreude on the golf course, what i really dig is me vs. the course, especially hole 11 on my home course. I could tell you the stories of trying to get the ball up that steep grade, but I haven’t given up yet.
In other words, CW is a lover, not a fighter, and I believe him. I have one more comment from you, my cpa brother, but only one link per post. here i go.
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nuff said. who’s next?
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EC: You need to argue against Reformed theology if you’re going to be effective here – not “Protestantism”.
I haven’t read anything remotely close to even a 1% grasp of Reformed Theology by Webfoot and Susan on OLTS.
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Andy,
You have a softer heart than 95% of these guys and I appreciate that.
I’ll take up for you as I see fit. I can’t stand bullies.
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Kent (hi), and the reason is easy.
What they know is mostly (all of it) from Bryan Cross and Tom Van Dyke.
They need to go listen to their papi and stop learning from the prot turned caths. Those guys are a different breed (just ask sean).
But they do have cute avatars, I give them that..
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Erik, if we can just heed M.Lewinski (hash tag YOU), I think we’re ok.
Or if you don’t listen to women preaching, hear holy writ. I only wish to bring
balance to the forcepeace to the combox, no more, no less. take care, i should stop posting now for a while (i’ll try)LikeLike
AB, it’s like getting stuck in a chat with a “big Yankees fan” and they have never heard of Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle, Munson, Reggie, or Jeter.
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kent, You know it. One doesn’t follow this blog and read almost every comment for going on 3 years (me) and not learn a thing or two. IOW same stuff, different day. God bless, brother.
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There hasn’t been a thing to learn from our RCC friends on here, the same old thing over and over, and they are the visiting team.
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The classic RC apologist’s response: “I would like to point out, though, that the removal of statues from your churches has not done anything to stop idolatry.”
If you can’t fix the church, then let us have more idols.
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ec, be careful. That’s what the Fourth Lateran Council gave to Jews.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 20, 2015 at 6:25 am | Permalink
vd, t, “Are you still going to continue to argue Winters and Wills against the Catholic Church? Because it’s garbage, on every level.”
Don’t bruise your foot stamping it.
Darryl, when you get yourself into a hole, especially one this big, you should stop digging.
Your authority–not mine–Winters against your other authority on Catholicism, Wills.
Against Luther and Calvin too. You might want to rethink this.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/garry-wills-please-go-away
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vd, t, actually, Winters is now you’re problem.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 20, 2015 at 9:18 pm | Permalink
vd, t, actually, Winters is now you’re problem.
I guess that means you’ll stop trying to use Michael Sean Winters as a weapon against the Catholic Church.
Wise move. 😉
https://www.gunandgame.com/attachments/lf-0067polish_target_pistol-jpg.40047/
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vd, t, actually, now that you’ve cited Winters against Wills, I’m golden.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 20, 2015 at 10:33 am | Permalink
AB,
Our best window into the overall financial picture of American Catholicism comes from a 2012 investigation by the Economist, which offered a rough-and-ready estimate of $170 billion in annual spending, of which almost $150 billion is associated with church-affiliated hospitals and institutions of higher education. The operating budget for ordinary parishes, at around $11 billion a year, is a relatively small share, and Catholic Charities is a smaller share still.
So much for word and sacramentssssssss.
Wow, I learn the darndest things here, despite yourselves. Although if anything, gross revenues and expenditures on the colleges and hospitals probably put the Catholic Church in the black, not the red, meaning they make money off them, not the reverse.
Another Old Life charge of questionable intelligence, and manifestly one of insufficient research. Not that I expect y’all care either way about the truth of the matter.
sacramentssssssss.
Hmm.
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vd, t, in your estimation, what are the three greatest challenges facing Roman Catholicism?
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TVD, whatever you say, man.
Hey, keep mopping the place up. I don’t know why you continue, you say it’s for the lurkers. It seems arminian to me, but then again, the RCC you follow is semi-pelagian with its tridentine nonsense. Keep it up, you are making pope francis proud, and maybe working off time in purgatory? As for us, no problems here on that front:
Erik:
No stained glass windows in Reformed Churches.<<<
Well, actually, you are wrong. Check out the link below. I can find many more examples if you like. Now, if the OPC does not use stained glass windows, and it it wants to argue that they are the only group that is truly Reformed, then have at it.
http://sachapel.com/about/who-we-are/our-place-
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 20, 2015 at 10:03 pm | Permalink
vd, t, in your estimation, what are the three greatest challenges facing Roman Catholicism?
Butch, why try to initiate principled discussion at this late date? Every time I do, you make me regret it. Anything I say can and will be used against me.
The frog and the scorpion. Charlie Brown and the football. The only learning now is in how to recognize the well-rehearsed traps http://biblehub.com/mark/12-13.htm and point them out to others.
But since I am Charlie Brown, my dear Lucy–the shame is not his that she pulls the football away–perhaps it’s entirely proper you asked for 3 answers. The first is the question of God of course. Classical theism.
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Tom,
You’re more like Reggie to Darryl’s Archie.
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Mrs.,
Good find. That church was founded in 1997. I can’t find any denominational affiliation so they could be a bunch of CREC-like oddballs doing mix & match. “Saint” in a Reformed church’s name? They say they’re “word centered” and then use stained glass? I haven’t looked at everything, but these cats probably need to be taken to the woodshed.
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Erik Charter
Tom,
You’re more like Reggie to Darryl’s Archie.
Jughead, you really got up to date on the popular culture, bro. Your youtube links are like so
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/07/archie_comics_only_openly_gay_character_gets_his_first_kiss/
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/archie-beloved-comic-book-icon-dies-saving-gay-friend
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cw l’unificateur
Posted May 20, 2015 at 9:56 am | Permalink
Over/under on number of comments by EC and AB? 12%?
_____
cw l’unificateur
Posted May 20, 2015 at 10:20 am | Permalink
Erik, my timeline is an open book of peace, love, and understanding. And I was trying to be nice by positing a figure so low as 12%.
Sometimes it’s a clean sweep, all 10 of the Recent Comments are Andrew or Erik.
People notice things: You can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Cheers, CW. I see why you instituted the 3-comment rule, Darryl.
Perhaps a 30-comment per day rule, though. That would clear a lot of the clutter.
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D.G. Hart:
The classic RC apologist’s response: “I would like to point out, though, that the removal of statues from your churches has not done anything to stop idolatry.”
If you can’t fix the church, then let us have more idols.>>>>>
Catholics do not worship false gods. Catholics worship the Triune God of the Bible.
Both Catholics and Protestants warn against idolatry. Saints are venerated, as in honored, in the Church. Protestants honor their great leaders, and even name their branches of theology after men like Luther and Calvin.
In fact, when a Calvinist uses an image of Calvin, and then talks about how great he was and what he did for Christianity, they are honoring a mere man. Even calling yourselves by his name is giving him great honor. Colleges, churches, and a whole branch of theology all proudly use Calvin’s name. How is that not idolatry? That is, if what Catholics do with images and saints is idolatry.
Here is what the Catechism says about idolatry.:
2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Many martyrs died for not adoring “the Beast” refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.
Here is what the CCC says about images:
IV. “YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FOR YOURSELF A GRAVEN IMAGE . . .”
2129 The divine injunction included the prohibition of every representation of God by the hand of man. Deuteronomy explains: “Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure. . . . “66 It is the absolutely transcendent God who revealed himself to Israel. “He is the all,” but at the same time “he is greater than all his works.”67 He is “the author of beauty.”68
2130 Nevertheless, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim.69
2131 Basing itself on the mystery of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons – of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new “economy” of images.
2132 The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, “the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype,” and “whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it.”70 The honor paid to sacred images is a “respectful veneration,” not the adoration due to God alone:
Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.71
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c1a1.htm
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Erik, in Protestantism, no one can claim the brand Reformed as their own. It’s a free for all. Besides, I told you I can give you more. Besides, aren’t you Lutheran?
Now, don’t tell me that the Christian Reformed is not Reformed.
http://www.friendshipcrc.org/stained-glass
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Seth( great name. it’s my son’s name too:) I don’t hear it often and that’s one reason I chose it. Out of curiosity, do you live in Ca. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you or were you a friend of J. Stellman?
Okay, I’ll get to my point:Really? And again I hope you don’t mind me interjecting, but I enjoy thoughtful dialogue.
What about the Great Schism? What about the Reformation, the Sedevacantists, or the Papal Schism of 1378? Please. All of these are failures of being “one Church”.
The answer this is that the one church( mystical body by receiving Christ’s body) is still the one church.
Maybe in your white-washed narrative you guys were lovey-dovey and Hakuna Matata, but there are a lot of bodies buried in the back yard.
You are upset over the atrocities of the past done by Catholics against Protestants? I understand. Lots have been by both sides. Does Protestant violence cancel out Protestant doctrine?
Again, you’re part of a denomination that really began at the Council of Trent as a reactionary group to the Reformers. You will find no great Edenic church prior to the Reformation. Instead, you’ll find dead Cathars, Three Popes, and Papa Sergius III. No unity – definitely a pornocracy
Okay, so maybe you aren’t who I thought you were. The man I thought you might be is a father to two young children( a boy and a girl) and I doubt he would use the term “pornocracy”.
I understand that you might consider the RCC to be just another denomination, but for there to be only denominations on the face of this planet implies that either there has never been the church of the living God, as in the pillar and foundation of truth that the gates of hades would not prevail against, or she did exist but has since died at some point to be resurrected into denominations. What gives?
Since I never get a substantive reply from Darryl( not so with Jeff, Robert, SDB), only hand waving( these are not the droids you are looking for), I don’t think I should engage anymore. If you guys are interested to learn more about what really pulls Protestants towards The Church, you will do our own research when the time comes. My hope is that someday you will pick up Ronald Knox, and John Henry Newman, and Richard John Neuhaus, and GK Chesterton, and all the many others who really believed that the RCC was what it claimed to be. Maybe one day, something will necessitate that you find out why they and many, many others could believe this far fetched idea. Seems crazy, right?
~Susan
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@Susan:
Veneration itself is problematic. The command in Exodus is, Do not make graven images nor bow down or worship
οὐ προσκυνήσεις αὐτοῖς οὐδὲ μὴ λατρεύσῃς αὐτοῖς
Now comes Nicea 2 and says that λατρεύσῃς (worship) is forbidden, but προσκυνήσεις (veneration) is ok.
No. God wrote with His own finger that we are to do neither of those things to graven images, not even if the high priest Aaron himself points to the calf and says “This is the Lord your God.” Nor council nor Pope has the authority to permit what God has forbidden.
It’s the words of the Sign, Puddleglum, and we daren’t muff it. We must obey.
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Ummm, lemme me see Susan. I can count on the fingers of one amputated webfoot just how many times I have seen a protestant bow down to and burn candles in front of a picture of Spurgeon, Calvin, Knox or Luther before we even talk about also kneeling down in front of the
imageidolpicture.Throwing money or darts at a picture of Benny Hinn? Now that’s a real possibility.
When D.G. needs a deputy I’m sure he’ll send you a plastic star you can wear on your shirt.
Chort, dude paid a thou to worm his foot back into the ring so now he thinks he owns the place.
Mrs. W has a great idea tho. Since it is always possible to sin in your heart by being angry at your fellow
idolaterpapist, laws against actually murdering your fellowidolaterpapist are redundant and need to be revoked.Hmmm. This could get very interesting.
As for St. John of Damascus, careful Suse. He’s EO. Likewise it is one thing for God to command images that were to accompany the ceremonial worship, another thing to invent our own after Christ has fulfilled and done away with the ceremonial worship.
IOW substantive engagement for a romanist is to ignore what conflicts with their narrative. Which is why it is not called parrot judgement for nothing.
As for W, she didn’t reply when we quoted the Roman Catechism on the sacrifice of the mass. Why are we supposed to pay attention when she quotes it on idolatry? (Saint Andrews? Sproul is an incipient papist on the RPW).
Yo S (this is like shooting fish in a barrel.) Go here for a mention of pornocracy on
RomanCatholic Answers. Or are you going to tell us papists can use the word, but prots can’t?As for what pulls prots to Rome? Simple. Unbelief aided and abetted by ignorance, more often than not wilful. (For proof, Snow White only has to look in the mirror.)
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vd, t, I ask because you don’t acknowledge any of the problems that other Roman Catholics mention. You always say that citations from other reputable sources are “attacks.”
So I wonder if you think Roman Catholicism has any problems.
Your answer suggests that to admit imperfections is a trap. Denying buyer’s remorse is for converts, not cradles.
And if you think I’m dishonest about conservative Presbyterianism, you don’t read Old Life. Blaming me for avoiding the PCUSA is a dodge. The OPC hasn’t considered the PCUSA to be a serious contender since 1967.
So why not put some of your cards on the table?
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mrs. w., I’ll ask what I ask Susan. Then why do you pray to saints:
Or this:
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Susan, “white-washed narrative”? Are you serious? Do you only read the comments? Did you not see this?
Or this?
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vd, t, is the German Roman Catholic Church a challenge?
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Tom,
I can live with Jughead.
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Cw, like JJS, TVD seeks to divide what we have here, getting you to go after me and Erik. As if everyone doesn’t already know which NBA team each and everyone of us roots for out here.
I do enjoy watching roman apologists when they get desperate. Same stuff different day.
Who’s next?
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Erik, that email thing with JJS was interesting. He’s clearly still fixated on Calvinism like BCross is.
Same stuff different day (SS,DD).
My new sign off.
SS,DD,
Andrew
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Mrs.,
You think Zrim would darken the door of any Christian Reformed Church with “friendship” in its name?
Here’s the difference: we can avoid Reformed churches doing stupid things. You’re stuck.
That’s why we’re critics and you’re an apologist.
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Susan,
I’m your fellow Californian, as is Tom Van Dyke.
Please focus on TVD. He hopes he goes to hell. You have bigger problems in your house in other words. Write back when he goes to church with you, mmkay?
We know you love these little Facebook chats asking about where people live. But instead the issues are what matter. Unless you want to talk Hobbit with me? I know you still haven’t finished..I dont need to ask.
Take care.
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Susan,
If only your priests had limited it to porn you could have avoided those bankrupt diosceses.
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Bob,
Darryl owns the place. He’s free to delete anything he wants.
You and Chortles aren’t the boss of me so you can sit and spin like Greg.
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Ab and Ec, I will not feed Tom. I know whose team I’m on. And I have bigger problems.
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Andy,
Yikes! You Need A better spell-checker.
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Ec, dgh will fix it.
Cw, you always provide a smile. Never change
My favorite YouTube video for the OPC, I can’t resist (Susan brought up star wars)
opc don’t look like much, but she got it where it counts.
Cw, your media presence is impressive. I’m in awe.
Thanks guys.I’m out while I’m still behind.
Next.
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Watch out, Andrew. That “b” will getcha.
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Since I’ve stirred Erik up with the mildest of jabs I’ll share something with everyone that I believe I shared with him long ago. Chortles Weakly was created a couple of years ago to give Erik heck for his serial comments. I quickly came to like and appreciate him so my focus turned to other things. Some even thought that CW was an Erik project at first. Things have gotten weird a couple of times but I trust we can get along. We never envisioned an AB at that time. Who could have?
Tom, you’re still a clown but I still say you’d be cool to hang out with.
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And thanks, Gregulus, for pouring a fifth of crazy juice in the OL punchbowl.
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Tom,
Just how much time do you spend worrying about who’s “gone gay”?
How do you function in your wife’s milieu?
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Hmmm. It looks like you guys idolize the OPC. You’re everyone’s critic and no one’s defender. No wonder you are dying. You have nothing to defend anymore. The only “truth” you represent is the truth of total depravity in everyone else.
You are not Reformed.
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Erik, she whose feet are webbed has a point. Our CRC not only did stained glass but stained infractions of the second. But at least it was named after Calvin and not friendship.
http://www.calvincrc.org/
But, she whose feet are webbed, there was still way more Reformation there than in evangelicalism or RCism.
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Not to go all Bryan Cross, but the reasoning here is false. I could say, water sprinklers don’t make side walks wet because I stopped using them, but when I went out today the sidewalks were wet. In other words, while the use of images in worship may be a sufficient cause, they are not a necessary cause.
It is true that protestant churches are not (ahem…) unified on this topic. Even reformed churches disagree how far to go on the regulative principle. The confessions are pretty clear that veneration of images/statues and praying to the dead is a big no no.
I think a lot of us understand the difference between veneration and worship and agree that sin is ultimately a heart issue. Looking at certain images (say playboy) is likely to lead one to lust. So even if one may lust without reading playboy (just for the articles, natch), it is very unwise to do so. Perhaps one should be holy enough to look at naked people and simply praise God for the wonder of his creation, but because of indwelling sin the bible tells me to flee temptation.
Now of course the virgin of Guadalupe isn’t porn, but the apostle John was quite concerned that we little children keep ourselves from idols and there is no question that what is intended to be veneration of the saints is in fact pagan syncretism in a lot of places. It strikes me as more than a little cruel to care so little about the harm this practice does to wide swaths of developing nations. There is a reason that protestantism is seen as liberating in these places…they are freed from their pagan blinders and finally see Christ. To be sure there is much to criticize about pentecostalism, but the fruit is hard to argue with. Even in the US, Assembly of God teens are far and away the most knowledgable of the Christian faith. For all their faults, they are doing something right that the RCC (and perhaps even some of reformed maybe sorta) could learn something. But clericalism is a major impediment for the RCC and baked into the structure of the church.
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Webfoot,
Baseless accusations are unbecoming.
Here I was starting to like you..
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If I recall correctly, cw, sean, and I are PCA. Erik and Seth are lutheran right? I think zrim and kent are URDSJD. Bobby, who I haven’t seen around in a while, is PCUSA. CDH, who I also haven’t seen in awhile, was a congregationalist gone atheist. I’m not sure about Robert, GW, Cagle or Muddy (I’m guessing Mormon, Jehovah’s witness, Southern Baptist, and Methodist respectively). DGH and AB are OPC so there is that. Whatever the case, I’m pretty sure the OPC is in the minority around here.
Who knew our mortality came from being critical. Maybe my doc is right and I need to take up Yoga.
Speaking of Carl, yesterdays weighing in at 18 minutes was great. Go listen
http://www.mortificationofspin.org/mos/podcast/36991
Who’s next?
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My Episcopal email buddy 2009-2012 had only one thing for me in the end, that I idolized the Bible.
Webfoot, we’ve heard it all before. Nothing new under the sun eccl 1:9
If you want to say I idolize the Word of God with my episcopal friend I accept the accusation, guilty as charged. I am indeed a slave, but not to sin. Go read your bible and learn and come back when you are ready
Grace and peace.
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SDB,
PCA with a deep appreciation of the OPC and a belief that RCism is only slightly more historically credible than Mormonism. But only slightly.
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ec, “we can avoid. . .”
That’s divisive
and hurtful.
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If you are Reformed, then why have you joined the critics corner? You are not apologists, because you find your faith not worth defending. Otherwise you would be defending your faith. What you are doing is trying to tear down others, even other Reformed groups and preachers.
Is that what your Gospel teaches you to do? It is is, then your Gospel is not worth anything, and you are the ones with less credibility than Mormons. You have no message to preach, so you criticize those who do.
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Mrs. W., wrong.
You’re not Roman Catholic.
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sbd, I’m currently quite content at a URCNA.
Not sure what your URDSJD means, is that like a
(BB)XR2K w-w?
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Mrs. W., and vd, t has the nerve to call me Butch.
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#3 You have forgotten what your 5 solas are and your Doctrines of Grace. You are now solos and graceless. Otherwise, you would exalt Christ and glorify His Name.
You won’t even defend yourselves, let alone the honor of our Savior, Jesus Christ – crucified, buried, risen, ascended on high, and coming again. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary – whom you despise and demonize – sent by His Father as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. All who come to Him in faith will be saved. Predestined,-> called, -> justified. ->glorified.
Contemplate Him on the cross. He died for you. He gave Himself for you. Give yourselves to Him.
Rid yourselves of your idols, especially the idol of a critical spirit, and preach the Christ you claim to know so well.
…BTW, Reformed churches use lots of images, lots of stained glass, and you know it. What a joke to pretend they don’t.
…and Jeff, you know that you are interpreting your 2nd commandment according to your tradition. You are using Scripture plus tradition, and not Scripture alone – which is a farce, anyway since Reformed teachers also interpret Scripture according to their traditions.
Read what the CCC says about idolatry and the use of images. Then check out how Jesus says God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. If I ask you to pray for me, it is not idolatry. If I ask a saint who is alive in the presence of God to pray for me, that is not idolatry. I do not confuse them with God.
…and to invoke your WCF escape hatch, my conscience is clear. If your conscience is clear, then I am happy.
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Susan,
Sorry I’m not your California Seth. I can’t be all things to all people like Pope Francis.
As for the term “pornocracy,” I didn’t make it up, nor was it created by some lecherous wordsmith. It’s a technical term. I’m not even the first to have applied it to the Papacy. Indeed, it was the Papacy that kind of popularized the term after they had a rash of “Wolf of Wallstreet”-esque Party Popes. Haven’t you heard of Saeculum obscurum? No, probably not.
I’ll bet it didn’t make it into Brad Gregory’s book, either.
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Mrs. W., for the 3rd time, then why do you pray to saints?
And why aren’t you a saint?
Actually, I’m getting a better sense of that. Did you have a scorched earth ministry as a missionary?
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Mrs. Webfoot,
“Lutheran” was not a self-applied label. Instead, it was originally an insult used against Luther and his allies. Most Confessional Lutherans I know dislike the term. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess a similar story applies to Calvin and the “Calvinists”.
All of which is to say: you’re flailing on the idolatry issue. Is your conscience clear that you didn’t even do your homework first?
But hey, I just want to be loved.
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Mrs. W: …and Jeff, you know that you are interpreting your 2nd commandment according to your tradition. You are using Scripture plus tradition, and not Scripture alone – which is a farce, anyway since Reformed teachers also interpret Scripture according to their traditions.
Put down the talking point for a moment, because we’ve hit the crucial point.
There is a whole lot of work in lit theory that has been done on how texts function within the context of a tradition. A know only the tip of the iceberg, but I do know this: Saying “that’s just according to your tradition” may be the beginning of a discussion, but not the end.
Has my tradition – traditions, actually – influenced my reading? Absolutely. But now let’s talk data. What does the text actually say? Now zoom out. How does Ex 20 function in the Pentateuch? In the OT ar large? In the entire canon?
The answers to those questions are influenced by tradition, certainly. But the asking of them, and the seeking answers to them, is precisely what practitioners of sola scriptura do.
Let’s contrast that with the Catholic method. The Catholic asks, What does the catechism tell me about veneration? And the answer is, We believe what John of Famascus taught and was ratified by Nicea 2.
The contrast between the two methods could not be starker. You wish to say, Tu quoque: we have tradition, you have tradition, we neither use sola scriptura.
But your tradition is to go to the church for answers. Our tradition is to let the text speak to the best of our ability. We uphold the primacy of the word of God.
And in so doing, we show love for Hod.
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Well, Jeff, I got your attention, and I hope that of others. Really, the idolatry of the personal conscience must be confronted in your tradition. The critical spirit exhibited by most here at Old Life is not part of Reformed teaching. It is not part of the Gospel of grace. Sure, critique, but with the intention of clarifying truth, not tearing down everyone else to make oneself feel good or look good, somehow. What is happening here is something else.
In fact, Calvin’s commentaries are well reasoned refutations of many of the excesses in the Church of his time. Calvinism needs to be put in that context, if we want to talk contexts. Besides, he went off the rails himself in a number of instances, as history portrays. If people are going to call themselves by his name, then they must be willing to accept all that entails.
Then, Luther got ex communicated because he divorced good works done in the love of Christ entirely from justification – something Scripture does not do. Reformed teachers have been having to make up for his lack ever since. How many of you have to add to justification by faith alone the fact that personal righteous is also part of our salvation. IOW, sanctification has to be put into salvation. Otherwise all you get is antinomianism. That is what Luther’s version of justification by faith alone leads to, so both Lutherans and Calvinists have to figure out how to put law back into a lawless formula.
Lutherans talk about Law and Gospel. Calvinists talk about justification which has to lead to sanctification which eventually leads to glorification. 3 stages of salvation – past, present, and future. I have been saved. I am being saved. I will be saved.
And, of course, the 1st stop in the ordo is regeneration, that mysterious and miraculous sovereign work of the Spirit of God which frees the will and enables a person to choose Christ. A person must choose Christ in order to actually be saved, and regeneration has to happen to the elect before he or she can savingly believe.
Only thing is, the Golden Chain does not quite fit. As I said before, there is a missing link, that is if Calvinists are correct in saying that justification is only a forensic act by the righteous Judge whereby the sinner is declared righteous solely on the merits of Christ’s finished work on the cross.
That formula breaks down at the golden chain – where it gets choked, actually. So, you have to substitute sanctification for justification so that your Reformation can be justified.
I got tired of trying to twist Scripture and rationality to fit the formulas. There has to be a better way. …and Thomas Aquinas showed me the way.
Now, as far as your interpretation of your 2nd commandment goes, you would have to take it to the extreme of not even having photographs or artwork of any kind, which is what the Muslims do.
It is not what how the ancient Jews interpreted the prohibition about not making idols – which is what a graven image is. It is a statue meant to be worshiped because it represents a false God.
No matter how many times a Catholic tells you that they do not worship the statue, they worship God, you will continue to make the accusation, all the while ignoring your own idolatry. What do you idolize, since your heart is an idol factory according to your tradition?
…and I am over my limit for the day. Thank you, Jeff, for at least wanting to talk about serious subjects and get to the heart of the matter. Who owns our heart?
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Webfoot, as Jeff says, you are flailing around. I would suggest at the very least taking the day off. From what I can tell, you are doing your religion no favors, but seeing you get all excitable like that, per DGH and my own view, is a good sign. The fact is the apostle Paul was a polemic, you can’t deny. You’ve only been here now 2 weeks or so? Try catching up on the archives, or maybe sit back and watch the discussions without your intrusion. I’m only trying to help, I think for your sake, you should cool your jets. Take care. I’ll try and do the same.
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Mrs. W., should you think before you comment?
On this matter of the idolatry of personal conscience, have you yourself confronted what the magisterium has declared:
You’re starting to do a really good impersonation of vdm, m.
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Web: You are now solos and graceless. Otherwise, you would exalt Christ and glorify His Name.
You won’t even defend yourselves, let alone the honor of our Savior, Jesus Christ – crucified, buried, risen, ascended on high, and coming again. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary – whom you despise and demonize …
Hold up. It’s one thing to argue ideas. It’s another to get personal. And it’s still another to make things up.
I have specifically written things exalting Christ as head of the church rather than the Pope. And I have written nothing despising Mary. To fail to venerate her is not to despise her. To recognize her humanity is not to despise her.
Something seems to have gotten under your skin?
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Indeed, I remember your 100 comments on this 1400 + comment thread (where I met ol’ CD host – CD, if you are out there, drop a line to say hi again someday!) on this thread as well, Grace and peace, Jeff:
@kent
Would you believe a typo? You shouldn’t… I thought it was something along those lines, but I couldn’t remember what came after the UR and was too lazy to look around.
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Jeff, what got under my skin got under it quite awhile ago, and is why I could no longer be Protestant. It’s not your fault, and I am sure that you preach the Gospel and glorify God in your life as you know how.
What specifically? The criticisms of Albert Mohler and the PCA. I do not agree anymore with the specifics of their theology, but these are good men who want Christ to be preached. That is the specific thing that got to me right now, I guess.
Thanks for asking. Now, if you want to discuss theology and Scripture, I would enjoy that, but not here. It gets buried in hundreds of irrelevant comments about nothing. You know where to find me.
Anyway, this is a tragedy.
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OK. Some other time.
Grace and peace to you, Mrs. W.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 21, 2015 at 11:36 am | Permalink
Mrs. W., should you think before you comment?
On this matter of the idolatry of personal conscience, have you yourself confronted what the magisterium has declared:
“In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience, especially in matters religious. The reason is that the exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before all else in those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the course of his life directly toward God. No merely human power can either command or prohibit acts of this kind.”
You’re starting to do a really good impersonation of vdm, m.
Out of context. This is a statement against coercion. Faithful Catholics accept the authority of the magisterium voluntarily.
That’s some real David Barton stuff, man. Very bad.
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vd, t, please explain how Mrs. W.’s objections to freedom of conscience squares with Vatican 2.
Please also show me some love. Strike that. If you’re going to show, make it celibacy.
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Seth,
What do you got against Gregory’s book? I haven’t read it, but it makes sense to me( although not to Rod or Carl) that there have been ( unforeseeable) consequences to the Reformation. Mrs. Webfoot and Mr. TVD or much better at the theological history than I, but I can spot why pointing out that because the on the ground lives of many, many Catholics is just as antinomian as many( not all or most) Protestants, still doesn’t mean that the Catholic Church as a teaching authority isn’t the true Church. Sure, I think we can agree that nominal Catholics and Protestants should get their moral lives straightened out and all the pastors assigned to help with that should be shepherding their sheep, but since we can agree that its a mess out there, we should instead discuss the topic that everyone here wants to avoid. You didn’t address my question about denominations vs. the biblical term of one church. So we can all bemoan the moral lackness out there, it’s a real problem, but we also need to deal with Christian disunity. You of course can see the problem of claiming that the bible is perspicuous and yet the differences of belief represented by the men who comment on this site alone, is enough to have led to at least five different denominations.
Here’s Fr. Richard Neuhaus— “Then too, although in catechism class I heard about sola scriptura , we both knew we had a Magisterium, although I’m sure I never heard the term. When it came to settling a question in dispute, they had the pope”and we had the faculty of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. It was perfectly natural to ask the question, “What’s our position on this or that?” The “our” in the question self-evidently referred to the Missouri Synod, and the answer was commonly given by reference to an article in the synod’s official publication, The Lutheran Witness , usually written, or so it seemed, by Dr. Theodore Graebner. Why the Spooners went to one church and we to another seemed obvious enough; they were Catholics and we were Lutherans. They were taught that they belonged to the “one true Church” and I was taught that I belonged to the Missouri Synod and all those who are in doctrinal agreement with the Missouri Synod, which community made up “the true visible Church on earth.” So, between their ecclesiological claim and ours, it seemed pretty much a toss-up. They were taught that, despite my not belonging to the one true Church, I could be saved by virtue of “invincible ignorance.” I was taught that, despite their not belonging to the true visible Church on earth, they could be saved by”in the delicious phrase of Francis Pieper, Missouri’s chief dogmatician”“felicitous inconsistency.” ”
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/03/how-i-became-the-catholic-i-was
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Susan, you really should be careful about lines like this, “I haven’t read it, but it makes sense to me.”
Here’s the rub for Gregory and you. In 1415 the Council of Constance made Martin V pope. But the church already had two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. How do you know the Council chose the right guy? Why don’t councils have more authority than popes if they can depose some and make others? Why weren’t Benedict XIII and Gregory XII real popes?
If unity hangs on the papacy, this is a pretty big deal. But if a council had to sort out the papacy, then how can unity hang on the papacy?
Church reformers want to know.
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Susan,
Pointing out that because the on the ground lives of many, many Catholics is just as antinomian as many( not all or most) Protestants, still doesn’t mean that the Catholic Church as a teaching authority isn’t the true Church.
That’s not Darryl’s point. Darryl’s point is that it is disingenuous for Bryan et al to pretend the Magisterium wraps everything up in a nice little bow when the number of RCs who actually care about the Magisterium numbers far less than the 1.2 billion member statistic that is always presented to prove the church’s catholicity and grandeur. And secondly, that if the Magisterium is what you all think it is, it certainly doesn’t act like it.
A Magisterium entrusted with the truth that cares very little, if not at all, that it’s people accept the truth it teaches isn’t a Magisterium in whose hands ANYONE should entrust their soul.
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Butch, you took that quote out of context. This is what happens when you go out there seeking error instead of seeking truth.
Your anti-Catholicism is understandable, because you know little about Catholicism and the little you do know is wrong.
_____
Susan
Posted May 21, 2015 at 2:46 pm | Permalink
Seth,
What do you got against Gregory’s book? I haven’t read it, but it makes sense to me( although not to Rod or Carl) that there have been ( unforeseeable) consequences to the Reformation. Mrs. Webfoot and Mr. TVD or much better at the theological history than I, but I can spot why pointing out that because the on the ground lives of many, many Catholics is just as antinomian as many (not all or most) Protestants, still doesn’t mean that the Catholic Church as a teaching authority isn’t the true Church.
Exactly, just as Mormons being more observant and more accepting of their church’s teaching wouldn’t make Mormonism the true Church.
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vd, t, so what is the context?
I’m really trying.
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Tom Van Dyke,
What does this mean:
My learning of Church History comes primarily from Dr. Gerald Bray of Beeson Divinity School, I found no problems in his lectures, and even appreciated his somewhat denigrating comments of the “westminster theological seminary” types (you can find the comment in his lectures on the reformation):
http://adbuckingham.com/category/church-history/
Thus far, I have no reason to follow anything you say because you just make baseless assertions. In other words, where are your arguments? For someone as yourself who says you are more in line with Bryan Cross than Darryl Hart, you sure don’t seem to be able to make an argument when rubber meets the road. I’m willing to be shown wrong here, man. What is your point other than to try to tear Darryl down?
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Tom or any other RC apologist here, I found this today, seems to kind of rain on the parade of the called to communion types who draw a clear line from francis to peter, any takers? Thoughts RC folks who are fans of Darryl and so can’t stop posting here over and over and over and over and over?
D. G. Hart
Posted May 21, 2015 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
vd, t, so what is the context?
I’m really trying.
You need to try harder. Sorry for the tough love, Butch, but you’re not putting forth a good will effort. You’re a clever fellow. Tell me which part of
This is a statement against coercion. Faithful Catholics accept the authority of the magisterium voluntarily.
you don’t understand.
It’s quite perspicuous, even for anti-Catholics.
Now the usual tactic is to ignore that you took the passage out of context, and try to change the subject: Troll for a gotcha, something that’s in apparent contradiction to that, and therefore argue that the Catholic Church is therefore bogus.
It’s the same baleful game that anti-Christians use, arguing the Bible against itself, delegitimizing the Bible and therefore Christianity. If that’s the next step, let’s head it off here. If you were actually sincere in asking for a clarification, thank me very much.
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Darryl,
“Here’s the rub for Gregory and you. In 1415 the Council of Constance made Martin V pope. But the church already had two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. How do you know the Council chose the right guy? Why don’t councils have more authority than popes if they can depose some and make others? Why weren’t Benedict XIII and Gregory XII real popes”
Am I supposed to be discomforted by this? From the Protestant perspective this is a good thing( to each his own, own- authority), I suppose. Periods of instability demonstrate, what, that there is no chair? Or that all the settled doctrine thus far gets reversed? You think this means that we’re in the same boat, right? Until ta-da what everyone thought was going to sink suddenly turns upright….again. Ok, well if there is no unified Catholic doctrine on the books, then neither side(s), should seek to evangelize the other because we all at least have Jesus, at the end of the day. IOW, my denomination has the same amount of certainty about supernatural theology as does yours. Why should we beat each other up when we’re all trying to do the best we can with what we’ve been given? Forget dogma, eh? Just grab yourself a bible and make a new church for the bible gives everyone that authority so that each can set effectively set straight the other guy who also has a bible to set us straight and so on and so on, ad finitum, ad nauseam. ((sigh))
Darryl, did any doctrine change during the 15th century? Wasn’t Mass still going on, weren’t people still gaining indulgences and praying for the dead, and venerating Mary and the Saints?
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ughh, when i see the names susan/tvd/footlady, I can usually just skip reading the text. paragraphs are you friend susan.
all these poor lost catholic souls have me hungering for a movie, these guys just need to go tweet with bryan cross and and his gang and stop this already. good greif.
next.
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Susan
Posted May 21, 2015 at 5:13 pm | Permalink
Darryl,
“Here’s the rub for Gregory and you. In 1415 the Council of Constance made Martin V pope. But the church already had two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. How do you know the Council chose the right guy? Why don’t councils have more authority than popes if they can depose some and make others? Why weren’t Benedict XIII and Gregory XII real popes”
…Periods of instability demonstrate, what, that there is no chair? Or that all the settled doctrine thus far gets reversed? You think this means that we’re in the same boat, right? Until ta-da what everyone thought was going to sink suddenly turns upright….again
Yes, that’s the counterargument. For 2000 years now, despite man’s best [worst] efforts. There is not one sect of Protestantism [or the 1500 years of various heresies before that] that can make that claim. Every one of them has divided and divided some more, never to become one again.
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And yet through it all TVD wants to go to hell.
Susan, Tom doesn’t talk to me anymore, like you, he thinks I don’t get to the point. Footlady says the OPC is dying, Same stuff, different avatar.
Why does Tom want to go to hell? Susan, ask him, would you please? I don’t understand a word coming from his keyboard, and he’s convinced that he knows something (has he even read 1 cor 8:2 ? didn’t think so)(oh, and go for the context, lover boy, we can tell you have soo much love to give, especially with words like because you know little about Catholicism and the little you do know is wrong.
gettin’ better by the minute, we’re bubba when we need him?
next
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Exactly. As we’ve said numerous times (and dgh has ding, ding, dinged) in this very thread, our complaint is not with the RCC per se. It is the ctc approach that grates. To be sure I find rc theology off on a few important points and think their ecclesiology results in a system that does a remarkably poor job helping her flock grow. None of us think rome is wrong about everything. There might even be parishes that do great things. But the claims ctc make for the SUPERIORITY of Rome (and arrogant comments like yours that everything good in protestantism came from rome) grate and are false.
@tom Unlike rome orthodox didn’t fracture, eo isn’t basically rc, and they are not in full communion with Rome.
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Andrew Andrew Andrew,
Tom doesn’t want to go to hell. I’m sure that he means he loves you( which means that he wills your good), and doesn’t want you to go where he fears he might.
Mortal sin is a very real possibility, but we trust in the mercy of God whose property is always to have mercy.
But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
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Hi SDB,
I think that the ctc approach isn’t to tell Protestants that the things we have in common are nothing at all, and not important. We do share a whole lot and it is very good. So from both directions we can look over at the other and like what we see. However, we are not completely united, and that should be a travesty to us all. Superiority is the wrong word, my friend. At the end of the day, we all need the same thing and that is to have a way to be united under one visible head. For all the flaws of the people, that Church is the only one who claims to be Christ’s visible body on earth. Whether or not her doctrine is right in your eye, or mine, or anyone else’s is not what we should be asking, for we should be able to believe that whomever the church is she must possess all that is true concerning morals and faith.
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Susan: That’s not my experience at all. I don’t think you understamd how CTC comes across.
But in any event, why do you insist that the church must be united unde a visible head? Isn’t Jesud the heaf? He is not visible at this time.
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Susan,
Did you read your bible today and get an indulgence?
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/can-i-receive-a-plenary-indulgence-for-reading-the-bible
Your system sucks. Indulgences are a work of the devil.
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“Whether or not her doctrine is right in your eye, or mine, or anyone else’s is not what we should be asking, for we should be able to believe that whomever the church is she must possess all that is true concerning morals and faith.”-Implicit faith.
Such a weird group. All this rigorous syllogistic setup and then fairy dust and holy water sprinkles
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Mrs. – Hmmm. It looks like you guys idolize the OPC. You’re everyone’s critic and no one’s defender. No wonder you are dying. You have nothing to defend anymore. The only “truth” you represent is the truth of total depravity in everyone else.
You are not Reformed.
Erik – When did you become Tom?
I’ll defend those who uphold the Reformed Confessions.
Reformed churches that try to imitate Catholics or Lutherans are just being cute and deserve a swift kick in the cojones. I’ll administer it as needed.
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I don’t have time to read everything now, but did Mrs. Webfoot cheer up as the day went on?
Susan, please talk her off the ledge.
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Can anyone offer up an example of a conservative P&R church that has stained glass featuring images of Jesus Christ?
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Jeff,
I wrote out a whole lot( you can imagine :)~ but lost it.
Jesus is the head of the church, but didn’t he give authority to people before He left? An authority that should be in continuity with the authority to whom He gave it.
If you disagree with your ecclesial authority over some doctrine and you say to yourself, “Forget this. This guy is wrongheaded.”, does he cease being your authority? And does the new authority you place yourself under ( who happens to agree with you) actually become your authority. Are our authorities only our authorities if we say they can be? How does Matt 18:17 work if authority travels with the individual?
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They keep asking, we keep copy pasting. Keep it up RC interlocutors! You guys are great sports, to keep taking these beatings. I’ll never figure out what keeps you going, like sean says, “weird group.”
Erik, Footlady is about where I was, frustrated, in Sept 2012. She will be back, she’s learning that we aren’t how Tom portrayed us, and it’s easier to sit on the outside and criticize than actually enter the ring and defend something.
Unlike Tom, she’s taken a side and tries to defend. Tom is still the silly man on the outside doing monday morning quarterbacking, but I still have hopes that even he will learn some maturity maybe by the end of the year, it’s a slow process, these religious matters, this we all know. Lates homes.
sdb
Posted May 21, 2015 at 7:24 pm | Permalink
@tom Unlike rome orthodox didn’t fracture, eo isn’t basically rc, and they are not in full communion with Rome.
There’s something to be said about the EOs [official name: Orthodox Catholic Church] vis a vis Rome, although not in the context of the Reformation: The Rome/Constantinople divide is sui generis.
They each have the same 7 sacraments; even when a Roman rite priest joins the EOs, he is not re-ordained. [This means EO recognizes his apostolic succession.] With very minor doctrinal differences, they remain the same religion.
This cannot be said of Protestantism, particularly a divide as great as say, the Lutherans and the Calvinists–or even between Calvinists: Will the Orthodox Presbyterian Church recognize gay marriages performed by the PCUSA? Are these people ministers?
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pcusa-church-ordains-first-married-lesbian-couple-as-ministers-days-after-denominations-marriage-amendment-136111/
Ministry isn’t very important to y’all, I imagine, certainly less important than to Catholicism because of the apostolic succession thing and the Eucharist. 1517 cannot be lumped in with 1054. Indeed, the irony has been that most Old Life attacks on the Vatican may lend support to 1054, but do nothing to justify the new Protestant theologies post-1517.
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Tom continues to blather. He still doesn’t know that given he has no position (except maybe he likes Thomas Aquinas, but that doesn’t make him a Xtian), no one here cares what his opinions are.
We want to convert him to Xtianity, and tell us why he wants to go to hell. Anything else is just, again, blather.
Next.
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“At the end of the day, we all need the same thing”
I agree
” and that is to have a way to be united under one visible head.”
But that’s not it. We need to be made right with God. Everything is subsidiary to that. Insofar as an angel, apostle, or any organization obscures that, then they are anathema.
” For all the flaws of the people, that Church is the only one who claims to be Christ’s visible body on earth.”
That’s not correct. Nestorians claim that, Orthodox claim that, and my PCA congregation claims to be a local manifestation of the visible body.
” Whether or not her doctrine is right in your eye, or mine, or anyone else’s is not what we should be asking, for we should be able to believe that whomever the church is she must possess all that is true concerning morals and faith.”
Paul’s message to the Galatians and warning to Timothy, John’s excoriation of the churches in Revelation, and Christ’s rebuking of the leaders of the OT “church” indicate that your expectation is unwarranted.
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vd, t, thanks. So you mean the holy fathers were right to silence John Courtney Murray in the 1950s in his understanding of the American creation. And those historians who say that Murray prevailed at Vatican 2 are just plain wrong? Or that David Barton is a goof?
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Susan, “Am I supposed to be discomforted by this?”
If you think, yes.
“You think this means that we’re in the same boat, right?”
No, Protestants have never invested the truth of their religion in a single bishop.
“Darryl, did any doctrine change during the 15th century?”
Yes. Papal supremacy involved not one popes but three. Three popes, one bishop?
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Sorry, I don’t follow. My orthodox family say that Rome unleashed the chaos in the west. I certainly don’t believe we are closer theologically than RCs. But I don’t see why that is relevant. Curiously though the orthodox are somewhat more lenient on divorce and have a more mystical understanding of the Eucharist than Rome.
” Indeed, the irony has been that most Old Life attacks on the Vatican may lend support to 1054, but do nothing to justify the new Protestant theologies post-1517.”
Well as we’ve noted over and over, our objection is not that RC has problems therefore the WCF is true. It is that the ctc engages in half truths to establish superiority of the RCC. Their apologetic rests on MOC such that if what they claim is correct, then it doesn’t matter how good our claims are, we are heretical schismatics. For the protestant project to be justified there must be a problem with the mocs. Establishing that the mocs don’t stand is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the prot project.
Doing so is not intended to undermine the whole of the rcc. It is to suggest that the pride and triumphalism is misplaced, and perhaps targeting insecure pastors, boasting about their scalps, and putting them front and center to extol all that is wrong with the tradition they left.
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vd, t, “There is not one sect of Protestantism [or the 1500 years of various heresies before that] that can make that claim.”
Except that every Roman Catholic historian does claim that settled doctrine gets reversed. I know, they’re all listening to Michael Sean Winters.
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Just to be an instigator and throw THIS in here. This is based on objective traffic data. New Advent gets number one 😀
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Aw. Erik, you were worried about me. I am doing great. It was a fantastic day, here. How are you?
Very interesting conversation today. I hope I clarified some of my positions and answered some questions put to me.
Tomorrow is another day, and now with this one, I am 2 or even 3 over my daily limit for this thread. Have a good rest of the evening, and take care.
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Footlady, you’re doing good indeed. Thanks for the confirm.
Greg, good link. Noticed this blogger was listed there. Christians, rest in the complete work of Christ. God help us. Amen.
http://heidelblog.net/2013/10/freedom-christian-man-3-luther-diet-worms/
next
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 21, 2015 at 10:51 pm | Permalink
vd, t, “There is not one sect of Protestantism [or the 1500 years of various heresies before that] that can make that claim.”
Except that every Roman Catholic historian does claim that settled doctrine gets reversed. I know, they’re all listening to Michael Sean Winters.
If you want to contradict Susan, Butch, you need to contradict her. If you just want to bury what I say, you have underlings for that. You tried to put them on a leash when they were annoying YOU, but now you just let them run free, yapping and nipping at heels and ankles, even those of nice Catholic ladies. Perverse, man.
Here, try again, and better luck this time. Unfortunately, I think the difficulty is that the facts are not on your side.
Susan
Posted May 21, 2015 at 5:13 pm | Permalink
Darryl,
“Here’s the rub for Gregory and you. In 1415 the Council of Constance made Martin V pope. But the church already had two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. How do you know the Council chose the right guy? Why don’t councils have more authority than popes if they can depose some and make others? Why weren’t Benedict XIII and Gregory XII real popes”
…Periods of instability demonstrate, what, that there is no chair? Or that all the settled doctrine thus far gets reversed? You think this means that we’re in the same boat, right? Until ta-da what everyone thought was going to sink suddenly turns upright….again
Yes, that’s the counterargument. For 2000 years now, despite man’s best [worst] efforts. There is not one sect of Protestantism [or the 1500 years of various heresies before that] that can make that claim. Every one of them has divided and divided some more, never to become one again.
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we’ll be one in heaven
tvdfails (biggest. fail. ever.)
yap and nip, yo
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Man is this place getting whack.
Mrs. W comes close to a EC type paranoid meltdown, but she’s back on track now. (Must be feeling guilty about the idolatry thing. Because you can always commit mental idolatry, idols and idolatry should be left alone. Uh huh. Incoherence much?) Does that mean a substantive response to Scripture? Nah. Prots are guilty of what RC teaches. Justification is sanctification. Imputation or infusion? Nah, best ignore it, otherwise we would be giving another performance of our Bambi in the floodlights imitation.
EC and Ab in spamming the combox are essentially telling us their job as accountants is boring. (Hey we already knew that.)
But seriously laddies. Quantity is not quality and just because DG doesn’t erase it, doesn’t mean it was worth sayin’.
Jus’ saying.
(Ahem, the quantity masquerading as quality syndrome is also known as the Bryan fallacy, only his replies are way more voluble on his website. Which is no excuse for pale imitations over here.)
Cause if comments are open for thee, they are also are open for the rest of us.
Even Tommy can figure it out, even if he can’t apply it to the larger picture of numbers vs. truth in the Roman vs. prot paradigm.
So stick more in the recycle bin genl’men and we’ll all be happier.
Or keep yammering away like the fool in Proverbs.
Your choice.
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Darryl
I think I’ve given enough material for you to chew on, so I’m going to bow out of this thread. I keep getting myself tangled in many little conversations and am feeling a bit dizzy. But I hope that over time you will pick up some of the authors that I mentioned.
Mrs. Webfoot is patient and loving, and I know she and Tom will continue to converse in good will.
Wish you the best my friends!
In Christ Jesus,
Susan
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vd, t, see what you did there?
I brought up Roman Catholic historians.
You disrespected Old Life regulars.
At least Bryan doesn’t get personal.
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Susan, I know. Everything is always all good among Roman Catholics. It’s Protestants who suck.
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Bob,
Point taken.
Good to hear from you.
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Vote today in Catholic Ireland on legalizing gay marriage. We’ll see if their superior paradigm informs them. How will Tom blame Presbyterians if they “go gay”?
In the U.S. we entrust that decision to our Jewish/Catholic Supreme Court.
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Sue,
This is really the first time you’ve been dizzy?
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Bob,
Take 2 Midol and call me in the morning.
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Erik, Tom will blame an adverse result in Ireland on all the the US entertainment filth from Holly…wait, where does Tom live?
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It’s hard when one has decided that everything “his team” does is perfect and always has been and always will be.
A mature and rational adult with a putative IQ of 3 digits is expected to weigh things out and be flexible and see the weaknesses on his side and admit them and try to improve. Not just go LALALALALALALALA I CAN”T HEAR YOU!!!!
Especially when it doesn’t even matter to the person outside of jokes and tee-hees on the internet.
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Commenting again on Old Life: $1000
Annoying Tom and Bob: Priceless
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Chortles,
You stole Greg’s thunder.
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Erik, any one of us could don the masque of Grand Inquisitor over the Filth on TV
that doesn’t take any plausible brains or special level of self-righteous prigginess
but why bother, we’re amongst friends (mostly)
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Interesting experiment here, DGH. When the person in charge conducts laissez faire moderation there’s a vacuum that gets filled in by moderator-vigilantes. Does any other blog have so many metanarratives about its comments? Are we wired to censor, or wired to seek order? Can adults be self-governing(no)?
And here’s mine: it’s good to have Kent back doing his “get a life, be an adult” thing from time to time.
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But, Mud, I want to know where my cut of the 1k is.
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Sometimes I feel like i’ve been tied to the whippin post, sometimes I do the tying up.
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Erik,
How will Tom blame Presbyterians if they “go gay”?
I have a prediction: “But the Magisterium is still holding the line.”
Why is it that the RCs think the Magisterium is holding the line when they don’t care if anyone follows them or not and just keep giving them the Eucharist?
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If the Magisterium utters a declaration in the woods and nobody pays attention, has it still made a sound?
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Erik says:Chortles,
You stole Greg’s thunder.
As seems often to be case around here, I don’t know what this means. Could I prevail upon you to be so kind as to help me out please Erik?
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Greg,
Kent became the arbiter of maintaining confessional vows pertaining to the 7th commandment.
But we know that no one brings it like you can. The floor on that topic is still and always yours.
You made your mark here, and are one of us if that’s what you want.
Good to hear from you Greg.
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I mean Chortles.
It’s been a long week. I’m still dizzy from someone named shawnie. Gee, wonder who that was (emoticon).
Susan, I feel your pain (dizziness).As you were, you righteous ones.
Eric, please. We all know it’s $2000.
(Wait for it…)
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muddy, not sure about the experiment. I just don’t think it’s right to be provocative and run (the way some bloggers are).
Plus, I always think that q&a sessions when I teach or speak are the most useful for MEEEE. I gain a sense of what people heard, understood, or not, and here at OL the RC interlocutors (not to mention the pietists) reveal more than you find in regular channels.
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Could I prevail upon you to take my bait?
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DGH – come for the content, come for the social experiment. But I used to work in a psychiatric facility, so it has a nostalgic vibe for me.
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Good to be reminded that our fellow travelers are often weirdos and that out opponents (such as and to the extent that they are) can be even weirder and lamer.
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I mean, for all their ‘authenticity’ (TGC), smug-clubby-cheekiness (Ref21, et al), and high-minded piety (they are legion), how many other sites are as real as this one?
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cw, it’s called “comments open”, we post what we like (go S. Curry!!).
dgh is a master propogandist. you gotta hand it to him.
your “comment of the month” during the super bowl half time took the cake, but i agree with you here. it’s the spirit of Martin Luther, as far as I am concerned.
We speak our mind. It’s fun.
Who’s next?
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CW, tread lightly. Remember what happened the last time you praised Old Life.
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Yeah, well ‘real’ usually sucks so (to use Sean’s idiom) here come some suck. Probably.
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Susan, I know you’re out for now. I’ll offer this up as food for future thought.
Susan: Jeff,
I wrote out a whole lot( you can imagine :)~ but lost it.
Yep. Been there. I have three categories of lost long posts. Those swallowed by the computer; those that I wrote in a grumpy mood and thought better of, and those that were waaay too long and got the editor’s axe.
Susan: Jesus is the head of the church, but didn’t he give authority to people before He left?
Definitely.
Susan: An authority that should be in continuity with the authority to whom He gave it.
This point needs defending. It is a core tenet of the RC apologetic, and it suffers from three problems.
(1) No support in Scripture. Why should authority have to be in continuity? Amos lacked continuity yet had authority. Caiaphas had continuity, yet abused his authority and was disregarded by the apostles.
(2) Vagueness. What kind of continuity? In fact — what is authority anyway?
These aren’t weird navel-gazing questions. The more I interact with CTC, the more I am convinced that the underlying mental picture of authority is and how it functions is actually an impossible one.
(3) Lack of defined failsafes. This goes to DGHs point about the multiple popes. If the required continuity is sacramental continuity as in laying-on of hands, then how do you know that the current pope even has that, given the multiple-pope controversy AND the 1054 Schism?
If on the other hand the required continuity is doctrinal continuity, then how do you know who has that continuity? Yada, yada.
Susan: If you disagree with your ecclesial authority over some doctrine and you say to yourself, “Forget this. This guy is wrongheaded.”, does he cease being your authority? And does the new authority you place yourself under ( who happens to agree with you) actually become your authority. Are our authorities only our authorities if we say they can be? How does Matt 18:17 work if authority travels with the individual?
And this is where I wonder what you mean by authority. Catholics continue to press the idea that either we fall under the magisterial authority or else we are simply individual popes. But that idea derives, I think, from a faulty understanding of what authority is and how it relates to interpretation.
Consider this. When you pick up a book that does not say Holy Bible on the cover and read it, you form an understanding of what the book means, specifically what the author’s intent was. (There are other theories of meaning, but I will assume that we share the notion that meaning consists of authorial intent).
When you form that understanding, you don’t pause and think, “I, upon my authority as Susan the Great, declare that this text means X.” Authority plays no role in your thought process as you read.
If you then read different authorities — literary critics, say — then you will take their opinions into account by allowing them to influence your views. Their opinions become data points.
Now we turn to Scripture. When anyone, whether Catholic or Protestant, reads the Bible (say, Matt 2) and forms an opinion as to what the intent of the author was. That’s what reading is. All readers do it, except middle school students, who skip to the phrase that looks like the blank they are supposed to fill in. Kidding. Somewhat.
Now: Background information plays a role in the formation of that opinion. We may or may not be aware of 1st century history, non-Biblical texts, archaeology, language, etc.
One of the important ‘etcs’ is the official teaching of our church on that passage. Our understanding of church teaching becomes a hugely important data point in forming our opinion.
BUT
We as individuals still form that opinion. We can’t help ourselves. There is no direct data-link from the CCC to your brain, such that you automatically and unconsciously adopt the church teaching on a particular passage. Rather, the church teaching becomes an important piece of information that you, the reader, use to form your opinion about the meaning of the text.
Much more can be said here. We haven’t touched on the voluntaristic assumption that underlies Catholic views of authority, nor the circular reasoning involved, nor the practical impediments to certainty that present to a Catholic.
But my point is this: Everyone is an interpreter. When a Catholic looks at a confessional Protestant and criticizes him for “relying on his own authority”, he is mistaken. Interpretation is what readers do. Authority plays a different role.
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‘real’ maybe.
Real is anything but suck, cw.
grace and peace brother.
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CT
Could I prevail upon you to take my bait?
It was actually an honest question Chris. Despite Andrew’s earnest attempt, I still have no idea how I stole Chortle’s thunder. I was also being honest in that a good deal of the time I stare befuddled at this site not knowing what people are talking about. There seems to be an oldlife vernacular that I am having difficulty assimilating.
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Greg, breathing in irony like it is oxygen, and a large capacity for self-deprecating humour can’t be taught.
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Greg,
You are the guy who comes down hard on people’s choice of television shows, as particularly pertaining to the 7th commandment.
When Chortles takes on that role
by saying that the vote today in Ireland with be in favor of allowing “gay marriage” is due to the US entertainment industry, it’s a playful jab then for Erik to say, “hey, how can chortles denigrate Hollywood like that, only Greg can do that, if anyone else does, then it’s “stealing Greg’s thunder.”
Chortles stole your thunder, you did not steal anyone’s.
You have my phone number, call me if you need further explan.
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“I just don’t think it’s right to be provocative and run (the way some bloggers are).”
Props, yo.
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AB, that was lucid. Props, yo.
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CWL, please, please don’t enable…
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Greg,
Did Richard Schickel invade Pauline Kael’s turf at The New Yorker?
You and only you are the resident Old Life media critic — a regular Roger Ebert meets Attila the Hun.
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Mrs. – Then, Luther got ex communicated because he divorced good works done in the love of Christ entirely from justification – something Scripture does not do. Reformed teachers have been having to make up for his lack ever since. How many of you have to add to justification by faith alone the fact that personal righteous is also part of our salvation. IOW, sanctification has to be put into salvation. Otherwise all you get is antinomianism. That is what Luther’s version of justification by faith alone leads to, so both Lutherans and Calvinists have to figure out how to put law back into a lawless formula.
Erik – Finally, a Roman Catholic at least starts to answer my question on the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification.
So you admit the doctrine is at least partially based on salvation by works?
But Tom has adamantly told us that Roman Catholics don’t believe in salvation by works.
How about the two of you huddle up and get back to me?
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Mrs. Webfoot became Roman Catholic because someone criticized Al Mohler?
Watch out if she goes to Perkins for breakfast and the cook burns her toast…
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Susan – Seth,
What do you got against Gregory’s book? I haven’t read it, but it makes sense to me
Erik – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b5aW08ivHU
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Are we paying Tom, Mrs. Webfoot, and Susan a stipend? If not, we need to.
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But splitting $1,000 three ways leaves a remainder.
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Erik, my posts yesterday were in answer to your questions, and those of others. I had things I had to do yesterday morning, so I wrote as fast as I could, but it is good that your recognized answers to your questions.
Of course salvation involves good works. Without them, there is no faith and no justification by faith at all. Check out the phrase “faith working through love”. See who said it. Relate it to faith and justification. Hint: the phrase is found in one of Luther’s favorite books of the NT. Fatih working through love is the only thing that matters. Why is this?
See, in the Reformed understanding of salvation, things are separated out into 3 stages – 1.) justification by faith alone – a forensic act of the righteous Judge whereby Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the believer, but not imparted 2.) sanctification – a process whereby the Holy Spirit works to produce greater Christlikeness that ends in 3.) glorification, when we will be like Christ because we will see Him as He is.
The big problem is that Romans 8:30 does not support that tradition. You cannot force the Reformed definition of justification on that verse without violating your own rule of sola scriptura.
Think about it.
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CW,
Listen to Michael.
Michael,
Props, yo.
Webfoot,
Explain how the OPC is dying again?
Really, my ears are literally burning.
Next.
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Web: The big problem is that Romans 8:30 does not support that tradition. You cannot force the Reformed definition of justification on that verse without violating your own rule of sola scriptura.
I’ve never seen such a load of crap in my life. You are playing with at least three definitions that I don’t have any confidence you can define in our context. And getting an F on prooftexting on top of it.
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Erik,
You made me smile. You are seriously funny. Darryl, should be paying you. It’s dull when your not around.
About my comment, you took it out of context( Jeff, see how easily that happens?), I meant that it doesn’t necessitate that I read Gregory’s book to grasp the basic implications to society wrought by the Reformation—– I live it daily.
Jeff,
Thank you for the thoughtful conversation. I will try to address this weekend what you’ve said.
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.
Susan
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click here
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Michael,
I’ve chipped in. Time for the others to cough up.
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Mrs, Webfoot,
So you and Tom do disagree on the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification?
He’s bored by the topic, but he’s told us several times that Roman Catholics don’t believe in salvation by works.
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Susan,
If we ever meet, I’m buying.
With our respective spouses in tow, of course…
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Susan,
I think what you’re experiencing are the effects of sin. Roman Catholic hegemony was not a panacea for those effects.
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RC interlocutors,
You keep pushing our numbers up. Average comments per post has almost broken 82.
This is fun. Sorry Bubba and Michael, I know nothing would make you happier than
for my arms to fall offto stop abusing your eyeballs with the script from my fingers, but if you don’t like it, why do you enable me?LikeLike
Erik,
That would be fun, I’m sure your wife is a saint, and I’d love to meet her:)
If you ever get FB, please add me as a friend.
I will ignore the Catholic comment.
Jeff,
My friend, I have a young teen, that needs her mom, so I’ve decided not to spend time here. Life’s short and it takes me too much time to formulate my thoughts and write them down. Plus I am taking a CIS class and there’s so much busy work involved. I have also made myself a reading list, and it will not happen if spend time at OL. I need to give more heed to being a good steward of the time the Lord has given me. I will peek in from time to time and do my best to refrain from opening my mouth!
Take care!
Susan
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 22, 2015 at 6:19 am | Permalink
vd, t, see what you did there?
I brought up Roman Catholic historians.
You disrespected Old Life regulars.
At least Bryan doesn’t get personal.
Easy there, Butch. Your Old Life “regulars” do nothing but ad hom and disrespect. When they’re not doing irrelevance. Once you asked them to dial it back but now you’re clearly encouraging them.
Their antics reflect poorly on you, not me, bro, and I say this out of love.
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Justification is not by works. Justification is always by faith. There is no other way. Without faith it is impossible to please God.
You see, Protestant tradition confuses sanctification and justification. Salvation goes like this according to the Bible and the Church. . There is an initial justification, then progressive sanctification, then a final glorification. The Bible teaches, and the Church confirms, that there is an initial justification at the time of conversion, then a progressive justification where a person grows in righteousness, then a final justification. It is all by faith.
Kent, your arguments are a bit weak, there, my friend.
Well, you guys know how to study this out for yourselves. Start with Decree On Justification from the Council of Trent (1545-1564). You should be able to find it somewhere online.
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Tom,
Who does your being here reflect poorly on? Pope Francis?
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Mrs.,
Where does that initial justification get you to?
Where does the deathbed convert stand?
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Mrs.,
How does the progressive justification and sanctification work for those outside the Roman Catholic Church?
Tell us the steps we must take.
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Susan,
You know you can’t quit us.
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MrsW/Susan/Tom (hereafter MST, or Mountain Standard Time),
Everything you have raised is an OPC Q&A click a way. Really, you are just wasting your time, and we are having fun at your expense (you know that, right?).
Enjoy, and take care:
Mrs.,
Trent’s still the go-to source on justification?
Is Luther referred to as a “separated brother”?
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Andy makes a good observation. All these apologists are from out west.
Who saw the “Mad Men” finale? Do we trust religious people from out west?
When do the spokespeople for the Mars diosces show up?
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Erik, Mad men? DGH mentions it in his other blog, I’ve not watched any of it, all the guys at work like it, just like Game of Thrones. I just smile and nod. Maybe Michael watches MadM and GoT, he’s really into TV and the latest stuff (he got me and the missus watching Americans, now she’s wanting to go on to season 2, hard to hold her off….I digress…….)
public service announcment – tom van dyke thinks “oldlife regulars” (who does that include anyway?) are mean.
here’s what we do – everyone reading this, be nice, cute and cuddly, do exactly at tom van dyke says. henceforth, i will comment nothing more at this blog, except to point out when we don’t live up to the tvd standard
congrats tvd, i have a new role here. the nice police.
good work
who
is
next
to
post
a
comment
at
oldlife
yo?
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do note though, irrelevance is fine.
As my first order of business, as nice police, I have a comment for Tom Van Dyke
Tom, if you do not want to be called names, I suggest you stop calling Darryl “butch.” You claim the ol reglars are mean.
Well it is mean to call darryl butch. I would ask that you apologize, and play nice. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite who can’t follow his own rules.
Shape up your act, or else you’ll keep hearing from me, and Bob Suden And Michael (T) will be angry that my name keeps showing up.
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I doubt I will ever be able to follow something like THIS
I wouldn’t have deciphered that in a million years.
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Darryl,
Big day for Hillsdale steeplechase sisters.
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Sorkin’s writing is too self-aware and his characters are too frenetic for my taste, although I liked “The Social Network” a lot.
Weiner & “Mad Men” are much more subtle and you have to ponder it to appreciate it. Multiple viewings are recommended, as Kent has made clear to me in many instances.
If you appreciate American lit from Sherwood Anderson forward it is the show for you.
It’s also the best show about work ever made.
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Erik, its prolly good.
I tend to default all my tv comparisons back to Star Trek Deep Space 9 from ages 13-16.
Most of what fiction I learned is from the written word, such as literature. I just can’t really get into shows like I could when I was a teenager
The last one was “Lost”, but the ending was horrible.
I’m kind if with Greg, shows today are really gross. If my wife didn’t force the shows with all the sex, I’d likely read science fiction a lot. But I know that would old too. So then there’s theology and history.
Michael probably is a good guy to talk tv with. He told me to watch this
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
My soft stalker never lets me down (emoticon)
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Cyber punk too:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem
I have intentions to finish that. All about me.
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Jeff Cagle
Posted May 22, 2015 at 11:04 am | Permalink
Susan, I know you’re out for now. I’ll offer this up as food for future thought.
“Susan: Jesus is the head of the church, but didn’t he give authority to people before He left?”
Definitely.
That creates an opening you could drive a Vatican City through. You’ve just conceded magisterium. Now it’s just a question of who and when. Acts, certainly. The Epistles.
Unless you want to argue that “authority” ended there. The Early Church Fathers, problematic. Unanimity did not exist among them. After that, it gets even more forensic. Was Augustine right about everything, as infallible/inerrant as Paul?
Susan: An authority that should be in continuity with the authority to whom He gave it.
This point needs defending. It is a core tenet of the RC apologetic, and it suffers from three problems.
(1) No support in Scripture. Why should authority have to be in continuity?
This simply shifts [avoids all] burden of proof. Since the Reformation argues against the Catholic Church–which in 1517 was manifest for 1000 years if not the full 1500–the Reformation needs to successfully argue discontinuity using Scripture.
After 1500 years of Christianity/Catholicism, where is the Protestant Reformation prophesied? The Catholic argument for continuity is rather plain. It’s not enough to deny or reinterpret “Thou art Peter” and “I will always be with you” and “I will send my Spirit.” The Reformation’s premise is not only that the new theologies post-1517 are correct, but that so many of the pre-1517s are wrong that a radical re-start of Christianity was required.
This is no small thing: The Eastern Orthodox “Great Schism” of 1054 is merely ecclesiastical, the authority of the papacy and some small matters like purgatory. 1000 years later, the theology of the sacraments and the Mass still remains identical. The liturgy remains recognizably the same: The Liturgy of the Word followed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
Have you ever been? To each? To a Muslim or a Martian, it’s visibly the same religion.
But Calvinism [and its evangelical descendants] dispensed with the Mass, and most of the sacraments. You turned as far away from the Eastern Orthodox as you did from Rome. Your argument–the Reformation’s argument–is not with the papacy, not ecclesiastical but theological.
Therefore, if you want to justify your version of Christianity, you need to start at 1054, and not just harp on the easy pickings of Rome’s corruptions of simony, the Inquisition, Edgardo Mortara and the latest Pew Poll on how American Catholics don’t know the Mass from a hole in the ground.
As for the rest of your worthy essay, Jeff, it’s worth engaging. But First Things First.
But my point is this: Everyone is an interpreter. When a Catholic looks at a confessional Protestant and criticizes him for “relying on his own authority”, he is mistaken. Interpretation is what readers do. Authority plays a different role.
Per the above, no, not “everybody” is an interpreter. No, not at all. That’s a Reformation thing. In fact, the Reformation came up with its own Bible, rejecting the 7 Deutero-canonical books and passages from Daniel and Esther. By what “authority” [Luther’s? Calvin’s?] is another question that the burden of proof lies on the Reformation.
The Eastern Orthodox Bible is the same as Rome’s. They don’t accept your “Reformation” either.
By setting the Reformation against 1054 rather than 1517, I think we’re onto something very important here. Thanks for the impetus on this, Jeff. It’s possible only because you play straight, and no energy is wasted clearing out the chaff.
Cheers, bro.
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Tom,
But the Called to Communion guys would tell us that by losing the Pope the Eastern Orthodox lost the most important aspect of Christianity. What do they have without an infallible authority? They’re as lost as Protestants.
Also look at Seth’s reference to Pornocracy the other day. The Catholic Church & the papacy was as messed up in 1054 as it was in 1517. The political climate for reform wasn’t present yet, nor was the technology (the printing press).
Take off the rose colored glasses about your boyhood faith. You were right being skeptical for 30 years.
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Erik,
Tom already said at your blog all olters are swine, that’s why he doesn’t post anything of value here.
I don’t feed trolls. You know what I mean?
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I think Tom is posting some substantive stuff of late. I can tell he’s reading and thinking. He asks good questions when he’s being serious as opposed to just trying to get Darryl’s goat.
His inner 15-year old is at war with his inner 50-year old.
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Tom, I agree that Jeff is a fair player.
Erik, sin has always been a problem in the RCC( what do you think confession is for?)and everywhere else,that’s not the argument. Remember, the Reformation was supposed to be about Reform not revolution. Have you ever read Luther’s 95 thesis’s? They’re mainly about the selling of indulgences and the papacy. So everything that present day Reformers dislike wasn’t on Luther’s list of problems.
I was thinking about a book that really helped me to dig deeper into our differences( and our commonality), and I wanted to mention it to Jeff. I recommend “Symbolism”by Johann Adam Moehler. I read it a little over two years ago. If you are interested, check it out. It’s online too. I’d link it for you but my stupid cursor won’t work and I don’t know how to use shortcuts to copy and paste.
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ec, woot hoo.
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ec, the only way Don Draper becomes interesting is to layer in some kind of fantastic past out west and the war and some adopted wife. As if.
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vd, t, in 1500 Western Christianity was fluid. If not for Protestantism, Roman Catholicism would not have achieved the relative coherence that it did. Lots of smart guys at many universities. But the popes were too busy constructing a city that would attract and house pilgrims.
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Susan,
And how did the church respond to the theses?
Maybe if they had paid heed as opposed to persecuting, more reformers wouldn’t have sprung up looking for more problems?
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Darryl,
He’s interesting as a man who has enjoyed all the world has to offer and still found life wanting.
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D.G.,
I’m also surprised that you don’t find it interesting as an historian of the 20th century. Maybe you lived too close to that time to be captivated by it.
The episode on the Kennedy assassination alone was fascinating.
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“So everything that present day Reformers dislike wasn’t on Luther’s list of problems.”
Some of still aren’t crazy about the office of the pope or indulgences.
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Interesting experiment here, DGH. When the person in charge conducts laissez faire moderation there’s a vacuum that gets filled in by moderator-vigilantes.
Mud, that’s hilarious. Often enough any vacuum around here gets filled up pretty quick by the moderator-spammers who don’t like anybody else taking advantage of the “comments are open” policy.
But we wouldn’t be catching any flak if we weren’t over the target, who has at least temporarily upped his game.
Whatever/ciao
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The big problem is that Romans 8:30 does not support that tradition. You cannot force the Reformed definition of justification on that verse without violating your own rule of sola scriptura.
Has we ever heards of tota scriptura?
You need to finish Williamson’s studyguide on the WCF be for you are really qualified to get taken seriously W.
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Qualified, BubbaSays? Look at the Scripture all by itself without forcing it through the lens of your theological tradition.
How does the Reformed definition of justification fit Romand 8:30, especially if you take into account your stages – but 3 counting from justification, and 9 in total? Why does the verse go from justification to glorification, with no sanctification?
Maybe you don’t find that curious. Now, you will not want to accept the idea that justification is a process. Your tradition will not allow it. Could it be that in this verse, justification is synonymous with sanctification?
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 22, 2015 at 11:08 pm | Permalink
vd, t, in 1500 Western Christianity was fluid. If not for Protestantism, Roman Catholicism would not have achieved the relative coherence that it did. Lots of smart guys at many universities. But the popes were too busy constructing a city that would attract and house pilgrims.
Butch, your religion can’t be founded on how popes sucked c. 1517. They did. They will continue to suck.
You have to have a religion of your own.
Argue against the [Greek] [Eastern] Orthodox Catholic Church as of 1053, way before John Calvin was even a mote in God’s eye. The EOs number some 250+ million, much bigger than “Presbyterianism’s” 80 million or so, and near 1000 times bigger than your “Orthodox Presbyterian Church,” which at 30,000 souls, is no more than a mote in Presbyterianism’s eye.
You gotta stop hating on the Vatican, just as formal argument. Even if it didn’t exist, your theological and ecclesiastical problems would still be the same. The Greek Catholic Church would still stand in your way.
Quit with the poll numbers and the Inquisition and take your theological anger out on the Eastern Orthodox. 98.9% of your complaints will still apply, Mr. Rev. Dr. Theological Society. Go for it.
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ec, I love the atmospherics. But the characters don’t work. Don Draper is about as plausible as Walter White. By the end of the second season I’m saying, I don’t care.
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vd, t, I don’t hate the Vatican. Me? Hate?
What tightens my jaws is apologists who can’t admit flaws in their love. In fact, its a funny thing how closely Roman Catholic exceptionalism mirrors American exceptionalism (and Fox News).
You could thank me. Old Life is quality control for RC apologists. Which arguments work, which don’t?
The thanks we get.
And to be clear, Protestants do have a religion. It is the one of Scripture. Rome cluttered it up. We try to take it straight.
But giving up the Yankees for the Mets can be a challenge.
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Erik,
Troll. Pure and simple.
Even Bubba got confused this round.
Amazing.
Next
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DGH, like the writer of Mad Men I was at a very young and impressionable age when Life Magazine brought the weirdness and horror of that era into the home every week.
The show was a good attempt to capture the changes that hit the US from 1957 through 1971. Recommended for anyone with deserved or fake nostalgia for those times.
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I don’t know if I have ever seen a TV show that I didn’t think was geared towards women.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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Mrs.,
Defend biblically the notion that sanctification and justification can be melded together as if they were one and the same.
How are you and Tom coming on whether or not the RCC teaches salvation by works?
Where does the deathbed convert stand? No time for good works.
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Darryl,
Don’s not believable?
You don’t know talented, good looking people with money who can get away with anything…until they can’t?
You’ve never met Bill Clinton?
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ec, all the back story on Don is unbelievable and unnecessary. It’s so obviously an attempt to make him complex and conflicted. Why can’t he just be an average guy with an average sex drive?
But did you ever hear him talk about his beliefs, feelings, government, toys, baseball? One dimension.
But Roger, there’s the guy for a show.
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this being comment 522, i thought i would post this, no one in particular comes to mind..
D.G.,
Given that Don was raised by a stepmother who didn’t really want him, in a whore house, his sexual issues make some sense.
His identity becomes interesting when we meet Anna Draper, and this also adds the California dimension.
You quit watching too soon. The best part of the show was when he was between Betty & Megan.
A few times they even touched on Jesus. Don clearly didn’t consider him to be the answer because as a boy he had encountered hypocrites who preached Jesus.
I agree on Roger.
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D. G. Hart
Posted May 22, 2015 at 11:08 pm | Permalink
vd, t, in 1500 Western Christianity was fluid. If not for Protestantism, Roman Catholicism would not have achieved the relative coherence that it did. Lots of smart guys at many universities.
No doubt, Butch. But as Luther believed the Turks were both “God’s rod and the devil’s servant,” we see that being an instrument of Divine Will doesn’t necessarily make you worthy in your own right.
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Erik, when does Don ever talk about what motivates him? You can’t just leave it to the audience to construe the past. I know what Roger wants. Don is another Walter White who is at the whim of writers and need a character to prolong the series.
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vd, t, so true. Even works for Rome.
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Previously Susan tells us that:
For all the flaws of the people, that Church is the only one who claims to be Christ’s visible body on earth. Whether or not her doctrine is right in your eye, or mine, or anyone else’s is not what we should be asking, for we should be able to believe that whomever the church is she must possess all that is true concerning morals and faith.
So there you have it. Implicit faith which glories in being both invincible and ignorant.
To be otherwise is to be disobedient.
As to where the Bereans would fit in to the earlier version of this perfect apostolic church, we have not a clue. Neither we suspect, does Susan.
Then after she complains elsewhere about all the parachurch non reformed authors on childraising she read as if that is the fault of P&R churches, never mind her complete fail on the deuterocanonicals, which is where the parrot judgement of popish propaganda will get you, she recommends “Symbolism”by Johann Adam Moehler.
Of whom, one James Bannerman says in the recently reprinted Church of Christ (1869):
Möhler is by far the ablest of the modern defender of the Church of Rome. His work is an admirable specimen of what can be done by a thoroughly efficient and dextrous controversialist in the way of omission, modification, plausible explanation, and defence, to maintain the cause of the Papacy. To any one wishing an excuse for going over to Rome, this is a book to be strongly recommended. Vol. 2:431
Suffice it to say we’ll take Bannerman’s comments over the inefficient, incompetent and ignorant Romanist PJ here – or anywhere else for that matter, thank you very much.
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Qualified, BubbaSays? Look at the Scripture all by itself without forcing it through the lens of your theological tradition.
Res ipsa loquitur.
We all have traditions W. They are inescapable to some degree, but the real question is are they biblical traditions; are they in accord with or do they contradict Scripture? To ask is to answer re. Rome as per the hypocrites of Isaiah and Jesus’s day who taught the commands of men over those of God. Is. 29:13, Mk. 7:5-9.
How does the Reformed definition of justification fit Romans 8:30, especially if you take into account your stages – but 3 counting from justification, and 9 in total? Why does the verse go from justification to glorification, with no sanctification?
Incoherence much? How about reading comprehension? Again, since when have prots claimed Rom. 8:30 exclusively – contra tota scriptura – for the golden chain of salvation?
Two, Jase the drunk ex pastor car lot worker already went down this dead end of cherrypicking /nitpicking Romans and Galatians all the while ignoring the obvious, before he got bored of majoring in minors and failing to do what he set out to do, prove popery from the Scripture.
Maybe you don’t find that curious. Now, you will not want to accept the idea that justification is a process. Your tradition will not allow it. Could it be that in this verse, justification is synonymous with sanctification?
No, what I might find curious, if I didn’t know better from both growing up in the Roman communion post Vat2 and being educated by Jesuits as well as observing the behavior of the Roman bots here and at CtC, is the studied avoidance of any real question. (The verbose obtuseness of the RCCC is yet another instance, tho I was brought up on the Baltimore.)
Two, ask Bryan what some of the common fallacies are.
Red herring, strawman, complex question, overlooking alternatives etc. (any of which might characterize his fundamental infallible paradigm that the only choice is between Rome’s infallible apostolic magisterium and the anabaptist anarchy of solo scriptura.)
Again, imputation vs. infusion of righteousness.
What’s that?
IOW this is like Suze on the deuterocans. A complete blank registers.
In short, a studied ignorance of what the real question is historically, much more this thread.
Apparently you don’t have to answer our questions, but we are supposed to answer yours.
No thank you.
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Of whom, one James Bannerman says in the recently reprinted Church of Christ (1869):
Möhler is by far the ablest of the modern defender of the Church of Rome. His work is an admirable specimen of what can be done by a thoroughly efficient and dextrous controversialist in the way of omission, modification, plausible explanation, and defence, to maintain the cause of the Papacy. To any one wishing an excuse for going over to Rome, this is a book to be strongly recommended. Vol. 2:431
Suffice it to say we’ll take Bannerman’s comments over the inefficient, incompetent and ignorant Romanist PJ here – or anywhere else for that matter, thank you very much.
Bannerman’s comments as excerpted here are embarrassingly empty.
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TVD, you’re sounding desparate. Throw in the towel.
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This convening of bishops in Rome is not only unusual (and thus unruly) but also threatening:
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Making the way straight for conciliarism:
But Augustinus warns of what happens without a papal unifier:
And so how exactly is papal supremacy working even now at the Synod?
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