Conceit? :) We say the Spirit loves us and helps us, and that is conceit? You say that the Spirit only helps your hierarchy, and that isn't conceit? Well, I suppose that we will continue to think of the Spirit as being a loving and very personal God, and you will continue to think of Him as being ........... something else. :)
But the Church does not teach its truth dogmatically, -- like in any approved private revelation I am free to believe or disbelieve the revelations at Fatima.
Then how does the Church teach its truth? I'm not sure what you're saying here.
There is a score of other personal opinions that I am confident about, theological and otherwise. ... They are separate from what is infallibly taught by the Church. ...... But I am yet to see a Protestant admit that his views on Sola Scriptura, or on Sola Fide are personal opinions that he feels confident about. They always say "I know it from the scripture".
Well of course, that is our system. We don't have a pope. Again, you are requiring a pope. Why do you do that? :) The only way an admission would be due from a Protestant is if we agreed that the pope has the only say. Of course we do not, so there is no issue of "admission". For interpretation, our confidence is not in God through a pope, it is in God through His own word. We can honestly disagree on which is correct, but you can't say we are not allowed to have confidence because we don't have a pope.
This is the Catholic teaching: lifelong process of sanctification in the individual. The Church, however, received the deposit of Faith from Christ. It was sanctified at that moment, at Pentecost; look it up in Acts.
If your Church was fully sanctified at Pentecost then why would you give one pope the power to overrule her? (Further comments at the end of the next post)
You admit the main statement, that your lines of authority do not converge at the top, even ideologically, right? So I will be brief. All protestants claim the individual guidance of the Holy Spirit and Scripture Alone.
No, this beginning would be like my saying that Catholics and Muslims disagree ideologically, therefore, both are wrong since they both claim to believe in God. I do not claim any allegiance to all Protestants. It is a non-starter to say that Sola Scriptura is wrong because some groups calling themselves Protestants claim wacko views based on Sola Scriptura. The doctrine, as formally identified by the original Reformers, is most faithfully practiced by the Reformers of today. Other Protestants practice it to lesser degrees.
In contrast to that, we do not have ideological disagreements with the Orthodox: we understand the Tradition, including the scripture, identically, and vary where there is legitimate room for disagreement inside the same Tradition.
Really? You and the Orthodox understand the scripture and Tradition identically? Your differences are basically "small potatoes" within Tradition? My wild guess is that you might find some "legitimate room for disagreement" FROM the Orthodox on that view.
FK: "I find it highly ironic that you would be complaining about the plain text of scripture. You cannot seriously look me in the eye and say that you favor it more than we do."
Absolutely I can. When things are in the scripture they are in the scripture. If the scripture said "you are not saved by faith alone" then that is what it is, sola fide is wrong, 'cuz the Bible tells me so. Now, there are things that are not in the scripture. For example, veneration of saints is not directly in plain text in the scripture. Then we can argue tradition, etc. But we read the scripture literally. You don't -- you spin it.
There are too many examples to list. Your literal reading of "all have sinned" is "all have not sinned". Your literal reading of "that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" is "that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have temporary life until he commits the next sin". Your literal reading of " For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, ..." is "For it is by grace you have been partially and temporarily saved, partially through faith — and this definitely partially from yourselves, it is somewhat the gift of God— absolutely by works, with God's help."
The point is that for every example you can come up with, we can come up with A LOT more. Don't forget, we say the Bible speaks for itself. You say the Bible is indecipherable without the Church's interpretation. I agree with you. There is NO WAY the literal taking of the Bible comes anywhere close to Roman Catholic theology. Except in very limited circumstances, you have no case to make that Roman Catholicism has any regard for the literal words of scripture. Why else would your hierarchy have sheltered your laity away from those words for so many hundreds of years? If your hierarchy simply reflected those literal words, there would be nothing to be afraid of. Yet, their actions betray the opposite truth.
(Continued on next post....)
INDEED.
--Biblically correct.
--Historically correct.
--Currently true.
--Logically true.
--Repeatedly demonstrably true historically and currently.
Thanks. Well put.
Conceit is to say that you interpret the scripture guided by the Holy Spirit and 2,000 years of Church fathers did not.
I'm not sure what you're saying here.
The Chruch distinguishes between pulbic revelation of the Holy Tradition, the Holy Scripture and the Magisterial teaching, and private revelations such as Marian apparitions, or any other revelation received directly from God and His angels, that does not come from the three dogmatic sources. The general, or public revelation is to be believed; that is, the faithful needs to work on his faith and struggle to understand it and condition his reason to believe it; he is under no circumstances allowed to reject it. A private revelation can be approved or unapproved. An approved priivate revelation is such that does not contradict the doctrines of faith in any way and is miraculous in origin. Such is the status of the Fatima revelation. An approved private revelation does not have to be believed but it may be believed, if the faithful is driven to believe it. If it is unapproved, the faithful is warned that it is not to be believed. Some are not investigated, and their status is unknown; the faithful need to exercise caution in regards of those.
We can honestly disagree on which is correct, but you can't say we are not allowed to have confidence because we don't have a pope
The difference is that when I read the scripture, I read it with the fathers of the Church. I never read it alone. I may have a private interpretation, of course (*), but then I would offer it, no matter how personally confident I feel, as private interpretation. On the other hand, when I dispute the fundamentals of the faith, for example, with you, I refer to the historical understanding of the fathers, -- my person in this is but a transmission belt.
If your Church was fully sanctified at Pentecost then why would you give one pope the power to overrule her?
If it ever happens that the Pope invokes his infallibility outside of the consensus of the Magisterium, then we believe that the Pope will be still speaking for the entire Church and the dissenting bishops will be in error and only speak for themselves. It never happened this way, and hopefully will never happen; howeve,r there was a point in time when the majority of the Christian bishops were Arian and pope Athanasius stood virtually alone "contra mundum".
this beginning would be like my saying that Catholics and Muslims disagree ideologically, therefore, both are wrong since they both claim to believe in God. I do not claim any allegiance to all Protestants. It is a non-starter to say that Sola Scriptura is wrong because some groups calling themselves Protestants claim wacko views based on Sola Scriptura
The difference is the content of the underlying common belief. What we have in common with the Muslim does not exclude disagreement over the nature of God or over where to look for guidance in understanding Him. But what all protestants have in common is the belief in the perspicuous self-explanatory Scripture (truncated to fashion). That belief logically demands that your faiths be identical, since they are driven by the same scripture in a self-evident fashion.
Orthodox understand the scripture and Tradition identically?
Correct. Our traditions and church organizations may differ, but we agree on the fundamental theology: Scripture as part of Tradition interpreted through the Church, salvation as a result of a lifelong struggle for sanctification, apostolic succession, obedience to bishops, etc.
The point is that for every example you can come up with, we can come up with A LOT more. Don't forget, we say the Bible speaks for itself. You say the Bible is indecipherable without the Church's interpretation.
In all these examples we look at the verse in context and it says what we say it says. You take it our of context and force it into a preconceived theological framework. We agree with the verse as intended. For example, "all have sinned" in one place speaks of the man before the sanctifying grace of Christ and in the other "all" is interspersed with "many" and speaks of the sin of Adam anyway, and not of personal sin, -- in both places the the text allows for an exception, such as Christ Himslef, or children, or Mary, or some other exceptionally righteous people. "Believe and you will be saved" does not say what the belief should entail in terms of works.
Also, we do not say that the Bible is indecipherable alone. We say it can lead to error is read alone. But, as you know, my contention is that one who reads the Bible through the patristic lense and not through the lense of modernity becomes Catholic or Orthodox. He will easily overcome the Protestant prooftexts. I once had a dispute over the supposed prooftexts for "faith alone" in Romans. All I had to do was to ask my opponent to read the Letter to the Romans from the beginning to end. The "faith alone" notion dissipated, -- I had nothing to debate. Every time a Protestant prooftext is offered, it is either over a minor point (don't call anyone "father") or does not say what it purports to say ("saved by faith" does not say "by faith alone"), or the context gives a different meaning ("not of works" refers to ritualistic circumcision or gainful work).
You're blaming Luther and the Reformers for the cultural crisis we see in America today?
Not directly. What I am saying is that the idea that morality comes from bottom to top -- from the individual to law of the land in some democratic fashion -- is the same idea that said that Christianity comes from bottom to top -- form laity reading and interpreting the scripture autonomously and possibly in contradiction to the faith handed down through the Church. I am, of course, fully aware that fundamentalist Protestant Christianity is a bulwark of traditional morality and we are happy to have you as ally in this fight.
Where are you getting this idea that Reformed theology somehow especially caters to a 21c mentality? It obviously catered pretty well to a 16c mentality since it spread so far and so quickly
But 16c is modernity. The Reformers catered to the emerging bourgeois, and the bourgeois mentality is still with us. For the rest, see above.
Irresistibility of grace might be a wash, objectively. The role of good works might also be a wash, but for different reasons. All say a saved Christian does and must do good works. I think the reader would probably stop there. And on the role of the Church, the last thing in the universe the reader would ever come up with is the current, or even historical, RCC
The Protestant concepts of irresistible grace and faith alone do violence to 2 Peter 1 and James 2, -- passages that specifically refer to these issues (there are other prooftexts as well). The two letters to the Corinthians explain that St. Paul speaks in the name of Christ and has authority to correct errors. The letters to Timothy and Titus set up the hierarchy of the Church as lead by bishops in apostolic succession. I read the scripture and I see my Church in every chapter.
You would put that up AGAINST what Christ Himself taught, and the thousands of other examples of prayer given to God alone?
The veneration of saints is based on the concept of eternal life; on the visions of angels and those asleep in Christ who are like angels taking interest in the events on Earth; on the concept of Christians acting as an interdependent community praying and interceding for one another. No doubt you are familiar with these ideas, you just don't apply them to the Communion of Saints due to the Protestant mental conditioning. Of course, Christ being the sole mediator to God is in no contradiction to these practices.
I have room for compromise here.
See? And previously you admitted that irressitibel grace and the role of works are a wash. So these fundamental issues -- where salvation hangs in the balance -- cannot be resolved conclusively from scripture alone.
Depending on what you mean by "solid", I would disagree. I think the principles of the trinity are laid out very well in scripture.
I plead history here. The Arians, the Marcionites and the gnostics read the same scripture and came back with (I grossly oversimplify) Christ being a smart inspired man, Christ being a second God fighting the first one; Christ beign a spirit and not man.
Who cares about 21c.? Why is that such a big deal?
It is a big deal because the Scripture was written by 1c men (or by ancient Hebrews) and addressed their contemporaries. If you see that a 21c man understands the scripture differently than the contemporaries of the inspired writer, then the 21c man is wrong in his interpretation every time it happens.
what about him do you think would lead him into one camp [Catholic] or the other [Orthodox]?
Personal cultural predisposition. The Latin culture is more analytical and legalistic; the Eastern is more spiritual and mysterious. Catholicism has a greater emphasis on the Christ crucified and the Orthodox on the risen Christ. Things like that. And then, it would depend if he is welcoming to the papal authority.
How about the nature of grace? You also disagree on original sin
The nature of grace is a matter of theological hypothesis. These are high levels of theology that do not really separate the two churches. The original sin to us is the condition or predisposition to sin and death inherited from Adam, to the Orthodox. We speak somewhat different languages here, but the actual differences are again fine points of theology. None of these differences are in interpreting the concrete scripture, as either uncreated grace or original sin have clear prooftexts. Well, I'd say Romans 5 is pretty good for Original sin... but then that's why I am Catholic.
How could the whole Church hierarchy (save the Pope) go apostate if the Church was sanctified (completely) at Pentecost?
No one says it will happen. I commented about this above, too.