Posted on 07/04/2007 6:47:22 AM PDT by NYer
BUMP!
We will have to agree to disagree on this, the very concept of error creeping into the Church flies in the face of Scripture and Christ’s promise that the gates of hell would not prevail. The Church needed reform, but in discipline, not in dogma.
"Gates" are a defensive weapon, not an offensive weapon. The phrase "The gates of Hell shall not prevail" is not meant to mean that error is not going to creep into the church, but that the Church will knock down the gates of hell (which it has been doing for 2000 years) and hell shall not prevail against the offensive attacks of the Church (the corporate body of true believers in Christ) The Church is attacking hell. The gates of Hell will not prevail.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;) (2 Corinthians 10:3-4 KJV)
The Church needed reform
It still does. Get on the bandwagon.
but in discipline, not in dogma.
Much of your "dogma" is nothing more than the traditions of men which make the word of God of none effect. Drop the traditions of men. Seek first the kingdom of God.
The alliteration to the gates speaks to the ultimate triumph of His Church against profane forces, only the sacred, fully sacred can expunge the profane, it's not a question of half measures. The Church, like Scripture is a vessel of truth, it must be to accomplish the mission.
Discipline is a tradition of man and can be changed, dogma is a more full understanding of an immutable truth, it can not change except in that it can become more clear.
If God did not allow error to creep in (and out) of the Church, then the Roman Catholic Church is not the Church.
Your supreme humility is obvious to us all, now that you have brought it to our attention.
How so?
I did not say it to seem humble, I stated a fact. If tomorrow more people were becoming Muslim than Christian it would not make Islam true, would you agree?
In the same way a particular denomination bragging that they are ‘getting’ in order to praise themselves or their church is dangerous ground. But hey, if its easier to attack me have at it..
You want a list?
Absolutely!
This excerpt pretty much say it all. It is very sad what Calvin created in this total depravity
The real sculptor of the total depravity doctrine is Jean Calvin, founder of Reformed Christianity. Frenchman, lawyer, writer, and zealot, Calvin squeezed from the concept almost everything that a man could eek from it while still believing in Christ. Calvin also saw the dangers of the Lutheran political situation, and determined that Reformed Christianity would, if anything, subject the state to religious controls. His prestige thus rose among independent-minded men, and Reformed Christianity became the form of Protestantism that penetrated Europe.
He who would know the doctrine of total depravity must look to Calvin.
Protestants thought that the concept of the Creation as a mirror of God robbed the Divinity of His uniqueness and majesty. So did the idea that men were the wounded lords of Creation who, with God’s help, might someday be washed as white as snow. The doctrine of total depravity, which humbled the whole of Creation, and men along with it, did so for the purpose of emphasizing the glory of God. It succeeded in accomplishing the opposite. It began by insisting upon a view of the universe so dreary as to make men flee from the harsh God who allowed it as though He were the demon. Instead of magnifying the glory of God, it ended in His rejection. Secondly, the doctrine of total depravity causes those who are formed by it, yet flee from it, to leap back into a rule-less Creation. There exists no way to navigate a course through the Protestant Creation, no path avoiding the bad and leading to the good. All is wicked. True, there are those who take the opportunity to flee from the Protestant God to embrace a universe which they wish to be as perfect as they once thought it to be depraved. Nevertheless, the tendency of secularized Protestantism is to leave men rule-less and ultimately in despair. Ignaz von Döllinger, the nineteenth century German Church historian who later broke with Rome, irritated many followers of the Reform by demonstrating how the doctrines of contemporary Protestant preachers ran totally contrary to the immediate desires of Luther and Calvin. One could go further. The Reformation is in and of itself a principle of contradiction. It destroys man and it destroys God.
This theme may be developed with reference to a body-spirit analogy. Creation, for the sake of my argument, may, somewhat inaccurately be referred to as the “body” of existence, and God as its “spirit”. The doctrine of total depravity has sought to humiliate the body, or Creation, for the glorification of the spirit, or God. It has done this in a four-fold fashion. The results of its efforts has been the abandonment of the spirit, the body’s declaration of independence from God, and Creation’s collapse into rulelessness. It is essential to examine each aspect of this four-fold humiliation in turn.
One might note, to begin with, that the doctrine of total depravity killed the “rhythm” of the body. Christ asked men to use their eyes and their ears to see and to hear. Catholicism did this, and realized that the human body followed certain rhythms. One of these rhythms was that of fasting and feasting. Most civilizations have recognized that men need to fast and to feast in order to answer a two-sided aspect of their character. Needless to say, man’s animal nature does tend to pull him towards a desire to sit down to an eternal banquet, but, when he does so, he pays a psychic price that even natural human wisdom has abundantly catalogued. Pagans understood the value of self-sacrifice. Christ demonstrated that renunciation, built upon His abandonment to the Cross, was the pathway to heaven. Catholicism has, therefore, noted in the fast not merely a kind of biological necessity, but an instrument predisposing man to be receptive to, accept, and merit sanctifying grace. Lent, and other periods of fast and abstinence, are naturally good for man, and supernaturally still more beneficial.
At the same time, however, life with God is not a fast. It is a heavenly banquet. Christians ought to recognize the joy and glory of living in the presence of the Divine Majesty. The feast day, marked at its mid-point by food and drink, song, dance, and general merriment, is necessary as a most-fit means of emphasizing man’s future reward. A feast answers man’s longing for joyous abandonment, and prefigures the abundant love of God for His children. Carnival may be a somewhat raucous beginning to the Lenten season. The Easter merriment, however, is a perfectly suitable conclusion.
Protestantism’s seed doctrine of total depravity attacked this rhythm. It could not see that anything in the human character might give direction to the Christian seeking God. Calvinist Protestantism emphasized the need for a king of permanent fast, not as a means of preparation for sanctifying grace, but because feasting made men believe that the world could provide some pathway to or foretaste of joy. A life of permanent fasting is not, however, a human life. Its dreariness caused men to flee from the Protestant God in horror. When they did, they discovered themselves in a universe which was thought by their ancestors to be depraved, and, thus, had been left ruleless. Imitating Luther himself, who tended towards gluttony, they were logically led to the table d’hôte. They behaved in its presence like performers in La grande bouffe. They had no measure for their indulgence. They engaged in a permanent feast. But the permanent feast obscures man’s understanding even of his natural need to fast. It does so at least until such time as the misery of endless consumption ruins all his happiness. One can ignore the legitimate promptings of the body only at the risk of enormous discontent.
Have you ever posted under a different name?
"If God did not allow error to creep in (and out) of the Church, then the Roman Catholic Church is not the Church."
The Church is the collective body of believers in Christ. Many of those believers hold to errors of one kind or another. If God did not allow error to creep in (and out) of the Church (the collective body of believers in Christ) then the Roman Catholic Church (which is riddled with errors) is not the Church.
Does that help?
No, not at all. Christ established one Church, to teach one Truth, while the body of believers comprise the church, they also hold to the same truth or are at least striving to by cooperating with His grace. There is no error in truth and there is no error in the Church.
Then the Roman Catholic church is not the Church.
So you say
Indeed I do. :-)
Dear Brother,Perhaps you should read the lives of the Saints.
They were brutally tortured for belief in the True Presence in Eucharist and many things that Calvin despised.
1500 plus years of clear consistent dogmatic teaching(guided by the Holy Spirit) before Calvin came along
It was the Catholic Saints and fathers who even decided Bible canon. and you must trust them to tell you that The Bible is the word of God.
Perhaps you should give credibility to the real men of God
Off to enjoy wife,s birthday
I wish you a blessed evening!
Have you ever posted under a different name?
Someone asked if the dipping your finger in the holy water was a repeat of baptism. And the answer would be no but a reminder of baptism. In fact those not baptized shouldn’t partake in that actually.
Regarding the representation versus the real substance of Christ in the bread and wine that occurs in the Eucharist for myself has to be understood in light of the continuous giving of himself that Christ gave at that last supper when he taught that he would have to leave in order to return and provide the means of having that spiritual connection to receive his body and blood.
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