Posted on 07/20/2007 8:52:53 AM PDT by Between the Lines
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Instead of taking offense at a recent Vatican statement reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, evangelicals should seize the chance to respond with equal candor that “any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church,” according to a prominent Southern Baptist leader.
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog that he appreciated the document’s clarity in voicing a key distinction between Catholics and Protestants over papal authority.
He said those differences are often forgotten “in this era of confusion and theological laxity.”
“We should together realize and admit that this is an issue worthy of division,” Mohler wrote.
“The Roman Catholic Church is willing to go so far as to assert that any church that denies the papacy is no true church. Evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church.
“This is not a theological game for children, it is the honest recognition of the importance of the question.”
This month, the Vatican released a document restating the contention that the Roman Catholicism is the one, true path to salvation. Other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches, the document said, restating the views of a 2000 document.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict XVI headed before becoming pope, said it issued the new document because some contemporary theological interpretations of the Second Vatican Council’s ecumenical intent had been “erroneous or ambiguous” and had prompted confusion and doubt.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I love Acts 15, when Peter reminded the congregation that we are saved by faith, that we should not seek to place a yoke on others that we can’t even bear ourselves, and the Council wrote to the Gentiles:
Act 15:28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements:
Act 15:29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”
Brothers and sister, let’s love one another, let’s not be harsh with one another while remembering that the Gospel in 1 Corinthians is told in Chapter 15, that the “burden” we are bound with is much simpler than we may have been taught, and remember that Paul did not mention a single woman witness - even the first that Christ revealed Himself to and that even the 11 did not believe when the women told them the simple good news: that Christ is alive and no longer in the grave.
Nothing challenging about it. There are two versions of Gensis, and one goes into greater detail how God created man and a woman. St. Paul simply says that man was created to the glory of God and then the woman was made to the glory of man. Thus man is "senior" to the woman in order of creation. And we know very well how seniority figured throughout history when it came to inheritance and blame. After all, we blame Adam, not Eve for the fall, because he was "older" or senior even though the sin is really Eve's first and foremost.
But it seems to me you are having an issue with St. Paul and are turning it into an issue with me. I don't really care one way or another. The Bible is clear that a woman should be covered, and I am willing to allow that long hair on a woman constitutes 'covering,' as Paul says, and by the same token the men are considered 'uncovered' because of their short hair. But, then short-haired women should be covered as their hair would be considered uncovered as is the case with men.
The rest of your post speaks of spiritual equality in love. There is no disagreement there. The disagreement is how we present ourselves in church and Apostle Paul (presumably speaking under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) says without any confusion that women should be covered in church. He then proceeds to explain that long hair constitutes covering, but short hair or baldness does not. This leaves no doubt that short-haired and bald women ought to be covered.
You are asking me about women who have lost their hair due to medical conditions. The same applies. Covering is not a punishment. It is a biblical commandment. I don't know which part of this you don't understand. Just as God decided to make one of us male and one female (He could have made us bisexual so we can fertilize ourselves like the plants do), and that one of us will bear children. Is being a woman then a "punishment" by God because outwardly and inwardly we are different by God's making? God makes a distinction in tghe way we look and in the way awe are to present ourselves in church. Feminists and men-wannabes seem to have a problem with God.
Address it with Him. In the meantime, if you choose not to follow what the Bible states in no uncertain terms, then just say so. This has nothing to do with how God loves us. We love our male and female children, our older and younger children all the same, but we don't pretend that males are females and females are males for the sake of 'fairness.'
I believe and was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 10 years before I married, in the Red River, just below the Denison Dam. I have faith in my reconciliation to God, by God, through Christ, who has been my covering since I received Him, and He will be when I stand before the throne.
And I would never doubt your faith, once you professed it to me. Romans 2, Brother.
I can understand that the Bible is inerrant, without understanding what Paul meant when he spoke of “for the angels’ sake,” and when I read 1 Cor 15, where Paul never mentions Mary of Magdelene or the other women who witnessed Christ’s resurrection and the empty tomb before any of the men he cites. Paul was telling the Good News, while being culturally correct. As on Mars Hill, he was being “all things to all people, in order to win some to Christ.
I’m concerned with the reality of the new creation and its impact on each of us, male and female in Christ. The “first shall be last,” and we are to submit ourselves by purposeful decision one to another, to the glory of God in Christ, not to our own or any person’s glory. Paul does go on to tell us to “judge for yourselves, and says in 1 Cor. 11 that now man is born of woman, and all are of God.
There was something in the prior letters between Paul and the Corinthians that we don’t know and that we don’t understand - as well as the cultural aspect of the local proper behavior that is reflected in his citation of the witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, in Chapter 15. We know that Mary Magdalene and the other women witnessed the empty tomb and Mary was the first to see the risen Christ, but Paul never mentions them and doesn’t note that the 11 didn’t believe the women. This doesn’t make Paul’s story false or even incomplete. It was appropriate to his audience.
I was born in the late ‘50’s in North Texas. Our churches had no tradition of long hair or head coverings. We would have considered it disruptive for a woman to wear a veil and hats were considered vanities. The issue was modesty and being humble - and, I suspect, a tincture of the results of poverty and a good dash of making sure that they did not look at all like the Catholics. While I don’t believe the latter was a good reason and have long believe we threw out too much good in this effort, there wasn’t any sort of feminism involved, no rebellion.
Nothing has changed.
Rome is Rome.
I hope this will help the kumbaya faction of Evangelicalism wake up and smell the coffee.
Maybe it's because other groups adhere to the bible and the actual definition of church.
the Bible the Apostolic church finalized around 300-400 AD after most of the practices protestants disagree with were already long established.
As proven by RC documents.
and Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox and pretty much any Christian church before the mid 1400s.
If you say so. I don't read denomination propaganda, I just read the Bible.
let’s see all historians, archaeologists, and the oldest Christians agree, but your sect does not.
Methinks we know who is and isn’t reading propaganda here.
What has your Bible got a missing verse at the end of revelation where St John send’s the Bible forward in time knowing it’s complete to law school drop outs in the 1400s?
Why would anyone believe anything the Bible says?
hey you’re the one who suggested that your Bible said something about it’s history that contradicts what historians archaeologiests and all Christians prior to the 1400s knew...
That's not quite what I said. My bible doesn't contain denominational propaganda therefore I'm not concerned with knowing it.
so is it “the Bible the Apostolic church finalized around 300-400 AD after most of the practices protestants disagree with were already long established.
“ or is it some other Bible? where did it come from? Was it sent through some time rift to an apostate catholic and law school flunky?
Why would anyone believe anything any Bible says?
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