Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.
The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.
It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.
One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.
First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.
The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.
The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.
All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.
Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.
How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.
One for each tribe of Israel.
1. Well, I do believe that there are extraordinary examples of God saving individuals who are not part of the True Church. I’m not going to bet my soul that He is going to stretch out and pull me into Heaven if I maintain my soul deliberately not in a state of grace.
2. I don’t think that such a state would ever come about.
3. That is my read upon their religion. And (minus Joseph Smith, of course), that is exactly the attitude of most Protestants.
4. I doubt it. I think that there’s so much more human depravity that can yet be realized, that it’s going to take a while. :)
Sorry, dunno what came over me...
:)
Why? We follow His institution. We follow His words. We don’t make things up as we go along. We have the Body and the Blood of the Eucharist as He commanded. We have the Apostolic succession that He instituted.
For the love of Him, why?
Peter was nicknamed Peter?.. probably..
Whether Peter was re-named Peter or not is not important..
Whether he is/was the first Pope and prelate of the apostles is..
Jesus metaphor was important..
The RCC didn't become viable except locally until 313a.d.
RCC church history is one thing, other church history is quite different..
What to believe?.. I believe Millers church history..
Some people are NOT aware that RCC church history is so absolutely different than say "Millers church" history..
Thats the point, not whether Peter was "peter" or not..
Whether Peter was re-named Peter or not is not important..
I think I'm gonna give up on this one. I appreciate your replies..
Whatever "the church" binds stays bound, the apostles are not the church.. neither are their assigns.. Several gifts are given to the church.. all with equal authority.. Each church is local.. ONLY locality divides believers(those reborn).. ONLY locality can divide the church..
Dogma cannot, counsels cannot, fleshly authority cannot, sacraments cannot, festivals cannot, ceremonies of any type cannot.. even the bible(scripture) cannot divide the church.. Paul, Apollos, Peter, Thomas, Timothy, and James cannot.. divide the church..
The Holy Spirit is prelate not a supposed mantel handed down from one apostle to another.. like they were High Priest of the Holy Place in the Jewish Temple.. You know; like the renegade jewish government that jews asked for(from Moses) instead of God being their King.. Which was the first Satan inspired separation of church and state movement.. When the jews separated civil law and religious law.. i.e. isreals government of the 12 tribes..
The renaming of Simon to Rock (or Cephus) is a most significant thing in the Bible God wants us to have for our edification. Please, do not abandon us in this important discussion for we need and can use and desire the Catholic perspective.
I don't think he did.. The other apostles may have "kidded" him for a time calling him "the ROCK".. Until the name became permanent.. I see the discourse(@ petros/petra) as a metaphor(parable) as in Jesus other metaphorical images.. Simon was a rock... as "WE" ALL are.. The metaphor is far greater than some wazoo CEO(pope) of the church image..
Jesus left the paraclete(Holy Spirit) not a Pope.. to oversee the church.. Elders(bishops) were also given/appointed by the Holy Spirit(not men) to guide in certain aspects.. i.e. a spiritual gift..
Thats wisdom I think.. It Will not be solved here..
But the discussion (here) is more calm than most I have noticed.. on this subject..
Don't know what inspired me to spin this in this way..
Wars have been fought over this.. Your spirit is appreciated..
A loving spirit is noticed.. and registered..
Much has happened on the thread since I left it early yesterday afternoon - and it is 1:00 am now, so I only have time to make one post, but will try to "catch up" tomorrow morning.
MarkBsnr and kosta50 - both of you centered on the Canon. I have not been addressing the history of the Canon at all but rather Scripture per se and various ancient manuscripts.
Again, I personally eschew all of the doctrines and traditions of men across the board and instead - subordinating my sensory perception and reasoning and the counsel of others - accept as certain knowledge only God the Father's revelations in (1) Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, (2) the indwelling Spirit, (3) Scriptures and (4) Creation both spiritual and physical.
I recognize Scripture not because it is listed in a Canon but because the indwelling Spirit brings the words alive within me as my eyes scan across the text. He personally authenticates Scriptures. They are unlike any other manuscript.
Concerning our discussion of ancient manuscripts, I zero in on Enoch because it was not merely rejected by the Catholic Church but actually discarded and lost for over a thousand years. As mentioned on post 1726, Enoch is referenced throughout the New Testament, and specifically quoted in Jude and paraphrased in II Peter. It is also called “Scripture” in the Epistle of Barnabas, another ancient manuscript that didn’t make it into the Canon (though it was not discarded.)
The relationship of Enoch to the Canon can be understood by looking at how the New Testament emerged:
In dealing with the canon of the New Testament we must begin with some rather negative statements. First, the earliest Christian Bible was not, and did not include, the New Testament. Instead, it was the Old Testament, usually read in Greek, and often interpreted in the light of a number of apocalyptic documents which were not generally recognized as canonical. Thus the Epistle of Jude contains a quotation from the apocalypse of Enoch and an allusion to a strange lost book known as the Assumption of Moses. Until the middle of the third century, Christian writers often regarded these documents as authoritative. The reason for regarding the Old Testament itself as canonical scripture was, of course, that Jesus and his apostles had so regarded it: they had believed that in Jesus the Old Testament, viewed primarily as prophecy, had been fulfilled. Second, no New Testament as such came into existence for several centuries after the beginning of the Christian movement. At an earlier time there were oral traditions, along with books of varying authoritativeness: but there was no New Testament.
How The Books of the New Testament Were Written (formatting mine)
Some Gospels would be more popular than others; there is reason to believe that Mark, which is shorter and contains less of our Lord's teaching, circulated less than Matthew and Luke. The book of Revelation was not accepted by all churches, and the authenticity of 2 Peter was questioned by some. On the other hand, some books which did not eventually secure acceptance in the authoritative Canon of Scripture were at first regarded with almost equal respect, and were even included in the great fourth century codices.
Thus the Codex Sinaiticus includes the 4th book of Maccabees, the Epistle of Barnabas and the 'Shepherd' of Hermas. The Alexandrinus has 3 and 4 Maccabees at the end of the Old Testament, and the two Epistles of Clement, and originally also the Psalms of Solomon, at the end of the New. The church to which the Chester Beatty collection belonged had a copy of the Book of Enoch. A group of churches in Syria in the second century for some time read a Gospel which passed under the name of St. Peter, until a bishop perceived that it was not authentic; part of it was discovered in 1892 in a vellum codex, probably of the sixth century, dug up in Egypt, which contained also parts of Enoch and of the Apocalypse of Peter. In Syria also the four Gospels were to a considerable extent replaced by a Harmony of the Four Gospels (known as the Diatessaron),compiled by Tatian about A.D. 170; of this, which was supposed to survive only in Arabic and Armenian translations, a small Greek fragment was found a few years ago in the ruins of a Roman fort on the Euphrates, and has lately been published. [2] A fuller account is given of this later…
The Emergence of the New Testament Canon
The longest Biblical canon belongs to the Ethiopian church. Their Old Testament contains the Septuagintal books, Jubilees, the Ethiopic Enoch, IV Edras, the Rest of the Words of Baruch, the Ascension of Isaiah, and other books. Their New Testament includes the Shepherd and other books. Some manuscripts of the Ethiopian New Testament include the Epistle of Eusebius to Carpianus and the Eusebian Canons which were written by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (c. 260-c. 340).(58)
IMHO it is a tragic situation that so many documents were intentionally discarded by the Roman Catholic Church. Knowing that, I cannot accept testimony that the Church has always believed a certain thing.
Nevertheless, the Scriptures are safe. They are the words of God and He looks after His own words to reveal them in the time and manner of His choosing – and always with the result He intends. Man’s duty is not to add to or subtract from His words:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, [even] to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. - Daniel 12:4
Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. – Deuteronomy 4:2
You may see a play on words from Aramaic (cephas) to Greek (petros) but it was Jesus Who made the play ... He had/has a very good reason for that emphasis. This is more than a nickname in the sense we use that term today. This was a renaming as with God renaming Jacob (twqister), Israel (Prince with God).
LOL!
[ Psa 119 is about God's words, which He puts above His own name (Ps.138:2) ]
God's words are above His name? LOL! The real Bible says our name above all things(Ps 138:2)
God placed His word above His name? LOL!!!! LOL!!!! Ps 138:2 says "I will worship toward Your holy temple, and give thanks to Your name, on account of Your mercy and Your truth; for You have magnified Your holy name above all things" not words and name...
As I said, there are two versions of the Bible, the Satanic one, and God's, which states,
2 I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name
Your posts are a waste of my time, FTD, which is why I asked you to never post to me. Yet here you are inviting yourself without an invitation. I repeat never post to me again.
If you attack the word of God (the King James Bible), you will see a post from me addressing your lies.
So don't go whining to the moderator when I post your comments without putting your name on it.
As for other translations, the NKJ, ASV, and KJ2000 translate it as the King James does-correctly.
The apostles were given the keys within the Church.
Each church is local.. ONLY locality divides believers(those reborn).. ONLY locality can divide the church..
The Church is where the apostle/bishop is. You cannot divide the Body. Each local church is fully Church, the Eucharist, Litrugy and the keys.
Revelation 21:12—It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.
Rev 7 speaks of 144,000 (square root of 12). The 12 represents 12 triobes of Israel; Christ chose 12 apostles—one apostle for each tribe of Israel.
It just didn't work out that way...when the Jews rejected the Gospels.
The idea to take the Gospel to the Gentiles was apparently an after-thought (more like dire nacessity!)
Act 13:46—Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: "We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.
[and what happened with "God gives us faith"...apprently +Paul and +Barnabas didn't think so then.]
I repeat that the Book of Enoch is not listed in any of the proposed canons of the Church (see my post 1732). So, your claim that the "Church" (as a whole) accepted it at one time is incorrect.
Thus the Codex Sinaiticus includes the 4th book of Maccabees
The EOC still has 3 and 4 Maccabbees; it's a matter of numbering and dividng, but the texts are the same in borth Churches (Catholic/Orthodox)
Seems to me we’ve never left town.
“Apostle” is synonymous with “missionary.”
Absolutely. Along with (or included with) the parable of the sower and the seed already given, there are all the people who cry "Lord, Lord" at the end (the self-righteous), and those who have "honestly" decided for a false faith such as a cult, under the guise of Christianity.
If someone came to me with a question about his conversion experience and whether it "counted" I would ask him for more details. If it was an emotional response to a preacher shouting in his face, then I would have reservations. I would point the person to the vast scripture showing us what a saved Christian looks like and ask him if he honestly felt he belonged in that group. Scripture is always the ultimate checker and measure against which we can evaluate ourselves. If the person was in denial of, or genuinely had no understanding at all of the teachings of scripture, then that would be telling.
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