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.
I agree, Marlowe. That was one weird post.
We all lived on a different earth at some time in the past????
We’re all getting a 2nd chance???
It sounds like a universal eschatological reincarnation. I’m thinking Sun Myung Moon.
Pong, are you a Moonie?
FWIW,
Rom. 8:28 "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Gal. 1:15 "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace.
It may not seem fair to us, but we are the created beings and we don't think as God does
What does the existence of one's humanity have to do with predestination? Do you simply "define" God's image as having the possibility of going to Heaven based on free will? If true, that seems pretty arbitrary to me. Under anyone's soteriology, some humans go to Heaven and some humans to hell.
Where in the Bible does it say that God created some people for damnation?
He created them to serve His purposes during their lives and they were not chosen for salvation. Here are a few verses:
Josh 11:20 : For it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.
1 Kings 20:42 : And he said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people. KJV
Prov 16:4 : The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. KJV
Matt 22:14 : "For many are invited, but few are chosen."
Matt 26:24 : The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."
John 17:2 : For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. [A pointless statement if men choose themselves.]
Rom 9:9-13 : 9 For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son." 10 Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad — in order that God's purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls — she was told, "The older will serve the younger." 13 Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
In addition, there are many "pro" predestination verses. The logical conclusion to these is that if God predestines some to salvation, the rest are predestined to hell by default.
That some shall be condemned is not part of God's intent.
Then man has power over God's will.
But, the Reformed theology suggests that God predestined before foundations of the world who shall be saved and who damned because He is "in control."
Yes, the issue of who is in control has plagued man from the very beginning. :)
The whole stumbling block here is based on your Reformed view that God leads some to salvation and some to damnation. In the Reformed mindset, if they can't hear His voice, whose doing is that?
God leads His elect to salvation and leaves the reprobate alone to their own wickedness. No one can hear God's voice without having first been prepared. Some are not prepared. That doesn't make it God's "fault".
But that's the other way of saying He didn't have to reject anyone, but He chose to reject some. So, according to the Reformed view, those who are damned are damned because God chose them to be damned, because He pre-fabricated them to be discarded.
Until Adam sinned He didn't have to reject anyone. After he sinned, God had to reject EVERYONE, unless He provided a way out, which He did for some but not all.
But, if we fail to do what we are commanded to do, is He going to save those we don't reach anyway? If so, why did He give us the Great Commission? Just to keep us "busy?".
God is going to save those He has predestined, regardless. As believers, we are His instruments to use as He sees fit. If for any reason I fail on a particular assignment, someone else will pick up the slack according to God's will. It is not possible for enough believers to fall away in order to thwart God's purpose. He guarantees perseverance as the rule.
He is the Healer, and we are the patients. In the spiritual Hospital (His Church) the healer heals, but the patients must cooperate with the Physician.
And He is also the Potter and we are the clay. The Potter can do whatever He wants with His clay, and He doesn't need any help or cooperation from the clay.
Amen!
In my never ending quest to "know" someone pointed me to this passage.
Isaiah 55:8 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, say the LORD."
Historically that has not always been the case.
Not to jump on you, but where would I find this information?
Same earth, a different age. I know how it sounds but it is based in scripture from the Old and New Testaments. We, as Christians, know there will be an age after this one. Why is it so difficult to believe in one before this one?
Pong, are you a Moonie?
No.
Thank you for your answers. Please indulge me with just a few more serious questions:
Do you believe in reincarnation?
What is your denomination?
Well, I can't compete with the good detail Ping got into, but this verse just occurred to me:
Matt 11:11 : I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
I figure if that's true, there just can't be any bad seats in Heaven. :)
No. Heb.9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
What is your denomination?
Non-denominational Christian
You are welcome to ask as many questions as you wish. I may not be able to answer them but I will try.
......Ping
Thanks for the straight answers.
You’re very welcome Xzins. Thank you for your kind tone.
Why are they ignorant of it is the question. When I first studied this I was actually a little angry that I hadn't been taught this earlier. So much makes sense, so much comes together. Scripture flows and some questions I have had since I was a child are now answered. I have come to realize - they just don't know.
Of course it doesn't affect anyone's salvation, but it's just plain Gnostic and heretical even only on it's surface.
Again, someone needs to tell me how it is heretical and gnostic. What part of what I said isn't Biblical? Also, I spoke too soon about the not affecting anyone's salvation because it had a big influence on mine - perhaps it can on anothers.
I believe this verse, when thoroughly thought through proves predestination. (Rev.13:8)
Yes it does.
Could you just supply us all with a link to where all these "unique" teachings can be found? I have never heard any of this stuff before, and I've seen a lot of weird stuff in the last 40 years. It sounds like a mixture of Mormonism and Hinduism. It does not sound Christian in any sense of that word.
You say you are a non-denominational Christian. That is a very wide brush which would include me and I am going to disavow any of this teaching. So if you could narrow down your "non-demonational" denomination and advise us as to whether or not your non-denominational church teaches this stuff, I would appreciate it.
This is fodder for a new thread, but this thread has already taken a number of strange twists and turns.
Thanks,
Marlowe
It starts at the very beginning.
Gen.1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
Note that "heaven" is singular here. In chapter two it has become plural - heavens.
2.And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
God did not create the earth this way: (Is.45:18 - For thus saith the Lord That created the heavens; God Himself That formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.)
The earth "became" without form and void. In most Bibles the footnotes state that the word should be became, not was.
The next 1/2 of verse two tells us when this present age began: And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. This was the beginning of day one. There were millions or billions of years before that day, as our earth records plainly tell us. The earth is not 6,000 years old and the Bible does not say that it is.
Satan rebelled in that first age and God destroyed it (the age, not the earth). This 2nd age is a spiritual war in which we decide who we follow.
There are many, many more scriptures about this in both Old and New Testaments. I don't have time for anything else tonight but would enjoy telling you about the rest tomorrow, if you wish.
Could you provide us all with a link?
I KNOW he calls us to his purpose. I believe he calls ALL of us but we can refuse that call. Period.
There are some things that will always remain a mystery and we are NOT supposed to know it until HE reveals it at some point. The Bible is a book of revelation. We are now only beginning to understand some of the end times stuff from Daniel and the statue made of bronze, etc.
Excellent post, Marlowe. And if we believe that God IS omniscient, and if we believe that God is not simply arbitrary, then He must choose for a reason, whatever that reason is.
It is the exact same word in both Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:1.
The only translation which makes it singular in Gen 1 and plural in Gen 2 is the KJV. All other translations use the plural in both verses. Regardliess, the Hebrew word is identical in both verses.
Maybe you should consult a lexicon before coming up with these bizzare theories.
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