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 do believe the Bible is the word of God. I do believe that Jesus came down to earth, died on the cross for my sins, that Jesus and Jesus alone is my salvation, that I contributed nothing toward my salvation, that I will be in heaven when I die, and that I AM NOT A HERETIC. Period.
So what? And the Jews believe none of what you believe. Although we pretent to believe in the same God, they curse Jesus of Nazareth and are called to do so (Jamnia, 90 AD). The LDS call on Jesus as their Savior, yet you call them non-Christian because it's a "different" Jesus they believe in.
And the Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet and a son of Mary, but did not die on a cross; they deny that He is the incarnate Word of God.
And Arians believe(d) that Jesus was a lesser God than the Father, and the Gnostics believe that His death was an illusion, and so on and so on and so on. People believe all sorts of things.
But there is only one Church that was established and left by Him, and it ain't Presbterian!
You forgot or better yet probably just left out other elements of justification: having babies, baptism, repentance, etc. all of which are in the Bible.
Strayng from true faith is defining everyitng in terms of Paul. But then we already know that Protestants are really Paulines. So was Marcion. Great company!
Yes, we do. But we don't understand it the same way. God chooses specific individuals or groups to do His work. Being reborn in Baptism precedes the faith for an infant. Being predestined is what the Church always taught; just not double-predestined.
Not all truth is equally important. Or relevant.
For one millionth time and more, God did not write the Bible. Men did. Sure, they were inspired by God, but man's fingers are in the Bible, and man's additions and delitions and versions, and errors litter copies of copies, all of which show great diversity and divergence, and because we also don't have the originals. There are verses in some Bibles that were never there before certain time in more recent history, so your sweeping generalization is patently false.
God didn't put Comma Joahnneum in 1 John! A monk did, and I doubt he was inspired. And if it was there all along as some claim, then someone took it out for 1500 years, and it wasn't God!
The Bible contains forgeries and man-made errors. Tha's why textual criticism is is so important. But if you are going to treat the Bible as some pristine book "written" by God, then you will believe any forgery that comes your way.
He wrote it (supposedly). He means David when he says "my." When I say "my" I mean Kosta. I can't say anything about others.
Because humans are created in His image and likeness and if they possessed unlimited freedom and knowledge they would be Gods.
Why did He create hell?
Biblical imagery tells us He created a "lake of fire" (actually burning "sulphur") somewhere in the universe for the devil and his angels. Of course, this is just imagery and not feal fire or sulphur. It is something eternal.
Worth mentioning is that the OT mentions no such thing. That is a latter-day innovation/devlopment/revelation, whatever. At any rate, it's supposed to be scary, not necessarily a documentary fact. It shows that life without God, or in rebellion with God, is "hell" (no pun intended). :)
That's like falling in love because someone has green eyes, imo.
“Obviously you did not read the excellent article by Knapp....”
But I did read it HD. Its not what The Church in either the East or the West teaches, especially what the Church in the East says. The West, of course, is sort of stuck given the level to which that Church has raised Augustinian theology. But even the Latin Church doesn’t teach this. It may be that Knapp is on to something, something which tends to establish that Augustine really was a Manichean heretic his whole life. In any event, his notions of perseverance are not at all within the consensus patrum. My comment to FK, however, was directed towards his interpretation of the passages from Mark & Matthew.
“However the East and West pick and choose what church father’s writings to accept.”
Not Orthodoxy, HD. The consensus patrum does that.
“In the case of perseverance, there is overwhelming evidence the early church fathers wrote extensively about this subject and agreed that, if chosen by God people will persevere.”
The Fathers call for that perseverance and point to it as an object lesson. The Fathers do not interpret it as modern protestants do nor as some others in the West have since the 11th century. The consensus patrum does not teach that the “elect” will always persevere. But then again, the Fathers’ notions of “election” were rather different from those of Calvin or even Augustine.
“This just simply does not fit the Orthodox/Catholic doctrinal belief which tries to get people to go to church to receive grace, so it’s discarded.”
HD, that would be the Latin Church, not Orthodoxy. You are mixing the two in an area where the Churches have very different beliefs, namely the “nature” of grace.
“Yet it was the fathers position that if a person was saved they would WANT to attend mass. It wasn’t the other way around that you needed to attend mass to be saved.”
The “Sunday Obligation” and “Holy Days of Obligation” are Latin innovations. Nothing like those have ever existed in Orthodoxy, HD. Your fight is with your religious parent, not the odd aunt from across the Adriatic!
“But then there’s another church father that probably was wrong. ;O)”
+Paul? Precisely! :)
“At any rate, it’s supposed to be scary, not necessarily a documentary fact.”
“Very often many things are said by the Holy Scriptures and in it many names are used not in a literal sense... those who have a mind understand this” +Isaac the Syrian
or, as +Basil the Great commented, “”It is because fear edifies simpler people.”
:)
I'm confused by the above sentences. Did God create an actual "lake of fire" for the devil and his angels or is it imagery?
Worth mentioning is that the OT mentions no such thing.
I wouldn't say it doesn't mention it. Normally it talks about the righteous living forever with God while the wicked will be cut off.
1Sa 2:9 "He keeps the feet of His godly ones, But the wicked ones are silenced in darkness; For not by might shall a man prevail.
Psa 58:10-11 The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. And men will say, "Surely there is a reward for the righteous; Surely there is a God who judges on earth!"
Psa 94:12-14 Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O LORD, And whom You teach out of Your law; That You may grant him relief from the days of adversity, Until a pit is dug for the wicked. For the LORD will not abandon His people, Nor will He forsake His inheritance.
Psa 145:20-21 The LORD keeps all who love Him, But all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD, And all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever.
At any rate, it's supposed to be scary, not necessarily a documentary fact.
If our Lord stated it, I think it's more than "scary".
And there you have it. I wasn't posting to you. Your comment, ending with "Mr. Jefferson" and me removing part of Scriptures was the beginning of your misunderstanding of my posts to Dr. E. I was not commenting to you, nor was I saying we should remove part of Scriptures. It was your smart-alleck comment that began this ridiculous conversation which can have no positive outcome. As such, I will refrain from further comment on it, as per Scripture's suggestions that I refrain from such conduct.
Regards
Dr E responded with Example of the repentant crucified with Jesus.
Oh, I forgot about that one. Thank you for correcting me. Is there any others out there in which I may be able to circumvent being crucified?
I don't even think Paul says this about HIMSELF, less other individuals. It is my opinion that he addresses the community in general when he writes letters. I do not think he means that every individual person in the Christian community who was baptized will be necessarily going to heaven. We see this proved by other Scriptures (ones that I have already given you, such as Heb 10:26-28) where some individuals will choose to disown their inheritance.
Regards
That is a subsequent tradition of the Church. Your quotes do not tell us that Paul writes to ALL men everywhere in ALL times.
The original letters were written to the community at large. Paul is clearly writing to a specific community in a specific time. Later, COMMUNITIES pass these letters around, seeing they have useful instruction in them. While we may say that God has written these letters to us after the fact, can we say that Paul wrote them to us? Secondly, these letters are written to the community. Not the individual. Thus, it is taking something out of context by applying the words written to a community and applying them to the individual. Clearly, Paul is not saying that EVERY PERSON in Corinth - or where-ever, will be saved for heaven. He says that the COMMUNITY will be - those who remain within it. Thus, for example, he says that those who commit particular sins will be disinherited from the Kingdom - 1 Cor 6:9-10.
By taking some of Paul's words to the community and applying it to you individually is a mistake, since the context is written to the community that perseveres, not to each and every individual regardless of their position with God.
Regards
I do believe that God speaks to me on occasion when I read the Scriptures. I believe that my comments on this are being taken out of context. I mean to say that Paul does not write to the individual Christian, and certainly not to us 2000 years later. Paul writes to the community. Thus, his words should be applied within the context of the community. Those who remain in the community will receive the promises that Scriptures detail. Paul tells us that SOME individuals within the community will NOT endure. We do not know WHICH individuals this refers to. Thus, I believe it is incorrect to apply what Paul says to the community at Thessalonica and apply it ALWAYS to our own personal life - thinking that I am of the elect merely because I read the Bible and think it applies to me.
Paul tells the community to persevere. These are words meant for everyone. Those who persevere TO THE END in Christ were obviously of the elect. I disagree that we can know we are of the elect for heaven UNLESS we actually persevered in the end. We do not see that future in our individual lives. We know that the community ITSELF will persevere - Christ said His Church shall not fail. Whether WE individually will remain within this Church, this community, that is not something absolutely certain at this time. I have seen too many people fall away and remain so to believe that is true. Too many people say "Lord, Lord". They will be surprised when Jesus responds "I never knew you. Away from me".
Regards
Tell me Jo Kus, is this passage meant for David only? lol
No, and you are misunderstanding what I am saying. Can we take that passage and say you personally will enter heaven? See my last post to Dr. E.
Regards
John 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
17:18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
17:19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
When Paul was commissioned as the Apostle to the Gentiles then he spread the Word both in building new churches and in writing letters for their organization etc so that the worship would be conducted properly.
Peter was never in charge of any churches, either.
2 Cor 11:28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily , the care of all the churches.
KOSTA: That's like falling in love because someone has green eyes.
No, that's like falling in love become someone's heart is true.
I already am in heaven, seeing that I have entered eternal life and the scriptures tell me so, so yes, the scriptures, all of them, tell me that I am. I don't spend one second of my time doubting it or worrying about it either
How does the RCC reconcile that? Paul was entrusted with the care of the churches, with speading the word of God, and it was Paul who corrected Peter.
2 Cor 11:28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
Amen. Score another one for Scripture.
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