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.
The Bible is of great value but even that of the greatest value is not worth anything if misinterpreted.
[3] In parables: the word “parable” (Greek parabole) is used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew mashal, a designation covering a wide variety of literary forms such as axioms, proverbs, similitudes, and allegories. In the New Testament the same breadth of meaning of the word is found, but there it primarily designates stories that are illustrative comparisons between Christian truths and events of everyday life. Sometimes the event has a strange element that is quite different from usual experience (e.g., in Matthew 13:33 the enormous amount of dough in the parable of the yeast); this is meant to sharpen the curiosity of the hearer. If each detail of such a story is given a figurative meaning, the story is an allegory. Those who maintain a sharp distinction between parable and allegory insist that a parable has only one point of comparison, and that while parables were characteristic of Jesus’ teaching, to see allegorical details in them is to introduce meanings that go beyond their original intention and even falsify it. However, to exclude any allegorical elements from a parable is an excessively rigid mode of interpretation, now abandoned by many scholars.
4 [11] Since a parable is figurative speech that demands reflection for understanding, only those who are prepared to explore its meaning can come to know it. To understand is a gift of God, granted to the disciples but not to the crowds. In Semitic fashion, both the disciples’ understanding and the crowd’s obtuseness are attributed to God. The question of human responsibility for the obtuseness is not dealt with, although it is asserted in Matthew 13:13. The mysteries: as in Luke 8:10; Mark 4:11 has “the mystery.” The word is used in Daniel 2:18, 19, 27 and in the Qumran literature (1QpHab 7:8; 1QS 3:23; 1QM 3:9) to designate a divine plan or decree affecting the course of history that can be known only when revealed. Knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven means recognition that the kingdom has become present in the ministry of Jesus.
5 [12] In the New Testament use of this axiom of practical “wisdom” (see Matthew 25:29; Mark 4:25; Luke 8:18; 19:26), the reference transcends the original level. God gives further understanding to one who accepts the revealed mystery; from the one who does not, he will take it away (note the “theological passive,” more will be given, what he has will be taken away).
6 [13] Because “they look . . . or understand’: Matthew softens his Marcan source, which states that Jesus speaks in parables so that the crowds may not understand (Mark 4:12), and makes such speaking a punishment given because they have not accepted his previous clear teaching. However, his citation of Isaiah 6:9-10 in Matthew 13:14 supports the harsher Marcan view.
7 [16-17] Unlike the unbelieving crowds, the disciples have seen that which the prophets and the righteous of the Old Testament longed to see without having their longing fulfilled.
8 [18-23] See Mark 4:14-20; Luke 8:11-15. In this explanation of the parable the emphasis is on the various types of soil on which the seed falls, i.e., on the dispositions with which the preaching of Jesus is received. The second and third types particularly are explained in such a way as to support the view held by many scholars that the explanation derives not from Jesus but from early Christian reflection upon apostasy from the faith that was the consequence of persecution and worldliness respectively. Others, however, hold that the explanation may come basically from Jesus even though it was developed in the light of later Christian experience. The four types of persons envisaged are (1) those who never accept the word of the kingdom (Matthew 13:19); (2) those who believe for a while but fall away because of persecution (Matthew 13:20-21); (3) those who believe, but in whom the word is choked by worldly anxiety and the seduction of riches (Matthew 13:22); (4) those who respond to the word and produce fruit abundantly (Matthew 13:23).
Context and interpretation.
By the way, where are those (2) and (3) people in Reformed theology?
When you can substantiate your points with Scripture, let me know.
You seem to have the minimum daily requirement of intelligence.
Golly gee. (((blush)))
I do not believe, as some Calvinists do, that the Holy Spirit is a messenger or emissary of either the Father or the Son.
Really? You've been misinformed...again. Where is the Scripture that denies the following...?
"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me" -- John 15:26 "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." -- John 14:26
Is this more of your denying the Holy Spirit, Mark?
Calvin was correct when he wrote that Rome sought to erase the Holy Spirit from men's hearts while hoping to turn Him into a secret stash meant only for the magisterium to dole out to the highest bidder.
Repent of it.
Why does Jesus Christ say He teaches in parables, Mark?
Matt 13:
10
The disciples approached him and said, “Why do you speak to them in parables?”
11
4 He said to them in reply, “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
12
To anyone who has, more will be given 5 and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
13
6 This is why I speak to them in parables, because ‘they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.’
14
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: ‘You shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see.
15
Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.’
Some men are ready to hear and some aren’t.
Where does Christ give any indication of "readiness" to hear?
He doesn't. He says the truth is given to some men who are able to understand it because their minds have been renewed by the Holy Spirit. And other men are not able to understand the truth because the Holy Spirit does not renew their minds, but leaves them, according to the will and purpose of God, in darkness.
Try not to add to the text. It helps the comprehension.
You responded: Except Paul and Luke...
LOL! We'll see!
"For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" -- 1 Corinthians 4:7
Way out of context, my friend! Paul is addressing the puffed up "teachers" who were glorifying in the gifts that God gave THROUGH Paul, to include the knowledge of the Gospel, as if to say "The knowledge that you possess, didn't you receive it from me?"
This has absolutely nothing to do with individual reprobation. The most you can say about this is that Paul is commenting on God's external order - He gives to each person an "occupation", a place in society or within the Body. This says nothing about God reprobating BEFORE man's demerits!
"And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." -- Acts 13:48
Another poor interpretation...
Here is what Clarke says about this verse:
"Many suppose that it simply means that those in that assembly who were fore-ordained; or predestinated by God's decree, to eternal life, believed under the influence of that decree. Now, we should be careful to examine what a word means, before we attempt to fix its meaning. Whatever τεταγμενοι may mean, which is the word we translate ordained, it is neither προτεταγμενοι nor προορισμενοι which the apostle uses, but simply τεταγμενοι, which includes no idea of pre-ordination or pre-destination of any kind. And if it even did, it would be rather hazardous to say that all those who believed at this time were such as actually persevered unto the end, and were saved unto eternal life. But, leaving all these precarious matters, what does the word τεταγμενος mean? The verb ταττω or τασσω signifies to place, set, order, appoint, dispose; hence it has been considered here as implying the disposition or readiness of mind of several persons in the congregation, such as the religious proselytes mentioned Ac 13:43, who possessed the reverse of the disposition of those Jews who spake against those things, contradicting and blaspheming, Ac 13:45."
My Catholic source, Father Most, answers this objection in anther manner as such:
If this (what Dr. E proposes) were true, it would follow that NO ONE who is not a member of the Church in the full sense could be saved. But the Church herself denies this, (as in Romans 2:14-16, which state that some Gentiles can be and ARE justified - my addition). Rather, the truth is that eternal life in the text cited is spoken of in the same sense as in the Gospel (John 17:3) "And this is eternal life, that they know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. This knowledge is begun in THIS life, by knowing Jesus Christ in the Church, and is perfected in the beatific vision (heaven) to which the Church is intended to lead men.
Read Ephesians 1 and 2. Men's good works are nothing;
Read Romans 8. It clearly says that the Spirit quickens the man. He is now a new creation. You are, again, erecting a straw man. The Catholic Church does NOT teach that man's works ALONE are of any value. What you do not understand is that when the Spirit abides in a man, that man's works are no longer HIS ALONE! You attempt to separate the new creation from the Body. When the Body of Christ does something, it has value. As long as I am part of the Body, with the Spirit abiding in me, a new creation, my work in Christ does have value in God's eyes.
God's graces actually transform me. Thus, we do not separate God's work from the new creation's work. Our good deeds absolutely RELY on God and His grace. It is your false understanding of Catholicism that tries to separate the two.
I wrote: Be careful of becoming a religious hypocrite.
You responded: When you have to resort to name-calling, you've lost on points.
Please read my post again. I said "be careful of becoming ...". I didn't call you one. My post was meant as a warning against self-righteousness, which you are dangerously approaching. You attack Catholicism of the very same things that you yourself practice. Isn't that hypocrisy?
Regards
WCF Chapter 8:
8. To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same; making intercession for them, and revealing unto them, in and by the Word, the mysteries of salvation; effectually persuading them by his Spirit to believe and obey, and governing their hearts by his Word and Spirit; overcoming all their enemies by his almighty power and wisdom, in such manner, and ways, as are most consonant to his wonderful and unsearchable dispensation.
CHAPTER 10
Of Effectual Calling
1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by his almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.
and numerous other examples.
Is the Spirit the emissary of Jesus?
Where is the Scripture that supports your contention that parables are a means of story-telling or teaching method?
Because that definition may work for Paul Bunyon, but it doesn't work for the New Testament. Jesus Christ told us exactly why He spoke in parables, and it doesn't begin wiht "once upon a time..."
That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them." -- Mark 4:11-12"Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:
If someone is ministering and uses stories, it’s self-evident.
Are you saying he spoke in parables to confuse his listeners or to make sure they didn’t understand?
Thank you for those excellent verses that confirm the fact that all existenece is by and through and for Jesus Christ.
I was reading Revelations 9 recently and was struck by the phrase...
"...angel of the bottomless pit."
(((shudder)))
LOL. "Self-evident? Yeah, Rome gets around a lot of Sciriptural truths with that kind of logic.
Are you saying he spoke in parables to confuse his listeners or to make sure they didn't understand?
Read the text. Jesus said He spoke in parables so that those who had been given ears to hear by God would understand their salvation by faith in Him. And those who had not received ears to hear would not understand and thus, would not believe and be saved.
Because "faith comes by hearing," does it not?
Nothing about teaching lessons or stories or hidden political motives.
Christ, once again, explains He is speaking to His sheep because they know His voice and are known by Him and they follow because God has given them to Christ to bring safely home.
All others are left in the darkness of their sins (which is exactly where they want to be,) according to the will and purpose of God which He ordained from before the foundation of the world.
As many times as you challenge that, the truth remains the same.
My goodness.
What a perversion of Jesus’s ministry.
This is not Reformed theology. There absolutely IS a transformation, a real one. We are a "new creation". The old has gone, the new has come. A remnant still remains however. Thus Paul says that whatever he wants to do he doesn't, and whatever he does not want to do, this he keeps on doing. But Paul's message is not that we can't live for Christ. His message is very positive.
THAT, my friend, is EXACTLY the problem! Your view of philosophy sees God and man on an equal plane acting on the same level. Thus, you see God and man pulling the same cart with the same tools! If man pulls 1% of the cart, you claim it takes away from God's Sovereignty. You cannot comprehend that God and man work on different levels. God is transcendent, beyond our level. Thus, we can attribute to God the primary cause of our salvation. ONE HUNDRED percent on that level, God grants graces and without those graces, man can do nothing good. Meanwhile, at the same time and on a different level, man is RESPONSIBLE to ACT upon the graces he has been given.
I would say that we understand primary and secondary causes just fine. We just define and use them differently from you. (You may have seen some of the recent discussion of them in the context of the WCF.) Anyway, in the theater of sin, we say that God ordains it as a primary cause, but man carries it out as the secondary cause. Thus WE say that man gets the blame for it. You, OTOH, apparently say that primary and secondary causes do not apply to sin. But if they did, you would say that God as the primary cause gets all the blame, thus you accuse us of believing that God is the author of sin.
Now, in the theater of salvation, you give credit for salvation to both God as primary cause and to man as secondary cause (grace + works = salvation). We, OTOH, give all the credit for salvation to God as primary cause. Thus, you say that for us man is "crushed" or "worthless" since we glorify God alone. We will never apologize for giving God all the glory.
So, I really don't think your criticism regarding man and God being on the same or different planes applies. We know man and God are on different planes. You and I disagree on the correct application of primary and secondary causes.
By dragging God into the empirical world, by ignoring universals, by rationalizing and simplifying the utterly transcendent, by forcing an "either/or" choice in the typical paradoxical points of Christian theology, by ignoring great swathes of Scripture, you must choose one extreme OR the other...Either God is Sovereign, OR man contributes and thus, God is no longer sovereign. Scriptures CLEARLY indicate BOTH occur - but you won't have it because your philosophy does not allow it. This a priori philosophy prevents you from seeing the seemingly paradoxical proposition that Christianity had held for 1500 years.
What are you talking about? The Reformers were the ONLY ones who clung to universals and antithesis. The Reformers combated the Renaissance philosophers and later modern philosophers, who were forced to give up their attempt to find a universal to reconcile man and God. They were forced to give up because they allowed things like secular humanism, existentialism, and rationalism to enter their models. It was the Roman Catholics who supported this growing humanism!
For example, the Catholics were pushing the idea of an incomplete Fall, thus leaving man with an autonomous intellect. The Renaissance philosophers LOVED THIS! The Reformers, OTOH, held to the Biblical view of a complete Fall. They said that only God was autonomous. The next 500 years have sadly led us to where we are today in modern philosophy. A philosophy with no absolutes that is controlled by relativism. Again, the Reformers were the ones who fought against this.
You have him speaking in order to not lose those who can’t get lost anyyay and being purposefully unintelligible to the rest.
The whole Gospel becomes moot. Jesus’s ministry a charade.
Thank you stfassisi. One thing I realized in my previous objections to KJV translations is that the Protestants have the deep conceptual differences in their vocabulary.
These differences lead to different theology. The word in question is thelema, which is, in its secondary meaning defined as "will, choice, inclination, desire, pleasure." Not here that the term pleasure is equated to will (as in "as I please") whereas the word pleasure really means a sensation of pleasure which is anthropomorphic term of passion/corruption which the Protestants routinely assign to God because it suggests that God is subject to pleasure.
Thus, when it comes to words such as "salvation," or "will" the Protestant theology departs along these anthropomorphic lines, reducing God to human-like emotions and pleasures, in the literalist tradition "because the Bible says so."
The same difficulty arises from the verse "God desires all men to be saved..." The word desire is equated to will, just as pleasure is.
Ἄξιος εἶ, ὁ Κύριος καὶ ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν, λαβεῖν τὴν δόξαν καὶ τὴν τιμὴν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν, ὅτι σὺ ἔκτισας τὰ πάντα, καὶ διὰ τὸ θέλημά σου ἦσαν καὶ ἐκτίσθησαν.
By the way, StFA is nearest to correct. FK, there's a reason why The Church has stuck with the original...it avoids so many problems.
“The Reformers combated the Renaissance philosophers and later modern philosophers, who were forced to give up their attempt to find a universal to reconcile man and God. They were forced to give up because they allowed things like secular humanism, existentialism, and rationalism to enter their models. It was the Roman Catholics who supported this growing humanism!
For example, the Catholics were pushing the idea of an incomplete Fall, thus leaving man with an autonomous intellect. The Renaissance philosophers LOVED THIS! The Reformers, OTOH, held to the Biblical view of a complete Fall. They said that only God was autonomous. The next 500 years have sadly led us to where we are today in modern philosophy. A philosophy with no absolutes that is controlled by relativism. Again, the Reformers were the ones who fought against this.”
And then, of course, there are we Orthodox, doing and believing the same things for 2000 years. How do the reformers account for, or better said, dismiss us, FK?
No, it tactfully says that they are telling lies, mistruths, and distortions.
Where they are going is up to God.
Since you choose not to believe Scripture (1 Timothy 3:15), perhaps you will accept the words of Augustine:
"I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church."
Saint Augustine (354-430), Against the Letter of Mani, 5,6, 397 A.D.
And, as for Sola Scriptura, the words of St. Athanasius still resound.
"Let us note that the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian."
St. Athanasius, Letter to Serapion of Thmuis, 359 A.D..
Let's give Martin Luther the final word.
"We are compelled to concede to the Papists that they have the Word of GOD, that we received it from them, and that without them, we should have no knowledge of it at all."
Martin Luther, commentary on St. John.
None of which worked, as +Athanasius the Great points out, FK!
I'm not sure what you mean by "worked". God elects those He chooses from both the OT and the NT. Abraham's faith was accorded to him as righteousness. Job was "perfect". David was a man after God's own heart, etc. It obviously worked in those cases. In fact, it always worked as God willed.
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