Thanks for your respectful responses. It is people like you who push legitimate questioning to ultimate truth and understanding.
RE: Romans claiming the truth. The Church acknowledges the truth in all of the Protestant and non-Christian religions. What it holds is that the FULNESS OF TRUTH, is held by the Roman Church.
RE: your examples. The Protestant Church rejected some Scriptures the Catholic Church still retains. Do you think the Lord left the early Church to pick wrong Scriptures?
Yes, we do cherry pick the early Church Fathers and every theologian who ever lived. It is the teaching Magisterium who is inspired by the Holy Spirit to do the cherry picking, not the individual, even if it is Henry the VIII or Martin Luther or Calvin or any other person who has broken with them.
“Upon this Rock....” “and the gates of hell shall not...”
By the way, why do you dislike Dave Armstrong so? He may not be a sophisticated theologian, but he does a pretty good job. Actually, why do you dislike all those converts?
>Hi,
>Thanks for your respectful responses. It is people like you who push legitimate questioning to ultimate truth and understanding.
Thank you for YOUR responses. Too many times people bring their emotions to the debate, spouting invectives rather than actually defending their faith. I appreciate that you are willing to set yours aside, and I pray I am able to do so also.
>RE: your examples. The Protestant Church rejected some Scriptures the Catholic Church still retains. Do you think the Lord left the early Church to pick wrong Scriptures?
Note the long list of Early Church Fathers that also forgo the deutero-canonical books (to be abbreviated DCB for sake of my fingers) from the canon. You know the list, or can look it up. It is no only the Protestant Church, but many of those that formed later dogma of the Roman Church, as well as those that were given the “Oracles of God” (Romans 3:2), the Jews themselves. The Protestant church does not stand alone in this.
Lets look to the 31 of the members of the Council of Trent that refused to vote, or voted against the 24 members that approved the DCB. When not even a majority of the learned scholars could agree to the inspiration of the books in question, it proves that amongst the Catholic learned scholar world of the 1500’s it was still very much in doubt. A mere 40 some odd percent of the scholars decided the matter, infallibly, against the consciences of the others involved. Even Cardinal Cajetan, famous for his standing against Luther in Wittenberg, supported Luther’s view of the canon.
Did the Lord leave the Church to pick the wrong Scriptures? No, indeed, the church recognized what was Gospel and what was heresy. It recognized, it did not write or even authorize. Gods word has power outside the church.
Thus the early church recognized that the Gnostic gospels were false and they were rejected. However, the DCB’s were not universally rejected, nor approved, and being apart from the Gospels and Epistles, were never used to the extent that the NT works were, so their influence were never all that great. Not enough of the ECF’s knew Hebrew or even would associate with Jews, so the matter stood unsettled in the church.
>Yes, we do cherry pick the early Church Fathers and every theologian who ever lived. It is the teaching Magisterium who is inspired by the Holy Spirit to do the cherry picking, not the individual, even if it is Henry the VIII or Martin Luther or Calvin or any other person who has broken with them.
Well, at least you are not arguing that the traditions of the Roman Catholic Faith have not changed for 2000 years. So you are a developmental traditionalist? The acorn and the oak?
As for Mr. Armstrong, I have followed some of his ‘discussions’ with Dr. James White, James Swan and other Protestants. It just seems that he throws in the towel early and goes ad hominum early.
As for the other ‘converts’? I have no problem with the others I mentioned. Oftentimes they can put forth pretty good points, wrong from my point of view of course.