Posted on 06/21/2012 8:24:00 AM PDT by fishtank
As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate Shifts to Heresy Accusation Hundreds, including seminary presidents, have signed a statement on salvation criticized by both Reformed and Arminian theologians. Weston Gentry [ posted 6/18/2012 ] A statement by a non-Calvinist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has launched infighting within the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and tensions are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
Just so I don't appear totally nuts on my long post, I was remembering your previous post thus. It would have made more sense if I had posted my reply to it.
“these are the wells of salvation, so that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the sayings in these. Let no one add to these. Let nothing be taken away.”Yep, couldn't be - and wasn't. :)Hmmmm. Sounds suspiciously like Sola Scriptura, but that couldn’t be, unless, unless he was really a time travelling Protestant! Nah, couldn’t be.
Sure it works. Just because a camper can go to the full service camping store that has everything he needs, doesn’t mean he has the experience to get all the right stuff on his first or second shopping trip. That’s what instruction is for. Under any system, yours, mine, or someone else’s, there will be a lot of diversity at the fringes, but people of good will tend to grow into and converge on a shared body of truth as they gain knowledge.
That’s why I keep bringing up Aquinas. Its part of natural law theory. Reason is good. God made reason so we could discover truth, so we could know more about Him. Sin takes reason off course, but then there’s the Holy Spirit to put it back on course. Not out of emotional whimsy, but out of a sincere struggle to know what is true.
Look at everything we DO agree on. Blessed Trinity. Christ as Messiah, God-man, Savior. The Resurrection. That people with faith will also have works. The sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. The sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. The profitability of Scripture. And much much more. It is only in certain select areas we run into trouble. And a lot of that has to do with history, not the Biblical text.
This is why I actually agree, in a reverse sort of way, with something stpio has been saying. I think there will be a convergence among believers as we get closer to the gate. But it won’t support any one particular human institution so much as it will drive us all to the glorified Jesus, who will so transcend our petty quarrels here we will forget them entirely. I look forward to that.
Peace,
SR
No it doesn’t work.
It results in radically different doctrines and teachings of salvation, who God is, who Man is, what our relationship is. These are not ‘fringes.’
>>> But it won’t support any one particular human institution
It will support every human being his own arbiter of scripture and doctrine. It supports the heretic proclaiming scripture supports him.
What it won’t support is One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
I think you misunderstood me again. Unless you don’t want us to be brothers in the faith at the end of days, with no division between us. I would have thought you would think that was a good thing. Sigh. Maybe I was unclear. I’m sorry.
Peace,
SR
Im sorry if my reply was too harsh.
It does hurt me that we are not one faith, that we do not illustrate Christ’s prayer in the garden.
The things you mention we share, such as the Most Holy Trinity, are not results of sola scriptura. Oneness Pentecostals for example use sola scriptura to reject it. Various heresies of Christology argued using scripture as they do today. Without the authority of Church, there would be no common creed.
No, the things we share as regards the Nicene Creed would not exist if sola scriptura were the doctrine of the Church. And there is nothing in sola scriptura to prevent further splits and completely undo the creeds, for various churches and for each individual.
Sola scriptura came with the rise in humanism and the power of the individual. Today we can see a ‘just me and scripture and Jesus’ attitude by many. The real meaning of communion of saints, of one body, of Church has been lost by many - unchurching is trend, more and more individual, less and less church. It separates and isolates us.
I do intensely wish us to be brothers in faith at the end of days. This is why I so intensely oppose the doctrine of sola scriptura.
I don’t mean any of this personally against you of course, and I apologize for the tone.
“Would you want me to run my law practice by just taking people’s word for it? Based on their feelings? Yikes! Do you know how bad that would be for my clients? The facts concerning the origin of the Bible I’m asking you to confirm are not private secrets. You are still asking me to make a leap of private judgment without giving me any logical reason to do so.
And before Damasus and before Jerome, Athanasius of Alexandria, not a pope, had already identified the 27 books of the NT canon. And not out of thin air, or one man’s authority, but out of the experience of three centuries of the Christian faithful using these books, in Greek, Syriac, Latin, etc. Other books of lesser authority he... allowed for more mature Christians to study”...
~ ~ ~
I shared facts, Christian history not as you say “feelings”. Private revelation (prophets) is second on the list after the Apostles in 1Cor 12:28. Prophecy doesn’t add to God’s revelation, it makes what He has given us more explicit. We agree, the Apostles “preaching” is how they shared Christ’s teachings, Catholics call it tradition. Then, putting much, not all of their oral teachings down in writing. I would not ask you to give your “Private judgment” that’s a heresy, one of the reasons for the division and error in Protestantism.
Why do non-Catholic Christians mention saints in the earliest times and still object to the faith? It’s such a disconnect, no offense. And “other Canons” is a way to say, I reject Christ’s chosen authority...there’s more than one Canon so no one knew for sure, that’s okay, see those early Christians are like Protestantism. No way.
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria was subject to the Pope. All bishops followed the Pope until the beginning of the Eastern Schism in 867 A.D. Athanasius disagreed about the Book of Revelation. He wasn’t sure. The Pope alone has the gift from God to be error free on faith and morals. Pope Damasus (366-384) decided the Canon and in his Decree are listed the books of today’s Canon. Other early Canons don’t matter, your Bible contains the books chosen by one man, Damasus and have never been changed to this day except the books Martin Luther threw out in error. They were the OT books Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the most. Martin Luther followed the Palestinian Jews who rejected those books because of fear.
+++ Pope Damasus I
“Likewise it is decreed: . . . [W]e have considered that it ought to be announced that . . . the holy Roman Church has been placed at the forefront not by the conciliar decisions of other churches, but has received the primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Savior, who says: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it; and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall have bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall have loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ [Matt. 16:18-19]. The first see [today], therefore, is that of Peter the apostle, that of the Roman Church, which has neither stain nor blemish nor anything like it” (Decree of Damasus 3 [A.D. 382]).
+++ Jerome
“I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but your blessedness [Pope Damasus I], that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark on Noah will perish when the flood prevails” (ibid., 15:2).
SR, hi,
Natural Law reminded me and another forum member in PM to be kind. You are civil in reply and kind to keep on with the discussion of our differences.
I fall down saying something negative and oh those, the veiled insults way at FR bug me. I just want you to become Catholic! I get frustrated because Prophecy states the Remnant IS Roman Catholic. I don’t want you or anyone to get waylaid by their upbringing or seeing soon the greater persecution of Catholics, further rejection of Mary and more important, the attempt to take away the Eucharist that is prophesied. All this, many many non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians will mistakenly thinking they are right!
We share an admiration for Acquinas, however there are realities that cannot be known by reason alone. What makes religion religion is the parts that transcend Reason's ability to know.
With the Enlightenment and the split of the spheres of knowledge into science, reason and revelation, revelation was "known" by the authority of the Church. Thus one could follow reason without becoming a rationalist or positivist - and continue to be an orthodox Christian.
With the split of the Reformation,the "authority" became each individual- via sola scriptura. And orthodoxy became just one opinion on scripture; heresy another. The "truth" of the Christian faith is up to the individual; the objective, absolute, orthodox, transcendent, catholic truths of Christianity became subjective, varied and heterodox.
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, subject to the Pope? I think not:
“Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.”
6th Canon of the Nicene Council.
Papal authority as you see it today was a long evolution. According to the Nicene Council, Rome was just another jurisdiction, an equal peer of Rome. Go back 80 years before that to the Council of Carthage and it is even clearer:
“For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.”
Another clear statement of jurisdictional separation, with no one head but Christ.
As for being subject even to the Bishop of Rome, that was not how Athanasius handled the Arian controversy. Do you not remember how Liberius, Bishop of Rome at the time, signed the Sirmium Creed, which was heretical for its Arianism? What a failure, what a dark day for Rome! But even more interesting, it didn’t settle the controversy. Rome couldn’t settle that controversy because it didn’t have controversy settling power outside of its own, limited jurisdiction.
And did Anthanasius succumb to the Arian heresy by following the lead of the Bishop of Rome? Absolutely not. He would have none of it, and fought his battle almost alone among the bishoprics, “contra mundum,” against the world, with his primary weapon, the Holy Scriptures, which no Pope could unilaterally sanction because there was no “bishop of bishops.” But God used those Scriptures mightily in the hands of the Bishop of Alexandria, and the tide toward heresy was pushed back, praise God!
stpio, I think you are a very fine person, but you need to research these things carefully. There are very important things you appear to be missing. God is the God of all truth, including the public record of the history of Christianity, and it would be a sin for me to lie either to you or to my own mind just to please a man in Italy whom I don’t even know and who appears, by the record, to have no basis of claim over either of us.
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, subject to the Pope? I think not:
“Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.”
~ ~ ~
Do you never question, where is Protestant teaching in the
early Church? The Church is Roman Catholic, quit fighting
it SR.
Forever protesting the authority of the Pope. Your Bible
has the books in it Damasus named (less Luther’s error),
kinda fits...66 books remaining. God’s trying to get
your attention.
Athanesius was a Bishop, understand, there is a hierarchy.
A Bishop is under the authority of the Pope. Yes, there will always be those who reject the Pope’s authority.
Athanesius disagreed about the Book of Revelation, he did not have the God given gift never to error on faith and morals. Not sure. The Eastern Orthodox, some of them still question Revelation.
Funny why the fellas, the KJV translators changed the word
Bishop, the original to “overseers.” Seeee...you’ll use, accept the word “Bishop” now when you’re trying to make another point but like them changing the word Bishop, it’s for the same reason, to reject the true faith.
“6th Canon of the Nicene Council.
Papal authority as you see it today was a long evolution. According to the Nicene Council, Rome was just another jurisdiction, an equal peer of Rome. Go back 80 years before that to the Council of Carthage and it is even clearer:
“For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.”
Another clear statement of jurisdictional separation, with no one head but Christ.”
~ ~ ~
Quit using Church history, Catholic Councils, Catholic
writings to say the Church is wrong. The above personal comments are BX. Jesus named his authority on earth in Matthew 16:18. My turn, here’s a Catholic quote from long ago that you ignored SR. Give it up, come to the faith.
+++ Pope Damasus I
“Likewise it is decreed: . . . [W]e have considered that it ought to be announced that . . . the holy Roman Church has been placed at the forefront not by the conciliar decisions of other churches, but has received the primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Savior, who says: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it; and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall have bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall have loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ [Matt. 16:18-19]. The first see [today], therefore, is that of Peter the apostle, that of the Roman Church, which has neither stain nor blemish nor anything like it” (Decree of Damasus 3 [A.D. 382]).
+++ Jerome
“I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but your blessedness [Pope Damasus I], that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark on Noah will perish when the flood prevails” (ibid., 15:2).
A few points.
First, no problem on misunderstandings. All’s well that ends well. :)
Second, almost all the major doctrinal deviations that occur are based on a departure from Sola Scriptura. Not the other way around.
There are two forms of said departure. Over-inclusivity and under-inclusivity.
Under-inclusivity is like the preacher who against all reason preach thus, “The Scriptures say, ‘Judas when out and hanged himself,’ and the Scripture also says ‘go thou and do likewise.’” The poor folks who end up under this kind of preaching will pay dearly for failing to address the whole counsel of God.
Over-inclusivity is also a rich area for error. You mention Oneness Pentecostals. They didn’t get started by Scripture Alone. In 1913 a man had an extrabiblical “revelation” about a special powers of a “Jesus Only” baptismal formula. One thing led to another and it ended up creating a movement to reject the Trinity. Go figure, but definitely NOT Sola Scriptura.
Other examples abound. Mormons => Book of Mormon. Jehovah’s Witnesses => Watchtower Society. Christian Science => Mary Baker Eddy, and on and on. No Sola Scriptura anywhere in sight.
On the other end of the spectrum, liberal decay of formerly decent denominations? Caused by outright rejection of the authority of Scripture. Big influence from the German School. The German philosophers are a useless bunch too. Definitely not Sola Scriptura. Not even close.
Baptist versus RC? What separates us are the doctrines we cannot find in Scripture. The rest of our unity does indeed come from our common respect for Scripture. The Arian controversy was fought and won on the basis of Scripture, not on the leadership of Rome, whose bishop had caved to the Arianism. The reason we both are Trinitarians today is because Athanasius clung bitterly to his Bible.
I’ve gotta go. Just keep in mind our models for Sola Scriptura can all be found in Scripture itself, Jesus in the Temptation, the Bereans checking Paul out, other examples, and there is no reason to think that humanism had anything to do with it. That is reading back into history things that are not there. The Reformation was, among other things, a sincere revival of interest in God’s word, delivered right to the doorstep of any average believer.
Riddle me this:
Private judgment is bad, right? Why? Because it introduces a fatal uncertainty in the conclusion. Great. So how do I escape private judgment to find my infallible interpreter?
By making a private judgment that I should believe some external claimant to infallible authority. Pick any authority. It doesn’t matter. In each and every attempt to escape the uncertainty of private judgment, I introduce the fatal uncertainty of a new private judgment.
Thus I am forced to wonder whether trying to escape from private judgment is even a good idea, since I seem to have no choice in the matter. It seems to be how God made me.
Then I discover that the Bereans were commended the Holy Spirit (through Luke) for their private judgment concerning Paul’s message, and I say to myself, whew, I can use the mind God gave me and let Him worry about keeping us all in line. Big relief, and it does work, though you and I doubtless mean something different by “working.” Subject for another post.
Gotta go.
Peace,
SR
Second, almost all the major doctrinal deviations that occur are based on a departure from Sola Scriptura.
Deviations according to whom; scripture according to whom?
stpio, you know I think the world of you, but I’ll give up using the written record of Christianity when I give up God’s truth altogether, and by God’s grace, that’ll be never.
So you have two choices. You can try to show me where I’m wrong without berating me for using legitimate facts of history, or you can keep on with your current approach. It’s up to you.
As for me, I’m perfectly fine with private judgment. Nothing in the Scriptures prohibits it. Quite the opposite. The Scriptures encourage it. The Bereans are my model. Athanasius is my model. Jesus answered the Devil himself with Scripture. Jesus is my model.
Meet me where I am. I can’t go where you are. God directed Christianity’s history, and further directed that there be a public record of it. What’s in that record is not my fault. You have provided me with no motivation whatsoever to give up on all that. All truth is God’s truth, and I will continue in it.
Peace,
SR
“Deviations according to whom; scripture according to whom?”
God, of course. Who else gets to decide what truth is? Or which book is inspired?
BTW, don’t worry about the circle. Aristotle once said a circle in your logic is just fine, if the circle is small enough. Because then it’s an axiom. :)
You see your own error. No need for me to point it out.
If your way of reason + scripture worked = common doctrine, we wouldn’t be disagreeing.
Your position fails and has failed; it continues to fail. It is unreasonable to expect that which transcends reason to be known using reason alone.
It’s called a category error.
thanks for your reply.
Error? You wish. Axioms are your friend. Only God can be infallible. That’s the premise of Sola Scriptura. We don’t trust man. We trust God.
Speaking of circular reasoning, you have not responded to my riddle yet. Is that because your circle is so much faultier than mine? You have no escape from an a priori exercise of private judgment. Offer a solution. I’m all ears.
“It is unreasonable to expect that which transcends reason to be known using reason alone.”
So why do you suppose God, who knew all this, gave us the Holy Spirit? Sola Scriptura reads its own Bible, and finds the need for God to help us. Just not some fallible guy in Italy with no valid claim to act as a substitute for the Holy Spirit (plus Scripture) in the life of a believer.
Nice try though.
Peace Bro.
“That’s what instruction is for. Under any system, yours, mine, or someone else’s, there will be a lot of diversity at the fringes, but people of good will tend to grow into and converge on a shared body of truth as they gain knowledge.
That’s why I keep bringing up Aquinas...
This is why I actually agree, in a reverse sort of way, with something stpio has been saying. I think there will be a convergence among believers as we get closer to the gate. But it won’t support any one particular human institution so much as it will drive us all to the glorified Jesus, who will so transcend our petty quarrels here we will forget them entirely. I look forward to that.
~ ~ ~
Hi SR,
God does not want “diversity” in belief. “Good will” hasn’t brought Protestantism together, you all are known by your inconsistent beliefs.
You bring up Aquinas but will not discuss his devotion the most Holy Eucharist. Everyone should talk about the Eucharist. Ask Catholics a question.
How can Our Lord return soon as many Protestants believe, do you not wonder which non-Catholic group will Our Lord confirm, tell the world is His Church? “Petty quarrels” cause Protestantism to divide and divide and divide? What is going to bring you all together and how about most of Christianity, Catholicism? Will Catholics accept the one chosen group Jesus reveals? Protestants stop there and only say Jesus is coming soon.
There’s an “institution” Jesus established that He is going
to soon “awaken” every person on the earth to, Roman Catholicism. It is the faith. God doesn’t do anything without revealing it first. Prophecy is saying this, confirming, making Rev 6:15-17 more explicit. God is gently preparing non-Catholic Christians in their messages. God doesn’t give specific dates, what if 2013 is the year?
1 Cor 1:10
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind, and in the same judgment.
Stpio, I think we’re not making any progress here. This is not personal. I just don’t have time for merrigoround conversations. I mention Aquinas because he said some things I agree with. I am amazed you think that implies I would agree with him on everything. Transubstantiation is a late doctrine with no scriptural support. I learn what I can from people but I don’t step outside of Scripture for anybody. God does have a chosen people, and no doubt some RC will be among them. But I don’t listen to prophets that bring a message at odds with Scripture. This is obedience to Christ for me. I am sorry if you don’t understand it, but its the way things are, and that’s that. God will heal all divisions, but no man should presume to the perfection that belongs only to God. Jesus came to bring a sword, father against son, daughter against mother. It won’t be sorted out till he comes back. Meanwhile, I must be faithful, not to man, not to human institutions, but to God and to his word.
Sorry. This is being a little disingenous. You have offer no theological explanation except to ignore and blatantly contradict scripture including the Old Testament and some of the New. So, we're not really "playing Dueling Verses".
Sure God created man and God saw that it was good. So? Everything God does is good. And I believe Springfield Reformer mentioned that God created Satan. Wouldn't you agree that Satan was created "good". After all, according to scripture he was God's most perfect creature.
I look more at the results
What results? Calvin was responsible for creating over 250+ churches and his writings are still being published 500 years later.
What I believe you are really saying is that you simply will believe what you want and ignore what doesn't suit your situation.
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