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 ...
I don’t understand your response on prophesy. I showed from Jeremiah 18 how God himself allows nations to repent. That doesn’t change the requirement for a perfect prophetic track record. And it doesn’t change Jesus warning against false prophets, or our duty as Christians to test the spurits, all the more as we see the end approaching.
I am very sad you don’t care for my labors in responding to you. It took me many, many hours to put that all together. Alas, you are free to do with it what you will. That is always a risk in these conversations, but one I accept willingly. I can say this, that I learned a great deal in my research, and so it was worth the trip.
I wish you well.
Peace,
SR
I don’t understand your response on prophesy. I showed from Jeremiah 18 how God himself allows nations to repent. That doesn’t change the requirement for a perfect prophetic track record. And it doesn’t change Jesus warning against false prophets, or our duty as Christians to test the spurits, all the more as we see the end approaching.
~ ~ ~
Hi,
I am not being unkind, I tire of reading your posting
rejection of everything Catholic. Your bias, quit telling
Catholics what the Church teaches.
And I showed you how some prophecies (God’s just judgment) don’t come to happen because of people’s repentance and change for the good (Nineveh). Are you going to wait until the present prophecy is fulfilled to believe it? It might be too late, God is telling you this day, hoping you believe now and prepare. Like Nineveh.
I agree, Jesus said pray for discernment before you read
prophecy.
“False prophets” are also those who preach falsehoods,
heresies.
God bless you SR,
“I am very sad you don’t care for my labors in responding to you. It took me many, many hours to put that all together. Alas, you are free to do with it what you will. That is always a risk in these conversations, but one I accept willingly. I can say this, that I learned a great deal in my research, and so it was worth the trip.
I wish you well.
Peace,”
~ ~ ~
Now I am sad, you are a much better writer than I am but
it would take me too long to reply to every one of your
sentences, you see, it’s too much to answer. I can but
it ends up, the same old arguments.
I just want you to become Catholic but I would accept that you think about converting, change a bit, well, to be exact
and I am repeating, accept the most Holy Eucharist. Then, change about Mary and believe in Confession to a priest before the Great Warning. I am trying to help you prepare because you take the time to discuss. It means a lot.
I can handle a question or a doubt, misunderstanding in
one or two sentences.
For example, you show me in two sentences, a paragraph
even, where any Apostolic Father rejected Christ’s presence
in the Eucharist?
I did not mean to imply that St. John Damascene did not write about things other than practices and customs; only that in every case where he and the other early Fathers do refer to unwritten traditions it is always with respect to practices or customs, not doctrines.
My main point is that sola Scriptura is not antithetical to God establishing His Church, giving it authority, selecting his messengers and they selecting their replacements, and it is not a denial of the Church's authority to teach God's truth and it is not a denial that God's Word has been spoken.
The Church is the Bride of Christ, she does not rule over His Word. The Scriptures are the rule of faith for the Church, not the other way around. Everything that one must believe to be a Christian is found in Scripture and in no other source.
Cordially,
Thanks for your reply.
Let’s take an example: The Holy Eucharist.
This involves both praxis and theology, it is key in both. Catholics believe in the Real Presence, many adherents of sola scriptura do not. So how can scripture rule the Church here?
Or take Sunday worship. Some claim, via scripture that it is wrong.
St. Justin Martyr wrote of it in the second century:
“But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things…”
It is impossible or at least impractical for sola scriptura to rule church doctrine and practice, because it means each individual rules the church with his/her interpretation. And Holy Scripture cannot be put in dock and testify whether Luther is correct or or Zwingly or Calvin - or you.
No, the result of sola scriptura in practice is doctrinal confusion and profusion - not One Lord, one faith, one baptist. As Martin Luther wrote Zwingli:
“If the world lasts, it will be necessary, on account of the differing interpretations of Scripture which now exist, that to preserve the unity of faith, we should receive the councils and decrees and fly to them for refuge.”
I did a little digging on Kevin Barrett, your fav non-Catholic prophet, and while I couldn’t find a lot about him at all, he does like to hang out at the Open Heaven forum, so I checked them out, and hoo boy do I not want to be associated with that group! Check it out...
http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain45.htm
These guys are so far from Sola Scriptura it isn’t funny. Latter Rain is a major source of error and spiritual deception, and the bottom line reason is they trust their own modern revelatory experiences, intuitions, and emotions, more than they trust the Bible.
As for the Eucharist, if we could all go back to how it was in the apostolic period and shortly thereafter, I’d be fine with that. There was no divinely sanctioned priesthood in the early church as there was in Israel. There was no worship of the physical elements of the Lord’s Supper, especially not under any theory even remotely like transubstantiation.
Just a gathering of simple believers in Jesus, who love Him in spirit and in truth, partaking of the prophetic symbols he left us of his great sacrifice, the bread and the wine, in remembrance of Him, just as He commanded us. There is no lack of love for God or for His Christ in any of that. Just true and faithful worship. And the Fathers testify of the same principle in the evidence you won’t consider.
But that’s not good enough for Trent. Trent requires the faithful believer to also subscribe to pagan Greek philosophy, looking to a weird inversion of Aristotle’s “substance versus accidence” categories as the way to invoke the literal physical presence of Christ in the elements, without affording the poor parishioner any evidence of the same, based on pure blind trust of a man who claims for himself the power to make this invisible miracle.
So please, I beg you, consider your recklessness in saying what Protestants believe about the Eucharist. You have us all wrong. You have wrapped the term “eucharist” in a meaning it didn’t have in the early days of the church, and even though I know you are well-intentioned, you damage the reputation of good people who love Jesus at least as much as you do, by suggesting we are somehow at odds with the Lord over His Supper.
You convict us without a trial, without even hearing the evidence, because the evidence, you say, is too lengthy. Is that judging with righteous judgment, as our Lord commanded? Would a real trial be conducted that way? I hope not.
But it is your choice. If and when you ever wish to look at the evidence, you can come back to this thread and review it at your leisure, or search out new evidence on your own. I long for the unity of the church too. But not at the expense of truth, and not at the word of prophets who can’t get it right, and whose prophecies, if believed, will lead many people into error.
Peace,
SR
Greetings to you both.
D-Fendr, I note that you never responded to my inquiry about so-called private judgment. Did I miss it, or have you just decided to pass up the opportunity to explain how you came to faith in Rome without privately assessing their truth claims?
With respect to Sola Scriptura, I am puzzled that you would use a consequentialist line of reasoning to determine its validity. If the Bible teaches it, then it is true whether we mortals handle it well or not. Whereas consequentialism, as a philosophy, is fundamentally relativistic, judging divine truth by how it plays out in the human theater. It is really right to say that if the consequences are undesirable, it must not be true? Isn’t that just a variation on the ends justifying the means?
Yet Jesus told us his message would bring division, even within families, and that we should expect all manner of false teachers and false prophets. And his word is true.
But that’s not the worst of it. When you assume, without evidence, that Sola Scriptura is responsible for all those divisions, you are making a post hoc fallacy. A post hoc fallacy confuses cause with effect based on time order. There was a breach with Rome based on a wide range of issues, indulgences, a heavily politicized ministry, a lack of piety, as well as a multitude of doctrinal questions. The break was long coming and well deserved. The attempt to use Sola Scriptura to arbitrate the fight was just a legitmate emulation of Athanasius and other fathers, who also appealed to Scripture as the supreme arbiter of the great controversies, as was the case at Nicaea.
But the problem of denominationalism has no demonstrable relationship to Sola Scriptura. Rather, denominations form when the Bible is rejected as the supreme rule of Christian faith, in favor of some contrary external revelation or tradition. In demonstration of this, among the non-Catholic denominations, I think you would find the most diverse group by far is the charismatics of one variety or another, which, by definition, allow for direct extrabiblical revelation, clearly a full rejection of Sola Scriptura.
As for your example of the Eucharist, the fissures were showing up far earlier that the Reformation. If you survey many of the Fathers, you will find reference to the bread and wine as symbols, figures, representation, and other such expressions. One early writer goes further, but even he ends up with something more like consustantiation than anything else. But go to the 9th Centruty, the Benedictine monk Radbertus, and you find the first unmistakable hint of what would later be called transubstantiation. The 4th Lateran Council of 1215 would recognize it by name, and Aquinas would invoke Aristotle’s categories to devise a way to explain it. Trent adopted the Aquinian formulation, and the rest, as they say, is history.
And a very sad history is was after that time. Now one could be anathematized by Rome for not believing a pagan Greek philosopher’s framework for understanding how bread could appear to be bread but really be something entirely different, and therefore the subject of direct, physical worship. Who might be so anathematized? Tertullian, Augustine, Justin Martyr, to name only a few, who discussed the Eucharist variously as a figure, a symbol, a representation, but never as an Aristotelian phantom having one substance before consecration and a different one after, with absolutely no evidence of such change except the priest’s say-so.
Much sorrow and persecution of good and faithful Christians was undertaken over this innovation in doctrine, without one scintilla of evidence from Scripture that it was either true or obligatory on the Christian conscience. A firm adherence to Sola Scriptura would have prevented so much foolishness and senseless loss, it is hard to see how even a consequentialist such as yourself can fail to notice the ill consequences of abandoning the supremacy of Scripture in favor of Greek philosophy or any other subsidiary streams of knowledge.
Peace,
SR
“I did a little digging on Kevin Barrett, your fav non-Catholic prophet, and while I couldn’t find a lot about him at all, he does like to hang out at the Open Heaven forum, so I checked them out, and hoo boy do I not want to be associated with that group!
As for the Eucharist, if we could all go back to how it was in the apostolic period and shortly thereafter, I’d be fine with that. There was no divinely sanctioned priesthood in the early church as there was in Israel. There was no worship of the physical elements of the Lord’s Supper, especially not under any theory even remotely like transubstantiation.”
~ ~ ~
I am happy you are taking notice of the Protestant prophetic
but think about your word “digging.”
Kevin receives teaching messages, they are tough messages.
Jesus is getting non-Catholic Christians ready to accept
the faith. And in such a loving way actually.
Jesus states to Kevin, OSAS, John 3:16, the “altar call
(though it maybe a moment of conversion)” do not save you...
justify you. Our Lord also states in Kevin’s messages the “prosperity gospel” is not true. Listen up Joel Osteen.
The “continual sacrifice” spoken of in Daniel is the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. You need a priest to offer
sacrifice. The Eucharist is true, God wants everyone to
believe He is humbly present, our God, He is there in the Eucharist. Think of the grace~~! Back in 07, I know I
repeat but it’s important. Jesus said to Cletus in a
prophetic message. You remain a “spiritual baby” without
the Eucharist. I’ll find the quote and post it again.
No use posting the repeated words of Our Lord in John 6 and the Eucharist prefigured in the OT (why Jesus speaks of the
Manna in John 6), people who believe in the heresy of ‘private judgment’ will reject.
I wish, I pray you would believe dear SR.
Here’s the quote about remaining a “spiritual baby” without
the Eucharist. Protestants know it as the “awakening”
in prophecy. Catholics hear it called the Great Warning or
Warning. It is the Second Pentecost but it will be worldwide. Do not be prideful and reject the faith. God wants everyone to believe, to become Roman Catholic. I shared more of the message to remind us, what is ahead. I put a few words the CAPS.
The excerpt, from the part of the messages entitled The
Mark of the Beast. I’ll post the link, it’s page 98.
11/6/07
...My faithful may be teaching in different areas of the world. After the WARNING, there will only be a short time given to mankind to repent. If no repentance is done, I will allow Satan and the anti-Christ to chastise a sinful generation. At this time, many faithful will be: called home, persecuted, martyred, and taken to my refuges. Only those who are not SPIRITUAL BABIES with my divine life residing in their souls will endure those days and enter my era of peace. My son, at baptism all my children receive sanctifying grace, but many do not progress beyond spiritual infancy. I will not lose any the Father has given to me. My SPIRITUAL BABIES will come home to be with me to prevent the loss of their souls. A soul who does NOT partake of my Eucharist remains a SPIRITUAL BABY. Just as a human baby must eat solid food to grow to adulthood, so spiritually you must receive my graces through the sacraments to mature to spiritual adulthood. The body must be fed to grow.Likewise, the soul must be fed to grow and mature. Satan knows this truth. This is why he has deceived many of my people with false interpretations of my scriptures.
Many teach the physical nation of Israel is the fulfillment of my scripture. Many teach the anti-Christ will resume the Jewish sacrifice in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem to constitute the abomination of desolation. This is a FALSE teaching, not from God, but from human understanding. My son, in the book of Daniel, the persecution by the Jews under Antiochus can be considered a partial fulfillment of the abomination of desolation. But the complete fulfillment has not yet taken place.
At my death, the veil in the temple was rent in two and the old sacrificial covenant was replaced by my new covenant. My sacrifice on the cross was the final sacrifice for my peoples’ sin. I am the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. I am the seed of Abraham, the son of David, in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed. My nation of Israel is my church, not the modern Israel. My people are now all those who become part of my church through sanctifying grace. The complete fulfillment of the prophecy from Daniel of the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION will occur: when the continual sacrifice of the mass is abolished by the false prophet and the anti-Christ. Acceptance of the protestant doctrine of the mass by an antipope will be the fulfillment of the prophecy. The temple of God is my Holy Roman Catholic Church. My faithful remnant will be persecuted worldwide with the mass taking place underground. These conditions will be similar to the early persecutions by the Romans. The Roman persecutions were a foreshadowing of the persecution and time of the antichrist.
Remember all this will be allowed and take place according to the will of my Father in heaven. Scripture must and will be fulfilled.I am warning you again my son and any who will take heed to my warnings. He who has ears to hear let him hear. A final warning to those who read these words. DO NOT WAIT until the warning to prepare your soul. Prepare your soul now. You may meet your maker today. I do not promise you tomorrow.
As to prophets, the warning of Scripture is plain. Do not accept false prophets. The Open Heaven group is as false as it gets. But you won't listen. Instead you redirect to trivialities, like making something out of the word "digging." You have a wonderful imagination. I'll give you that. I think you are closed to real conversation because you err on so-called private judgment, which is forbidden for Bible writers, but is commended as good behavior for Bible readers. See Acts 17:10-11. You literally can't seem to hear me. It is very strange. I know you will have your own explanation. Please know that I have mine. God will have to sort it out.
Peace,
SR
This involves both praxis and theology, it is key in both. Catholics believe in the Real Presence, many adherents of sola scriptura do not. So how can scripture rule the Church here?
And yet, if you look at the entirety of writings of the early church Fathers, what did they do? They never appeal, to the authority of Tradition as a separate and independent body of Revelation.
It is impossible or at least impractical for sola scriptura to rule church doctrine and practice, because it means each individual rules the church with his/her interpretation.
If you had said that in the bishop of Jerusalem's catechism class in the middle of the 4th century he would have flunked you. His Catechetical Lectures constitute an extensive and comprehensive explanation of the faith of that place and time. The following may sound strange to the ears of a modern Roman Catholic, but Cyril was a BISHOP, ok, and yet he actually states explicitly in Lecture 4 that if he were to present any teaching to these catechumens which could not be validated from Scripture, they were to reject it!
Here: Lect. IV. 17
How Cyril could expect them to do that without using their private interpretive faculties is beyond me. But Springfield Reformer has already shown the impossibility of avoiding the fact of private interpretation because even where there is a claimed infallible decree or prophecy, the one who believes the decree is infallible still has to interpret it himself, and even if there were an infallible interpretation of the infallible decree, the infallible interpretation would still have to interpreted, and so on.
But according to Cyril, his very authority as a bishop was subject to his conformity to the written Scriptures in his teaching. Even when he tells his catechumens that they are receiving traditions, and exhorts them to hold to them, what is the sole source of that tradition?
"But take thou and hold that faith only as a learner and in profession, which is by the Church delivered to thee, and is established from all Scripture. For since all cannot read the Scripture, but some as being unlearned, others by business, are hindered from the knowledge of them; in order that the soul may not perish for lack of instruction, in the Articles which are few we comprehend the whole doctrine of Faith…And for the present, commit to memory the Faith, merely listening to the words; and expect at the fitting season the proof of each of its parts from the Divine Scriptures. For the Articles of the Faith were not composed at the good pleasure of men: but the most important points chosen from all Scriptures, make up the one teaching of the Faith. And, as the mustard seed in a little grain contains many branches, thus also this Faith, in a few words, hath enfolded in its bosom the whole knowledge of godliness contained both in the Old and New Testaments. Behold, therefore, brethren and hold the traditions which ye now receive, and write them on the table of your hearts"
Lect. V. 12 (starting at bottom of page 57)
And Holy Scripture cannot be put in dock and testify whether Luther is correct or or Zwingly or Calvin - or you.
Sola Scriptura did not start with Luther, Zwingly or Calvin, or me. Although not with the nickname "sola scriptura", it was, as an operative principle, simply taken for granted by the early church.
"The generality of men still fluctuate in their opinions about this, which are as erroneous as they are numerous. As for ourselves, if the Gentile philosophy, which deals methodically with all these points, were really adequate for a demonstration, it would certainly be superfluous to add a discussion on the soul to those speculations. But while the latter proceeded, on the subject of the soul, as far in the direction of supposed consequences as the thinker pleased, we are not entitled to such license, I mean that of affirming what we please; we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet; we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings."
Gregory of Nyssa:
Dogmatic Treatises, "On the Soul and the Resurrection", p. 439
Cordially,
IMHO, it's a fools errand to try to separate scripture and tradition. Consider this: At first the NT was not written but transmitted orally.
Scripture itself was tradition. The command to baptize was tradition, as was the fact that Jesus is God. Scripture is written tradition.
Scripture and tradition have to be taken together. Tradition includes beliefs, liturgy and practices of the apostolic faith, the creeds… We don't separate these out from scripture, rather they go together..
As for Cyril, he is teaching both as well:
For the Articles of the Faith were not composed at the good pleasure of men: but the most important points chosen from all Scriptures, make up the one teaching of the Faith.
The one teaching of the faith according to whom? The scriptures (meaning) according to whom? The Apostolic Church - not scripture alone.
A key point of sola scriptura is authority. Who is the authority for the faith derived from sola scriptura? Who, for example, determines whether or not there is the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist? Luther? Zwingli? Calvin? You?
Each of these men and each individual has equal authority under sola scriptura, not the catholic Church. The Catholic Church has never been sola scriptura, because then it would cease to be catholic.
When major disagreements on the meaning of scripture arose, the Church met to determine which is correct, based on the faith handed down from Christ through His Apostles.
This, the authority of the Church to teach one faith, ended with the Reformation, and this is why I say this was the beginning of the dogma of sola scriptura. Those who teach this are not catholic for they have left the authority of the Church.
Thanks for your reply.
Thanks for the ping. Cyril is amazing. Learning so much ...
ph
IMHO, it's a fools errand to try to separate scripture and tradition. Consider this: At first the NT was not written but transmitted orally.
That the Apostolic revelation was at first transmitted orally is stipulated. It seems to be your position, though, not mine, that there is a separate apostolic oral tradition with content that is different than what is contained in Scripture but nevertheless is binding on the Christian conscience.
Scripture itself was tradition. The command to baptize was tradition, as was the fact that Jesus is God. Scripture is written tradition.
Again, if there are unwritten Apostolic traditions (that is, doctrinal truths from the Apostles themselves) passed down orally in the Church through her Tradition that are different from that which was inscripturated, that are binding on the Christian conscience as an additional rule of faith then I would like to see that content. We are not talking here just about an issue of Tradition as an authoritative interpretation of Scripture, but of supposed doctrinal truths that are part of revelation that are not contained in Scripture.
Was the entirety of the apostolic message preserved in Scripture alone or not?
To conclude from the mere fact that for a period of time the Gospel was given orally it necessarily follows that alleged unwritten traditions constitute an extra-scriptural rule of faith to be administered exclusively by Rome is a non-sequitur.
A key point of sola scriptura is authority. Who is the authority for the faith derived from sola scriptura?
The Author and Completer of Faith, The Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last?
Who, for example, determines whether or not there is the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist? Luther? Zwingli? Calvin? You?
Who determines?
"we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet" - Gregory of NyssaOr to put it in the words of the Apostle Paul:
Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other.
I Corinthians 4:6
A key point of sola scriptura is authority. Who is the authority for the faith derived from sola scriptura? Who, for example, determines whether or not there is the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist? Luther? Zwingli? Calvin? You?
Each of these men and each individual has equal authority under sola scriptura, not the catholic Church. The Catholic Church has never been sola scriptura, because then it would cease to be catholic.
Again then, can you can explain to me why someone in a position of authority fairly early in the history of the Church such as Cyril, a BISHOP, no less, could tell his catechumens that if he were to present any teaching which could not be validated from Scripture, they were to reject it?
Austine says the same thing:
I do not want you to depend on my authority, so as to think that you must believe something because it is said by me; you should rest your belief either on the canonical Scriptures, if you do not see how true something is, or on the truth made manifest to you interiorly, so that you may see clearly, Vol. 20, Saint Augustine Letters, Letter 147,Chapter 2, p. 171).
But if it is supported by the evident authority of the divine Scriptures, namely, of those which in the Church are called canonical, it must be believed without any reservation. In regard to other witnesses of evidence which are offered as guarantees of belief, you may believe or not, according as you estimate that they either have or have not the weight necessary to produce belief , Vol. 20, Saint Augustine Letters, Letter 147, Chapter 4,p. 173).
There is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The authority of these books has come down to us from the apostles through the successions of bishops and the extension of the Church, and, from a position of lofty supremacy, claims the submission of every faithful and pious mind (NPNF1, Vol. 4, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book XI, Section 5).
This shows that the established authority of Scripture must outweigh every other (Ibid., Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book XIII, section 5).
For, as regards any writing professing to come immediately from Christ Himself, if it were really His, how is it not read and acknowledged and regarded as of supreme authority in the Church, which, beginning with Christ Himself, and continued by His apostles, who were succeeded by the bishops, has been maintained and extended to our own day (Ibid., Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book XXVIII, section 4–5).
Now, who is it that submits to divine Scripture, save he who reads or hears it piously, deferring to it as of supreme authority (Ibid., Vol6, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Book I, Chapter XI). 239 Ibid., Vol. 1, Augustin, City of God 11.3
When major disagreements on the meaning of scripture arose, the Church met to determine which is correct, based on the faith handed down from Christ through His Apostles.
That is true. But the only formal authority they ever called upon is Scripture. I could answer you again with Augstine's words:
You are wont, indeed, to bring up against us the letters of Cyprian, his opinion, his Council; why do ye claim the authority of Cyprian for your schism, and reject his example when it makes for the peace of the Church? But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride, without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity?
And here he says,
For the reasonings of any men whatsoever, even though they be Catholics, and of high reputation, are not to be treated by us in the same way as the canonical Scriptures are treated. We are at liberty, without doing any violence to the respect which these men deserve, to condemn and reject anything in their writings, if perchance we shall find that they have entertained opinions differing from that which others or we ourselves have, by the divine help, discovered to be the truth. I deal thus with the writings of others, and I wish my intelligent readers to deal thus with mine.
Augustine.NPNF1: Vol. I, Letters of St. Augustine, Letter 148, §15.
Cordially
What I can't seem to communicate to you effectively is that scripture alone has no authority. It cannot be put on the stand and say Zwingli is right, Luther wrong on what John 6 means... or the reverse. It cannot be deposed directly on the question of Luther is correct, according to itself, on what the Sacraments are and the Church wrong.
So when you say "the authority of scripture," it necessarily always follows "scripture according to whom?"
Nor can I seem to communicate the intertwining of scripture and tradition. But I'll try again.
Take this portion:
Apostolic traditions (that is, doctrinal truths from the Apostles themselves) passed down orally in the Church through her Tradition that are different from that which was inscripturated,
What qualifies under this category depends entirely on what you believe is inscripturated. Is the Real Presence inscripturated? If you say no, then it is tradition; because it is deemed not inscripturated and is definitely "binding on the Christian conscience as an additional rule of faith."
The same for all other dogma and doctrine, liturgy and praxis of the orthodox faith.
Thanks very much for your reply.
While I believe your cites of St. Augustine support my position more than yours, I was remiss in not adding this one to them:
“For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”
“Do you even read my posts? I am getting no evidence that we are having a real conversation. Your version of Eucharist and its transubstantiation are late inventions of men, apparently designed to empower men over the souls of others. Neither John 6, nor any other Scripture, knows anything of your Aritsotle. You may dream otherwise if you wish, but wishing will not make it so.
As to prophets, the warning of Scripture is plain. Do not accept false prophets.”
~ ~ ~
You’re dear SR, I can only reply to what you post. Neither of us is going to change, maybe someone else reading this thread will be enlightened.
The Eucharist is not “late” invention of men only the denial
of it. I am sorry you reject Our Lord’s presence in the
Eucharist and settle instead for bread and wine. Your protests do not hold water. If you could just begin to see the importance of the Eucharist but it’s no use. Why would God misdirect most of Christianity, past and present? Almost all Christians (billions) believe in the Holy Eucharist.
I shared a link to Protestant prophetic to help you see
there is one end time. God is preparing everyone, Protestant and Catholic. You reject prophecy, your loss brother. I recall, I shared the link to a daily non-Catholic Christian prophecy site. Here it is again.
It’s not Open Heaven. There’s no personal commentary.
Personal interpretation of Scripture (private judgment)
IS heresy. Give another reason for 30,000 plus Protestant
churches? Everyone preaching something different, imagine!
I would run from Protestantism to the faith for that fact alone.
If you could “see” in Scripture how many times the Eucharist
is spoken of by Christ, the Apostles and prefigured in
the Old Testament.
Maybe, I can ask other Catholics, post your favorite reference to the Eucharist, Old or New Testament.
I pray for your conversion,
stpio
He is no Protestant nor a prophet. The claim is that God wants all to be RC, why is this 'prophet' not getting the message? Pretty lousy prophet.
Everyone preaching something different, imagine! I would run from Protestantism to the faith for that fact alone.
Another reason to thank God! False prophets already abound, the world has no use for more.
stpio: I shared a link to Protestant prophetic
“He is no Protestant nor a prophet. The claim is that God wants all to be RC, why is this ‘prophet’ not getting the message? Pretty lousy prophet.”
~ ~ ~
xone, thanks,
Who is “He?” There are quite a few Protestant prophets.
If you are referring to Kevin Barrett, he sure has
received messages to show Protestant heresies are
false. Jesus called them lies. Ignore, ignore, how
can I make you believe?
God is much more loving than I am, He is perfectly loving. If He explicitly said the Remnant is Roman Catholic to non-Catholic Christians, they would do just as you are doing, say no way! Instead, Our Lord reveals the unity of Christianity and non-Christians converting to the faith in a gentle way, to get you ready for oneness of belief.
Our Lord is NOT returning to confirm Protestantism. He
never has in prophecy or ever in Scripture or in tradition. Go further, which Protestant sect/denomination is Our Lord returning to say is the true faith? Non-Catholic Christians will not give an answer to this question.
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