Posted on 08/08/2012 9:03:55 AM PDT by Dr. Thorne
At least 1 million evangelical Christians took part in Saturday's annual "March for Jesus" in Sao Paulo, demonstrating the growing trend of Protestantism in Brazil.
With 123.2 million of 191 million Brazilians identifying as Catholic according to 2010 census data, the South American nation still holds the world's largest Catholic population, but adherents to the faith have been steadily declining over several decades, while Protestantism, particularly evangelical Christianity, has been on the rise.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.com ...
Amen!!!!!
Amen!!!!!
'm still waiting for the Scripture that describes and approves of Christians using contraception..
You will not, nor will you find one that forbids ever preventing pregnancy by any means. But you will find sanction for using means to circumvent the normal course of nature. And outside of abortion, if doing so is wrong, then so are things from artificial sweeteners to antiperspirants to parachutes and more.
I am still waiting for even one Scripture out of multitudes of examples of prayer that describes and approves of Christians praying to someone else in Heaven but God, which only pagans are shown doing. RCs argue that there is no command that forbids that, and attempt to support it based on earthly communication, though only God is shown to be the immediate addressee of supplication to Heaven, and whom the believer has immediate access to, and need no intercessor in that realm the light of the sufficiency of Christ, and that ony God is shown to engage communication between the two realms of earth and heaven, without a personal visitation in either place.
Meanwhile those who support non-abortion contraception may justify it in principle based upon approval of means of preventing the normal course of nature from taking place, as salt does in preventing decay, while we also eliminate what nature does, such as the use of soap to kill bacteria.
However, if conception begins at fertilization, and contraceptives can abort that, then that would be taking a human. Moreover I see both things like artificial sweeteners to conception militating against the principle that with pleasure comes consequences requiring responsibility, thus requiring self discipline, and trying to circumvent them has their own consequences. This may not disallow all intervention against nature, which even taking Advil is in order to deal with pain due to a toothache as a consequence of eating to much sugar, but i think even this can have detrimental effects. But this would not warrant an ecclesiastical law against such.
While Scriptural affirmation of marital sexual relations goes beyond children, (Proverbs 5:18-19) sexual relations are supposed to result in children, and if you do not want multitudes and the responsibility that entails, then you need to exercise temperance (and which is to be exercised in all realms anyway). Even so, Susanna Wesley was the 25th of 25 children, and John and Charles Wesley were two of 19 children. Some couples are infertile so they would seem to have sexual pleasure with no effects, but they are also deprived of the blessing of having their own biological children, unless they had raised them prior.
Thus even apart from any abortifacient effect of contraceptives, i see the widespread use of contraceptives by both Catholics and Protestants as a error. While mainline Prot denoms are no longer Protestant in their view of Scripture, and evangelicals are not one entity, yet the latter has also been uncharacteristically liberal in this, and in contrast to its historical emphasis on temperance. However, this does not change the fact that what Rome characteristically fosters is liberalism, even in Biblical scholarship.
Note that Rome has not at least taken a stand on contraceptives and other things, but again, what she effectually conveys is salvation to the most nominal who die as a Catholic due to her power. Some also fault the perspicuity of the magisterium, and not only in Vatican Two. As one Catholic professor writes, “Though addressed not only to Roman Catholics but to "all men of goodwill," Humanae Vitae is both diffuse and elliptical; its premises are scattered and, to non-Catholics, obscure. Though the encyclical letter is magisterial in the sense of being lordly, it is not magisterial in the sense of teaching well. It seems to lack the sense, which any discussion of natural law requires, of what must be done to make the self-evident evident, to make the intuitive available to intuition, to make what is plain in itself plain to us. — http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/708736/posts
In addition, as history shows, theological development to new situations takes time. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stated,
“I think the contraceptive revolution caught Evangelicals by surprise.” “We bought into a mentality of human control. We welcomed the polio vaccine and penicillin and just received the Pill as one more great medical advance.”
“The Pill turned pregnancy — and thus children — into elective choices, rather than natural gifts of the marital union. But then again, the marital union was itself weakened by the Pill, because the avoidance of pregnancy facilitated adultery and other forms of non-marital sex. In some hands, the Pill became a human pesticide....
Christians must not join the contraceptive revolution as mere consumers of the Pill or other birth control methodologies. Finally, many evangelicals are joining the discussion about birth control and its meaning. Evangelicals arrived late to the issue of abortion, and we have arrived late to the issue of birth control, but we are here now.” — http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/04/26/the-pill-turns-50-time-considers-the-contraceptive-revolution/
While society moves further away from conservative Christian faith, and much of the church follows, there is a remnant that is resisting this declension,consistent with historical evangelical examples.
As concerns contraceptives, it is of note that the foremost apologetic against contraceptives due to them resulting in abortion is that of Randy Alcorn, a well know evangelical author, who wrote “Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?.”
The largest evangelical type denom, the Southern Baptists, do consider the use of contraceptives to be a moral decision married couples must make, but stipulate that a couple uses a form of contraception that prevents conception.
Richard Land, head of the SBC’s ethics-and-public-policy agency, stated,
“The Southern Baptist Convention is not opposed to the use of birth control within marriage as long as the methods used do not cause the fertilized egg to abort and as long as the methods used do not bar having children all together unless there’s a medical reason the couple should not have children.
And in support of that and more, in a controversial sermon in 2008, Thomas White, vice president for student services and communications and associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a Oct. 7 seminary chapel sermon that using birth-control pills is “wrong,” “not correct according to Scripture” and, in some cases, “murder of a life.”
White said one of the three ways the pill functions is to prevent a fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus seven days after conception.
“The seventh day is seven days too long, and it’s murder of a life,” he said. “When the egg and the sperm meet, you have life.
While apparently not forbidding any contraceptives, he said,
“I wanted kids, but I wanted kids in not God’s timing, but in my timing,” he said. “I didn’t want kids when I was in my M.Div. program, when I was going to have another mouth to feed, and it was going to inconvenience my ability to finish my course work and maybe move on and do a Ph.D. and all these type things. I wanted kids, but I wanted kids my way, my time, the way I wanted to do it, so I could plan my family out.”
“Folks, you are not in control of your destinies—God is,” he said.
“And the sooner we recognize that we are sinning when we say, ‘I am going to control every aspect of my family’ and we’re not giving control to God, we don’t trust him, we don’t believe that he knows better than we do—we think we know more than God does, and just like I did, some of you are involved in that exact same sin.”
http://www.baptiststandard.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8702&Itemid=53
The increase in immorality exactly matches the growth of Evangelical
Besides your characteristic failure to substantiation what you allege (exactly matches..), your sophistry here uses the classic Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. fallacy, and if you will use this then you can also assert that since the increase in the growth of socialism in the last few years corresponds to the growth of the Tea Party, or because Communist activity corresponded to anticommunist movements, then the latter is causative of the former, or facilitating or consenting to it, and which is as absurd as inferring this of Evangelical faith, which was a reaction against liberalism. And which resulted in the growth of (the once forbidden) lay Catholics debating them, but the latter did not cause the former.
And again, rather than blaming liberalism in mainline Prot denoms on SS, it is actually due to a departure from holding the Scriptures high as the supreme standard after the Reformation tradition. And in fact, the more Catholics take Scripture basically literal, unlike in much of her approved commentary (as in labeling historical narratives fables or folk tales), then the more conservative they are. But relative few do.
Rather than demonizing all which opposes Rome, as blind loyalty requires, a more objective analysis is warranted.
Condoms.
You can't go to Scripture. There's nothing there.
Then what's the basis for the Catholic position on the subject?
It’s always amusing to be lectured by Catholics with respect to morals, especially in regard to accusations hurled at the clergy.
Ouch.....
Preach it, sister....
Do condoms cause abortions? No, they are a "barrier" to the fertilization of the egg. If a married couple opts for condoms to regulate - though in many cases, it doesn't - the spacing of children into their family, is their use of condoms wrong? If condoms in this case are wrong, then how is NFP (approved by the RCC) any less illicit? In both cases the intent is to prevent fertilization and the start of a pregnancy.
There are certain things that God has seen fit to leave up to a person's own liberty, the ability to make personal choices about things that specifically affect him or her. Some things are between us and God and aren't anyone else's business. But where God's word IS specific, we have no excuse but to follow the principles laid out.
Condoms and NFP are both immoral. Condoms and NFP are both OK.
Hi, D, sorry so long in responding. Many fires to put out.
Anyway, we’ve been over this enough before, so I won’t be long. I just wanted to acknowledge that I had read your response and found it mildly amusing. I just shake my head at how hard it is to get some folks to understand exactly what Sola Scriptura is. We spend so much time chasing down dead ends, spilling untold gallons of cyber-ink on what amounts to a futility. If Solomon had an FR account, would he use it? I wonder.
The amusement I found was in your reference to dispensationalism as a product of SS. There are, of course, the usual technical problems defining which form of dispensationalism you think is heretical, because Paul does in fact mention dispensation (“economy”) four times, and if the “system” confined itself to the stewardship of the Gospel as those four uses imply, then you could argue virtually all believers are “dispensationalists.”
But I know you mean the more advanced system put forward in early form by Darby, popularized by CI Scofield, and made very popular by a number of modern proponents, such as Ryrie, Walvoord, etc.
BTW, I met Walvoord in person while I was at Moody Bible Institute, and challenged him directly on his view of the reinstatement of temple sacrifices during the millennial period. Why? Because I could not find it in Scripture, and as a hypothesis it ran against other Scripture proclaiming that the sacrifice of Christ was once for all complete and could never be repeated, whether by renewed animal sacrifice or in any other form. Poor Mr. Walvoord thought he was among friendlies, so he was caught quite off-guard.
And my own father had a similar experience, if somewhat harder on him. He was one of those who routinely used a Scofield Bible, so I was raised on a combination of Scripture and Scofield’s notes. I remember one series of sermons where the preacher, every Sunday night for what seemed like forever, would walk us through his highly colorful and detailed scrolling chart of the all the images and meanings of the book of Revelation.
But my dad was an intellectually honest man, one of those rare good men you hear of in stories. He was teaching Sunday school, a class on Thessalonians, and when he came to the part about the man of sin, he just couldn’t get through the passage without realizing it did not suggest the now famous pre-trib rapture. For his inability to extract that contrived thing from this passage, he was fired from teaching in that church in any capacity.
I don’t recall that we used Scofield for much after that. Our interest was knowing what God said. Not to eliminate the use of wise men gone before us, but to measure their words, as the Bereans did, against our own direct exposure to the words of God.
So no, dispensationalism is very difficult to assign to Sola Scriptura. More like Selecta Scriptura, plus the writings of Darby, Scofield, Ryrie, et al, ad nauseam. Indeed, some have argued it was in part the result of an extrabiblical revelation produced by a teenage girl of Scotland named Margaret McDonald, though I have seen convincing refutations of this theory, which point further back in time, to the writings of various Catholic apologists who were anxious to recast Revelation as entirely future, because it would dull the Reformers’ contention that the Pope was Antichrist. The Jesuit Lacunza is mentioned in this regard, among others. I have also seen refutations of this theory, and at this point, just being honest with you, I have not resolved the matter to a high degree of confidence that I have the right understanding of exactly how dispensationalism came to be.
But I didn’t need all that to make an early decision on the matter. It really happened one day in the cafeteria at Moody. I was speaking with one of my classmates who was sharing with me his love of dispensational theory, which had led him to the conclusion that there was only one book in the Bible that fully and absolutely applied to the modern Christian, Ephesians, and we just didn’t need the rest. My Sola Scriptura alarm went off like mad and I knew that any speculative system which prevented a Christian from reading most of his Bible had to be an invention of the evil one.
So you see, to me, to think of all that as the product of Sola Scriptura just leaves the definition of SS in such a shambles as to be useless for purposes of a coherent discussion. One might just as easily say that the general rise in literacy is responsible for pornographic novels being written. And of course there is a grain of truth in that. The market for such a product does become wider. But really, not because people can read, but because people are sinners, and whether you give them a Bible or an alphabet, they will do perverse things with it because that is the human condition apart from God’s grace.
One final note on that pastor of my youth and his scrolling chart sermons. I developed a friendship with him and found he was also into pyramids, Egyptology, and other assorted nefarious things, including Rosicrucianism. So far from being Biblical, I could say his sources for his teaching were legion.
I do not accuse all Ryrie-style dispensationalists of being closet occultists, but it just emphasizes again that the principle of Sola Scriptura is completely missing from those who are willing to build on false foundations made of unproven and unbiblical presuppositions, and then try to force Scripture into conformance with their “system,” rather than the other way around.
This was the Pharisees’ problem, and why Jesus was so irate with them, and why he said these things are to be hid from the wise and revealed unto babes. This is His work, and He will hold them to account who mislead the innocent and the naïve. Yet he says of His own sheep, that they will hear His voice, and follow Him. There is great comfort in that promise.
This was supposed to be short, and look what happened. Sigh.
Nice talking with you.
Respectfully Yours,
SR
B
Both condoms and NFP are okay for a married couple to use, in my view. My point was there is a seeming contradiction when the Catholic Church okays NFP but not using a condom when both methods are for a couple intending to prevent pregnancy. Neither one causes an abortion of a fertilized egg as the back-up function of most birth control pills and hormonal implants do and which is the precise function of an IUD.
In "your view". That's exactly my point. This is your personal position and I presume this is not something on which the evangelical movement as a whole takes a strong position.
My aim here is not to point out the difference between contraception, e.g. condoms and NFP (although see HERE for a discussion of why they're different).
My point is that not every ethical/moral question facing modern man can be solved with chapter and verse from Scripture. Contraception e.g.condoms, is a case in point. There are some questions about which we need guidance from some form of human, moral teaching authority.
Thanks very much for your thoughtful reply, SR. Don’t worry about the length, I appreciate reading your views.
I think in this case you help make one of my points: that SS leads to very dissimilar theology. Your view of Dispensationalism is that it is very different/wrong from your SS view.
Where you disagree is that they qualify as ‘primarily grounded in scripture’ or true SS.
And as you say, that depends on how we define SS.
I think you would define it as ‘grounded in scripture’ or something similar.
I would define it as: ‘grounded in scripture as the adherent views scripture.’ Because the difference is there is no authority - except the adherent - on what scripture says/means in terms of doctrine and theology.
The Dispensationalist would say he most definitely is grounded in scripture and most definitely follows SS. And, likely, that you do not.
So who is correct? There is no objective authority to decide the question. You, and the Dispensationalist could argue that scripture is the final authority. But you both would be claiming that and the differences in theology remain.
This is why I said that: “Luther thought that sola scriptura meant everyone would see *his* interpretation of scripture as the obviously correct one, this authority of scripture. But, in practice, it becomes everyone’s interpretation on their own authority.”
thanks again, peace and good wishes to you and yours.
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