Posted on 06/06/2013 3:50:50 PM PDT by NYer
Ping!
Thanks for posting.
Some of my own thoughts:
When I am standing at that judgment throne, will the God of the universe know me or not? Jesus said that it didn’t depend on what I preach/teach/prophecy or what miracles I have performed — it depends whether He knows me — not whether I know Him. Humbling to the core.
On that judgment day, perhaps instead of blowing our own horns about our own spiritual accomplishments in front of God, perhaps if we threw ourselves on his mercy at even that last moment, He would have mercy on us, as He did with the thief on the cross.
Thanks for posting this fabulous essay.
Too bad he isn’t the President of Boston College.
Very interesting article! I quite enjoyed it!
“What do you mean?” “I mean that all God wants us to do—all the time—is to ask Him what He wants us to do, and then do it. That covers everything, doesn’t it? Instead of asking ourselves, ask God!” Surprised, my father replied, “You know, you’re right!””
Of course this is what Christians believe. We just deny the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian view that man is working for his own salvation. We pray, like Augustine, saying “Grant what Thou commandest, and command what Thou dost desire.” In other words, we believe the scripture that it is God who “works in us both to will and to do” of His good pleasure.
As a result of this, we deny the vanity of man which thinks that he can add one jot or tittle to the work of God on our souls. We affirm, with Paul, that salvation comes not by him that runneth or him that willeth, but of God who sheweth mercy; that salvation is the free gift of God on an undeserving sinner, and that our righteousness is not earned, but is imputed by faith in Jesus Christ. That’s all. There’s nothing nefarious about this. Evidently the author wasn’t content with the idea that he is unable to earn his way to heaven.
Kreeft lays out concisely his route to Christ’s true church, based in the three-legged stool of scripture, the magisterium, and Sacred Tradition, 2000 years and counting.
Does the RCC have a 2,000 year tradition that there is a Pope in Rome who is head over the entire church? Even in the days when the alleged supremacy of Peter came into vogue, not even the Bishop in Rome believed he was the only man who was the successor of Peter.
According to the Catechism, the Roman Bishop is:
882 ... the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.”402 “For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.”403
883 “The college or body of bishops has no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, as its head.” As such, this college has “supreme and full authority over the universal Church; but this power cannot be exercised without the agreement of the Roman Pontiff.”404
It was this same idea of “General Father” or a ‘Universal Bishop” that Gregory condemned in the then Bishop of Constantinople who had taken the title Universal Bishop:
“What then, dearest brother, will you say in that terrible scrutiny of the coming judgment, if you covet to be called in the world not only father, but even general father? Let, then, the bad suggestion of evil men be guarded against; let all instigation to offense be fled from. It must needs be (indeed) that offenses come; nevertheless, woe to that man by whom the offense comes Matthew 18:7. Lo, by reason of this execrable title of pride the Church is rent asunder, the hearts of all the brethren are provoked to offense. What! Has it escaped your memory how the Truth says, Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea (Ib. 5:6)? But it is written, Charity seeks not her own 1 Corinthians 13:4. Lo, your Fraternity arrogates to itself even what is not its own. Again it is written, In honour preferring one another Romans 12:10. And you attempt to take the honour away from all which you desire unlawfully to usurp to yourself singularly. Where, dearest brother, is that which is written, Have peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord Hebrews 12:14? Where is that which is written, Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God Matthew 5:9?”
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360205018.htm
Some Catholics can read this letter and say that Gregory only condemned the title, but not the power they claim he still possessed. However, there are other instances where Gregory could have embraced his power as “universal” Bishop of the entire church. While at this time the idea of the “Primacy of Peter” was in vogue, yet this same primacy was not translated to a supremacy over the entire church. And, in fact, there wasn’t just one person who held the “throne” of Peter; according to Gregory, it was held by one Apostolic see ruled by divine authority by THREE separate Bishops, which is that of Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. Here is the letter in full, but first I am going to quote the RCC abuse of it:
The link to the whole letter first
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360207040.htm
Now here are the Roman quotations of this letter, wherein they assert that Gregory is a champion of the Primacy of Rome. Take special note of the clever use of ellipses:
Pope Gregory I
“Your most sweet holiness, [Bishop Eulogius of Alexandria], has spoken much in your letter to me about the chair of Saint Peter, prince of the apostles, saying that he himself now sits on it in the persons of his successors. And indeed I acknowledge myself to be unworthy . . . I gladly accepted all that has been said, in that he has spoken to me about Peter’s chair, who occupies Peter’s chair. And, though special honor to myself in no wise delights me . . . who can be ignorant that holy Church has been made firm in the solidity of the prince of the apostles, who derived his name from the firmness of his mind, so as to be called Peter from petra. And to him it is said by the voice of the Truth, ‘To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven’ [Matt. 16:19]. And again it is said to him, ‘And when you are converted, strengthen your brethren’ [Luke 22:32]. And once more, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me? Feed my sheep’ [John 21:17]” (Letters 40 [A.D. 597]).
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-authority-of-the-pope-part-ii
“Who does not know that the holy Church is founded on the solidity of the Chief Apostle, whose name expressed his firmness, being called Peter from Petra (Rock)?...Though there were many Apostles, only the See of the Prince of the Apostles...received supreme authority in virtue of its very principate.” (Letter to the Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria, Ep. 7)
http://credo.stormloader.com/Ecumenic/gregory.htm
I provide their versions of the quotations only to highlight for you the parts they omit. And, really, there is no reason for them to omit them. The lines they remove are small sentences, and then they continue quoting right after they finish. It’s quite an embarrassing display!
In this letter, Gregory is specifically attributing to the Bishops of Alexandra and Antioch the “Chair of Peter” and its authority that they bestowed upon him. In the first quotation, the Romans omit the sentence which says: “And, though special honour to myself in no wise delights me, [they omit here] yet I greatly rejoiced because you, most holy ones, have given to yourselves what you have bestowed upon me. [They rebegin here]” After telling them about the “special honor” that is respectively given to both parties, Gregory immediately goes into a discussion on what that special honor is... which is the authority of Peter they all enjoy:
“Wherefore though there are many apostles, yet with regard to the principality itself the See of the Prince of the apostles alone has grown strong in authority, which in three places is the See of one. For he himself exalted the See in which he deigned even to rest and end the present life. He himself adorned the See to which he sent his disciple as evangelist. He himself established the See in which, though he was to leave it, he sat for seven years. Since then it is the See of one, and one See, over which by Divine authority three bishops now preside, whatever good I hear of you, this I impute to myself. If you believe anything good of me, impute this to your merits, since we are one in Him Who says, That they all may be one, as You, Father, art in me, and I in you that they also may be one in us John 17:21.”
Notice how different this reads when one does not omit what the Romans omit! Gregory declares that the See of Peter is one see... but in THREE places, over which THREE Bishops preside, which is Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, the latter of which he was now writing to.
So while the Romans insist that the Primacy of Peter refers to the Bishop of Rome, Gregory applies the Primacy of Peter to ALL the major Bishops of the See. They are, in effect, ALL the Church of Peter, and possess his chair and authority.
And Gregory, of course, isn’t alone in this. Theodoret references the same belief when he places the “throne of Peter” under the Bishop of Antioch:
“Dioscorus, however, refuses to abide by these decisions; he is turning the See of the blessed Mark upside down; and these things he does though he perfectly well knows that the Antiochene (of Antioch) metropolis possesses the throne of the great Peter, who was teacher of the blessed Mark, and first and coryphæus (head of the choir) of the chorus of the apostles.” Theodoret - Letter LXXXVI - To Flavianus, Bishop of Constantinople.
So while you may have particular people saying that the Roman Bishop has authority, or has the chair of Peter, yet these same accolades are given to multiple Bishops, all said to have the “throne” or authority of “Peter.” Furthermore, this authority, at best, consisted only as a place of honor, and not one that the various Christian churches across the world took as the “final say” on matters of doctrine or canonicity (just ask the Eastern Orthodox, the other guys who claim to be THE Holy and Apostolic Church of God on Earth).
Thus, the RCC is built upon various fictions and assumptions; superficial edifices which collapse with the least bit of inspection. This is what happens when you embrace unverifiable traditions by men, instead of the verifiable scripture handed down by the Apostles directly.
Right you are. Some people are very misled.
Not you again, your cut and paste elephant-hurling posts from anti-catholic sites, oh goody, sorry, i will stick with history.....mind you, not your personal opinion revisionist anti-catholic history, but actual history.
Thanx for ‘your’ input though.
“Not you again, your cut and paste elephant-hurling posts from anti-catholic sites,”
I am my own anti-Catholic website! A sad thing the revisionists of the RCC can’t defend their own theology and alleged history when under examination.
Under ‘examination’ from your revisionist point of view, where you can make history say anything you want, just like sola scriptura, make it say ANY ‘CHRISTIAN’ belief that only you can verify.......sorry, no need to defend strawmen arguments refuted time and time again
SAGE WISDOM
EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE,
I LEARNED FROM NOAH’S ARK
1. Don’t miss the boat.
2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.
3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
4. Stay fit. When you’re 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
5. Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
6. Build your future on high ground.
7. For safety’s sake, travel in pairs.
8. Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
9. When you’re stressed, float awhile.
10. Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
11. No matter the storm, when you are with God, there’s always a rainbow waiting. . .
Second or third time I’ve seen it on a thread.
“Under ‘examination’ from your revisionist point of view,”
“J. Gresham Machen said, in his 1915 lecture “History and Faith,” that “The student of the New Testament should be primarily an historian.”
And in fact, thanks to the last few centuries’ worth of historical criticism, and a couple of “historical Jesus” quests, both the life of Jesus and the history of the New Testament have undergone a thorough historical examination, and in the process, have only had their historical reliability enhanced.
On the other hand, what we’ve been told about the early papacy has fallen away like chaff. Instead of boasts about the papacy being “instituted by Christ” and “immediately and directly” given to Peter and “perpetual successors,” now, Joseph Ratzinger has stepped back and said that the papacy “goes back to the Lord and was developed faithfully in the nascent church.” (Ratzinger, “Called to Communion,” page 72.)
How was it “faithfully developed”?
In the first place, some Catholics will say that it is no contradiction that this “immediate” and “perpetual” power nevertheless had to “develop.” But I am writing to individuals who, able to read and think, will easily be able to see the disjunction at this point.
Eamon Duffy, who was President of Magdalene College at Cambridge, and a church historian, wrote the following summary (”Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes”)
Irenaeus thought that the Church had been ‘founded and organised at Rome by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul,’ and that its faith had been reliably passed down to posterity by an unbroken succession of bishops, the first of them chosen and consecrated by the Apostles themselves. He named the bishops who had succeeded the Apostles, in the process providing us with the earliest surviving list of the popes — Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, and so on down to Irenaeus’ contemporary and friend Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome from AD 174 to 189.
All the essential claims of the modern papacy, it might seem, are contained in this Gospel saying about the Rock, and in Irenaeus’ account of the apostolic pedigree of the early bishops of Rome. Yet matters are not so simple. The popes trace their commission from Christ through Peter, yet for Irenaeus the authority of the Church at Rome came from its foundation by two Apostles, not one, Peter and Paul, not Peter alone. The tradition that Peter and Paul had been put to death at the hands of Nero in Rome about the year ad 64 was universally accepted in the second century, and by the end of that century pilgrims to Rome were being shown the ‘trophies’ of the Apostles, their tombs or cenotaphs, Peter’s on the Vatical Hill, and Paul’s on the Via Ostiensis, outside the walls on the road to the coast. Yet on all of this the New Testament is silent. Later legend would fill out the details of Peter’s life and death in Rome — his struggles with the magician and father of heresy, Simon Magus, his miracles, his attempted escape from persecution in Rome, a flight from which he was turned back by a reproachful vision by Christ (the ‘Quo Vadis’ legend), and finally his crucifixion upside down in the Vatican Circus at the time of the Emperor Nero. These stories were to be accepted as sober history by some of the greatest minds of the early Church — Origen, Ambrose, Augustine. But they are pious romance, not history, and the fact is that we have no reliable accounts either of Peter’s later life or the manner or place of his death. Neither Peter nor Paul founded the Church at Rome, for there were Christians in the city before either of the Apostles set foot there. Nor can we assume, as Irenaeus did, that the Apostles established there a succession of bishops to carry on their work in the city, for all the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles. In fact, wherever we turn, the solid outlines of the Petrine succession at Rome seem to blur and dissolve. (Duffy, pg 2.)
In a world where history affirms the life of Christ, the testimony of his resurrection, and in which the New Testament has been affirmed as reliable history, and the movements of Paul and the events in his life pinned down to the very year they happened, this same study of history has washed away the underpinnings of the historical papacy.
In fact, the city of Rome was very geographically diverse, and throughout the first half of the second century, the Roman church was led by a network of presbyters in a network of house churches. These presbyters fought among themselves as to who was greatest. I’ve quoted Hermas from “The Shepherd of Hermas as saying, “They had a certain jealousy of one another over questions of preeminence and about some kind of distinction. But they are all fools to be jealous of one another regarding preeminence.”
The rest at: http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/05/papacy-built-on-pious-fiction-and.html
“Second or third time I’ve seen it on a thread.”
Strange! I’ve posted it to you, in various threads, probably dozens of times, though in various forms. It’s not once been actually answered by anyone.
Furthermore, the Church Fathers just “smelled” more Catholic than Protestant, especially St. Augustine, my personal favorite and a hero to most Protestants too. It seemed very obvious that if Augustine or Jerome or Ignatius of Antioch or Anthony of the Desert, or Justin Martyr, or Clement of Alexandria, or Athanasius were alive today they would be Catholics, not Protestants.
After reading some of the writings of these early Christians, I seriously DOUBT they would be Roman Catholics today - in fact, they wouldn't even recognize the church that claims them as members.
Are you denying the words of Gregory that GPH posted? If the only "input" you have to give is that of castigating someone for posting the writings of those your church claimed for herself, you ought to just save yourself the trouble of posting - you add nothing to the conversation.
How many times are you going to post this kind of stuff? Is it time for the “Let’s You and Him Fight” game again???
Second or third time I’ve seen THIS thread.
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