Posted on 12/21/2013 11:13:29 AM PST by GonzoII
You are assuming that it's God's plan for everyone to go to heaven. If that were so, then you're correct. It would be better for all babies to be ignorant. Indeed, it would have been better never to have placed the tree in the garden.
Yes.
Surely you KNOW this request cannot be enforced!
Best you can do is ignore what you want.
wf-I disagree and here's why. ... A deeper more joyful appreciation of how everything happened comes with maturity, but there is never an altar call without The Gospel.
Hmmmm...if I understand you correctly I would agree with what you're saying. Certainly they don't have the theological understanding at the beginning. And, I will attest that after 40 years they will still find there is much they need to learn. ;O)
Prior to any altar call the pastor will preach The Gospel. Obviously, some pastors are better than others and some churches are better than others at following up,...
I'm absolutely sure this was poorly phrased and you would agree that it doesn't depend upon the level of preaching but on the Holy Spirit moving in our hearts.
Joh 3:8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
But what you've stated is common among people who believe in OSAS. Many believe it's all about presentation. What type of music to draw people into the churches, fun topics, the right tools, etc. Understanding that it is not dependent on us but the Holy Spirit moving frees us from worrying about how well we present the gospel. It doesn't matter how WE present the gospel. It is dependent on God's Spirit. We move beyond "body counts" and gimmicks, understanding that it is according to God's will and not by our works. If people would just stick to God's word and skip their anecdotes things might be better.
This isn't easy believability. We are called to be faithful to God's commandments and all that entails. But whether we see lots of fruit being bore or we see none, it doesn't matter as long as we're faithful to Him. He has promised that if we cast our bread upon the water it will not return void and that we will bear much fruit. We rest on and trust the promises of God.
Abraham only saw Issac. Jacob saw the great nations that Abraham trusted God to bring forth.
You know, you make a point I would love to disagree with, but I can't. Unfortunately, in too many instances church is business and numbers mean money. The best way to increase numbers is to preach what makes people feel good and to create an unthoughtful emotional experience. The only thing I would add is you never know who the Holy Spirit has grabbed and compelled to come forward, so even when we have a pastor with selfish motives good may occur.
I would love to see Evangelical churches start paying taxes and preach more about the relationship between our Christian walk (which includes how we vote and participate in our political process) and our faith. Instead, I've seen too many instances where pastors hid from preaching about tough things under the guise that they aren't allowed to.
It seems to me we are approaching a time where there will be no middle ground. You are either with GOD and believe in His Word, or you believe man is god and embrace the pro homosexual agenda. If you are one of those "reprobate", "insensitive", "uncaring", "unevolved", "neanderthal" Born Again Christians you will be punished for your faith.
I think we're in agreement.
I believe where we may diverge is with the altar call, or salvation prayer, that is done in Evangelical churches. It seems that it is often derided as "easy believism" but really we recognize it is the Holy Spirit pulling these non-believers forward and we don't expect them to have advanced theological degrees of understanding.
I'm not a big fan of alter calls. They do not represent a change heart-only an emotional draw. Still, I find nothing wrong with them in churches as long as they don't go on forever and ever and ever. And no one knows how the Spirit will work. Asking people to come down to the front for prayer is fine. But spending 10-15 minutes "feeling there is one more person out there" is enough to bore even the Holy Spirit. :O)
Nor am I.
For the same reasons provided above.
I guess this is ONE way to dismiss what the other guy has posted...
Depends on who’s being altered...
You can give up your Salvation.
Then why ARE there so many denominations downward through the ages, offshoots of each of those, and more offshoots from those, and offshoots downward from there, if not for touring through the Bible Alone causing differing opinions, interpretations, practices diluted, added or done away with altogether?
And what about that is propaganda? I don’t even know any protestants who disagree with that. It’s written in crayon and easily traceable historically. What about that fact, in print and available for anyone to see, is propaganda?
It is hardly a fair fight. Disadvantaged protestants ignore some basic dogma by worshipping Bible Alone short of even all the original books. It is hardly a fair fight.
It was the Church who gave us the Holy Bible, canonized it, and taught it for centuries before there was ever a printing press, making the Church capable (and Tim Staples specifically) of going head to head with anyone on its contents. It wasn’t the Church who truncated the full Bible, but one who thought he Alone could take away seven original books, ignore original tradition and alter original pious practices, and who said of himself, “In taking away the Pope, I have created many”, and who himself continued devotions to Mary.
Millions of self appointed have descended from Luther. They call themselves protestant.
It’s hardly a fair fight.
You are avoiding that you had no substantiation that this man was any kind of Christian, only than you recollected that someone said he was, yet you invoked him as an example for losing one's salvation, thus assuming what you had no evidence for.
And since you argued under a premise which you offered no evidence for, then what my criteria is for being a Christian never was an issue, despite your attempt to make it so. Go find out what evidence there is for this man having what you argue he lost. Then we can discuss criteria for being worthy of that name.
And it is only reasonable that there must be some basic criteria for being a Christian, unless you believe the early Christians were like Ted Kennedy libs.
Going by your “reasoning” if it were someone else who happened to be leaning toward your ideological persuasion, the excuse would have been “... but (s)he is only human, and not perfect.
More erroneous mind reading, which distracts attention from your foundational error.
You make it sound as though a person who is a “true Christian,” ‘saved,’ ‘born-again,’ and all that can never again sin.
That is simply an absurd assertion. Nowhere did i say or infer a “true Christian" can never again sin, or that he could not fall from grace, and draw back in unbelief, which is not simply sinning as a Christian. One aspect of a Christian is that he strives against sin, (Heb. 12:4) that of his own and then others, repenting of his sins when he realizes he has sinned.
So your premise is that only under the supremacy of Scripture, as in sola scriptura or sola prima, then there are divisions and schisms, versus under sola ecclesia, the model under which Catholicism operates?
And what about that is propaganda? I don’t even know any protestants who disagree with that.
Then all you have read is typical RC propaganda, which is not surprising, as RCs have even expressed here they will not follow links to sites which impugn the claims of Rome.
It’s written in crayon and easily traceable historically. What about that fact, in print and available for anyone to see, is propaganda?
Since you asked, and it seems likely that you may not look at evidence to the contrary, then i shall not simply post a link but material itself.
For there is even support from Catholic sources for our rejection of Rome's historical claims and of Peter as being the Rock and for the perpetuated Petrine papacy.
• Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in Frankfurt] in his work, “Papal Primacy ,” pp. 1-4 :
“New Testament scholars agree..., The further question whether there was any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the negative.
That is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably 'no.”
“....that does not mean that the figure and the commission of the Peter of the New Testament did not encompass the possibility, if it is projected into a Church enduring for centuries and concerned in some way to to secure its ties to its apostolic origins and to Jesus himself.
If we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer.” (page 1-2)
[Schatz goes on to express that he does not doubt Peter was martyred in Rome, and that Christians in the 2nd century were convinced that Vatican Hill had something to do with Peter's grave.]
"Nevertheless, concrete claims of a primacy over the whole church cannot be inferred from this conviction. If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (page 3, top)
[Lacking such support for the modern concept of the primacy of the church of Rome with its papal jurisdiction, Schatz concludes that, “Therefore we must set aside from the outset any question such as 'was there a primacy in our sense of the word at that time?” Schatz. therefore goes on to seek support for that as a development.]
“We probably cannot say for certain that there was a bishop of Rome [in 95 AD]. It is likely that the Roman church was governed by a group of presbyters from whom there very quickly emerged a presider or ‘first among equals’ whose name was remembered and who was subsequently described as ‘bishop’ after the mid-second century.” (Schatz 4).
Schatiz additionally states,
Cyprian regarded every bishop as the successor of Peter, holder of the keys to the kingdom of heaven and possessor of the power to bind and loose. For him, Peter embodied the original unity of the Church and the episcopal office, but in principle these were also present in every bishop. For Cyprian, responsibility for the whole Church and the solidarity of all bishops could also, if necessary, be turned against Rome." — Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996], p. 20)
• Roman Catholic scholar William La Due (taught canon law at St. Francis Seminary and the Catholic University of America) on Cyprian:
....those who see in The Unity of the Catholic Church, in the light of his entire episcopal life, an articulation of the Roman primacy - as we have come to know it, or even as it has evolved especially from the latter fourth century on - are reading a meaning into Cyprian which is not there." — The Chair of Saint Peter: A History of the Papacy [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999], p. 39
• Catholic theologian and a Jesuit priest Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops (New York: The Newman Press), examines possible mentions of “succession” from the first three centuries, and concludes from that study that “the episcopate [development of bishops] is a the fruit of a post New Testament development,” and cannot concur with those (interacting with Jones) who see little reason to doubt the notion that there was a single bishop in Rome through the middle of the second century:
Hence I stand with the majority of scholars who agree that one does not find evidence in the New Testament to support the theory that the apostles or their coworkers left [just] one person as “bishop” in charge of each local church...
As the reader will recall, I have expressed agreement with the consensus of scholars that available evidence indicates that the church of Rome was led by a college of presbyters, rather than a single bishop, for at least several decades of the second century...
Hence I cannot agree with Jones's judgment that there seems little reason to doubt the presence of a bishop in Rome already in the first century.
“...the evidence both from the New Testament and from such writings as I Clement, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians and The Shepherd of Hennas favors the view that initially the presbyters in each church, as a college, possessed all the powers needed for effective ministry. This would mean that the apostles handed on what was transmissible of their mandate as an undifferentiated whole, in which the powers that would eventually be seen as episcopal were not yet distinguished from the rest. Hence, the development of the episcopate would have meant the differentiation of ministerial powers that had previously existed in an undifferentiated state and the consequent reservation to the bishop of certain of the powers previously held collegially by the presbyters. — Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops , pp. 221,22,24
• The Catholic historian Paul Johnson writes in his 1976 work “History of Christianity:”
Eusebius presents the lists as evidence that orthodoxy had a continuous tradition from the earliest times in all the great Episcopal sees and that all the heretical movements were subsequent aberrations from the mainline of Christianity.
Looking behind the lists, however, a different picture emerges. In Edessa, on the edge of the Syrian desert, the proofs of the early establishment of Christianity were forgeries, almost certainly manufactured under Bishop Kune, the first orthodox Bishop, and actually a contemporary of Eusebius...
Orthodoxy was not established [In Egypt] until the time of Bishop Demetrius, 189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so to Peter and Jesus...
Even in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch completely lost their list...When Eusebius’s chief source for his Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch, he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in Rome and ten in Alexandria.
• Roger Collins, writing of the Symmachan forgeries”, describes these “pro-Roman” “enhancements” to history:
So too would the spurious historical texts written anonymously or ascribed to earlier authors that are known collectively as the Symmachan forgeries. This was the first occasion on which the Roman church had revisited its own history, in particular the third and fourth centuries, in search of precedents That these were largely invented does not negate the significance of the process...Some of the periods in question, such as the pontificates of Sylvester and Liberius (352-366), were already being seen more through the prism of legend than that of history, and in the Middle Ages texts were often forged because their authors were convinced of the truth of what they contained. Their faked documents provided tangible evidence of what was already believed true...
It is no coincidence that the first systematic works of papal history appear at the very time the Roman church’s past was being reinvented for polemical purposes. (Collins, “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven,” pgs 80-82).
Roman Catholic [if liberal and critical] Garry Wills, Professor of History Emeritus, Northwestern U., author of “Why i am a Catholic:”
"The idea that Peter was given some special power that could be handed on to a successor runs into the problem that he had no successor. The idea that there is an "apostolic succession" to Peter's fictional episcopacy did not arise for several centuries, at which time Peter and others were retrospectively called bishops of Rome, to create an imagined succession. Even so, there has not been an unbroken chain of popes. Two and three claimants existed at times, and when there were three of them each excommunicating the other two, they all had to be dethroned and the Council of Carthage started the whole thing over again in 1417." — WHAT JESUS MEANT, p. 81
• American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission):
“The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)
• Raymond Brown [being censored here], in “Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections,” could not prove on historical grounds, he said, that Christ instituted the priesthood or episcopacy as such; that those who presided at the Eucharist were really priests; that a separate priesthood began with Christ; that the early Christians looked upon the Eucharist as a sacrifice; that presbyter-bishops are traceable in any way to the Apostles; that Peter in his lifetime would be looked upon as the Bishop of Rome; that bishops were successors of the Apostles, even though Vatican II made the same claim.. (from, "A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory" by Msr. George A. Kelly can be read on the internet at http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/Jan-Feb00/Article5.html)
Peter Lampe (Lutheran)*:
The picture that finally emerges from Lampe’s analysis of surviving evidence is one he names ‘the fractionation of Roman Christianity’ (pp. 357–408). Not until the second half of the second century, under Anicetus, do we find compelling evidence for a monarchical episcopacy, and when it emerges, it is to manage relief shipments to dispersed Christians as well as social aid for the Roman poor (pp. 403–4). Before this period Roman Christians were ‘fractionated’ amongst dispersed house/tenement churches, each presided over by its own presbyter–bishop. This accounts for the evidence of social and theological diversity in second-century Roman Christianity, evidence of a degree of tolerance of theologically disparate groups without a single authority to regulate belief and practice, and the relatively late appearance of unambiguous representation of a single bishop over Rome. — Review of “Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries,” by Peter Lampe in Oxford’s Journal of Theological Studies, 2005
*Peter Lampe is a German Lutheran minister and theologian and Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Heidelberg, whose work, “From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries,” was written in 1987 and translated to English in 2003. The Catholic historian Eamon Duffy (Irish Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and former President of Magdalene College), said “all modern discussion of the issues must now start from the exhaustive and persuasive analysis by Peter Lampe” — Saints and Sinners,” “A History of the Popes,” Yale, 1997, 2001, pg. 421).
Turning to non-catholic scholars, Jaroslav Pelikan [Lutheran], The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959), also finds:
"Recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity..."
“The reformers were catholic because they were spokesmen for an evangelical tradition in medieval catholicism, what Luther called "the succession of the faithful." The fountainhead of that tradition was Augustine (d. 430). His complex and far-reaching system of thought incorporated the catholic ideal of identity plus universality, and by its emphasis upon sin and grace it became the ancestor of Reformation theology. … All the reformers relied heavily upon Augustine. They pitted his evangelical theology against the authority of later church fathers and scholastics, and they used him to prove that they were not introducing novelties into the church, but defending the true faith of the church.”
“...To prepare books like the Magdeburg Centuries they combed the libraries and came up with a remarkable catalogue of protesting catholics and evangelical catholics, all to lend support to the insistence that the Protestant position was, in the best sense, a catholic position.
Additional support for this insistence comes from the attitude of the reformers toward the creeds and dogmas of the ancient catholic church. The reformers retained and cherished the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the two natures in Christ which had developed in the first five centuries of the church….”
“If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was, the legitimacy of the reformers' claim to catholicity becomes clear. (Pelikan, pp. 46-47).
"Substantiation for this understanding of the gospel came principally from the Scriptures, but whenever they could, the reformers also quoted the fathers of the catholic church. There was more to quote than their Roman opponents found comfortable" (Pelikan 48-49).
Thus, faced with claims from antiquity by Reformers, no less an authority than Manning, in not denying Rome's claim to antiquity, invoked this recourse:
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. How can we know what antiquity was except through the Church? No individual, no number of individuals can go back through eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of antiquity. We may say with the woman of Samaria, ‘Sir, the well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw with.’ No individual mind now has contact with the revelation of the Pentecost, except through the Church. Historical evidence and biblical criticism are human after all, and amount to no more than opinion, probability, human judgment, human tradition...
I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. The Church is always primitive and always modern at one and the same time; and alone can expound its own mind, as an individual can declare his own thoughts. ‘For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.’ The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, pp. 227,28
► As regards the oft-quoted Mt. 16:18, note the bishops promise in the profession of faith of Vatican 1,
Likewise I accept Sacred Scripture according to that sense which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy scriptures; nor will I ever receive and interpret them except according to the unanimous consent of the fathers. — http://mb-soft.com/believe/txs/firstvc.htm
Yet as the Dominican cardinal and Catholic theologian Yves Congar O.P. states,
Unanimous patristic consent as a reliable locus theologicus is classical in Catholic theology; it has often been declared such by the magisterium and its value in scriptural interpretation has been especially stressed. Application of the principle is difficult, at least at a certain level. In regard to individual texts of Scripture total patristic consensus is rare...One example: the interpretation of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16:16-18. Except at Rome, this passage was not applied by the Fathers to the papal primacy; they worked out an exegesis at the level of their own ecclesiological thought, more anthropological and spiritual than juridical. — Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P., p. 71
And Catholic archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick (1806-1896), while yet seeking to support Peter as the rock, stated that,
“If we are bound to follow the majority of the fathers in this thing, then we are bound to hold for certain that by the rock should be understood the faith professed by Peter, not Peter professing the faith.” — Speech of archbishop Kenkick, p. 109; An inside view of the vatican council, edited by Leonard Woolsey Bacon.
Your own CCC allows the interpretation that, “On the rock of this faith confessed by St Peter, Christ build his Church,” (pt. 1, sec. 2, cp. 2, para. 424), for some of the ancients (for what their opinion is worth) provided for this or other interpretations.
• Ambrosiaster [who elsewhere upholds Peter as being the chief apostle to whom the Lord had entrusted the care of the Church, but not superior to Paul as an apostle except in time], Eph. 2:20:
Wherefore the Lord says to Peter: 'Upon this rock I shall build my Church,' that is, upon this confession of the catholic faith I shall establish the faithful in life. — Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on Galatians—Philemon, Eph. 2:20; Gerald L. Bray, p. 42
• Augustine, sermon:
"Christ, you see, built his Church not on a man but on Peter's confession. What is Peter's confession? 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' There's the rock for you, there's the foundation, there's where the Church has been built, which the gates of the underworld cannot conquer. — John Rotelle, O.S.A., Ed., The Works of Saint Augustine , © 1993 New City Press, Sermons, Vol III/6, Sermon 229P.1, p. 327
Upon this rock, said the Lord, I will build my Church. Upon this confession, upon this that you said, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,' I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not conquer her (Mt. 16:18). — John Rotelle, Ed., The Works of Saint Augustine (New Rochelle: New City, 1993) Sermons, Volume III/7, Sermon 236A.3, p. 48.
• Augustine, sermon:
For petra (rock) is not derived from Peter, but Peter from petra; just as Christ is not called so from the Christian, but the Christian from Christ. For on this very account the Lord said, 'On this rock will I build my Church,' because Peter had said, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' On this rock, therefore, He said, which thou hast confessed, I will build my Church. For the Rock (Petra) was Christ; and on this foundation was Peter himself built. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus. The Church, therefore, which is founded in Christ received from Him the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the person of Peter, that is to say, the power of binding and loosing sins. For what the Church is essentially in Christ, such representatively is Peter in the rock (petra); and in this representation Christ is to be understood as the Rock, Peter as the Church. — Augustine Tractate CXXIV; Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: First Series, Volume VII Tractate CXXIV (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107.iii.cxxv.html)
• Augustine, sermon:
And Peter, one speaking for the rest of them, one for all, said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:15-16)...And I tell you: you are Peter; because I am the rock, you are Rocky, Peter-I mean, rock doesn't come from Rocky, but Rocky from rock, just as Christ doesn't come from Christian, but Christian from Christ; and upon this rock I will build my Church (Mt 16:17-18); not upon Peter, or Rocky, which is what you are, but upon the rock which you have confessed. I will build my Church though; I will build you, because in this answer of yours you represent the Church. — John Rotelle, O.S.A. Ed., The Works of Saint Augustine (New Rochelle: New City Press, 1993), Sermons, Volume III/7, Sermon 270.2, p. 289
• Augustine, sermon:
Peter had already said to him, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' He had already heard, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the underworld shall not conquer her' (Mt 16:16-18)...Christ himself was the rock, while Peter, Rocky, was only named from the rock. That's why the rock rose again, to make Peter solid and strong; because Peter would have perished, if the rock hadn't lived. — John Rotelle, Ed., The Works of Saint Augustine (New Rochelle: New City, 1993) Sermons, Volume III/7, Sermon 244.1, p. 95
• Augustine, sermon:
...because on this rock, he said, I will build my Church, and the gates of the underworld shall not overcome it (Mt. 16:18). Now the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). Was it Paul that was crucified for you? Hold on to these texts, love these texts, repeat them in a fraternal and peaceful manner. — John Rotelle, Ed., The Works of Saint Augustine (New Rochelle: New City Press, 1995), Sermons, Volume III/10, Sermon 358.5, p. 193
• Augustine, Psalm LXI:
Let us call to mind the Gospel: 'Upon this Rock I will build My Church.' Therefore She crieth from the ends of the earth, whom He hath willed to build upon a Rock. But in order that the Church might be builded upon the Rock, who was made the Rock? Hear Paul saying: 'But the Rock was Christ.' On Him therefore builded we have been. — Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), Volume VIII, Saint Augustin, Exposition on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXI.3, p. 249. (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf108.ii.LXI.html)
• Augustine, in “Retractions,”
In a passage in this book, I said about the Apostle Peter: 'On him as on a rock the Church was built.'...But I know that very frequently at a later time, I so explained what the Lord said: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,' that it be understood as built upon Him whom Peter confessed saying: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,' and so Peter, called after this rock, represented the person of the Church which is built upon this rock, and has received 'the keys of the kingdom of heaven.' For, 'Thou art Peter' and not 'Thou art the rock' was said to him. But 'the rock was Christ,' in confessing whom, as also the whole Church confesses, Simon was called Peter. But let the reader decide which of these two opinions is the more probable. — The Fathers of the Church (Washington D.C., Catholic University, 1968), Saint Augustine, The Retractations Chapter 20.1:.
• Basil of Seleucia, Oratio 25:
'You are Christ, Son of the living God.'...Now Christ called this confession a rock, and he named the one who confessed it 'Peter,' perceiving the appellation which was suitable to the author of this confession. For this is the solemn rock of religion, this the basis of salvation, this the wall of faith and the foundation of truth: 'For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.' To whom be glory and power forever. — Oratio XXV.4, M.P.G., Vol. 85, Col. 296-297.
• Bede, Matthaei Evangelium Expositio, 3:
You are Peter and on this rock from which you have taken your name, that is, on myself, I will build my Church, upon that perfection of faith which you confessed I will build my Church by whose society of confession should anyone deviate although in himself he seems to do great things he does not belong to the building of my Church...Metaphorically it is said to him on this rock, that is, the Saviour which you confessed, the Church is to be built, who granted participation to the faithful confessor of his name. — 80Homily 23, M.P.L., Vol. 94, Col. 260. Cited by Karlfried Froehlich, Formen, Footnote #204, p. 156 [unable to verify by me].
• Cassiodorus, Psalm 45.5:
'It will not be moved' is said about the Church to which alone that promise has been given: 'You are Peter and upon this rock I shall build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.' For the Church cannot be moved because it is known to have been founded on that most solid rock, namely, Christ the Lord. — Expositions in the Psalms, Volume 1; Volume 51, Psalm 45.5, p. 455
• Chrysostom (John) [who affirmed Peter was a rock, but here not the rock in Mt. 16:18]:
Therefore He added this, 'And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church; that is, on the faith of his confession. — Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily LIIl; Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LII.html)
• Cyril of Alexandria:
When [Peter] wisely and blamelessly confessed his faith to Jesus saying, 'You are Christ, Son of the living God,' Jesus said to divine Peter: 'You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.' Now by the word 'rock', Jesus indicated, I think, the immoveable faith of the disciple.”. — Cyril Commentary on Isaiah 4.2.
• Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Book XII):
“For a rock is every disciple of Christ of whom those drank who drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, 1 Corinthians 10:4 and upon every such rock is built every word of the church, and the polity in accordance with it; for in each of the perfect, who have the combination of words and deeds and thoughts which fill up the blessedness, is the church built by God.'
“For all bear the surname ‘rock’ who are the imitators of Christ, that is, of the spiritual rock which followed those who are being saved, that they may drink from it the spiritual draught. But these bear the surname of rock just as Christ does. But also as members of Christ deriving their surname from Him they are called Christians, and from the rock, Peters.” — Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Book XII), sect. 10,11 ( http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101612.htm)
• Hilary of Potier, On the Trinity (Book II): Thus our one immovable foundation, our one blissful rock of faith, is the confession from Peter's mouth, Thou art the Son of the living God. On it we can base an answer to every objection with which perverted ingenuity or embittered treachery may assail the truth."-- (Hilary of Potier, On the Trinity (Book II), para 23; Philip Schaff, editor, The Nicene & Post Nicene Fathers Series 2, Vol 9.
It is hardly a fair fight. Disadvantaged protestants ignore some basic dogma by worshipping Bible Alone short of even all the original books. It is hardly a fair fight.
Rather, the evidence against the pretentious of Rome often results in her defenders resorting to such straw man as the one you example here.
Worshipping the Bible Alone? If we worship the book by holding it to be the supreme authority as the wholly inspired word of God then RCs worship there church, which effectively claims to be the supreme authority, and possessing assured (conditional) infallibility.
Yet answer this question: Was the church founded upon the premise that the stewards of Scripture were the assuredly infallible interpreters of it, or that it was established upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power?
short of even all the original books.
More evidence that all you have read is RC propaganda versus what research provides . Answer me these questions? When were the apocryphal books infallibly defined as being Scripture proper, thus excluding dissent? Did this precede the dissent of Luther and the Reformers? Did their 39 book OT canon have ancient support? Do we have any copies of the LXX from the time of Christ which includes these books?
It was the Church who gave us the Holy Bible, canonized it, and taught it for centuries before there was ever a printing press, making the Church capable (and Tim Staples specifically) of going head to head with anyone on its contents.
You mean not simply going head, but as having assured veracity. So again, your premise is that being the stewards of Holy Writ makes one the trustworthy or even infallible interpreters if the conditions are met) of it. Correct?
and Tim Staples specifically
You mean Tim is part of the Ordinary magisterium? What official authority does he have? Are all his books even stamped with the Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur. And BTW, what assurance do these provide?
It wasn’t the Church who truncated the full Bible, but one who thought he Alone could take away seven original books, ignore original tradition and alter original pious practices,
So again, you mean Luther dissented from an infallible canon,. and was a maverick among Catholics in so doing, so that And he alone thought he could do so??
In taking away the Pope, I have created many”,
So those who hold Scripture as supreme claim assured infallibility?
and who himself continued devotions to Mary.
But since this and many other aspects of Luther were rejected by Reformers, why are RCs so preoccupied on Luther, as if we are like RCs who follow a pope, unlike the the early church which established their claims upon Scriptural substantiation?
It’s hardly a fair fight.
Indeed you are at a disadvantage, and have so many questions to answer in the light of the evidence against your propaganda.
What more can we offer? (We can crucify Christ all over again -- which is what Hebrews 6 says)
Yet one losing their relationship with God doesn't have anything to do with God, who remains completely faithful.
A faithful spouse who loses their spouse to unfaithfulness can remain completely faithful -- and continue to offer 100% security; yet it doesn't mean the unfaithful spouse will "bounce back."
And sorry, it doesn't do anybody any good to play Ultimate Judge and claim, "Well, he/she was never in Christ to begin with." I mean that is indeed possible & likely with many, but it doesn't explain all.
Would people claim that Satan & demons "never had a relationship with God to begin with?" (I don't think so)
Here the demonic angels had 100% security with God.
God remained completely faithful.
They had a perfect environment (no sin).
No sin nature.
Yet they fell.
Which, on the human parallel side, is what Hebrews 6:4-6 (the passage referenced in this thread) is all about.
Haven't gone thru all the posts in this thread yet...but I find the "once saved, always saved" folks don't really like to discuss Heb. 6:4-6...and therefore they avoid it (like the plague).
So...kinda "funny" that people think that a sinful person in Christ living in a sinful world would never walk away from the Lord; while at the same time they acknowledge that a perfect being living in a perfect environment in a perfect relationship with the Lord can lose their relationship with God.
See, when it comes to explaining demons, the "once related to Christ, always related to Christ" folks seem to dissipate -- as in 100% of them.
Anyone care to explain that?
Why don't you do so and you will find your questions addressed! The we can talk....
1st—
My premise, you ask? I already gave you my premise. You deny it, simply.
2nd—
To the contrary, protestants that I know are not propaganda. I shared what they admit.
3rd—
“No”, to all the links to those disputing sites that strain for argument, in the face of 2000 years of history, artifacts, etc., etc. I know because I lived there, already been-there-done-that. I am a convert. Hardly a fair fight.
4th—
Now you launch a filibuster that disrespects any dialogue, FR site space, and my time, with your force fed diatribe, bordering belligerence. How would you like for me to do that to you? Old news of laborious suppositions that simply protest the Church is no longer interesting to me. No contest. Hardly a fair fight, in the light of the already proven.
If you are taken by it, good for you.
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