Last installment ...how Rome lost the gospel
Yet we will be judged according to our works...
Godly sorrow which leads to repentance: the most significant component of salvation which has been lost by the “church” as it has softened the Gospel message, and which has led to apostasy at best and, more likely, countless false conversions.
The Official Adoption of an Apostate GospelThough the Councils of Orange (in 441 and 529) condemned the synergism of semi-Pelagianism, the medieval Catholic church eventually came to define justification in synergistic terms (meaning that the church presented salvation as a cooperative effort between God and man).
In the thirteenth century, at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Roman Catholic church officially made salvation contingent on good works by establishing the seven sacraments as the means by which sinners are justified.
As Norm Geisler [full disclosure: I had Norm Geisler as a prof. Brilliant] and Josh Betancourt explain in their book, Is Rome the True Church?:
Roman Catholicism as it is known today is not the same as the Catholic Church before 1215. Even though the split between East and West occurred in 1054, most non-Catholics today would have been able to belong to the Catholic Church before the thirteenth century. Regardless of certain things the church permitted, none of its official doctrinal proclamations regarding essential salvation doctrines were contrary to orthodoxy.
While the development of Roman Catholicism from the original church was gradual, beginning in early centuries, one of the most significant turning points came in 1215, when one can see the beginning of Roman Catholicism as it is subsequently known. It is here that the seeds of what distinguishes Roman Catholicism were first pronounced as dogma. It is here that they pronounced the doctrine of transubstantiation, the primacy of the bishop of Rome, and seven sacraments.
Many consider this a key turning point in the development of Roman Catholicism in distinction from non-Catholic forms of Christianity.vi
There, fixed that statement.
>>The indulgence system allowed corrupt popes to use their religious position to extort money from spiritually desperate people on the false notion that sinners can purchase God’s grace for a price.<<
They only scaled that back. Today they still have to "merit" grace through some sort of ritual or another which of course can only be gotten through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
Lot of words to once again bash Catholicism. The whole article is based on the false premise that “sinners are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.”
False, because it can not be reconciled with James 2: 17 “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone”.
While Catholicism has had its problems over the years, don’t use that as justification to preach a false gospel. “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18
The subversion of Christianity through its merger with the Roman state of Constantine; saddling the teaching and propagation of the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ with the trappings of a secular empire, the invention of a “Christian” Prince (aka Pope) and surrounding him with a panoply of dukes, earls, etc, etc, etc, a putative “Christian” equivalent of the secular kingdoms of Europe, absent any model prescribed by the Bible of Christendom. And to what end; a response to which of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth or of the disciples whom he chose and charged with a preaching, teaching mission?
“In contrast, the Reformers insisted that Christ alone is the head of the church. Any other self- proclaimed “head” constituted an imposter and a fraud. “
can’t disagree with that. thanks for posting. interesting article
Thanks for the great series.
The article does not provide evidence for or support the supposition that the Church Fathers believed or taught a “reformed” conception of the gospel instead of Catholic doctrine.
The idea that the Church Fathers weren’t Catholic and that the Council of Trent “lost” the Gospels is absurd and unproven as well.
The “evidence” that the Church lost the gospels fails precisely because none of the quotes set forth attributed to the Church Fathers are indeed contrary to Church Doctrine!
This is a straw man set - up: (A) that the Church Fathers foretold justification by faith alone before the reformers (and the implication that their position is contrary to Church Doctrine): therefore (B)the Church Doctors are proto type reformer forerunners, does NOT work. The Church already holds the doctrines that the Fathers set forth in the article! If Catholics tried to make the case that the Fathers meant something different, then there would be a problem, but instead, Catholic Church teaching agrees.
At any rate, all of the points set forth ARE completely compatible with the Doctrine of Justification as taught by the Council of Trent, not to mention the current Catechism of the Church..
The reformed gospel is completely new, starting with the “reformers” in the 1500’s.
The Church Fathers are Catholic beyond doubt; it is not possible to “explain away” their belief in handed down tradition (2 Thes. 2:15) because there is an abundance of preserved writings that show their affirmation in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
For example: St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing circa 80 A.D. wrote in his letter to the Smyrnaean’s wrote:
“...they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ...”
The examples of the Church’s Fathers belief in the eucharist are clear and abundant. Also - the eastern church fathers (not Rome) clearly were not prototype reformers either, for the same reasons; they believed in a sacramental Church.