How Do We Know It’s the True Church?

Catholic Answers ^ | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

[ADSUM]

What are the twelve traits of authority, and how do they work?

First of all, it seems clear that their decision would have to be made from a historical perspective. It was not good enough to decide complex moral, social, or doctrinal issues based on popularity polls or yesterday’s newspaper. To decide difficult questions, a valid authority has to be historical.

[StormPrepper]

The final authority is not the Bible. The final authority is God and His prophets.

The Catholic church has no prophets.

Peter was the head of the Church when Jesus ascended. However, after Peter was killed, the people chose Linus I to be their leader. Linus was not a prophet, nor was he chosen by God.

The leadership of the Church did not go to Linus. It went to the one man that was chosen by God; John. John was an Apostle and was still alive when Linus claimed to be the leader of the church. And Jesus made this clear by visiting John and speaking to Him face to face.

John was a prophet and was given the vision which he wrote down in the Book of Revelation. The Lord Himself showed who was in authority after Peter.

The Lord never visited Linus nor gave him any visions or prophecies. Nor has he visited any pope since. When the people elevated Linus to lead their church, they in fact created a new church. It's not Christ's true Church. It never has been.

This is why the Catholic church deviated from the Lord's teachings so completely. This was the great falling away spoken of by the Lord.

Paul gives some insights into the false churches of the last days. He says that they "forbid to marry"... The Catholic church forbids their entire leadership to marry. This is what Paul saw in vision 2000 years ago.

[NKP_Vet]

Popes come and go, some good, some bad, some great. The Catholic Church has endured for 2,000 years. God promised the gates of hell would not destroy His Church. The fullness of the faith rests in the One, Holy, Apostolic Church, and that Church is the Catholic Church.

[NKP_Vet]

I’m a Catholic and this is my favorite “pastor” as far as politics go. I’m also a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus and I know of maybe two Knights that are democrats. We have a large council, with at least 200 active Knights. 99.9% conservative republican.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jeffress

[bike800]

Funny... However, if Jesus said “it is written”. He was necessarily referring to the Old Teatament, as it was the only Scripture at the time. In all seriousness, I don’t understand the logic of saying the bible is the be all and end all... When it never says that, nor did Jesus. He did however, pass on many things that were not recorded in the gospels.

[Mr Rogers]

When asked, Jesus quoted scripture. Not church councils. We also have the New Testament, which wasn’t written at the time of Jesus’ ministry.

What we never see is Jesus citing the authority of the Jewish councils or saying, “Trust the priests of Israel”! And since the New Testament had no priests other than Jesus, that may be significant. And that is the real rub - that much of Catholic theology is in contradiction to what is written.

[terycarl]

Bzzt. Wrong answer. There were in fact changes in religious freedom and ecumenism.

There were???? please give me a couple of examples.

[terycarl]

Minor? In some churches you can’t find the tabernacle. It’s often shunted off to a side room. The priest is referred to as ‘the president of the assembly’. The words of consubstantiation are changed from ‘the many’ to ‘all’. Many of today’s priests don’t believe in consubstantiation. What is passing for the Catholic Church today is an entirely new religion that has nothing to do with The Holy Trinity and everything to do with secular humanism and heresy. This Argentinian Bergolgio is proof that the Roman Catholic Church as we knew it, as did our forefathers, is gone. Radically changing tenets and rubrics of Christ’s Church on Earth was a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance”! the post-Vatican II “Catholic” Church is not the real Catholic Church. It’s the Counter Church of the last days. It purports to be Catholic, but it is not. It’s been presided over by antipopes and heretics.

First and foremost the Catholic Church does not have consubstantiation, some protestant churches do (Lutheran)...the Catholic church teaches transubstantiation, whereby only the appearance of bread and wine remains, not the substance. I did like the Tabernacle on the altar but I don't think it is a big deal to be on a side altar as ours is. I have no idea of where president of the assembly comes in....our priest is the pastor and we refer to him as Father Dominick. The church is not presided over by antipopes nor heretics...that may be your opinion, but it is wrong.

[boatbums]

But a valid question that needs to be answered. Even Luther was dismayed at the rampant, wild interepretations that occurred because of his teachings ... You can’t say that “only the Bible is true, and everything needed for salvation is found in scripture alone, when the bible itself doesn’t ever say that. Once that is acknowledged ... Then the question of the marks of the true church can be sought

Oh, really? Why don't you cite what Luther had to say about his "dismay" because of his teachings? There is a site http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2016/08/luther-people-are-now-possessed-with.html that posts Luther's thoughts and preaching about those who falsely use grace as a license to sin - something Paul dealt with in his time. In every case where someone implies Luther "regreted" his teachings, those who claim so never post his words in context and they misconstrue what he said. Case in point:

We must certainly receive this message eagerly and gratefully, by it becoming more pious and godly. Unfortunately there's the opposite side, that by this teaching the world becomes more and more hostile, wicked, and malicious; yet not through fault of the teaching but of the people, thanks to the pernicious devil and death. Today people are possessed by seven devils, whereas before it was only one. The devil now bulldozes the people so that even under the bright light of the gospel they become greedier, slyer, more covetous, crueler, lewder, more insolent and ill-tempered than before under the papacy. Why so? Not through fault of the teaching but because the message is not met with thankful acceptance; people cast it to the wind and pay more attention to money and goods than to the blessed treasure which our Lord Christ brings to us. Hence our Lord God scolds again, saying, Have you no appreciation for this—that through the suffering and death of my only begotten Son I have removed your sin and death? Well, then, if that's the way you want it, I will multiply sin and death sevenfold for you. And whereas before one devil possessed and troubled you, now seven worse devils will afflict you. No station in life—peasant, burgher, aristocrat—is spared, from highest to lowest, as they give their lives shamelessly, carelessly to greed, gluttony, drunkenness, immorality, and all manner shameful depravity.

 12. Therefore I exhort that you listen eagerly and lovingly to the Word, receive it with deep gratitude, and beseech the Lord from the bottom of your heart for a firm faith to cling to this teaching. You may be certain that this will bear fruit day by day, as you become more humble, obedient, loving, chaste, and godly, for it is in the nature and art of this teaching to create godly, decent, obedient and pious people. But if people refuse to receive it with loving ready hearts, they will become seven times more wicked than before they came to know this teaching, as experience shows. Be forewarned therefore; the hour is coming—it cannot be avoided—the ingrates will be afflicted and punished. They will then receive what now they have earned. God will certainly find them out [The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther Vol. 5, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000).  p. 29-30.

There are other examples as well. There will ALWAYS be people who misinterpret the gospel to their own nefarious ends. It doesn't change the fact that the gospel never changes and anyone who would know the truth will find it in God's sacred inspired word - whether through hearing it taught or studying for himself. No man is in authority over God's word but is subject to it and a servant of the truth.

The claim that Scripture doesn't say "only the Bible is true, and everything needed for salvation is found in scripture alone" is a false construct. It ignores the many, many places we are told that it is the Divinely-inspired Scriptures which are able to make one wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. That it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (II Timothy 3:15-17). Paul warned, "Do not go beyond the things which have been written— in order that you might not be puffed-up, one on behalf of the one against the other." (I Cor. 4:6) Jesus disputed every false challenge of satan in the wilderness by "it is written". This and many other examples IN Scripture prove that it IS the source of all truth concerning our faith. Whatever men may produce to teach the truth must be backed up the word of God.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Placemarker -———> X

[bike800]

Luther, as best I can read, preached that there is no need for there to be any arbiter of the gospel..maybe that is how Luther came to write this...

Martin Luther: “Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well about whom St. John tells us. Was not everybody about Him saying: Whatever has He been doing with her? Secondly, with Mary Magdalen, and thirdly with the women taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even, Christ who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.”, from Trishreden, Weimer Edition, Vol. 2, Pg. 107

Trying to think of where I read that in the Bible...

[Fantasywriter]

Did Luther really make these assertions? An electronic search of the digital edition of Luther’s works, the massive Weimar Ausgabe (WA), uncovers no evidence that he did. Only two statements come even close to suggesting these unorthodoxies.

The first is a comment on Psalm 119:145 in which Luther interprets Mary Magdalene’s actions at the tomb of Christ as an example of loving devotion. Mary “came beforehand at the dawn and with untimely haste and cried and called for her betrothed [sponsum] much more wonderfully in spirit than in the body. But I think that she alone might easily explain the Song of Songs.”

Luther’s Works: American Edition (LW) unfortunately mistranslates sponsum as “husband.” In Luther’s medieval monastic context, the word meant something different. The verb spondeo means “to pledge oneself to” or “to promise oneself to someone,” as in “to pledge in the vow of marriage.” The male form of the noun is “fiance” and the female form is “bride.”

The full context of Luther’s remark indicates that he was thinking allegorically. Influenced by mainstream allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs, Luther viewed Mary as the prototypical disciple (a celibate nun?), the first “bride of Christ,” who had made her vow of unconditional love and obedience to her sponsum (”betrothed,” “groom”). Even today Roman Catholic nuns wear a ring to symbolize their betrothal to Christ. On another occasion Luther argued that all Christians are “brides of Christ” (LW 28:48). He certainly did not think Jesus and Mary were actually husband and wife. Several unambiguous statements in his writings clearly indicate that he held the traditional view that Jesus, like Paul, was celibate and chaste.

Seemingly more problematic is a small notation from John Schlagenhaufen, one of Luther’s close friends, which contains a recollection of something Luther supposedly said informally at his Wittenberg dinner table in 1532:

Christ [as] adulterer. In the first instance
Jesus became an adulterer
with the woman at the well in John
4, because they say (no one understands),
“What is he doing with
her?” In the same way with Magdalena;
in the same way with the
adulteress of John 8, whom he let
off so easily. In that way the godly
Christ first of all must also become
an adulterer before he died. (WA
TR 6, 107, sec. 1472; cf. LW 54:154)

No one knows if Luther actually said this. The critical apparatus in the Weimar Ausgabe reveals the textual and grammatical problems in this supposed quotation. Schlagenhaufen recorded only a portion of what he remembered Luther to have said that day (and after how many beers?). No context is given.

Scholars know how difficult, if not impossible, it is to link the lapidary “table notations” of Luther’s friends to Luther’s own views. The editors of the American Edition speculate in a footnote that the “probable context is suggested in a sermon of 1536 (WA 41, 647) in which Luther asserted that Christ was reproached by the world as a glutton, a winebibber, and even an adulterer” (LW 54:154).

A more probable context is Luther’s account of the atonement. One of his basic assertions is that our sins become Christ’s and Christ’s perfect righteousness becomes ours by faith. This idea of “the happy exchange” is found in many Luther texts. Given his central soteriological and christological concern, the theological irony in Schlagenhaufen’s remembered notation becomes clearer: The “godly” Christ becomes or is made a sinner through his solidarity with sinners, even to the point of dying as a God-forsaken criminal on the cross. This is how Luther understood Paul’s statement, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

So Christ “becomes” an adulterer, though he does not actually commit adultery with Mary or anyone else. He puts mercy front and center, and rejects the legalism which demanded that the woman caught in adultery be killed and the woman at the well and Mary Magdalene be shunned. The holy one becomes the sinner by putting himself into the situation of sinners, by loving and forgiving them, and ultimately by taking their sins on himself. For this gospel reason, Luther could also remark that God made Jesus “the worst sinner of the whole world,” even though he also acknowledged that the sinless, righteous Christ actually committed no sin himself.

Trapped in a literalistic approach to Schlagenhaufen’s contextless note, some readers have missed the metaphorical character of the remark, which Luther may have made, if he made it at all, with a twinkle in his eye. I’m confident that Luther would not be a fan of The Da Vinci Code—except perhaps with a beer in hand and that twinkle in his eye.

http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2005/12/luther-said-christ-committed-adultery.html?m=1

[HomerBohn]

How one can be a conservative thinker and believe that all changes subsequent to Vatican II are all well and good may boggle some minds.

[boatbums]

Thanks for your comments. I did some searching as well and found that this polemical hit piece against Luther is based on such little evidence as to be laughable and those who would use it to condemn Luther are grasping at straws.

From http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/search?q=Christ+committed+adultery+first+of+all+with+the+women+at+the+well, I found:

In both instances we have reproduced the item completely. There is no context. It is simply a briefly scribbled note of part of a conversation, none too intelligibly recorded or transmitted, with several important words illegible. 

And also:

The sole manuscript containing this item is a quarto volume that found a final resting place in the State Library at Munich, where it was catalogued as Codex latinus 943. The page containing our item was copied from an earlier copy - possibly Schlaginhaufen's original manuscript-between November 4, 1551, and some time in 1567. The copyist may have been Schlaginhaufen's son-in-law, the Rev. John Oberndorfer of Ratisbon. 

Thus the "hair-raising blasphemy" turns out to be an inaccurately translated version of a somewhat uncertain, uncontrolled and unverifiable quotation of an offhand remark of blessed Martin Luther, without a shred of context or any indication of the circumstances that evoked the words it purports to reproduce. Since the item was destined to remain in manuscript form for 356 years after it was set down, it is quite probable that blessed Martin Luther himself never saw what Schlaginhaufen had written down. 

Conclusion
How does one respond to this? The quote appears outrageous. First, the quote has no context. One does not know what exactly Luther had in mind. Was he kidding? Was he summarizing someone else's argument? Was he using hyperbole? It's really hard to say. If taken literally, it certainly is at odds with his other statements about Christ. Thus, even though one can't know exactly why he said this, we can have a strong assurance he didn't mean it literally. The editors of Luther's Works include a footnote for this comment of Luther's, and they offer the following speculation:

This entry has been cited against Luther, among others by Arnold Lunn in The Revolt Against Reason (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1951), pp. 45, 257, 258. What Luther meant might have been made clearer if John Schlaginhaufen had indicated the context of the Reformer’s remarks. The probable context is suggested in a sermon of 1536 (WA 41, 647) in which Luther asserted that Christ was reproached by the world as a glutton, a winebibber, and even an adulterer.

Be careful with Luther’s Table Talk. The Table Talk is a collection of comments from Luther written down by Luther’s students and friends. It is not in actuality an official writing of Luther's and should not serve as the basis for interpreting his theology.

How telling that, instead of addressing the answer to the initial challenge, a new one gets tossed out - and a bogus one at that.

[boatbums]

Luther, as best I can read, preached that there is no need for there to be any arbiter of the gospel

Why don't you try to remember where you read that? Then explain what you mean by "any arbiter".

Why is it you cannot address what I responded to you and feel you have to toss out another canard about Luther? You realize, I hope, that Luther is not the "Protestant" pope and that he was but one of many involved in the Reformation, don't you?

[Fantasywriter]

Thanks for the additional info. When I first saw the quote, attributed to Luther, I knew there was a backstory. No one even glancingly familiar with him believes he ascribed adulterous acts to Jesus.

Then, when I read the actual origin of the comment, all I could do was shake my head. The lengths some will go to, in an attempt to smear a believer in Christ, is incredible.

Incidentally, from what I have seen, many Catholics DO believe Luther is the protestant pope. They pounce if we fail to believe every single thing Luther himself believed, as if such a position discredits everything Luther said, wrote and did, and everything connected to the Reformation.

This goes to the heart of the issue. Luther and all Catholic popes are sinful humans—as are we all. Only Christ was perfect. The Holy Spirit “breathed,” the Scriptures to those selected for the task of transmitting them. So we know the Holy Scriptures are trustworthy.

Anything beyond that is open to question. If it’s not God-breathed, then where does its authority derive from? To make any utterances of mere, fallible humans the equivalent of God-breathed Scripture is a fundamental error—and a fundamentally dangerous one. Anyone can claim divine inspiration, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t contradict Himself, nor does Jesus. Jesus in fact did described the true church, and His is the only word on the subject that matters.

[CraigEsq]

>>First and foremost the Catholic Church does not have consubstantiation, some protestant churches do (Lutheran)...

Just as an FYI, Consubstantiation is not a term Lutherans use. We simply say real presence. Jesus took bread (wine) and said it was his body (blood). We take bread (wine) and say that bread is His body (blood). We don’t know or try to define how.

Here are our official statements from the Book of Concord:
http://www.bookofconcord.org/augsburgconfession.php#article10
http://www.bookofconcord.org/defense_8_holysupper.php
http://www.bookofconcord.org/smalcald.php#sacrament

Here’s a little video on the topic too if you’ve got time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4DUo2un2qg

[boatbums]

Incidentally, from what I have seen, many Catholics DO believe Luther is the protestant pope. They pounce if we fail to believe every single thing Luther himself believed, as if such a position discredits everything Luther said, wrote and did, and everything connected to the Reformation.

It's a common tactic used often by some here to divert the discussion down a rabbit hole. It also usually means they have no answer to dispute what has been said but they are too proud to admit it.

Anything beyond that is open to question. If it’s not God-breathed, then where does its authority derive from? To make any utterances of mere, fallible humans the equivalent of God-breathed Scripture is a fundamental error—and a fundamentally dangerous one. Anyone can claim divine inspiration, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t contradict Himself, nor does Jesus. Jesus in fact did described the true church, and His is the only word on the subject that matters.

Totally agree. What the Reformation tried to do is restore the Christian church BACK to the doctrines that always had Biblical warrant and get rid of those that had been added to the rule of faith over the centuries by those who would corrupt and pervert the truth of the gospel. They were truly closer to the original faith as taught by Jesus and His Apostles than what boasted itself as THE church established by Jesus. As many times as these arguments have been posted one would think that we wouldn't have to keep repeating them. But we do because some here either refuse to believe the evidence before their own eyes or they don't really want to know the truth. We keep saying it anyway and it's nice to have you join in. I don't recall seeing your screen name before. Have a blessed week!

[aMorePerfectUnion]

+1

[rollo tomasi]

The context of tradition and reason can be warped just like Scripture. Scripture is warped due to the attempt at rationalizing what ever time you are living in while ignoring historiography/fundamental reasons why/the purpose. Again, tradition and reason follow this.

"I Am", does not change, and the purpose of our existence are the biggest "tells" of what Christianity is all about. In the end, God is God.

[bike800]

It is my understanding that Luther “submitted himself” to the gospels. Thereby the gospel is the “arbiter” if you will of truth. My point is simply this... Based on this idea... One can give 20 people the same bible, and all 20 can come up with a different meaning of similar texts. In this situation, when one simply referees back to the scripture, it becomes a circular problem. I may read the scripture, my interpretation of it may be wrong, but it’s my interpretation, and no one else can tell me that it is wrong, because the scripture is held as the standard. This of course coming from his personal issues with the church at the time... He rejected the church’s authority to claim “authority” over the interpretation of the scriptures... Does any of this make sense? Truly I am not trying to squabble, but in 50 years I have not found a sensible logical answer to the problem of solo scriptura ... Or for that matter, sola fides...