Posted on 06/18/2021 6:17:57 PM PDT by Marchmain
Faith alone leaves out:
The Lord, in His scriptures teaches:
If none REPENT, all will perish.... Luke 13: 3
Peter: REPENT and be BAPTIZED... Acts 2:38
Jesus: He that BELIEVES and is BAPTIZED will be saved... Mark 16:16
With the mouth, CONFESSION is made unto salvation... Romans 10:10
BAPTISM now saves us... I Peter 3:21
There were four denominations [divisions based on names] in Corinth. In verse 13, Paul completely destroys the concept of denomination. And the Lord did not say, “On this rock I will build my churches.” or “On this rock I will build your churches.” “I will build MY CHURCH.”
Thank you. I will keep the list handy.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
.
Also, like you, I don't care what denomination you call yourself. God is concerned with your relationship with Jesus Christ (i.e. the "gospel"), not your "church" or your "religion" or your "denomination" or your "works".
Dictionary.com defines the word:
noun
1. Church of England.
a. a person acting as priest of a parish in place of the rector, or as representative of a religious community to which tithes belong.
b. the priest of a parish in which tithes were formerly transferred to a religious house, chapter, or layperson, the priest receiving only the smaller tithes or a salary.
2. Protestant Episcopal Church. a. a member of the clergy whose sole or chief charge is a chapel dependent on the church of a parish.
b. a bishop's assistant in charge of a church or mission.
3. Roman Catholic Church. an ecclesiastic representing the pope or a bishop.
4. a person who acts in place of another; substitute.
5. a person who is authorized to perform the functions of another; deputy: God's vicar on earth.
.
.
It seems like YOUR use of the word is more like #5, not #3. I seem to recall that we used the word (in the RCC six decades ago) more like #3.
What are your thoughts? I don't expect you to answer.
BULL. Attested where, and by whom? Quote them.
Yes. THOSE Church Fathers.
The justification argument is complicated, and too many of you don’t even understand what the Catholic position because you think we believe salvation like a gumball machine where we deposit a “work” and automatically earn a treat as if God were constrained to give a grace instead of giving it freely. We don’t think that.
So you throw up a bunch of quotes you got from some website somewhere. To refute them properly, I have to literally go back and do an extensive research project on each quote, determining what the context of the Fathers’ arguments were (if even the quotes were accurate in the first place.) and why the Catholic position still remains correct. Because I know that the Catholic position was *based on a thorough understanding of what the Fathers said in the first place*.
I’m not retired. I don’t have time to do all that research. And you won’t read it anyway.
But I suspect that I’m the only one in this discussion who has read Clement and Ignatius on the authority of bishops. Who has read Augustine’s numerous homilies on the veneration of the martyrs. Who has read Irenaeus on the authority of the Bishop of Rome in Chapter 3 of the Adversus Haeresis.
There’s a lot in there that you would find....uncomfortable.
Go back and read the Church Fathers’ entire works, and see what they believed for yourself. IF they truly DID agree with you, it will only strengthen your arguments against the Catholic Church, right?
Of course if they didn’t......well......
" BULL. Attested where, and by whom? Quote them."
Seeing as you appeal to such uninspired writings for support, then unless you deny it (rather misunderstanding what I said) I should not have to provide quotes from certain uninspired writings of so-called "church fathers" variously affirming distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).
You made a historical claim that the Fathers attest to a “progressive accretion of traditions of men”...I presume by the Catholic Church.
What is your historical evidence of that?
I am sorry that apparently you still do not comprehend what I meant, which is not that these "Fathers" attest that these are traditions of men, but that rather by their positive teaching of these unScripture distinctive Catholic teachings - for support of which you invoke them for - then by way of this evidence they attest to a progressive accretion of traditions of men. The issue remains that these are not manifest in the only wholly inspired-of-God and substantive record of what the NT church believed, which is why Catholic selective invoke so-called "church fathers."
Well then I guess you don’t see the flaw in your argument.
You start off with your wrong assumptions about the NT Church. But the Fathers say otherwise. So “Aha!” you say, “clearly the Fathers departed from the NT Church!”
Instead of realizing that there was no departure whatsoever, your initial assumptions were just wrong from the get-go.
Rather, as clearly explained to you, the flaw is in your argument that the (selective) uninspired writings of post apostolic so-called church fathers are definitive of what the NT church believes, versus the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed in which distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest. Thus, like as Jewish traditions that later developed which are not Scriptural, the record of such among certain post apostolic uninspired writings that are not what we see the NT church in Scripture - most specifically in Acts thru Revelation - believing, testifies to the progressive accretion of such. As does substantial historical research, including that of papal power.
“The justification argument is complicated.”
Pull the other one; it’s got bells on.
You just spent several days trying to come up with some desperate argument that the church fathers didn’t believe in salvation through faith alone, and the best you can come up with is that the church fathers contradict themselves?
Then why do you cite them in the firat place?
Or are you claiming that they REALLY mean the opposite of what they say, just like you do with Jesus and the Apostles?
It’s pretty pathetic in either case; you’re really not worth replying to any more if that’s the best you’ve got.
Pretty funny how Claud insists that the church fathers contradict themselves when dealing with me and then insists they’re inerrant when dealing with you.
Or he thinks that when they mean “faith alone” they don’t REALLY mean “faith alone.”
Hilarious.
And finally, the church fathers would denounce modern day Roman Catholicism as heresy and embrace the Reformers as the True Church.
What else could they do with a church that promotes sodomy in its priests, elected Pope Frank, and both protected and enabled the rape of children?
Just to trigger you, lol.
Which means that beside the reality that - contrary to how they are invoked - such "fathers" can contradict each others, and also were developing their own theology and which can be unclear at points - such are open to interpretation. And which means (to a faithful RC) not that the meaning of such or of Scripture is determined by the weight of contextual substantiation, but that what valid Scripture, history and so-called "fathers" consist of and meant is whatever Rome says they meant, and only judges those to be orthodox when they agree with her, which authority is based upon under the the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial veracity, at least as regards matters of salvation, which thus require assent by Catholics (albeit of different levels depending upon the levels of teaching).
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....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 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, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
“The living magisterium, therefore, makes extensive use of documents of the past, but it does so while judging and interpreting, gladly finding in them its present thought, but likewise, when needful [as in V2], distinguishing its present thought from what is traditional only in appearance. It is revealed truth always living in the mind of the Church, or, if it is preferred, the present thought of the Church in continuity with her traditional thought, which is for it the final criterion, according to which the living magisterium adopts as true or rejects as false the often obscure and confused formulas which occur in the monuments of the past.
Thus are explained both her respect for the writings of the Fathers of the Church and her supreme independence towards those writings–she judges them more than she is judged by them.” — Catholic Encyclopedia: “Tradition and Living Magisterium
in all cases the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them [doctrines] is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” — John Henry Newman, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation.” 8
Of course, whatever is invoked for support of this premise of ensured magisterial veracity in salvific truths can only mean what Rome decides based upon that premise. And which extends to the presumption that souls cannot even discern what Scripture consists of apart from faith in her which must tell them. Recognizing this problem of proving church by the Scriptures and the Scripture by the church then the recourse in Catholic apologetic has been, "when we appeal to the Scriptures for proof of the Church's infallible authority we appeal to them merely as reliable historical sources, and abstract altogether from their inspiration." (Catholic Encyclopedia > Infallibility)
Which means that while the would-be convert cannot discern what writings are of God yet he is expect to be able to see the Catholic (one of them) church as being of God. Which is simply absurd.
Thus rather than assurance of RC doctrine for a faithful RC being based upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power as in the establishment of the church (and if RC's made that their basis then they would be operating as faithful evangelicals), or even the weight of tradition, then their assurance is based upon faith in their church as being the sure and supreme standard on Truth.
And which also means that while Catholics often employ the authority of Scripture in seeking to defend their faith and convert evangelicals others to it, they are actually abusing it in service to Rome in seeking to persuade us to abandon the only wholly inspired-of-God and substantive record of what believers believed as the sure and supreme standard, and place our faith in Rome. So we should realize what the real basis is for their false beliefs and motivation to defend such.
Exactly the point I led him into making.
The church fathers contradict themselves and each other. Just the mere existence of “Protestant” ideas in their writings exposes Rome’s lies about there being 100% unity among them.
I don’t defend salvation by grace through faith and not by works by the writing of these ancient Christians; Scripture does that job without needing help. Instead it simply tears down Catholicism’s ‘proofs’ quite easily.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.