Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
At the time he was right. ;O)
If you have problems with Catholicism that you can't discuss with charity and kindness toward your neighbors, including your Catholic neighbors, then you need to forget about them and work on your relationship with God. IMO.
Ultimately we are charged with working out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
We are also charged to obey the leaders God has placed over us; Hebrews 13:17.
Your Protestant, anthropomorphic understanding of The Father is not at all in accord with what the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church has always taught. It is a construct of the West which has developed since the 16th century. The Church, most especially in the East, has always applied what is called apophatic reasoning to understand The Father which is a method whereby we can try to understand by establishing what God is not.
"When we are His and obey Him he reveals Himself to us."
None of us can experience the essence of The Father or better put, share in it. Some few, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can experience, even share in, the uncreated energies of The Father, can experience a vision of the Uncreated Light. This, however, can happen only if one has died to the self quite nearly completely, so that our entire being becomes focused on God. Because The Word became Flesh and dealt among us, and by dying destroyed the power of death, we can and do experience Christ. By becoming "like Christ", we fulfill our created purpose and thus are adopted sons of God.
But do we "know" God's standards? No; God doesn't even "exist" in any way we understand existence. We see all around us the results of His energies, but not His essence.
"It is the rightful quest of life to get to know The LORD better and better. We can have a relationship with Him and yes He does reveal Himself to us. It seems that you do not KNOW Him or really very much about Him except that you think He is unknowable except perhaps esoterically."
It is not only a rightful quest, it should be the ultimate quest but it isn't a matter of "knowing", it is a matter of experiencing the Uncreated Light. Now perhaps you see this as being overly esoteric. Given the mindset of The West, especially since The Englightenment, I can see how you would feel and believe this way. But in the East, The Church has always declared the ineffability and complete transcendence of The Father. In fact, even the Trinity is a great mystery, at least the inner relationships of the Trinity are, the definitions of the Creed notwithstanding.
It may be that much of the apparent differences in what we believe are in fact nothing more than how we talk about things. But I believe it goes deeper than that. You apparently believe that we can know and understand The Father and thus can freely define Him and His purposes and ways. The Church declares that we can only experience His uncreated energies. I think that's a fundamental difference which goes beyond mere words.
I would say it was Calvin's theology from which the Westminster Confessions were drafted.
Also the Westminster Standards have been modified since they were originally promulgated, have they not?
It's my understanding that small parts of the Westminster Confessions have been modified over time but the general work of the Confession remains in tack. I have read through the Westminster Confession, the London Baptist Confession and several others. There is little differences between the main points.
You will be hard press to find a more complete and thorough understanding of Protestantism then the Confessions. You will also be hard press to find anything similar in all of Christiandom. I would recommend all Protestants read the Confessions of our faith.
And your belief that that God has placed the Magisterium over you is YOPIOS, is it not?
I celebrate sound doctrine, and the courage to stand in the face of false teachings.
"Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures, or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen!" ~ Martin Luther
To clarify, this doesn't mean that the Father is removed from His creation (contrast with the Islamic conception of their god). The fact that He sent His Son and Spirit to save and teach us demonstrate that the Father cares for man.
I don't. I adhere to them because I think they are closer to the text than any other option I have studied, but in the end, they are nothing more than words on a paper that only reflect what I believe pretty well.
I reference them only as a shorthand for which tradition from which I derive, not as binding authority on anyone. The ECF, on the other hand, are at least quite pursuasive.
Exactly; Thanks for the clarification.
LOL...and he's right, in so far as we Catholics have gotten used to doing that of late. :)
But speaking of Irenaeus, he also very strongly inveighed against "unauthorized" meetings that were not sanctioned by the local bishop...AND he also said it was a "matter of necessity" that churches everywhere agree with the church at Rome.
Have you read Adversus Haeresis? Fascinating read, that.
BTW-As many times as I have spelled Irenaeus name I still seem to flub it. Why couldn't he simply been called Bob?
NO, I am not.
Well said.
Certainly this is a fair statement of our Roman Catholic friends' confusion over the seeming disarray of Protestant beliefs.
After I read some Van Til I was better equipped to respond to that particular misconception.
If there is a definite, specific, single truth in existence regarding God, then it is right that men search for it, revere it and be led by it.
If we believe men are basically good and it is the world which corrupts, we will stand with Plato and the Greeks who thought the same thing. We then will try to align ourselves with whatever we think is of similar goodness around us to increase the good and lessen the effects of the bad. If we believe in a God, then we assume this is what He wants us to do. Life is then a choice between good and evil, a dualism with the war waging inside of us and outside of us, via God (or any positive force) vs. Satan (or any negative force.)
These assumptions color and effect our faith and our lives to the point where they actually become our faith.
However, if we start from the position of a corrupted nature (due to Adam's Fall), we accept the fact that we must always choose poorly. As Luther wrote, our human will is truly in bondage to sin. If we always choose poorly, we can never please God, and we are lost...unless God actually did decide to save some people by the atonement of His Son's death and resurrection, which is so great a payment as to literally cover the enormous cost of our transgressions.
Now if we believe this scenario of man's total inability to save himself, and Christ's free and complete sacrifice to save those who believe in Him through His mercy alone, then we will approach all of life from this perspective. We will read the Bible and find man's inability and God's regeneration and Christ's redemption and we will find the inward working of the Holy Spirit within our lives.
When this happens, amazingly, we will realize that everything else in our lives that is good and true is coming from this same inerrant source.
The question then becomes why do men reach different conclusions? If we return to Scripture, we find, like Paul and Augustine and Luther and Calvin found, that each man's walk is led by the Holy Spirit. Some are led to faith and some are left in sin.
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." -- John 14:26
And that's just the way it is, all for the glory of God. Basically, a very simple plan, ordained by God from before the foundation of the world. Believe and be saved, by the grace of God alone.
And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" -- Acts 10:44-45,47."While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.
As a Presbyterian, I believe it is the will of the Holy Spirit to work in men's hearts and bring them to faith. As a group, we challenge each other in light of Scripture and keep each other on track. Thus the Westminster, Heidelberg and Belgic Confessions are simply restatements of God-ordained doctrine as reflected from Scripture. The correct writings of men are used by God to further increase our knowledge of Him and our joy in His unmerited gift of Jesus Christ's resurrection on our behalf.
Along those lines, an excellent article is found here:
You are misunderstanding Irenaeus. I am familiar with your quote, and he is basing the knowledge of the faithful on TRADITIONS (which, as you should know, means both oral and written teachings. It is only later when "traditions" were known as "oral teachings") that were taught, not the congregation's understanding of their reading of the Scriptures! Private reading of the Scriptures was not common, nor was it done in contradistinction to what was taught by Tradition.
Regards
No. Just abuses of "doctrines".
Regards
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