FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS, CHAPTER IV, Papal Persecutions

Christian Classics Ethereal Library ^ | John Fox

[wmfights]

"Each Christian has the need to read Holy Scripture, yet each Christian does not also have the authority or ability to teach and interpret the words of Scripture. This privileged authority is reserved for the Church via its holy clergy and theologians, men who are instructed in and knowledgeable of the true faith."
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Welcome to Animal Farm. No thank you, my SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST did not come and allow himself to be sacrificed for me so a new group of Pharisee's could stand between him and me.

I don't mean to be too harsh, but resting the power of interpretation solely in your church has led to all kinds of beliefs and practices that are highly dubious.

To name a few:
Purgatory
The Mass
Transubstantiation
Indulgences
The Treasury of Merit
Pennance
The Rosary
Prayers to Mary
Holy Water
The Papacy

All the best, but I'll place my FAITH in JESUS and pray that I understand the HOLY SPIRIT when I'm convicted of my sins.

[annalex]

I am simply reminding you what the Church teaches and has always taught. If your beliefs are different, you are entitled to them; you won't be the first heretic who reads the scripture, nor the last.

[Campion]

From my perspective, as a Baptist, I see the opportunity for believers to be misguided when they depend on a church for understanding rather than "GOD-BREATHED" SCRIPTURE.

There is a huge potential for believers to be misguided in every possible direction when they rely on their own reading of Scripture and treat it as authoritative.

Baptists, orthodox Lutherans, Church of Christ, and orthodox Presbyterians all insist that they follow "the Bible alone". Lutherans and Presbyterians pour and baptize infants. Church of Christ and Baptists immerse and baptize only "believers". Church of Christ and Lutherans believe in baptismal regeneration; Baptists and Presbyterians don't.

None of them can even agree on what baptism -- the first sacrament a new Christian receives! --does or how it is to be performed, to say nothing of anything else. They all claim to follow "the Bible alone" but apparently they don't agree on what it says, and at most one group can be right.

When Catholics confront Protestants about these differences, the Protestants pooh-pooh them and say, "Oh, but we are really very much united." Yeah ... they're united in their hatred and mistrust of Rome, but that's about it. As soon as the Catholics aren't listening, the Protestants go back to denouncing each others' beliefs as rank heresy.

Jesus prayed in St. John's Gospel for his followers to be "one, as You, Father, and I are one". Sola scriptura hasn't made that happen, and never will.

[the_doc]

My problem with infralapsarianism is that it seems to imply God did not create some men as reprobates and some men as saints.

This is why I wondered whether we were missing something in the discussion.

I affirm a rigid double predestination. I believe that the elect are predestined to heaven and that the non-elect are predestined to hell. But it seems to me that this is not what the controversy between infralapsarians and supralapsarians is about.

[jude24]

I affirm a rigid double predestination. I believe that the elect are predestined to heaven and that the non-elect are predestined to hell.

I don't see how you can affirm predestination and not reprobation. By definition, if you elect some people to salvation but not others, and if election is the critical difference that makes people's destiny change, by default - without any affirmative action on God's part - you must have reprobation.

[vladimir998]

You don't have to believe the source. You are allowed to be as ignorant as you want.

[the_doc]

Yes, as one theologian has said, "Predestination is double or nothing."

[jude24]

It's logically necessary. If election is necessary for salvation (E => S), than the contrapositive inference (~E => ~S) is logically necessary.

[the_doc]

Perzackly.

[ears_to_hear]

I affirm a rigid double predestination. I believe that the elect are predestined to heaven and that the non-elect are predestined to hell. But it seems to me that this is not what the controversy between infralapsarians and supralapsarians is about.

As we would 99.9% of the time I agree with you on double predestination doctor .

The issue with the order of decrees is another matter

[ears_to_hear]

Is God omniscient? If he is one can not "logically" say that the reprobates were not ordained until God finished one task or another .

Act 15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.

To say that God did not ordain men for destruction until he had done XYZ first denies that God knew for all time those that would be with him in eternity and those that would not.