Peter & Succession (Understanding the Church Today)

Ignatius Insight ^ | 2005 | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your views!

Yet, I believe A8 is correct in his assessment that your epistemology and theology is essentially subjective naval gazing that lacks radical exteriority needed to lift yourself beyond your own horizon.

LOLOL! I have no idea how you got that idea. My epistemology puts my own musings way down the list. Even logic ranks #3 there.

Before I get into the meat of the arguments of the subject matters at hand I found your appeal for insularity from judgement as symptomatic of basic defects in your warrants and perhaps a whiff of an appeal to authority.

Hardly. When I said “I’d rather you not judge me at all” it was in reference to Matthew 7 – because whoever is judging another will be held to the exact same standard he is using. IOW, it was not for my sake but for anyone making judgments of another:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. – Matthew 7:1-2

There is also that snaky problem Paul mentioned, that our judgments are self-condemning per se:

Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. – Romans 2:1

Or in modern parlance, ’it takes one to know one.’ or to put it another way, the one who can imagine a thing is the one who speaks of it. The naïve person’s mind is clean and thus he has no basis to judge. Conversely, as the Sermon on the Mount shows, the thinking of the thing and the doing of it are equally condemning.

Finding no cause for your appeal to insularity from judgement we move on then to your self-annointed framework for personal judgement. [where I am using the fruit/tree test of Matthew 7 and the fruits specified in Galatians 5]

Your protest fails on “self-anointed” since the standard for judging whether or not to listen to a “prophet” is not mine but Christ’s. And as to the connection between the fruits described in Matthew 7 and itemized in Galatians 5:21-22, it requires spiritual discernment.

Clearly you are consistent in your degrading of Creation and a skepticism of reality that imply things may be appearances only. If this is not full blown gnosticism it closely approaches it.

To the contrary, it is geometric physics (Vafa, Wesson, et al)

From what I witnessed Scripture only serves your immanent epistemology, fit to explain your existential situation not something that brings you out your internal world. I think your oft-repeated mantra is telling in this matter.

As I have testified on many occasions, God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways:

1. Through Jesus Christ who is the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person – by whom everything that was made, was made, and for whom it exists and by whom it subsists. (Hebrews 1:3, Col 1)

2. Through the indwelling Spirit who reveals Truth to us and leads us. (John 14-17, Romans 8, I Cor 2)

3. Through the Scriptures, which I do often quote as most of the correspondents accept them as inerrant.

4. Through Creation itself. (Psalms 19, Romans 1:20)

I am not in an “internal world” – to the contrary, those who value sensory perception and reasoning above the person of God are the ones who are living in an “internal world”.

Because of the observer problem, there is no objective truth from the perspective of the ego-centric. None of us mortals can step outside of “all that there is” – both physical and spiritual - for a panaromic view of reality. That is the domain of God alone. He alone is objective Truth. There is no other way to obtain Truth than through Him, i.e. the Spirit He has given us for that very purpose. (John 14-17)

This is not something I can reason with another person. Either they are led by the Spirit or they are not. But if they are led by the Spirit, they know some of the mind, the wisdom and the power of God. (I Cor 2)

IOW, hermeneutics are wasted on me though I'm sure many find comfort in them. But that's fine, we are not "cookie cutter" Christians.

[Running On Empty]

I would like to thank you for the posts you have made on this and other threads. They are direct and easy to follow, not tiresomely long, and also are cordial and respectful.

I also have noticed how very seldom you use the words "I" or "me".

It causes me to remember the words of St. John the Baptist: "He must increase, I must decrease".

I'm glad that you are here.

ROE

[Quix]

Now, now. Wouldn't want you getting ILL, Harley.

[Quix]

Overturning any Catholic dogmas.
= = =

Ahhhhh, but they have! LOL.

[Quix]

Such a harsh slave driver, you are!

LOL.

Cue Mission Impossible theme! LOL.

[adiaireton8]

Ahhhhh, but they have!

Please name one Catholic dogma that the Catholic Church has overturned. Anyone can toss out accustations without substantiating them.

-A8

[wmfights]

"AWESOME POLITICAL POWER has a LOT of attractions and bennies. They are hard to turn loose of or weaken."
__________________________

I agree and am not naive about the motivations of men, but I am also a skeptic by nature. I've found it comforting because the more you question the more TRUTH is revealed.

[Quix]

Reader's Digest . . .

CERTAINLY Holy Spirit is free to ENLIVEN, highlight, anoint . . . anything.

He actually anointed a donkey to speak sentences once upon a time. He MAY even have anointed a phrase or 3 from a Bishop or two sometime in history . . .

Certainly He can enliven something from The Reader's Digest, The Daily Times . . . something a snotty nosed kid blurted out on the playground as one passed by on the sidewalk.

Doesn't really matter the source. What matters is that Holy Spirit says at a given time and place to the individual concerned--

"You know that issue you've been so burdened about . . . remember that phrase the kid just blurted out on the playground? Apply that there. That's your answer."

And it is. And the burden lifts.

Was the kid enScripturating something new to be included in the Canon? Of course not. That's silly.

Was the highlight, anointed sentence Holy Spirit called the individual's attention to God's word to the individual at that moment? Absolutely.

With according fruitfulness in the individual's life.

[Quix]

Masterfully put.

Thanks for the encouragement.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

History as dogma, dogma a history; sweet work, if you can get it. Who can't win with this formula?

LOL! Great post, AlbionGirl. You know of what you speak.

[Quix]

That's what the Mormons say. So who should we believe, you or the Mormons?
= = =

Lots of counterfeits say lots of things. They say things similar to the real. That's what counterfeits do. It's of no profit to counterfeit a $3.00 bill.

As A-G has said quite repeatedly . . . GOD ALONE is absolutely trustworthy. I don't understand where the difficult vocabulary is, in that.

Trust GOD ALONE!

WHEN God says trust us, then it's foolish before God to avoid trusting us. When God says--don't trust Quix when he says thus and so--then it would be foolish to trust Quix in that thus and so.

Has this suddenly turned into rocket science? Am I missing something?

[Dr. Eckleburg]

It's of no profit to counterfeit a $3.00 bill.

Great line.

[adiaireton8]

Trust GOD ALONE!

Where does one find God?

-A8

[proud_2_B_texasgal]

This question of authority has been on my mind to. The sticky wicket for some is that it is either/or. Bear with me for a minute, my thoughts don't always flow freely.

My authority is Christ, alone. Ultimately, when I stand before God, I won't be able to say "This person made me..." .. or "I beleived that person..." or "I was a part of this church" . I am, WE are, ultimately responsible for our Christian walk and the decisions we make.

Yes, there are those called to be leaders, and while a part of their congregation I would be under their "authority", but never to the point that I would blindly trust ANY MAN. Scripture is the standard. If that man's teachings began to blatantly contradict scripture, I could no longer follow that man, or men in the case of an institution.

I think to the point that they are called, elected, graduated, appointed .. leaders are probably held to a higher accounting for the souls of the people they lead. But ultimately, each person is responsible for their walk with the Lord.

The AUTHORITY given to all of us as believers is the authority to reach others with the gospel, pray for the sick, cast out demons. It is SUPERNATURAL authority over a SUPERNATURAL enemy, to walk daily with the weapons of our warfare, which is not carnal, and to take authority over the enemy.

We have in us the SAME POWER that raised Jesus from the dead. We have the weapons. We have the authority. We are given the scripture to speak. We are given the Holy Spirit for discernment and POWER. We just flat FAIL to use it.

Jesus said that HIS people parish for a lack of knowledge. HIS people. That is not unbelievers parishing because they don't have the knowledge of the gospel. That is HIS people .. Christians, parishing because they have a lack of knowledge about HOW to live AS HE LIVED.

We are sick, dying, and manipulated by the enemy on a daily basis. Jesus showed us and told us how to overcome these things. Why don't we? He showed us how to overcome the works of satan, to be healed and delivered and set free? Why aren't we? Is that the wide gate to destruction Jesus talked about? The narrow gate being the way to supernaturally overcoming the enemy in every circumtance, the way that leads to LIFE?

God's ways are foolishness to the world. He uses the foolish things to confound the wise.

I don't understand it all. I can't 'prove' any of it. I can only share what Jesus has worked in my life, and in my family's life. How I have witnessed, and moved in, the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. How it is possible for different churches with different gifts and even some differences in doctrine, can work together as the BODY OF CHRIST to reach a community with the Gospel.

Jesus: Our ultimate, undeniable, indescribable, incorruptable, sovereign Lord and Authority.

To Him alone I bow.

[Quix]

Here's the dilemma: either those children will have more spiritual authority than you, or their spiritual authority will be equal to or less than your spiritual authority.

NO dilemma at all--except, maybe . . . for those trying to find them or trump them up. . . .

If those children will have more spiritual authority than do you, will you submit to them? But if the spiritual authority of those children will be equal to or less than your spiritual authority, will you too be sending "generals and their armies to their deaths and hell"?

Not quite sure what all I'll be doing. The Lord has made abundantly clear it will be interesting, plenty dramatic for sufficient interest and excitement . . . hazardous duty in a number of respects . . . and require the utmost in focus on and devotion to HIM ALONE.

Some folks have insisted I'll be talking firmly to the bosses of the generals. That would be interesting. What do I know emphatically? . . . prophetic things I tend to put on a shelf and wait to see what God confirms. And, some things have a longer timeline than others.

I just want to serve my Lord in whatever capacity He ordains and as faithfully as I can manage, by His Grace to cooperate with Him on. I want to never ever deny Him in any respect for any cost. But, He is the author and finisher of my faith and of me. So I'm growing in trusting Him on that score.

[Quix]

No. He's emphatically not. That much is easy.

Were He doing so, He'd be confirming it abroad in the Body of Christ I'm in touch with. He's not doing so.

That is a false word.

[adiaireton8]

That is a false word.

How do you know that it is a false word?

-A8

[Quix]

if your words have the same authority as that of the Apostles,

NO. I DIDN'T SAY THAT! I appreciate it more when folks avoid putting words in my fingers.

To judge something . . . one needs to know the goal, the standard of measure/criteria for determining whether the goal is reached and the context.

The Goal of Holy Spirit speaking to and through me is not to write more Scripture. What we have is quite sufficient.

The Scope of Holy Spirit's msg to me and/or through me is entirely different. Yes, the source is the same and the import IN MY LIFE can be similar or even the same. Because THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. But it has nothing to do with being equal to Scripture. Nothing. I'm surprised that such a mentality appears at all except that I know satan uses that spurious logic to cause trouble.

[Quix]

Probably not any time soon. Others may, if they wish.

The truth is there for those who care to dig it out. It's better appreciated then.

[Quix]

True enough.