Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.
The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.
It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.
One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.
First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.
The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.
The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.
All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.
Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.
How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.
The Church acknowledges sacraments (in Greek mysteria) entrusted to His disicples and their successors (clergy), but not the laity. Our understanding of God's mysteries is that the work of the HS remains a mystery to us, as we can never understand how God accomplishes things.
The Gospels are very scarce when it comes to mysteries. The real "king of mysteries" was Apostle Paul, an apocalyptic Jew, and John of Patmos, who is credited with the book of Revelation, by all accounts not the same as John the Apostle, and, based on his poor Greek (as opposed to the flawelss Greek of the Gospel of John), and apocalpytic beliefs, was porbably a Palestinian/Syrian Jew who embraced the Essene apocalyptic beliefs shared also with Daniel's.
Of the Old Testament the use of mystery and mysteries is very rare, and when they are used (in two or three instances, such as the book of Job), they are used in the traditional Judaic manner, which is different from the apocalyptic usage. The term comes to an avalanche in the book of Daniel, itself a highly controversial book, where there are numerous references to mysteries in the same way one finds in Paul, and John of Patmos.
Thus, Daniel, Paul and John (of Patmos) stand out compared to the rest of the OT and the Gospels.
Because you love Christ, He tells us:
Rom 8:28 : And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Jer 29:11 : For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
In Jeremiah, the context is clear (to me) that God is speaking of the elect among the Israelites, specifically, and about all of the elect generally. God has the full power to implement everything in your best interests, so if He loves you like He says He does (and He does), why wouldn't He?
Has God implemented what He thinks best for Him?
He's omnipotent, and given His nature, what else would He do? :)
When one looks at the physical laws and physical constants it is as if they were precisely tuned for life. (Paraphrasing from our book, “Timothy:”)
If the strong nuclear force had been just 13 percent stronger, all of the free protons would have combined into helium-2 at the early stage of the big bang, decaying right away into deuterons, which would then fuse to become helium-4. There would be no hydrogen, no water, and no hydrocarbons. A decrease of approximately 31 percent would make the deuteron unstable and remove a step in the chain of nucleosynthesis. Consequently there would be nothing but hydrogen in the universe.
Water is another example. The hydrogen bond is the attraction of the electron-rich oxygen atoms of water molecules for the electron-starved hydrogen atoms of other water molecules. This in turn determines the precise H-O-H bond angle of 104.5 degrees. This hydrogen bond is what holds together the two strands of DNA — it also causes the crystalline structure of ice (an open lattice), which is less dense than the liquid form. Thus, ice does not collect at the bottom of lakes and oceans — building up to a frozen earth. Instead, the ice on the surface acts as an insulation, which prevents evaporation and keeps the water beneath warm.
There’s an even more unlikely process in carbon resonance. Within stars, two helium-4 nuclei merge to make beryllium-8, which only exists for about 10–17 of a second. So a third alpha particle (helium nucleus) must collide and fuse with the beryllium nucleus in a tiny interval of opportunity in order to make carbon. Lucky for us that there is a resonance in the three-helium reaction at the precise thermal energy of a star’s core. If it weren’t so, then most carbon would be quickly processed into oxygen.
And then there is the antimatter. Where did it go? In the big bang, both particles and anti-particles were created and destroyed in pairs — equally. They annihilated each other in a burst of gamma radiation. And yet one proton and electron per billion escaped this annihilation.
Moreover, that the earth is habitable is highly unlikely. Our sun has just the right metals and its orbit within the Milky Way is almost circular — which keeps it away from the galaxy’s dangerous spiral arms. Most of the other stars have elliptical orbits. Also, our solar system is located in a position within the galaxy such that it isn’t adversely subjected to the gravity of the center of the galaxy, and we don’t suffer from the radiation (gamma rays and such) like other solar systems in our galaxy.
2. Origin of life.
3. Origin of inertia.
4. Origin of information.
5. Origin of conscience (sense of right v wrong, good v evil, etc.)
6. Origin of consciousness (including decision processes)
Amen and more...
May I quote liberally from passages in your book, like the above regarding the delicate balance of our universe?... You and Baeety Boop put things so beautifully, I could never approximate the task in the little Bible Study book I’m writing.
This stands in direct opposition to the law of the jungle and Darwin's concepts of Origin of Species.. The setting and stage and props(speicies) of the drama of Life must surely have been orchestrated.. by intelligence.. The TUNING is and has been so accurate and designed.. Even the timing is distributed and set to a firing order of events.. An orchestration of non random wavelenghs of spiritual music harmonizing corporately..
Bruce came to understand that he does not belong in control of anything of God's providence because that is God's job, realized that he was completely a victim of fate, became catatonic, and now has his own room at Atascadero State Hospital.
It was sweet. :)
Um, I think you're illustrating my point.
""The overwhelming majority of mutations have no significant effect, since DNA repair is able to mend most changes before they become permanent mutations, and many organisms have mechanisms for eliminating otherwise permanently mutated somatic cells."
Please note they were specifying somatic cells. "My question would be what percentage is an "overwhelming majority""?
That is a difficult question to answer not because we cannot determine the average number of mutations passed from a parent to a child but because the role of a mutation, and whether it can be labeled as neutral, beneficial or detrimental, depends somewhat on the conditions at the time the mutation occurs but more so the environment the population will encounter in the future.
You have in your body, approximately 100 changes to your genome that your parents do not have, despite the repair mechanisms. Because those differences occurred through a change in the germ cells from your mother and father and resulted in alleles slightly different from the two found in your mother and the two found in your father they are, in a general sense, called mutations. If no 'errors' occurred during meiosis then every sequence of DNA found in your genome would be identical to the same sequence in either your mother's two or your father's two.
Severely deleterious mutations are generally quickly removed from the population, simply because the organism dies before reproducing. Moderately deleterious mutations can be passed on to future generations but tend to be restricted by selection. Immediately beneficial mutations, depending on the size of the population and the cost/benefit ratio can and do spread within a population and can become fixed. However the most important of mutations are those which are neutral given the current environment because those mutations have an ~equal chance of fixing in a population as they do in disappearing. A population can have, as you do, many neutral mutations that can become either beneficial or deleterious through a change in environment or additional mutations to the same allele. This is the only time we can ever determine if a neutral mutation can be considered beneficial or deleterious.
Even those neutral mutations which affect highly conserved non-coding segments of the genome, or those which do not change the amino acid or protein can come into play with consequent mutations.
In most cases, a change in the third base in a codon does not change the amino acid. That gives a roughly 33.33% chance the mutation will be neutral. In many cases a change in an amino acid does not affect the shape or affect of a protein, however, since we do not know how many proteins can do the same job in an allele we have no way of determining more than a guestimate.
"The DNA repair section is very bleak about any good coming out of defective DNA repair..."
You are assuming that only deleterious mutations can and will occur, this is a misapprehension based on the term 'error' which you take to mean defective. That is not the case. Error in this context does not mean defective but means a result of processes which should lead to identical sequence but does not. At any given locus, your mother likely has two similar but not identical alleles (they could be identical). The same for your father. If the replication was perfect then you should, at that same locus, have one allele identical to one of your mother's and the other allele should be identical to one of your fathers. If your allele, or more generally any sequence, does not match either of your father's nor either of your mother's then you have a mutation. This is in no way a 'defect'.
"Now I read this to mean that a mutation in, say an eye cell, can never be passed along to an offspring. Is that right?"
After reading some of the posts responding to your question I sense that your question pertains to somatic cells rather than germ cells so your question has probably not been answered.
If you experience a mutation in a somatic cell, whether it is an eye cell or not, it does not get passed on to your children. Only those mutations, or changes, which occur in the germ cells, or those which occur in the developmental environment will have an effect on offspring.
Your question was misunderstood by others.
You are correct that changes to somatic cells do not get passed on to offspring, generally. Sometimes changes in the developmental environment can affect changes to the offspring, but those are not passed on unless the germ cells are affected.
I don't quite understand what your last point is trying to say. Are you trying to say that evolutionary changes are claimed to be responses to external environmental changes? Could you please clarify your comments?
I think that we're talking about different things.
Oh, boy, but He is rumored to have hardened specific people's hearts. That's not exactly Him sitting on the sidelines and cheering.
To accomplish the ordination all He had to do was to leave them alone to their own devices, which He says He does several times in scripture, all the time knowing the results (e.g. Rom. 1:24, 26, 28.)
That means He is standing on the sidelines knowing what our choices will be. This is not consistent with your previous statements, including the one above. The question is: did He put those choices in our heads or not? If you answer "yes" then He is the one doing the good and the evil.
It wasn't funny. Gnosis is a noun. He asked me "What do you knowledge for sure Kosta?" You find that funny? I guess it doesn't take much.
No, he is not! He is saying that those who have received grace can lose it. Obviously only those have come into communion with Christ can be severed from Christ, and obviously only those who have received grace can fall from it. He is saying in a very plain language that you can lose your grace based on what you do.
It is not Christ who will leave you, but you who can leave Christ. Your grace is not guaranteed because man, not God, changes his mind.
I could build a mannequin that looked just like me and even put a computer program in to make it talk like me. But that wouldn't make it my child, whom I loved
And what does it take for a mannequin to become your child? Did He not come to save the world, FK? next thing you will tell me that means only the "elect." The rest of the human refuse doesn't count, right? I can see how racism and slavery were "justified" in the west through the Bible, if one asserts that not all human beings are His children, but only fit for disposal.
If we have His life, and we do, then we are His children.
He plainly tells us that some are His children, and some are not: John 1:12-13 : 12
FK, John 1:11 (one verse earlier) says: "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." Now, what would "which was his own, but his own did not receive him" possibly mean other than all the people were His children but not all His children accept Him.
God's right of passage is, as the Apostolic Church correctly teaches, a matter of us responding to His call and coming to Christ on our free will. Those who believe are welcome in His House. The rest is called. God came to save the whole world, not just the select few. He would have all men saved.
What exactly do you see?
Transitory parts of speech are legal in english especially american english.. What do you know for sure, you old Gnostic you?..
It just has to be that at least some babies are born guilty and moreso - fatally flawed, with an uncurable disease of evil, else the theology has God killing innocent little ones.
Even then, we have to be creative in reading Jesus’s words, else we end up with a God for whom it would be better if he was thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck.
No, this cannot be. If you remove this petal, the TULIP collapses. It must be maintained.
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