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.
Yes, I fully agree. We need only to look at what the claimed successors teach now, versus what we know the Apostles taught then in scripture.
AMEN Hosepipe! That would make a decent tagline. :)
Absolutely. And I was trying to figure the relationship between belief and repentance, and it seems clear that one necessarily forces the other. Neither can exist alone.
Then it seems to me that life in Christ includes an increasingly deep awareness of one's sinfulness and of the horror and evil of sin - hand in hand with an increasing awareness and gratitude for God's mercy and love.
In 1971 I was conversing with a guy who had conducted an effective radio ministry in the Mid-West. He was an Episcopal clergyman, back when Episcopalians believed in God (who me? bitter? Why would you say that?), so he had a parish. He said that his experience was that people would "come to Jesus" first and then, maybe a day later, want to confess their sins. He concluded that the awareness and acceptance of the love of God clarified (as I guess I just said?) their vision of how little they deserved and how much they needed that love.
In my alleged thinking, repentance is a lifelong project.
As I say, FWIW ....
...... Here is a page from the Blue Letter Bible ...
Now, with all that set up, I honestly don't know much about the Blue Letter Bible, or if it is any good. Wiki reports that it is now a whopping 12 years old on this earth. That doesn't mean it's bad, but here are some other tidbits from Wiki:
"The Project supports 12 English Bible translations, Hebrew and the Septuagint for the Old Testament, and the Greek Textus Receptus and Westcott-Hort versions for the New Testament. Integrated study tools include Gesenius' Lexicon for the Old Testament, and Thayer's Lexicon for the New Testament, as well as English and Strong's Concordances for the entire Bible.
I don't know how this thing works, but it appears that you've been doing some picking and choosing within a much larger arena. :) I have no doubt that Orthodox translators have translated everything there is into words that match what the Church wants to hear. That is fine by me.
In fact, as a Baptist, I do not even scream bloody murder at triple dunking. I wouldn't say "that counts as three baptisms, so it's no good", or something like that. If you want to triple dunk at one time, then go for it. I won't call you names. Now, if we could only get the same kind of consideration from some of our Apostolic friends, that would be nice. :) But of course, I'm not going to hold my breath.
The Bible simply doesn't say for sure, notwithstanding dueling translators across time. BTW, as of this post, you haven't addressed the problem that you have explaining away Matt. 3:16. A multiple immersion wouldn't make sense with the text.
Since it means multiple dips, what number is meaningful and symbolic at the same time? First there is the Holy Trinity into which we baptize, each person separately, so it makes sense to dip for each Divine Hypostasis (the way we make the sign of the cross, when calling on God, each Divine Person individually).
Second, Christ was dead for three days, and when we are baptized we die unto ourselves and are "buried" and each dip can represent one day of death before resurrection. Other numbers simply make no sense from the spiritual point of view.
I just want you to think of all the posts of mine that you have previously summarily dismissed because I was "rationalizing", or some such. And then, I'd like you to read the above two paragraphs and tell yourself that they are nothing like that. :)
Not as weak as what promted it.
“Those who have cash can show it. You can only talk about it.”
This is a passage from Pilgrim’s Progress where Dr. E. in speaking to Talkative demonstrates that her life is more than talk as can be supported by many of us who have had the privilege of watching her and learning from her over the years.
A work of Grace in the soul discovereth itself, either to him that hath it, or to standers-by.
To him that hath it thus:
It gives him conviction of sin, especially of the defilement of his nature and the sin of unbelief (for the sake of which he is sure to be damned, if he findeth not mercy at God’s hand by faith in Jesus Christ) John 16:8, Romans 7:24, John 16:9, Mark 16:16.
This sight and sense of things worketh in him sorrow and shame for sin; he findeth moreover revealed in him the Saviour of the world, and the absolute necessity of closing with him for life, at the which he findeth hungrings and thirstings after him, to which hungrings, etc. the promise is made Psalm 38:18, Jer. 31:19, Gal. 2:16, Acts 4:12, Matt. 5:6, Rev. 21:6.
Now according to the strength or weakness of his Faith in his Saviour, so is his joy and peace, so is his love to holiness, so are his desires to know him more, and also to serve him in this World. But though I say it discovereth itself thus unto him, yet it is but seldom that he is able to conclude that this is a work of Grace; because his corruptions now, and his abused reason, make his mind to misjudge in this matter; therefore in him that hath this work, there is required a very sound Judgment before he can with steadiness conclude that this is a work of Grace.
To others it is thus discovered:
1. By an experimental confession of his Faith in Christ. (Romans 10:10, Phil. 1:27, Matt. 5:19)
2. By a life answerable to that confession, to wit, a life of holiness, heart-holiness, family-holiness, (if he hath a Family) and by conversation-holiness, in the World; which in the general teacheth him, inwardly to abhor his sin, and himself for that in secret, to suppress it in his Family, and to promote holiness in the World; not by talk only, as an hypocrite or talkative person may do, but by a practical subjection, in Faith and Love, to the power of the Word: (John 14:15, Psalm 50:23, Job 43:5-6, Exek. 20:43).
By the same accounts as those concluding they could but wouldn't.
You are inventing their motives
So are you.
Wasn't the real point of healings to stir faith in the lost?
Did Christ abolish miracles? I don't think so.
"These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." [Mark 16:16-18]
This He said after the Resurrection, so as far as I know He neither foretold nor ordained that miracles stop.
You are a believer. Do signs follow you? Do you heal the sick? Do you speak in tongues?
It just seems to me to be too coincidental by half that all of the supernatural powers that the men of the Church have claimed to receive by Apostolic succession just so happen to be all the unprovable ones
Like everything else religious. What proof do you have for anything you believe in other than what's hidden inside of you? Can you produce "signs?" Can you float in the air? can you heal the sick, raise the dead...? Do you have any proof that Christ lived and died and resurrected other than what you believe in your heart?
No, I assume that they did have the powers and kept them
That's right, it's an assumption. Why would they keep them when the Lord clearly told them that they will cast demons in His name...?
True Apostles, yes. They performed miracles, and then they died
No, Christ didn't say Apostles, but believers...by logic all believers died too since no one, but a handful of snake-carrying charismatics, claim to heal the sick, etc.
Paul was exactly correct. Those who claim to have the powers of the Apostles are FALSE apostles, masquerading
So, then you are saying the Pentecostals are masquerading? I can't disagree with that. :)
I couldn't base it on that because in today's times, no one, to my knowledge, can reliably heal
But Christ commissioned believers to do exactly that, in His name! You have yet to show me some reason why the Apostles stopped healing and why not only the apostolic successors but all the believers can't do it.
What happens to you internally, what you believe, is no proof of anything except perhaps to you. And one can be deceived. As P-Marlowe once said "you have nothin'."
“It’s still talk.”
No it is the report of others who have had the continuing opportunity to observe a confession and life consistent with the Gospel. Luk 6:44 “For every tree is known by his own fruit....”
Of course it's proportional. Like He said
Giving equally can be meaningful only if proportional. If I feed an adult and a 5 year-old child with the same amount of food, either the adult will get too little or the child will get too much.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but that would seem to be the only interpretation if everyone has a fair shot at getting into Heaven
The NT tells us that God came to save the world and would prefer to have all men saved. So, that assumption is correct. Christ made it possible for all men to go to heaven.
The result would be that those with the least would be encouraged to commit the most crime because the penalties would be less
Less in what sense? Those who have the least are the ones who commit most crimes anyway. How severe a penalty is depends on an individual's perception. It's relative. If the punishment is meant to discourage then is must be applied proportionally.
If it is meant to stop (prevent) a criminal from ever hurting the society then death penalty and lifelong incarceration are equal justice for all.
A $50 parking ticket is meaningless to a millionaire. To someone struggling on a tight budget it can be a disaster. It this case, it may discourage the one struggling and have no effect on the millionaire, yet their misdemeanor is the same.
How does the punishment then "fit" the crime? Equal justice for all should mean that the punishment stings the same, which is obviously not the case here.
It's the invisible fruits again...There are millions, even billions of people who swear their experience is just as real and they are not Christian. What have you to offer them as proof that your "fruits" are real and theirs' are not? They will tell you they have witnessed a change; they are not the same as they used to be. They will call on others who "witnessed" the same (is it the same?) as "proof."
Show me your fruit that leaves no doubt where it comes from.
So you are programmed to answer, ...
That is an unglamorous way of describing irresistible grace. :) But of course, we experience nothing of the sort. For us, our human reality is much as you think it is with God. I would counter by saying that God's reality is very different from our own.
[continuing:] ... and apparently also to fail to see that "only one choice" is not a choice but an oxymoron. That's like going to an election with only one candidate and you must vote.
Boy, THAT would be MISERABLE, wouldn't it? :) Imagine it, you HAD to vote for your eternal destiny, you went in, and the only choice was God. Wow! How unfair can it get? It would be the same as that Saddam election where the results were 11 million to zero. Amazing. Why, all of us Protestants who think that must believe that God is the worst dictator in history, bar none. How dare He abuse our Constitutional rights like that! Etc., etc.
I know that I laugh at the above idea, because I know that I NEED God to be in full control. If I walked into that ballot booth on my own, then I wouldn't even understand how to make an 'X' in the only box on the page. I wouldn't be equipped, so I would just leave it blank and walk out. Pretty dumb, huh? Well, it's true. That is how UTTERLY dependent on God I am. And, may God bless those who are less dependent on God.
FK: "Believe me, I don't feel cheated or anything. :) Really, ask any Reformer if he or she feels "violated" because He did not respect their free will ..."
There are cases where kidnapped people identify with their captors and claim they really wanted to be captives. I think it's clear that this is not love.
Stockholm syndrome??? :) No, no, no. LOL! We're OK, REALLY. :) This is backwards. With Stockholm syndrome, the bad guys kidnap the good guys and then they change into bad guys (Patty Hearst). In the case of God, the good guys kidnap the bad guys, and then THEY turn into good guys. It's all in reverse and it all comes out for GOOD! :) It is ALL about love.
FK: "Everything I DO know has come from Him, nothing from myself."
How do you know that? He told you?
Yes, He told me. In scripture:
Acts 17:24-25 : 24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
1 Thess 5:17-18 : 17 Pray without ceasing. 18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. KJV
Whatever it is that I DO know would be included under both "everythings".
“Show me your fruit that leaves no doubt where it comes from.”
I’m not reporting on “my fruit”. I’m reporting on the “fruit” I observe in Dr. E. that is consistent with that described in the Gospel.
1Cr 2:14 “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.”
Not really. The Crosswalk Greek lexicon also lists baptizo as immerse repeatedly. The issue was not various Bibles but the definition of the word. Clearly, the early Church, which used the same language in which the NT was written, took it to mean more than once, as the 1st century Didache testifies. And that same early church, when the Apostles still walked the earth baptizes by triple immersion. I think I will stick with the Apostolic Church and its practice.
In fact, as a Baptist, I do not even scream bloody murder at triple dunking. I wouldn't say "that counts as three baptisms, so it's no good", or something like that
Based on what rule? One dip contrary to the meaning of the word?
BTW, as of this post, you haven't addressed the problem that you have explaining away Matt. 3:16
There is nothing in that verse that says He was immersed only once. The word "baptize," by the way, doesn't exist in the Old Testament, so we have to go with Greek meaning. BTW, Christ's own baptism is pointless, since He had nothing to repent of. So, in a way it was an empty ritual. The suggestion that the HS descended on Christ at that moment also makes no sense, given that He was never without the Holy Spirit.
I just want you to think of all the posts of mine that you have previously summarily dismissed because I was "rationalizing", or some such. And then, I'd like you to read the above two paragraphs and tell yourself that they are nothing like that
Sure. Given the dilemma posed by the meaning of the word baptizo the Church looked for a meaningful number of immersions. Or perhaps number three is what the Church was told and it was one of those other things that the Apostles knew and never wrote about it because it had to do with worship. The NT does not tell us how to worship, yet the early Church, along with the Apostles, did worship liturgically, based on Hebrew worship. Since they were all Jews, all practically all, there was no need to specifically write about the liturgical way of worship which was known to all.
Either way, the only meaningful number in the equation is three. The rest would be rationalizations.
Sounds great, but where's the proof? We can all say that we know "love." And we can say that we "see love" in others through acts of love. Others may see them as acts of selfish pride and self-aggrandisement, or getting a tax-break, or trying to impress someone. etc. It's still only words, and our perception .
The recent disclosures of Mother Theresa's own doubts show this deception. To everyone, she appeared as doing what she was doing out of deep conviction, yet in her own heart she saw nothing but darkness. To many, this is a sign of true humility and complete dying unto oneself. No matter how many fruits she produced, her prayers were empty words by her own account. yet she may have been closer to God than any one of us, because she realized that what she was doing was perhaps for her own feel-good exculpation and not from God.
Had her letters not been disclosed, her fruits would have been used as "proof" of God working through her, and or all we know He may have indeed worked through her more than we realize. But appearances can be deceiving and judging anything on "fruits" is neither proof of motives nor of God working through us.
Kosta: "But that "meaning" is "meaningful" only insofar as it related to your experience, not as a universal concept."
YEAH, D-fendr ............ what Kosta said!!!! :) If it helps our discussion at all on free will, this is exactly how I am looking at it, experientially. Any time I say that we have free will concerning salvation, I mean it is meaningful because we experience "normal" free will. It is fully real for us, regardless of what is going on behind the scenes in God's reality. ...... No offense, Kosta, but yours was a very astute comment. :)
Life is actually the way it is, even if we don't like it, or even if we think it should be different. Tough!
Amen, ain't it the truth. :)
What prevented Christ from doing many miracles in His home town?... Apply that to our current world.
The Apostles knew the Holy Spirit and worked with him... its the same today.. Many act like they know the Holy Spirit BUT DO NOT.. Healing is NOT one of the fruits given to the spirit but it can be one of the fruits of knowing the Spirit.. The Father Son and Holy Spirit are "One"..
Beware of any that would Hijack/Supplant/Impersonate the Holy Spirit from/in your life..
They are robbers and thieves probably hirelings(John ch 10)..
What are they stealing?.. Your future..
So you admit that was weak?..
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