Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
This is pure conjecture. First, what is the low level "true" faith?
It is the faith one has when he accepts Christ as Lord and Savior. From there, his faith will grow, although he may temporary backslide for a time here and there. The point is that God will cause the faith of the elect to get stronger as we go through our lives.
Then, how do you know that sanctification begins?
Because sanctification only applies to believers:
John 17:17-20 : [Jesus prayed:] ... 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. 20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ...
Jesus was only praying for believers. There is no reason not to think that sanctification begins immediately upon belief.
Because you are tested?
Has nothing to do with it.
Or is this sanctification now a function of some other factors you didn't come up with earlier?
No other factors, just belief.
Second, how does it benefit us if finding "true" faith is salvific? Is there a greater benefit than what Christ accomplished on the Cross? Sure seems that way from the way you write.
Apostolics generally think that salvation/theosis is only possible at the very end of physical life, or afterward, so it is natural that you assume there is nothing for the believer after he is saved, except Heaven itself. In reality that is not true. The same time you spend trying to gain theosis we spend being sanctified. We grow in faith and are better able to serve Him. Our lives are better in the same way you would say your life is better as you conform yourself to Christ for theosis. We don't do it in order to gain salvation, we do it as a result of it.
Third, our sanctification make us more "useful" [sic] to God so He can finish His "plan?" Are we "helping" God along?
No, we are being used as His tools to accomplish His plan. In His love and mercy, He lets us experience that as participation. We are benefited the same way a four-year-old girl is benefited from thinking she is "helping" her mommy bake a cake. She is very happy to be a part of it.
This brings up some problems, FK. What about Judas. Was he also "helping" God accomplish His "plan?" Was he also "sanctified?"
Judas was used, but he was never sanctified because he was never a true believer.
Does this mean that somehow, in a twisted heretic way, Judas was really a "friend" of Jesus? "Helping" Him accomplish His task?
No.
After all, without Judas' betrayal, Jesus could not die for our sins!
Judas did not cooperate, he only followed his sin nature. No thanks goes to him. If anything it would be your side that would be thanking Judas because he used his free will and that resulted in Jesus saving us from our sins. Judas acted freely and that facilitated Jesus dying.
I have plenty of BAD and really dumb reasons to be angry at God. Maybe fewer now than I did once. But that is because God patiently let me rant, and then showed me what a jerk I am. Dust and ashes are an acquired taste, but I"m getting used to them.
Second, if we do, we need to repent, not just tell him.
Well, my take is that part of the Job story is that repentance too is a grace. Job rants, God reveals Himself, Job repents "in dust and ashes."
People think if we talk about a life of repentance, that sounds all gloomy. But really it's a life of grace.
Of course not. God’s revelation is His and not man’s.
OK, good. Then we do not have men to thank for God's revelation.
God is perfect; men are not. Example: Beethoven created some of the most perfect music that has ever been created. If a pianist cannot play it well, is that Beethoven’s fault?
Again I would agree, if we are likening God to Beethoven, the scriptures to the music, and the pianist to any man or group of men who interpret them in error.
Really? I don't think aversion to dogma would justly characterize, say, the Lay Dominicans over the centuries.
I'll try to give a more nuanced response if I can make the time later today or tonight.
I’m amazed at the traffic that simple report generated.
Amen. Thanks for summarizing the nexus of the initial report.
AMEN. The acquitted and the condemned. Great, glorious and merciful distinctions.
A person's worldview is their basic heart's commitment that governs their life. The Scripture is clear that you either commit to Jesus and bring all thoughts captive to him (2 Cor 5:10) or you're committed to something else, namely paganism. There is no neutrality. Liberal Christianity is, for instances, another religon because it denies all the basic doctrines of Christianity while trying to hold to the form. It is in essence pantheism. It is God manifesting and developing himself in successive stages of the finite either by means of ethical progression or even material progression, as in Darwinism.
Rome, otoh, is actually a synergism of Christianity and Paganism. While holding to the basic doctrines of Christianity it adds pagan symbolism to the mix. Where Pagan symbolism is mixed with the doctrines of God known only through his revelation there is always a watering down of that revelation. The great Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper described the antithesis with great clarity a century ago...
AMEN. "There is no neutrality."
I'm pinging a few others to your really, really excellent excerpt by Kuyper in your post #4634, and wondering what some of you think of it?
THANKS FOR THE PING.
Will try to get back to it this evening or tomorrow.
If it slips my mind, please feel free to remind me.
blessings,
Whoa! Usually I check the size of the thread. This time I didn’t, I’m sure you got your fair share of abuse and praise. God bless.
Wow. What a great line.
Accommodation to existing religion has always been its leading thought, and this accommodation it achieved at once by taking as poetry what the church confesses as the highest reality, by attaching to the holy history the alluring character of the legend and the myth, and finally by interpreting its actions of worship as mere symbolical utterances.
AMEN!
Hence the preference, which in the opinion of these modern symbolists, the Roman Catholic Church possesses above the Protestant, and among our various denominations the Episcopalian above the Presbyterian, in all its branches. Already in the first half of this century the so-called Romantic school in Germany led to the conversion of a great many famous Lutheran scholars and artists to the Church of Rome; and this can not surprise us. As with the solution of every vital problem, Rome's strength lies in her compromise. Rome understood perfectly well the two different principles involved in the antithesis between Revelation and Symbolism, and avoiding, as always, every absolute choice, kept to the Revelation in her confession, but at the same time indulged in Symbolism for her worship. So Rome possesses an elaborate dogmatical system, but without troubling the mind of the people by it. The church thinks for the people, theirs is the "fides implicita" the implicit faith. In that "implicit faith" to adhere to the church is considered to be satisfactory for the laity. And thus the Revelation being secured, clergy and laity both are allowed to indulge in the most exquisite, most splendid, and most artistic symbolical worship. The impression of a high-mass performance in the Saint Peter's, or in the Cologne or Milan cathedral is indeed overpowering and overwhelming. But the shady side is obvious, and at the end of the middle ages, the lower as well as the higher class could witness, to what sad results both for the church and for society, this compromise between Revelation and Symbolism had led. I do not refer here to the abuse. From abuse every system has to suffer. I draw your attention merely to what, at the end of the middle ages, proved the downright consequence of the system itself. God's holy Word almost ignored by the people. An overflow of mystical sensations darkening the mind. A general bluntness and dullness, rendering both the conscience and the consciousness dim and obtuse; and the distance between the lower and the higher classes wide and sharp. The laity overruled by the clergy. All vital energy broken. And the spirit of liberty and independence quite crushed down...
At that critical period God sent as a saving angel, what we all still shall honor as the Reformation, and this powerful reaction against Roman symbolism, partly checked in the Lutheran, and more so in the Episcopalian church, has been wrought out fully only along the Calvinistic line, in the non-conformist churches. These churches therefore took a fully opposite stand. Instead of relying upon feeling and sensation, they appealed to Faith, and faith here meant both the understanding of the Revelation and its personal application to the soul. They denied absolutely the necessity of connecting the Infinite with the finite by symbols. God had revealed himself, had revealed the mysteries of salvation, had revealed his ordinances for every sphere of our existence, and according to what Jesus declares, eternal life was not to have agreeable sensations, but "to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Not symbols but the "wisdom of God" was the preaching of the Cross. "I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I say," interpreted the apostolic method of teaching, expounding not to the clergy alone, but to all the saints, the mysteries of justification and redemption. — Here, therefore, lies the fundamental difference between our old Calvinistic churches with their bold confession, and Rome with its compromise. Of course there is the mystical working of hidden potencies in our mind, there is the perception of God in the conscience, there is the emotion in prayer, and there is the communion with the indwelling Holy Spirit. But these are the mystical gifts, and the aim of God's Revelation is not to abandon us to shady and dim perceptions, but to declare to us the truth, to lift us up to its understanding, and so to enable the children of the kingdom of heaven to kindle the pure and serene light of the Gospel, to become confessors of a sound and clear confession, and if necessary to shed their martyr blood not for mystical sensations, but for the inviolability of God's Revelation. Hence the circulation of their Bible among all social classes; the well defined confessions, which they unfolded as their banners; the substantial Scriptural content of their preaching; their purified and simplified liturgy; and finally their submitting of every creature to God's holy ordinances. So standing before the dilemma of feeling or faith, they choose for faith. Standing before the dilemma between sensation and understanding, they declared themselves distinctly for understanding. And as to the fundamental dilemma between Revelation given to us by God, and Symbolism conventionally coined by man, they firmly antagonized the symbolical system, and stood up for the all pervading authority of God's holy Revelation. This was the nerve of their strength, and to this staunch defense of Revelation over against Symbolism, they owe their imperishable glory in history. For it was by thus decidedly turning the wheel of life, that the human mind was roused from its slumbers, that the hidden energies of humanity came forward, that the direct union of the soul with God was restored, and that the liberty of conscience, the liberty of worship, and as its immediate consequence, the social and political liberties, were reconquered for every nation, following in their track...
AMEN!!! Sorry for these long excerpts from the post, but every word of this is joyous and confirms the power and the intent and the accomplishment of the Holy Spirit.
Symbolism in the holy precincts stuns, blunts and stultifies the organs of understanding, and checks their function agnostically. Our churches, on the contrary, did not cease to pray, with St. Paul, and "to desire that all the people of God might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding."
Symbolism throws us back to that lower stage of religious development, which could but stir the feelings and intoxicate the senses of the masses. Our churches, on the contrary, raised the religious life to that much higher level, which leads every believer personally to what St. John confessed, "that the Son of God has come and has given us the understanding that we might know him." And so also Symbolism subjects the laity to the mysterious performances of the clergy and hereby fosters aristocratic sympathies. Our churches, on the contrary, united both laity and clergy in one brotherhood, and thereby laid the foundation for the democratic pre-eminence of modern times.
AMEN! A foundation without peer.
(Free Republic) a brilliant place to burn the fat off of your world view and actually learn a thing or two...or three.
Great line -- "Burn the fat off of your world view..."
AMEN. We are beneficiaries of Christ's life insurance policy. He dies. We gain. And that life insurance policy was not taken out by us, but by God on our behalf from before the foundation of the world.
If anything it would be your side that would be thanking Judas because he used his free will and that resulted in Jesus saving us from our sins.
If I might add, Judas would be using his "gift" of free will, as the RCC and EO constantly tell us.
With "gifts" like that, who needs coals of fire on his head?
You must not be getting the FReepmails I am.
But I have a problem with it right at the beginning. I am talking about what seem to me to be artificial oppositions in the works of God, and you come back with real distinctions among classes of people. I am not arguing that there are NO distinctions and no oppositions (though it may be apposite to mention that Satan is not the polar opposite of God, but of Michael).
And here we go:
Symbol means a fictitious link between the invisible Infinite and the visible finite. It is derived from sumballein; i.e., bringing two different spheres together.[emphasis, duh]
If we start out by postulating that symbolism is fictitious, we must not be surprised if we end up concluding it is fictitious. But we must not be persuaded either.
What the soul want to realize is a grasping of the Infinite as such; and such an infinite sensation Symbolism only can produce, just because it puts an invisible stamp upon a visible or palpable phenomenon.
If I accept "symbolism" as an apt word to describe what we do (and I'm a little dodgy on that. Does he mean to be referring to the Sacraments or what? ) then I disagree with Dr. Kuyper on what symbolism is capable of or useful for or something like that. I don't think it so much lets me grasp ("produce"s "a grasping of the Infinite") as heightens and focusses my longing.
[And what does he mean by "Spiritism"? I'm not sure what he's saying there.)
Darn. I have to say, with frustration, that to me his second paragrpah illustrates precisely the artificiality of the dichotomies I'm trying to comprehend. There was a time when revelation was tactile, undeniably "sensible". A man crouched doodling in the sand, a touched hem of a garment -- these are all sensible.
The left hand and the right are also "opposed one to another by principle", by the principle of "handedness". But they still work together.
Further, I'm not sure the opposition of symbol and revelation is not a straw man. That is, I don't look to the Veneration of the Cross (which I'm thinking might qualify as a symbol) for Doctrine, or for "discursive" apprehension of Divine Truth. In fact, I consider that symbolic activity a response to revelation, not a bearer of it. It MIGHT conceivably, but not essentially, be an occasion of revelation.
(How very sort of Romantic post-Hegelian he is! Interesting guy!)
Paragraph 3 of this passage ("Such is the bifurcation") gives me pause. I mean I get the "history of Philosophy" thing. I was quite the Hegelian for a year or so there back in, say 1970 and into '71 (then God tapped me on the shoulder with a sledge hammer ...) But I don't get how, in the history of Xty the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's was a particular bifurcation. But wow, do I share his horror (paragraph 4: "No doubt...") at the "distinguished adherent of the new system"! Self-congratulatory gnosticism rears its raddled head.
Paragraph 5, "hence the preference": Okay. NOW we get to Rome. I see. The argument so far amounts to, "Because symbolists like Roman type worship, therefore Rome is wrong." So as a place marker I have to put in: because right wing wackos like those guys who protest at funerals call themselves "Baptists" May I conclude something negative about the Baptist strand??
"Rome's strength lies in her compromise". "avoiding, as always, every absolute choice,". Eveery one? The last Western Church with an official body capable of giving an official stand and taking uncompromising stands on Artificial Birth Control and Abortion is avoiding every absolute choice? BEfore this is written The IMmaculate Conception is defined and after the Assumption is defined, and we are told we are avoiding EVERY absolute choice?
We may be avoiding HIS choice between what HE calls Symbolism and Revelation, a distinction which, as I pointed out earlier, seems to overlook the Incarnation, but "every absolute choice" indicates to me that his urge to find Rome wrong has over-ridden his judgment.
It is unrealistic to take the magnificent worship at St. Peter's or at the great European Cathedrals as usual or typical. The guy is taking an extreme and putting it forth as common. He hears, maybe even witnesses the magnificent ceremonial, and overlooks the significance of the weary, distracted priest and the slack-jawed, snot-nosed altar boy mumbling Mass responses before a gaggle of dowagers in some neglected side-chapel. The simple daily said Mass, the usual, is overlook in favor of the rare and magnificent, and on this carelss approach to data an indictment is laid. No sale.
And as he cherry-picks his liturgical data, he also cherry picks his temporal sample. The Laity, such wimps and wussies as Catherine of Sienna, beaten down and uncaring? Maybe in the early 16th century, and maybe when he was writing (though I doubt it) but ..
Well, all I have is my experience of a parish with several different adult classes going on at once, both Bible-study and Theology - for teens through seniors (I take Sunday School for the kiddies as stipulated), lay-organized devotions -- heck, a Lay Dominican taught a really fine, the Bible for beginners class last Fall. Not bad at all.
In my previous parish of around 40-60 Sunday attendance I had a weekly Bible class with 6-10 people every Sunday. I read that from BEFORE Vatican II reading the Bible was an indulgenced activity.
Further, back to "sampling". One of the amusing things I've noticed about US Zen Buddhists is that they compare the Sunday of their childhood to the stories of Zen Masters and the intense atmosphere of the Zendo during a retreat. They don't realize how very unrepresentative the anecdotes and the sesshin are.
Here Dr. (as I presume him to be) Kuyper compares the Catholics her may have observed from a distance and know about by reputation to... to what? To every person attending a reform church on a drowsy summer Sunday, listening to an interminable sermon of indeterminate point? To Tom Sawyer's church? Or to the church where he or his colleagues are preaching and where the presumably intelligent and committed members stay after for coffee and conversation or invite him to their homes.
As I like to say, always remember that 100 IQ is average! A cleric is not always in position to evaluate his own congregation, because those who are bored, half-hearted, uncommitted, etc. don't cluster around him. It's the opposite of the US college student and Zen. Dr. Kuyper, presumably not speaking at a small church outside Moline IL late on a July morning, but rather at a large and exciting parish, maybe at a lecture where the audience is self-selected for interest or to students who, more or less, have chosen his classes and must do the homework, concludes from his rewarding experience that Reform Churches are just more involved, more full of vitality than the oppressed Catholic laity.
But his experience of Catholics is derived from an entirely different type of population and a different set of anecdotes. I had the good fortune to take part in a sparkling discussion of what it means to say that Jesus "did all things well" -- not ONE priest in sight, not ONE -- and we ranged over the virtues, especially temperance, and the disordered affections and impulses of fallen man as indicated in music and literature and as addressed in prayer and the study of Scripture and the Fathers. Dr. Kuyper would have us believe that all the laity are crushed and ignorant and kept so by their clergy, and expects us to think that there are no members of reform churches with 100 or lower IQs and ADHD and disordered lives, and then wants that comparison to demonstrate something about Catholics, Symbolism and Revelation? It won't do. It doesn't describe the Devotio Moderna of the Late Middle Ages and other lay movements.
TO sum up. Thank you for presenting this articulation of the difference. It is very interesting, and despite some of what strike me as errors, there's no question that Kuyper is a thoughtful and pious guy. I do think that there is a common urge among religious thinkers to present a category of deviation or error which will explain the broad way which leads away from the Truth. As such, the passage is more a description of a point of view than an argument as such. And, IMHO, it indicates that the POV is, in part, based on a common error of what I'm calling "sampling". For that and other reasons, this passage, although it does give me something to think about, does not pose a challenge to me (on the always dubious assumption that I understood it, that is.)
Thanks again. I hope I was responsive (and I wish I got paid by the hour ...)
At bottom is the question "Who do you believe?" If one believes the church or a man - instead of God - he is in trouble. Only Christ saves.
And yet many evidently cannot discern the difference. No wonder some see life where there is none and end up becoming literally albeit often without malice, worshippers of things instead of worshippers of God.
And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus.
And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid.
And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.
And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves. - Mark 9:2-8
Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43
He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. - John 12:48
Where do we find that part in the Bible,Dear Brother?
....Or should I say where do you twist the Scriptures to make this fit?
“”Symbolism is the grasping of something outward and material, upon which the imagination may put the stamp of the unseen and unspeakable””
I'll bet you have no problem with the pagan goddess lady liberty in NY harbor though?
Better throw away pictures of loved ones too!
We can trace back veneration of relics and symbols to the earliest of Christians,like the ones who admired the life of Saint Polycarp-who was a Disciple of Saint John. They even brought the bones in as reminders
“We took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place, where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom.”
(The Martyrdom of Polycarp, dated to about 150 AD.)
Saint Jerome also wrote..
“We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are. (Ad Riparium, XXII)”
And you trusted This Blessed Saint during Bible Canon. Correct?
From Kuyper “”nor Symbolism proper, has thus far made any noticeable intrusion into our Calvinistic services.””
Right on target!
Instead they replace Christian services with the words “calvinistic services “.
It is the mind of John Calvin that gets the worship.
Perhaps Calvin should have read more Saint Augustine,since he used other writings from the Blessed Saint.
From Saint Augustine..
“If a father's coat or ring, or anything else of that kind, is so much more cherished by his children, as love for one's parents is greater, in no way are the bodies themselves to be despised, which are much more intimately and closely united to us than any garment; for they belong to man's very nature.” It is clear from this that he who has a certain affection for anyone, venerates whatever of his is left after his death, not only his body and the parts thereof, but even external things, such as his clothes, and such like. Now it is manifest that we should show honor to the saints of God, as being members of Christ, the children and friends of God, and our intercessors.” Saint Augustine(De Civ. Dei i, 13
Life is long, God willing.
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