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To: Augustinian monk
Aren't you ever struck by the obvious contradiction in Protestants, on the one hand, asserting that the Scriptures are clear and perspicuous to every believer; and, on the other, denouncing, not only Rome, but each other as heretics and apostates ... as this article itself does????

This has been a built-in, Mack truck-sized hole in your theology and ecclesiology from the very beginning. It's not a new thing, and it didn't start with Robert Schuller and Rick Warren.

It started with Martin Luther, or even before him. Luther insisted that he had every right to call the Pope antiChrist and decide for himself what Scripture meant, but before his death, he bitterly complained that every milkmaid was now claiming the same right that he had claimed previously! (Of course, to justify himself and his rebellion, he had already had to claim for the milkmaid precisely the right he now expected her not to exercise.)

Protestants who are coming to Rome because they've thought things through carefully often enough are coming because they see the same glaring illogic that bothered Luther.

The only resolution possible within the Protestant framework is to either set up a de facto Pope (either one's denomination, or one's minister, or one's self), or to simply walk away from the idea that truth is objectively knowable.

The first one just pushes the contradiction a bit further away, it doesn't really solve it.

The second one ultimately destroys any semblance of Christian faith. And it's going down that road that has destroyed any number of mainline Protestant denominations, and will continue to do so. It isn't crypto-Catholicism, nor is it really a repudiation of the reformation. It's following reformation ecclesiology to its logical and self-destructive end.

110 posted on 05/02/2008 8:49:49 PM PDT by Campion
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To: Campion
Protestants who are coming to Rome because they've thought things through carefully often enough are coming because they see the same glaring illogic that bothered Luther.

Not to mention the barrenness of using theater as a cheap imitation for the action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of congregants.

125 posted on 05/02/2008 10:23:24 PM PDT by papertyger
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To: Campion

God Himself preserves His Body, the true Church of Christ. Not an edifice, not a denomination, but US, His Body.


679 posted on 05/08/2008 3:48:04 PM PDT by Marysecretary (.GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL)
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