Who are the Catholics: The Orthodox or The Romanists, or both?

Me

[the_conscience]

I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"?

I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?

[Petronski]

Precisely my point.

[Quix]

Good points.

Regardless of our differences and fierce exchanges, please know that I do respect and appreciate a lot of the solid Biblical points you make.

May God bless you and yours this New Year.

[Cronos]

The fact remains that your question was wrong -- Annalex said "a Catholic is instructed to examine his conscience before presenting himself for Holy communion", to which you said "Interesting. So here the Roman Catholic is to trust his conscience, but the Protestant who believes in Jesus Christ is not to trust in or rely on his conscience. " ---> apples and oranges:

Annalex says about examining your concience prior to Holy communion and you ask a question about some trusting their conscience to follow the teachings of Machen like the OPC does and to make Machen some kind of demi-god if not God.
Why DO Machenites in the OPC believe that Baptists are wrong? And they also disagree with Branch Davidians on beliefs and Luherans and Arminians on episcopality or theology.

[Quix]

The most loving thing to do with some idiotic assertions,

is to laugh at them robustly.

[Cronos]

And the Orthodox Presbyterian C (OPC) believes that government should mandate religion to create a Presbyterian theocracy like Geneva and then throw out all Lutherans, Apostolics, Anglicans, Baptists. That’s the structure in the OPC

[Petronski]

Thank you for making my point so effectively.

[Cronos]

So some of the various APC, OPC, BPC, etc. of the Orthodox Presbyterian Clan consider Machen differently as saint, demi-god or prophet?

[roamer_1]

good post.

[boatbums]

You are a patient and persistent man. God bless you for all your well thought out and scripturally PROVEN comments, repeatedly. I don’t believe, sadly, that some people on this thread will bother to read, much less understand what the Lord has to say here in these passages. It has been so drilled into them that salvation is not by faith alone that, no matter how many verses are quoted, it does not compute. There is a spiritual blindness happening, a hardened heart to the true gospel. Which, I know you know, means “good news”. Tell me how it is good news that we can believe in Jesus but, in the end, if we haven’t been “good enough”, we will go to hell?

[Cronos]

The OPC had a break-away group under Carl McIntire that formed the Bible Presbyterian C (the BPC)

Strangely enough the BPC then split in 1955 to become the Evangelical Presbyterian C (the EPC), which then merged with the REformed Presbyterian C (RPC) to become the RPC, Evangelical Synod (RPCES?). And then, the BPC had another split to form the APC (American Presbyterian...)


All Man-made religions, dedicated to Machen or Carl McIntire or someone, like Mormonism and it's prophets or the Seventh Day Adventists, all man-made cults.

Why do you not give up these cults and join The Church formed by Christ and His Apostles, The One Holy Apostolic Church and leave behind these musings on the demi-god nature of Machen and other OPC (or BPC, APC, EPC, EPCRS etc. etc) cults?

[annalex]

His thought extends beyond the scope of an individual verse. To take a verse and apply it literally without looking at the context of the whole argument is to court error

Nothing in the wider context overturns the plain language of the letter, that God will render salvation or condemnation accoridng to everyone's work. The context qualifies this statement but it does not contradict it. Nothing in the Scripture is contradictory, and you preach contradiction.

Not surprisingly, you do not offer anything we did not cover together a half-hour ago. The faith is important and one with true faith will be saved. But the judgement is by the works, because both Romans 2 and Matthew 25 say so.

You can find verses that say "you have been saved" and there are verses that say "you will be saved" (you quoted one of them). That is because our salvation is not entirely in the past and it is not entirely in the future. It depends on our continuing works as well as on our faith. It is by faith, for example, that Abram crossed the desert into Palestine, and it is by faith the Catholic read about the necessity of the Eucharist and so do it. It is by lack of faith that you need kilobytes of fraudulent hermeneutics to read what is written in the Gospel.

Not will be, or might be, but HAVE BEEN SAVED!

Except it doesn't say so. It says γαρ χαριτι εστε σεσωσμενοι, you are saved, simple passive tense, not past perfect tense. King James, sloppy as it is, did not make that error.

This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent

That ends up in the necessity of believing in His presence in the Eucharist, does it not?

No one on my side is denying that the Catholic faith is saving faith.

[Quix]

I gather
that you think
that you are fooling
someone besides
the bloke in your mirror!

[Quix]

EXCELLENT POINTS, imho.

Thx.

[Cronos]

Again, if acting independently of faith through Him, they are missing the target. If Gandhi or Muhammed Yunus of Bangladesh failed to have faith THROUGH Christ, then they might perform a worldly good, but their spiritual good would not meet the standards which have made known to us by God, for there is only ONE name under heaven by which we may be saved and that is of our Lord Christ Jesus.

Valid enough statement to me (though of course, non-Christians wouldn't agree, but they would have reason based on their own beliefs to disagree), but you had said "Anybody performing outside of faith through Him, is acting in sin" -- why do you say they are acting in sin? Or was that just a slip and you meant to say what you clarified here that they were missing the target?

[annalex]

in scripture, the word saint applies to ALL believers. And you are the one trying to apply the suffering of Paul as merit to the sins of others...

As far is this issue of the treasure of merits go, anyone, canonized saint or not, increases the treasure of merits for others, as he suffers in imitation of Christ. Good point.

[Cronos]

If not through faith in Him, then they have been performed independent of God’s Plan, similar to Lucifer becoming Satan declaring his 5 “I wills”, seeking to emulate God and set himself as God, resulting in the fall.

My apologies -- you answered it here. But, isn't it wrong to ascribe the good actions of non-Christians to be independent of God's Plan?

[annalex]

HATE them personally

I never offered any conjecture, let alone !!!dogmatically INSIST!!! whom, if anyone you hate.

[Cronos]

placing their priority of faith upon Peter.

You do realise that that is incorrect. Peter's primacy among the apostles was for administrative and also an earthly "last-resort" for collective councils. This proved true during the early centuries of The Church when there were councils ad-nauseum about Monarchism, Montanist, Donatists, ARians, the teaching of Nestorius etc. where the Patriachs of Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople and the Patriachs/Popes of Alexandria and Rome (incidently the head of the Copts is also called the Pope -- Pope Shenouda II currently) along with the bishops of the Church met.

The primacy of Peter did not affect basic doctrine -- or else, why would the beliefs of the Syro-Malabar Christians resemble the Christianity of Europe in dogma even though they were separated from each other for over a millenium?

[Quix]

Good.

I don’t have a list of those who, in my view have.

I don’t have a list of those who, in my view haven’t.

I just know that there are clusters of folks in both categories.