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?

[Mad Dawg]

It's a variant reading: The famed Codex Shiffleticus, found under the bleachers at Scott Stadium at UVA by a drunk looking for place to sleep. It's a semi-eradicated palimpsest, scribbled on the back of a game program.

I wasn't that drunk, not really. At least, well, to tell you the truth, I don't really remember.

[RnMomof7]

“The last end of every creature is to attain to a likeness to God therefore it would be contrary to providence to withdraw from a creature that whereby it attains the divine likeness. But a voluntary agent attains the divine likeness by acting freely, as it has been shown that there is free will in God (B. I, Chap. LXXXVIII)

This shows the church fathers are fallible

Do you really think it is at all possible to have an independent likenesses to God? Do you really believe you can free will yourself to be like God?

Can God change His mind about salvation to someone that has followed all the "rules" he has laid down?Could God eliminate Purgatory and decide to send those souls to hell?? Could He change His mind and kick a few catholic saints out of heaven cause they get on his nerves ..always asking for stuff?? Just how free a will do you give Him?

RN7-”Let us consider a garden with out the fall..How would you understand Holiness with out something to compare it to. ..namely evil How would you understand the wrath of God and the Justice of God in that garden ..if there was no sin “

Free will!Adam and Eve’s free decision TO SIN.

But what if Adam and Eve had not chosen to sin..what if to this day they and their children never sinned?? What would you know personally about the nature of God? All you would know is a nice old old man walking in the garden that was a "sugar daddy " meeting all your needs ?

Without the fall of Lucifer, without the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve.. we would never know the entirety of Gods nature

Do you know the purpose of creation? Was God lonely? Did He need company ?

In your world holiness and love can only be known due to sin-which makes evil in control from all eternity if you say sin originates from God. You have things backwards

Please re read what I said.. I said if there was no sin or evil we would not know what holiness means or what it looked like.Many things only are understandable when viewed by its opposite . We understand light because of darkness.. if it was dark all the time we would not understand light or what it means.. God is not the author of sin, yet it is a part of His plan for this world.. He can and does work evil for good and for HIS PURPOSE.. there is NOTHING over which God is not sovereign thus He can make this promise to His children "28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. " (Romans 8:28)

[Mad Dawg]

The disagreement is that the view of Scholastic Realism is that "Freedom to sin" is a meaningless phrase.

IF the premise is as I characterized in the "What to do, what to do?" description, then we have the seeming paradox of God's freedom being limited.

If on the other hand we view sin as the loss of freedom, (supporting the "slaves to sin" language) then God's will can be said to be entirely free.

Other knots are also untied if the "Realistic" stand is taken.

It reminds me of the solution one gets to certain basic physics problems once one adopts the correct frame of reference. What is VERY difficult to untangle from one view, is immediately evident when one gets to the correct place to stand."

Similarly, in my view, once one tries to make a limitation on God's freedom a viable concept, the knots practically tie themselves.

[Mad Dawg]

Thanks.

How’s yer mouf?

[Judith Anne]

Agreed. It is all, to the Calvinists, a play that was set in motion at the beginning of creation with all the lines pre-written and all the parts set.

It is, to the Calvinists, God watching a pretty story He has set in motion and written the end of ahead of Time.

What the Calvinists believe in, is a dead God, a dead world, a dead story. They could not be more wrong.

God is alive, the Ultimate Living Being — He is participating with us in our lives, He is the Good Shepherd, rejoicing in His sheep that He laid down His Life to save! He is the source of all Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Joy, Peace, and Love!

The Calvinists dreadful need for security leaves them unable to love in response...they try to nail God down to participles and gerunds randomly found in the Bible, perverting the Holy Scriptures to their own ends...Here’s news: The last time God was nailed down, HE rose again in victory over death!

Wake up, Calvinists! Live in the Holy Spirit!

[Quix]

Yeah, patience and TRUSTING TO HIM are so crucial.

And we don’t know hearts well and cerainly not thoroughly well . . . if at all . . . and we don’t know all the inner and external contingencies and forces . . . we can’t make perfect judgment on our own at all . . . .

TRUST AND OBEY
FOR THERE’S NO OTHER WAY
TO BE HAPPY IN JESUS
ONLY TRUST AND OBEY

And most things take far longer than we think or like.

[Petronski]

...men are inherently capable and willing to do the right thing, thus negating the Fall...

Machenism (n): the state or condition of being adrift with a broken rudder and a defective compass (see also Orthodox Calvinism)

[Petronski]

What the Calvinists believe in, is a dead God [sic], a dead world, a dead story. They could not be more wrong.

I do not see the point in capitalizing the Calvinist god--a fictitious, semi-autobiographical excretion of Calvin's dark, sick mind.

[Mad Dawg]

The other way is to think of the will of the sinner as ALMOST completely unfree. Freedom in this view is the ability to know and to choose the good and to act on that choice.

Unsaved man can do nothing but sin in Gods eyes.

I don't see the connection between my statement and your response.

And it's ludicrous IMHO to attempt to parlay the misunderstanding of freedom into a suggestion or outright charge that saying that man is almost completely unfree is Pelagian or semi-Pelegian.

[RnMomof7]

Intellectual word games do not change a thing.. There are actions God can not preform, things He can not do for if He did, and violated His nature He would cease to be God.

Malachi 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not;therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

Numbers 23:19 I the LORD have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent; according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, shall they judge thee, saith the Lord GOD.

[RnMomof7]

I don't see the connection between my statement and your response.

If God can not violate His nature, we can see that unsaved men can not violate their nature

[esquirette]

“Protestantism—in its practical piety as well as in its theology—was simply a rediscovery of Paul.”

“Yet Paul has never been accepted for his own sake. Men have never come to him for an independent solution of the riddle of the universe. Simply as a religious philosopher, he is unsatisfactory; for his philosophy is rooted in one definite fact. He has been listened to not as a philosopher, but as a witness—a witness to Jesus Christ. His teaching has been accepted only on one condition— that he speak as a faithful disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.” ~J. Gresham Machen

“. . . sounds good to me.” ~esquirette

[Judith Anne]

Duh! My mistake.

[Judith Anne]

Intellectual word games do not change a thing.. There are actions God can not preform, things He can not do for if He did, and violated His nature He would cease to be God.

What kind of dinky little deity is THAT?

[Natural Law]

"Calvinist Heaven is based totally on the luck of the draw. A person is either saved or damned and this was all decided prior to Creation, so NOTHING we do has any impact on Salvation."

Exactly. So why would a Calvinist perpetuate the charade of a "Final Judgment", White Throned or otherwise, if they really believe the TULIP nonsense?

[Quix]

INDEED.

[Petronski]

Painting an appealing, pretty face on the racist segregationist pig Machen is an exercise in propaganda.

Calvinism—in its spiritual poverty as well as in its bankrupt, retrograde theology—is simply a exploitative and haphazard revision of the writings of St. Paul.

[Petronski]

The agreement was not an independent act for which Mary is due accolades.

That kind of depraved notion of the Annunciation turns the Holy Spirit into some kind of rapist.

Not consensual you say?

Sickening.

[Petronski]

What kind of dinky little deity is THAT?

The Calvinist god has to be small enough to have fit into the mind of Jean Cauvin, French lawyer and aspiring totalitarian autocrat.

[Quix]

Well put as usual.