No doctrines of fallen man, no traditions based on years of feel-good nothingness.
You are saying the decision at the council of Jerusalem was a doctrine of fallen man? Was it based on feel good nothingness?
The Doctrine of the Trinity -- feel good nothingness? Fallen Man?
How about the several doctrines of dispensationalism -- fallen man or feel good nothingness?
And no one between themselves and God but Jesus Christ, the ONE MEDIATOR between God and man.
Not only do we have direct access, we also have indirect access. We got access up one side and down the other. And the words of Paul to Timothy and of James encourage us to pray for one another -- which is nothing other than mediation and intercession. So is what they say based on feel good nothingness or a teaching of fallen man?
Imagine if there was One body, and One Spirit, even as ye are called in One hope of your calling. One Lord, One faith, One baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. “(Eph. 4:4-6).
That is precisely what we teach. And we teach that it is not some formless group, a subset of those who claim to be saved, namely the ones who are right and not the ones abode which the others say, Well I guess he was wrong to think he was saved. and while the borders of that body are difficult to determine, we say that you can be sure you're in it, if you're in communion with the See of Rome.
Imagine if there was ONE gospel that saves. “For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, NOT OF WORKS, lest any man should boast.” (Eph. 2:8,9).
So we teach. We add that good works and their resulting merit are all gifts of grace.
Imagine if there was a group of people called saints, and they were made up of all living and dead saved believers.
So we teach.
And not some elitist group that fallen men have decided to label and VENERATE as saints.
The list of "canonized" saints is not an exclusive list. That's one reason we celebrate All Saints Day, to praise God for ALL His saints, the unknown as well as the known. So we do not teach an elitist group.
And while you say our determinations as those of fallen men, how many non-catholic funerals have you been to where the pastor and other speakers assured their hearers that the departed with in Heaven today? How many obituaries declare that so and so went to be with the angels on such and such a date?
Now THAT's fallen men nominating saints, often with far less evidence than we expect before we make the sweeping statements made about the blessedness of their dead by non-Catholics.
Imagine if there were no group of people on earth claiming they alone hold the keys to the kingdom
So Jesus was wrong then?
and no one is saved outside their Church.
That is not what we teach, We teach no one can be saved AND outside THE Church. There's a difference there.
Imagine if God’s Word was studied, rightly divided, so as to be an approved workman of God that needeth not to be ashamed. Imagine being able to do this without running to a Church for the “correct understanding” of God’s Word.
I'm trying to imagine what it would be like if the jargon "rightly divided", which has the air of a shibboleth, were dropped. No running to Darby, Scofield, or Bullinger either?
And while we're imagining, imagine a body where every member thought it was the head? St Paul says "SOME [are] teachers," yet we are rebuked for taking some members of the Church to be our teachers.
Imagine having the Holy Spirit guiding you in all truth and not councils, and meetings, and dogma and doctrines of men and traditions that could or could not be the same day to day, depending on who is in charge.
I see three main divisions among dispensationalist teachings and in the development I see further little subdivisions and disagreements among various teachers and 'schools'. It looks like within 18-0 years at least 5 different strands of teaching have arisen. What was said to be true in 1830, rightly divided in the 1870's, 1930's, 1950's and 1980's. And you're saying WE change?
Imagine being able to rest in the Finished Work of Christ instead of not knowing if you’ll ‘make it’ or not in the end.
Until you suffer an assault of doubts or backslide and people start saying, "Well I guess he wasn't REALLY saved anyway." And then imagine growing up in that group and wondering if the feeling you have today is the "Real thing" or not? So you get 'saved' two or three times before you're 20, and still aren't sure, and feel condemned, even predestined to hell because of your lack of assurance, DESPITE your theological background.
You seem to think there is no chaos in your Church. Look behind the pretty curtains. It’s a MESS.
DO you know any REAL Catholics at ALL? We're ALWAYS complaining about this or that congregation or group or bishop or pastor -- and occasionally about Popes. A pastor of whom I am very fond indeed thinks both JP2 and PapaBenXVI are disasters! (fortunately I don't have to agree with someone to be fond of him.) For every Catholic who respects me for being a lay Dominican there are several who think I'm a kind of religious geek, am unbearably conservative, excessively pious, too bookish, not bookish enough, not sufficiently involved with sticking it to the man, etc.
I'd love to meet a Catholic who thought the Church was without chaos! Oh My Goodness! It's crazy. The one command the Church is really good at obeying is not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing. Only they obey that one not when they're giving alms but when they're, say, planning a meeting or a project.
8 months ago or so, I was asked if I would help with a book sale. About before the sale it became clear that what they actually meant was would I RUN the book sale!
Oh no, no chaos. No chaos at all.
lol. Many of the Protestants in these discussions were born and raised Roman Catholic. They know what the RCC teaches.
And by the grace of God they've learned it's better to trust God's word than the whims and wills of fallible men and their superstitious, ever-changing doctrines.
yet we are rebuked for taking some members of the Church to be our teachers.
No, Scripture rebukes you for believing those teachers are infallible and "another Christ."
For every Catholic who respects me for being a lay Dominican there are several who think I'm a kind of religious geek, am unbearably conservative, excessively pious, too bookish, not bookish enough, not sufficiently involved with sticking it to the man, etc.
How is it RC apologists manage to pat themselves on the back with every post?
Lots of us do know what the Catholic church really teaches (been there, done that) and we've backed it up from vatican.va. itself.
At the very least, there's a huge discrepancy between what the RCC really teaches and what FRoman Catholics think it really teaches, or what they think it should really teach, or what they wish it would teach, or what they were taught.