Posted on 10/21/2010 6:56:49 AM PDT by marshmallow
From time to time I receive an email from a Protestant Christian who is trying to pick a fight with me about this, that or the other. Maybe it's papal infallibility or their idea that Catholics believe in salvation by works, or maybe it's lighting candles or 'worship' of Mary, or maybe it's indulgences or the Inquisition or some other old chestnut.
Here's my stock response: "Thank you for your question. I'm afraid I don't engage in debate with non-Catholics because I find it unfruitful. However, if you would genuinely like to learn more about Catholicism and have open and honest questions I'd be delighted to do my best to answer them. However, there is one topic I am willing to discuss, and it is my question to you: 'Why should your version of Christianity be the right one and the other thousands be wrong?'
The bottom line is the authority question. Where do we turn for the answers? The Protestant will say, "To the Bible." But this begs the question. We then have to ask, "But which interpretation of the Bible?" The tens of thousands of Protestant Christian groups and millions of Protestant Christian individuals all say, "To the Bible!" yet they all disagree. So how can that simple and noble answer be correct? Others will cry out, "But if you simply read the Bible and pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit the clear and simple word of the gospel will be made abundantly clear to you!" Alas, that is what all the other tens of thousands of groups and millions of individuals say, and what they really mean by this is, "The Holy Spirit will reveal to you that I and my group are right and the others are wrong."
Others will resort to individualistic sentimentality. "You will know in your heart a great and sudden peace!" or "You will have a great joy when you come to finally understand the truth!" How wonderful to have a positive and glowing religious experience, but alas, such things are easily counterfeited not only by self-deceiving wishful thinking, but also by religious charlatans, well meaning religious preachers who sincerely believe the religious experience they are manipulating people into is genuine, and also various forms of synthetic emotion producing chemicals, and when all is said and done the bottom line question still remains, "And how do you know that the emotion you have experienced is a valid emotion and the peace or the joy or the certainty you know in your heart, while powerful and convincing is not fraudulent in some way?"
Linked with this is a similar response: that is a certain and confident 'inner knowledge'. "I just know that this is right, and I can't explain it!" cries the enthusiastic believer. While such experiential knowledge is admirable the question still remains, "Yes, but how do you know that your feelings of certainty are based on anything other than wishful thinking or a fleeting emotion or the suggestion of that feeling by a teacher or preacher? Indeed this is a favorite tactic of Mormon missionaries. They say, "Just read the Book of Mormon, and before you do pray to the Holy Spirit and ask him to reveal to you the truth of what your read." Then, hey bingo! Lot's of people say, "Its true! I just prayed to the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of what I read and suddenly my eyes were opened and I understood that it was all true!!" Hogwash.
Finally there is the response which makes appeal to the simple words and concepts of the gospel. "Surely we can leave on one side all these complicated and divisive questions. Isn't the main thing that we all try to love one another and love Jesus the best we can? Isn't that really what the simple gospel of the simple carpenter from Nazareth would have wanted?" These are noble and beautiful sentiments, but again they beg the question and evade the difficulties. Apart from the objection that this reduces Christianity to being nice and good, one needs to insist on the necessity of the ultimate question and say, "Yes, but how do you know that you are actually loving Jesus, and not your own fictional version of what you want Jesus to be? How do you know you are not worshiping a Jesus made in your own image? You must have some sort of belief or dogma as well as your good life or how is your life to be distinguished as Christian, and if you have some belief then how do you know it is the one which will lead to your souls salvation?"
This is the bottom line question between Catholics and Protestants, and it is the question that I have never once had even the beginning of a satisfactory answer from a non Catholic. In fact, most often they cannot even seem to understand that it is a necessary or possible question at all.
Without a coherent ecclesiology and a universally agreed, external and infallible authority structure the question cannot be answered and the non Catholic can only resort to subjective sentimentality.
The Catholic answer of an infallible, divinely appointed authority on earth may be difficult to accept, indeed even the suggestion of it will cause scandal and outrage. It may be inconceivable for the non-Catholic imagination and may seem awkward and awful in application, but at least it offers a positive and intellectually coherent theory on which an ecclesiology and soteriology can be based.
“No point in discussing anything about the true Faith with a Protestant.”
Then why keep posting your screed with that sentence in it on threads open to both Protestants and Catholics? Indeed, why post anything on these threads at all if you find these discussions completely fruitless?
So you’re saying that Catholics think they can earn their way to heaven and don’t need Christ?
For example, I can't see Mother Teresa approaching the pearly gates and being told by St. Peter to check into the other place because the doctrine of transubstantiation is wrong because the sacrament is only symbolic, not literal.
Rome's caricature of heaven aside, Mother Teresa engaged in good old fashioned works-righteousness, a tenet of all pseudo-religions that estimates that one's works will somehow appease the gods. And she was a practical polytheist in that she sincerely believed in a Many Paths, One God soteriology. Her statements are pretty clear that she rejected Jesus Christ being the only way to salvation and she totally supported sincerity in any faith (whether it is Hindu, Muslim or Voodoo, as long as the believer is sincere). Now she did subscribe to a hodge-podge of Roman beliefs, and perhaps she may have believed in a real Jesus Christ, but she is also well known for pointing to the "least of these" and believing that they individually were Jesus Christ, sort of a wierd semi-pantheistic spirit blend theology. One thing is for certain, she rejected orthodox doctrines of Christianity. Her missions had nothing to do with salvation, it was very much a ministry of service.
Nor can I see St. Peter admitting some murdering scumbag into heaven because at one time in his life, he signed the acceptance of Jesus Christ statement in the back of a Gideon New Testament and sincerely meant it.
So St. Paul didn't make it to heaven for even he called himself the "chief of all sinners"; part of his résumé included the serial murder of Christians.
Thankfully, we don't have to rely on the heresies and blasphemies that have characterized Rome, rather we have the Scriptures and many generations of devout theologians including men of God such as Thomas Aquinas, who have debated extensively on every point of doctrine in the Bible and have left us their notes so that we can have a more comprehensive understanding of God.
As part of that heritage, we have a very mature understanding of the Doctrines of Grace that rely on the Grace of God through His Election according to His Purpose rather than relying on the moral relativity and subjectivity of fallen and corrupted man.
The Gospel Matthew 25:31-46 is what she had stated she was thinking of; she trained herself to see Christ in "the least of these." That may not make sense to everyone, but it makes eminent sense to me.
I don't set myself up as the judge of St. Paul or anyone else, for that matter. I simply make the observation that a man can turn from murder to being the greatest missionary for Christ in history (in the case of St. Paul) just as one can turn from being a sincere confessor of Christ to murder. It is a huge difference which, evidently, is a moral equivalent in your mind.
Not unlike the political liberals who want to be judged for their good intentions rather than their actual results.
re:why post anything on these threads at all if you find these discussions completely fruitless?
Copy & paste takes a second. I do it for the Catholics and people of good will.
No, I said:
...as each "Protestant" is just one person making up their own religion as they go along, they're all winging it, to themselves they are more infallible than a pope, they are their own god. There is no point in discussing anything about the true Faith with a Protestant. If I were to correct the misunderstanding in ONE person for ONE question of life, there would still be millions of other errors to deal with in that ONE person.
Ones beliefs are unique to him, as Protestantism has no beliefs that require adherence, each Protestant basically invents his own church of one. That is not the case with Catholics. The Catholic Church has doctrines that are unchangeable, and a Catholic MUST believe them, or he is not a Catholic. PERIOD.
The Gospel Matthew 25:31-46 is what she had stated...
I have heard the comparison made many times by all kinds of service minded people, but in the few times I heard her identify the poor and lame as Jesus Christ, it came off as an extension of transubstantiation, in that they actually were the flesh and blood of Christ. I once dismissed the awkwardness of the assertion as something lost in translation, but within the context in which the statements were made, the view you and I are thinking of didn't seem likely.
Doctrinal accuracy was surely not her forte.
So, do you think your view is the view of the majority of Protestants? Or just the Calvinist view?
Given a strict definition of the label "Protestant" I consider the two one and the same. I prefer the definition of "Protestant" as derived from the Latin where the classic Protestant wasn't one just rebelling against the system, but were Confessional in that they have a proclamation articulating their faith. This is in distinction to the so-called "non-denominational" and their ideological progenitors the Anabaptists.
While the Westminster, 1689 BCF, Augsburg, Belgic et al are well thought-out declarations of faith, I consider them guard-rails rather than holy writ. Given that, there is an enormous amount of agreement on key doctrines leaving room so that the "talent" rich believers can discuss and debate what essentially is differences in doctrine due to personal prejudices, presuppositions and world-views.
“Copy & paste takes a second.”
I’d say the time it takes to post it is a pretty good reflection of how much it adds to the discussion...
I gather you are not Catholic.
“I gather you are not Catholic.”
Nope, better stop talking to me quick. It would just take time away from my busy schedule of imagining up doctrine for my personal Religion of Me anyways.
Shows how very little you actually know about Protestantism. Ah well, it's apparently easier for you to hyperventilate than attempt to understand.
Have a nice day.
re: Shows how very little you actually know about Protestantism.
There is no such thing as the Protestant religion. If you had said “Shows how very little you actually know about the creed of the pure Lutheran faith as practiced in Germany by Briefwechsel Tischreden”, that would be another story.
Judging by what you wrote above, you are just another “American Protestant making up their own religion as they go along, winging it, to themselves more infallible than a pope, your own god”.
You do not understand/know the hierarchy of truth.
Honey, if that’s what you need to believe to sleep well at night, go for it.
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