As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate Shifts to Heresy Accusation

Christianity Today ^ | 6-18-2012 | Weston Gentry

[fishtank]

As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate Shifts to Heresy Accusation Hundreds, including seminary presidents, have signed a statement on salvation criticized by both Reformed and Arminian theologians. Weston Gentry [ posted 6/18/2012 ] A statement by a non-Calvinist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has launched infighting within the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and tensions are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans.

[D-fendr]

We don’t trust man. We trust God.

You trust man, yourself or Calvin, when you determine what scripture means, dogma, doctrine, etc.

E.g., according to you God, says scripture alone, faith alone, salvation by election, totally depraved...

You claim "God" for this, but...

[Diamond]

If Paul was teaching sola scriptura why does Paul teach that he is giving Revelation from God orally?

Because there was a finite period of time in which the Apostles were still alive and transmitting the Gospel orally?

That there was a finite period of time in which the Apostles were still alive and teaching orally and said teachings were being inscripturated does not prove the Roman concept of Tradition, whatever that ambiguous and amorphous concept may actually currently mean.

Why do you simply assume that the content of the unwritten traditions referred to by Paul is different from that which was written down? You never inform us of any of its content. What, exactly, is the information content of this unwritten Tradition referred to by Paul? Please produce the content. If you cannot produce any of it then how in the world could you possibly you know that the information content of the two is different?

To conclude from the mere fact that at one time the Gospel was given orally it necessarily follows that the unwritten content is therefore different, and that God thereby intended an additional binding rule of faith other than Scripture via Tradition, and not only that, but an extra-scriptural rule of faith to be administered exclusively by Rome, requires such gigantic, unfounded leaps of logic that it defies description.

Let me try anyway. It's like watching the current Supreme Court "interpret" the Constitution.

Let's keep it simple. The verse prior to the one you quoted from 2 Thessalonians 2 speaks of the Gospel. If you have any of the content of the oral teaching of the Apostles regarding the Gospel that is different that what is preserved in Scripture, let's see it.

Cordially,

[Springfield Reformer]

You trust man, yourself or Calvin the Pope, when you determine what scripture means, dogma, doctrine, etc.

There, fixed it.

Your move.

Doncha love chess games where they copy each others moves? But that can only last for so many moves.

[D-fendr]

What results? Calvin was responsible for creating..

No, results in dogma and doctrine.

You cite verses that prove God declares man evil. I cite verses that prove God declares man good.

Dueling verses.

We can trade proof texts forever, to no end.

So I compare results - what's your dogma and doctrine?

Mine is orthodox; yours Calvinist. I compare what these say about man and God and the relationship between God and man.

I don't care how you get there, we've seen all manner of doctrine claim scriptural proof.

And under the doctrine of sola scriptura, they all have equal authority to you. So, unless you claim to be the Sola Scriptura Magisterium, you absolutely no authority over my views of scripture. If you wish links to scriptural rebuttals, I'll try to help; but I believe a) you've likely seen them and b) you wouldn't change your view from Calvinism.

Anyway, I just illustrate and confirm your/Calvin's view, hold them up to the light as contrary to orthodox Christian faith. You can get your views from Calvin, from divination, from parsing verses, whatever you wish. However you get there, you've made a wrong turn from orthodox Christian teaching and interpretation to heretical views and interpretation.

[D-fendr]

Actually I trust the Church that Christ established, and gave authority to, the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Holy Scripture is her work product; she wrote, selected, preserved it, and she’s responsible for its interpretation in key matters.

Such as the Most Holy Trinity, the Nicene Creed that you mentioned earlier.

Obviously I think sola scriptura a far inferior doctrine - each person his own authority. Not what Christ established, not a method for transmitting what He taught, most certainly a method that cannot result in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

Summarizing again, sola scriptura is unbiblical, unhistorical and impractical.

Other than that, you are welcome to it!

:)

[D-fendr]

Thanks for your reply.

No where does Christ say folks will write a New Testament, there will be an official canon somehow and this and only this is what you'll use to know my teaching.

He does, however, establish His Church, give it authority, select his messengers and, as we see in scripture, they select their replacements, and so on.

This is the way Paul taught, the Apostles and their successors teach. This is biblical where sola scriptura is not.

The teaching and transmission of the correct principles of Christian faith is through the Church, both orally and written - with the written interpreted by the Church - and by other means.

Not everything religious is capable of reducing to words, and not all teaching can be given and graded by words. This is not math. It involves people transmitting knowledge on all levels to other people.

If you wish some examples of words transmitted through the Church, a good source is St. John Damascene who produced a master work of compiling Orthodox teaching of the early Church. You can read this online: An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St John Damascene.

[Springfield Reformer]

“I trust the Church”

What? Your church has no people in it? I say it does, and thus your doctrine comes from a man, or a group of men, who have made a claim to authority.

I asked you this before, but you either missed or ignored it. I’ll rephrase it. How did you personally determine whether the Roman claim to authority is correct? Was it just an intuition you had, or did someone reason you into it, or what? And if some such event occurred, in you personally, how do you personally know you made the right determination?

My point is this. Somewhere in there, you had to choose to believe what someone told you. That makes your whole argument against private judgment inconsistent with your own experience, and with ours.

You see, we Sola Scriptura folks would love to bypass private judgment and tap directly into some infallible transmission of the mind of God to each of us personally. As much as your framework tries to deny it, we do love God, and wish to be as connected to him as possible.

But to be honest with ourselves, we have confronted the harsh reality that in this imperfect life, when any of us believes anything, it is because we have adjudicated truth, and being fallible, we always have the possibility of being wrong.

In fact, you are asking us to do that now. You are asking us to determine that you are right. That determination would also be a private judgment, and just as likely to be wrong as anything else we ever chose to believe, because we are fallible, and if we believe you, we just might be wrong.

So throw us a bone here. At least admit that you have read this inquiry about private judgment, and that you either have no answer for it, or show us some brilliant new solution no one has ever told us before on how to believe, without first privately adjudicating the truth of the thing to be believed.

Otherwise, Sola Scriptura, Sola Ecclesia, Sola D-Fendr, it’s all the same. We must decide, and from your own stated rejection of God granting belief, where else can that decision begin, but in us?

[Diamond]

And I thank you for your reply and the link.

e does, however, establish His Church, give it authority, select his messengers and, as we see in scripture, they select their replacements, and so on.

This is the way Paul taught, the Apostles and their successors teach. This is biblical where sola scriptura is not.

Sola scriptura is not a denial of the Church's authority to teach God's truth. And second, it is not a denial that God's Word has been spoken.

If you wish some examples of words transmitted through the Church, a good source is St. John Damascene who produced a master work of compiling Orthodox teaching of the early Church. You can read this online: An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St John Damascene.

From the book, Early Christian Doctrines by Roman Catholic scholar J.N.D. Kelley, as found on Google Books:

St. John Damascene is no exception. He refers to practices or customs, not doctrine. Nowhere does he write that there are doctrines of the Christian faith that are not taught in Scripture and that are only transmitted orally from the apostles.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

I apologize for the lack of an italics tag in your second sentence. Your words are:

He does, however, establish His Church, give it authority, select his messengers and, as we see in scripture, they select their replacements, and so on.

This is the way Paul taught, the Apostles and their successors teach. This is biblical where sola scriptura is not.

[stpio]

“You can try to show me where I’m wrong without berating me for using legitimate facts of history, or you can keep on with your current approach...

As for me, I’m perfectly fine with private judgment. Nothing in the Scriptures prohibits it.”

~ ~ ~

You’re accusing, quit being so defensive, I replied to your comments.

Catholics are repeatedly showing the error of following
Protestant heresies. Geee...so stuck, you put it in your
forum name.

Pope Damasus was given the authority by God to name the
Canon. I notice you do not reply to it, my last post, only
personal comments here.

And you didn’t reply to my post to you concerning what
Prophecy (private revelation) states for a long, long, time, Catholic and Protestant messages from Heaven. The Remnant is Roman Catholic. You are living during the period close the end of the 6th Day.

Listen to your Catholic friends. Believe in the Holy
Eucharist, accept Mary’s help, accept confession to a priest, it is major! The first is the most important to change on of the three.

“Private Judgment” is heresy not of God. The fruit is
error and division.

love,

stpio

2Peter 1:20
Understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation.

[20] No prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation: This shews plainly that the scriptures are not to be expounded by any one’s private judgment or private spirit, because every part of the holy scriptures were written by men inspired by the Holy Ghost, and declared as such by the Church; therefore they are not to be interpreted but by the Spirit of God, which he hath left, and promised to remain with his Church to guide her in all truth to the end of the world. Some may tell us, that many of our divines interpret the scriptures: they may do so, but they do it always with a submission to the judgment of the Church, and not otherwise.

[stpio]

“Stpio, I think we’re not making any progress here. This is not personal. I just don’t have time for merrigoround conversations. I mention Aquinas because he said some things I agree with. I am amazed you think that implies I would agree with him on everything. Transubstantiation is a late doctrine with no scriptural support. I learn what I can from people but I don’t step outside of Scripture for anybody. God does have a chosen people, and no doubt some RC will be among them. But I don’t listen to prophets that bring a message at odds with Scripture. This is obedience to Christ for me. I am sorry if you don’t understand it, but its the way things are, and that’s that. God will heal all divisions, but no man should presume to the perfection that belongs only to God. Jesus came to bring a sword, father against son, daughter against mother. It won’t be sorted out till he comes back. Meanwhile, I must be faithful, not to man, not to human institutions, but to God and to his word.”

~ ~ ~

I have been away, just now saw your later reply above.

I am sorry you reject your own Protestant prophets. There
is one end time.

Jesus said do all that I command of you. This includes believing all He taught. St. Thomas Aquinas believes
in Our Lord’s presence in the Holy Eucharist.

“Late Doctrine”...right. John 6: Jesus said “This IS My Body.” You don’t believe, it’s your loss. Stick with juice and crackers. Think about what you are settling for SR.

I share, go to a Catholic Church or Eucharistic Adoration
Chapel (sometimes it is in the Church but separate or next to the Church itself) and kneel before the Tabernacle, sit if you wish.

Jesus will give you the grace to believe. Ask Him. Doing this will change you. Trust me.

Go to the Parish office if the Church is locked and ask them to open the Church. You wish to pray. There are new electronic locks on the Eucharistic Adoration Chapels today with a code. Knock on the door is my advise. Most of the Adoration Chapel are open 24 hours a day.

The vague “God will heal the divisions.” Yes and He’s told us how He’s going to do it perfectly. The only negative, He will still respect our free will to say no in the “awakening”, also known as the Second Pentecost, the Great Warning, Rev 6:15-17.

Read some current messages...mainly Catholic...it’s a
direct link, you don’t have to join a group.

http://www.catholicbinder.com/

Here is a prophetic non-Catholic Christian link:

http://ft111.com/eagles.htm

[Diamond]

Pope Damasus was given the authority by God to name the Canon

Then why did he name a canon that not only differed from the Eastern Churches, but one that was later contradicted by the Council of Trent?

Cordially,

[D-fendr]

Please read the link more. This is a compendium of orthodox theology, exegesis and what was taught in the Apostolic Church. Much more than practices and customs.

So I don’t see where we are crossing signals here. Please clarify if possible.

thanks for your reply.

[Springfield Reformer]

1. About Prophets.

I reject any prophet, Protestant, Catholic or otherwise, whose message fails the twofold test given under Moses.

First the prophet must have a perfect track record. Everything prophesied must come true. Else they are not a prophet of God.

Second, even if everything came true, the prophet’s message must point is toward the one and only true God. Any prophet whose message takes us away from what God has already said to us must therefore be a false prophet.

There are NT admonitions for prophets as well. Jesus told us to steer clear of false prophets, false Christs, false teachers, etc. Paul in Galatians goes to the extreme of saying that even if an angel from Heaven should appear, if he brings a different Gospel, or a different Jesus, he is to be rejected. because we know that even Lucifer can appear as an angel of light to deceive the unwary.

What then is the way to avoid false prophet, false teachers, alternative Christs? John tells believers, all of them, not just the leadership, to “try the spirits,” to test them against known doctrinal guidelines. See 1 John 4:1. That’s what the Bible is for, and that’s how we Sola Scriptura folks use it.

2. About Transubstantiation.

First, I wonder about your reference to John 6, as the phrase “this is my body” does not appear there. Instead it occurs in Matt 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, and 1Cor 11:24, all from one event, the Last Supper.

In any event, there is absolutely no basis for launching from the simple “is” in the foregoing passages to the complex quasi-Aristotelian doctrine of transubstantiation. It just isn’t there. The wine and matzo were already figures of the events of the Israeli exodus from Egypt, and Jesus is revealing to his disciples that they also represent him as their Savior, giving his body and spilling his blood, so that they could have eternal life.

But the notion of a literal but undetectable corporeal presence of his physical body in the elements based on Aristotelian categories is utterly alien to the standard usage of the verbs of being in Hebrew. More typically, such verbs are used for symbols or figures. For example, Jesus says I am the vine, and you are the branches. See John 15:5. He certainly does not mean he is literally a vine, but merely looks like a human. Or the time he said. “I am the door.” No one thinks he is really a door (and a vine), that merely looks human, whose inner reality (Greek “substance”) of “doorness” or “vineness” is unreachably hidden behind his appearance (Greek “accidents”) of being human.

But, you say, what about John 6 (which, after all, is the passage you mentioned)?

Fair enough. Let’s see what it says:

John 6:53-58 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. [54] Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. [56] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. [57] As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. [58] This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

Well, that’s the big passage that everyone fights over, but it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Earlier in the same chapter we have Christ making some other very controversial statements. Jesus had just fed the 5000 with loaves and fishes. Yet he rebuked those who followed him after the miracle, because they were thinking carnally, food for the belly. He warns them they should be working for the food that leads to eternal life. So they asked him, how do we do the works of God?

John 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

So you see that from the beginning of this passage, Christ is trying to redirect their attention from physical foods that satisfy physical hunger to the spiritual food that satisfies spiritual hunger. He even tells them they are being clueless, that because they are still seeking physical food from him, they don’t get it. And in fact he tells them the only way they’ll ever “get it” is if the Father makes it happen:

John 6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

So he presents the with a make or break challenge. In John 6:53-58 he tells them if they don’t satisfy their hunger by consuming him, his flesh, his blood, they have no life; but those who do so feed on him will have eternal life.

So they thought they had a free miracle meal ticket, but he tells them he is their true food from Heaven. Because they were stuck in the mud of materialism, they couldn’t grasp his meaning. They scratched their heads, said they didn’t get it, and left off following him.

And how does Jesus explain this? “They couldn’t take transubstantiation, so they left me?” No! What he says is this:

Joh 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

So he underscores it at the end. This is about the spirit, NOT the flesh. He fed the 5000, and they loved the meal. But they didn’t love him. They were materialists. They couldn’t see past the physical to the spiritual. The reason they couldn’t see was because God the Father had not drawn them to Jesus. So when Jesus offers himself as the spiritual food that can, through faith, satisfy all their needs, they get confused and leave him. It could not be more clear that Jesus here is not only not speaking of himself as literal food, he is specifically rejecting that idea, and asserting himself as the only possible spiritual food for those who would have spiritual life through faith in him.

Transubstantiation? Nowhere in sight.

And the Fathers agree (look for “figure of” or “represents” or “symbolizes”, any of which deny transubstantiation):

“Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the “beggarly elements” of the Creator.” (Tertullian, Five Books Against Marcion, Book 1, Chapter 14).

“Now it is evident, that in this prophecy [allusion is made] to the bread which our Christ gave us to eat, in remembrance of His being made flesh for the sake of His believers, for whom also He suffered; and to the cup which He gave us to drink, in remembrance of His own blood, with giving of thanks.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 70).

“Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body.” (Tertullian, Five Books Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 40.)

“For so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery.” (Tertullian, Five Books Against Marcion, Book III, Chapter 19.)

“But doth the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.”. . .It seemed unto them hard that He said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you:” they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, “This is a hard saying.”. . .But He instructed them, and saith unto them, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.” (Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 99, Section 8).

“’Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,’ says Christ, ‘and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.’ This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapter 16, 24).

“But at the present time, after that the proof of our liberty has shone forth so clearly in the resurrection of our Lord, we are not oppressed with the heavy burden of attending even to those signs which we now understand, but our Lord Himself, and apostolic practice, have handed down to us a few rites in place of many, and these at once very easy to perform, most majestic in their significance, and most sacred in the observance; such, for example, as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord. And as soon as any one looks upon these observances he knows to what they refer, and so reveres them not in carnal bondage, but in spiritual freedom. Now, as to follow the letter, and to take signs for the things that are signified by them, is a mark of weakness and bondage; so to interpret signs wrongly is the result of being misled by error.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapter 9, 13).

“For since He no more was to take pleasure in bloody sacrifices, or those ordained by Moses in the slaughter of animals of various kinds, and was to give them bread to use as the symbol of His Body, He taught the purity and brightness of such food by saying, ‘And his teeth are white as milk.’ This also another prophet has recorded, where he says, ‘Sacrifice and offering hast thou not required, but a body hast thou prepared for me.’” (Eusebius, Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, Chapter 1).

“Wherefore with full assurance let us partake as of the Body and Blood of Christ: for in the figure of Bread is given to thee His Body, and in the figure of Wine His Blood; that thou by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, mayest be made of the same body and the same blood with Him.” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, Lecture 22, Section 3).

“As then in the case of the Jews, so here also He hath bound up the memorial of the benefit with the mystery, by this again stopping the mouths of heretics. For when they say, Whence is it manifest that Christ was sacrificed? together with the other arguments we stop their mouths from the mysteries also. For if Jesus did not die, of what are the rites the symbols?” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily 82, Section 1).

“Orthodoxos. — But our Savior changed the names, and to His body gave the name of the symbol and to the symbol that of his body. So, after calling himself a vine, he spoke of the symbol as blood.
“Eranistes. — True. But I am desirous of knowing the reason of the change of names.
“Orthodoxos. — To them that are initiated in divine things the intention is plain. For be wished the partakers in the divine mysteries not to give heed to the nature of the visible objects, but, by means of the variation of the names, to believe the change wrought of grace. For He, we know, who spoke of his natural body as corn and bread, and, again, called Himself a vine, dignified the visible symbols by the appellation of the body and blood, not because He had changed their nature, but because to their nature He had added grace.” (Theodoret, Dialogues, Dialogue 1, PNF 2.03, pp. 326-327).

“Eranistes. — As, then, the symbols of the Lord’s body and blood are one thing before the priestly invocation, and after the invocation are changed and become another thing; so the Lord’s body after the assumption is changed into the divine substance.
Orthodoxos. — You are caught in the net you have woven yourself. For even after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance, figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they are become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be. Compare then the image with the archetype, and you will see the likeness, for the type must be like the reality.” (Theodoret, Dialogues, Dialogue 2, PNF 2.03, pp. 401-402).

**** IMPORTANT ****

All the foregoing quotes are direct denials of one or more key aspects of transubstantiation. Therefore, according to Trent, they are all anathema! Even Augustine!

Oops!

So I stand by my assertion that transubstantiation is a late doctrine with no Scripture to support it whatsoever, and many witnesses against it both in Scripture and in the Fathers. If it were not for the false doctrine of Sola Ecclesia, it would never have happened. Realize then, that Sola Scriptura is the best defense against the tendency of sinners, even saved sinners, to imagine they know better than the written record of truth God bequeathed to us in behalf of Christ and his Apostles.

3. About Private Judgment

2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. [21] For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

If you will look at verse 21 above, you will note this pertains to how we got Scripture, not how we read Scripture. No prophet sat around doing his own interpretation of events and writing at his own whimsy. Rather, God was the author of the Biblical text, and so it may be relied on, unlike the rambling of fallible man, including certain personages in Italy.

To verify this, take a look at verse 19:

2 Peter 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

Peter just got done telling his readers about hearing the voice of God directly in the Transfiguration. You would think that would trump any other form of revelation. Not so, says Peter, because the word of prophecy in Scripture trumps even Peter’s personal experience of the Transfiguration.

And what gives us this confidence in Scripture, that we treat it as a “light shining in a dark place” while we tread this mortal life? The fact that Scripture is “theopneustos,” God speaking to us, and not the mere private ramblings of mortal man. It all fits.

Don’t feel bad. It’s a common mistake of interpretation. That’s why we keep learning. We can always do better.

Peace,

SR

[stpio]

How are you, I hoped you would reply....

~~~

“1. About Prophets.

I reject any prophet, Protestant, Catholic or otherwise, whose message fails the twofold test given under Moses.

First the prophet must have a perfect track record. Everything prophesied must come true. Else they are not a prophet of God.”

~~~

“Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,”

No offense, your last that’s not true, prophecy is a warning, God’s desire for people to change and a help to strengthen your faith and revelation about the future (but not always).

The People of Nineveh returned to God, they got down and prayed and fasted, the prophecy didn’t come true.

Read Jonah 3:1-10.

On the Eucharist, I will look at what you shared but I
could shake you. Why would you not want the Eucharist
to be true? Again, more Christians than not believe in
Our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist.

In the Protestant revolt, the Eucharist was rejected because
Protestants have no ministerial priesthood to confect
the Eucharist. Of course, they’re going to come up with
a different meaning to Christ’s words.

It’s so obvious, a 2 year old could figure out their denial.
Please, do you realize the grace involved?

I’ll read what you wrote on the Holy Eucharist, thanks and see you,

stpio

[stpio]

Pope Damasus was given the authority by God to name the Canon

“Then why did he name a canon that not only differed from the Eastern Churches, but one that was later contradicted by the Council of Trent?

Cordially,”

~ ~ ~

The Canon Pope Damasus decided in 382 is the same as we
have today (except Protestants accepted Luther’s deletions). Share what you have concerning the Council of Trent?

Some Orthodox still question the Book of Revelation. The
Schism didn’t begin until 867, with our pride, people are always going to disagree and from the beginning.

blessings,

[Diamond]

The Canon Pope Damasus decided in 382 is the same as we have today

No, it is not. Do your homework, I'll give you a hint. 1 Esdras. Septuigint 1 Esdras is not the Hebrew Ezra. The canon decreed at Trent is different with respect to that one D.C. book than the one approved by Damasus.

Fact: The Canon was not officially and authoritatively established for the Roman Church until the 16th century at the Council of Trent, and either they made a mistake with respect to that one Deuterocanonical book. or "Pope" Damasus did.

Cordially,

[Springfield Reformer]

Glad to hear from you again. One never knows how these abandoned threads will work for a continuing conversation.

1. On Prophets.

As for Jonah, of course he has an exception, but that exception is spelled out in Jeremiah 18, in which God say the following:

Jer 18:7 At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; [8] If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.

So what happened with Nineveh is consistent with the test of Moses. Basically, any national prophecy based on the wickedness of those people, can be averted by repentance. I have no problem with that.

But I do have a problem with would-be prophets who proclaim they know the day of Christ’s return, and when they miss, they blame it on someone else. Or a “prophet” who misses things then says they’re getting “better at it.” What the heck is that? Edgar Cayce could say as much, and I don’t follow him either. But worst of all is the prophet whose sayings come true, yet if they are believed, they will lead people away from God, away from Christ and His Gospel. Moses accounted for such prophets. They are tests from God. Who will we believe? Some mere mortal wonder worker? Or the plain and simple of God’s own word?

Consider what Jesus said:

Mark 13:22 For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.

The false prophets of the last days are going to be endowed with a great power to deceive, up to and including “signs and wonders.” So powerful in fact that even “the elect” could be deceived, if that were possible. This should make us very cautious. This is not the time to start trusting spiritual “strangers” offering us “candy.” Rather, his warning, in view of the times in which we live, should make us cling even tighter to the simplicity of truth we were given in Scriptures. That will guide us home.

2. On the Eucharist.

You ask a very revealing question: Why would I not want the Eucharist to be true? It is revealing because it shows the loop we’re in, and why I believe God will reprimand all of us to some degree for these arguments. Allow me to explain.

To you, the Eucharist represents being as close to Christ as it is possible to get. If I am wrong, please feel free to correct me. Now, wanting to be close to Christ is a good and wonderful thing, and it is one of the reasons our conversation continues. I like you, I like your passion for God as you understand him. I really think your heart is in the right place.

However, for you it appears impossible to consider that Scripture does not point us to quasi-physical objects consecrated by a ministerial priest as the means of achieving that closeness to Christ. So you want to “shake” me. Would shaking me convince me? God gave me a Bible, and a mind, and he also redeemed me from a life of wickedness with a death sentence built into it. Needless to say, I adore him every day of my life, in spirit and in truth, and I take what He says extremely seriously, and only that will convince me of the right way to know and be close to him.

So here we two sit, both wishing to honor God. That’s good. But no one of any persuasion has yet made the case to me why I should give up on the supremacy of God’s word to govern my life and nourish my union with Christ. Jesus puts it well, and this is where I live in him:

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

3. On Real Presence

You note that the belief in the “real presence” is widespread in Christian faith, although you frame it as “Eucharist,” which of course carries your own package of nuances, specifically transubstantiation. But the notion of “real presence” in protestant circles is nothing remotely like transubstantiation, so it is misleading to make such a statement.

And I have experience with various denominations, some which hold to pure Zwinglian memorialism, some which hold to what they would call “spiritual presence,” and even the Lutheran consubstantiation. The problem with all of these is they do not aid your case. Not one of these is transubstantiation in the form given by Trent, as given here:

“If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which change the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema.” (Council of Trent, Second Canon, Thirteenth Session).

So that right there is your burden to defend, because whoever does not believe it is anathematized by Rome. As I pointed out in my previous post, a number of important Fathers made statements that contradict the Trent formulation, and nothing in Scripture supports it, though the scriptural argument for “spiritual presence” as practiced by the Reformed churches is at least plausible. But they are all anathema, in theory, because they do not see the corporeal presence of Christ in the elements per Trent’s “substance versus appearance” model.

In fact, you and your companions love to point out how Rome is needed to keep a unified body of truth in the Church. But how many average Catholics really understand the Eucharist of Trent? It is extraordinarily complex. To really get it, you have to not only be adept at pagan Greek philosophy, namely Aristotle’s science of categories, but you also have to be able to invert said categories. I’m talking about substance versus accident, two important Greek concepts clearly identified above in the Trent formulation as required belief to avoid anathematization.

This is a difficult ride, but if you’re interested, I’ll try to explain it to you the best I understand it. Otherwise you can skip to the end. And please take no offence. This is just my honest attempt to analyze the problem:

In classical form, the Greeks present a puzzle: If I put my foot into a river twice, is it the same river each time? In one sense yes, because you look and there the river is, you touch the water and you feel the river. In another sense no, because the water moves, and is never the same water twice. To be able to discuss the river as a river, you cannot discuss it in terms of its “accidents,” the moving water that is never in the same place twice. So you need a concept called “substance” to identify with stability what the river is conceptually.

How does this relate to transubstantiation? The ministerial priesthood of Rome asserted themselves as necessary intermediaries between men and God. One of the means of sustaining this claim was the assertion of power to consecrate the elements of the Eucharist, to effectively perform a public miracle on demand that enabled union with God.

The problem was, you couldn’t see the effects of this miracle. At all. Except for an occasional story of an Eucharistic miracle. But how to explain the vast majority of consecrations that yielded no visible change in the elements, that was the problem.

Enter transubstantiation. Proposed in an early form in the 9th Century by one Benedictine monk, it eventually became more popular and was formally recognized by the 4th Lateran Council in 1215AD. But it didn’t reach its Aristotelian zenith until Aquinas undertook to reconcile all of Christian theology with all of Aristotle.

Under Aquinas, the Eucharist is said to work something like this. The bread has substance, the categorical quality of being bread. It also has the accidents that give it the appearance of being bread, whiteness, flakiness, etc. Upon being consecrated, the bread ceases to have the substance of bread, but now has the substance of Christ in his entirety, including not only his divinity but his physical body.

But what happened to the accidents? They do not reflect the change in substance. They are, as it were, freestanding. A thing can look, act, and taste like bread, based on nothing real, but entirely on what appears to the senses, which of course is not the real thing, because the real thing is the substance.

Still with me? Remember, you can be anathematized for not believing this. It’s all spelled out in Aquinas.

But it gets scarier. Because if you were watching closely, you noticed that the sense of substance versus accident is inverted from its Aristotelian prototype. In the river analogy, the accidents (moving water, etc.) are the changeable part, while the substance (river-ness) remains the same. Whereas in transubstantiation, the substance is the changeable part (being Christ versus being bread) , while the accidents (perceptible attributes of bread) remain the same.

Example: Say you have a dog. Under Aristotle (uninverted), the substance is dogness, the accidents are furriness, panting, cold nose, four-legged-ness, etc. Under Aritstotle (inverted), the dogness (substance) goes away, but all the visible attributes of dogness (accidents) remain, furriness, panting, etc. In other words, in general terms, any given object might be any other given object, based on a claimed miracle, for which there is no method or means of verification, and no basis in Scripture.

And remember, if you disagree with any of those features of transubstantiation, Trent deems you to be anathema. So what does the average congregant do? Ignore all the fancy stuff and worship Christ as best they can understand him. And by golly if that means the priest said he made a miracle then he made a miracle, even if I can’t see any such miracle. And now we trot out the passage about faith being the evidence of things not seen, and we can really bamboozle that poor parishioner into thinking he’s got invisible cloths, even though he’s really buck naked.

That is why there had to be a Reformation. Reformation is Biblical. It’s just another word for correction. It doesn’t assume everything is bad, only that some things need to be corrected. But what happened in Israel when God sent His (true) prophets with a corrective word to his people. They killed those prophets, and rejected their correction. They are an example to us. We should be careful not to miss a reformation of God’s own making. It is for our good that he sometimes chastises us, as a loving Father would.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Peace,

SR

[stpio]

“I reject any prophet,

“Protestant, Catholic or otherwise, whose message fails the twofold test given under Moses.

First the prophet must have a perfect track record. Everything prophesied must come true. Else they are not a prophet of God.”

~ ~ ~

I gave you an example of how prophecy is changed, doesn’t happen because of the people’s response to it...Nineveh. You reply using your first reason above to object.

Prophecy is a help, you’re going remain in the dark rejecting it. I am sorry.

Both your posts to me, yesterday and today amount to a book SR, I could but it would take forever to comment on your denial of Our Lord’s presence in the Holy Eucharist. You gotta have faith, believe God can do anything. It’s the Trinity’s plan for Our Lord to humbly come to everyone this way.

Look at who you do believe...shhhhsssss. Martin Luther and his heresies, the favorite, Sola Scriptura. The first Christians and never until 1517, did you ever hear anyone preach Sola Scriptura. How about the negative, hateful quotes of Martin Luther. What are you going to with them?

It doesn’t matter what I say. I think Our Lord is going to convince you. For now, take my suggestion, go kneel/sit in front of the Tabernacle. I challenge you, do it. Jesus will give you a special grace friend.

stpio

[stpio]

“Fact: The Canon was not officially and authoritatively established for the Roman Church until the 16th century at the Council of Trent, and either THEY made a mistake with respect to that one Deuterocanonical book. or “Pope” Damasus did.”

~ ~ ~

May I ask, who are “they?” These people are Roman Catholics, Pope Damasus, the Council of Trent are Roman Catholic not Protestant.

Why do you adhere to the 27 NT canon? This means you accept the Holy Father’s choices.

blessings,