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To: Heart-Rest; CynicalBear
The choice was one of putting one's faith in "Church" and putting one's faith in Christ.

You had said;

To mimic your own style of reasoning and discourse in your above comment to CB, turning that same around in counter-point, I could ask you, Heart-Rest;

But that wouldn't be entirely fair. Yet for yourself to so casually mix and blur the identities of God Himself, on the one hand, to also on the other hand BE the Church (and by that you do mean the Roman Catholic one, the one which has an earthly & human "pope") isn't at all fair either.

That is what set me off against yourself having played games with CB's other statements, turning them this way and that, saying as much as If this-then that. The same treatment should be applied to your own statements and positions.

The Roman Catholic ecclesiastical community has long imported into the Gospel itself a variety of distortion, in the end having made many among their own ecclesia end up with some blend of often looking to Mary for salvation itself --- which salvation they must then also work for, somehow making themselves holy enough (through works) to be acceptable to God.

One may as well be a Mormon or perhaps better, a Muslim (they talk all nicey-nicey about how special *Mary* was, even as they say God created Christ within her) if it be by works that we are saved.

But go ahead, object and say that the RCC doesn't teach salvation by works ---it will fall on partially-deaf ears --- for I otherwise can see for myself that when the RCC is not teaching "grace" (having been forced to return to official endorsement of salvation by the Grace of God, through the bodily sacrifice of Jesus) due to the significant theological challenges and pressures arising from the Protestant Reformation, then "they" (the RCC) do also teach salvation by works, with that being inexorably mixed in with the teaching of the need and calling towards increasing sanctification being represented much as justification itself --- in overall end result rendering Christ's own sacrifice insufficient propitiation for our own sins, that must be added to in some manner, by our own efforts.

When the Gospel itself is not obscured by presenting salvation be of works which must be done (whatever the works are which the RCC would in any particular era proscribe) then Christ's own sacrifice is turned into a pill, a flat lozenge which only priests in communion with Rome are said have the ability to "confect" (into being the body of Christ, of which it is true, all must partake of).

It is no wonder that many, once they were able to read the Scriptures in their own native languages and thus understand what was written, reacted to what had evolved as being Rome's own (16th century) approach to the thanksgiving memorial remembrance with the rhetorical charge --- "blasphemy!".

It is simply not true, that to oppose the RCC in some way, is to oppose (thus reject) God Himself. The RCC is not God. Please stop broadcasting the confused (and confusing) message that He is.

593 posted on 02/17/2015 7:29:03 AM PST by BlueDragon (the weather is always goldilocks perfect, on freeper island)
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To: BlueDragon
It is simply not true, that to oppose the RCC in some way, is to oppose (thus reject) God Himself. The RCC is not God. Please stop broadcasting the confused (and confusing) message that He is.

I think you missed Heart-Rest's point, here. The point is not that the Church is somehow ""God" (which is absurd); the point is that the Church is the Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ, the custodian of His revelation, and the God-ordained means by which His Salvation is communicated to the world. To reject the Church is akin to rejecting the ambassador of the King; and I imagine there would be few Kings who would be pleased by the excuse, "Hey, all I did was reject some dumb ambassador... I didn't reject YOU, Your Majesty!" If God established His Church, to the extent that He identifies Her with Himself (cf. Acts 9:4, etc.) and with His Beloved, spotless Bride (Ephesians 5:32, Revelation 9:7-9, Revelation 21, etc.), then it's no trivial matter to reject Her. She doesn't need to be deified in order to be beloved by (and acting in the Name of) the Deity.
596 posted on 02/17/2015 8:05:07 AM PST by paladinan (Rule #1: There is a God. Rule #2: It isn't you.)
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