Posted on 07/01/2015 7:13:05 AM PDT by RnMomof7
Recently there has been a surge in prominent Evangelicals calling for unity with Roman Catholicism. In one sense there seems to be strong foundational similarities that would justify these calls to unity. Catholics are baptized in the name of the Trinity. God’s revealed word in the Bible -- setting aside their addition of the Apocryphal books, for argument’s sake -- is foundational to their worldview. Catholics love Christ and believe that he died on the cross and rose again to provide grace for sinners.
Obviously there are theological differences associated with the specific teachings of each one of these perceived similarities, and I do not want to minimize the importance of these differences. But for argument‘s sake, at least on the surface, there is some common ground.
There is also a strong agreement in ethical standards. Both Roman Catholics and Evangelicals ground morality on God’s holy nature as revealed in the law of God. This means that on the hot button moral issues of the day; the murder of the unborn, human sexuality, the sanctity of marriage there is solidarity between Roman Catholic and Evangelical ethics because they are coming from the same source. Again, this seems to justify a call to some sense of unity.
Are these good enough reasons to publically stump for visible unity with Roman Catholics? That question is beyond the scope of this post. But there is a more fundamental question that must be answered first. That question serves as the dividing line between followers of Christ and the world, which separates biblical Christianity from every other worldview; does Rome possess and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
The author of the book of Hebrews in chapter 10 contrasts the gospel with that which is but a shadow of the gospel. He argues:
"And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." -- Heb 10:11–14
The argument being presented here makes it clear that Christ’s singular sacrifice, his death on the cross, perfects those for whom it is made for. This is the gospel. It is contrasted with the shadow of the gospel in which sacrifices were repeatedly made year after year because though they symbolized the atoning and perfecting sacrifice of Christ, they never themselves perfected those for whom they were made. The gospel of Jesus Christ perfects and any other religious strategies cannot.
This principle is directly applicable to the question of Roman Catholicism and the gospel of God. Roman Catholic worship centers on the mass. The mass is a series of liturgical practices that culminates in the Eucharist which according to paragraph 1068 of the Catholic of the Catholic Church (hereafter CCC) is a divine sacrifice. Paragraph 1367 of CCC calls the Eucharist a “truly propitiatory” sacrifice. This sacrifice is performed repeatedly in the life of a Catholic.
The reason the Eucharist is performed repeatedly is because even though it is claimed to be a propitiatory sacrifice that can make reparation for sins (CCC, 1414), it is a sacrifice that never perfects anyone. According to the Catholic message grace is something that you get from God by performing certain acts. First, God gives you the grace for faith in Jesus (CCC, 2000). Second, when you are baptized God graciously erases the sin of Adam from your record (CCC 1257). From that point on you get more grace by doing things like participating in the sacraments, including the Eucharist. The problem is that when you commit sins, you lose some of the grace you have gained and now need more lest your grace be found wanting at final judgment. This forces the Catholic into a position where they need to return day after day, week after week, and year after year to a priest who serves to repeatedly re-present the same sacrifice which never perfects those for whom it is made, since it only offers grace to cover some sin.
This is not the gospel.
Roman Catholics need the gospel for the same reason we all need it. We are all sinners with such a messed up and low view of how holy holiness really is that we think somehow through our own efforts we can attain it. If we just had enough time and willpower we could somehow have our good deeds outweigh our bad, and this will please God just enough for me to be acceptable to him. This is a satanic lie. A satanic lie that to some degree or another we have all bought into at some point in our life.
But the truth is glorious. God is good and God is holy. He is more good and more holy than we can possibly imagine. God is so good and so holy that anything less than absolute perfection is unacceptable in his presence. It is because of God’s awesome goodness and awesome holiness that in his wisdom he has offered us grace, through faith in Christ. A good and holy sacrifice that absolutely without question completely perfects everyone for whom it is made.
You next statement proves otherwise.
The Roman church denied the gospel in Trent ....
I asked a serious question... what is the gospel that Rome teaches ?
No it is a "gotcha" question.
And just what convenience store do you get your definition of Protestantism and what it teaches in this regard? Since RCs infer we follow Luther in all he says, let us hear him and others (in context, unlike frequent RC quotes):
In his Introduction to Romans, Luther stated that saving faith is,
a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]
“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
All believers are like poor Lazarus; and every believer is a true Lazarus, for he is of the same faith, mind and will, as Lazarus. And whoever will not be a Lazarus, will surely have his portion with the rich glutton in the flames of hell. For we all must like Lazarus trust in God, surrender ourselves to him to work in us according to his own good pleasure, and be ready to serve all men. And although we all do not suffer from such sores and poverty, yet the same mind and will must be in us, that were in Lazarus, cheerfully to bear such things, wherever God wills it.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:25]
“This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”[Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341]
“For it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Savior, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present. Therefore man knows by the fruits what kind of a tree it is, and it is proved by love and deed whether Christ is in him and he believes in Christ. As St. Peter says in 2 Pet. 1, 10: "Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble," that is, if you bravely practice good works you will be sure and cannot doubt that God has called and chosen you.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:40]
“For if your heart is in the state of faith that you know your God has revealed himself to you to be so good and merciful, without thy merit, and purely gratuitously, while you were still his enemy and a child of eternal wrath; if you believe this, you cannot refrain from showing yourself so to your neighbor; and do all out of love to God and for the welfare of your neighbor. Therefore, see to it that you make no distinction between friend and foe, the worthy and the unworthy; for you see that all who were here mentioned, have merited from us something different than that we should love and do them good. And the Lord also teaches this, when in Luke 6:35 he says: "But love your enemies, and do good unto them, and lend, never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil." [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:101]
“Therefore we must close our eyes, not look at our works, whether they be great, small, honorable, contemptible, spiritual, temporal or what kind of an appearance and name they may have upon earth; but look to the command and to the obedience in the works. Do they govern you, then the work also is truly right and precious, and completely godly, although it springs forth as insignificant as a straw. However, if obedience and God’s commandments do not dominate you, then the work is not right, but damnable, surely the devil’s own doings, although it were even so great a work as to raise the dead...And St. Peter says, Ye are to be as faithful, good shepherds or administrators of the manifold grace of God; so that each one may serve the other, and be helpful to him by means of what he has received, 1 Peter 4:10. See, here Peter says the grace and gifts of God are not one but manifold, and each is to tend to his own, develop the same and through them be of service to others.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:244]
In addition, upon hearing that he was being charged with rejection of the Old Testament moral law, Luther responded,
And truly, I wonder exceedingly, how it came to be imputed to me, that I should reject the Law or ten Commandments, there being extant so many of my own expositions (and those of several sorts) upon the Commandments, which also are daily expounded, and used in our Churches, to say nothing of the Confession and Apology, and other books of ours. Martin Luther, ["A Treatise against Antinomians, written in an Epistolary way", http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_against_the_antinomians.html]
The Westminster Confession of Faith states:
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. [Westminster Confession of Faith, CHAPTER XI. Of Justification. http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/wcf.htm]
The classic Methodist commentator Adam Clarke held,
The Gospel proclaims liberty from the ceremonial law: but binds you still faster under the moral law. To be freed from the ceremonial law is the Gospel liberty; to pretend freedom from the moral law is Antinomianism.[Adam Clarke Commentary, Gal. 5:13]
Likewise on on Titus 1:16 ("They profess that they know God; but in works they deny, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." KJV):
Full of a pretended faith, while utterly destitute of those works by which a genuine faith is accredited and proved. [Adam Clarke Commentary, Titus 1]
To which the Presbyterian commentator Mathew Henry concurs: "There are many who in word and tongue profess to know God, and yet in their lives and conversations deny and reject him; their practice is a contradiction to their profession." [Matthew Henry Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible, Titus 1]
Contemporary evangelical theologian R. C. Sproul writes,
The relationship of faith and good works is one that may be distinguished but never separated...if good works do not follow from our profession of faith, it is a clear indication that we do not possess justifying faith. The Reformed formula is, “We are justified by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone.”[[“Essential Truths of the Christian Faith,” Google books]
Also, rather than the easy believism Rome associates with sola fide, in Puritan Protestantism there was often a tendency to make the way to the cross too narrow, perhaps in reaction against the Antinomian controversy as described in an account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period that notes,
“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”
Jas 2:17 If it hath not works, is dead - The faith that does not produce works of charity and mercy is without the living principle which animates all true faith, that is, love to God and love to man. — Adam Clarke, LL.D., F.S.A., (1715-1832), Commentary on the Bible
Jas 2:14-18 Even so faith. Faith that has no power to bring one to obedience and to sway the life is as worthless as good wishes which end in words. — The People's New Testament (1891) by B. W. Johnson
Jas 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. It is like a lifeless carcass, a body without a soul, Jam. 2:26 for as works, without faith, are dead works, so faith, without works, is a dead faith, and not like the lively hope and faith of regenerated persons: — Dr. John Gill (1690-1771), Exposition of the Entire Bible
“If the works which living faith produces have no existence, it is a proof that faith itself (literally, ‘in respect to itself’) has no existence; that is, that what one boasts of as faith, is dead.” “Faith” is said to be “dead in itself,” because when it has works it is alive, and it is discerned to be so, not in respect to its works, but in respect to itself. — Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jas 2:17 So likewise that faith which hath not works is a mere dead, empty notion; of no more profit to him that hath it, than the bidding the naked be clothed is to him. — John Wesley
Even so faith; that which they boasted of, and called faith. Is dead; void of that life, in which the very essence of faith consists, and which always discovers itself in vital actings and good fruits, where it is not hindered by some forcible impediment; in allusion to a corpse, which plainly appears to have no vital principle in it, all vital operations being ceased. It resembles a man’s body, and is called so, but in reality is not so, but a dead carcass. — Matthew Poole (1624 -1679)
However, while works justify one having true faith which is counted for righteousness, and manifest that he is fit to be blessed by God under grace, works and one's own holiness are not what actually obtains justification, but in conversion God justifies the unGodly by faith.
In Roman theology, one is formally justified by his own holiness being first "infused" via the act of baptism, and thus he usually ends up having to become good enough once again (and to atone for sins) via postmortem "purifying torments" commencing at death in order to enter Heaven and be with the Lord.
Which is contrary to Scripture , which always places believers with the Lord once absent from this body wherever it clearly speaks of this, even entire churches. And with the only postmortem suffering is that of the loss of rewards (and the Lord's displeasure) at the judgment seat of Christ when He returns. (1Co. 3:8ff) Thanks be to God.
That's a serious answer and a serious question exposing yet another point Protestantism ignores.
Did Christ make that statement or is there an error in Scripture that someone should throw out?
The exact opposite is true. They are attacks on the Catholic Church.
There is an opportunity for individuals to defend or explain their doctrine
Actually they are an opportunity for the non-Catholics to go on rants.
we do not hide behind the "caucus" label
Neither do we, but it is nice to be able to have a theological discussion with out being attacked or subject to non-Catholic bombast. I would hope that he non-Catholics do read the Caucus threads. This is for two reasons. One they will hear the truth and more importantly they can see what a civil discussion actually is.
The non-Catholics will notice that the only thing missing from them is a lot of snarky input from non-Catholics.
Just like skipping what follows and is directly tied to John 3:16, substituting all sorts of smoke and mirrors doesn't alter what Christ clearly stated by so much as one iota.
The funny little pretense that not receiving rewards is the same as being purified as if by fire is a nice touch, though, one that I'm sure impresses people who prefer to pretend they're under no obligation to Christ to obey Christ in order to be obedient to Christ.
Oops, ping a ling a ling.
I wonder how much confusion arises from not being able to differentiate the Bema Seat of Christ in Heaven, and the Throne of Judgment at the end of the Age? ... It is the spiritual church Jesus has built which will be tried IN HEAVEN, and not before the Great White Throne of Judgment. The Rapture of the Church removes His Bride from the hour coming during which will be great testing.
I’m sorry, I do not follow you. To what are you referring?
"Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire."
- Matthew 7:19
Which part of the words of Christ don't you follow ?
I asked what fire every tree that bringth not forth good fruit is cast into.
Is that fire Hell or does each individual receive their own personal fire as a consequence of not bearing good fruit ?
Are they destroyed in that fire or are they purified by that fire ?
Is bearing good fruit a requirement or a suggested means to avoid a nasty burn without eternal consequences ?
Not following seems a bit odd in light of the volume of comments we all see in these forums claiming inerrent interpretation of Scripture.
“... people who prefer to pretend they’re under no obligation to Christ to obey Christ in order to be obedient to Christ.” That would be a terrible position to be in without God’s Life in one, eh? If I am under the 600+ laws of sin and death and fail to keep them all, I am guilty as if I have violated them all.
If you read the passage in context, to whom was Jesus referring before the passage and after the passage? Was Jesus speaking of Israel or members of His Church? Or is there some other to which He was referring that you might want to clarify for us?
Matthew 7: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree produces good fruit; but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit. 18A good tree can’t produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down, and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. [WEB]
Well, if you're a Pharisee you count all those laws as laws you must obey and if you're not a Pharisee, then what Christ Himself tells us is required is all that is required.
Having not placed the Pharisee Rabbis of Jamnia above the Holy Spirit, I don't worry about those 600 laws and I'm sure "reformed" Jews don't much care for what Pharisee Rabbis have to say, either.
That leaves only those who insist that Pharisee Rabbis are led by God but that the Holy Spirit is not. No doubt such folks are rather desperate to come up with some way to pretend they're not bound by such laws and for such folks I'm sure one fantasy is as good as another.
Thanks for serving up the thorns and corrupt fruit yet again.
Nice try.
Oh, by all means, I forgot that Christ was talking to a physical patch of dirt, not to a people, a people who Christ says there are none of in Christ. Sure, Christ was talking about trees on a hillside and giving gardening tips.
Gotcha !!! LOL. Wolves in sheep's clothing are so funny when they get desperate and evasive.
Uh, God did not tell us to fall in love with our neighbors.....In fact he warns against it...Again,
Jas_4:17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
This is the kind of love we are to have for our neighbor...Do good...Keep an eye out for him...Help him when he needs it...Respect...Do no harm...
Since this is a poor excuse for lack of an argument you must be left to your soliloquy.
The funny little pretense that not receiving rewards is the same as being purified as if by fire is a nice touch,
Your attempt at sarcasm will not change the fact that the texts says absolutely nothing about believers being purified, nor can 1Cor. 3 otherwise be made to refer to purgatory (try if you want), while what the text does say is that they will be saved despite their workmanship s which they built the church with being burnt up, not because of it. And that this loss is that one thing that they are said to suffer, nor does it commence at death, but awaits the Lord's coming.
though, one that I'm sure impresses people who prefer to pretend they're under no obligation to Christ to obey Christ in order to be obedient to Christ.
Which false belief I just refuted at length, and thus your attempt at sarcasm once again simply testifies to your lack of an argument.
We read your catechism...We read papal bulls...We read encyclicals...We read the church fathers...We read the forged history of your religion...Why would we not know???
It is you guys who are all over the map...You hardly agree on anything...In fact, most all of the time you have to point us to links to different Catholic officials' opinions since you apparently don't have enough of an understanding about your own religion to even discuss it...
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