Posted on 08/04/2021 2:19:35 PM PDT by MurphsLaw
The promotion of Biblical interpretations serving secular, liberal political agendas of sex and race is only the latest manifestation of a centuries-old trend.
The Bible makes no explicit condemnations of transgenderism. It makes no claims as to the morality of abortion. It encourages racial reparations. Such claims can be found virtually everywhere in corporate media like the Washington Post, New York Times, or CNN, which seek to promote the various political objectives of the Democratic Party.
During his campaign for president, Episcopalian Pete Buttigieg argued that Jesus never mentioned abortion and that Bible verses censuring homosexuality were culturally conditioned, not eternal truths. The Washington Post, in turn, cites secular academics, who offer Biblical exegesis of a progressivist, feminist, and racial identitarian variety.
Of course, the Bible has always been a political document. The Old Testament was not only a religious and liturgical text but one that had much to say about the governance of the ancient kingdom of Israel. Jesus told his followers to respect and pay taxes to the Roman Empire. St. Paul described the temporal ruler as “God’s servant for your good.” (Romans 13:3-4)
For most of ecclesial history, the primary interpreters of Holy Scripture were not journalists, politicians, or secular academics, but the Catholic Church herself. Most early Church Fathers were priests or bishops. Ecumenical councils like Nicea, Chalcedon, or Lyon made determinations on theology, morality, and the meaning of the Bible.
But beginning in the fourteenth century, scholars like Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham began questioning the hierarchy’s hold on biblical interpretation. Instead, they proposed, the Bible should be under the authority of scholarly experts supported by secular political authorities. Though it would take several centuries for their ideas to proliferate, this thinking came to fruition in the Reformation and Enlightenment, and inspire trends in scriptural exegesis to this day.
This story is the focus of Scott Hahn’s and Benjamin Wiker’s book, The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book. Less than three-hundred pages, the book summarizes the central arguments of the authors’ 2012 Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, which is more than twice the size. This is a welcome development; it makes their important contributions accessible to a larger audience.
While the story begins with Marsilius and Ockham and their Erastian belief in the supremacy of the state over the Church, the reader will encounter many familiar faces. John Wycliffe, esteemed by Protestants as the “Morning Star” of the Reformation, argued that “the pope ought, as he formerly was, to be subject to Caesar.” The monarch would then employ “doctors and worshipers of the divine law” to interpret the Bible. Martin Luther also called for the German princes to wrest ecclesial power away from corrupt bishops and the Roman pontiff, and grant him unequaled interpretive authority. Indeed, Luther asked the prince of Saxony to expel fellow reformer Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt because of the latter’s radical teachings. Around the same time, Machiavelli viewed the biblical text as material for furthering secular political ends.
All of these men influenced the court of English King Henry VIII, who recognized that the Reformation offered an opportunity to consolidate his political power. Thus, he pursued the Act of Supremacy in 1534 to grant him “supreme” headship over the Church of England, followed by the dissolution of monasteries, closure of shrines, and seizure of Church wealth. His King’s Book then declared that individuals must be subject to the “particular church” of the region in which they live, and obey the “Christian kings and princes” to whom they are subject.
Other Englishmen would further endorse this thinking. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes asserts that there is only “one chief Pastor” who is “according to the law of Nature. . .the civil sovereign.” Hobbes also rejected many of the supernatural elements of Scripture, as well as Heaven and Hell. John Locke, dismayed by the violence and distemper caused by the English Civil War, endorsed a state-controlled church whose most important feature would be “toleration,” since religious sentiments were private matters “of the mind.” For Locke, Jesus was ultimately a political messiah whose teachings focused on the perpetuation of a “civil morality.”
There are many other actors in this torrid tale – Baruch Spinoza, J. Richard Simon, John Toland – but enough is clear from the above to appreciate the consequences of these religio-political trends. Proto-Reformers called for dethroning the Catholic hierarchy’s supremacy over biblical interpretation. The Reformers, relying on princes and kings, put that wish into practice. And political philosophers and state-sanctioned scholars normalized it. Wherever the Catholic Church ceased to exert ecclesial authority, the state took up the reins.
There has always been this tension between Church and state. St. Ambrose excommunicated the emperor Theodosius because of his execution of 7,000 citizens of Thessalonica. Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV because of a dispute over investiture. And Thomas Becket’s resistance to English King Henry II’s attempts to control the Church resulted in his murder at Canterbury Cathedral.
There is actually something healthy about this tension: when the state and the Church both operate strong spheres of power and influence, they serve as checks upon one another. Kings and governments cannot pursue any policy without risking moral condemnation from ecclesial leadership that will undermine their popular support. And Church corruption and nepotism can be used by secular authorities eager to usurp power.
Hahn’s and Wiker’s history tracks the growing imbalance in favor of the state, a disparity whose roots can be traced back to the late Medieval period. The ubiquitous promotion of Biblical interpretations that serve secular, liberal political agendas related to sex and race is only the latest manifestation of this centuries-old trend. To reverse it requires a return to a more ancient understanding that the Bible is, before all else, the book of the Church, rather than the state or its acolytes in the media or the academy. Catholics need to support and celebrate churchmen who appreciate and seek to realize that essential mission.
That very passage you smugly pretend to understand as well as the other verses already posted tells you clearly that IF a person says they are a believer but their life shows no repentance or spiritual change, then they should rethink if they really ARE a believer.
No, they were converted/saved, solid Christians, AND THEN they revert back to their sinfulness. ALL OF YOU SAY once saved, always saved. So, how can a once saved Christian end up going to heaven if they then become UNREPENTANT SINNERS? You say it doesn’t matter. They are STILL going to heaven and that means there is no PENALTY FOR UNREPENTANT SIN. You say once they are saved, THAT’S IT. Nothing will keep them out of heaven.
Also...stop claiming no one can answer your question when that's all we have been doing FOR DAYS! If you don't agree is one thing, but you have been answered. You have done exactly what I knew you would.
Perhaps the SDA cult has erased so many of his IQ points that he is now incapable of comprehending answers not found in the SDA cult handbooks.
WRONG. He is a believer who then commits LAWLESSNESS. That is why God says He never knew him.
And yet you STILL misrepresent what we have said! We're just going around in circles here. You reject the gospel of grace in favor of saving yourself by your good deeds and obedience to the commandments and they won't. May you one day come to the knowledge of the truth. I'll not waste anymore time here repeating myself.
And yet you STILL misrepresent what we have said!
Not at all.
We don’t wonder, do we?
“Let me in heaven because I obeyed some of the laws you gave to the Jews.” Or, in other words, Your Holy Son, Jesus, Savior to the world, didn’t do enough on the cross to save me.
We won’t be guilty of that!
A few thoughts:
1) Salvation is Gods domain. It is ALL His work. It is a mystery to us.
2) Catholics tend to deny assurance of salvation, protestants tend to lean on once saved always saved
3) There is REAL assurance of salvation and FALSE assurance of salvation. God’s word speaks to both.
4) I can’t imagine a Christian not having assurance of salvation. If not , you have no solid ground. Your salvation depends on if you did the right things before you died, or how you feel that day.
5) So the REAL QUESTION is do you have real assurance of salvation or false assurance? What does God say on the matter? It is a question worthy of much reading and reflecting.
We are assured salvation if we abide in his love.
Excuse me, if you love Me, keep MY commandments.
Maybe Ravi thought the same thing....I can commit all the rape and adultery I want to because those commandments were given to the Jews. I’m not under any obligation to keep any of it. (Wrong!)
No, He certainly does not. It is YOU He contradicts. Lord, Lord. To address Christ as “Lord” is to profess the belief that He is indeed the Messiah, and implies that the speaker has assumed the role of disciple.
MHGinTN’s point was that Jesus said to them, “I never knew you.”. NOT you once were believers but then you sinned so I don’t know you anymore. Keep twisting the word, I’m sure Jesus is pleased (not).
And in 1 John 3:6
6Whosoever ABIDETH in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, NEITHER KNOWN HIM.
It is because of SIN (LAWLESSNESS) that Christ says He doesn’t know him.
You, SC, and MHG are STILL WRONG.
All some people can work on to discredit Scripture and the security of the believer is hypotheticals.
Create some imaginary scenario and pose it to a Christian as a gottcha question and then declare victory when they don’t answer it the way you want them to.
There is no such thing as a “formally saved unrepentant sinner”.
You claim that it’s not your job to judge a person’s repentance or true conversion, and then not only do it but DEMAND that everyone else do it too.
Nor are you are any master of logic.
You are starting with a false premise, that is that someone can be formally saved and unrepentant and thus any attempt you make at a logical argument crashes and burns before it gets off the ground.
Someone who is formally saved is not an unrepentant sinner. By definition, someone who is saved has already repented. That’s how they got saved; they turned from sin to Christ.
If they are an unrepentant sinner, then they are not saved.
Also, God never in Scripture refers to a saved person as an unrepentant sinner, or even a sinner. God recognizes the saved and labels them as saints.
So your pitiful hypothetical doesn’t even get off the ground.
As far as your hypotheticals go, if that’s the best you can do to try to discredit Scripture and the security of the believer, then you have a pretty weak case. When you have to make up what if scenarios, it’s simply for the ability to be able to declare victory when someone else doesn’t answer in the way that you want and that doesn’t work.
You also seem awfully obsessed with the idea of being able to sin with impunity and rape and murder to your heart’s content, or live like Ravi, whom you are also obsessed with. And just what is the point of that?
Are you looking for justification of your own lifestyle choices? Do you want us to say that sure, you’re saved, so you can then continue in that kind of lifestyle and breathe easy?
Instead of worrying so much about others, fictional or not, perhaps you need to focus on yourself and your own lifestyle choices because you need to answer to God for you, not for others.
And don’t be a hypocrite and demand others do what you claim is not your job.
Nope, you are the one wrong.
Jesus says that He never knew them. IOW, they never were a believer to begin with.
If they were believers, Jesus would have known them as such, but He said he NEVER knew (past tense) them.
You failed on that try.
Nope! As I said in post 411 (guess you missed reading that one?)
And in 1 John 3:6
6Whosoever ABIDETH in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, NEITHER KNOWN HIM.
Matthew 7:21-23 is in COMPLETE AGREEMENT.
It is because of SIN (LAWLESSNESS) that Christ says He doesn’t know him.
Oh, and for that matter, I have STILL not received an answer from any of you on what the PENALTY for UNREPENTANT sin is. BB says there’s as penalty but she won’t tell me what it is. MHG says NOPE, there’s no penalty. You all say you told me but I just can’t comprehend.
You already told me in which post? (and don’t give me that crap answer about disfellowship). If you (BB) call someone a liar you had better back it up. SO BACK IT UP.
That’s what I thought.
As far as your hypotheticals go, if that’s the best you can do to try to discredit Scripture and the security of the believer, then you have a pretty weak case.
To you, once saved, always saved means just that. It doesn’t matter what kind of life a Christian lives AFTER their conversion (Ravi principle). No penalty for unrepentant sin. Oh, there is? THEN WHAT IS IT?
A lack of IQ points seems to be in oplay when a person cannot comprehend the meaning of the term NEVER. Or maybe demonically induced blindness?
It really is incredible how spiritually blind you all are. Here is yet ANOTHER text that parallels the other two.
The Lord knoweth who are his: and, let every one who calleth on the name of Christ depart from iniquity, (2 Timothy 2:19.)
23. And then will I confess to them (482) By using the word ὁμολογήσω , I will confess, (483) Christ appears to allude to the vain boasting, by which hypocrites now vaunt themselves. “ They indeed have confessed me with the tongue, and imagine that they have fully discharged their duty. The confession of my name is now heard aloud from their tongue. But I too will confess on the opposite side, that their profession is deceitful and false.” And what is contained in Christ’s confession? That he never reckoned them among his own people, even at the time when they boasted that they were the pillars of the church.
Depart from me. He orders those persons to go out from his presence, who had stolen, under a false title, an unjust and temporary possession of his house. From this passage in our Lord’s discourse Paul seems to have taken what he says to Timothy,
The Lord knoweth who are his: and, let every one who calleth on the name of Christ depart from iniquity, (2 Timothy 2:19.)
The former clause is intended to prevent weak minds from being alarmed or discouraged by the desertion of those who had a great and distinguished reputation: (484) for he declares that they were disowned by the Lord, though by a vain show they captivated the eyes of men. He then exhorts all those who wish to be reckoned among the disciples of Christ, to withdraw early from iniquity, that Christ may not drive them from his presence, when he shall “separate the sheep from the goats, ” (Matthew 25:33.)
DISOWNED BY THE LORD = I NEVER KNEW YOU
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