(moved) Can the Philosophical Approach of "Reformed" Protestantism lead out of Christianity?

hedrick · Feb 7, 2016

I think I’ve responded to this before.

1. I quoted Fitzmeyer on what he meant by the real presence. it wasn’t quite what you’re assuming. I’ve also explained that “in heaven” doesn’t mean quite what you seem to think. Heaven isn’t a physical place out beyond outer space. It’s the spiritual, which the sacrament allows us to experience. Calvin says eating the bread and wine imparts Christ’s body and blood. Haven’t we been through this a bunch of times before?

2. I’ve already said I’m not dead set against miracles being done by relics. I’d just take a good deal of convincing. If people keep it out of the sanctuary and out of worship, I don’t condemn all possession of relics. It's not something we'd likely do in our tradition. Though now and then the PCUSA has made exceptions. There's a joint PCUSA / ELCA mission that uses a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

MennoSota · Feb 7, 2016

rakovsky said:
Hello, Mennosota.

The problem with this mentality is that there are hundreds of Protestant sects who don't care about the Christian explanations of verses for the last 1900 years, are convinced they have the right reading of the Bible, that the Spirit is filling them and leading them to this reading, a reading which turns out to be mutually exclusive of the other sects.

Take for example Quakers. They followed Zwingli's belief on sacraments to its natural conclusion. They decided that per the Bible, sacraments are only "outward" symbols and not really necessary, and so they stopped using baptism and communion rituals. In accordance with their full convictions and belief that they were following God, they underwent persecutions that were sometimes deadly.

This is why in practice it is important to care about the Traditions of the early Christians who explained what these passages actually meant, instead of just everybody always deciding major doctrines for their own small faction without caring about normal Christian understandings and imagining that their private, discordant viewpoint must be from God. Theoretically of course God could give you a vision and tell you most people but you are wrong like Ellen White claimed when she started the SDAs, but the early Christians seemed to care about following traditions handed down to them. (2 Thessalonians 2:15)

Yes, the Bible has many very inspiring truths. Personally, I find the concept of communion very pleasant too, thinking that God and Christ are directly present right there with us.
Question: When you learn that all the tens or hundreds of thousands of Catholics who claim to be healed and increased in faith from praying with relics are just under silly superstitions about these things, does this cause joy or not?

How should one mentally and emotionally deal with all these inspiring claims of healings and miracles with relics as a hardcore skeptic, and then turn to Reformed claims of miracles with no relics?

Satan doesn't care which denomination a person was in, if that person still goes to hell. The teaching that baptism by a church saves a person is one of those whoopers that Satan tells so that people misplace their faith in sprinkled water rather than in the shed blood of Christ. I have met countless people who couldn't care less about Jesus in their everyday lives, but claim they are going to heaven because they were baptized as an infant and went through a couple months of confirmation. After that they only give God a nod at Christmas and Easter. They place their faith in their denomination and don't even know their Lord and Savior. It's sad to see such false hope and know that so many are going to hell and are falsely believing they are going to heaven. Add that to the fact that you are wanting to push that lie as truth and it just makes me sad.

PeaceByJesus · Feb 7, 2016

rakovsky said:
Dear P.B.J.,
...1. The Hebrews didn't practice it because Christ's sacrifice was not yet accomplished.

Wrong. 1 Co. 10 makes the OT passover as well pagan dedicatory feasts as analogous to the Lord Supper, that,
The bread which we break, is it not the communion/fellowship of the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16)
Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? (1 Corinthians 10:18)
But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils. (1 Corinthians 10:20-21)

To take part in these sacrificial dedicatory feasts signified fellowship with the other worshipers, and identification with the object to whom the feast was dedicated to. But in no case was the fellowship via physically consuming the flesh and blood of the object of their devotion.

To consume something to take in its life spiritually would bring one down to the animal level, because they just had animals. This is actually explained in the Torah, where it says not to eat blood, because the life is in the blood. Jesus however explicitly explains that you do need to consume his blood because his blood brings life. If you partook of the spiritual life of God, you could become immortal.

No, that is simply reading the Cath interpretation into what the Lord said, and which is foreign to the rest of Scripture.

And as based upon Jn. 6:53, which is an absolute imperative like as other "verily, verily" statements are, then it makes taking part in the Lord's Supper (as a believer in the Cath sense) in order to obtain spiritual life, for "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." (John 6:53)

Yet this is nowhere the means of obtaining spiritual life in the rest of the NT, Acts onward, which is interpretive of the gospel, and instead obtaining spiritual life is always by believing the gospel. (Acts 10:43; 15:7-9; Eph. 1:13) And preaching of the word is the only thing that is said to "nourish" souls (1Tim. 4:6) and build them up by, (Acts 20:32) and which the NT presbyteros (which the Holy Spirit NEVER distinctively titles "priests") fed the flock with, (Acts 20:28) and are described doing.

And in fact any manifest description of the Lord's Supper is missing from all but one epistle to the churches, and 1Co. 11 will be dealt with below.

2. Eating was an essential part of necessary rituals like the Day of Atonement and Passover, during which the sins were taken away.

Actually sins were forgiven prior to that under the rubric of the day of atonement, which itself looked forward to Christ, but sins were not taken away by eating, but which signified fellowship with each other as partakers of the sacrifices to God. Which the NT church shows by looking back to Christ, showing His death for the body by sharing this communal meal with those who were bought by His sinless shed blood. (cf. Acts 20:28)

3. The concept itself is not pagan, since it is in the Torah, but it's banned because they did not want you to drink animal blood.

Obtaining spiritual life by consuming the flesh of the beloved deceased is not in the Torah, or the NT, but is distinctively pagan, as described here.

Further, the Orthodox and Lutheran traditional view is that this Communion is not a "bloody" feast. Luther explains that we don't drink physical blood.

And you do?

Further, if we consider this a pagan concept only, then we would end up accusing Jesus of relying on pagan concepts, whether or not he used them as symbols.

But it is a distinctively pagan concept, unseen in Scripture and which ignores the abundantly figurative use of eating which the apostles would have been familiar with, and thus you are arguing against your position, as Christ indeed did not rely on pagan concepts.

And even as per Calvinism, some form of partaking of Jesus is inherent in the ritual.

But the devil is in the details of what Catholicism means by this. As the Lord identifies with His body, the church, and is in the midst of even 2 or 3 gathered in His name, then in remembering His death by sharing food with those for whom He died form, then the Lord is nigh in a greater degree.

And it is Roman Catholicism that had to devise a metaphysical explanation to justify her claim:

In Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship, Bernhard Lang argues that, “When in late antiquity the religious elite of the Roman Empire rethought religion and ritual, the choice was not one between Mithraism and Christianity (as Ernest Renan suggested in the 19th century) but between pagan Neoplatonism and Neoplatonic Christianity.”

“In the third century CE, under the leadership of Plotinus, Plato’s philosophy enjoyed a renaissance that was to continue throughout late antiquity. This school of thought had much in common with Christianity: it believed in one God (the “One”), in the necessity of ritual, and in the saving contact with deities that were distinct from the ineffable

One and stood closer to humanity. Like Judaism and Christianity, it also had its sacred books–the writings of Plato, and, in its later phase, also the Chaldean Oracles. In fact, major early Christian theologians–Origen, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysus–can at the same time be considered major representatives of the Neoplatonic school of thought.” - (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2014/04/08/early-churchs-choice-between-neoplatonism)

From a RC monk and defender:

Neoplatonic thought or at least conceptual terms are clearly interwoven with Christian theology long before the 13th century...

The doctrine of transubstantiation completely reverses the usual distinction between being and appearance, where being is held to be unchanging and appearance is constantly changing. Transubstantiation maintains instead that being or substance changes while appearance remains unchanged. Such reversals in the order of things are affronts to reason and require much, not little, to affirm philosophically. Moreover, transubstantiation seem to go far beyond the simple distinction between appearance and reality. It would be one thing if the body and blood of Christ simply appeared to be bread and wine. But I don’t think that is what is claimed with “transubstantiation.”

Aristotle picked up just such common-sense concepts as “what-it-is-to-be-X” and tried to explain rather complex philosophical problems with them. Thus, to take a “common-sense” concept like substance–even if one could maintain that it were somehow purified of Aristotelian provenance—and have it do paradoxical conceptual gymnastics in order to explain transubstantiation seems not to be not so anti-Aristotelian in spirit after all...

That the bread and wine are somehow really the body and blood of Christ is an ancient Christian belief—but using the concept of “substance” to talk about this necessarily involves Greek philosophy (Br. Dennis Beach, OSB, monk of St. John’s Abbey; doctorate in philosophy from Penn State; http://www.praytellblog.com/index.p...iation-and-aristotle-warning-heavy-philosophy)

Edwin Hatch:
...it is among the Gnostics that there appears for the first time an attempt to realize the change of the elements to the material body and blood of Christ. The fact that they were so regarded is found in Justin Martyr. But at the same time, that the change was not vividly realized, is proved by the fact that, instead of being regarded as too awful for men to touch, the elements were taken by the communicants to their homes and carried about with them on their travels. (Hatch, Edwin, 1835-1889, "The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian church;" pp. 308-09 https://archive.org/stream/influenceofgreek00hatc/influenceofgreek00hatc_djvu.txt)

4. To object that a concept appears pagan would be to repeat the kind of claims that Christianity is "pagan", that the Torah considers it impossible for God to be a "man", that having multiple divine beings (eg. a Trinity) is pagan, etc.

But which copycat claims are specious, while spiritual life in oneself is always obtained by believing the word of God of the gospel.

In any case, at this point, I wish to please ask you to move on to Question #3. (http://www.christianforums.com/thre...of-christianity.7929431/page-10#post-69202770)
In the third question, I'd like to focus on how the Reformed position on the Eucharist and on relics leads away from Biblical Christianity, particularly how:
The Evangelical website "Credo House" says that disciples who rejected the plain meaning of Jesus' words on eating his flesh left Jesus, and that Jesus didn't call them back and give a symbolic meaning, even though the gospels say Jesus explained all his parables' symbolism to the disciples.

As your premise is false so is your conclusion. The Lord did not explain all things, such as "destroy this temple and in 3 days i will raise it up," but left those misunderstanding it who did not hunger for truth, even if it mean it being used against the Lord later.

And "disciples" means a learner, and does not necessarily denote a believer, which is to whom the Lord privately explained things, while those who departed in Jn. 6 did not wait for the fuller explanation, as did true seekers.

For as the Lord said "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me,". (John 6:57) and the Lord said man lives by every word of God, (Mt. 4:4) and His "meat" was to do the Father's will/obey His word, (Jn. 4:24) so also He explained that His flesh - which the carnal hearers assumed was the body the Lord was in - would ascend up above, but that His words were spirit, they are life, the word of eternal life. And which John abundant confirms is believing on the Word made flesh, by which one is saved, contrary to physically eating to obtain spiritual life.

And which use of figurative language is also entirely consistent with John:

• In John 1:29, Jesus is called “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” — but he does not have hoofs and literal physical wool.

• In John 2:19 Jesus is the temple of God: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” — but He is not made of literal stone.

• In John 3:14,15, Jesus is the likened to the serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21) who must “be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal” (vs. 14, 15) — but He is not made of literal bronze.

• In John 4:14, Jesus provides living water, that “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life,” — but which was not literally consumed by mouth.

• In John 7:37 Jesus is the One who promises “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” — but believers were not water fountains, but He spoke ”of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive.” (John 7:38)

• In Jn. 9:5 Jesus is “the Light of the world” — but who is not blocked by an umbrella.

• In John 10, Jesus is “the door of the sheep,” and “the good shepherd [who] giveth his life for the sheep”, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” vs. 7, 10, 11) — but who again, is not literally an animal with cloven hoofs.

• In John 15, Jesus is the true vine — but who does not physically grow from the ground nor whose fruit is literally physically consumed.

Other examples of the use of figurative language for eating and drinking include when David distinctly said drinking water was the blood of men, and thus would not drink it, but poured it out on the ground as an offering to the Lord, as it is forbidden to drink blood:

And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. (2 Samuel 23:16-17)

To be consistent with their plain-language hermeneutic Caths invoke then they should also insist this was literal. As well as when God clearly states that the Canaanites were “bread:

• “Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us” (Num. 14:9),

Other examples:

• The Promised Land was “a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.” (Num. 13:32)

• David said that his enemies came to “eat up my flesh.” (Ps. 27:2)

• And complained that workers of iniquity ”eat up my people as they eat bread , and call not upon the Lord.” (Psalms 14:4)

• And the Lord also said, “I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord.” (Zephaniah 1:3)

• While even arrows can drink: “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh ; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.' (Deuteronomy 32:42)

• But David says the word of God (the Law) was “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. (Psalms 19:10)

• Another psalmist also declared the word as “sweet:” “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalms 119:103)

• Jeremiah likewise proclaimed, “Your words were found. and I ate them. and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15:16)

• Ezekiel was told to eat the words, “open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee...” “eat that thou findest; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” (Ezek. 2:8; 3:1)

• John is also commanded, “Take the scroll ... Take it and eat it.” (Rev. 10:8-9 )

Therefore the metaphorical use of language for eating and drinking is well established, and which the apostles would have been familiar with, and would have understood the Lord's words by, versus as a radical new requirement that contradicted Scripture, and required a metaphysical explanation to justify.

Paul wrote twice in 1 Cor. 10 and 11, asking the Corinthians to "discern" that the ritual bread is Christ's body, and warned them intensely against failing to do so.

Which is another argument against you, as the context here is that of recognizing the church as the body of Christ in remembering the Lord's death for it, "which he hath purchased with his own blood," (Acts 20:28) for Paul reproves the Corinthian church for not actually coming together to eat the Lord's supper, because they were eating what is supposed to be a communal meal, the “feast of charity,” (Jude 1:12) independently of each other, so that “in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken,” and thus what they were doing was to “shame them that have not.” (1Co. 11:20-22)

Therefore Paul proceeds to reiterates the words of Christ at the institution of the Lord's supper, ending with “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew [kataggellō=preach/declare] the Lord's death till he come.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

For while they were supposed to be showing/declaring the Lord's unselfish sacrificial death for the body by unselfishly sharing food with other members of the body of Christ, whom Christ purchased it with His own sinless shed blood, (Acts 20:28) instead they were both eating independently and selfishly. And thus were effectively treating other members as lepers, as if others were not part of the body for whom Christ died. Therefore they were eating this bread and drinking the cup of the Lord unworthily, hypocritically, because they were presuming to show the Lord's death for the body while acting contrary to it. And thus some were chastised for it, some unto death, (1Co. 11:27-32)

This lack of effectual recognition is what is being referred to as “not discerning the Lord's body,” not that of the nature of the elements consumed. Because this was the case and cause of condemnation, then the apostle's solution was, “Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come.” (1 Corinthians 11:33-34)

The context of the next chapter is also that of the church.

The Reformed position takes extreme cynicism that saints' presence, bones, clothes, or other items could be involved in miracle working, yet this attitude would normally discount the numerous Biblical instances of them.

The cynicism toward these as well as holy cloths peddled by certain prosperity preachers (and come Cath. ministries) is well warranted. And as with other things i said, you seem to have ignored what i said on this. Thus i am not going to repeat myself again.

PeaceByJesus · Feb 8, 2016

rakovsky said:
Hello, PBJ.
1. I am not sure that Catholicism teaches the magisterium is "infallible". At least our Orthodox church does not teach this.

R. Catholicism certainly does teach the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, if conditional, while EO is wise to avoid that term, but which leads to the question as what the basis of your assurance of Truth is, if it is not the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power.

2. It is hard to assert that the writings are "uninspired", since as Christian saints they would have been inspired (filled with Spirit), especially when it came to theology.

Being presumably filled with Spirit does not translate into being wholly inspired of God as Scripture is, and making the former determinitive of truth. That is the difference.

If that is the Reformed belief, it is hard to understand why the saints would choose the right books of the Bible when they finalized them in the post-apostolic era, picked the right beliefs for the Creeds like Nicea and Chalcedon, etc.

Then tell me how common laity discerned both men and writings as being of God, even in dissent from the leadership. Or do you deny that?

I think Catholics don't claim the Bible is "dead". However in real life you sometimes need to about what the Christian teachings about the verses have been for the last 1900 years, or else you could end up like the JWs and hundreds of other sects who don't care about tradition, get confused about the Bible, and make mutually-exclusive doctrines that they claim are Biblical.

Just because a basis for unity can also lead to disunity does not invalidate it. Both Rome and EO disagree somewhat about the canon, and what tradition teaches. And the real life popular unity (versus the limited largely paper version) is that of widely variegated beliefs, while those who esteem Scripture the most as the wholly inspired accurate word of God are the most unified religious group in basic beliefs, and strongest contenders against those who deny them.

I don't think Catholics claim _infallibility_ about relics either. But they do typically believe that some relics have been involved with miracles. The Reformed seem so contrary to this, that they would normally be predisposed to even rule out the ones in the Bible were it rationally possible to do so.
Yes, it's scriptural like you said. But the Reformed mindset appears to denounce said contact, in practice drawing exceptions around those contacts enumerated in scripture.

The use of relics was a one time or brief period instance and extremely rare, and was not a matter of formally making such to be objects of veneration and as necessarily permanently conveying grace, which is akin to what Israel did with the bronze serpent.
When we see some real Elijah's and Peter and Paul then maybe we will see some such one time use of relics.

I am not talking about worshiping the objects like they were idols.

It is doing obeisance before such, which you not see in Scripture.

Secondly, there appears to be a Biblical view that the physical body of saints is holy, hence the resurrection of their bodies. Were the bodies worthless to them, they could just stay in the ground and be better off. Christianity instead claims that the saints are spiritually transformed and these bodies will be made incorruptible. Jesus' body and Peter's physical presence are portrayed as playing a role in miracles. This can help make sense of Elisha's bones and how they could be involved in miracles long after his death.

Elisha's bones was not playing a role in miracles, plural, but singular. Why are you so focused on relics, when the use of which was a one time/period very rare occurrence? God is sovereign and can do what He wants and when He wills, and is not constrained by men who take what He sovereignly did on occasions and turn it into a formal sacrament. Might as well have a talking donkey while you are at it.

PeaceByJesus · Feb 8, 2016

rakovsky said:
Sorry, I am not sure what you are asking.

I am essentially asking why God-fearing Protestants cannot rightly discern what is of God even when (in certain issues) their judgment is contrary to the historical leadership and their traditions. Whether you claim infallibility or not, it seems you are assuming veracity on the basis of historical pedigree.

And is the degree of Scriptural substantiation being the basis for the veracity of Truth claims to be disallowed since this can result in disunity?

If the Orthodox church care a lot about following the beliefs and writings of the Christian community from their first period when the Biblical books were agreed on, this is a good sign that the Church reflects the teachings of that Church.

Regardless, this presumes that discerning which books are of God (actually while largely settled, scholarly doubts and discussions about certain books continued for centuries) means that they can be trusted in all other judgments as well, but if discerning which books are wholly inspired of God (which the devil also does) is to have the impact such warrants, it means that the very writers as well as discerners are to be subject to it.

And thus the question is whether the early post-apostolic church had deviated from that and had begun to succumb to the accretion of traditions of men which are simply not found in Scripture.

We can examine every single of the appox. 200 prayers in Scripture and no find a single prayer or offering to anyone else in Heaven but the Lord - except by pagans - or any testimony to created beings being able to hear and respond to all such addressed them, but in the name of historical tradition we are supposed to accept this unscriptural late development.

We can also look in vain to even one instance of a NT presbuteros being titled "priest" and having a unique sacerdotal function, but we are supposed to accept it in the name of tradition, as well as other errors.

Moreover, what these so-called "church fathers" wrote which you look to for interpretation can themselves be subject to different interpretation, and Rome and the EOs even disagree about some things tradition teaches.

If on the other hand a movement appears 1500 years later and goes ONLY on that main sacred Book and doesn't care much about how the contemporary Christian leaders understood the passages in the books that they passed down, it seems likely that the new movement 1500 years later could easily misunderstand some passages.

The Reformers did care,
"Substantiation for this understanding of the gospel came principally from the Scriptures, but whenever they could, the reformers also quoted the fathers of the catholic church. There was more to quote than their Roman opponents found comfortable" ( Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 49).

It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour." (Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation)

But as the Lord did, (Mk. 7:2-16) they subjected such men to Scripture as supreme.

Besides, one of the proofs of Christianity is supposed to be that in the first few centuries the believers survived persecution for their faith.

Indeed, and the "Hall of Faith in Heb. 11 includes Samson and a man who made a very alarming vow, and while such can be pious souls of great faith and virtue, this simply does not equate to absence of errors . "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit," (Psalms 34:18)

After i become manifestly born again thru tearful deep repentance and faith at around age 25, i remained a week mass-going RC, and even still prayed to Mary somewhat, and believed in the Eucharist, though trying to figure out how the anointed evangelical preachers that fed my hungry soul could be receiving it. And i was persecuted for my faith in witnessing to others about Christ, even placing myself in bodily danger, going like a sheep to the slaughter in opposing immorality on my own. Which was not my idea by Gods, and continued after i prayerfully left the RCC after 6 years for an evangelical church, which God clearly confirmed was of Him.

But the same Catholic church which claims the faith of early martyrs has the blood of Christian martyrs on her hands, both those who were Catholic as well as sincere souls who dared dissent from her.

How can that be a proof of Christianity's truths if you don't care about the real, specific beliefs of those thousands of Christians as they directly wrote them down and explained their Bible?

You continue to employ a straw man, and vastly exaggerate the number of early "church fathers" whose writing we have, and of Bible commentary by them, but rejecting some things these men wrote does not translate into not caring about what they believed. But it means that that no matter how great their piety, nothing can justify their erroneous beliefs, and in which they could disagree with each other on.

Jerome and Augustine, among others and other things, held perverse views regarding marital relations, with Jerome even abusing Scripture to support his erroneous conclusion.

It looks like Reformed is much more about caring what each Reformed person thinks about religion and the Bible, not about what the early Christians who formed the original Church that the Bible came from actually thought about it themselves.

Regardless of what esteeming the wholly inspired word of God over the various ideas of others seems like to you, it seems obvious that Roman and EO Catholics care more about their church and its accretion of traditions of men over what Scripture actually teaches, with some of the distinctive Catholics beliefs not even being a matter of interpretation of Scripture, as they are not even found in Scripture!

After five centuries it is not surprising this leads to some sects creating their own versions of religion based on what they want or expect to see, with "critical scholarship" debunking the Christian reading of Isaiah 53, etc.

Which is the type of thing that modern evangelicalism, like historical Protestantism, rose up to oppose, while liberal revisionism is what predominates in your sister the RCC, even in her sanctioned New American Bible notes for decades.

But division because of doctrine is nothing new, as Rome and the EOs realized long before the needed Reformation.

rakovsky · Feb 13, 2016

Dear Hedrick,

I hope that you will find the part later in this message about Christ as the spiritual rock illustrative of how Paul sees him as spiritual food directly in the bread itself.

hedrick said:
Sure, transubstantiation is consistent with participation. But the original question was about participation of Catholic scholars in ecumenical Biblical scholarship. I’ve never claimed that Catholics have abandoned transubstantiation, just that it doesn’t color the NT scholarship of people like Fitzmeyer. Fitzmeyer may well believe in transubstantiation, but it isn’t argued for in his commentaries (at least not in this place — I haven’t read all of his work).

Haydock’s commentary, to which you refer, is from 1859. That is well before Catholic scholars became part of ecumenical scholarship. (Nor do I claim that every Catholic scholar is, even today, any more than every Reformed scholar is today. There are plenty of conservative Reformed.)

I think your main point was that scholars say that in 1 Corinthians 10-11, Paul is not talking about the bread as actually having in itself Christ's body. My response was to say that there can be a division along denominational lines based on people's own theologies. Haydock(Catholic) and Kretzman(Lutheran) are still standard commentaries, and Lopukhin is still a standard - perhaps the main - Orthodox commentary. Personally, I find the Catholic Fitzmyer to be endorsing the Catholic view when he says: "His words thus affirm the real presence of the Lord in the eucharistic food and drink, as he will do again in v. 29" (about discerning the body).
I say this because Fitzmyer is Catholic, and for Catholics and Lutherans, to speak of the "real presence" in the food means something different than the "real presence" means for Calvin. That is, they have different understandings. I know that Calvin felt he believed the same thing as the Lutherans, but Luther didn't agree about that. So when a Catholic writer talks about the "real presence", the default understanding is that he means what he and other Catholics understand by this term.

Secondly, Calvin taught the "real presence" in the meal (an activity), but he differed from Luther's teaching that Christ was present in the food and drink (objects) themselves. I am OK with being corrected on this, but if you do correct me, I ask that it be an explicit contrary statement by Calvin, as he said: "The presence of Christ in the Supper [activity] we must hold to be such as neither affixes him to the element of bread, nor encloses him in bread [an object]".
Fitzmyer and Luther both wrote that Christ's presence was "in" the food/bread.

You wrote:

However, Calvin would not agree with that "Bread and cup, body and blood of the Lord correspond to each other in an unmistakable way, and their implication should not be missed; they have become for Paul the real "spiritual food" and "spiritual drink" of 10:3-4." For Calvin, the way that bread corresponds with the Lord's body is not one where the bread becomes the "real spiritual food". For Calvin, the "real spiritual food" was up in heaven, and the bread down on earth was just a symbol of that.

That’s absurd. Calvin certainly teaches that the bread and wine are spiritual food.

You are right that Calvin calls the bread and wine spiritual food, although I notice that he doesn't say "real spiritual food" like Fitzmyer does. Perhaps that doesn't make much difference.

Here is the quote that I found by Calvin on "spiritual food" in his commentary on 1 Cor 10:

Farther, when he says that the fathers ate the same spiritual meat [the manna in the desert], he shows, first, what is the virtue and efficacy of the Sacraments, and, secondly, he declares, that the ancient Sacraments of the Law had the same virtue as ours have at this day. For, if the manna was spiritual food, it follows, that it is not bare emblems that are presented to us in the Sacraments, but that the thing represented is at the same time truly imparted, for God is not a deceiver to feed us with empty fancies.

http://biblehub.com/commentaries/calvin/1_corinthians/10.htm

I note that Calvin might say that "the thing represented is at the same time truly imparted", but this does not mean that Calvin thought that the presence was actually in the bread. My understanding of Calvin was that he thought that the body that was represented was imparted during the meal through spiritual communion where the believer's spirit ascends, but that the body not actually in the bread.

So for Calvin, calling the manna "spiritual food" meant that "the thing represented is at the same time truly imparted," but it didn't mean that the thing represented (body) was actually in the bread, but just that the bread imparted it (acted as a vehicle).

Next, Calvin brings up an extremely helpful issue:

4. And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

That rock was Christ Some absurdly pervert these words of Paul, as if he had said, that Christ was the spiritual rock, and as if he were not speaking of that rock which was a visible sign, for we see that he is expressly treating of outward signs. The objection that they make -- that the rock is spoken of as spiritual, is a frivolous one, inasmuch as that epithet is applied to it simply that we may know that it was a token of a spiritual mystery. In the mean time, there is no doubt, that he compares our sacraments with the ancient ones. Their second objection is more foolish and more childish -- "How could a rock," say they, "that stood firm in its place, follow the Israelites?" -- as if it were not abundantly manifest, that by the word rock is meant the stream of water, which never ceased to accompany the people. For Paul extols [535] the grace of God, on this account, that he commanded the water that was drawn out from the rock to flow forth wherever the people journeyed, as if the rock itself had followed them.

For Calvin, the term "spiritual rock" is an epithet that means it was a "token of a spiritual mystery", and he disputes Christ's presence in the rock. So when in the last passage he says "spiritual food", Calvin means that the manna/Eucharist was "a token of a spiritual mystery" or a sign.

Next, please notice what Calvin says about the rock NOT being Christ. He says that Paul uses the word "rock" to mean the stream of water following Christ.

Now please contrast that with Fitzmyer who notes on p. 383:

"From these poetic verses (in the Torah on the spiritual rock) there eventually developed in Jewish tradition the idea of the rock itself, which supplied the water, accompanying the wandering Israelites... Paul thinks that Christ was actually the accompanying rock, conceived of as the source of water that saved the Israelites in their desert wanderings. Paul thus applies to Christ an appellation often given to Yahweh as the helper or aide of Israel, called in Hebrew sur, Rock. He now makes it refer to the rock of Horeb... Paul uses the impf en "was" which implies that he is thinking of the preexistent Christ as that rock . The impf stands in contrast to Gal 3:16 where Christ is the offspring of Abraham... Recall the allegorical use of estin in Acts 4:11, "This is the stone" There was already a hint at the preexistence of Christ in 8:6

That is, Fitzmyer goes back and looks at Jewish traditions and finds the belief in the rock actually following the Israelites. Calvin however calls this concept "foolish and more childish", and concludes that Paul must be talking about the stream of water. I disagree. First, we cannot equate our modern naturalistic mindset with the ancient one of Paul 2000 years ago. Just because something sounds mythical or fantastic is not actually grounds to exclude it out of hand and force some other interpretation on it.

Here, Paul plainly wrote that "the rock" followed the Israelites, not "the stream". And to me, the exegetes whom Calvin dismisses appear quite right in their claim that Paul must see this rock as Christ, because it follows them, unlike a simple physical rock representing Christ.

So for Fitzmyer and Paul, when they talk of ("real") spiritual food and a spiritual rock in 1 Cor 10, then they actually mean that this was actually Christ in some form. Calvin however, would say that the food and rocks are "outward signs" that play some role in salvation, not actually being Christ Himself. Fitzmyer and Paul more easily perceive the supernatural and mythical as material and direct, while Calvin has a habit of rejecting as too "carnal" or "superstitious" or "childish" religious interpretations of like relics, the rock, and the Eucharist that imbue them directly with some kind of spiritual presence or inherent nature.

You continue to misunderstand Calvin, because you take one of three ways in which he said believers are united to Christ in communion and exaggerate it. “Spiritual food” is a fine term for Calvin’s understanding, and in fact he uses it in his commentary on 10:3. Calvin understands the bread as spiritual food because it imparts Christ’s body. He sees this as the middle course between two extremes: Catholics “who dream of transformations (I know not of what sort)”, and extremists who separate the signs from the realities. He believes that the signs and the reality appear together, so that eating in faith actually imparts the body. “the thing represented is at the same time truly imparted, for God is not a deceiver to feed us with empty fancies.” Hence calling it spiritual food is precisely appropriate.

Yes, that was Calvin's reasoning, and I understand him on that point. However, that is not how Paul and Fitzmyer use the terms spiritual food and spiritual rock.

My conviction is that the Christian reading of Isaiah 53 is correct, and the Nicene Creed states that Jesus' resurrection would be "according to the Scriptures", so this is a fundamental of Christianity. But we find multiple modern Protestant (I don't think particularly Lutheran) Bibles claiming that the rabbinical view is correct:

Click to expand...

I think you have misunderstood how prophets should be used. Jews applied OT passages to current days. E.g. John the Baptist was seen as Elijah. (Mat 11:14). But this doesn’t mean that we should read the Elijah stories in the OT as simply predictions of John. They have an original context, but in Jewish thought OT events are seen as patterns to understand current events.
Similarly, Is 53 had an original OT context. But it was widely seen by Christians (and probably Jesus himself) as describing Christ. Insisting that OT commentaries should describe the OT context does not invalidate the use of the passage in the NT.

Hedrick!
I understand what you mean. The Book of Jonah might be intended as a "real life account" or allegory of a prophet going to Nineveh, and maybe Jesus reinterpreted that story or allegory and applied it to Himself.

BUT, I believe that in the case of Isaiah 53, Isaiah was writing about the Messiah as the Servant, not the Israelite nation. I think that there are many ways to show this, as I laid out on my website rakovskii.livejournal.com. I would be glad to discuss it with you.

Take for example, the RSV comment:

"God will exalt his brutally disfigured Servant (Israel) to the numbed astonishment of the world's rulers".

Here is what Isaiah 52 says, per the RSV:

12. For you shall not go out in haste,
and you shall not go in flight,
for the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
...
14. As many were astonished at him[b]—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men—
15. so shall he startle many nations

[b] aiah 52:14 Syr Tg: Heb you

What the RSV does, as footnote b admits, is switch the Hebrew "you" with "him". There is no explanation of why the RSV does that, and the other translations just leave "you".
In fact, if "you" is used, it undermines the identification of the Servant as Israel, which the RSV Study Guide makes.
Ask yourself, who is "you" who astonishes many? "You", as seen in preceding verses, is the audience, Israel. Notice how it says then:
"As many were astonished at you, so shall he (the Servant) startle many nations."
This kind of juxtaposition grammatically separates "you" (Israel) from him (the Servant). Israel is not the Servant. There are many more ways to prove this.

You wrote:

This isn’t “naturalism,” any more than Calvin is actually guilty of naturalism. I think using the term "naturalism" for respecting the original context of a writing is a pretty non-standard use of the term.

Correct. The Revisionism used about Isaiah 53 is not "naturalism". It is more a kind of doubt in Christian Tradition that leads to revisions against what the Christian Community, even Protestants across the spectrum have long thought about these verses. And I believe that in the case of Isaiah 53, this revision is incorrect, even when I try to think about the issue of Isaiah 53 independent of Tradition myself!

Indeed I would claim that it is transubstantiation that is actually “rationalistic,” in trying to turn a spiritual reality into metaphysics. I think many Orthodox would agree with that.

It's certainly "scholastic", from the Orthodox POV what Lutherans, Catholics, and Reformed have done in terms of making definitive explanations about the Eucharist that the Orthodox simply considered a mystery.

Google Definitions says Rationalism is "a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief", and in theology "the practice of treating reason as the ultimate authority in religion."
In the case of Lutherans and Catholics, they were basing their definitions of Transubstantiation and "Consubstantiation"(for lack of a better single word for the Lutheran view) on Christian Traditions about the Eucharist that were handed down to them as a matter of faith and religious doctrine. In the case of Calvin, however, in practice he based his explanation that Christ's body was not directly in the Eucharistic bread on Reason over and against the religious doctrine handed down to him that Christ was directly present in the bread itself.

As Killian McDonnell cites Calvin in John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist:

Calvin... invokes reason in his polemic against both the Lutherans and the Romans. (p. 55)
[Calvin wrote:]"A doctrine carrying many absurdities with it is not true. The doctrine of the corporeal presence of Christ is involved in many absurdities; therefore it follows that it is not true..." (pp.207-208)

For Calvin, reason is a higher authority than the religious doctrine in this case, because "absurdity" is his criterion for rejecting in a straightforward, absolute way this doctrine that was handed down and generally held by the religious community of his time, Lutherans, Catholics, and Orthodox.

rakovsky · Feb 13, 2016

redleghunter said:
I have to point out you have yet to establish the Reformers used modern naturalist reason above the plain meaning of Holy Scriptures and tradition. You have asserted such but have not established such.

Hello, Redleg!

When Jesus handed his disciples the bread and said "This is my body", the "plain" (as opposed to symbolic) meaning was that in some way this was actually his body (the Lutheran or Catholic views).

Meanwhile, in his Institutes, Calvin objected to the Lutheran claim that Christ could be in the Eucharistic bread because He was everywhere:

"These men[Lutherans] teach that he is in every place, but without form. They say that it is unfair to subject a glorious body to the ordinary laws of nature. But this answer draws along with it the delirious dream of Servetus [burned by Swiss Reformed], which all pious minds justly abhor, that his body was absorbed by his divinity."

Christ had a glorified, transfigured body after the Resurrection that could pass through walls and Ascend. Lutherans objected to subjecting His body to the "ordinary laws of nature", but Calvin said that to complain about using the ordinary laws of nature to Jesus' body was wrong like Servetus. Thus, the "ordinary laws of nature" were taken by Calvin above the plain meaning of scripture.

Further, in his writing against relics, Calvin says:

It was not the custom of the primitive Christians to have images, and it only became so a long while afterwards, when the Church was corrupted by superstition...

Isn't here Calvin associating images with "superstition", and thus making a naturalistic criticism of them? Beliefs about walking under a ladder bringing bad luck many minutes later is superstition, for example. It does not have a basis in real science or nature. But is this really a correct claim to make about images that the apostolic age (ie. primitive) Christians of 30-110 AD. didn't have them or that it's superstition?

Think about the images of the cross, anchor and the "sign of the fish".

The Christians adopted the anchor as a symbol of hope in future existence because the anchor was regarded in ancient times as a symbol of safety. The Epistle to the Hebrews 6:19-20 for the first time connects the idea of hope with the symbol of the anchor. A fragment of inscription discovered in the catacomb of St. Domitilla contains the anchor, and dates from the end of the 1st century.

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA on Christian Symbols

Catacomb of St. Domitilla (Rome)

1st century Christian burial in Jerusalem:

: A fish is carved upon the lid of the 1st century burial tomb

Using a robotic arm equipped with a camera, archaeologists have found human bone boxes and an inscription that reads 'Divine Jehovah, raise up, raise up' in a 1st Century Christian burial chamber beneath a tower block in Jerusalem.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...reveal-Jesus-resting-place.html#ixzz406DQfqgz

"The four line inscription in Greek has been translated as 'Divine Jehovah, raise up, raise up'"
Some of our earliest Christian manuscripts (200 AD) have the Staurogram on them. It's quite reasonable to think then that the earlier papers that we don't have now used pictures too.

You draw your conclusions by providing evidence of modern liberal churches. These "churches" engaged in doctrines of demons condoning the premeditated murder of unborn human beings, embracing the sins of damnable Sodom and brazenly uplift such and encourage. However Calvin nor the Reformers encouraged such nor provided a dialectic for such.

When those liberal churches claim in sincerity (even if they are wrong) that any of the actions you might object to are allowed by the Bible, then they are in fact using that "dialectic" as you called it. The dialectic approach says to be in agreement with the Bible, and if they sincerely think that what they are doing is in agreement with the Bible, then they have followed the Reformed approach. It's really that simple.

Normally, Orthodox might object that they aren't following the Bible and that we can tell this by looking at what Christians have been saying for the last 1900 years on many topics- an answer that normally in all kinds of subjects would be quite reasonable. If you want to go check what the Augsburg Confession meant if there is some doubt, then you can go check materials outside of the Augsburg confession. If you want to understand the Quran, you can go check the Hadiths that were written later. But such a vital (and common sense) strategy for Christian authority is not cared for much in the Reformed approach.

We only need to look to Christ and the writings of the apostles to see they warned us of wolves in sheep's clothing, false teachers and gospels which even in the Apostolic NT were creeping in. Even St John penning the epistles to the 7 churches in Revelation 1-3, shows us Satan has been at war with the ekklesia since the beginning.

OK. If you accept the Bible, then by default you should tend to think that the Church fathers wanted to and did succeed in keeping those wolves away, because they preserved the books of the Bible that give these teachings. The Fathers kept out other books, like those of the gnostics. Compared to the other teachings of the time, the Fathers are alot like BOTH Catholics and Protestants. If you argue that the Fathers were the wolves, then you might as well give up even Protestantism.

The Reformers upheld the Sacred Scriptures and upheld traditions which could be found justified by Scriptures. A cursory glance of Westminster confession provides the evidence you seek.

70% or so Christians in the world would disagree with the Reformed view on the Eucharist alone. I have JM who considers himself Reformed claiming to me that baptizing infants, which is in the Westminster Confession, is wrong. One problem is that the Westminster confession broke away as a much smaller group from the rest of the Christian community of their time and picked their own set of doctrines and traditions. I "get" that theoretically the Christian Community could be so wrong for 1500 years and then only in 1500 AD or so the Reformed got it right and had to break away from everybody else, but when I look at the issues, I disagree as we've been discussing.

The naturalistic reason you speak of came later in the Enlightenment, and was not theological in nature.

Wouldn't you agree though that the religious trends of the Enlightenment really were naturalistic and theological? Look at how Thomas Jefferson, coming from an overwhelming Protestant society and background, went through the Bible and cut out the miracle stories and then republished it as his own version.

As the radical textual criticism you speak of was a secular 19th century machination which certain German theological centers adopted ignoring the inspiration of Holy Scriptures and the early historical record of Christianity. All of which if Calvin or Luther were still alive would condemn as damnable heresies and extreme error.

Just as the early church fathers would condemn the doctrines of "Jesus" of Siberia today.

If you could say that "Jesus of Siberia" represented a certain trend that you could identify among the Church fathers and that Jesus of Siberia openly professed to be in accordance with the Church fathers and was still part of the Orthodox Church, then your analogy would be far closer.

As we have it, the German centers professed to be following the Protestant methods and indeed they were still part of the Protestant (I think Reformed) community.

rakovsky · Feb 13, 2016

redleghunter said:
Perhaps we should explore together what Jesus Christ said with regards to wheat and tares, the narrow road, and bearing fruit. There is where you find the sheep and goats, not in a particular church, tradition or denomination. ~Redleg

Not poetry but the very parables of Christ I referred to. He also explained His parables. I used short hand given you are Orthodox and know the references.

100 years from now the Scriptures I envoked will be the same as they are the words of Christ which was the same yesterday, same today and evermore.

This is the problem: You gave me some nice phrases, and I could try to look up the references, because I am Orthodox. But maybe 1500 years from now, in a different context, people will not know that. Maybe they will have a hard time knowing the same version of English.

With the scriptures, maybe 100-200 years later the Church fathers had it passed down in good form what everything meant and what the right theology was. But 1500 years later, things get tougher.

When you just say "the words are the same yesterday and evermore" you destroy part of reality with arbitrariness and imagine falsely that sincere people can't be mistaken about it.

Take for example how you began: "Perhaps we should explore together..."
Why say "perhaps"? One group of people will say this is a nice way of welcoming me as a friend without a hard push to do something. Another person will say that you are not making any suggestions at all, you are only making a hypothetical - as in "Maybe, maybe not".

The farther in time and context readers get from you the harder they understand what you mean.

With the Bible you could say things are meant by God to be clearer, but in practice dozens or hundreds of Protestant groups split all over the place, unfortunately, with each sincerely claiming different ideas about the "real" meaning.

rakovsky · Feb 13, 2016

redleghunter said:
I am not a cessationist. Miracles happen today. I become a skeptic when a miracle does not clearly Glorify Jesus Christ and demonstrate His Gospel in Word and Power.

Jesus' robe is supposedly being preserved.
What if a Catholic thinks to herself: "I just need to touch Jesus' clothes, so I get healed"?
Then she touches it and gets healed? Does this glorify Jesus clearly?
I think Reformed will be skeptical about this.
But this is what we read the lady said to herself when she touched Jesus' clothes in the gospel.

Again there is a "Grand Canyon" between the bones of a prophet of YHWH or cloth of St Paul, and keeping a saint's bone under the altar where you share the Eucharist or having a chapel and altar made of bones and skulls.

Whether there is a Grand Canyon or not, I think in both cases the Reformed will be extremely cynical about it. But in two cases we are talking about stories in the Bible. So there is a big conflict with Reformed Principles against holy objects.

Also, on a sidenote, it looks like early Christians shared the Eucharist around saints' bones:

Funeral feasts were celebrated in family vaults on the day of burial and on anniversaries. The Eucharist, which accompanied funerals in the early Christian church, was celebrated there. In some catacombs, larger halls and connected suites of chapels were, in effect, shrines for devotions to saints and martyrs. A famous example is the Triclia in the catacomb of St. Sebastian(ad 258);, to which countless pilgrims came to partake of memorial meals (refrigeria) in honour of Saints Peter and Paul and to scratch prayers to them on the walls.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/catacomb

rakovsky · Feb 13, 2016

redleghunter said:
One can rid places of worship of items which can lead to idolatry, yet preserve the history of such works in Christian museums. As many of the artwork in Christian history proclaims a love of God's Creation and portrays Biblical accounts (see my tagline for a wonderful Baroque work!). Francis Schaeffer Sr. wrote a book on this.

Christians continue to paint and sculpt to proclaim Christ.

View attachment 169564

I understand. Calvin seemed negative about even regular images, as he said:

Thus at Rome there are four[pictures of Mary], which they pretend were painted by St Luke the evangelist. The principal one is in the church of St Augustine, which they say St Luke had painted for his own use; he always carried it about his person, and it was buried with him. Now, is it not a downright blasphemy to turn thus a holy evangelist into a perfect idolater? And what reason had they for believing that St Luke was a painter? St Paul calls him a physician. I do not know from whence they obtained this notion; but supposing it was so, is it possible to admit that he would have painted the Virgin for the same purpose as the Pagans did a Jupiter, a Venus, or any other idol?

It was not the custom of the primitive Christians to have images, and it only became so a long while afterwards, when the Church was corrupted by superstition.
http://www.godrules.net/library/calvin/176calvin4.htm

Basically, if Luke drew a picture of Mary carried it about him (like a photo of a close relative in your wallet), that means to Calvin that Luke would be an idolater. And Calvin claims that the early Christians didn't have images.

But actually archeologists have found images from the apostolic era (1st century) by Christians, and very many more from the 2nd to 3rd centuries even before Christianity became legalized under Rome.

So Calvin was very negative about images wholesale, associating them with idols (if you carry them around with you) and superstition.

rakovsky · Feb 13, 2016

Hello, Mennosota!

MennoSota said:
When any denomination
1. bases their teaching on human reasoning and
2. then force the scriptures to match their traditions
3. by using proof texts for their pretext, out of context, that teaching must be rejected by the body because Christ rejects that teaching.

OK. By comparison, it looks like under the Reformed approach, they can take the Bible,
1. then base their reading of the Bible on human reasoning,
2. then force the Bible to match their human reasoning
3. by using proof texts for their pretext, out of context, and with disregard to Tradition.

If you have Tradition as a crucial authority, you don't have to treat it as infallible (we don't), but it acts as an anchor to keep you following what Christians have been teaching for the last 1900 years. When you get rid of tradition, you sail away based on human reasoning without caring about what Christianity has taught about these verses for 2000 years.

So now we have different groups of people claiming that Christian Zionism and Christian nonZionism and Dispensationalism and Numerous "End Times" theologies are all true.

Thus, I acknowledge that there are brothers and sisters in Christ from many many different denominations. This is because God has adopted them by His grace, not by the churches decree.
The gospel is a simple truth, yet it cannot be understood until God makes us alive in Christ. (Read Ephesians 2:1-10.)
All who have been chosen by God are unified by Christ. Denominations are not the unifying piece. It is sad that you cling to the Roman church rather than to Christ.

I am OK with what you wrote, except the underlined part. Just because God chooses someone does not mean they are automatically unified to Christ. God chose the Israelites, but not all of them accepted Christ, or even God in the Old Testament.
Second, do you understand that you just wrote that I cling to Rome even though I am not in the Catholic Church? This is strange writing.

This is kind of like a Catholic/High Episcopalian/Orthodox/Lutheran saying that you as Reformed cling to your own human reasoning rather than to Christ, when He gave the bread and said: "This is my Body." In truth, what Christ meant is what you and I are discussing, so let's please not make pointed personal accusations, OK, Mennosota?

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

Hello Hedrick.

hedrick said:
I’m actually sympathetic with the primary thesis of this thread, that Calvin was a precursor to modern scholarship and theology. My problem is that in the course of making this thread, the OP is misrepresenting Calvin and using a weird definition of rationalism.

My understanding is that rationalism means putting reason over religious doctrine, or finding reason as a greater authority to judge reality than religious teachings. Merriam Webster's dictionary says it is in "philosophy : the belief that reason and experience and not emotions or religious beliefs should be the basis for your actions, opinions, etc."

It's true that in some different contexts, it can mean different things, eg.:

In religion Rationalism commonly means that all of man's knowledge comes through the use of his natural faculties, without the aid of supernatural revelation. "Reason" is here used in a broader sense, referring to man's cognitive powers generally, as opposed to supernatural grace or faith--though it is also in sharp contrast to so-called existential approaches to truth.
http://cyberspacei.com/jesusi/inlight/philosophy/western/Rationalism.htm

When I say that Calvin is using a rationalist standard, I don't mean it like in that passage above where all man's knowledge must come independently through the mind without supernatural revelations. That is more of an absolutist sense than I am using the word.

I am referring instead to times when Calvin says that Christ's body (particularly in the Eucharistic context, but also as regards Christ's body in heaven and earth more generally) must follow the "ordinary laws of nature", that holy objects in miracleworking are superstition, or that considering that Christ was in some way directly the rock in the desert would be "childish". Here, Calvin is using his senses and standards of reason as a superior standard in order to judge against religious teachings held by most of the rest of the Christian community of his time.

hedrick said:
However maybe he means something different by the term than I do. I agree that both Calvin and modern theology are willing to abandon tradition where there’s evidence that it’s wrong. Perhaps he considers that rationalism.

Here I don't mean simply where some "evidence" exists that tradition is wrong that one might abandon the tradition. An especially strong case I have in mind is where the evidence in particular is the standards of science to judge the supernatural. There is "evidence" that relics don't work miracles. There are plenty of debunkers of these claims. However, to make a broad principle that it simply doesn't happen and is superstition would rationalistic, because we aren't just talking about "evidence" that miracles don't happen, but rather using our common understanding of science to judge wholesale supernatural claims and thus as a rule to put our scientific understanding above the religious principle that sometimes they are involved in miracles.

The reason I think the use of the term is weird is because of the major drivers behind modern theology is a perception that a lot of Christian theology turned metaphorical and spiritual language in Scripture into metaphysical puzzles. This is understood as having happened in the transition from Hebrew to Greek worlds of thought. That’s normally described as a move in the direction of rationalism. During the medieval period in the West, theologians further elaborated the concepts, moving it further in a direction I’d also call rationalistic.

Maybe that is scholasticism? Those Christians using the Greek worlds of thought did use logic to explain theological ideas like Christology, but in doing so they didn't have a practice of putting their logic against those theological ideas that they got from the apostles. Their logic was using for expounding and supporting and clarifying, rather than debunking. In the case of Calvin, I think he uses Reason to debunk things like miracleworking relics.

The Reformation to some extent, and modern theology more, has tried to move back into the 1st Cent Jewish framework.

I am confused what you mean or how exactly it did that. It seems to me that if the ancient Jews used objects for healings (as you said, had "relic mania"/"popular piety"), then it seems that to debunk this relic mania and consider relics to be unbiblical, one would be moving into a much later framework with a different mindset than relic-believing ancient Jews had. We do know that ancient Jews did occasionally use holy objects in miracle working. One that comes to mind is the case when a Jewish healing, according to Josephus, used a ring for healings.

I suspect, however, that the OP considers any use of evidence to be rationalistic. It’s certainly rational.

Some extrabiblical, extra-Traditon evidence (that's what I think you mean by evidence here) can be supportive in a secondary way. In the case of 1 Cor 10, where Christ is a "spiritual rock" in the desert following Moses' Israelites, Fitzmyer's extraBiblical evidence that Jews in the 1st century thought of the rock itself as following the Israelites serves as a secondary support to show that Fitzmyer's and Church Tradition's reading of 1 Cor 10 is correct, against Calvin's more rationalist or naturalist view that Fitzmyer's more supernatural or mystical view is "childish".

Further, I still am thinking about the best way to describe the naturalistic mindset that Calvin uses on these questions. I see a common trend here where Calvin demands Christ's body follow the "ordinary laws of nature" (calling the Lutheran/Catholic views "absurd"), calls relics "superstition", and calls Christ's direct relation to the desert rock "childish". This reminds me of the way that people complain about folk beliefs that a black cat can be "bad luck", or Skeptics might view Creationiams. This particular way he treats those traditional beliefs and religious teachings, how would they best be called from the Catholic viewpoint, naturalist? The Lutherans when meeting these views in the same era considered them as giving too much emphasis on Reason.

To go back to your question about evidence then, let me give an example. Some Orthodox theologians and a Russian bishop are looking at the stories of the Transfiguration and beginning to think (like some Protestants and critical scholars propose) that it happened on Mt Hermon, not Mt Tabor as was occasionally thought in traditional writings. Right before the Transfiguration, the apostles and Jesus were at the base of Mt. Hermon, according to Mark's gospel. After the transfiguration, it says they came down the mountain, and then they went to Galilee. But Tabor is already in Galilee. So those Orthodox theologians are saying that Mt Hermon was probably the site.

If this "rationalist" in the same way that I find Calvin to be? No, because what I am really trying to get at with Calvin is his view that the older beliefs passed down to his time are "superstitious" like fears about black cats and opening umbrellas indoors are superstitious. For their part, the Orthodox and Protestant theologians who think the Transfiguration was on Mt. Hermon wouldn't consider the ideas about Mt. Tabor to be "superstitious". Hedrick, do you have an idea for a better term for Calvin's perceptions about "superstitions", demands of following the "ordinary laws of nature", etc.?

I am impressed with your answers here, Hedrick:

I’m inclined to agree with him on the question of relics. There are few examples of relics in the Bible, and the three or so are pretty restrained compared to later practice. That allowed Calvin and other Reformers to draw a line between Scriptural examples and medieval practice. Still, I think the few examples that do occur in Scripture show the same kind of popular piety that resulted in later relic-mania. With Elisha’s bones, Jesus’ garment, and Peter’s shadow, we have holy figures whose holiness became a force in itself. It’s not so clear whether that is true of Paul’s effects. But the principle is there.

If you agree that the late medieval situation is unacceptable, one can take several approaches:
* try to make a distinction between the Biblical examples and what was done
* accept that in principle relics can have power, but demand more careful investigation
* reject the principle

Calvin seems to have done both 1 and 3. I think the Catholic tradition has ended up doing 2. My reading of Calvin’s treatise is that he rejected relics completely. I don’t think he just called for more care.

I believe modern theology would be likely to do just 3, and see the Scriptural examples of popular piety having made its way into Scripture. Critical scholarship does not, of course, reject the supernatural as a matter of principle. However it is aware of the tendency for supernatural accounts to be attached to holy figures. Hence not all supernatural elements in Scripture will be accepted.

I’m sure the OP will see this as rationalism. I’m not so sure that’s actually a correct use of the word. But it is surely the case that Calvin’s attitude is a precursor to the modern one.

Of course the current Catholic practice of demanding very careful documentation for miracles isn’t all that different from critical scholarship. In both cases it’s understood that Christianity inherently involves some supernatural claims, but it’s also understood such claims can also be spurious. Thus careful review is needed. Hence the current very careful reviews done of purported miracles by the Catholic Church is just as much rationalism as critical scholarship.

In my opinion the things characterized by the OP as rationalism are all good, though I’m less clear whether that word is the right one.

The main thing I would question there is whether "modern theology" would just pick option #3 and reject the principle that relics could be involved in miracles. It seems more likely to me that modern theology would depend to a major degree on what denomination the theologian was. At the theoretical level, I don't have a problem with thinking that a relic could be used or involved in some miracleworking, just as theoretically a piece of bread (Eucharist) could be involved in the "miracle" of Communion. Consequently, just as with Communion bread, I think a modern Catholic or Orthodox theologian who comes from these Traditions and accepts these "theories" could or even would be inclined to allow for principle #2.

hedrick · Feb 14, 2016

On rationalism, I don't think Calvin was placing reason over religion. I think he was using it to help understand what Scripture means. I believe that the way people decide what is metaphor and what is literal is based on reason. For example, when Jesus says he is the door for the sheep, we know that this is a metaphor because the literal reading makes no sense, but the metaphorical understanding does. This is essentially a rational process, though we do it so automatically that we often don't think of it that way. I don't think you can make that kind of decision without being rational.

This is a very different kind of thing than saying "Jesus can't have been raised, because we know that dead people don't rise." That's rejecting a plain reading of Scripture, whereas what Calvin is doing is accepting a plain reading, but using reason to help understand what that plain reading is. Mainline and liberal theology actually do both. There are times when I will say that something that Scripture clearly says happened probably didn't. But that's not what is going on in deciding that "this is my body" should not be taken literally.

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

Hello, Hedrick!

hedrick said:
I think I’ve responded to this before.
1. I quoted Fitzmeyer on what he meant by the real presence. it wasn’t quite what you’re assuming.

Fitzmyer said that the "real presence" in the food and drink themselves, and he is Catholic, and Catholics use "real presence" to refer to the Catholic/Lutheran doctrine, and he sees the terms spiritual food and spiritual rock to mean that Christ is present in those, as he explained about the "spiritual rock" in the desert actually moving and following the Israelites, against Calvin's view about 1 Cor 10 that the spiritual rock just referred to a stream.

I’ve also explained that “in heaven” doesn’t mean quite what you seem to think. Heaven isn’t a physical place out beyond outer space. It’s the spiritual, which the sacrament allows us to experience.

Calvin used the distinction to explain why Christ's body could not be "on earth". Something that is spiritual, however, can be directly on earth.

In the Institutes, Calvin reasons:

As we cannot at all doubt that it is bounded according to the invariable rule in the human body, and is contained in heaven, where it was once received, and will remain till it return to judgment, so we deem it altogether unlawful to bring it back under these corruptible elements, or to imagine it everywhere present.

Something that is spiritual could theoretically be everywhere present on earth, like God's love. However, Calvin uses the distinction between what is in heaven to void the idea that Christ's body could be everywhere present. Therefore, to just say that heaven is "the spiritual" does not really equate with Calvin's logic about the Eucharistic food.

Calvin says eating the bread and wine imparts Christ’s body and blood. Haven’t we been through this a bunch of times before?

2. I’ve already said I’m not dead set against miracles being done by relics. I’d just take a good deal of convincing. If people keep it out of the sanctuary and out of worship, I don’t condemn all possession of relics. It's not something we'd likely do in our tradition. Though now and then the PCUSA has made exceptions. There's a joint PCUSA / ELCA mission that uses a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Thank you for sharing your own POV on this. I think you explained best what I was getting at in your message #318. I think if more ecumenical/liberal/modern Reformed were bystanders living in the 1st century they would need alot of convincing too before accepting the Bible's miracles using holy objects. But really with that much Reformed skepticism about relics, who knows if the Biblical relic-miracles would even have happened? One of the reasons given in the gospels repeatedly for multiple times when Jesus couldn't do miracles was because there was too much skepticism. But in the gospels, the woman with the issue of blood said If I only touch his robe, I will be healed. In her case, her faith that her effort that involved a relic would be rewarded was a major factor in whether it occurred or not.

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

Hello, MennoSota!

MennoSota said:
Satan doesn't care which denomination a person was in, if that person still goes to hell. The teaching that baptism by a church saves a person is one of those whoopers that Satan tells so that people misplace their faith in sprinkled water rather than in the shed blood of Christ.

What do you think of Calvin's teaching below that opposition to baptizing infants is from Satan?

John Calvin's Argument for Infant Baptism
No sound man, I presume, can now doubt how rashly the Church is disturbed by those who excite quarrels and disturbances because of paedobaptism. For it is of importance to observe what Satan means by all this craft, viz., to rob us of the singular blessing of confidence and spiritual joy, which is hence to be derived, and in so far to detract from the glory of the divine goodness...

Doubtless, the design of Satan in assaulting paedobaptism with all his forces is to keep out of view, and gradually efface, that attestation of divine grace which the promise itself presents to our eyes. In this way, not only would men be impiously ungrateful for the mercy of God, but be less careful in training their children to piety. For it is no slight stimulus to us to bring them up in the fear of God, and the observance of his law, when we reflect, that from their birth they have been considered and acknowledged by him as his children.
(SOURCE: http://www.theologian.org.uk/doctrine/calvin-baptism.html)

That is, according to Calvin, after infant baptism, infants show an "attestation of divine grace" and are acknowledged by God as His children.

I sympathize with you when you say:

I have met countless people who couldn't care less about Jesus in their everyday lives, but claim they are going to heaven because they were baptized as an infant and went through a couple months of confirmation. After that they only give God a nod at Christmas and Easter. They place their faith in their denomination and don't even know their Lord and Savior. It's sad to see such false hope and know that so many are going to hell and are falsely believing they are going to heaven.

Yes, just because someone is baptised or at some point sincerely believes/prays to Jesus does not automatically mean that they will go to heaven no matter what they cannot do, nor can they ever "lapse" or fall away. That would not make sense and it is not what the early Christians taught.

Add that to the fact that you are wanting to push that lie as truth and it just makes me sad.

I am confused what you mean by "that lie". Do you mean my agreement with infant baptism, which is one of Calvin's teachings and in the Westminster Confession?

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

Hi. PeaceByJesus.

PeaceByJesus said:
The Hebrews didn't practice it because Christ's sacrifice was not yet accomplished.

Wrong. 1 Co. 10 makes the OT passover as well pagan dedicatory feasts as analogous to the Lord Supper, that,
The bread which we break, is it not the communion/fellowship of the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16)
Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? (1 Corinthians 10:18)
But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils. (1 Corinthians 10:20-21)

To take part in these sacrificial dedicatory feasts signified fellowship with the other worshipers, and identification with the object to whom the feast was dedicated to. But in no case was the fellowship via physically consuming the flesh and blood of the object of their devotion.

Your point is that the Old Testament meals did not involve consuming the flesh of the object of their devotion.
My reply was that the Old Testament meals were before Jesus came. Jesus explained the difference in John 6. He told the disciples that UNLIKE the Old Testament meals, you did have to eat his flesh.
"Many disciples" absolutely refused to accept this teaching, so they left.

PeaceByJesus said:
No, that is simply reading the Cath interpretation into what the Lord said, and which is foreign to the rest of Scripture.

And as based upon Jn. 6:53, which is an absolute imperative like as other "verily, verily" statements are, then it makes taking part in the Lord's Supper (as a believer in the Cath sense) in order to obtain spiritual life, for "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." (John 6:53)

Yet this is nowhere the means of obtaining spiritual life in the rest of the NT, Acts onward, which is interpretive of the gospel, and instead obtaining spiritual life is always by believing the gospel. (Acts 10:43; 15:7-9; Eph. 1:13) And preaching of the word is the only thing that is said to "nourish" souls (1Tim. 4:6) and build them up by, (Acts 20:32) and which the NT presbyteros (which the Holy Spirit NEVER distinctively titles "priests") fed the flock with, (Acts 20:28) and are described doing.

And in fact any manifest description of the Lord's Supper is missing from all but one epistle to the churches, and 1Co. 11 will be dealt with below.

You seem to be saying that preaching the word is the only thing that nourishes souls. But in this I think you are in disagreement with Calvin, who taught that the Eucharist meal is part of nourishing souls and joins the believer's soul to Jesus' body.

Calvin just didn't think that Jesus was in the bread, that's all.

See also Rom. 11:17 and John 15, where being joined to Jesus nourishes believers - Jesus is the tree/vine, believers are the branches. This is the belief in Communion as passing life into believers. And Communion is what happens during eating the food.

PeaceByJesus said:
Actually sins were forgiven prior to that under the rubric of the day of atonement, which itself looked forward to Christ, but sins were not taken away by eating, but which signified fellowship with each other as partakers of the sacrifices to God. Which the NT church shows by looking back to Christ, showing His death for the body by sharing this communal meal with those who were bought by His sinless shed blood. (cf. Acts 20:28)

Yes. My point was just that eating was a required part of the rituals demanded for the covenant and to take away sins. Therefore, the idea that eating can be part of a ritual taking away sins is not pagan. Anyway, the analogy that Jesus himself and Paul used was providing food (manna) and water from the rock (Jesus was the rock, says Paul). Jews needed life, and they got that by eating the food and the water that came directly from Jesus (1 Cor 10).

PeaceByJesus said:
Obtaining spiritual life by consuming the flesh of the beloved deceased is not in the Torah, or the NT, but is distinctively pagan, as described here.

Rabbis complain that Christian doctrines are not in the Torah, so that they are pagan. I disagree. Christian doctrines, including the Messiah's killing and resurrection, and the eating of Christ's body like manna bread can be prefigured in the Torah.

PeaceByJesus said:
Luther explains that we don't drink physical blood.

And you do?

It doesn't have physical properties of blood. But what the exact nature of the change is, Orthodox don't have a formal teaching that they demand everyone believe in exactness.
The faith of the early Christians in the East, like Orthodoxy, allows for some more mystery about God than what people in the West started to demand in the modern period.

Further, if we consider this a pagan concept only, then we would end up accusing Jesus of relying on pagan concepts, whether or not he used them as symbols.

But it is a distinctively pagan concept, unseen in Scripture and which ignores the abundantly figurative use of eating which the apostles would have been familiar with, and thus you are arguing against your position, as Christ indeed did not rely on pagan concepts.

Rabbis say that Christianity relies on pagan concepts. The Christian answer is that our teachings are prefigured in the Old Testament, even if we can't find them there in perfect repetition.

Second, as the Presbyterian Hedrick showed, figurative meaning and real meaning can go together, so there is no "ignoring" of figurative use.

PeaceByJesus said:
And even as per Calvinism, some form of partaking of Jesus is inherent in the ritual.

But the devil is in the details of what Catholicism means by this. As the Lord identifies with His body, the church, and is in the midst of even 2 or 3 gathered in His name, then in remembering His death by sharing food with those for whom He died form, then the Lord is nigh in a greater degree.

Calvin went beyond just saying that in Communion "the Lord is nigh". Calvin taught that you actually are joined to Christ in a spiritual way during the ritual. See Hedrick's messages about this.

PeaceByJesus said:
And it is Roman Catholicism that had to devise a metaphysical explanation to justify her claim:

In Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship, Bernhard Lang argues that, “When in late antiquity the religious elite of the Roman Empire rethought religion and ritual, the choice was not one between Mithraism and Christianity (as Ernest Renan suggested in the 19th century) but between pagan Neoplatonism and Neoplatonic Christianity.”

“In the third century CE, under the leadership of Plotinus, Plato’s philosophy enjoyed a renaissance that was to continue throughout late antiquity. This school of thought had much in common with Christianity: it believed in one God (the “One”), in the necessity of ritual, and in the saving contact with deities that were distinct from the ineffable

One and stood closer to humanity. Like Judaism and Christianity, it also had its sacred books–the writings of Plato, and, in its later phase, also the Chaldean Oracles. In fact, major early Christian theologians–Origen, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysus–can at the same time be considered major representatives of the Neoplatonic school of thought.” - (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2014/04/08/early-churchs-choice-between-neoplatonism)

From a RC monk and defender:

Neoplatonic thought or at least conceptual terms are clearly interwoven with Christian theology long before the 13th century...

The doctrine of transubstantiation completely reverses the usual distinction between being and appearance, where being is held to be unchanging and appearance is constantly changing. Transubstantiation maintains instead that being or substance changes while appearance remains unchanged. Such reversals in the order of things are affronts to reason and require much, not little, to affirm philosophically. Moreover, transubstantiation seem to go far beyond the simple distinction between appearance and reality. It would be one thing if the body and blood of Christ simply appeared to be bread and wine. But I don’t think that is what is claimed with “transubstantiation.”

Aristotle picked up just such common-sense concepts as “what-it-is-to-be-X” and tried to explain rather complex philosophical problems with them. Thus, to take a “common-sense” concept like substance–even if one could maintain that it were somehow purified of Aristotelian provenance—and have it do paradoxical conceptual gymnastics in order to explain transubstantiation seems not to be not so anti-Aristotelian in spirit after all...

That the bread and wine are somehow really the body and blood of Christ is an ancient Christian belief—but using the concept of “substance” to talk about this necessarily involves Greek philosophy (Br. Dennis Beach, OSB, monk of St. John’s Abbey; doctorate in philosophy from Penn State; http://www.praytellblog.com/index.p...iation-and-aristotle-warning-heavy-philosophy)

Edwin Hatch:
...it is among the Gnostics that there appears for the first time an attempt to realize the change of the elements to the material body and blood of Christ. The fact that they were so regarded is found in Justin Martyr. But at the same time, that the change was not vividly realized, is proved by the fact that, instead of being regarded as too awful for men to touch, the elements were taken by the communicants to their homes and carried about with them on their travels. (Hatch, Edwin, 1835-1889, "The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian church;" pp. 308-09 https://archive.org/stream/influenceofgreek00hatc/influenceofgreek00hatc_djvu.txt)

I think there is a contradiction in the part I put in bold above, because first he says Transubstantiation says being changed but appearance didn't but then says the opposite. Anyway, Orthodoxy is tolerant enough for either the Catholic or Lutheran views (calling the Eucharist a mystery), and I feel comfortable enough with the Lutheran one I don't feel required to defend the Catholic one.

PeaceByJesus said:
But which copycat claims are specious, while spiritual life in oneself is always obtained by believing the word of God of the gospel.

This can be true even in both the Catholic and Calvin's view - if you don't have faith, the spiritual life doesn't happen. But both Catholics and Calvin thought that the eating ritual was a major process for this to be accomplished too.

As your premise is false so is your conclusion. The Lord did not explain all things, such as "destroy this temple and in 3 days i will raise it up," but left those misunderstanding it who did not hunger for truth, even if it mean it being used against the Lord later.

The fact is, those who could not handle the plain meaning of the teaching of eating Jesus' body left Jesus in John 6, and those who cannot handle the teaching of actually eating Jesus' body in the Eucharist per the Lutheran and Catholic views broke with the Lutheran and Catholic churches.

Also, unlike the passage about destroying the temple, the Bible never goes back to the idea of eating Jesus' body and explains that Jesus was just talking about something else that was not really eating his body.

PeaceByJesus said:
And "disciples" means a learner, and does not necessarily denote a believer, which is to whom the Lord privately explained things, while those who departed in Jn. 6 did not wait for the fuller explanation, as did true seekers.

Those in John 6 were not happy with the fuller explanations he gave, which did not include saying the eating was just a symbol.

PeaceByJesus said:
For as the Lord said "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me,". (John 6:57) and the Lord said man lives by every word of God, (Mt. 4:4) and His "meat" was to do the Father's will/obey His word, (Jn. 4:24) so also He explained that His flesh - which the carnal hearers assumed was the body the Lord was in - would ascend up above, but that His words were spirit, they are life, the word of eternal life. And which John abundant confirms is believing on the Word made flesh, by which one is saved, contrary to physically eating to obtain spiritual life.

As Hedrick noted, the two are not necessarily contrary, even if they are distinct. The process of eating was indeed a key part of the Eucharist ritual.

PeaceByJesus said:
And which use of figurative language is also entirely consistent with John:

In the examples you give, figurative and literal are both true in a way.

PeaceByJesus said:
• In John 1:29, Jesus is called “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” — but he does not have hoofs and literal physical wool.

No, nor does the bread given in 1 Cor 11 have the hair and skin of a normal body when Jesus says "This is my body".
Yet Jesus directly and actually IS the lamb of God, and per Lutheran teaching, the bread actually and directly IS Jesus' body.

Under the Catholic view, when he said he was a lamb of God, he did not literally mean to treat him as a ritual sacrifice in the Temple, but he did literally mean that he would literally get killed and literally serve as atonement.
Under the Catholic view, when He said eat the body, He did not literally mean to cut him into pieces, but it did literally still mean to eat him in a new way - the transformed Eucharist bread.

• In John 2:19 Jesus is the temple of God: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” — but He is not made of literal stone.

When he said this Temple, did he point to the Temple?
In the Last Supper though, he was indicating the bread that he held out.

• In John 3:14,15, Jesus is the likened to the serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21) who must “be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal” (vs. 14, 15) — but He is not made of literal bronze.

But he was literally lifted up.

• In John 4:14, Jesus provides living water, that “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life,” — but which was not literally consumed by mouth.

This could be a reference to the Eucharist, not just to the "water" of faith or words. Both early Christians and Orthodox mix water with the wine.

• In John 7:37 Jesus is the One who promises “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” — but believers were not water fountains, but He spoke ”of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive.” (John 7:38)

Sure, he spoke of the spirit, but this verse is paralleled in another way when John says that out of his body came WATER at the crucifixion.
I tend to think this special mention of water in the Crucifixion is not just coincidence.

• In Jn. 9:5 Jesus is “the Light of the world” — but who is not blocked by an umbrella.

And how were the days separated before the sun was made in Genesis?
It seems that Jesus, as he wishes, may also produce light, as he is God's Word, and by speaking, God made the world.

• In John 10, Jesus is “the door of the sheep,” and “the good shepherd [who] giveth his life for the sheep”, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” vs. 7, 10, 11) — but who again, is not literally an animal with cloven hoofs.

And yet he literally gave his life for the sheep.

• In John 15, Jesus is the true vine — but who does not physically grow from the ground nor whose fruit is literally physically consumed.

Per the Catholic view, the body is literally physically consumed. Per the Augsburg Confession and other Lutheran confessions, this consumption occurs through the literal process of eating, as Christ's body is present in the bread.

PeaceByJesus said:
Other examples of the use of figurative language for eating and drinking include when David distinctly said drinking water was the blood of men, and thus would not drink it, but poured it out on the ground as an offering to the Lord, as it is forbidden to drink blood:

And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. (2 Samuel 23:16-17)

Yes. But if Jesus said 10 times "This water is my blood" and "You must drink the water from my body to get eternal life", and people couldn't handle the teaching so they left Jesus, and we knew that Jesus could break the laws of nature and go through walls, then believers who stayed with would have to evaluate whether Jesus meant that in the plain meaning of the idea, and that this water had Jesus' presence in it.

PeaceByJesus said:
To be consistent with their plain-language hermeneutic Caths invoke then they should also insist this was literal. As well as when God clearly states that the Canaanites were “bread:

• “Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us” (Num. 14:9),

Other examples:

• The Promised Land was “a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.” (Num. 13:32)

Actually in this verse they could have meant that literally. The spies who gave this report were intentionally exaggerating, the Bible says, in order to scare the Israelites away. Calvin also says something like that. They talked about giants too in the report.

• David said that his enemies came to “eat up my flesh.” (Ps. 27:2)

• And complained that workers of iniquity ”eat up my people as they eat bread , and call not upon the Lord.” (Psalms 14:4)

• And the Lord also said, “I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord.” (Zephaniah 1:3)

• While even arrows can drink: “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh ; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.' (Deuteronomy 32:42)

• But David says the word of God (the Law) was “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. (Psalms 19:10)

• Another psalmist also declared the word as “sweet:” “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalms 119:103)

• Jeremiah likewise proclaimed, “Your words were found. and I ate them. and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15:16)

I would say the same thing about these passages that I did about 2 Samuel 23.
Another important thing to remember is that Jesus was about direct fulfillment, whereas the Old Testament was much more about types and prefigurements.
So if in the Old Testament we hear about the lamb getting killed during the sacrifice and prefiguring the future sacrifice (as Paul says in Hebrews), then in Jesus we actually have that direct fulfillment where Jesus actually does get killed and take away sins.
So whereas in the desert the manna is a prefigurement that gets eaten, Jesus' body is that direct fulfillment and "actually" gets eaten in the form of the Eucharist food.

• Ezekiel was told to eat the words, “open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee...” “eat that thou findest; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” (Ezek. 2:8; 3:1)

• John is also commanded, “Take the scroll ... Take it and eat it.” (Rev. 10:8-9 )

Xylophagia (paper-eating) is a real phenomenon. Some people really do eat paper. It can be eaten. As for Rev. 10, it was a vision, so in his vision he could literally have eaten a scroll, just like he could literally have envisioned Jesus with a sword coming out of his mouth in Rev. 1.

PeaceByJesus said:
Therefore the metaphorical use of language for eating and drinking is well established, and which the apostles would have been familiar with, and would have understood the Lord's words by, versus as a radical new requirement that contradicted Scripture, and required a metaphysical explanation to justify.

Yet many disciples left Jesus in John 6, because in that context they were taking his words literally.
If you want to argue that everything is just figurative in scripture when it sounds supernatural, you end up where the "critical scholars" are today who say that Jesus' resurrection was also figurative. This is actually one of the main points I am making in this thread. Just as the Reformed go to great lengths to claim that the Eucharistic bread itself is just figurative as Jesus' body, so now there is a trend of critical scholars coming out of the Reformed movement who say that the extreme miracles in the Bible were figurative/allegories too.

PeaceByJesus said:
Paul wrote twice in 1 Cor. 10 and 11, asking the Corinthians to "discern" that the ritual bread is Christ's body, and warned them intensely against failing to do so.

Which is another argument against you, as the context here is that of recognizing the church as the body of Christ in remembering the Lord's death for it, "which he hath purchased with his own blood," (Acts 20:28) for Paul reproves the Corinthian church for not actually coming together to eat the Lord's supper, because they were eating what is supposed to be a communal meal, the “feast of charity,” (Jude 1:12) independently of each other, so that “in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken,” and thus what they were doing was to “shame them that have not.” (1Co. 11:20-22)

Therefore Paul proceeds to reiterates the words of Christ at the institution of the Lord's supper, ending with “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew [kataggellō=preach/declare] the Lord's death till he come.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

For while they were supposed to be showing/declaring the Lord's unselfish sacrificial death for the body by unselfishly sharing food with other members of the body of Christ, whom Christ purchased it with His own sinless shed blood, (Acts 20:28) instead they were both eating independently and selfishly. And thus were effectively treating other members as lepers, as if others were not part of the body for whom Christ died. Therefore they were eating this bread and drinking the cup of the Lord unworthily, hypocritically, because they were presuming to show the Lord's death for the body while acting contrary to it. And thus some were chastised for it, some unto death, (1Co. 11:27-32)

Please go back and read my discussions earlier in the thread with Hedrick, where I cite the Lutheran commentator Kretzman and others to show that these two interpretations are inclusive of one another. The Corinthians were treating it like a regular meal, not judging that in the bread was the communion of Christ's body (1 Cor 10:15-16), and they acted in a disorderly way and broke up into factions. After discussing this with Hedrick I am more persuaded of this before.

Many Evangelicals in the spirit of Zwingli, interestingly enough, are like that too. They don't judge that in the bread itself is Christ's body, and they break up into dozens or hundreds of smaller "factions" each with different doctrines like we see in 1 Cor 10-11.

PeaceByJesus said:
This lack of effectual recognition is what is being referred to as “not discerning the Lord's body,” not that of the nature of the elements consumed.

Because this was the case and cause of condemnation, then the apostle's solution was, “Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come.” (1 Corinthians 11:33-34)

The context of the next chapter is also that of the church

As we see in 1 Cor. 10:14-6, the recognition/"krinate" in Greek referred primarily to the nature of the elements consumed:

15 I speak as to wise men; judge ("krinate") ye what I say.
16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

The bread that was being broken is the ritual bread in the Eucharist. That ritual bread itself is the communion of Christ's body. And this is what is being asked to discern.

PeaceByJesus said:
The Reformed position takes extreme cynicism that saints' presence, bones, clothes, or other items could be involved in miracle working, yet this attitude would normally discount the numerous Biblical instances of them.

The cynicism toward these as well as holy cloths peddled by certain prosperity preachers (and come Cath. ministries) is well warranted.

I am not sure how you and I are in disagreement about this.
The Reformed have "cynicism that saints' presence, bones, or clothes could be involved in miracle working". You seem to be in agreement with that.
What I am noting is that this cynicism would normally discount the numerous Biblical instances of their role in miracleworking. The discrepancy between this Reformed cynicism and the Biblical accounts is one of the main things I am asking about.

Peace.

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

PeaceByJesus,

PeaceByJesus said:
R. Catholicism certainly does teach the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, if conditional, while EO is wise to avoid that term,

It's interesting. I didn't know that Catholicism teaches magisterial infallibility. I think not many Americans know about EO, and they think that they either have to choose magisterial infallibility in Catholicism or else forget about the importance of Tradition like Reformed do.

PeaceByJesus said:
while EO is wise to avoid that term, but which leads to the question as what the basis of your assurance of Truth is, if it is not the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power.

Your question seems to be - if EOs don't accept that Tradition is "infallible" (outside maybe the Councils), then how could EOs be assured of Truth?
The easy answer for you as a Protestant is that EOs are stuck in the same boat as Protestants, because Protestants don't accept Tradition as "infallible" either.

A deeper answer is that to demand from God perfect infallibility and perfect understanding about everything is too much. It just is not realistic or something God has granted us about everything. We have to realize that Christian writings have inspiration and Truth, but we can't expect to have perfect "infallible" knowledge about everything. So the Bible has Truth and is inspired, and the Church fathers have some Truths- otherwise how would they be right in picking the books of the Bible? But to demand that every religious writing that is important to use is "infallible" and perfectly shows you everything is just not for real.

The only way to know omnisciently 100% that whatever meaning you have is right would be through direct divine revelation, where God directly told you something. Otherwise we are left with Christian sacred writings over the span of thousands of years and have to rely on them to understand Christianity.

It's not as if we can say that we go by the Bible and go by whatever each person on his/her own sincerely believes that it means and we don't care what Christians have been teaching for the last 1900 years, because the end result can just be Unitarianism or Jehovbah's Witnesses who all believe they have the "right" answer. This is why even if Tradition (Christian beliefs and teachings) didn't turn out to be "infallible", it's still very important to understand what Christianity actually means.

PeaceByJesus said:
It is hard to assert that the writings are "uninspired", since as Christian saints they would have been inspired (filled with Spirit), especially when it came to theology.

Being presumably filled with Spirit does not translate into being wholly inspired of God as Scripture is, and making the former determinitive of truth. That is the difference.

OK. I am not saying that the early Christians and apostles and their followers were 100% inspired in their writings and 100% determinative of Truth. But they can be crucial to understanding the truth, otherwise even sincere people who don't care about them can end up going way off course like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

PeaceByJesus said:
If that is the Reformed belief, it is hard to understand why the saints would choose the right books of the Bible when they finalized them in the post-apostolic era, picked the right beliefs for the Creeds like Nicea and Chalcedon, etc.
Then tell me how common laity discerned both men and writings as being of God, even in dissent from the leadership. Or do you deny that?

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. If the major Christian writers and leaders in the 3rd-4th century didn't have inspiration, how could they get the Bible books right or teach the fundamentals of Christianity in Nicea that even the Protestants accept, when those topics were sharply debated in the early days?

PeaceByJesus said:
I think Catholics don't claim the Bible is "dead". However in real life you sometimes need to about what the Christian teachings about the verses have been for the last 1900 years, or else you could end up like the JWs and hundreds of other sects who don't care about tradition, get confused about the Bible, and make mutually-exclusive doctrines that they claim are Biblical.
Just because a basis for unity can also lead to disunity does not invalidate it. Both Rome and EO disagree somewhat about the canon, and what tradition teaches. And the real life popular unity (versus the limited largely paper version) is that of widely variegated beliefs, while those who esteem Scripture the most as the wholly inspired accurate word of God are the most unified religious group in basic beliefs, and strongest contenders against those who deny them.

Sorry, I don't see what you mean about the "basis for unity leading to disunity".
If Reformed say that they all accept the Bible as their unity, but then they don't care about keeping unity with the Christian teachings or have another shared, common way to reach the same beliefs about Tradition, then it leads to disunity.
The fact that they don't care much about staying with the Christian understandings passed down over the last 1800 years and just read the Bible on its own as they see fit is not a basis for unity, it's a basis for only partial unity.
Jehovah's Witnesses and Reformed have "partial unity" in the Bible, but the approach of not caring much about 1800 years of teachings is hardly unifying.
You say "those who esteem Scripture the most as the wholly inspired accurate word of God are the most unified religious group in basic beliefs, and strongest contenders against those who deny them". However, Catholics and Orthodox also agree that Scripture is the inspired word of God as you said.

In real life though, there are plenty of major disagreements between people who think scripture is infallible but don't care about tradition. A good example is the debate between Reformed over infant baptism. One of the reasons why Calvin killed Servetus - one of the charges used - was that Servetus denied infant baptism.

PeaceByJesus said:
The use of relics was a one time or brief period instance and extremely rare, and was not a matter of formally making such to be objects of veneration and as necessarily permanently conveying grace, which is akin to what Israel did with the bronze serpent.

Yes. Whether or not the use of relics is rare or not, Reformed would not agree with them. This principle goes against what happened in the Bible.

PeaceByJesus said:
When we see some real Elijah's and Peter and Paul then maybe we will see some such one time use of relics.

We have bones and other relics from apostles and prophets. But it doesn't matter. Even though the Bible showed that bones could work miracles long after the prophet died and that we don't need "real Elijahs" living at the moment for the bones to work miracles, Reformed principles are very cynical about all that.

Building for Elisha's burial place in the Mideast

PeaceByJesus said:
It is doing obeisance before such, which you not see in Scripture.

Yes, I am not talking about that. I am talking about people receiving and keeping the clothes like they did in Acts 19 for healings.

PeaceByJesus said:
Elisha's bones was not playing a role in miracles, plural, but singular. Why are you so focused on relics, when the use of which was a one time/period very rare occurrence?

Because as a matter of principle, Reformed teachings disregard them, yet we find them repeatedly in scripture.

PeaceByJesus said:
God is sovereign and can do what He wants and when He wills, and is not constrained by men who take what He sovereignly did on occasions and turn it into a formal sacrament. Might as well have a talking donkey while you are at it.

I think you are being sarcastic, and that this is the kind of mentality that can lead some Reformed even out of Biblical Christianity. "Donkeys talking? That's ridiculous and to be made fun of." Then some of them read in the Bible about a donkey talking and they start to think that the Bible miracles are goofy and made up too.

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

PeaceByJesus!

PeaceByJesus said:
I am essentially asking why God-fearing Protestants cannot rightly discern what is of God even when (in certain issues) their judgment is contrary to the historical leadership and their traditions. Whether you claim infallibility or not, it seems you are assuming veracity on the basis of historical pedigree.

Of course, each writer or prophet in the Bible meant something when he wrote a passage. So in theory, I think each Protestant could read the Bible on his/her own and get the true meaning 100%.
But in real life, the opposite often happens where groups of people (including Reformed) read the Bible in sincerity and are convinced that it means opposite things. Since their views are mutually exclusive, it means that on their own they weren't able to discern the "real" meaning. A good example is the debate over whether to baptize infants. There are many less noticed debates though, like what Zechariah means by the "mourning of Hadadrimmon", where commentators give opposite views.

This is because the Bible has alot of mysteries and prophecies and mystical ways of talking that are often not easily understandable to everyone.

PeaceByJesus said:
And is the degree of Scriptural substantiation being the basis for the veracity of Truth claims to be disallowed since this can result in disunity?

No, Scriptural substantiation can be allowed. The fact that there are such sharp divisions though shows that just by itself scripture is often not enough to show people what the right meaning is. So people should consider what Christians who lived in 35-200 AD thought about what those verses mean. After all, that was the community that produced these works.

PeaceByJesus said:
Regardless, this presumes that discerning which books are of God (actually while largely settled, scholarly doubts and discussions about certain books continued for centuries) means that they can be trusted in all other judgments as well, but if discerning which books are wholly inspired of God (which the devil also does) is to have the impact such warrants, it means that the very writers as well as discerners are to be subject to it.

And thus the question is whether the early post-apostolic church had deviated from that and had begun to succumb to the accretion of traditions of men which are simply not found in Scripture.

We can examine every single of the appox. 200 prayers in Scripture and no find a single prayer or offering to anyone else in Heaven but the Lord - except by pagans - or any testimony to created beings being able to hear and respond to all such addressed them, but in the name of historical tradition we are supposed to accept this unscriptural late development.

I understand your argument that this is a late development. But that does not show it is not the main Church (Christian community) even if it has some secondary wrong ideas but accepts the basics.
But more importantly, in the Bible we do have cases of believers addressing beings in heaven besides just God himself. John does this in Revelation. (Rev 22:8-9, 19:10)
In the Transfiguration, the apostles meet the OT righteous Moses and Elijah.

God does not forbid us to address His holy angels, in fact two of the Psalms which He Himself inspired contain invocations of angels:

"Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure." (Ps 103:20-21)

"Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights.
Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts." (Psalm 148:1-2)

If God wants us to pray these Psalms, then He has no problem with us addressing the angels. (SOURCE: http://home.earthlink.net/~mysticalrose/col218.html)

PeaceByJesus, my goal in this thread is not actually to prove that Tradition is perfect or infallible, as I said. Rather, it seems to me that if we put Tradition in the trashcan and forget about it totally, then whether we are Roman Catholic or not (I'm not), we can go way off course on some issues. And I think that when we add in a modern, "scientific" mindset, we can better understand how some modern groups coming out of the Reformed movement think that the Bible miracles are all just so called "true" "allegories" that didn't "literally" happen.

PeaceByJesus said:
We can also look in vain to even one instance of a NT presbuteros being titled "priest" and having a unique sacerdotal function, but we are supposed to accept it in the name of tradition, as well as other errors.

It's only natural that in the early church the presbyters who were responsible for managing their churches would also normally play a leading role in different rituals like the Eucharist. The NT wasn't a complete ritual instruction booklet, or else the Reformed wouldn't be divided over infant baptism either.

PeaceByJesus said:
Moreover, what these so-called "church fathers" wrote which you look to for interpretation can themselves be subject to different interpretation, and Rome and the EOs even disagree about some things tradition teaches.

If there are many more writings though then it gets easier to get a better picture, I think you will agree: The Jehovah's Witnesses claim that The Bible doesn't teach Trinity and Reformed get in big arguments with them. But if we care about Church Fathers, then we remember that they had the Council of Nicea, and Reformed, Orthodox, and other mainstream Christians could openly agree on this as a solid, common, clear basis to solve the confusion of JWs.

PeaceByJesus said:
The Reformers did care,
"Substantiation for this understanding of the gospel came principally from the Scriptures, but whenever they could, the reformers also quoted the fathers of the catholic church. There was more to quote than their Roman opponents found comfortable" ( Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 49).

This of course is a massive exaggeration if we are going to talk about the Reformed approach. Just look at Calvin's long writing on Infant Baptism:
http://www.theologian.org.uk/doctrine/calvin-baptism.html
He only mentions St. Augustine one time.
The Church Fathers are not a central focus of their approach to teaching doctrines when the Reformed disagree with eachother.

PeaceByJesus said:
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour." (Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation)

Cardinal Manning takes a very "powerful" view. I think you could use appeal to antiquity or the Bible to show that Church teachings were wrong. However, Cardinal Manning is not all wrong either. If the Christian community (Church) has arrived at a belief across the board (like in Trinity), then that should be a major consideration too. It doesn't mean that it's infallible, but it should count for a lot.

PeaceByJesus said:
But as the Lord did, (Mk. 7:2-16) they subjected such men to Scripture as supreme.

Scripture can be a supreme written authority. But that doesn't mean that what some people are convinced the Scripture says is Supreme either. JWs are convinced that Scripture doesn't teach Trinity. But we don't submit the teachings on Trinity to the "authority" of what the JWs believe Scripture says. We need to evaluate the meanings with the major help of what Christians have been thinking about this for the last 1900 years.

PeaceByJesus said:
If on the other hand a movement appears 1500 years later and goes ONLY on that main sacred Book and doesn't care much about how the contemporary Christian leaders understood the passages in the books that they passed down, it seems likely that the new movement 1500 years later could easily misunderstand some passages.

Besides, one of the proofs of Christianity is supposed to be that in the first few centuries the believers survived persecution for their faith. How can that be a proof of Christianity's truths if you don't care about the real, specific beliefs of those thousands of Christians as they directly wrote them down and explained their Bible?

Indeed, and the "Hall of Faith in Heb. 11 includes Samson and a man who made a very alarming vow, and while such can be pious souls of great faith and virtue, this simply does not equate to absence of errors . "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit," (Psalms 34:18)

Yes, I am not teaching "absence of errors". I am saying that if surviving persecution is one of the main proofs of Christianity, and as you are saying these 1st-3rd century Christians are pious of great faith, then don't you agree that their explanations should be a key resource for deciding what the books of the Bible from their own era that they chose mean?

PeaceByJesus said:
After i become manifestly born again thru tearful deep repentance and faith at around age 25, i remained a week mass-going RC, and even still prayed to Mary somewhat, and believed in the Eucharist, though trying to figure out how the anointed evangelical preachers that fed my hungry soul could be receiving it. And i was persecuted for my faith in witnessing to others about Christ, even placing myself in bodily danger, going like a sheep to the slaughter in opposing immorality on my own. Which was not my idea by Gods, and continued after i prayerfully left the RCC after 6 years for an evangelical church, which God clearly confirmed was of Him.

This is a touching personal story. I am glad that you found some happiness.
For me, things went in a different direction - I grew up Reformed and went to an Evangelical school. They occasionally dropped negative commentary about Catholic people, like blaming Catholic people for not listening to Evangelical sermons in a train station. I told my relatives about these stories, and they said: "Maybe the Catholics had some place to go to." Even though I generally agreed with Reformed beliefs and not Catholic beliefs, the negativity I felt there toward Catholics pushed me away. I went to Catholic school and felt like I was in a less judgmental environment and was happier about that.
America is a mainly Protestant country (or else doesn't care about religion), and Reformed are a HUGE part of the Protestants. I think that in practice someone usually risks more ostracization from society if they are Catholic than if they don't care about religion or are Reformed. At least, this is my experience.

PeaceByJesus said:
But the same Catholic church which claims the faith of early martyrs has the blood of Christian martyrs on her hands, both those who were Catholic as well as sincere souls who dared dissent from her.

Offhand I am not sure which Catholic martyrs you mean.
Anyway, one of Luther's 95 Theses said that it was wrong to kill heretics. That's a wonderful teaching by Luther, right?
Calvin agreed. But then in 1553 Calvin announced that as religious doctrine heretics should get killed, like in the Old Testament. That same year Calvin was the main religious leader in Geneva and promoted killing Michael Servetus for heresy. Then other people got killed or severely punished for heresy in Calvin's Geneva. Considering Calvin's main importance in Calvinism, and considering that after 1553 Protestants began a long trend of killing heretics, Calvin is somewhat responsible indirectly for any killing of heretics by Protestants ever since, because he changed the teaching on that topic.

PeaceByJesus said:
You continue to employ a straw man, and vastly exaggerate the number of early "church fathers" whose writing we have, and of Bible commentary by them, but rejecting some things these men wrote does not translate into not caring about what they believed. But it means that that no matter how great their piety, nothing can justify their erroneous beliefs, and in which they could disagree with each other on.

I agree with the black part. But as I pointed out, Reformed in practice don't care about them a ton, do they?

PeaceByJesus said:
Jerome and Augustine, among others and other things, held perverse views regarding marital relations, with Jerome even abusing Scripture to support his erroneous conclusion.

Offhand I don't know what you are talking about, but by default I am OK with disagreeing with them on whatever it is.

PeaceByJesus said:
Regardless of what esteeming the wholly inspired word of God over the various ideas of others seems like to you, it seems obvious that Roman and EO Catholics care more about their church and its accretion of traditions of men over what Scripture actually teaches, with some of the distinctive Catholics beliefs not even being a matter of interpretation of Scripture, as they are not even found in Scripture!

I have a pretty hard time agreeing with the bold, considering how many Catholic and EO commentaries and writings there are about the Bible. I think if they didn't care about figuring out the Bible's real meaning they wouldn't talk about it so much.

PeaceByJesus said:
After five centuries it is not surprising this leads to some sects creating their own versions of religion based on what they want or expect to see, with "critical scholarship" debunking the Christian reading of Isaiah 53, etc.
Which is the type of thing that modern evangelicalism, like historical Protestantism, rose up to oppose, while liberal revisionism is what predominates in your sister the RCC, even in her sanctioned New American Bible notes for decades.

The NAB you cited complained that "Then there are ultra-liberal scholars who qualify the whole Bible as another book of fairly tales."
So the Catholic Church, whatever its faults, is still Christian, because it still accepts the basics of Jesus being God and the Messiah and the other many things in the Nicene Creed (See CF Forums rules for what counts as Christian).
However, when you get each sect not caring about Tradition and just going by the Bible as each sect imagines that it means and not caring about whether they break up into groups or not, it is only natural that you get groups that the NAB is complaining about who just see the whole Bible as "stories", or you get groups like the JWs.

If someone imagines the Catholic Church going outside of Tradition and start debunking basic Christianity, then it will mean that the RCC is starting to follow the modern "Reformed" approach that does not treat Tradition as a key way to decide what Christianity means, and instead just decides what the Bible "really" means by itself.

Also, you will have to admit that revisionism is common among even conservative Reformed, when they debate over Christian Zionism, Replacement Theology, Dispensationalism, End Times chronologies and propositions, Infant Baptism, etc. etc.

PeaceByJesus said:
But division because of doctrine is nothing new, as Rome and the EOs realized long before the needed Reformation.

They did a far better job keeping their Churches together though than breaking up into dozens or hundreds of totally independent groups with their own very different teachings, even though the Bible says not to do that as we have been discussing. (eg. 1 Cor 10-11)

Next, I will turn to the second part of Question 3: How the Reformed Approach can lead out of Christianity more generally

hedrick · Feb 14, 2016

rakovsky said:
Offhand I am not sure which Catholic martyrs you mean.
Anyway, one of Luther's 95 Theses said that it was wrong to kill heretics. That's a wonderful teaching by Luther, right?
Calvin agreed. But then in 1553 Calvin announced that as religious doctrine heretics should get killed, like in the Old Testament. That same year Calvin was the main religious leader in Geneva and promoted killing Michael Servetus for heresy. Then other people got killed or severely punished for heresy in Calvin's Geneva. Considering Calvin's main importance in Calvinism, and considering that after 1553 Protestants began a long trend of killing heretics, Calvin is somewhat responsible indirectly for any killing of heretics by Protestants ever since, because he changed the teaching on that topic.

Calvin was not the major leader at that time. He was actually on the outs with Geneva leadership. They asked for him as an expert witness, but he didn’t make the decision. He did support it, though, and wrote a book afterwards justifying it.

The best history of the time I know says that this was the only execution for heresy. There were, however, a number of executions for witchcraft.

Calvin certainly supported it. So did the Catholic authorities and the leaders of other Protestant towns in Switzerland. I don’t think you can blame Calvin for what was a universal practice at the time.

In my opinion, from having read a fair about the context, at that point there was not a clear separation between the Church, the State, and the community as a whole. Christianity was seen as one key thing that unified the community. For that reason, attacks on Christianity were attacks on the community itself, and effectively treason. This idea of Christianity as the unifying force for the community goes back to Constantine. It’s only fairly recently that we’ve adopted other approaches.

Everyone agreed that there could be no compulsion in religion. But they also believed that attacking Christianity was attacking the community. I think the way these two views were reconciled is that no one was prosecuted for what they thought (at least not in Geneva). Prosecutions were for public attacks on Christianity or advocacy of positions that were seen as attacks on Christianity.

rakovsky · Feb 14, 2016

Hello, Hedrick!

hedrick said:
On rationalism, I don't think Calvin was placing reason over religion. I think he was using it to help understand what Scripture means. I believe that the way people decide what is metaphor and what is literal is based on reason. For example, when Jesus says he is the door for the sheep, we know that this is a metaphor because the literal reading makes no sense, but the metaphorical understanding does. This is essentially a rational process, though we do it so automatically that we often don't think of it that way. I don't think you can make that kind of decision without being rational.

Yes, Calvin was placing Reason over the religious understanding of his time (Lutheran, Orthodox and Catholic) about scripture. He was using Reason over doctrine/tradition/common understandings to understand scripture.

Sure, Reason can be a tool to separate metaphor from literal meanings. Jesus did not have a door in front of him when he said that he is a door for sheep, therefore he apparently did not mean that he is in the form of a specific physical door at hand - there was none. Therefore, a rational process can rule it out.

In the case of the Eucharist however, Jesus did have specific bread at hand and gave it and said "This is my body", and Christians have performed this ritual in his remembrance, repeating that the bread is His body. In this case, there are specific pieces of bread that are pointed to, therefore it is rationally conceivable that Jesus, who could do anything or being divine could conceivably take other forms, could be directly in the bread exactly as He said, such that it is actually His body. This in fact is rationally conceivable, as over 70% Christians across denominational lines worldwide profess to conceive of it.

Therefore, the Reformed rejection of this teaching must in fact be based on something beyond whether one can imagine it or use the most basic reasoning about it. Rather, Calvin found the Lutheran/Catholic teaching "absurd" and "incredible" because as he said, it violated the "ordinary laws of nature". Thus, the standard he used was one of "credibility" and the "ordinary laws of nature", not just primitive rationality.

hedrick said:
This is a very different kind of thing than saying "Jesus can't have been raised, because we know that dead people don't rise."

Yes. Taken to its logical conclusion, it might be of that kind. Luther equated Jesus' presence in the Eucharistic bread with Jesus' ability to go through walls and be invisible, calling it the second mode of being, as I think we've discussed. If indeed Calvin rejected the ability to be in the Eucharistic bread (an example of this second mode of being) as violating nature's "ordinary" laws, then by extension this reasoning could negate the other cases when Christ was in this supernatural mode of being.

hedrick said:
That's rejecting a plain reading of Scripture, whereas what Calvin is doing is accepting a plain reading, but using reason to help understand what that plain reading is.

The normal reading of "This is my body" is that the bread is actually Christ's body in some direct way.
Calvin's "Reason" interprets that statement about the bread itself in the symbolic sense - the bread symbolizes the body, or it serves as a tool to connect the believer with the body that is not actually in the bread in particular itself.
Some modern critical scholars make a similar kind of reasoning. When they are faced with references to Jesus "rising" from the dead, they reason that this is not meant in the direct sense either as it would violate their understandings of nature's laws, but rather they read this in a symbolic sense. It's not a rare view among those whom I would normally consider Skeptics, and yet they consider themselves Christian. They propose that Jesus' resurrection was spiritual, not bodily. As to the body, they propose that we don't know what happened to it, because the Bible doesn't openly and directly say, as no one was there at the tomb who mentioned the body leaving it.

I am sure that you, like I, will disagree with their view because we come from the background of Christian teachings and traditions, but that is their reasoning of the "real" meaning when they take the gospels by themselves. They rule out the physical resurrection based on what they find "reasonable" vs "absurd" and "incredible" (Calvin's terms, BTW), and conclude that the resurrection was "spiritual" and symbolic.

hedrick said:
Mainline and liberal theology actually do both. There are times when I will say that something that Scripture clearly says happened probably didn't. But that's not what is going on in deciding that "this is my body" should not be taken literally.

Calvin's reasoning as I understand it was that Jesus' body was up in heaven, and a body can't be in two places at once (Einstein wasn't around in 1550), therefore Jesus cannot be present in the Eucharistic bread in particular, therefore, that is not what Jesus meant.
Yes, you are not disputing whether something supernatural that you believe the gospel says happened, you are disputing whether the gospel says something supernatural about the composition of the bread itself.

Earlier you had said that you wished a Lutheran could chime in on this topic. You may read one of their comments about this here:
http://www.christianforums.com/thre...ate-the-role-of-reason.7932441/#post-69260784

Next I will aim to move on to the second part of Question 3 to expand a bit on what I said in this message.

(moved) Can the Philosophical Approach of "Reformed" Protestantism lead out of Christianity?

Does Reformed Protestantism have a direct apostolic basis to consider the Eucharist only symbolic?

Yes. Early Christian writings said so.

No. They relied on their own rationalist approach c.1500 years later in the Age of Enlightenment.

Other (explain).

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