Catholics CAN'T Answer This Question!!!

[Vicomte13]

Well, it sure didn't under the Law of Moses, no question - But you cannot use OT Scripture to invalidate the New Testament Church

Of course they can, and do. It’s why these conversations end up pointless. Lucy always moves the football.

By the way, I enjoy your writings here. Are you really Russian? You write and think like a Frenchman.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Of course they can, and do. It’s why these conversations end up pointless. Lucy always moves the football.

No, there was no using OT Scripture to invalidate the New Testament Church, as instead i showed genealogy does not establishes validity of faith in the kingdom of God (Romans 2:28,29) and that if being the magisterial stewards of Scriptures over the instruments of it meant such possessed ensured veracity and thus requires warranted unconditional assent - which is the premise I was refuting - then the NT church would be invalidated, since as showed, it began contrary to that novel premise.

The football being moved was that of moving Scriptures as the wholly Divinely inspired infallible supreme standard and replacing it with a imperfect less than 100% reliable church.

As for you, if you believed contrary to what I said then you would not have rejected the existence of a wholly Divinely inspired infallible supreme standard and made reason and care your solution.

 

[Darrel Slugoski]

Which is no argument for Rome being the one true church since her members have gone liberal more so evangelicals are now drifting, and which drift is due to declension from basic reformation teaching, not because of it. Every man his own pope is not one of them.


You tried this before and as said, unity in basic beliefs dies not mean all beliefs for them nor for RCs. Hardly any evangelicals believe in baptism as more than symbolic but virtually all believe this is commanded, as with communion and denying the Cath liberalism of John 6:53 (which few RCs really believe),. And basically all believe in the baptism of the holy spirit, but Pentecostals hold it to be a second word of grace, and while there is division on OSAS (once again with Pentecostals denying it) , both believe in salvation by grace thru faith, in Christ's account, not on ones own personal righteousness, as be Catholicism, while details of Predestination is an unresolved debate in your own church, which even the post could not reconcile, but forced a truce.

Thus both have divisions and who ar just ignoring what i said about the validity of arguments for authority based upon unity.

Which is basically reiterated bombastic propaganda, for as a church your one basic duty is to follow your pastors as docile sheep, and they show you the meaning of Catholic teaching by what they do, which Scripturally is what determines what you believe, and they count and treat those whom you call "cafeteria catholics" as members in life and in death.

Which also has already been told you yet you just keep reiterating standard RC lines.

You really "jumped the shark" here with your absurdity! "Obama's former evangelical church?!" That foul racist liberal hold of Hell is about as evangelical as anti-evangelical racist Obama is!

If they actually were lovers of Truth and thus looked to Scripture as the wholly inspired word of God then could see the Catholic Church has not taught anything for 2000 years since it was not the NT church, and her distinctives are not seen the only wholly inspired record of what the NT church believed. To deny this is to live in a fantasy.

The historical Prot meaning of faith was that of liberals, but perseverance, not impenitent willful sinning, while it is even proabortion, prohomosexual public Catholics who are giving hope of salvation because they die as Catholics. They are your brethren, not mine, and you must own them since your church manifestly does. To deny this is to live in a fantasy.

What?! You evidence you have not read or comprehended all of what i said, and in any case just go on spouting whitewashed propaganda.

I am done with you wasting my time. "Obama's former evangelical church" included!

It is not propaganda it is history based on fact . I have heard your type propaganda/generalization and these arguments many times before . Yours just seems include a spirit arrogance . I am sure you wouldn't speak to some like you have addressed me in real life . A gentler approach would be advised
The bands you gave me , were read , and they seen like propaganda/generalizations to me .

Trent was a reaction( like every Council before it ) to a Crisis in the Church in which men were attempting to do stupid things ( eg Martin Luther attempt to remove Books like James and Revelation and poor translations of the Bible ). The fruits for the Reformation were wars ,division , hatred .......historical fact

You have said evangelicals believe that baptism is symbolic . Where doe that leave you forefathers Luther , Calvin , Anglicans who believed it was a sacrament , second class Christians . Do you believe they are Christians ??????????

Predestination is not a issue for us . Read the Catechism of The Catholic Church .

The Church of Rome with its Bishop has been around since the beginning . Thats 2000 years longer then you . I guess the NT church disappeared for 1500 years and reappeared as Baptist , lutheran , ........... who still contradict each other . You are in denial .

Brother sometimes the simplest argument is truth .( read John 6 , read the early Christians view of John 6 and it has been believed for 2000 years )

Block me if you need to . Christ has never let me down and I have had experience real miracles in my life and with my family . Pray for me as I will do for you .

 

[Albion]

Major1 makes an interesting point here. Didn't Jesus asks sinners (the Apostles) to serve him? After His resurrection, didn't Jesus appear to them and commissioned them to be his evangelizers? (Mk.16:15) And they obeyed. (Mk.16:20)

I could be wrong, but it looks like you missed his point which, I believe, was that the Bible is God's word (almost all churches agree to that, even the ones that talk a lot about "Tradition"), so it has to be more authoritative and/or more reliable than the religious musings of sinful men (which is what doctrines based upon "Holy Tradition" rely upon). God used and continues to use sinful men for various tasks, but creating doctrines isn't one of them.

 

[Arsenios]

Of course they can, and do. It’s why these conversations end up pointless. Lucy always moves the football.

By the way, I enjoy your writings here. Are you really Russian? You write and think like a Frenchman.

I'm half Swede, and half NW European mongrel... No Ruski, but a great lover of Russia... I love Hugo and Dumas, but my thinking is pretty much North Dakota isolationist - I grew up alone in ND... I was an atheist for the first 36 years of life... In a way, that is why I am so condemned here - No man could convert me, but only God, and while I lived 36 years in unbelief - I did not like Christians at all then - with no spiritual contact with anything at all, when God finally came, He has not left me short-changed... For this I am accused of self-elevation... I identify with Paul a lot... Except whereas he followed a religious path as a Jew prior to Christ, I was unchurched, so that when God took me into the Orthodox Faith, I had an easy time acquiring it, because I had no preconceptions, and I was there to acquire it, and did not care what was being taught... The recovering evangellicals who convert bring a ton of noxious garbage with them that has to be slowly off-loaded in religious repentance...

My French thought of the day:

"Who am I to face the odds?
Of man's bedivlement and Gods?
I a stranger and afraid...
In a world I never made..."

So who, Vicomte, is the author?

St John of Shanghai and San Francisco stayed in France for some years, formed am ecole there, a Russian Saint, still well remembered to this day there... Then went on to China, then the Phillipines, and finally to San Francisco - Do you know this one? I think Padre Pio was one of the Last of the great Latin Catholic Saints... St. John was in that league, but far moreso - His life was an ongoing miracle work... After death even more so...

Arsenios

 

[Albion]

The Church at Antioch is pre-denominational...

You're speaking of one component of Eastern Orthodoxy.

 

[Arsenios]

If being the magisterial stewards of Scriptures over the instruments of it meant such possessed ensured veracity and thus requires warranted unconditional assent - which is the premise I was refuting - then the NT church would be invalidated, since as showed, it began contrary to that novel premise.

Where, pray tell, in your sola universe, do you find the term: "Ensured veracity requiring warranted unconditional assent?" Sounds like a legal description in a contract...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

You're speaking of one component of Eastern Orthodoxy.

In the Bible, the Churches that are the Church are denominated according to country - The Church in Rome, the Church in Antioch, the Church in Alexandria, the Church in Thessalonica, in Corinth, and on and on... The Church in Russia is therefore pre-denominational because it is not named after a person's name, but the country... The Lutheran Church, for instance is named after a person, etc...

Arsenios

 

[Albion]

In the Bible, the Churches that are the Church are denominated according to country - The Church in Rome, the Church in Antioch, the Church in Alexandria, the Church in Thessalonica, in Corinth, and on and on... The Church in Russia is therefore pre-denominational because it is not named after a person's name, but the country... The Lutheran Church, for instance is named after a person, etc...

Arsenios

Every denomination that poses as the 'one and only church' of Christ also argues that it's not a denomination. If members of those denominations want to talk that way, no one is stopping them.

I have no particular beef with the English language myself. But more than that, it's also impossible to tailor every post to the linguistic preferences that each of the churches represented on CF has put its seal of approval on.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

It is not propaganda it is history based on fact . I have heard your type propaganda/generalization and these arguments many times before . Yours just seems include a spirit arrogance . I am sure you wouldn't speak to some like you have addressed me in real life . A gentler approach would be advised.

Ignoring/mot interacting with responses or misrepresenting them and reiterating elitist amateur propaganda is arrogant.

Trent was a reaction( like every Council before it ) to a Crisis in the Church in which men were attempting to do stupid things ( eg Martin Luther attempt to remove Books like James and Revelation and poor translations of the Bible ).

You tried this before, and what i told you then remains the fact, that rather than Luther attempting to remove books (from a uniform indisputable canon), "Actually, while largely established, the final, indisputable canon of the Bible for RCs did not occur until after the death of Luther." And that "believing this book [2 Mac] was Scripture proper was not required until after Luther died, almost 1400 years after the last book was penned."

And if you had cared to go to the linked page you could have seen that scholarly doubts and disagreements about such books were permissible and continued down thru the centuries and right into Trent, which provided the first indisputable canon for Catholics (which EOs do not consider themselves bound by).

Moreover, Luther's canon was not binding, and he actually includes apocryphal books in his translation.

Instead you just ignore all that and parrot the ignorant and refuted propaganda of others.

The fruits for the Reformation were wars ,division , hatred .......historical fact

You also said this before and to which I responded at length, for this existed in Catholicism also, and most of it still does (though she lost her unScriptural use of the sword of men). But you just go on with the same charge. Why then should i spend much more time with you?

You have said evangelicals believe that baptism is symbolic . Where doe that leave you forefathers Luther , Calvin , Anglicans who believed it was a sacrament , second class Christians . Do you believe they are Christians ??????????

I said "evangelicals."Lutherans, Anglicans and most paeobaptist denominations are not. And which conflates with what i said but which you fail to quote, which is, "Hardly any evangelicals believe in baptism as more than symbolic."

Predestination is not a issue for us . Read the Catechism of The Catholic Church .

Once again you do not quote what you are supposed to be responding to, and in which i said "details of Predestination is an unresolved debate in your own church, which even the post could not reconcile, but forced a truce." and which you are not going to know (along with a whole lot more) from your Catechism. And which is not infallible and can and has erred, and thus some RCs correct it.

Meanwhile, the details i was referring to was that of the reconciliation of the efficacy of grace with human freedom, which is key aspect in predestination. In the 16th century the Dominicans, who seemed to lean towards Calvinism strongly disagreed with Jesuits on this issue, and parties of both engaged in vehement debate.

Finally, as Wikipedia provides,

after twenty years of discussion public and private, and eighty-five conferences in the presence of the popes, the question was not solved but an end was put to the disputes. The pope's decree communicated on 5 September 1607 to both Dominicans and Jesuits, allowed each party to defend its own doctrine, enjoined each from censoring or condemning the opposite opinion, and commanded them to await, as loyal sons of the Church, the final decision of the Apostolic See. That decision, however, has not been reached, and both orders, consequently, could maintain their respective theories, just as any other theological opinion is held. The long controversy has aroused considerable feeling, and the pope, aiming at the restoration of peace and charity between the religious orders, forbade by a decree of the Inquisition (1 December 1611) the publication of any book concerning efficacious grace until further action by the Holy See.

Thus that was the best Rome could do on this unresolved issue.

The Church of Rome with its Bishop has been around since the beginning . Thats 2000 years longer then you . I guess the NT church disappeared for 1500 years and reappeared as Baptist , lutheran , ........... who still contradict each other . You are in denial .

Sig. Just what kid of argument is this? All it is mere assertion in response to my details and substantiated postings which show the Church of Rome with its Bishop has NOT been around since the beginning, but standards in distinctive contrast to the NT church, based upon the only wholly inspired and substantive record of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the gospels), as revealed in Acts thru Revelation,

Brother sometimes the simplest argument is truth .( read John 6 , read the early Christians view of John 6 and it has been believed for 2000 years )

Again, this is not an argument, and while Caths assert they take this literal, but if they do then they must exclude Christians who disagree with Catholicism on this from having spiritual life in them, and eternal life, since a literal understanding of John 6:53 requires believing and taking part in the Lord's supper to have both, but which is never what the NT church preached.

And as told you before and ignored, I do not have to agree with the symbolic [metaphorical] viw, "except that is the only interpretation is easily conflated with the rest of Scripture. . See here by God's grace."

Block me if you need to . Christ has never let me down and I have had experience real miracles in my life and with my family . Pray for me as I will do for you

I do not block people, but put them on notice that after significant long-suffering, they have warranted being basically put on the ignore list, such as are manifestly unreason-able, and ignore what refutes them and resort to sophistry and or mere continued argument by assertion.

 

[Arsenios]

I do not block people, but put them on notice that they have warranted being put on the ignore list, such as are unreason-able, and ignore what refutes them and engage in sophistry or assertions of propaganda.

Well, speaking only for myself, I can tell you without any fear whatsoever that in every case known to mankind I have ALWAYS thoroughly and completely proven myself right in every circumstance to my very own satisfaction too!

Quid, Erat, Splat!!



Arsenios

 

[TuxAme]

Every denomination that poses as the 'one and only church' of Christ also argues that it's not a denomination. If members of those denominations want to talk that way, no one is stopping them.

Denomination suggests division, doesn't it? And the "one and only church" shouldn't be divided, should it? You're not denominated if you're all united- and the "one and only church" certainly wouldn't consider itself divided because of what those outside of it are doing.

 

[Albion]

Denomination suggests division, doesn't it? And the "one and only church" shouldn't be divided, should it?

Even if there were a "one true church," it would still be a single entity standing among all the other churches of Christendom.

The divided state of the Christian world is a fact of life, so the word denomination is correct when we're speaking of any of those parts.

 

[TuxAme]

Even if there were a "one true church," it would still be a single entity standing among all the other churches of Christendom.

The divided state of the Christian world is a fact of life, so the word denomination is correct when we're speaking of any of those parts.

Firstly, I can't say I'm a fan of Anglicans (so far, I've only heard it coming from Anglicans) suggesting that there isn't a "one true Church". I hear it repeatedly, and it's quite troubling. Do you guys not even believe yourselves to be teaching more accurately than any other church?

Secondly, the one true church probably isn't in full (perhaps even partial) union with any other church. So, they wouldn't consider themselves just one among "equals", but instead one amongst "others". There's no room for division in the true church. If someone jumps ship and makes another church, it loses a member- perhaps many, but it remains whole.

Might I direct you to 1 Corinthians 12 and leave it at that. Yes, it has many verses, but the message is obvious.

 

[Vicomte13]

Denomination suggests division, doesn't it? And the "one and only church" shouldn't be divided, should it? You're not denominated if you're all united- and the "one and only church" certainly wouldn't consider itself divided because of what those outside of it are doing.

Sometimes division is necessary in Christianity. Consider the circumstances of Christians in the time of American slavery. Within various churches, some stood strongly and formally on the side of slavery, and backed that stance with Bible and church tradition. Others saw no way to square "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" with the institution of slavery. The country itself divided, and so did religious denominations. To paraphrase Lincoln, 'both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God', but the particular fact of what each said that God was telling them to DO, plainly and clearly "in the Bible", made the other utterly evil, indeed a servant of Satan.

People could not sit together in the pews with open and defiant servants of Satan, so churches divided.

Who was right? There was no way to resolve that issue, or most others on which people are dug in and committed, by words and argument. The division was too great, the cause too important and noble: it could only be settled with blood on the battlefield. Of course when people trust to war, the God of Battles, Lord of Hosts, chooses the winner, and the effects of that choice are generally more permanent and absolute than any human decisions.

So, each side believed itself right with God, and each side prayed to God, and the result is history. I'll quote Lincoln again, because he got it exactly right, in all of its terrible divine logic:

"The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

The same terrible divine logic applies to the Reformation and its wars, to the perennial wars with Islam and their outcomes over time. When men open their books and, fired by the passions it arouses, reach for the sword to go and defeat the evil heathen, they had the decision over to the Lord God of Hosts, who makes his judgments of such cases manifest on the battlefields of history and in the results that come thereafter.

Today, as in all of the past 14 centuries, our war with Islam continues on battlefields all over the world. Christian on Christian war has diminished to harsh words at each other through the various media. Christians are as dug in on every little detail as they were in 1861, but none of the issues move them enough to draw the sword and kill each other. The antagonism of their words makes it clear enough that some of them, if given the power, WOULD draw the sword to settle issues, but most people are just not into religion sufficiently to form any sort of army, so the would-be crusaders are left to fire verbal barbs at one another. As they do so the overall ranks of Christians in their world - the developed world, ebbs away: the bigger battle is with an indifference to the quarrelsome Christians, their internal squabbles over fairy tales (I speak from the perspective of the external pagans) - and a resolute determination to push that "nonsense" farther and farther away from any levers of power or social influence. "The time for that is past - we know more now."

Against that doctrine, waving around a book or an incenser is little more than a futile paroxysm. Christians have become so very good at skewering each other that everybody's arguments look like earwax and tissue paper, and any outsider who doesn't need aid will peer in, shake his head and move along, just as they do to the squalid rows of the mosques.

It's a relentless problem that God resolves through the forces of nature. The Shakers were devout and sincere. All that is left of them is some quaint furniture. For in their religious fervor, they actually managed to suffocate their own sex drives and refused to "be fruitful and multiply". And so they died true to their faith of purity, and their ideas died with them and ceased to have any impact on the minds of any men afterwards: they were obviously loons. They made nice furniture.

Most denominations in their sincere fanaticisms do not take doctrinal positions that literally eliminate them as species. It has generally taken war and conquest to do that, and war is usually not so efficient as to scour every last heathen from the pot. There are still a few handfuls of American Christians who justify slavery with the Bible, there are still a few handfuls of Samaritans living beside their sacred mountain in Israel, and there are still a few thousand Christians holding out in the various Muslim countries, dwindling through immigration, aging and violence towards the final result that was ordained by victory in war long ago.

Christian Forums reveals the depths of antagonism and antipathy between Christians. We really do not like each other very much. With each new generation the old battle lines form anew, with nothing resolved. The victors over time of the endless Christian civil war have been secular pagans and Muslims.
Already in Europe the battle of the future is visible. Christianity is going the way of the faith in Odin and Thor - a dwindling fringe. Islam is aggressive, but ultimately superstitious and ignorant. Will the Europeans choose the God of the Koran, or will they choose the God of Spinoza and Einstein? My bet is on Spinoza.

 

[Arsenios]

Every denomination that poses as the 'one and only church' of Christ also argues that it's not a denomination.

 

[Arsenios]

Sometimes division is necessary in Christianity. Consider the circumstances of Christians in the time of American slavery. Within various churches, some stood strongly and formally on the side of slavery, and backed that stance with Bible and church tradition. Others saw no way to square "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" with the institution of slavery. The country itself divided, and so did religious denominations. To paraphrase Lincoln, 'both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God', but the particular fact of what each said that God was telling them to DO, plainly and clearly "in the Bible", made the other utterly evil, indeed a servant of Satan.

People could not sit together in the pews with open and defiant servants of Satan, so churches divided.

Who was right? There was no way to resolve that issue, or most others on which people are dug in and committed, by words and argument. The division was too great, the cause too important and noble: it could only be settled with blood on the battlefield. Of course when people trust to war, the God of Battles, Lord of Hosts, chooses the winner, and the effects of that choice are generally more permanent and absolute than any human decisions.

So, each side believed itself right with God, and each side prayed to God, and the result is history. I'll quote Lincoln again, because he got it exactly right, in all of its terrible divine logic:

"The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

The same terrible divine logic applies to the Reformation and its wars, to the perennial wars with Islam and their outcomes over time. When men open their books and, fired by the passions it arouses, reach for the sword to go and defeat the evil heathen, they had the decision over to the Lord God of Hosts, who makes his judgments of such cases manifest on the battlefields of history and in the results that come thereafter.

Today, as in all of the past 14 centuries, our war with Islam continues on battlefields all over the world. Christian on Christian war has diminished to harsh words at each other through the various media. Christians are as dug in on every little detail as they were in 1861, but none of the issues move them enough to draw the sword and kill each other. The antagonism of their words makes it clear enough that some of them, if given the power, WOULD draw the sword to settle issues, but most people are just not into religion sufficiently to form any sort of army, so the would-be crusaders are left to fire verbal barbs at one another. As they do so the overall ranks of Christians in their world - the developed world, ebbs away: the bigger battle is with an indifference to the quarrelsome Christians, their internal squabbles over fairy tales (I speak from the perspective of the external pagans) - and a resolute determination to push that "nonsense" farther and farther away from any levers of power or social influence. "The time for that is past - we know more now."

Against that doctrine, waving around a book or an incenser is little more than a futile paroxysm. Christians have become so very good at skewering each other that everybody's arguments look like earwax and tissue paper, and any outsider who doesn't need aid will peer in, shake his head and move along, just as they do to the squalid rows of the mosques.

It's a relentless problem that God resolves through the forces of nature. The Shakers were devout and sincere. All that is left of them is some quaint furniture. For in their religious fervor, they actually managed to suffocate their own sex drives and refused to "be fruitful and multiply". And so they died true to their faith of purity, and their ideas died with them and ceased to have any impact on the minds of any men afterwards: they were obviously loons. They made nice furniture.

Most denominations in their sincere fanaticisms do not take doctrinal positions that literally eliminate them as species. It has generally taken war and conquest to do that, and war is usually not so efficient as to scour every last heathen from the pot. There are still a few handfuls of American Christians who justify slavery with the Bible, there are still a few handfuls of Samaritans living beside their sacred mountain in Israel, and there are still a few thousand Christians holding out in the various Muslim countries, dwindling through immigration, aging and violence towards the final result that was ordained by victory in war long ago.

Christian Forums reveals the depths of antagonism and antipathy between Christians. We really do not like each other very much. With each new generation the old battle lines form anew, with nothing resolved. The victors over time of the endless Christian civil war have been secular pagans and Muslims.
Already in Europe the battle of the future is visible. Christianity is going the way of the faith in Odin and Thor - a dwindling fringe. Islam is aggressive, but ultimately superstitious and ignorant. Will the Europeans choose the God of the Koran, or will they choose the God of Spinoza and Einstein? My bet is on Spinoza.

Wow!

This post should be required reading for all posting on CF...
AND...
There should be an exam on it that must be passed to post here...

Vicomte, I had no idea of the profound extension of good will you were offering when you accused me of sounding French... This post is what you meant, yes? This kind of writing, impassioned and truthful and joyous even in its dismays at the displays of fallen human conduct, I have only heard polemically presented by an English speaking Frenchman from my perch here in the US a couple of times... Those times were seminal and profound in their impact on my soul... You are, in my view here, a member of that seminally impassioned group of what can only be called some of my favorite folks... I have never actually MET one of your guys, and I just want to stop the world here for brief moment, and take the time to say to you, and through you to all who think and love and speak as you do:

Thank-you...

I thank God for you and your peers...

And finally I have been able to say so to an actual person...

And not merely in my heart, for a speech or interview recorded and then seen and heard...

God Bless You, my Brother!

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

Even if there were a "one true church," it would still be a single entity standing among all the other churches of Christendom.

So then, Biblically speaking, were the Church at Ephesus and the Church at Rome one Church or two Churches...

The divided state of the Christian world is a fact of life, so the word denomination is correct when we're speaking of any of those parts.

Which means that the "Christian world" has lost the Ekklesiastical unity of New Testament Ephesus and Rome (and Jerusalem and Alexandria and Corinth and on and on...) That Ekklesiastical Unity is still in the possession of the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, and the Papal Communion Communions... All of which are Apostolic Churches who understand the need for Ekklesiastical Union because of the unity of Christ in His Body Whose Head He IS...

Those who base their faith on the Bible, on the contrary, see the church as a collection of Bible readers who gather to pray and read and study the Bible... eg They see churches as groups of men and women, rather than the Body of Christ, and therein they scorn the Ekklesia as a Holy Body directed by God... Such that when men study the Bible and pray together, the man who becomes their leader will have his NAME as the identifier of his understanding of the Bible... Lutheranism is deNOMinated as the church Luther established... Likewise Calvin and the rest...

But the Apostolic Churches are pre-denominational - They simply identify Christianity in a geographical area... The Russians, for instance, did not initially understand Americans wanting to become members of the Russian Orthodox Church. They would ask them, quite reasonably, since they had emigrated to the United States to escape the Russian Atheists: "Why do you want to become Russians?" They did not understand the profound Thirst for God [in the US homeland of shallow wells] which was driving these Americans to the Russian Church...

Denomination is a political concept in the "Churches of Christiandom"... It is not an Ekklesiastical term referring to Christ's Holy Body...

To our shame...

Arsenios

 

[Major1]

That did not make it into Ripley's, and I myself have clearly affirmed the supremacy of God - despite the apparent blindness of some to that as well as to their own illogic - while if we were follow the same logic that reasons that making the something on earth to be the supreme authority on Truth means they must be making this source Superior to God, then the church would be since Catholics make that the supreme authority, but which is nowhere ensured doctrinal infallibility.

Which should know by now never to supreme as the conclusions of some. The error here is one of category, in God is supreme over all, and within the Godhead the Father is greater in position than the Son, but in terms of revelation, God has made His word the supreme authority on Truth, and has even magnified it above His name. And had made writing the chosen mean of preservation of it, including that of Christ, the express visible revelation of the person of God, come in the flesh.

Likewise, the Father has functionally made the Son Lord over all, who must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet,

The person of God and His pure revelation word go together right from the beginning, while the church needed perfection from its beginning, and fails to to express God in the purity or in the scope that His Scripture does, although the church is to be the closest manifestation of Christ in the flesh, not the Eucharist.

Reasoning that since sinners both penned Scripture and make up the church then the latter is are reliable as the former also fallacious, but the former refers to something already provided and which class is wholly inspired of God, while the latter (the church) is nowhere promised all it officially teaches is infallible, or wholly inspired of God. Instead, just as the NT church began with the historical magisterium being subject to reproof from Scripture as used by officially itinerant preachers, so it must bow to Scripture now, as being the assured word of God.

And it was those who were called Christians who manifested this, and not Catholic distinctives.

But as then, some refuse to see this.

Well said. I agree!

 

[Major1]

Excellent post!