Is Evangelicalism a false religion?

Saint Steven said:

Don't get me wrong. I love the Bible, but I'm concerned about those who think it is a replacement for God, or those who think God can't operate without it.

Click to expand...

Maybe that is your false assumption, or at least your misuderstanding.

Maybe you don't know the difference between belief and worship.

• Fervent said:

  The question is not about whether it is credited as what is due, we're in agreement it's not based on personal merit and that Paul is making a point that it's not a matter of personal merit. But 'imputed righteousness" is far more than simply the declaration that our righteousness is not on account of inborn merit to a specific doctrine about an exchange of a guilty status for Christ's status of righteousness, rather than a recognition that in that declaration God makes the unrighteous into the righteous.

  Click to expand...

You're either "guilty" -- unrighteous,
or you're "not guilty" -- justifified--a right-standing before God, allowed into his presence.

Being "made righteous" is a matter of sanctification through obedience, it's not justification.

As for the latter half, all of those citations from Romans play into Paul's overall point in Romans and don't make for the kind of declaration of total depravity that they are used to prop up.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you would like to Biblically demonstrate that in a way which remains true to the teachings in Ro 3:9, 10, 19, 23-25, 5:12, 11:32; Gal 3:22.

Galatians is a different issue, but again single quotes devoid of context don't make for a proper understanding. I am simply looking at what the Bible says in its own context, and when God says someone is righteous, even righteous enough to deliver themselves, I see no need to modulate that since the proof texts used to forward a claim opposite don't mean what they are forwarded to mean when read in context.

Click to expand...

Do you see that you have no need to "modulate" any text stating an individual's righteousness, but have no problem "modulating" texts with which you have set it in disagreement?

Feel free to Biblically demonstrate the nature of their righteousness in a way that remains true to the teachings in Ro 3:9, 10, 19, 23-25, 5:12, 11:32; Gal 3:22.

Saint Steven said:

This is where Catholicism (in all its many forms) and Protestantism part company, unless we give a broader definition to "functional successors".

Correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of Apostolic Succession means an Apostle laid hands on a new apostle to pass the mantle of authority and that apostle then followed the tradition and blessed the next successor and so on. (apologies if my wording is awkward) Thus leaving a clear line of succession.

Click to expand...

Catholics do preserve a clear line of succession. You can see this even way back in the Church historian Eusebius, who published lists of the bishops of the major sees of the Church right back to the apostles. Showing a connection to that line of succession is important for Catholics, and for the Orthodox. It's as important as actually holding the faith, not more important but not less either. In the reformation many groups chucked succession entirely and some others preserved bits of it.

Not sure there was an equivalent historical activity of successors as a result of the Protestant Reformation. Probably not, since Catholicism (in its many forms) names this as a critical difference between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Click to expand...

The Anglicans and some of the Lutherans preserved some of it, at least the trappings of it. More recently they have had keen efforts to re-establish a real succession. Not sure whether they have succeeded or not, but it's probably worth looking at again now that they have done that.

But here's my point.
Was this whole idea of Apostolic Succession God's idea or mans' idea? I suppose there is biblical support. (pretty sure I could find it) But, are we saying God is incapable of raising up a leader with Apostolic Succession? This scripture below stopped me in my tracks and has led me to thinking through this whole issue. Who were these prophets? And who were these apostles, for that matter? The OT gives dozens of examples of leaders raised up out of nowhere. Even of Christ it was asked... (John 1:46)

Click to expand...

It was God's idea, of course, but even God can raise up leaders from dry bones if required. It does come down to authority. One can think he is called to be an apostle, one can be smarter than an apostle, one can know their Bible and their theology perfectly, but until the Church recognizes the calling, it's only a supposed calling. One can be sure of being called by God, but they also need the laying on of hands to be part of the apostolic leadership. Paul was knocked off his horse by God, trained in the faith by the best, but confirmed in his calling by the laying on of hands by the apostles. That's Acts 13. I consider that essential, the part where "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us."

Fervent said:

Yes, and apart from those witnesses there is no relationship. We are dependent on the manner God chooses to reveal Himself, and over history that has been through prophets and then finally in Christ. Does that mean God is silent today, simply observing? No, but God's nature is primarily to work in ordinary means through foolish things like books and preaching rather than miraculous intercessions and direct revelation. Relationship with God is confined to the book not because God is incapable of anything else, but because it is God's chosen method and those who dismiss it do so generally to maintain a false image of God that Scripture tears down.

Click to expand...

For the benefit of the rest of us who are attempting to follow along in this discussion, Fervent, you might need to disclose your own church denomination so that we'll have a better understanding of your working framework.

Thanks.

Saint Steven said:

Did you watch the video?

Click to expand...

So I have now. I think both men made some good points.
First man went past where he should. Got a little overly aggressive.
Second man didn't address all the points made but went off on a tangent. Left me wondering about some things.
To me it was a typical debate where Christians hold different points of view. Words were said that shouldn't have and words were not said when they should have been.
I'm a woman so maybe I look at it a little differently than a man would.

Fervent said:

Yes, but the anathemas weren't aimed at the common man but were aimed at the magisterial reformers.

Click to expand...

Since there were few reliable citations available of actual quotes of the reformers, the council of Trent condemned propositions that were heretical but which may not have actually been held by actual reformers. They did not condemn anyone by name either. So it would be more proper to say the anathemas were amed at propositions, and not necessarily at the particular propositions held by any reformer.

The disagreements were not primarily theological, the theological phrasings and presentations were to paper over political disagreements such as the propriety of indulgences and the power of the pope.

Click to expand...

Hilaire Belloc wrote about the politics and economics of the Reformation in a book called 'How the Reformation Happened'. https://www.amazon.com/How-Reformation-Happened-Hilaire-Belloc/dp/0895554658

Overtime the polemics on the issue have made it so it's nearly impossible to have a dialogue on the theological grounds because everyone is working with different definitions and the Biblical verses are infused with nuances from the debate rather than the context. The works denounced by the reformers were specific religious ordinances that the church was essentially selling forgiveness through, not general piety and the phrase "faith alone" was a rallying cry against those works in particular so Trent's anathema's were attacking a false notion of that phrase, which is exactly what a strawman does.

Click to expand...

Polemics won the day. And it's still alive today, thriving even.

Here are two current views of the selling of indulgences:

SELLING INDULGENCES. In the dark ages, when Papacy held control of men's consciences and few dared to think, one method which she practiced to supply herself with money was the sale of indulgences. The indulgence was a permission to sin and yet be free from its consequences.

SELLING INDULGENCES. The Pope (or the bishops in Germany) did not approve of the "selling of indulgences"... there were abuses that priests and bishops did not correct and check. However, the Church has never taught that money remits temporal punishment for sin.

We haven't progressed very far. We still argue and don't listen and don't actually communicate a bit. And we like it. And so it goes.

2PhiloVoid said:

For the benefit of the rest of us who are attempting to follow along in this discussion, Fervent, you might need to disclose your own church denomination so that we'll have a better understanding of your working framework.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I'm honestly not sure where I would fall denominationally. I grew up mostly in american baptist or calvary chapel churches but my theology doesn't really fall in line with any. I fellowship at a southern baptist church and am working on a master's in divinity from GCU, if that helps at all.

More helpful may be some personal disclosure about my relationship with the Bible, because I grew up being told it was nothing more than the wisdom of men compiled over the centuries with fragments of history. For a long time I thought far more about science and philosophy than the Bible. That didn't give way until well into my adulthood, and that because God's directly revealing to me its authenticity, and so today I recognize that we either treat it as the Word of God or we treat it like any other book. If it is the Word of God, then it must take precedence over every other avenue of discovery since God alone is true.

chevyontheriver said:

Since there were few reliable citations available of actual quotes of the reformers, the council of Trent condemned propositions that were heretical but which may not have actually been held by actual reformers. They did not condemn anyone by name either. So it would be more proper to say the anathemas were amed at propositions, and not necessarily at the particular propositions held by any reformer.

Hilaire Belloc wrote about the politics and economics of the Reformation in a book called 'How the Reformation Happened'. https://www.amazon.com/How-Reformation-Happened-Hilaire-Belloc/dp/0895554658

Polemics won the day. And it's still alive today, thriving even.

Here are two current views of the selling of indulgences:

SELLING INDULGENCES. In the dark ages, when Papacy held control of men's consciences and few dared to think, one method which she practiced to supply herself with money was the sale of indulgences. The indulgence was a permission to sin and yet be free from its consequences.

SELLING INDULGENCES. The Pope (or the bishops in Germany) did not approve of the "selling of indulgences"... there were abuses that priests and bishops did not correct and check. However, the Church has never taught that money remits temporal punishment for sin.

We haven't progressed very far. We still argue and don't listen and don't actually communicate a bit. And we like it. And so it goes.

Click to expand...

True that there weren't well codified meanings simply slogans that developed their meaning over time. Yet those at Trent believed it was anathematizing "Sola Fide" just as those at Constance believed it was anathematizing Sola Scriptura when it declared Jan Hus an archheretic.

Indulgences are an interesting historic study, as the church didn't see themselves as selling salvation as much as they were selling time off from purgatory to individuals already saved. The full theology of penance as existed during the Reformation is hard to pin down because most of the material on it is polemics so the trustworthiness of the documents is suspect.

It's sad how easily infected those who claim Christ are sold into political situations and secular concerns cause such strife. Yet it seems to me that politics is more often the culprit than genuine theological disagreements, even going back to the Arian controversy where the divide was largely between newly converted Northerners and established imperials.

Fervent said:

I'm honestly not sure where I would fall denominationally. I grew up mostly in american baptist or calvary chapel churches but my theology doesn't really fall in line with any. I fellowship at a southern baptist church and am working on a master's in divinity from GCU, if that helps at all.

More helpful may be some personal disclosure about my relationship with the Bible, because I grew up being told it was nothing more than the wisdom of men compiled over the centuries with fragments of history. For a long time I thought far more about science and philosophy than the Bible. That didn't give way until well into my adulthood, and that because God's directly revealing to me its authenticity, and so today I recognize that we either treat it as the Word of God or we treat it like any other book. If it is the Word of God, then it must take precedence over every other avenue of discovery since God alone is true.

Click to expand...

OK. I appreciate your disclosure of this. And I while I might differ on some philosophical or theological points here or there, I generally understand some of your angle on things, so thanks for sharing that!

hedrick said:

.

A test case is to ask about people during the period between Jesus life and the writing of the NT Gospels. They didn't have the Bible (at least not the NT), but they had direct witnesses to Jesus' life.

Click to expand...

Since there was no bible in the 1st 3 centuries after Jesus lived, surely there was no CHristians and no Christianity. Surely one cannot have Christianity merely by teaching what Jesus actually said and did, and the liturgies of the time of the living apostles. In fact, how could there be Christianity before the KJV, certainly not the real Christianity we understand today.


NOT

Saint Steven said:

In many cases, religion is preferred over a relationship.

Click to expand...

And where, ultimately, do we hear about the relationship except thru the church, that church that assembled the canon of Scripture, and the creeds, etc?

Fervent said:

It's not a matter of "limiting God," you're seeking reasons to discredit Biblical revelation as if extreme cases prove some kind of general rule. Apart from God's self-revelation there is no relationship with God. God has chosen a means of revealing Himself, so to not restrict ourselves to that revelation is to set up false gods of our own making. God set the boundaries, ignoring them only imperils yourself.

Click to expand...

I wish that this belief could be discussed in a council . You truly believe that without the bible, there can be no relationship with God. As wonderful as Scripture is (whichever number of books and translations that you accept), to limit God by suggesting that he no other way to be in relationship is, is, let us just say a very strange notion.

God speaks to us in our prayer life. God speaks and guides us in our daily life, by bringing people and situations into it, and by allowing Himself to act through us.

God speaks to us through miracles and through the lives of the saints and of so many others.

God sometimes even use us to do his ministry of healing and of helping the weak.

God speaks to us through fellow Christians, and especially through mentors.

And yes, God speaks to us through books other than the bible, certainly through the many books on the spiritual life.

Clare73 said:

Didn't watch the video, but suspect that the issue is requiring works for justification. . .the issue Paul was most adamant about.

Click to expand...

Except that John MacArthur teaches "works-based salvation". The whole "Lordship salvation" thing is just another variation of religious performance to earn God's favor.

Usually when I see Protestant polemicists attack "works-based salvation" they aren't actually doing that, instead they are attacking the doctrine of Justification by grace alone through faith, and the way they do that is usually to deny the Means of Grace (Word and Sacrament), deny the gift of faith, and to instead preach that salvation is about "making a decision to follow Jesus", i.e. a human work.

So at least from a Lutheran vantage point, folks like MacArthur aren't championing the gospel, but working against it.

-CryptoLutheran

We are saved by Grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ Jesus alone. This is our common faith.

And yes, I have taught this loud and clear to Catholic fellowships.

BTW, I have zero question that if today's Catholics were to be living in time of Luther, they would have been much more comfortable with him and the monks about him, than with the Catholic Church of the times.

Lutherans and Catholics have had a joint declaration on justification. There have been many decades of meetings and prayer.

mark46 said:

I wish that this belief could be discussed in a council . You truly believe that without the bible, there can be no relationship with God. As wonderful as Scripture is (whichever number of books and translations that you accept), to limit God by suggesting that he no other way to be in relationship is, is, let us just say a very strange notion.

God speaks to us in our prayer life. God speaks and guides us in our daily life, by bringing people and situations into it, and by allowing Himself to act through us.

God speaks to us through miracles and through the lives of the saints and of so many others.

God sometimes even use us to do his ministry of healing and of helping the weak.

God speaks to us through fellow Christians, and especially through mentors.

And yes, God speaks to us through books other than the bible, certainly through the many books on the spiritual life.

Click to expand...

I don't deny God uses those means to communicate as well, but His primary self revelation is in preaching and through the Bible. The Bible serves as the final authority and gives us a means of testing the various spirits that speak in all of those ways. It may seem strange to you, but either the Bible is the word of God fully sufficient for spiritual matters, or its just another human work. To try to give it a middling stature, in which it is simply one of a variety of authorities, is to deny that God has made a clear revelation in history such that we can reliably discuss and eliminate false gods.

fhansen said:

And where, ultimately, do we hear about the relationship except thru the church, that church that assembled the canon of Scripture, and the creeds, etc?

Click to expand...

Are truly saying that studying the writings of the mothers and fathers of the church is not useful, and that we can only learn about the relationship with Jesus in Church? There is nothing to learn by studying the lives of the saints and their writings? There is nothing to be learned from those who have taken the spiritual journey before us?

Yes, I certainly believe that one part of the relationship with God is through the Church and the sacraments. However, there are many other place to learn about that relationship.

Watching the video I wasn’t all that impressed with either figure. MacArthur is the very assaulter of the truth whom he condemns, teaching a false gospel, and Hanegraff, whose gospel as stated is accurate enough, bothers, ignorantly I’ll assume, to assail the Catholic Church with some false statements, claiming that priestly celibacy and limbo are dogma, which they are not.

Fervent said:

I don't deny God uses those means to communicate as well, but His primary self revelation is in preaching and through the Bible. The Bible serves as the final authority and gives us a means of testing the various spirits that speak in all of those ways. It may seem strange to you, but either the Bible is the word of God fully sufficient for spiritual matters, or its just another human work. To try to give it a middling stature, in which it is simply one of a variety of authorities, is to deny that God has made a clear revelation in history such that we can reliably discuss and eliminate false gods.

Click to expand...

We must agree to disagree. Prayer is not an adjunct to bible study. Allowing God to act through us in our daily life is not just ad adjunct to bible study. We are here for two purposes, not three.

It the bible that is the adjunct to our lives. It does indeed reveal God and his history to us. It does indeed teach us how Jesus lived and what he taught. It does indeed provide a test for any new doctrine.

However, let me be very clear, we are to love God and love one another. We are to be as Jesus taught in the sermon On the Mount. And yes, we love God by becoming a member of a fellowship of believers, and enter into the sacramental life.

mark46 said:

We must agree to disagree. Prayer is not an adjunct to bible study. Allowing God to act through us in our daily life is not just ad adjunct to bible study. We are here for two purposes, not three.

It the bible that is the adjunct to our lives. It does indeed reveal God and his history to us. It does indeed teach us how Jesus lived and what he taught. It does indeed provide a test for any new doctrine.

However, let me be very clear, we are to love God and love one another. We are to be as Jesus taught in the sermon On the Mount. And yes, we love God by becoming a member of a fellowship of believers, and enter into the sacramental life.

Click to expand...

I quite agree that prayer and living righteously are not merely adjuncts to Bible study. I would forward that simply studying the Bible is to neglect its full voice, though. Perhaps I am imposing a limit on my relationship with God that need not be there, yet it appears to me that this limit God has set for me is a common one if not universal where Bibles are available. I have heard God speak in many ways, but every time He has it has been to confirm the trustworthiness of the Bible.

As for becoming a member of a fellowship and entering into sacramental life, I'm inclined to agree though I have a feeling there's quite a gap between our theologies of what "sacramental life" entails. For instance, I am absolutely against the notion that Christ is sacrificed at every mass.

fhansen said:

Watching the video I wasn’t all that impressed with either figure. MacArthur is the very assaulter of the truth whom he condemns, teaching a false gospel, and Hanegraff, whose gospel as stated is accurate enough, bothers, ignorantly I’ll assume, to assail the Catholic Church with some false statements, claiming that priestly celibacy and limbo are dogma, which they are not.

Click to expand...

I think they are both anti-Catholic. MacArthur can't even see straight he is so anti-Catholic. Which makes him anti-Orthodox as well, having to curse Orthodoxy because it's so like Catholicism. And Hannagraff, in becoming Orthodox, has managed to hang on to his own lesser but real anti-Catholicism. It isn't pretty although it's not as bad as MacArthur's thing. I'm happy for Hannagraff but he has some evolving still to go, if he can. He has done an impressive thing in following the truth where it leads, at least where he has allowed it to lead him so far.

It's a measure of maturity to try to see other positions accurately. St. Thomas Aquinas used to do a really good job of stating an opponent's position, often better than they could do themselves. And then to entirely blow them out of the water. But he was diligent to understand the opinions of others accurately first. Hannagraff needs work in that area. MacArthur? Well, some people are convinced beyond any doubt they have everything figured out.