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Many messengers of the Creator are called irrational, and to the world we are irrational - they cannot understand the truth.Touche.
But to be irrational is wholly worse.
By your love-of God and neighbor. That's the surest evidence of change in us. Love, and the fruit it naturally produces.How can we know if we actually believe and it's not just a mere profession of faith held in our neurons?
How can we know we truly experienced the Holy Spirit and not our consciousness making the experience?
And how do we know if the dictionary and definitions have been changed by satan or someone?
Is it bad that I am such a fierce rationalist, like Rene Descartes?
By your love-of God and neighbor. That's the surest evidence of change in us. Love, and the fruit it naturally produces.
The RCC actually recognizes baptism by most other denominations as valid as long as the form is correct and they're of Nicene beliefs, which is why the RCC will never rebaptize converts from those backgrounds. But the RCC also knows that this is only the beginning, of a journey, in any case. So, if we're not living as children of God should then we probably aren't His, or we've departed from Him.Indeed.
However, as for whether or not someone has been born again, this is literally just a question of being baptized into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, however one defines this (for example, evangelicals will define it as being invisible and consisting of all the Christian faithful, while Baptists and Congregationalists will define it as consisting of the local church, Roman Catholics define it as those churches in communion with the Pope in Rome, most Orthodox define it based on the criteria for apostolic succession of St. Cyprian of Carthage, whereas Anglicans, Assyrians, Old Catholics and a minority of Orthodox will define it based on the apostolic succession criteria of St. Augustine or a related form of “branch ecclesiology,” and Lutherans will tend define it in a manner similiar to the view of St. Cyprian albeit without a requirement for direct apostolic succession or an episcopate, but rather, as consisting of wherever the Word and Sacrament are ministered (thus, St. Cyprian requires Orthodoxy and apostolic succession from only Orthodox bishops, whereas Lutherans require only varying degrees of Orthodoxy, where in both cases, Orthodoxy is understood to mean “right-glorification” or what Church Slavonic calls pravoslavie as opposed to “correct belief.”
The RCC actually recognizes baptism by most other denominations as valid as long as the form is correct and they're of Nicene beliefs, which is why the RCC will never rebaptize converts from those backgrounds. But the RCC also knows that this is only the beginning, of a journey, in any case. So, if we're not living as children of God should then we probably aren't His, or we've departed from Him.
And as the OP is asking about evidence, our love and resulting actions speak loudest. And this is why the church, concisely summing up the criteria for our "particular judgment", can teach, quoting a 16th century believer:
"At the evening of life we shall be judged on our love."
And yet Jesus said they of the synagogues all appeared to be clean on the outside but were filthy on the inside. Nothing changes in the religious business.
True enough, and yet we'll also find no perfectly sinless members- of any church, or perfectly sinless believers outside the church either for that matter. So we all need to keep in mind Jesus's words in Matt 23: to keep working on washing our robes with the ever-present help of grace.I trust you are not accusing all Christian churches of such, since Christ our True God, promised us that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church, and it would be a huge slur to persecuted Christians in the Middle East and Pakistan, many of whom are members of very ancient churches which have never persecuted anyone.
That was a good read. It's refreshing to hear wisdom, especially when Chrisitan fathers of many centuries past can be referenced for it.The canonical Eastern Orthodox also do this from Christologicaly right-believing churches. I found a nice article from an Antiochian Orthodox priest here: Receiving Converts into the Orthodox Church. Fr. Lawrence Farley
He said it.
Ok, but how do you know that your truth is more accurate than, say, that of a particular denomination, or of another individual who diagrees with your interpretation while also maintaining that they're reflecting His word correctly with their beliefs? Aren't we all necesarily acting as middlemen as we try to discern His revelaltion?Yes, as He said that would be His church based on only truth from the Father and not from mankind. No middlemen needed.
how do you know that your truth
And that's what they all say, whether or not they go on to establish a religion, or, perhaps more accurately, a church, with it. And without an organized visible body to carry on and preserve and proclaim the faith, there would arguably be no Christian faith today, certainly no Christian bible since it required men to assemble it's canon, deciding between writings to be considered inspired while throwing out those they determined were not. A certain group, such as those who came together in Jerusalem in Acts 15 to decide on matters of the faith, would later decide on controveries such as that posed by Arianism, which was poised to take over Christianity and already had in many parts of the Christian world. The Nicene creed and doctrines on the Trinity were produced there, which most Christians adhere to today, knowingly or not. The ancient churches simply believed and taught and practiced what they had received at the beginning, before the new testament was even written, incidentally, and the larger church met to protect and clarify that understanding as necessary, guided by the Holy Spirit.I said God's truth not mine.
TrueYes man thought it necessary to control the narrative of what they created for themselves
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