East of Eden
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Matthew 12 36:
"But I say to you, that for every idle word which men will have spoken, they shall render an account in the day of judgment." CPDV
What idolatry? And can you prove we worship Mary? Or do we give her honor as most blessed among women? As for common objects being used for prayers, or pagans lighting candles, there is no issue or error.
There is a book you should check out. It's called "The Apostasy that Wasn't". It recounts how men and women chose to die for their faith rather than water it down or change it, or denounce it. Maybe that would change your dunno and understand why we remain true to the faith that is true to us.
Your point is............?Matthew 12 36:
"But I say to you, that for every idle word which men will have spoken, they shall render an account in the day of judgment." CPDV
He lost followers because they couldn't get it. They thought literally and it made no sense, because Jesus didn't mean it literally. He meant for people to live by His words the way you live by eating and drinking.The context demands such an interpretation. When Jesus declared it, he lost followers.
The pope has no business pontificating on issues he knows nothing about. He's 84. And he knows nothing of Stalinist Russia or Mao's China? He can't see the direction that China is now taking, even though he is involved in discussions with China's leaders? He advocates unity with Islam, the religion that advocates the murder of non Muslims? This is the greatest of the great in Christendom? Spare me.Well, the Pope's area of expertise is not in politics. He is only infallible in certain circumstances, and we can agree that he has a lot to learn about some things, like climate change and mass immigration.
You have not, though, shown any reason for apostolic succession to be 'simply wrong'.
No, you said that. A plain reading of the two scriptures, not the papacy, but certainly the fathers of the Church, say exactly that doctrine of the Eucharist. Jesus wouldn't tell us we must do something and not give us a way to do what he said. Likewise, at Caesarea Philippi, the Holy Spirit chose Peter to proclaim the words, and Jesus told him "No flesh and blood has revealed this to you." And made him the head of the Apostles, and thus the Church.
I think it was always small but grew into a mass of false believers after Constantine. Tares instead of true believers.To a large degree, I agree with you. I believe in the faith, not the political institution. Regardiing the Church in Acts, it was small, but as it grew, needed to change. But a bishop was always a bishop. When the congregation grew bigger, he had assistants, priests.
But just because someone's a Catholic doesn't mean his salvation is assured.
Making statues and graven images and bowing before them and offering prayers to them. That is worship.
If Jesus comes tomorrow, most everybody is going to be surprised when he says, "That's not quite what I meant."
But we should do our best to understand anyway.
That is a good, Irenic and quintessentially broad-church Anglican reply.
I think it was always small but grew into a mass of false believers after Constantine. Tares instead of true believers.
I've held that view before my Anglican days. Although I suppose it does help me be Anglican. I believe all denominations, including those that think they hold the absolute truth, are wrong about something. Not by intention buy due to the limitations of their own humanity. And, I believe God understands that.
He contributed to it by developing an unscriptural State Church. But it all began with the Monarchical Bishops in the 2nd century. Nowhere found in scripture.What must I do to communicate to the members of this forum that Emperor Constantine was not, as a matter of historical fact, the founder of the Roman Catholic Church? He was baptized by an Arian who denied the deity of our Lord! Google Eusebius of Nicomedia. Or Constantius. Or even Eusebius of Caesarea, the great historian of the early church, who was also an Arian sympathizer who agreed with the declaration of faith at Nicea that Christ was God Incarnate only under protest.
And this same Eusebius later collaborated with the other Eusebius to baptize Constantine so his heir in the East would become Arian!
If anyone “founded” the Roman Catholic Church it would be Pope Leo IX. Which is ironic given the Chalcedonian Schism was largely the result of a clumsy and unneeded unintervention on the part of Leo I, who was not however a Pope in the same sense as Leo IX understood the office, nor styled Pope, and Pope Leo X does share partial responsibility for the Protestant Schism with Luther, Calvin, the Northern European monarchs, and the city councils in Switzerland.
He contributed to it by developing an unscriptural State Church. But it all began with the Monarchical Bishops in the 2nd century. Nowhere found in scripture.
He was instrumental, to say the least.Wrong, because Constantine did not make Christianity the state religion, he merely decreed the Edict of Toleration and personally involved himself in the faith because he believed it led him to victory. Wrong, because Armenia, eight years earlier, actually did make Christianity its state church. Wrong because Edessa, a monarchial City State, did so even earlier. Wrong, because St. Ignatius who was fed to lions, spent most of his episcopate in the first, and the same is true of St. Clement, and St. Polycarp, who if I recall was the last to know St. John the Apostle personally. Wrong because bishops were, and in most of the Eastern churches still are, informally elected by popular consent and in some cases formally. And wrong because the episcopate as described and understood in the New Testament is consistently reflected in later epistles. And wrong because what defines the New Testament was set out by St. Athanasius in the fourth century, before that there was no universally agreed on NT canon. Even afterwards there was not.
He was instrumental, to say the least.
He opened the flood gates to the visible institutional churches for the unsaved masses. It's all part of God forming Antichrist's kingdom according to prophecy.No, he really wasn’t, and you can’t prove that fact because it is ahistorical. By the way my apologies if I seemed fumed at you, which is inappropriate for me on a Sunday in Lent. I just (a) am opposed to this pointless sectarianism and (b) wish people knew the actual history of Constantine and the Byzantine Empire. Because there are some skin-crawling villains in there, but Constantine I was relatively harmless. And I also wish more people would give the persecuted Syriac Christians who were originally from Edessa, and the Armenians, the first and second nations to adopt Christianity as their state religion, the credit due for that.
In fact Arianism was so prevalent in the Roman Empire for so long I don’t think we can call it a Christian nation until AD 400. The first Christian nations were really Edessa, Armenia, Ethiopia and Georgia. And they still exist, and you can find Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia on any map.
He opened the flood gates to the visible institutional churches for the unsaved masses. It's all part of God forming Antichrist's kingdom according to prophecy.
Islam has martyrs too. It proves nothingThat’s not true, and to prove it, I will point to the sacred blood of the martyrs of those churches to Rome, Islam and Communism throughout history as a testimony to the sincerity of their Salvific faith in Christ. Because even now, Muslim fundamentalists are killing and oppressing them.
Are you familiar with the Byzantine theological conception of the unknowability of the divine essence due to human finite nature, in particular the Palamist essence/energies distinction? Because these doctrines seem conceptually related to the idea that we owing to our limitations are plagued by misconceptions.
For my part I am convinced many Christians, including myself at one point, due to bad catechesis in my childhood concerning the Trinity, inadvertently worshipped God the Father as if He were a Zeus like figure while having no pnuematological understanding and only a flawed and limited Christology.
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