Posted on 05/26/2007 4:32:30 PM PDT by Titanites
I am a convert to the Catholic Faith from Calvinism. I loved Calvinism and owned a library full of Calvin, Luther, Warfield, Hodge, Murray, Owen, Machen, etc. as well as helped plant a local Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I knew Reformation Theology and how much hatred it generates for the Catholic Church. As a Calvinist, I could boast with the best of them. I even persecuted the Catholic Church and went after every one of them I found, beating them back with Scripture, upon Scripture, upon quotes of Luther, Calvin, etc. I found great pleasure in debating Catholics.
My one flaw was learning what the Early Church Fathers believed. A Catholic who had not fared well in a debate with me, mentioned I should read the Early Church Fathers to see just how Catholic they were. I honestly thought I would just gain more "ammo" to use in my battles.
I found Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp with my first visit to the University Library. I poured over them for months until finally I pounded the books on the table with my fists, tossed them from the fourth to the third level of the library and wept. It seemed these great martyrs for the Faith were Catholic. It had taken about 8 months of going over Clement, Augustine, Athanasius, etc. to see the Catholic Church was the Early Church. I kept coming back to Ignatius and Polycarp as I could not get them out of my mind.
Over the next two years, I read more and more on the Catholic Faith and became less and less convinced the Reformed Faith was correct. It became clear to me; it was nothing more than a novelty, spewing forth doctrines that had never been believed before. Christ promised the Holy Spirit to His Church and stated the gates of hell would not prevail against it. I thought that was a lie and for 1500 years, the Church had been without truth and the gates of hell had prevailed. It is very humbling to come to the conclusion you have been horribly wrong, even to the point of not trusting the words of our precious Lord and Saviour. Yet, I still was not ready to become a Catholic.
Then one day when I was reading the Scripture I read Paul talking about how he was the most religious Pharisee, the most upright, and you know my heart was pierced and I actually laughed about how I could claim I had been one of the best Calvinists around, but then it hit me. Was that even something to boast about? So I looked up one of the most wonderful examples of boasting the Lord mentioned. Luke 18:9-14 (Please read the Scripture as this is my paraphrase)
'Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Calvinist and the other a sinner. The Calvinist (that would be I) stood and was praying thus to himself, God, I thank thee that I am not like other people, sinners, Catholics, heretics, or even like this sinner beside me. I planted your church in this god-forsaken part of the country, I read the Scriptures and Calvin and Luther twice a week, and the rest of the week I read nothing but reformers and your Scriptures. But the sinner standing a little off to the side, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast saying, God, be merciful to me the sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled but he who humbles himself shall be exalted."
You know who the sinner was? I turned next to Luke 5:8 because I was then looking for others who admitted they were sinners for I knew I was once the boaster but now I was the sinner. "But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus' feet saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Peter then was able to go on and follow Jesus. Peter came home, this home became the Church, and he was the Rock it was built upon, and he was justified.
At that moment, it finally became clear I could not stay a Calvinist or stay in the OPC. I had plans to attend Westminster Seminary and those were discarded. I lost friends and was informed I must have never been a Christian in the first place.
As I became least, Christ became more. I decided the only place I could go was the home where the Apostle Peter went. I was accepted into the Catholic Church in Easter 2002. I have never been happier and I wish and pray this joy for all. I will never be the same after taking the Body and Blood of our Lord.
So you now want to put me to work on a holiday??? What is wrong with what Paul means by it there in Romans 4 ----
We obviously differ on what we think Scripture tells us about faith and works, so I'm asking you to simply tell us what a "work" is. Seems to me we'll never get very far in arguing over whether or not something is a "work" if we're operating from different definitions of the term.
So I ask again...please define for us exactly what constitutes a "work."
You really need to think about that statement for a while.
Do you really believe it? You have made your belief your work (not God's), by taking the ultimate determination as to your eternal destiny out of the hands of God and into your own hands. Are you sure you want to do that?
If salvation is ultimately in your hands and not His, then you are in fact your own savior. Christ then becomes some kind of potential generic savior, but you become the ultimate Savior.
Think about that for a while.
Shouldn't your question be to define what Paul means by the word "work or worketh" there in Romans 4??? Your Concordance works as well as mine.
Mine lists "exertion of effort, toil, labor, deeds, action". What does yours say?
Nope --- your characterization is incorrect. I didn't die for my own sins, but I do believe in the Word of the God who did die for my sins. How does that make me my own saviour??? It no more does than Abraham who believed God and his belief was accounted to him for righteousness. Did that make Abraham his own promise-giver? He believed in the promise of the promise-giver. What's wrong with that???
He would never have believed if God had not made him willing to believe.
Did God make you willing to believe?
Did he take away your unwillingness?
Where does it say that in the text?
Did God make you willing to believe? Did he take away your unwillingness?
Where is that addressed in scripture???
It says it all throughout the Bible.
Where is that addressed in scripture???
I will take that as a "no."
I will therefore have to assume that you believe that by the exercise of your own free will, independent of any compulsive influence of the Holy Spirit, that you made a rational and natural decision to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe that is Pelagianism.
Would you identify yourself as a Pelagianist?
UC-From the word of God
Does God generate this faith or do you?
Chapter and verse please.
Where is that addressed in scripture???
I will take that as a "no."
Why? Because you can't answer my question?
I will therefore have to assume that you believe that by the exercise of your own free will, independent of any compulsive influence of the Holy Spirit, that you made a rational and natural decision to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that is your assumption for what it is worth. But why is any way that a person winds up believing on the Lord Jesus Christ the right way or the wrong way? Is your way the only way? Is believing the gospel irrational?
I believe that is Pelagianism.
Now that belief is a work. You had to work hard to come up with that conclusion and the following question.
Faith comes by hearing --- hearing the word of God. It is embedded in the word of God.
The problem is not how "Catholic" the early church fathers were, but how "unCatholic" the church of Rome became over the years. I am not one who believes the Roman church is antichrist (although I wince at some of the language in ch 12-14 of the Council of Trent). NEITHER DID LUTHER. His goal was to REFORM the church. Their response was "recant or die" and so we have the split. Schisms in Christendom are always unpleasant, and never happy and always unfortunate. Rectifying them always calls for repentance.
I hope it does not sound too terribly mushy and dismissive of truth to say that we Protestants should ALWAYS be willing to look at our history with Roma and be willing to repent. On the other hand Rome should certainly be willing to repent and renounce its schismatic ways in denying the teaching of the church fathers even as it lauds them. My opinion is that the Roman church left the true biblical and apostolic faith over the issues of:
1) Infused vs Imputed righteousness. Imputed righteousness is just the corpse of Pelagianism, all dolled up to look different. It is, as Augustine clearly understood, a modified works righteousness. Men save themselves, and God helps. Thank God that even those who advocate it do not seem to truly understand what they are pushing. Otherwise, they would be damned. Trent accurately called it (the issue of justifying faith) an issue for "anathema" (the word rendered damned or condemned in Galatians 1. They are simply, two different gospels.
2)The authority of church tradition vs the authority of Scripture. No protestant denies that we ALL reverence the opinions of good and godly men who have gone before. I truly believe that protestants disservice themselves by being so ignorant of the luminaries in the pre and post Reformation Roman Church. Also, I will be the first to tell you that Luther was a wack job in his tirades against the Jews (Himmler used his suggestions as to what to do with Jews as an operational plan for the 3rd Reich), the covenanters were a bunch of hotheads, many Reformers will have to answer SERIOUS questions before God over what they did to the anabaptists, and that the burning of Servetus was not Calvin's, er, "most glorious moment" (let's leave it at that). However the Roman Church has an UNbiblical view of tradition, which prevents it from (as a church) repenting over its clear and unambiguous errors, whether they be the "reverse jihadism" of the Crusades, or the Council of Trent, or the monstrous wickedness of Torquemada. Once they have been pronounced by the Pope, they become a part of the word of God as it is handed down by tradition. This is horrid. The idea that the church speaks with the voice of God (there seems to be some merit for a modified view of this in Matthew 18, when Jesus talks about being "present" when excommunication is being pronounced) is ONLY as the church speaks in submission to the spoken word of God. There is a great deal of foolishness, poppycock, and downright damnable heresy that exists in the "authoritative" declarations of the Roman Church and they simply need to repent of this wickedness. Scripture judges church tradition, even as tradition helps us understand the proper (including the historical) view of the word of God.
3) Marioloty and reverence for saints is nothing more than syncretism with the pagan tribes which came into the church. The foolishness and idolatry of praying to Mary and/or saints who have gone before is simply unbiblical and idolatrous. On this, the reformers were dead on, and the Roman church is simply in error.
That said, I DO understand and I DO have a great deal of sympathy why the "praying to the saints" stuff happens. I had a dear brother in Christ die of cancer this past week. I commented to a friend that I understood why there this practice (praying to saints) could happen. Bill (not his real name) is not "up there" with Christ, but I still have a very real and substantive connection with him. There is a biblical union with ALL of Christ's people, not just the ones who have gone on. Death is horrid obscene and a rupture in the union and connection I share with this man. Christ has spit in the face of death, and stomped the "life" out of it, and the rupture betwee "Bill" and I is, in fact, an illusion. I am one with this man, and his death has not changed that. The ancients instinctively knew that, and the spiritists and witches actually have a better view of the fact that we inhabit a spirit world than most Christians do. They (the pagans) err in rejecting the one true door (Christ, through faith) INTO that spirit world, but they are more cognizant of it than most Christians, who are functional rationalists except at 11:00 am on Sunday mornings. There is more room for "mysticism" in the Roman church, and so this reality is received (that is GOOD), and transformed into a spirtual discipline of praying to human beings who have died and gone on (most decidedly BAD and a direct violation of the first commandment).
When asked why do I not return to the "mother church" when some very kind souls (I believe very sincere and saved people) inform me that the age of indulgences is over, my response is "to be sure. Rome should repent of these unbiblical practices and join the true faith." If we could have unity on these issues, I personally would not care who joined who, to be frank.
"you" most decidedly do NOT generate this faith. This is scriptural, and at the core of the argument by Augustine against Pelagius. The Roman church was decidedly "Reformed" in its earlier years. Augustine differed very little from Calvin and Luther on this.
The historical orthodox view of this is that men are spiritually dead in their transgressions and sins. They are no more responsive to the gospel than a dead dog on the side of the road will rise to its feet and yelp for a freshly cooked steak. Faith is a GIFT (Eph 2 :8,9) and NOT of ourselves precisely because it is the natural response of a man who has been MADE ALIVE (the theological term is regenerated, or what Jesus called being "born again") Just as the NATURAL response of the unregenerate is to remain in unbelief, so the NATURAL response of the regenerate man is to gladly embrace Christ.
Two points:
1) Modern protestantism is actually more Roman Catholic than it realizes, in that it makes faith a work we "do" and then states that regeneration "follows" (logically, if not temporally) faith. This is unbiblical, and a modified version of Pelaginanism, which is condemned by the church of Rome and then embraced about a thousand years later.
2) Salvation is a TOTALLY FREE GIFT. The biblical picture is that man contributes NOTHING (no, not his "faith", or his "decision for Christ, or any other unbiblical and historically unfounded buncombe). We are dead in sin, God sovereignly gives life to us and then we "freely" respond, but as we "freely" rejected when dead in sin.
It is all about GRACE. Salvation is God's work from front to back, and end to end.
You have a warped sense of what you call the “Roman Church”.
That is most interesting. I wonder what he read that I missed in these guys. I too fell in love with the early Church Fathers while in Seminary (I am a graduate of Westminster, btw. I spent two years at Reformed and then graduated from WTS). The first paper in Church History I did was on Clement of Alexandria. I was fascinated with the Ante and Post Nicene Fathers and REALLY enjoyed reading lots of Aquinas (ok, NO ONE reads all the works of Aquinas. If someone tells you they have, they will lie to you about other stuff too!), Bernard of Clairvaux (what a study in contrasts!), Anselm, St Francis, and other "mighty men." I deliberately veered away from Calvin, Luther, Knox, Beza, Zwingli, Hus (a reformer before the reformation), Cranmer, Latimer, and the reformers, as I had read about them and had spent a summer in Switzerland (L'Abri) and took a bunch of side trips to Protestant "shrines" associated with these guys.
I have to say, I wonder what books this guy read on the church fathers!!!! I found them to be men of contrasts, to be sure. I found some weird weird weird views (origen was a universalist, and a proto Arian when he wasn't cutting off his own balls in the name of seeking Christ) among some of them, but what I also found was that LUTHER WAS RIGHT. He had argued that the church had in fact, abandoned the simple message that Salvation is of God alone through faith alone and that man can no more "contribute" to his salvation than he can sprout wings and fly to the moon. The reformation forced the church to articulate and codify the orthodox faith re: justification, just as Arius and Athanasius were at loggerheads over the deity of Christ, necessitating a fissure in the church at Nicea (the fissure was "sealed" by Constantine picking sides and using the power of the state to enforce it, but that is another story).
The bottom line is that the early church fathers were, in fact, REFORMED. I can't understand "pounding the table" and wailing in frustration here, as the very men this guy quotes would have been aghast at the crap that came from the council of Trent.
Did he have books on these guys that I just missed?
You’re skirting the issue and you know it. Either 1) God give you your faith or 2) you generate it from hearing God’s word. You can pick door #1 or door #2 but there isn’t a door #3.
Doubtless this is true, and I find joy in repenting when my understanding is made more complete. I don't want to hate or speak contemptously of other professing believers.
That said: Do you deny the Council of Trent?
specifically, the following:
CANON 9: "If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema."
CANON 12: "If any one shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy pardoning sins for Christ's sake, or that it is that confidence alone by which we are justified ... let him be accursed"
Canon 14: "If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema."
Canon 23: "lf any one saith, that a man once justified can sin no more, nor lose grace, and that therefore he that falls and sins was never truly justified; or, on the other hand, that he is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even those that are venial,- except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Blessed Virgin; let him be anathema."
Canon 24: "If any one saith, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof; let him be anathema."
Canon 30: "If any one saith, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise, that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened (to him); let him be anathema."
Canon 33: "If any one saith, that, by the Catholic doctrine touching Justification, by this holy Synod inset forth in this present decree, the glory of God, or the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ are in any way derogated from, and not rather that the truth of our faith, and the glory in fine of God and of Jesus Christ are rendered (more) illustrious; let him be anathema.
Let me hasten to add, that although NO ONE CAN TRULY HOLD TO THE ABOVE AND BE SAVED, yet I believe many Roman Catholics either have
1) hearts better than their heads -- they don't really understand that stuff, or
2) no knowledge that the Church teaches such horrible doctrine, or
3) believes that this was just a "lapse" in the church, that men, including popes, are sinners and just in error, and that "no one really believes that anymore"
I know many precious Roman Catholic believers, and I should add that the abortion issue was addressed ONLY by Catholics for many years (1973-1980) while protestants were silent. Those people (many of whom I know) are true 20th century Christian heroes.
Amen, Fru!
"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." -- Romans 13:12.
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!" -- Isaiah 52:7
"Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." -- 2 Timothy 1:13
If you believe that you can come to Christ independent of the compulsive influence of the Holy Spirit, then you are flirting with Pelagianism. God must (one way or another) make you willing and take away your natural unwillingness to repent and believe. It therefore requires a supernatural act. If you believe you did it on your own, then your salvation is the result of a natural act.
Is believing the gospel irrational?
It is both unnatural and irrational. No man who is uninfluenced by the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit will ever make a rational decision to embrace the gospel of Christ. If, at the time you received Christ, you believed it to be a rational decision, it was only because the Holy Spirit put the ability to see that as a rational choice in your heart. It didn't grow out of some kind of natural tendency in mankind. The natural tendency of mankind is to reject the Gospel, as it makes no sense to the person who is not under the direct influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Now that belief is a work. You had to work hard to come up with that conclusion
No, your answers were classic Pelagianism. Even Arminians would refute them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.