Posted on 02/19/2008 11:55:18 AM PST by NYer
This is actually a very interesting remark. Here's how it interests me:
(1)How can I "try faith"? Isn't faith a gift of God to man, a sign and instance of Divine Grace? I can no more "try faith" than I can beget a child on myself. The latter needs a human other (and the rolling back of a few years), the former requires God's gift.
(2)Does "it [that is, faith] work," or does God work through faith? Does anything good happen in the human soul unless God has done it? Can the city possibly stand if God does not build it? Do we not otherwise labor in vain?
I pinged you hither, Harley, because a week or so go you expressed astonishment at my distinguishing between the language of theology and the language of piety. But here we have almost the very example I gave!
My example was, "Prayer works," and here we have "try faith," and "It [faith] works."
Now of course I disagree with what the poster is saying about Eucharistic theology and works and all that. But I can see many of us here, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, saying to someone exactly what IOTN said here. "Try trusting in God! It works!" And yet we would, I think, agree with the proposition that we could not say that unless God gave it to us to say it, and the person to whom we spoke could not act on it unless God have given it to him to act.
So it's kind of funny to see some one who is rebuking us RCs for our alleged works-righteousness, in the very act of rebuke falling into the LANGUAGE of works. Was there ever a more "worky" word than "try"?
It is all gift. If, perchance, someday, some good work were done by me, it would not really be me by whom it was done, but God acting in me both to will and to do. Silver and gold have I none. I have nothing of my own. But what I have, I give:
Try faith, it works.
Try faith. It works.
Try not!!! Do!
Lurking’
I don't know. What does your church preach as THE GOSPEL?
I'm not familiar with this can you elaborate?
Unfortunately, I find great difficulty in extending your level of charity towards the purveyors of such tautologies as “try faith, it works.”
I was long victimized by such doubletalk in my earlier Christian life. Very convenient for the doctrinaire theologian; if faith doesn’t work, YOU didn’t really try it.
It all strikes me of the same stripe as Job’s comforters. I did and believed everything the Bible-based, evangelical, Christians told me to do and believe, and I was still tormented by my enslavement to sin.
Now, praise God, I know those people were rewriting the definition of “works” the way the ACLU rewrote the definition of “speech.” Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ is a grace, not a work, though one must “do” to receive it. And in receiving that grace I gained freedom from the sin that enslaved me.
I thank God through Christ Jesus.
I'm all over Vatican II. I just don't get where the idea came from that the REAL aesthetic meaning of VatII was, "Ugly is good."
What I was struggling to say was that we ALL slip into works type language, and I try to caution myself not to believe it.
"Try faith; it works," is, just by the linguistics and if understood literally and out of context, a works-theology statement.
There's another side to this, though. I am waiting for a certain friar to get off sabbatical, because he and I share a feeling that Calvinism somehow sorta kinda leads some people to Catholicism. At least for me it's a feeling, while he claims to have studied up on it and worked out at least a conjecture that could be explored further.
It has to do with the hope of being conformed to the Gospel and to Christ and the desire to preach NOT oneself but Christ, and not in such a way as to win arguments and discomfit one's foes but to make God's saving love known, and to know it better oneself.
It is so easy to preach oneself, and so disastrous, maybe for others, certainly for oneself.
You responded:
I don't know. What does your church preach as THE GOSPEL?
Thank you for your honest response. Why don't you take a look, I think you will find that the Gospel presented here is identical to what you are familiar with.
Out of curiousity, does the church you attend have a Gospel reading (and by that I specifically mean the Gospels of Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) at EVERY church service? I only ask because I have attended many Protestant services that don't and EVERY Mass does.
Did you notice in the scripture you posted that even after the blessing and consecration of the bread, just before eating it, the bread is still only bread. It's not flesh or body or anything else. It's still only bread.
I guess Paul and the early church were just not privy to the magic formulae --
Now, how can one be unworthy of bread? How can one be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord if it is mere bread and wine?
By claiming that your bread and wine is superior to the bread and wine of the congregation next door because you are privy to some magic formulae that they don't have --
By claiming that your bread and wine is something that it is not --
Protestants REJECTED Transubstantiation and the Eucharist, that IS NOT the Church's fault. The fact that you reject our Lord through denying yourself the Eucharist even though the overwhelming majority of Christians embrace Him in this way is also not the Church's fault.
By claiming that your bread and wine is something that it is not --
You see, it's not just "our" Bread, it is your's too if you want it. And it is not just bread, it is the Bread of Life.
The Lord clearly differentiated this and he compared it to Manna from Heaven. Keep in mind that the Manna REALLY DID feed the Jews when it came from Heaven. It is axiomatic that the Bread of Life has to be more important than and superior to Manna. But the Eucharist, if it is "only bread", is just a small wafer and obviously cannot feed anyone. How then can it be more than Manna which really did feed people, unless it is the Real Presence?
Uncle Chip, I believe you will find the answers to your statements on this thread.
Thanks -- I'm on my way.
I’m just looking for an explanation as to how, if the Eucharist is just a small wafer and not the Body of Christ, it can be in any way superior to Manna from Heaven.
"For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come."
You are showing the Lord's death until he comes. If he is in the bread, then he has already come in the bread and thus why does he need to come???
You can answer me on the other thread --
Oliver,
There is no time in eternity. There is no past and no future. Just the eternal NOW.
Imagine freezing this moment, and then being able to compartmentalize all of the tasks you are doing, finishing each, and discovering the moment has not passed. I don’t think there’s a perfect explanation in human terms, but it is a matter of logic that anyone in eternity is unfettered by time and place.
Since "the new testament" isn't in my Bible, this has nothing to do with Biblical inerrancy! Why can't you understand this??? An error in the nt no more disproves my point than an error in the koran!
Now . . . is the "eucharist" literally flesh and blood, or is this also a metaphor?
You mean like, if I say the magic words, "I accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour", I'm saved?
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