Well, I certainly admire your self-confidence. I try to obey God and constantly urge others to do so as well. Yet I have this defect, that though my spirit takes me in the right direction, my flesh gets in the way, and all the good things I would love to do, I don’t get them all done, and all the bad things I would avoid, I end up doing ... sometimes. Happily, I do not have any fear that I am on and off and on God’s books day in day out, because perfect love casts out fear. God is better than we make him out to be. My expectation is that God knew all this about me when he rescued me from the dark path.
And believe me, there was a very clear turning point for me. As a Calvinist, I do not encourage people to rest in the belief that some specific religious ceremony created a condition where they can do as they please and will still be saved in the end. The Scriptures do not teach that. Calvinism doesn’t teach that. The both of them do teach that when a person is born again in Christ, they become a new creation, a new and different person who loves and seeks to obey Christ and the Father, and that those thus reborn will in fact inherit eternal life.
If you could only know what I was before that moment, you would understand the miracle of redemption God has worked in my life. For me to deny the reality of such blessing would be perilously close to blasphemy, a denial of the faith, so dramatic and obvious was the working of his mercy in my life. I will never renounce it, not for any inducement, and least of all for some vague and unsubstantiated genealogical claim of a Petrine Pedigree being made by a relatively modern denominational group. Go back to the “stem cell” church from which we both came. That is the unity we should be finding with each other, in fulfillment of the prayer of Christ. I long for that day, don’t you?
“...some vague and unsubstantiated genealogical claim of a Petrine Pedigree”?
Apostolic succession is not vague, illusionary or merely an artificial construct. It a divine assurance that we have an authentic authoritative claim to Christ’s teaching. After all, the Bible’s canon wasn’t finalized until 398 A.D. yet the Church was already active spreading the Gospel message as Christ had commanded and had gone through 15 Popes most of which were martyrs. Christ said that He would be with His Church for all time and that includes the 1500 years or so before Calvin. I can’t fathom why Christ would wait 1500 years until His correct doctrine for salvation would emerge?
And it is certainly not “unsubstantiated” although I am sure you would like it to be. Throwing stones at the 2000 year old Church will not bring it down. Now to answer the all important question, “Who has the authority?” In order to have only one truth, it is necessary to have only one authority. The truth cannot be divided up. St Augustine understood succession when he said,
“Before His suffering the Lord Jesus Christ, as you know, chose His disciples, whom He called Apostles. Among these Apostles almost everywhere Peter alone merited to represent the whole Church. For the sake of his representing the whole Church, which he alone could do, he merited to hear, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven (Matt 16:19).”
Sermons 295,2, 391 A.D.
“What they found in the Church they kept; what they learned, they taught; what they received from the fathers, they handed on to the sons.”
Against Julian, 2,10,33, 421 A.D.
Continuity is pretty important and it authenticates our beliefs. Saint Athanasius, in a letter to Serapion, 359 A.D., said ,”But what is also to the point, let us note that the very tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers. On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian.”
I consider that succinct and a clear validation of our faith.