Posted on 09/01/2012 2:23:41 AM PDT by iowamark
Early in the evening of May 28, 2010, I am attending Mass in the majestic Basilica di Sant’Apollinare next to the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce in Rome. From Utah I have come as a scholar to deliver a paper at an international conference on the work of the great Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, and I have come as a tourist to see the Eternal City for the first time. Mass is being celebrated in the basilica for those attending the conference.
I am not Catholic—in fact, I was raised a Mormon, though I have had serious doubts about the Latter-day Saint faith for decades. Yet my journey of the heart—which ultimately ended in the Catholic Church—came long after I had intellectually departed—so I cannot receive Holy Communion. But when Archbishop Raymond Burke places his hand on my head in a blessing, the extraordinary presence of Jesus Christ moves my soul to tears. I now know, in my head and in my heart, that I have come to Rome as a pilgrim. I have finally heard his voice, and I will not turn away.
Of course, I was awestruck by the beauty of Rome. The conference was wonderful, and I made important contacts and great friends. But infinitely more important, I found a priceless gift: the God of truth I had ignored for decades. I found my soul, which had been lost in the fog of my pride and stubbornness. Thus began a journey that took me to the waters of Catholic baptism, the anointing of confirmation, and first Communion at the Easter Vigil of 2012. You do not need to travel thousands of miles to have a real encounter with Christ. But your soul does need to be open in a way mine had not been for years.
Mormon friends ask how I could leave the LDS Church. Catholic friends ask why the pilgrimage to Rome took me so long. My brother, a rabbi, was the first person I told I was converting. When we talked, he said simply, “You were a Catholic thinker when you were a graduate student at Harvard in the 1970s.”
Intellectually, there are two beliefs at the core of the LDS faith that I eventually realized I could not accept. The first is the doctrine of a “great apostasy” afflicting the church. Mormons do not deny that Peter led the church after Jesus’ Ascension. They deny that the Holy Spirit continued to guide it. Mormons believe that after Peter the patristic church lost its way.
And by “losing its way,” Mormons do not mean that the church suffered from human sinfulness or became too wedded to secular power. Christianity supposedly strayed so far that it was no longer Christianity. It did not merely require renewal, as St. Francis preached. It did not merely require a new vocabulary to express timeless truths, as Vatican II proclaimed. Mormons believe that the church—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant visions alike—completely died and that Christianity required a “restoration” by God himself.
My intellectual journey was inspired in large part by my study of patristics. Reading the Church Fathers in my first year at Harvard in 1970–71, I realized that this story was false. Even my meager study of the Fathers allowed me to see what Newman had seen—that there was a development of Christian thought, a deepening of our understanding of such truths as the Incarnation and the Trinity. There simply was no evidence of a fundamental break from the church Jesus established. As one of Mormonism’s most brilliant minds of the last half century, Edwin Firmage, wrote after he left the LDS Church: “The idea that God was sort of snoozing until 1820 now seems to me absurd.”
Two passages from the Gospel of Matthew are particularly difficult to reconcile with the Mormon doctrine of the great apostasy. Jesus promised Peter that “the gates of the netherworld” would not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16) and he promised the Apostles that he would be with the Church until the end of the age (Matthew 28).
The other fundamental Mormon teaching that I cannot accept is the absence of an existential distinction between God and man. In an 1844 sermon, Joseph Smith made a claim that profoundly shapes the way Mormons see the world: “God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man.” Parse this out and God himself becomes a finite, physical being. How, I wondered, can we have absolute confidence in a God whose power and knowledge are limited, not just by the rules of logic, as St. Thomas would have said, but by unknown barriers? A limited God cannot be our anchor in the face of extreme horrors or profound personal loss. In the face of terrible, inexplicable loss, Job did not place his trust in an “exalted man.” The God who spoke to Job did not start out on a world like ours. This God, who comforted Job and comforts millions of others every day, to whom we can truly pray “not my will but yours be done,” cannot be the limited being Mormons call “god.”
The Mormon “god,” who came from a world like ours, cannot be the creator of all worlds, as Scripture and reason tell us he is. The physical god of the Mormons cannot have been present at creation, when there was no matter. Furthermore, if all of us can become “gods,” then Mormonism is incompatible with Christian Trinitarianism and Jewish monotheism. It is polytheism.
Compounding all this, in my experience, is the fact that Mormons generally do not seek for serious answers. In fact, Mormon authorities actively discourage the marriage of faith and reason that we Catholics celebrate. I now profess openly what I always too silently believed: If a faith cannot be sustained in the face of serious questions, it is not a faith worth having.
If these reasons to reject Mormonism were sound for me over forty years ago, why did I stay? I could say it was culture, friendship, or inertia, and those reasons are accurate in a certain sense. But the full truth is found in Psalm 95: “Today if you hear His voice, harden not your heart.” I now know that at least four times in those forty years I specifically heard God calling me to his Church, but I turned away. My oldest and closest friend since 1970 told me twice directly that, like him, I should be a Catholic. I knew he was right. Yet I did nothing.
In one instance, the turning was literal. I had invited a Catholic theologian to speak at Utah State on religion and science, and I arranged a lunch for him with the Newman Club. After lunch, the parish priest and I talked for a long time. As our conversation wound down, I felt strongly that I should go with him to his office and talk about my faith. Yet I turned away and walked back to my office.
In the past two years, my journey towards the Catholic Church has brought me to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ than I have ever had. I have not “given up my faith.” Leaving Mormonism for Catholicism is a journey many others are making, and it has allowed me to experience God’s love in a profoundly richer way.
He said "My church" -- not just any church. And you have capitalized it. And you have inferred that it is something more than a gathering of members called out from their homes into one local public place for the purpose of deliberating. Your "church" goes beyond a local assembly, which sense is not given by the precise translation of the Koine.
... and that He would be with us always, even unto the end of the world. ...
That promise was conditional on obeying five of his commands:
o to journey
o to recruit disciples (not just converts) from all peoples
o to induct the disciples by individually administering the rite of water baptism into discipleship, by the authority of The Father, the authority of The Son, and the authority of The Holy Ghost
o to congregate the inducted baptized disciples for the purpose of public indoctrination
o the topic of the public teaching was to keep watchfully secure without changing, embroidering, or otherwise "improving" every already perfected command that He had committed for them to obey and keep.
Implicitly water baptism is the only baptism the Jews knew of, and that was by immersion in living water, exactly as in a mikvah, of an adult person responsible and accountable for his/her irreversible transformation to becoming a bondslave of Christ from being a bondslave of Satan. Furthermore, even pouring or sprinkling with "stagnant" water (let alone the requisite total body immersion) for ritual purification--as from a font--would be wholly abominable to the Jewish culture.
Furthermore, water baptism is an external testimony as a public declaration of something that is claimed by the disciple to have already occurred internally--the birth of a new spiritual man inside, and confessed by the person claiming salvation by faith, not by works lest any man should boast. Water baptism does not and cannot impart regeneration by a work of man.
This precludes and negates any possible participation of an infant, or person ignorant of the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, or one not intending to continue in a process bringing spiritual maturity, as having any beneficial effect on one's eternal destiny.
the Universal Church has been here for 2,000 years ...
The universal invisible church concept never entered any theologian's mind, until it was invented and proclaimed by the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine, somewhere about 400 AD, to deal with the paradox of having an impure visible "Church."
... just as Jesus said it would.
Please give me the verse citation where this happened, eh?
the reason is the Church is the Body of Christ on earth, ...
Each local faithful assembly of saints, obeying the Lord's ordinances, governed according to New Testament principles, and subjecting itself to effective church discipline, is a Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and for whom the next step in authority is the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
Of course, He is not going to wed a hundred thousand Brides. On his return in the air to snatch away both the living ones and those resurrected, they will be joined as the general assembly (festal paneguris) and Church (ekklaysia) of The Firstborn. Here is where His Church will be assembled as one, as he said to Peter and others.
... it is not a man made institution like the Moose Club ...
As would be a religious organization set up by men and governed by traditions of men and following a Nicolaitanism paradigm (clergy ruling over the "lay" constituents), which Christ hates.
... baptist church. the groups you listed split off from the Church and fell into obscurity.
You mean obeyed The Holy Spirit and separated from idolatry to serve the Living God, and for this were persecuted to death (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1) for (1) coming out from them, (2) maintaining separation, and (3) refusing to touch the unclean thing. Their adversary attempted to stamp them and their uncorrupted vernacular Bibles into oblivion, but failed. We know about them, and the price they paid in flesh for Heavenly glory.
no Church that has authority over local churches?
That is correct. At the end of the apostolic age, look at The Revelation Chapters 2 and 3 and see how Christ dealt with the seven local churches. There was no overarching episcopacy external to the local churches and their pastors. With John as his amansuensis (John had no authority over these assemblies) Christ dealt with each pastor individually and firmly. There was no diocese having rule over them. He was/is that great Shepherd of His Own sheep, the Bishop of their souls, the Head of each one.
hmm, i guess you never read Acts 15 unless you think the “local” church of Jerusalem extended all the way to Antioch.
Yeah, I read Acts 15 once or twice. Says nothing about the Jerusalem church having any direct authority over Antioch of Syria. Only says that Jacob (James, Mary's son by Joseph) gave them wise coumsel, and sent two members to explain the decisions of the Jerusalem church for itself, and strongly recommending that their decision was of the Holy Ghost, So what?
i guess Paul was also a member of the local Corithian church?
No, Paul was always a member of the church at Antioch of Syria. They were his, and Barnabas', sending church. The Corinthian church was from his efforts, but he was not a member of it. Of course, he had the apostolic authority, but that passed when he died. There is no Scripture showing that he passed it on, nor put anybody out of the church. In one case, they had to step up and do it, under his advice.
i didn’t mistakenly credit you with God-like qualities, ..."
Don't back off from this and try to shift blame. You did, and that was bad judgment. Either apologize, or shut up on this. I don't do the saving or condemning. But God does, and He has some conditions for walking in His ways. I do not have to know more about Sherlock than he says, to evaluate his likely position.
no you have it backwards, salvation is by grace, not anything we do, it is a gift from God.
Yes, salvation is free, and so is grace, but God has condiions. They are knowing the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, of which baptismal regeneration is not a part; of repentance from dead works, turning to God from idols; and concurrenly fully and persistently committing one's trust in Christ for life eternal, salvation never lost.
You don't just wander into Heaven by mistake. It's something you commit to, counting the cost. That's an attitude, not a work.
it’s funny, all the names you listed as “candidates as heroes” all believed in baptismal regeneration.
Wrong. Peter was not regenerated when he was baptized into discipleship by Christ. He was not even converted at the time of the last supper. (Lk. 6:32) Peter denied Christ 6 times before He was crucified. At this point, Jesus would have denied Peter before The Father (Mt. 10:33). And Peter wept bitterly, I supposed that he was worthy of Christ's denial. Also, Peter was not regenerated until the Pentecost Sunday. Forget the baptismal regeneration thing That belief is deeply flawed. All the names I named knew from experience that repentance/salvation/regeneration are in w moment, in the blink of an eye. I do, too.
of course, ever since Peter preached in Acts 2:38, the Church has taught baptismal regeneratin,
A Precise Translation of Acts 2:38 gives this:
"Then Peter expressed to them, 'Repent at once! and be baptized each one of you by using the name of Jesus Christ on the basis* of forgiveness of sins! And you shall receive the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit' " (Ac. 2:38 APT)(my emphasis). It is very tempting here to want to accept the phrase "with a view toward" as representing the preposition "eis"; but his is not so. The correct use here for "eis" is "on the basis* of" the forgiveness of sins. This is not a baptism to cause sins to be remitted, for if you have confessed and intend to abandon your sinful life, God does not hold back until you are wet! They are forgiven and you are immediately saved by Him, and now you may be baptized into a life of discipleship on the basis that your sins are forgiven. The baptism is advancing in the first step of obedience to Christ's ordinance (already discussed). Remember, it is Peter here, and he personally knows and would never give one the idea that water baptism produces forgiveness of sins nor salvation nor regeneration.
It's very late, and I do not wish to deal with the canon issue anymore this AM. Perhaps more later.
What would be their distinguishing marks or the criteria you would use in determining that these men were Christians (as you define that term) in faith and practice? What I'm looking for is traits that would distinguish them as members of an identifiably non-Catholic church which is not at the same time one of the obvious heresies (e.g. denying the OT, denying the eternal divinity of Christ, etc.)
These historical questions are of ongoing interest to me, since I do not want to fall into, say, MOrmon-like credulity. See tagline)
This is not some kind of set-up question or gotcha question. I am sincerely interested in the distinguishing criteria. Thank you for your time and care.
"Contradiction" anyone?
How does one qualify such a "test?"
Why? What changed?
Your misunderstanding of evangelical Christianity is typical.
Then by what faculty did Paul expect the Corinthian Church to discern the sin in 1 Corinthian 5?
Snappy come-back, my ignorant friend!
Ignorant? Hardly.
I had over twenty years as an evangelical to qualify it.
I’m sorry that during your 20 years as an evangelical, you apparently never came to experience a simple faith in Jesus.
And I’m sorry that it’s not obvious to you that both your responses to me evince anything but a “born again” heart and mind.
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
-Matthew 5:47 (KJV)
Is not the very entrance to evangelicalism the experience of a “simple” faith in Jesus?
you keep under handing them to me and i’ll keep hitting them out of the park ( i just hope i remember all the points that need to be made )
- “my Church” yes, it is His Church ( singular ) because He established it in His Blood and it is His Body. Jesus is so connected to His Church that anyone who persecutes the Church is really persecuting Jesus ( Acts 9:4 )
- Jesus statement that He would be with us always even until the end of the age WAS NOT CONDITIONAL ON THE FIVE THINGS YOU LISTED. I notice you missed His command in John 17 that His followers be One, so the world may know Jesus was sent from the Father. Wonder how you missed that one, strange huh?
- you use a term that the Bible never does, namely “ water baptism” anywhere the Scriptures speak of baptism, it only says “ baptism” , it NEVER SAYS SOMETHING CALLED “WATER BAPTISM”. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:5 there is ONLY ONE BAPTISM, yet there were false teachers who arose in the 16th century with a NEW teaching unheard of before that , that there are “two” baptisms, something they called “spirit baptism” ( another unbiblical term ) and “water baptism”
why do you use the made up term “water baptism”?
- the Church received the practice of baptizing by either pouring, sprinkling or immersion from the Apostles. the Didache testifies to do this. in what river or lake was Paul immersed in according to Acts 22:16?
- you state “ baptism is an external testimony as a public declaration........” WHERE DOES THE BIBLE TEACH THIS??
it doesn’t. no one was ever told to be baptized as an external testimony as a public declaration, NOT ONCE!
the NT is crystal clear, baptism is for:
1. the remission of sins
2. receiving the Holy Spirit
3. being placed “into Christ”
this external testimony teaching is a 16th century tradition of men, unheard of before then.
- St Augustine was a great theologian and used mightily by the Holy Spirit to build up the Church, but he did not invent the concept of the Universal Church. Since there is only ONE LORD, THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE CHURCH, SINCE THE CHURCH IS HIS BODY. St Ignatius, who learned at the feet of St John and who would be martyred in Rome for his faith, was the first to use the term Universal or Catholic Church at the end of the first century.
- you say infants are precluded from baptism, the Church teaches it received the practice from the Apostles. now, if today, a Baptist minister were to baptize an infant, it would cause quite a stir in his congregation and he would lose his job. DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE ANY DIFFERENT IN THE FIRST OR SECOND CENTURY? who was the first person to teach and practice infant baptism and what great controversy developed??? THERE WAS NONE RECORDED IN ALL CHURCH HISTORY, BECAUSE THE CHURCH FROM THE TIME OF THE APOSTLES, BAPTIZED INFANTS. even Luther and Calvin admitted this.
- you asked where Jesus said the Church would always be here, Matthew 16:18.
- “faithful assembly of saints” i guess “faithful” means agreeing with your unique take on the Scriptures, so that would mean there were NO CHRISTIANS before the 16th century.
- searching wikipedia for any non-Catholic groups that ever existed that have nothing in common with the Baptist beliefs, is not the same as having an unbroken line of faithful men and women who have kept to the Apostolic Faith and practice for 2,000 years now.
- reading Acts 15 is one thing, understanding it is something else. The Apostles did have AUTHORITY over the local church at Antioch, and this AUTHORITY does pass on by the laying on of hands as the Church received from the Apostles. The Church recieved this authority directly from Jesus in Matthew 28 and the AUTHORITY to teach and baptize is meant to last until the end of the age. If the Church has the AUTHORITY to teach, we have the OBLIGATION to learn.
- salvation is something you commit to? sounds likes “works” to me! every Baptist i have ever met has claimed you are “saved” the moment you accept Jesus as Savior, no matter what you do after that. sounds like you have a different understanding, of course, this is the CONFUSION you get when everyone reads the Scriptures and decides on their own what they mean. the Holy Spirit has led the Church for 2,000 years into the way, the truth and the life.
finally, the subject of BAPTISMAL REGENERATION......this is why you so arrogantly assert mr. sherlock is still lost because he believes as Peter teaches in 1 Peter 3:21 that “ baptism now SAVES you.....”
Baptismal Regeneration is probably one of the clearest and easiest to understand doctrines taught by the Scriptures and EVERYONE for 1,500 from Peter up until the Baptists arrived on the world scene in the 16th century believed it.
your “precise” translation of Acts 2:38 has many problems, but i notice the cultists is always trying to attack the Scriptures and say the “Greek” really says something else. The Jehovah Witnesses like to play your game as well.
the first problem you have is NO ONE WHO TRANSLATED THE BIBLE AGREES WITH YOU. Not the Catholic, Protestants ( including the leading Greek scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries who worked on the Authorized Bibles including the KJV ) or Greek Orthodox ( who i suspect may know Greek better than you, but i could be wrong! )
the next problem you have is LOGIC. to read your “precise” translation, the verse makes NO SENSE. “repent” is a future event, “be baptized” another future event, you then do a 180 and say “on the basis of forgiveness of sins” which would be a PAST EVENT and then receiving the Holy Spirit would be another future event. DON’T YOU BELIEVE ONE RECEIVES THE HOLY SPIRIT AT THE SAME TIME ONE RECEIVES THE FORGIVESNESS OF SINS?? if yes ( and every Baptist i know believes they happen AT THE SAME TIME ) then your “precise” reading is WRONG and the Catholic, Protestant and Greek scholars are CORRECT.
the last problem you have with your “precise” Greek gymnastics is it doesn’t match with what the rest of the Scriptures teach about baptism. maybe the scholars were also not “precise” in translating Acts 22:16, Titus 3:5 and 1 Peter 3:21 just to name three verses.
NO ONE READ ACTS 2:38 AS YOU PROPOSE FOR 1,500 YEARS. and of course, the Apostolic Faith the Church received as evidenced by every Church Father that wrote about baptism, tells us that baptism is FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS, just as Peter preached.
i am anxious to hear what you have to say about the AUTHORITY to set the canon of Scripture, does anyone have Authority to set the canon infallibiliy or are we not sure we have the total and complete Word of God?
Not to sound petty, but you started the patronizing insults with your first comment to me: “Your misunderstanding of evangelical Christianity is typical.”
So don’t point your finger at me, Pharisee.
Too late, but that was my point.
Your Pharisaism is tiring. Enjoy your time in Rome.
BTW, if I am a Pharisee for patronizing someone being patronizing, what does that make you?
No, that would be "thinking" you find so exhausting.
AND thank you for the useful citations. Do you happen to have "Bibleworks"? Some VERY kind people gave me it as a present (!) and it's really very good. In what follows I typed "he ktisis" myself, but these days I tend to load Bibleworks and cut and paste if I need Hebrew or Greek 'cause it has all the jots and tittles.
Genesis 1:1 is not an appeal to reason. It is an opening statement. It demands faith. It is not a logical proposition. It is not part of a debate. Genesis 1:1 is not an appeal to reason. It is an opening statement. It demands faith. It is not a logical proposition. It is not part of a debate.
With you up to the last sentence. It can be one of the premises of a debate. And the debate could be about many things, for example whether and how ἡ κτίσις is good.
One could talk about how, in a Hindu account, Brahman meditates, and creation springs up as an illusion, while the Lord creates through a word which causes and distinguishes, separating light from dark and water from dry-land.
But that's not the meat of the disagreement. Isn't the real question about the extent of the corruption of man's reason? It SEEMS you are suggesting ἡ ανακαίνωσις is a kind of end of reason. I think it is the restoration of right reason.
In that connection, I like to suggest that it is very difficult to think like a monotheist. But more specifically it seems to me that for some, the gifts of trust in God Himself and belief in the Gospel really do restructure the WAY one reasons, but do not remove reason.
As a trivial example, BEFORE I thought and felt that an apology was an inadequate way of tidying up a moral mess. NOW I (sometimes, with grace) see an apology as the opening to a step forward in a relationship. BEFORE, I saw holding a grudge as sometimes quite reasonable. Now I see it as emotional self-flagellation and self-crippling. All this through contemplating, and even reasoning about, the Cross!
From where I sit, when IHS "takes captivity captive", He often "baptizes" it. One of our "Saints, "Josephine Bakhita, through the grace of gratitude and forgiveness was able to make her own slavery into a treasure.
So where you say "quenching and bypassing," I would say "redirecting, freeing, revivifying, indeed, renewing."
Of COURSE thinkers go astray. So do non-thinkers. There's an army arrayed against us, and our enemy has a powerful propaganda team. But we would say it was not because they reasoned, but because they reasoned poorly and disobediently and didn't check their work that they wandered.
This is not meant to be a "so there" kind of argument but a sketching of the position I am maintaining. I don't think I've "shown" anything.
“I’m afraid that you are not ready to be honest with that same Holy Ghost who without the Bible is mute. I can show you fifty ways in which ROMANISM departed from The Faith once delivered to the saints.”
~ ~ ~
Are you talking about Roman Catholicism when you say Romanism?
Yes, it is one form of "catholicity" of which Hellenic catholicism, Lutheran catholocism, Russian catholicism, Episcopalian catholicism, Methodist catholicism (under which I was born, "baptized," and raised), etc. are examples of those who cling to the "catholic" form embodied in the baptismal formula, often incorrectly called "The Apostles Creed." which was formally written down according to Rufinius of Aquileia, about 400 AD.
Personally, I believe deep down of every article in it except that one word "catholic," which was invented as an invisible church, articulated, and first endorsed by the Bishop of Hippo in the same time frame as Rufinius.
You will note, though, that the first statist Roman religion came into being under Constantine as one method of unifying his empirate, and it was of the one ruled by the Bishop of Rome.
Hence, Romanism.
Practical fact shows that it is not the only global denomination, hence the term "Roman Catholic" is an oxymoron, dear stpio.
You will note that the word "katholou" occurs only once in the New Testament Majority Textform, and that in Acts 4:18, where its use has nothing to do at all with an ekklaysia.
With respect --
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