Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.
The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.
It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.
One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.
First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.
The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.
The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.
All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.
Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.
How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.
Actually, Mary said: let His will be done.
Mary could have refused, n’est pas? And then where would we have been?
He may chastize His own children, but He sure chastizes others as well. We have numerous stories of the Israelites warring upon others.
We accept single predestination; we have very little Scriptural support of double predestination.
Which others? Where does it say that?
To God be the glory!
We presume that god knows the life of every one of his creatures, every detail of His creation. To Him your life or my life is not a "developing" story but a finished one. he knew you would be born, he knew what you felt from the beginning, what you thought and so on. he knows what you and I will think and when and how you and I and the rest of humanity will die.
That does not mean He is causing us to do what we do; it is foreknown by Him, and always has been. If He is causing Judas to betray Christ then He is doing it and not Judas, because Judas has no will of his own.
No matter how you try to cut it, Kosta, foreknowing has some culpability if the Foreknowing One has the ability to change the outcome.
If I know you are going to kill someone, and I have time and means to stop you, then I have culpability.
Moreover, the Foreknowing One has quite a bit of culpability if He is involved in the creation of the product known to have defects.
If I build Dora the Explora Dolls for a 3-5 year old market, and they have lead paint on them that could injure a child who would bite on them, am I culpable?
There is no difference between God's foreknowledge and God's predestination. They are one and the same. If God merely "knows" something is going to occur by some untethered free will choice of men, then that thing is outside God's control and dependent on men's creative ability and not God's.
But in acknowledging foreknowledge, the Arminian makes a fatal concession. Figuratively speaking, he cuts his own throat, for the simple reason that as God foresees those who will be saved, He also sees those who will be lost! Why, then, does He create those who will be lost? Certainly, He is not under any obligation to create them. There is no power outside Himself forcing Him to do so. If He wants all men to be saved and is earnestly trying to save all men, He could at least refrain from creating those who, if created, certainly will be lost. The Arminian cannot consistently hold to the foreknowledge of God and yet deny the doctrines of election and predestination. The question persists: Why does God create those who He knows will go to hell? It would be mere foolishness for Him to wish to save or try to save those who He knows will be lost. That would be for Him to work at cross purposes with Himself. Even a man has better sense than to try to do what he knows he will not do or cannot do. The Arminian has no alternative but to deny the foreknowledge of God - and then he has only a limited, ignorant, finite God who in reality is not God at all in the true sense of that word. If election is based on foreknowledge, that makes it so meaningless that it becomes more confusing than enlightening. For even as regards the elect, what sense is there for God to elect those who He knows are going to elect themselves? That would be just plain nonsense. The evangelical Arminian acknowledges that God has foreknowledge, and that He therefore is able to predict future events. But if God foreknows any future event, then that event is as fixed and certain as if foreordained. For foreknowledge implies certainty, and certainly implies foreordination. The evangelical Arminian does not deny that there is such a thing as election to salvation, for he cannot get rid of the words "elect" and "election," which occur some twenty-five times in the New Testament. But he tries to destroy the force of these words by saying that election is based on foreknowledge, that God looks down the broad avenue of the future and sees those who will respond to His gracious offer, and so elects them.
Also see this excellent essay by Greg Bahnsen which answers the question so clearly and simply and Godly...
Think of some notorious Biblical examples of this. When Moses did wonders in the presence of Pharaoh, demanding that God's people be liberated, the Bible says that Pharaoh refused to listen and hardened his heart (Ex. 7:13). Pharaoh did as he wished and made his own choices -- which is why he later suffered at God's hands for his obstinacy. Nevertheless, Pharaoh's free choice to harden his heart was previously decreed by God, who told Moses in advance that He as God would harden the heart of Pharaoh (Ex. 4:21). The Persian Emperor, Cyrus, made his own free choice to release the Jews from captivity and rebuild Jerusalem. Yet the Bible tells us that God foreordained that Cyrus would decide to do such things (Isaiah 44:28; 45:13). These things were prophesied by God and brought to pass according to His wise plan or counsel, without taking anything away from the reality of the volition exercised by Cyrus in history. In the days of Christ the two earthly rulers, Herod and Pontius Pilate, deliberated on options available to them and eventually determined for themselves to have Jesus executed. Along with the Jewish people themselves, Herod and Pilate were guilty before God for such a choice. The Bible says they did so "with wicked hands" (Acts 2:23). However, the very same text of Scripture tells us that what they did was done "according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." In Acts 4:27-28 we read: "For of a truth, against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." Well then does the Bible declare that "the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases" (Proverbs 21:1). We see this in the case of the free decisions made by monarchs like Pharaoh, Cyrus, Herod and Pilate. (And surely the Lord likewise directs the hearts and decisions of all those who are less than mighty kings as well.) Over and over again we see that from the Biblical perspective there is no conceptual difficulty in asserting that God has foreordained the decisions which men freely make. God determines in advance what individuals will choose to do, and yet those individuals genuinely decide for themselves to do it...Based on texts like Ephesians 1:11, Isaiah 46:9-11, etc., we hold that the Bible teaches that God has decreed in an unchangeable fashion from all eternity what events will take place in nature and history -- and even what decisions men will make. He has predetermined the end from the beginning of all things, as well as the means by which all His ends shall be accomplished. According to His own wisdom and in deference to nothing whatsoever outside of Himself and His purposes, God has predetermined or foreordained everything that will happen in the created order and what men will do.
The two Q & A's by Bahnsen included in the essay are excellent.
And then there's that brilliant Baptist, Arthur Pink...
...When the solemn and blessed subject of Divine foreordination is expounded, when God’s eternal choice of certain ones to be conformed to the image of His Son is set forth, the Enemy sends along some man to argue that election is based upon the foreknowledge of God, and this "foreknowledge" is interpreted to mean that God foresaw certain ones would be more pliable than others, that they would respond more readily to the strivings of the Spirit, and that because God knew they would believe, He, accordingly, predestinated them unto salvation. But such a statement is radically wrong. It repudiates the truth of total depravity, for it argues that there is something good in some men. It takes away the independency of God, for it makes His decrees rest upon what He discovers in the creature. It completely turns things upside down, for in saying God foresaw certain sinners would believe in Christ, and that because of this, He predestinated them unto salvation, is the very reverse of the truth. Scripture affirms that God, in His high sovereignty, singled out certain ones to be recipients of His distinguishing favors (Acts 13:48), and therefore He determined to bestow upon them the gift of faith. False theology makes God’s foreknowledge of our believing the cause of His election to salvation; whereas, God’s election is the cause, and our believing in Christ is the effect...
"God's election is the cause, and our believing in Christ is the effect..." Amen! All glory to God. He loved us before we loved Him.
I absolutely revel in the Scriptural understanding of God's predestination of all things, Kosta. It is a wildly comforting, motivating, life-affirming truth and it is spoken on nearly every page of Scripture. But it was not until I read Colossians that I really "got it.". Heaven and earth were created by and for and through Jesus Christ. Every speck of it. It is ALL of God; all the time.
And what could possibly be the down-side of that?
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." -- Colossians 1:16-17"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
Don't worry about it, I know I get a bit curt at times and that was the reason for the 'save the double-talk' comment, which was not called for.
No, because He created us in His image.
God is a Person and thus, can have relationships with other Persons, such as Angels and Men.
I’ve been thinking about the idea that we can have a relationship with God because we are rational beings. I’m convinced that this is not so. We can have a relationship with God only because He opens up that conduit for us.
Well, there is no question that God has to initiate that relationship, but He has equipped us to respond to that initiation and it is clear that He Himself wants a relationship with us.
Well, my wife was about to say, “Okay, how are you going to blame THAT on me?” so I’m glad we can move on. Sometimes I can’t win for losing.
Not to be confused with me or Arminius himself.
Thanks for noting that. :>)
Amen.
The fault was mine, not yours.
Remember though, an image is not the thing.
We may created as an image of God (think of the implications) but we are certainly not God. A photograph is a two dimensional image of an object. Are we simply a four dimensional image of an infinite dimensional being?
http://www.bibletexts.com/kjv-tr.htm#5 contains an essay on the KJV.
“The KJV’s New Testament was based upon Erasmus’ Greek text as modified by Stephanus and Beza. The NKJV’s New Testament was based primarily upon Erasmus’ Greek text as modified by Stephanus and Beza, but its translators also consulted the so-called Majority Text.) However unlike the original KJV, the NKJV does not include the Apocrypha. Though the NKJV provides a modern English rewording of the KJV wording, the NKJV still has all of the same errors that the KJV derived from Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, which is plagued with corrupt readings, as explained in this article. Below are three examples of corrupt texts in the KJV and NKJV. In all three verses, Erasmus’ Greek New Testament text was based upon copies of the Latin Vulgate, not on any ancient Greek texts. In other words, the corruption of these verses had no support in any Greek texts prior to 1516.
1Jo 5:7-8 - For details, see:
http://www.bibletexts.com/kjv-tr.htm#1jo0507
http://www.bibletexts.com/versecom/1jo05v07.htm
Rev 22:19 - For details, see:
http://www.bibletexts.com/verses/v-rev.htm#rev2219
Act 9:5-6 - For details, see:
http://www.bibletexts.com/verses/v-act.htm#act0905 “
“Truly major differences between the KJV and modern translations of the New Testament are primarily due to the inaccuracy of the so-called Textus Receptus [TR], the Greek text upon which the KJV’s New Testament was based. According to Bruce Metzger (The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, 1992, pages 95-118), the TR primarily resulted from the work of a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and Greek scholar by the name of Desiderius Erasmus, who published his first Greek New Testament text in 1516. The first edition of Erasmus’ text was hastily and haphazardly prepared over the extremely short period of only five months. (ibid., page 106) That edition was based mostly upon two inferior twelfth century Greek manuscripts, which were the only manuscripts available to Erasmus “on the spur of the moment” (ibid., page 99). “
The article is fairly long and detailed. I wonder if you’d give me your opinion on it.
Who gave Mary her heart for God? Who gave Mary her faith? Who gave Mary her humility? Who gave Mary her courage?
I could go on but do you really think that God did not raise her up for such a time as that?
HD-And others were cut off.
Mark-Which others? Where does it say that?
Rom 11:25-26 For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery--so that you will not be wise in your own estimation--that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB."
So did I for a long while. That is why Romans never made any sense to me.
Rom 9:13-18 Just as it is written, "JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED." What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
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