Posted on 04/13/2008 5:51:16 PM PDT by Edward Watson
Arguments about religion have constantly erupted on Free Republic. This internicene sniping frequently devolved into personal attacks against others just because of religious differences. We all need to step back from this conflict and look around at the world - yes, there's a religious war that's about to erupt but it isn't between Christians.
If we are to save our world from barbarism, if we are to save our nations and the best and most humanitarian societies the world has ever known; we must come together, as Christians, despite the differences of our denominations and branches. We need to hold each other's hands and join forces - no more exaggeration of differences. We must also stand together with anyone, regardless of belief or disbelief, as long as they want to preserve our freedom and way of life. United we stand; divided we fall.
For this end, I have devised a list of common Christian beliefs that all Catholics, Eastern Christians, Mormons, and around 95% of Protestants can wholeheartedly affirm. It is my belief that whoever affirms all 12 Declarations is a Christian, regardless of any unique beliefs that pertain only to his or her denomination. Feel free to think it through and participate in my survey at the sourced link on Tiger Survey (http://tigersurvey.com/survey.php?survey=5654), so I can get a better idea of what should be included or excluded, and why.
Thanks everyone!
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God and Savior of Mankind
2. The Holy Bible is the Word of God and is authoritative over us
3. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are “One God”
4. God became man in the person of Jesus Christ
5. Christ’s followers are saved by his Grace
6. Christ was sinless throughout his life and substituted himself for us
7. Christ is the Mediator of the New Covenant between God and man
8. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, died on the cross, and rose from the dead
9. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, Messiah, Intercessor, Lamb of God, Creator, Son of Man, First and Last, Rock, Foundation, the I AM, and our Judge
10. Christ experienced a single mortality and has an immortal body
11. Jesus Christ is the only source of Salvation and the greatest name possible
12.We take upon ourselves the name of Christ, pray to the Father in his name, worship and obey him
If that were true, I wouldn't have had to become Catholic to be freed from sin, because I sure wasn't for the twenty plus years I spent as a "born again, spirit-filled, Bible-believing, fundamentalist."
I’m sure Warren Jeffs and the fLDS could agree with your rendition of 12 beliefs. In fact they agree with everything in Mormonism and THEY practice what they believe unlike the pandering LDS Church.
I think you’ve done a fairly good job of trying to distill the basic beliefs of Christians. Mormons would agree to all twelve of the points but, since the Mormon attack dogs have been called out, the thread is going to devolve into a useless Mormon attack so I am not going to post further since I don’t feel like being negative today.
I do agree that someday we will all have to stand for our Christian beliefs or many, if not all, will fall to non-Christian aggression. It may have to be temporary alliances on the the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend basis but I completely agree that arguments of whether this or that denomination is Christian, or orthodox, or true is largely worthless here on this forum.
Good luck to you.
“He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.””
Have you, or anyone you’ve ever met, actually done this?
“If that were true, I wouldn’t have had to become Catholic to be freed from sin, because I sure wasn’t for the twenty plus years I spent as a “born again, spirit-filled, Bible-believing, fundamentalist.” “
Why were you not forgiven before? Did you not have faith?
The original Church is now mainly either Roman Catholic (the original latin half) or Eastern Orthodox (the greek half), with some exceptions (such as Byzantine or Eastern Rite Catholics, Latin Rite Orthodox, and the Coptic Churches which had a falling out with the main Church)
Baptists are the Protestants of the Protestants. Their doctrines belong to the radical reformation-—
Show me the evidence that the Baptist denomination (not just a breakaway sect from the main Orthodox Catholic Church, such as the Nestorians, Pelagians or the groups around Arius, but one that modern Baptists can trace direct lineage through and had similar doctrines) existed for over 1000 years before the Protestant Reformation.
If Mormons are bothered by not being Christian they can join a Christian church.
Christian churches of all of the persuations are in full agreement on the Mormon question.
No matter which of the major churches you belong too, here is where they will tell you, Mormonism is not Christian.
The wider Christian community agree that Mormonism is not Christian. In fact most denominations use the word cult.
Catholic
http://www.catholic.com/library/noncatholic_groups.asp
Here is Southern baptist http://www.4truth.net/site/c.hiKXLbPNLrF/b.3471385/k.6CD7/Are_Mormons_Christians.htm
Lutheran http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=2239
Lutheran http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/LCMS/wa_mormonism.pdf
Assemblies of God http://pentecostalevangel.ag.org/Articles2002/4579_spencer.cfm
United Methodist http://archives.umc.org/umns/news_archive1999.asp?story=%7B3BE161B2-8603-4B32-A64F-0C9D2CBFAF85%7D&mid=3368
Presbyterians http://www.pcusa.org/interfaith/study/lds.htm
Here is the Greek Othodox position on mormonism as non-Christian.
http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7101.asp
cults in America http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7075.asp
So you know Koine Greek? Did you go to seminary or is this something you learned on your own? One of my life goals is to learn Koine so that I can read the New Testament in the original Greek.
I'd like to learn Hebrew and Aramaic, too, but I think that's pushing it.
Now that you are a Catholic, you no longer commit sin???
I didn't say anything about being forgiven. On that account I have nothing to say.
If I had no faith, I wouldn't have stayed a Fundamentalist for so long.
What I can say is that I eventually recognized my continued torment and enslavement to sin and iniquity was not because of anything I was doing, but because of what God *was not* doing; namely, granting me the freedom from the law of sin and death as Paul described in Romans 7.
I eventually ran out of excuses for God not delivering on His promises.
Of course, they weren't actually God's promises; they were the promises *I* claimed God made by my own vain presumptions on the Bible.
When I recognized God was ignoring me, I realized my entire paradigm was flawed, and the only Church that couldn't be made to fit into my self-authorizing paradigm was the Catholic Church.
No matter how many people tell you how great their Windows PC is, when all yours ever does is crash and burn, you eventually give Mac a try.
Well lo and behold, when I began letting the Church founded by Jesus Christ lead me instead of leaning on my own understanding to qualify the Church, God in His grace granted me the relief from my torment and powerlessness against sin. I finally had the answer Paul had when he said "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
So you see, I don't have to quibble over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin with those who "know so much that isn't so," anymore. I once was "blind," but now I "see."
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.2 Peter 1:16
Problem is ... to look at some of the FR religion threads (and some of the real-world fights as well), it's quite clear that the Creeds have ceased to inform many about our common Christian beliefs.
IMO, the worst offenders seem to be the Catholic bashers, followed closely by the Mormon-bashers (I choose not to get involved in that particular debate....)
No, now that I'm a Catholic, I'm no longer a slave to it.
I'm sure you know the difference.
I was also told this by a Baptist pastor but I have never seen anything historical to back it up, other than some oddball book he had. And remember “baptistic groups” doesn’t equal Baptists (as we know them today).
I don’t think it’s that important for me. I only find it interesting because this type of “historical” information is often used as a means of bashing Catholics and I don’t think that’s right.
As for me, if a creed contains more than what is said in the Scritures, it is too much.
If a creed contains less than what is said in the Scriptures, it is not enough.
If a creed contains the same as the Scritures, we don't need it, for we have the Scriptures.
Just a little thought for you....
“I think the Mormons disagree with six points out of ten.”
... and they change the meaning of the other 4 so they can
agree by meaning something different than Christians mean.
And so it goes in cult-land.
Very true. In England, before the "Reformation" of Luther, there were many independent "baptistic" churches that were never members of the Roman Rite Churches. Then before them, there were many churches that were in opposition to the Latin Church, and had their own Bishops and Deacons. The Latin Church, i.e, the Roman Catholic Church, never ruled all the churches of the world, or had any authority over them.
I keep trying to tell the FRCatholics about this, but they don't believe me.
The various creeds and confessions of the historic church have been a useful means of codifying and focusing key Biblical doctrines, and by extension are very useful in matters of church membership (covenants) or forming definitions of heresy for Protestants. Many "Protestant" churches, especially evangelical and non-denominational ones, reject these creeds as binding on themselves re matters of discipline or doctrine, and thus there is no simple way of determining whether they are "in the fold" or not.
I would never suggest that creeds are a substitute for Scripture itself, nor would I suffer accusations that they are fabrications of doctrine. I would say that creeds are excellent summaries of where Scripture speaks to certain subjects, and exist as historic documents as to who took what side in prior ecclesiastical/doctrinal disputes. IMO creeds were wisely formed to "redeem the time" (Eph. 5:16) when testing or investigating the confessions of a professing believer or congregation of believers.
The practical result of any refusal to use a creed/confession/doctrinal statement of some kind, is such that every time someone wants to investigate a brother's doctrine, they must go through the Bible - all of it - and see how each agrees with each other's reading, point-for-point, of:
All 66 books
All 1,189 chapters
All 31,373 verses
All 775,693 words
(and since I'm using numbers drawn from the KJV text, there might even be an argument whether to limit the reading to the Authorized Version as well.) Will each party agree with the other's beliefs and doctrines, point-for-point? How long will either of them endure the investigation, how much "error" will either of them permit, before one gets fed up and separates from the other?
By refusing to profess/acknowledge a creed, or at least publish/profess an "articles of faith" / "doctrinal statement", the anti-creedal believer and/or their congregation functionally accomplishes five things:
- a tacit a priori rejection of every prior study and/or codification of doctrine formulated by any church body, at any and every point in church history,Protestant churches use creeds, but the phrase "Protestant" loses meaning when it's used inclusively to speak of everyone "not Catholic and not Orthodox". It becomes a meaningless epithet when used in this manner. IMO "Protestant" should be redefined to be synonymous with the phrase "Reformed", i.e. with the pro-creedal churches that emerged from the Reformation. While there are other churches and denominations that sprang out of that era (and since), they did not form in protest to the excesses of the institutional Catholic Church. Instead, most of them formed as a protest and opposition to the creeds, confessions, and doctrinal distinctives held by the Reformed (Protestant, Lutheran, Anglican etc) churches. In other words, they were part of the counter Reformation/"radical Reformation" movement. We used to call these churches anabaptists.
- a practical behavior, if not an outright creed-like belief and teaching, that Wisdom ended in the first century (when special revelation did), effectively dismissing any and all possible wisdom acquired by any bible-believing Christian in any post-NT church era, contrary to Proverbs 2:6-9,
- an allowance of relatively minor points of doctrine (eschatology, worship forms and practices, ecclesiastical government forms, etc) to be granted equal status with major points of doctrine (the Trinity, nature of salvation, etc),
- an allowance for doctrinal stances to shift unknowingly from moment to moment, congregation to congregation, pastor to pastor, or even from week to week, without declaration or documentation,
- a willful sequestering of oneself from examination and correction by any congregation, visitors, friends, fellow believers and unbelievers, preventing all from discovering one's actual doctrinal beliefs without forcing a long, arduous and mandatory investigation.
In more recent times, and following in the anabaptists' tradition, is the Restorationist (Campbellite) movement of the 19th century. Restorationists reject any prior reforms or formal creeds, Catholic or Protestant. Restorationists believe they are returning believers to an authentic "first century church" experience, by attempting to take the church back to a time when no creed had been formed. In our own lifetime we're faced with the Emergent Church phenomenon, which also seeks to throw off historic traditions and orthodoxies that might color how the Bible is understood. They are not protesting in favor of a particular doctrine over another - they are apparently protesting any institutionalizing of traditions, creeds, and exegesis altogether, in a manner similar to the Restorationists.
IMO all of these groups (and countless non-denominational others) are born of the (false) beliefs that all institutional authority is corrupt/compromised by definition, and that the larger/older the institution is, the more corrupt it is. Thus (excepting some anabaptists) the desire to not form (institutionalize) their congregations into denominations, to limit ecclesiastical authority to the local church body only, to avoid formulating any binding creeds or statements of faith to be held accountable to. "No Creed but Christ, No Law but Love, No Book but the Bible". To re-write a familiar proverb in Restorationist terms, "you might successfully tie two strands into a cord, but binding three together weakens the whole." The majority of these churches - anabaptist, restorationist, and emergent - tend to self-identify themselves using the label evangelical over and above the term "Protestant".
IMO most of the churches that are called "Protestant" aren't deserving of that historic title, and it would be wise to understand and recognize the profound differences between them. IMO only those believers that individually and institutionally submit themselves to the historic creeds of the church can truly be said to be "in agreement", since the creeds are covenantally binding summaries, and provide a useful way for insiders and outsiders to test themselves on whether they are doctrinally and congregationally unified together.
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