Though I am a Protestant who strongly disagrees with Trent and many of the doctrines of Rome (and therefore am under their anathemas), I do recommend reading these documents for a better understanding of the Reformation – and for proof that the Reformation still matters today.
What ends up happening is that I come up with ideas that seem obvious to me, but nobody else thought of because they are focused on the current IT application.
Same thing with the bible. I don’t approach the bible from a Catholic or protestant “here’s what this verse means” perspective. I simply read it, come up with questions, ask those that have studied the word more than me or from a different perspective, PRAY, and then come up with my own interpretations.
I’m a strong believer that YOPIOS is a very, VERY good thing. After all, my relationship with God and my salvation is a personal thing between me ang God. My church body can help me get clarity or warn me where I may be going a bit around the bend, but ultimately the decision and results of that decision is solely my responsibility.
This is why I am no longer a pre-tribulationist and believe the fate of the lost is annihilation. But those beliefs are not core. They could be changed if new information presented itself. Heck, it’s how they changed in the first place.
What is core is my relationship with Him.
QUOTE This is why I am no longer a pre-tribulationist and believe the fate of the lost is annihilation.
We are of one accord there, brother! I decided, some 10 years back, to question everything I had been taught, and let the scripture be my guide to all doctrine, not men's statement of faith or creeds or dogmas. I found that many of my learned Baptist beliefs were soundly scriptural (original sin, virgin birth, sinlessness of Christ, Justification by faith alone, etc), I also found that in some instances, especially the pre-trib rapture, the scripture taught the exact opposite!
Sounds like you ask, seek and knock..
And testing is only how we know what is from Him...
My thoughts have changed to the point where I pray the reformation gets a restart and it won’t start from the mother church.... they are the standard and the denominations have splintered from that...
And asking what one has in common with the catholic mother church is a good start.....one I just started a couple years ago...
Game may not like this on the thread, but I think some questions that never get asked could do some good...if nothing else, iron sharpens iron...
My first question after I did a testing on the rosary and the mary spirit:
What do I and my church share in common with what the first reformers called the antichrist? ( because I could see it in that rosary)
I have found a couple I am no longer comfortable with...
What about the world observing the ‘pope’s’ calendar instead of the scriptural one?
And how about the pope’s sabbath and the pope’s holy days as the standard for all Christendom (with exceptions to those that see saturday as the true sabbath or those who just wink at december 25 as symbolic, not literal-still start with the papacy calendar)
Those are not ‘theology’- but those are three things that are core to a believer’s work and worship life...it affects a nonbeliever’s work and leisure life too..
What if the entire believing world is accepting a false premise to begin with, and argues from that false premise, in an never ending circular pattern?
And it all originates in a vessel chosen by the enemy- the mother church (not the believers). Is that not what the reformers believed?
the first reformers were quite comfortable calling the papacy antichrist..they were in my study bible and I have seen quotes of them that acknowledged it...
I think that has been softened over 400 years..
For ecumenical reasons, churches may want to cozy up with what the first reformers believed was counterfeit, because the goal of the world is ‘unity’...
Is the reformation dead or will believers be willing to ask very hard questions that may affect their very belief in their own ‘church’ or their own beliefs and worship practices, that are far more subtle than what normally gets debated on the forum...
Were the reformer’s opinions wrong? Or were they just wrong about calling the mother church and papacy the Antichrist?
Were they brilliant theologians that never contemplated that they too may have been arguing from a false premise, accepting the mother church as their standard to jump off from, (because they too originated there) only to hold some rather key core worship practices of their mother’s at the same time?
They have an excuse that I do not.. I never was in the mother church.. my questins would be with the reformed churches who accept so much that maybe the first reformers didn’t think about, even as brilliant and brave as they were...
We may accept the same false premise 400 plus years later..
I don’t anymore...