Actually the Church started down the wrong road around 600AD when it accepted both John Cassian's (free will) and Augustine's (grace) views to be held jointly together. By 1000AD the Orthodox left when they excommunicated the Pope. By 1200AD so many were leaving the Roman Catholic Church that the Church had to issue new rulings that grace through the Eucharist could only be administered by a priest and that you had to attend the Church (check the 4th Lateran Council of 1215AD). The Catholics got so mad about criticism about their errors that they were willing to burn John Wycliffe at the stake for translating the Bible for all to read. By the 1500s, the time of the Reformation, there were so many errors that it was time for reform. One would have hope they would have looked inward. But that didn't stopped Catholics from issuing later doctrines like the infallibility of the Pope (something the Orthodox will never buy), the deity of Mary, etc.
It isn't surprising that Catholics have given up on Augustine (as well as some Protestants). Augustine is the heart of the Reformation. Whether Augustine had a faulty view of Hebrew I don't know and is immaterial. What Augustine did have was a superior understanding of theology-how scripture fits together-a rare gift. His later writings showed a progress in his thinking and understanding. Consequently, Augustine was one of the very first people to put together a systematic theology, at a time when few thought about that.
No one would argue that Christ isn't preserving the church. The argument centers on what precisely is the church. If you want to argue that the church is the Roman Catholic Church, then you would be right according to the RCC dogma but wrong according the Vatican II. Either only those people in the Catholic Church can be saved or other people outside the Catholic Church can be saved as well. Catholics cannot say what is right.
So what precisely is Christ preserving? What is "authentic doctrine"?
HarleyD:
Well I appreciate you giving me a date 600AD. Grace and Free will can’t go together?? I disagree, it is we on this side of the divide can’t reconcile how they do, only God knows.
You missed what I said, it was the Protestants who were attacking Saint Augustine, not Catholics. In other words, it was Protestants posting at a Catholic site stating Augustine got it wrong with his justification that was infused [Grace is not the debate] because he was not fluent in Hebrew and his understanding of Hebrew got lost in translation in Latin via Greek from the Hebrew [Again, it was the Protestants, Reformed mind you, criticizing Augustine, not Catholics]. Catholics have not given up on Augustine as he was one.
Diety of Mary, not even going to respond to that. No such thing has happened and can happen as she is human. I thought you would have gotten that by now as the Assumption of Mary has been discussed, and I think you and I have actually been part of those discussions. Mary is not God and no Catholic teaching would ever make such claim because that is heresy.
he issue of pre-Vatican II and post Vatican II on who is part of the Church is what you are getting at. There is only 1 Church, all are in it at some level, some more than others, but all are related to it or part of it so the question of how one understands “outside the Church there is no salvation” is one of those things that has always been part of Church teaching, but it has never been completely and definitively defined.