Unhappy1
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Is that even a word?
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Pope Benedict 'Resigns' - Reports
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Is that even a word?
Arthur
Honorary Master
It's a nonsense created by auototext/correct on my fern. I meant to write ad hominist, which is equally illegitimate, but you know the meaning.
~ someone who dishes out ad hominems. Ghoti is the meistro.
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Can man attain perfection through works or only through the grace of God via Christ?
Ekstasis
Honorary Master
Or through the blood of Christ rather
Arthur
Honorary Master
If you are a Catholic you already know the answer; if you are not, here is the Catholic teaching:
- Only God is perfect.
- Man has damaged himself through sin and cannot through his own action alone attain the end for which he was made.
- The Eternal Word made flesh in Jesus Christ is the sole, unique and only source of salvific grace and therefore redemption for all humans.
- Salvation is by grace alone (ie a free gift than cannot be earned), won through the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, and cannot be accomplished by mere human deeds only or obedience to the Mosaic Law.
That said, the Protestant notion of salvation through faith alone is an absurd and grotesque twist on the Christian gospel:
* It make God either a capricious and whimsical monster (because He gives salvific grace without reference to deeds), or it makes salvation subject to the act of faith, which is no different from any other action or deed, and so becomes a 'works righteousness' heresy.
* It is an innovation and man-made doctrine from the 16th C.
* It is unbiblical - in fact the very opposite is expressly said in Js 2:24.
BTW, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (ie Mary conceived without the stain of Original Sin) expressly teaches that Mary was redeemed and saved by her divine son, Jesus Christ.
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You said man must work his way through imperfection, none of the Catholic teachings you listed above say this ("Salvation is by grace alone (ie a free gift than cannot be earned)"). You then go and accuse Protestants of a 'works righteousness' heresy. You are the one who said works are required to deal with imperfections.
Arthur
Honorary Master
St Paul says it. St James says it. St John says it. Many others have said it. I simply summarised.
This thread is getting derailed (and I myself am guilty of that, by responding to the slurs against Christ's Church).
I did so because in discussions about Catholic Church teaching, everyone is quite happy to quote the enemies of the Catholic Church. It is odd in the extreme that they totally ignore what the Church itself says it teaches (and doesn't teach), which makes one wonder what their motives are.
About 99% of the time the enemies of the Church misrepresent Catholic teaching, and get it wrong. Justice alone demands that you listen to what the other side says about itself, rather than what its enemies say it says.
Let's get back to the topic and continue the salvation discussion elsewhere.
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abandonallhope
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Arthur what exactly do you understand under papal infallibility ? That, to me, seems a rather unbiblical concept.
You are right, it is only by God's grace that we are saved, but if you have no faith in God and Christ, it is logically impossible to receive His grace.
Where it does start to go wrong is with the Calvinist version of salvation.
You are right, it is only by God's grace that we are saved, but if you have no faith in God and Christ, it is logically impossible to receive His grace.
Where it does start to go wrong is with the Calvinist version of salvation.
Arthur
Honorary Master
What I understand is irrelevant - I presume your real question is "what does the Catholic Church teach"?
Before answering, a short preface: 'Infallibility' is an English version of a technical Latin word with very precise meanings honed over more than a millennium and a half, so when the Church uses that term it uses it in a very specific way that might not be reflected in modern popular dictionaries.
Basically, when referring to "Papal Infallibility", the word means "free of false or erroneous teaching". We use the same word when we refer to Sacred Scripture as being 'infallible' when teaching religious or moral truths. The conditions of papal infallibility are very limited and very specific. The statement, which every Catholic learns in primary school catechism, is: when the pope solemnly and officially enunciates a teaching to be held by everyone, expressly using his office and authority as successor of St Peter and shepherd of all Christians as given it by Christ himself, on matters of faith or morals, he is preserved, by an act of the Holy Spirit, from formally teaching error or falsehood.
So to summarise, the conditions required for a non-erroneous (ie infallible) papal teaching are:
1. He must teach officially as pastor of all Christians by virtue of his apostolic authority as successor of St Peter ("from the chair" of St Peter, which is what "ex cathedra" means)
2. His teaching must be addressed to the universal church, ie to be believed by all the faithful.
3. It can only be on matters of faith or morals.
4. It must be immediately and expressly clear that the teaching is definitive.
> It goes without saying that he cannot change any previous definitive teaching on faith or morals. Neither can he teach any new revelation, doctrine or dogma, for the faith has been delivered once and for all (ie there is no new revelation since that in Christ, which is whole and complete). Authoritative church teaching (whether papal or through the Ordinary Magisterium) cannot bring any new teaching - it simply unpacks and explains the implications of a teaching already implicit, when challenged in a particular age. In this sense, then, all papal teaching can only be an explicit clarification of existing teaching.
In short, papal infallibility is a negative thing: Catholics trust Christ that the Holy Spirit protects them from being taught or forced to believe erroneous doctrines by preventing a pope from issuing them. That is all. It is very similar to our belief that there is no formal error of teaching or falsehood on matters of faith or morals in the Bible.
It does NOT mean the pope is sinless, or that he doesn't or can't lie, or that his personal opinions can't be wrong. By virtue of his office, Pope Benedict has no God-given guidance on who will win a soccer game or how the first 3 picosconds of the Big Bang unfolded or indeed on anything at all. He is simply prevented from officially as pope teaching an error or falsehood on matters of faith and morals only.
More reading on innumerable websites. Some random ones: here, here, and here for a start. It's a big subject.
Christians must be very careful how they use the word "faith". It is a very simple thing in one way, but once you start unpacking, it is also very complex, and it is used in many different ways and senses in Scripture. A wrong or blunt use can be extremely off-putting and shut people to the truth that Christ died to bring. Depending on context, its meaning can span the spectrum from "trust" (which resides in the will) to "formal identification and acknowledgment" (which resides in the intellect).
"Faith in Christ" similarly entails many things, and has many deeply subtle and nuanced aspects. Who is Christ? Again, the answer to that can be given on many levels .... from "a man who lived and taught in Palestine 2000 years ago" to "the Eternal Omnipotent All-Knowing Word of God, through whom all was created". To hold that only people who in this life formally acknowledge the man Jesus as God Incarnate can be saved is grotesque, unchristian, unhistorical, and unbiblical (yet many little sects claiming to be Christian make these very claims, a skandalion).
It is well-nigh a moral certainty that those, who through no fault of their own, do not hear the gospel and thus cannot give assent to it, will not be shut out of the Kingdom for that reason.
"Do not hear the gospel" might well cover many people right here on this thread who have heard of 'Christ' (or some people's cut down, distorted version of Him) and had half-baked and half-truth religion shoved down their throats by insensitive and ignorant parents, teachers and other believers ... in such a way that they never really heard the true and full gospel but only a grotesque caricature of it. It is impossible in the extreme to think that a God who so loved the world (of sinners) that He sent his only beloved Son to die in atonement for us, could conceivably damn someone to eternal hell who through no fault of their own never heard the Truth and encountered Christ.
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Pressure from affirmative action campainers. To make a space for a black Pop.
You do realise that a black Pope will be more conservative and appeal more to the demographics that see a growing religious influence? A black Pope won't be installed because of affirmative action, a black Pope would be installed to save the church.
abandonallhope
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No, I wanted to know what you understand under it, because what the RCC teaches is unbiblical. "that infallibility means more than exemption from actual error; it means exemption from the possibility of error"
Christ is infallible. The pope is not. Interestingly in Matt 16 Peter, whom you call the 1st pope, is referred to as satan by Christ. That's quite bizarre for someone you'd consider a pope ? I know Christ didn't directly call Peter satan, but there was a manifestation of the character of satan, at the very least. In a pope ! Matt 16 being one of the passages which is quoted as a justification for papal infallability.
The pope calls himself the "vicar" of Christ, which I understand means "in stead of" , just like the word vicarious implies. It is supreme arrogance to think you can fill the shoes of Christ on earth.
Only the RCC makes one massive grey area of the word in fallible.
Christians must be careful how they use many words, many of which atheists must also be careful to use.
Why not refer to a Biblical definition of faith : "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
So what other way is there to be saved ? What else do we have before God ?
If you do not acknowledge that Christ is the son of God, his sacrifice - the price He paid - loses all it's significance!
How do you read John 14 ?
It is not up to me to declare how God will judge those that did not have any remote chance of hearing the Gospel. Or had any remote notion of something bigger than themselves.
People didn't just pop up on the earth out of nowhere, there were no far off remote tribes that sprung into a 100% isolated existence ? How many human beings, really could not have had any idea of God ? Except for maybe severely handicapped people.
I do know however that even though God loves the world, not only His love is perfect, but His justice too. He gave us a promise, but also a demand or requirement. When the measure of His long-suffering is full, there has to be retribution.
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abandonallhope
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You stopped 2 verses short. Read Matt 16:21-23.
Arthur
Honorary Master
Hello AAH:
Just to clear some ground, we need to declare some basics. I say this only to play with an open hand and a full deck. Of course I am well aware of the objections (since they used to be mine, too).
1) Bishops of the Catholic Church wrote the New Testament and years later decided what books to incorporate into the Bible. They did this by the authority given to them and to no others, by Christ himself.
2) The Bible is not the ultimate authority of faith. The Church is. More specifically, it is the apostolic authority received from Christ himself and handed on down to their successors that alone can decide these matters definitively. Christ established a living authority to teach his truth and bring his sanctification to all people down through the ages, until He comes again in glory.
But let's go with your point for a moment: There's simply no way of wriggling out of the plain and clear meaning of Mt 16, where Christ changes the name of Simon and gives him the name Rock, and says that he (Peter) is the rock on which He will build his church, and then gives him the power to bind and loose in His name. These words are addressed to Simon alone.
Elsewhere Jesus says "who receives you receives me, and who rejects you rejects me, and the one who sent me". We also read of the Great Commission, where Christ shares his own mission with his Apostles: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20:21). But wait, there's more. He also gives them authority to make binding decisions. "Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt 18:18). And he gives that final binding power to Simon renamed to Rock (Peter).
That authority extends to the forgiveness of sins, again something normally reserved only to God: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’" (Jn 20:21–23).
This power was understood as coming from God: "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18). Indeed, confirms Paul, "So we are ambassadors for Christ" (2 Cor. 5:20).
What many religious people in Christ's day could not accept was that a mere man could forgive sins. Yet Christ shares that divine power with mere portals, creatures, weaklings. How do you account for this?
As to your attempt at playing the word "vicar". No cigar. Vicar has several related meanings. It is absurd to suggest that a single Catholic of more than a billion believes for one millisecond that the pope is a substitute Christ. Just ask any one. If you can find one sincere Catholic who believes what you say we believe, I'll eat my hat and give you my car. But there is a sense in which every Christian is called to be another Christ.
Peter is given the authority (keys of the Kingdom) to bind and loose. Elsewhere he is still called a deceiver (satanas ). But that is when he tries to dissuade Jesus from going to his death in Jerusalem - were Jesus to listen to Peter and the others Jesus's whole redemptive mission would have been thwarted. All this takes place before Peter is purified again after the Resurrection, where his three denials are healed with three professions of love at the waterside near a charcoal fire. Later, just before his Ascension, Christ breathes on his Apostles and says "Receive the Holy Spirit.
What you cannot do and remain credible is use dictionaries and definitions to argue like a dilettante. Let me give you an uncontroversial example: take the meaning of the word "anarchy". Any dictionary will include several meanings, spanning a whole range of things, from chaos and mayhem to the simple state of no government. Its precise meaning depends on how and where the word is used. What some people do (and what you are doing with the word vicar) is to take one meaning and then in a different context impute that meaning to a different context. If someone were to say "I am an anarchist", does it necessarily follow from dictionary definitions that they believe in promoting chaos and mayhem? Of course not! For them, "anarchy" could well mean a very specific thing, from the Gk "an=no/none/not, "arche"="government/sovereign/ruler" and you would do them an injustice to impute chaos/mayhem to them. This is what you do with vicar.
By far the most central and important doctrines and dogmas in the Catholic Church have to do with the utter and transcendent majesty of God, that He alone is adored because He is God and there is an infinite distance between Creator and creature, between Infinite Being that is Pure Act, and finite little creation & man, less than a speck in a flash of time. Nothing created even remotely approaches the awesome power of God. And we Catholics believe - hard as it is to explain adequately - that God entered creation and history as the man we know as Yeshua (Jesus in English). He is known as The Annointed One (Christ in Greek). Priests, Prophets and Kings were anointed, and Christ is all three and more. No mere human can replace or be a substitute for Christ - that is a grotesque horror for us. For us Catholics, Yeshua is lord of all lords, and king of all kings, far transcending all powers in heaven or earth. We Catholics can only bemusedly chuckle when you try to say we believe the pope is a substitute Christ. That is patent nonsense, absurd, and for us an absolute horror!
That said, Christ can and indeed does share his divine life with us. By his grace he divinises us if we but allow him, inviting us to participate in the internal life of God himself. Of course we have to accept that freely, and that requires that we live and behave accordingly.
That sharing of divine life extends in all sorts of ways to us. In a very special way it extends to his Church, which as St Paul says in Ephesians, is Christ's mystical body. In fact, that extension in many ways IS what the Church is - the way that the Spirit of Christ lives in the created world, bringing it to a supernatural level. And that work includes sharing in Christ's authority to teach, govern and offer sacrifice (prophet, king, priest). and it extends to the power to forgive sins. These are all powers that derive from God alone, but He shares them with His Church.
So, the whole Incarnation is a powerful revolution that overturns all our old categories and notions of religion. It overthrows religiosity and replaces it with authentic relation.
(Run out of space and time. More later)
Just to clear some ground, we need to declare some basics. I say this only to play with an open hand and a full deck. Of course I am well aware of the objections (since they used to be mine, too).
1) Bishops of the Catholic Church wrote the New Testament and years later decided what books to incorporate into the Bible. They did this by the authority given to them and to no others, by Christ himself.
2) The Bible is not the ultimate authority of faith. The Church is. More specifically, it is the apostolic authority received from Christ himself and handed on down to their successors that alone can decide these matters definitively. Christ established a living authority to teach his truth and bring his sanctification to all people down through the ages, until He comes again in glory.
No, the basis of the Catholic claim is not in Mt 16. The basis is the authority and mission given directly by Christ to his Apostles in particular and to his disciples in general. It is a living authority, handed down over the generations from the Apostles to their successors, the bishops. The validity and authority rests in Christ himself, the Head of the Church. Mt 16 was only written years maybe decades after the Church had been established. It is the Church that validates Matthews gospel as authentic, not the other way round. Looking to a book as an authority simply begs the question. By what authority? And how do you know?
But let's go with your point for a moment: There's simply no way of wriggling out of the plain and clear meaning of Mt 16, where Christ changes the name of Simon and gives him the name Rock, and says that he (Peter) is the rock on which He will build his church, and then gives him the power to bind and loose in His name. These words are addressed to Simon alone.
Elsewhere Jesus says "who receives you receives me, and who rejects you rejects me, and the one who sent me". We also read of the Great Commission, where Christ shares his own mission with his Apostles: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20:21). But wait, there's more. He also gives them authority to make binding decisions. "Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt 18:18). And he gives that final binding power to Simon renamed to Rock (Peter).
That authority extends to the forgiveness of sins, again something normally reserved only to God: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’" (Jn 20:21–23).
This power was understood as coming from God: "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18). Indeed, confirms Paul, "So we are ambassadors for Christ" (2 Cor. 5:20).
What many religious people in Christ's day could not accept was that a mere man could forgive sins. Yet Christ shares that divine power with mere portals, creatures, weaklings. How do you account for this?
As to your attempt at playing the word "vicar". No cigar. Vicar has several related meanings. It is absurd to suggest that a single Catholic of more than a billion believes for one millisecond that the pope is a substitute Christ. Just ask any one. If you can find one sincere Catholic who believes what you say we believe, I'll eat my hat and give you my car. But there is a sense in which every Christian is called to be another Christ.
Peter is given the authority (keys of the Kingdom) to bind and loose. Elsewhere he is still called a deceiver (satanas ). But that is when he tries to dissuade Jesus from going to his death in Jerusalem - were Jesus to listen to Peter and the others Jesus's whole redemptive mission would have been thwarted. All this takes place before Peter is purified again after the Resurrection, where his three denials are healed with three professions of love at the waterside near a charcoal fire. Later, just before his Ascension, Christ breathes on his Apostles and says "Receive the Holy Spirit.
What you cannot do and remain credible is use dictionaries and definitions to argue like a dilettante. Let me give you an uncontroversial example: take the meaning of the word "anarchy". Any dictionary will include several meanings, spanning a whole range of things, from chaos and mayhem to the simple state of no government. Its precise meaning depends on how and where the word is used. What some people do (and what you are doing with the word vicar) is to take one meaning and then in a different context impute that meaning to a different context. If someone were to say "I am an anarchist", does it necessarily follow from dictionary definitions that they believe in promoting chaos and mayhem? Of course not! For them, "anarchy" could well mean a very specific thing, from the Gk "an=no/none/not, "arche"="government/sovereign/ruler" and you would do them an injustice to impute chaos/mayhem to them. This is what you do with vicar.
By far the most central and important doctrines and dogmas in the Catholic Church have to do with the utter and transcendent majesty of God, that He alone is adored because He is God and there is an infinite distance between Creator and creature, between Infinite Being that is Pure Act, and finite little creation & man, less than a speck in a flash of time. Nothing created even remotely approaches the awesome power of God. And we Catholics believe - hard as it is to explain adequately - that God entered creation and history as the man we know as Yeshua (Jesus in English). He is known as The Annointed One (Christ in Greek). Priests, Prophets and Kings were anointed, and Christ is all three and more. No mere human can replace or be a substitute for Christ - that is a grotesque horror for us. For us Catholics, Yeshua is lord of all lords, and king of all kings, far transcending all powers in heaven or earth. We Catholics can only bemusedly chuckle when you try to say we believe the pope is a substitute Christ. That is patent nonsense, absurd, and for us an absolute horror!
That said, Christ can and indeed does share his divine life with us. By his grace he divinises us if we but allow him, inviting us to participate in the internal life of God himself. Of course we have to accept that freely, and that requires that we live and behave accordingly.
That sharing of divine life extends in all sorts of ways to us. In a very special way it extends to his Church, which as St Paul says in Ephesians, is Christ's mystical body. In fact, that extension in many ways IS what the Church is - the way that the Spirit of Christ lives in the created world, bringing it to a supernatural level. And that work includes sharing in Christ's authority to teach, govern and offer sacrifice (prophet, king, priest). and it extends to the power to forgive sins. These are all powers that derive from God alone, but He shares them with His Church.
So, the whole Incarnation is a powerful revolution that overturns all our old categories and notions of religion. It overthrows religiosity and replaces it with authentic relation.
Because the "biblical definition" that you take is in fact part of a long letter that addresses people who already believe. It is of very little use to unbelievers and says only slightly more than nothing about the content of faith.
That's a set-up question. Of course there's nothing before God. By definition, else He wouldn't be God. But to suggest that you only have to believe and then you're saved is seriously wrong. It is utterly counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is utterly counter to the Sacred Scriptures. The only place "faith" and "alone" appear together in the New Testament is when St James says that we are NOT saved by faith alone. Why is this do you think?
(Run out of space and time. More later)
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daveza
Honorary Master
So Acts 16:31 is wrong ?
How do we know this.
How do we know this.
Where's the letter that says so?
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
It can be more conservative in European or (even) African terms, I don't know and not going to discuss, as it is secondary issue.
First at all it is wrong assumption that Church needs to be saved. I don't see such calls, but certainly there is lot of external activity to destroy Church. So If you talk about saving Church, I think immediately about those who are trying to destroy it.
Look at the trash in religious section and now on this thread, you see bunch of the same well trained individuals trying to undemine Christianity and Catholicism in particular, some of them even pretent to be Christians, giving dicussion specific tasteless spin.
- However Cardinals can be motivated by the fact that black Pop would definitely help expanding Church in Africa.
- It was already lobbying for black candidate 6 years ago, quite vocal around Proudly South African circles. It is expected that pressure is mounting behind the scenes.
- Those who want to destroy Church have their own agenda in forcing black candidate, the same way they supported Obama.
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