A letter for protestants

[JonNC]

=UriahTheHittite;9446294]While it is well thought out, I have to say I disagree with most of your points. I’m not going to reply to each and every one, but there are a few I want to point out.

We could get into semantics about what Christ was saying to Peter in Matthew 16:18 but just suffice it to say I believe He was saying He would found His church on the foundation of the testimony of who Christ is. Probably won’t convince anyone here of that, but there it is.

Oh, it convinces me, but even to this Lutheran, one has to consider that it was Peter to whom he was speaking, and it was Peterr whose name He changed.

From my understanding, Catholics believe that the pope has direct communion with God and believe he is infallible, correct? In other words, there is no authority above him that challenges him on what he says or does because they believe he acts and speaks directly from God right? If Peter was the first pope, then why did he get rebuked by Paul (a relative newcomer at the time) for ignoring the Gentiles and fearing the Jews to the point of even bending the Gospel slightly (Galatians 2:11-21)? If they had revered Peter the same way the pope is revered today, Paul would have never said anything and the Gospel very would could have become Judaism with a little Christ sprinkled in. But it looks as though Paul did not see Peter as the “pope” or as this infallible man but rather as a man just like him who is capable of being deceived and who needed correction. Does the pope today receive correction and public rebuke when he’s wrong?

I have direct communion with God, in the word and the sacraments. I think you don’t quite understand infallibility, but I’ll leave the explanation to Catholics.

And John 6:47-69 is often used to back up the notion that the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Jesus when blessed. That kind of misses the point of what Jesus was trying to say there. The people were looking for someone to feed them daily because He had just fed the multitude with some bread and fish. They didn’t want the eternal blessings but just the earthly rewards. He was trying to point them back to the fact that He is the only one who will truly sustain them, not food.

If one looks at the Gospel accounts of the last Supper, and St. Paul’s in 1 Corinhians, it doesn’t miss the point at all.

But there’s the argument of, “This wasn’t symbolic because He didn’t say it was symbolic”. True, He didnt say that it was symbolic. But He also didn’t say this was symbolism:

If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell. - Matthew 5:29-30

So do Catholics tear out their eyes and cut off their hands when they sin? Or is that rule only applied to John 6?

So, when He says, “This is my body” while holding bread, we are to believe He meant something else. There’s no figurative language here.

And the use of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to claim that Scripture is only “useful” but not final authority is a big stretch. Scripture should be everything to a Christian’s walk. Look at Psalm 119 and tell me that Scripture wasn’t as important to David as tradition.

Sure it is. Catholics will tell you they are equally important.

Now I’m not trying to claim Protestantism is God’s only way necessarily. I hate labels and don’t consider myself a “Protestant”. I’m a Christian.

Is “Christian” not a label?

Jon