Hi Randy.
=Randy Carson;10153629]Jon-
Jesus made a number of promises concerning the Church and the Holy Spirit. Either He has kept His word or He hasn’t. (Obviously, we think he has.)
Obviously, we do too, that He has and will keep His word.
Now, at issue is the understanding of His promises and how they apply to the concept of infallibility. The bottom line is that IF the Church ever once formally taught doctrinal error, then in that specific instance, falsehood would have “overcome” truth. Satan could be said to have overcome the Church because the Church would have formally taught something that was not true, and something which is not true leads people away from God.
So, something wrongly believed on Earth by sinful men overcomes His truth in the Church Triumphant?
As you know, Catholics do not believe it is possible for the Church - the Catholic Church - to formally teach error based upon the promises of Christ as found in the pages of the NT. Without an infallible Church, Christianity is a mess…like Protestantism. No offense intended…I think you know that Protestantism does not reflect the unity for which Jesus prayed.
No offense taken, Randy. The mess of Christianity, the lack of unity of His Church, is clearly not what He intends. That’s why we all pray for Christian unity of His Church Militant. But the disunity includes the Catholic Church, as the Catholic Catechism says.
And that’s my point, our misconceptions, our sinful disunity may be influenced by Satan, but that doesn’t mean Satan has stormed the gates of Heaven and destroyed the Church.
Non-Catholics will seek and espouse alternative explanations of the verses and will cite all sorts of examples of evils that the Catholic Church has or allegedly has done to “prove” that the Church is not infallible. None of these arguments stick, but they are thrown against the wall again and again just the same.
If I sit here and type about all the evils of the CC, then for the most part I am typing evils about myself and Lutheranism. We do, in fact, agree on a huge amount of the Truth of the catholic faith.
Asking the non-C if Jesus was a liar is simply a shorthand (if not cheap) way of getting him or her to pause and reflect on the promises more completely. It may not be terribly effective as apologetics go, but it does get attention.
It got mine.
But I see your point, and you tell me if this makes sense.
I’ve often said, and truly believe, that if Lutherans we become complacent, and comfortable in the separation which we as Christians now find ourselves, and accept this as normative and in keeping with Christ’s call, then the Reformation has indeed failed, and can rightly be called a “deformation”. Long term division was never the intention of the Lutheran reformers, and it cannot be for us. We can blame, in part, the leaders of the CC 500 or more years ago all we want, but even that doesn’t respond to Christ’s call. Instead, we, all of us - Catholic, protestant, Orthodox, must seek the unity He spoke of, which is more than an invisable unity. We must also recognize, that this division is not a failure of Christ or the Holy Spirit, nor is it a lie of God, but is our sin, our fault, our own fault. Lord, in your mercy, forgive us.
Jon
D) for us to argue against something the other doesn’t believe. I happen to go through this at times about Lutheranism.
