Charles Hodge on Rome's authority claims

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**The poor man not only does not know what innfallible means in our Church, he demonstrates that a little bit of knowledge CAN BE DANGEROUS. **

At first glance he seems to be a Professional Anti-Catholic. The man entitles his piece “SYSTEMATIC”…

A systematic approach must start with true facts, he used untruths about the actual Authority of the Church; therefore, his paper has to be unsystematic. Some would call it trashing a religion.
 
Scott Waddell:
As opposed to Sola Scriptura? Every man his own superpope? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. :rolleyes:

Yes, indeed.

The Calvinist heart is much better at examining our consciences, which are always presumed bad, than examining its own.

The Puritan is consoled in the knowledge of his utter depavity with the hubris that attends election.

There is nothing in the heart of Charles Hodge that I can discern from his writings to suggest the spirit of ‘fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum’, but I bet he knows the exact location of every pimple on the rear of every pope of bad reputation.

God have mercy on him and on me. What is sad is that intense Reformation theology abolishes Christ.

One can not bring to mind John Calvin, John Knox or the Puritan Ethnic Cleanser Oliver Cromwell and hold the Sermon on the Mount in the same meditation.

Christ has thus been abolished to elevate a narrow interpretation of Paul that Paul surely would not recognize.

Talk about idolatry. Blessed be me who proves God’s goodness by allowing him to count me among the elect so I can look down on other men, who are not like me.

They should read the Red Text more and stop trying to out Paul, Paul.

Steve
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SteveT -
An astounding charge from a man who claims salvation is sola fide, and sanctification isn’t necessary for salvation!
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Where have I ever said such nonsense, or Hodge for that matter?

BouleTheou
 
“The second consequence attributed to the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, is a title to eternal life. This in the older writers is often expressed by the words “adoption and heirship.” Being made the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. iii. 26), they are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ of a heavenly inheritance. (Rom. viii. 17.) The mere expiation of guilt confers no title to eternal life. The condition of the covenant under which man was placed was perfect obedience. This, from all that appears in Scripture, the perfection of God requires. As He never pardons sins unless the demands of justice be satisfied, so He never grants eternal life unless perfect obedience be rendered. Heaven is always represented as a purchased possession. In the covenant between the Father and the Son the salvation of his people was promised as the reward of his humiliation, obedience, and death. Having performed the stipulated conditions. He has a claim to the promised recompense. And this claim inures to the benefit of his people. But besides this, as the work of Christ consisted in his doing all that the law of God, or covenant of works requires for the salvation of men, and as that righteousness is freely offered to every one that believes, every such believer has as valid a claim to eternal life as he would have had, had he personally done all that the law demands.” - Charles Hodge, “Systematic Theology” 3:17:7

In Hodge’s view, the moment of Justification - before the process of sanctification even begins - provides a “valid claim to eternal life” to the believer. Hence, in the final analysis, sanctification is not necessary for salvation. Which position, I agree with you, is nonsense. 🙂
 
What Hodge does not mention is that by denying that Jesus left us his church as authority. Then what did Jesus leave us? THe Bible, no Jesus did not write one word of scripture. Jesus did leave us his church and his apostles this is affirmed to us by scripture what is not affirmed is that Jesus left us a bile to argue over its interpretation for thousands of years. Both protestanst and catholics would agree that Jesus left us the Holy spirit but the Holy spirit does not contradict itslef it gives us one teaching and one truth not 30 thousand different truths denominations and interpretations, THe holy spsirt does not direct 30,000 different authorities he speaks for once church through one office who has the keys to the kingdom of heaven and the gates of hell shall not prevail against Peter and his church.
 
Maccabees -
What Hodge does not mention is that by denying that Jesus left us his church as authority. Then what did Jesus leave us?
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That would be the Holy Spirit of God. The 30,000, or 145,000, or 1,786,000 denomination argument doesn’t work because Eric Svendsen has shown that the exact same criteria used to come up with that number would also produce around 23,000 Catholic “denominations.”

BouleTheou
 
There doesn’t need to be 30K demoninations to have a problem. There just needs to be two. The Holy Spirit was left to us. The Holy Spirit can not contridict itself. Therefore there should be and is only one correct interpreatation of infallable scripture. If there is more than one, one of the interpretations must be wrong.

I think most would agree that The Catholic Church and Protestant Churches (in general) have differing interpretations of scripture. Only one can be correct.
 
There doesn’t need to be 30K demoninations to have a problem. There just needs to be two.
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Ha! Amen.

There are Traditionalist Roman Catholics and post-vatican II Neo-Catholics. Hence, your ultimate authority is a failure and you have believed a lie.

Do I believe it’s really that simple? No. All I’m showing is that the very same arguments can be used to destroy your own position. If the Magisterium does not produce uniform belief, then it is invalid - if you’re going to apply the standard you apply to us fairly.

BouleTheou
 
There are Traditionalist Roman Catholics and post-vatican II Neo-Catholics. Hence, your ultimate authority is a failure and you have believed a lie.
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Do I believe it’s really that simple? No. All I’m showing is that the very same arguments can be used to destroy your own position. If the Magisterium does not produce uniform belief, then it is invalid - if you’re going to apply the standard you apply to us fairly.
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BouleTheou
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Boule,

Ha? I will agree that the number of Protestant demoniations is too high and that by those standards you can split Catholics into many groups.

However your arguement is moot. Only if the Magisterium produced conflicting pronoucements of Dogma would your arguement hold up. It doesn’t. We hold the Church is infallable and our “ulitmate authority” in matters of Dogma. It is the teaching of the Church that is infallable, the actions of those who hear it are not infallable. They are free to accept or reject it because of free will. If we couldn’t act by free will there never would have been heresy’s or Protestants.
 
Boule:

“No, that sanctification is not a necessary part of salvation”

Hmmm. I looked through Hodge’s book, even posted a clip from it in my last post, and I cannot find where he says it is a necessary part of salvation. On the contrary, in the excerpt I quoted, he asserted that at the moment of justification - quite apart from any sanctification - the believer has a “title to eternal life”. Can you show me chapter and verse where Hodge says you cannot be saved unless you be sanctified?
 
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BouleTheou:
There are Traditionalist Roman Catholics and post-vatican II Neo-Catholics. Hence, your ultimate authority is a failure and you have believed a lie.
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Incorrect again. It has happened before that groups have been in protest against the See of Peter. When was that? About the 16th century when your religion started. But it’s been happening all along, the Arians, the Donatists, etc. Not everyone will follow the way.
 
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BouleTheou:
Ha! Amen.

There are Traditionalist Roman Catholics and post-vatican II Neo-Catholics. Hence, your ultimate authority is a failure and you have believed a lie.

Do I believe it’s really that simple? No. All I’m showing is that the very same arguments can be used to destroy your own position. If the Magisterium does not produce uniform belief, then it is invalid - if you’re going to apply the standard you apply to us fairly.

BouleTheou
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The Magisterium does not need to produce uniform belief to be valid. It needs only to pass on the Divine Truths given to Her by Christ, regardless of those who reject this truth, Catholic or Protestant. Truth is not invalidated by those who reject it.

The Protestant denominations have an altogether different problem, because their institutional denominations teach many different things in regards to almost any given doctrine, which quite simply means they are all teaching a great deal of error. These folks are in doctrinal error not by rejecting their denominations teaching (as in the case of the Catholic rejecting the Churchs’ teaching), they are in error by accepting what is taught and practicing it.

I find it quite surprising that it seems so difficult to grasp this most basic distinction between Catholic dissenters (essentially Protestants in their worldview) and varying Protestant denominations.

Peter John
 
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