non-Catholic Christians - "Did You Know"?

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I find it amazing that there exist “Protestants” here at CAF, who are arguing, just a much with Martin Luther and the early Protestant Church as with Catholicism.

Did you know
, according to Martin Luther, Infant Baptism is ok, more here

That the Baptism of infants is pleasing to Christ
-The Large Catechism by Martin Luther.

Did you know, according to Martin Luther, Absolution and confessing to a priest (“a confessor”) is ok, more here

“Since Absolution or the Power of the Keys is also an aid and consolation against sin and a bad conscience, ordained by Christ [Himself] in the Gospel, Confession or Absolution ought by no means to be abolished in the Church, especially on account of [tender and] timid consciences and on account of the untrained [and capricious] young people, in order that they may be examined, and instructed in the Christian doctrine.” – --The Smalcald Articles, By Martin Luther.

“When speaking to God, we should plead guilty to all sins, even those we don’t know about, just as we do in the “Our Father,” but when speaking to the confessor, only the sins we know about, which we know about and feel in our hearts.”
  • Luther’s Little Instruction Book
    (The Small Catechism of Martin Luther)
Did you know, Martin Luther believed in the “Real Presence” when referring to the Eucharist, more here

“It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under bread and wine for us Christians to eat and to drink, established by Christ Himself.”
-Luther’s Little Instruction Book
(The Small Catechism of Martin Luther)

Did you know that Martin Luther Venerated Mary:
“There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith . . . It is enough to know that she lives in Christ.”
“The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.”
(Sermon, September 1, 1522).
Hello Jimmy B,

I haven’t been through all the posts on this thread, so please forgive if . . . . .

But did you know that Martin Luther thought that contraception was pure evil?

touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-04-020-f

catholic.com/radio/event.php?calendar=1&category=0&event=4415&date=2006-12-29
 
Hello again bengal-fan,

You know what I like about you…………everything, well almost everything. Maybe we can team up like Batman and Robin and can work together to bring some of these Christians here closer to the truth, or at least to an agreement on the issues that you and I agree. :hug3:

Let’s see;
  • The “Real Presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist (check)
  • Confession to a priest (check)
  • Mary is in heaven and “holds a place of significance there” (check)
I’ll even let you be Batman, how about it? :bounce:

Here is your chance to “succeed”, Please try again, Thank You! 👍
I think you are more closely imitating the Joker, not Batman or Robin…what did you say you want to “bring us closer to?”
 
You confuse primacy of honor with supremacy. It is well documented that the Pope of Rome (being the pre-eminent Christian Church) carried a primacy of honor. But infallibility and supremacy was not known. All bishops were equal.
The difference between the papacy in the early Christian Church and the modern papacy is analogous to the difference between the acorn and the oak tree!!

The pope has always been infallible when declaring dogma and he has always been the Supreme Shepherd of God’s militant church!!!
 
Couple it with the co-redemptrix doctrine and it infers, Jesus couldn’t do it with the help of his mother. :rolleyes:
Don’t be so keen to be irreverent to reality here. If Mary had not consented to the incarnation Jesus would not have been able to do anything through a channel of freewill without God abusing and brutalizing us to save us against our consent. Comprehende?

James
 
did you know that one of the calls of the reformation was “always reforming”? that means that we don’t just take what luther says as if he’s the pope, but we are constantly trying to seek the truth.

also, i love the quote from luther about venerating mary that you used. it is exactly what nearly every protestant would say. mary is in heaven and that’s all we know about it so we shouldn’t make an article of faith of it.
Well, even “nearly every protestant” is maybe an exaggeration… the problem with using the term “Protestant” is you never know what that stands for. In fact, I know several Protestants (who don’t even consider themselves “Protestants” because their denominations or non-denominations didn’t split from the Catholic Church – they split from someone else!) who don’t know if Mary is in Heaven or not, since the Gospels record that the family of Christ said Jesus was “out of His mind.” So Mary maybe wasn’t saved (of course, given all the other verses about her that is hard to believe – in fact, in flies right in the face of the woman who followed her son everywhere, was present at every important moment of His life, and “treasured all these things in her heart” – as her soul would be pierced by a sword as well.).

“Always reforming” usually means “always contradicting.” All Protestant groups in existence before 1929 believed contraception was sinful. After the Anglicans changed their mind (suprise, surprise – the Church was founded by a gluttonous egomaniac who wanted to marry his mistress), so did just about everyone else follow. So is it right or wrong? So you were teaching error all this time? Wasn’t the Bible sufficiently clear to you?

Same thing with neo-Calvinists – they believe Calvin “erred” in believing (ardently) in the necessity of infant baptism.

Anabaptists denied infant baptism and “sola fide” so they split from Luther. What could Luther do? He set the ball rolling with his view that “anyone” could interpret the Sacred Scriptures (cf. 2 Peter 1:20; 3:16).

chnetwork.org/journals/authority/authority_4.htm

The Churches of Christ denomination have now changed their position on Hell – they believe it is temporal, not eternal. You go to Hell and will eventually be “destroyed” in it, you won’t suffer forever. This was one minor thing that propelled a friend of mine, a CoC pastor, to become Catholic – well, at first at least to leave the CoC.

“Constantly seeking the truth”? But why “seek” when the Lord Jesus Himself said to the Church that He would lead the Church in to “all truth”? Just follow Him!!!

Protestants don’t have any real authority to discipline or enforce doctrine. History shows that once someone disagrees they just make their own church. Ta-da! But the Catholic Church doesn’t have “difficult verses” – we’ve got the whole Bible which we embrace, and know with certainty that God has given us not only Sacred Scriptures to guide us, but a teaching authority to properly teach them.
 
The difference between the papacy in the early Christian Church and the modern papacy is analogous to the difference between the acorn and the oak tree!!
So the modern innovations of the papacy are more accurate than the early Christian Church? I think not. The deepest wells have the clearest water.
The pope has always been infallible when declaring dogma and he has always been the Supreme Shepherd of God’s militant church!!!
Only since about 1870.
 
You know, even though I’m a Catholic myself I’ve always been debating about some teachings of the Catholic church. And the points brought up by East Anglican in Page 5 seem to cover many of them. You see…
1, How could God say through Saint Paul, The Just shall live by faith and then years later say through a bishop of Rome that the just shall live by penance and indulgency?
Yup. I do believe it’s written in Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” And if anyone says that it gives permission to go on sinning because we have received the saving Grace, just read John 14:12 - Jesus said “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.” That covers the fact that we can’t go on sinning and believe that we will still go to heaven when we die. Besides, Romans 3:20 says “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” So what I don’t get is why isn’t honest repentance when we do slip up and sin (I admit, I’m not perfect and I do sin no matter how I try not to!) addressed to God in our prayer enough?
2, How could Jesus tell the theif next to him he would be with him in paradise that day if the doctrine of Purgatory is true? Did Jesus pay a special indulgence for the thief?
I’m still not convinced of purgatory. The Bible verses that are quoted to support it sounds just too loose to me. They don’t give any solid view into whether there is purgatory or not! Especially if you take the context of the chapter and not just the verse.
3, How could Paul say that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus and then through bishops of Rome say you can pray through saints as well?
EXACTLY!!! Why pray through Mary or Saints! If by Jesus’ death and resurrection we have been given the priviledge of calling God, “Father”, why do we need to pray through third parties?
4, If the gospel writers called it bread it must have been bread and if Jesus called it his body it must have been his body, therefore the literal bread must be his literal body but still be bread. Where is the doctrine of trasubstatiation in The Bible?
I personally believe that the body and blood of Jesus is present in the bread and wine together with the bread and wine. Where is it written that it turns solely to flesh and blood?
5, If Jesus said “Nobody can come to The Father except through me” Why do Roman Catholics claim people come to The Father through The Roman Catholic Church?
True. I do agree that there are many “protestant” churches that hold beliefs that go against Scriptural teaching. But does that mean ALL Protestant churches teach dross? I think we Catholics need to learn to get off the Lord’s judgement chair - because judgement is His. And the Bible says in Romans 3:23 that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. So who made you all so righteous, my Catholic brothers and sisters? :confused:
7, If the Roman Catholic Church stays where it is and never changes, why is there no referances to Purgatory, the imacullate conception, Mary being the co-redemptrix, indulgencies etc. etc. in Church History prior to 1070?
As a reply to this ChristianRoots had written on page 5 of this thread, “The reason why there were no written references to these beliefs in early Church history was because no one was challenging them at that time. Only when there was a challenge to a particular belief did the Church feel compelled to define it in more dogmatic terms.” If that’s so, why does the Catholic Church base beliefs such as the Assumption of Mary on treatises like the “De Obitu S. Dominae”? Where did that come from? And please don’t try to fly that “just because it’s not written in the Bible doesn’t mean it didn’t happen” argument. If you believed that you have to agree to the DaVinci theory about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being married (I mean according to that argument, just because it’s not written in the Bible that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married doesn’t mean that they weren’t either, does it?)

The idea of Mary being the co-redemptrix sounds like blasphemy to me - sharing the glory due to God (and JESUS IS GOD!) with another person, however “holy”!?! CentralFLJames said “If Mary had not consented to the incarnation Jesus would not have been able to do anything through a channel of freewill without God abusing and brutalizing us to save us against our consent.” See, that’s assuming that we can understang what all God can do! We can’t, which means that we can’t be so sure that God wouldn’t have been able to give us salvation if Mary hadn’t agreed to the plan.
 
You are forgetting that the Orthodox didn’t accept the Pope’s authority approximately 500 years before that. So, they are the first “reformers”. Or they could argue that the Western churches were the reformers or “changers” since they changed the filoque and the pope at Rome claimed supreme authority.
You are forgetting to mention that for the first 1,000 years of Christendom, that the Orthodox DID accept the Pope’s authority. Some people fail to consider the full truth, just the part that makes them feel righteous in their own hearts.

You are also failing to consider that there can be a difference in the manner that Papal authority is respected.

This news article articulates this very well:
zenit.org/article-21815?l=english

I quote:
"“We came to the concept that the Church is realized on three levels: the local level, that is, the diocese with the bishop; the regional level, that is, the metropolitan or patriarchate; and the universal level. And on every level we have a tension between authority – bishop, patriarch, and the ‘protos,’ Greek for primate, that is, ‘the first of the bishops’ – and the principle of synodality, synodal structures.”

"But the real breakthrough, he said, was that “the Orthodox agreed to speak about the universal level – because before there were some who denied that there could even be institutional structures on the universal level. The second point is that we agreed that at the universal level there is a primate. It was clear that there is only one candidate for this post, that is the Bishop of Rome, because according to the old order – ‘taxis’ in Greek – of the Church of the first millennium the see of Rome is the first among them. Many problems remain to be resolved, but we have laid a foundation upon which we can build.”

I can see from this that God’s ways are not our ways. This is not a democratic viewpoint of opinion. It is not a personality contest. It is not a scientific view of testable theories. It is not a monarchy, dictatorship or presidency. It is about being a slave to Christ and servant to the Universal Church.

When Christians truly humble themselves, they can finally begin to see their proper place of service within the body, not apart from it, or in contest with Him whom they should rightly serve.

Gene
 
You are forgetting to mention that for the first 1,000 years of Christendom, that the Orthodox DID accept the Pope’s authority.
The undivided Church never looked to the bishop of Rome as the infallible supreme pontiff—never!
 
I find it amazing that there exist “Protestants” here at CAF, who are arguing, just a much with Martin Luther and the early Protestant Church as with Catholicism.

Did you know
, according to Martin Luther, Infant Baptism is ok, more here

That the Baptism of infants is pleasing to Christ
-The Large Catechism by Martin Luther.

Did you know, according to Martin Luther, Absolution and confessing to a priest (“a confessor”) is ok, more here

“Since Absolution or the Power of the Keys is also an aid and consolation against sin and a bad conscience, ordained by Christ [Himself] in the Gospel, Confession or Absolution ought by no means to be abolished in the Church, especially on account of [tender and] timid consciences and on account of the untrained [and capricious] young people, in order that they may be examined, and instructed in the Christian doctrine.” – --The Smalcald Articles, By Martin Luther.

“When speaking to God, we should plead guilty to all sins, even those we don’t know about, just as we do in the “Our Father,” but when speaking to the confessor, only the sins we know about, which we know about and feel in our hearts.”
  • Luther’s Little Instruction Book
    (The Small Catechism of Martin Luther)
Did you know, Martin Luther believed in the “Real Presence” when referring to the Eucharist, more here

“It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under bread and wine for us Christians to eat and to drink, established by Christ Himself.”
-Luther’s Little Instruction Book
(The Small Catechism of Martin Luther)

Did you know that Martin Luther Venerated Mary:
“There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith . . . It is enough to know that she lives in Christ.”
“The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.”
(Sermon, September 1, 1522).
Yes, I knew all of those things. And apart from the last one abou Mary, I believe all of them as well.

And about Mary - there are two things here:

1: Luther was, as he himself would have admitted freely, but a man and could err. He did so on this matter. There is no Scriptural support for the idea.

2: Please notice Luther’s point that it is not something that can be an article of faith.

And it should ALSO be noted that Luther later renounced the “veneration” of Mary and the “saints”.

Finally: Martin Luther is NOT the “pope” of Protestant churches, not even the one which, in defiance of his own wishes, bears his name. Therefore - Protestant churches are not bound by his views, which is why the “look at Luther’s writings against the Jews”-argument against Protestant churches is invalid. No man can speak ex cathedra. Not Luther, not anyone.
 
Scriptural proof for Purgatory, omitting Maccabees:

1 Corinthians 3:15
and to a lesser extent, Matthew 12:32

By the way, Purgatory is an inherent concept of Judaism, and as a side note, the words Trinity and Incarnation, like Purgatory, are nowhere found in scripture, but that shouldn’t mean much, right?
10By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. 14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

This pasage is talking about dead works. That which is not built on Christ will be destroyed. Our works are as filthy rags. As we grow in Christ our dead works are burnt away and only hat is built on him shall remain. To say this is refering to purgatory is a very long stretch.
 
Hello bengal_fan, thank you for your post. You are correct and since the “Protestant” break from Catholicism, “Protestants” are still today “constantly trying to seek the truth”.

So, of the estimate 36,000 different non-Catholic Christian religions, to what 'truth" do you subscribe? Moreover, why aren’t the “truths” contained in all the other (36,000) Christian religions the same?

Protestant, “Christian Reform” is nothing more than: many different expressions of a mans desire to have God on his terms, and not on God’s terms.


*If one does not like or disagrees with the “truthes”, doctrine or rule-set of any given, non-Catholic Christian religion; start another religon. *

*That is why there exist so many non-Catholic Christian religions today. Don’t take my word for it, look-up the history of “your” religion (or beliefs), or any non-Catholic Christian religion (or beliefs) and see for yourself. *

Out of everything I posted (post # 1), all you have for me is one “sort of” disagreement.

If what you say is true, why won’t you dispute Martin Luther’s beliefs? It is because, on these issues, he is in agreement with Catholicism?

Why aren’t “Protestants” as eager to openly argue their own differences with one another, as they are with the Roman Catholic Church, or Catholics?


*Please try again, Thank you 👍 *
“Why aren’t “Protestants” as eager to openly argue their own differences with one another, as they are with the Roman Catholic Church, or Catholics”

Oh, believe me: We are. Luther himself called Zwingli a heretic, because of the latter’s unorthodox views on the Sacraments, and much of Confessio Augustana is written against the Zwinglians and "Schwärmer"s.

The reason many Protestants use much strength to “argue their differences” with the Roman church is the latter’s claim to be the ONLY true church of Christ. A view that has no basis in either the Scriptures or church fathers. Not the Roman church as it exists today. Yes, Cyprian could say “extra ecclesiam nulla salvus”, but by that he did not mean the Roman church as it exists today - because that church was not even in existence at his time.
 
Did you know that Luther adviced his own mother NOT to leave the Catholic Church because he CARED about her? It is like deep down inside Luther knew that he was a fraud. He knew that the Catholic Church and only the Catholic Church is the Ecclesia established by Jesus. He had his own little carrer to worry about but when someone he really loved got involved, he was forced to admit the truth through his actions. He knew he was wrong and he didn’t want his mother to follow him into error. He was willing to take a chance with his own soul, and the souls of million of others and over time, billions but he was not willing to allow his mother, whom Luther really loved, to take a chance with her soul.
Just two words: Documentation, please!
And not just some “I heard it at Sunday school”-theory…
 
did you know that one of the calls of the reformation was “always reforming”? that means that we don’t just take what luther says as if he’s the pope, but we are constantly trying to seek the truth.
NO!
The calls of the Reformation were:
Sola Scriptura
Sola Fide
Sola Gratia
Solus Christus
Soli Deo Gloria

Not “keep on changing!”
Luther is not the pope, no, but he rediscovered truths that the Roman church had done away with, while keeping those Roman beliefs that WERE in accordance with Scripture (although this was a gradual process, as it has been demonstrated that he still had an unnatural high evaluation of Mary in 1522) - among which were infant baptism, Communion, and confession.

The catholics inhere had a field day of that comment (yours), but it is not true.
 
We say, the Lord’s Supper is merely a memorial but accuse our Catholic brethren of being ceremonial.
I don’t.

I think the mere memorial line is Baptist, but i’m not sure because The Baptists believe he is present in their midst as they gather in his name (Which is scriptural)

Within Protestantism there is

1, Consubstatiation (Real precence within the bread and wine) (Lutheran View) (My view also.)

3, The Reformed view (so like The lutheran View you can’t tell the differance.)

2, Precence in a memorial (Baptist View)

3, Mere Memorial

4, Sacrementarianistism (Merely symbolic)

5, Symbolic Memorial

Then others believe in Transubstatiation.

See we can’t agree on that either.
We say we are more like the early Church but we are not willing to live as such. We preach directly against the Catholic and spread lies about them from our pulpits. We (Protestants) allow the layman to vote in the pastors like a popularity contest. We allow any who will to teach our Sunday Schools and even vote on that. We allow so called deacons to fire the pastor even though they are under him. We have no true government. We pick and choose how we will believe without spiritual guidance from those God ordained. We come dangerously close to worshipping the Bible after we individually decide what it means.
I think this is what Presbytarians do.
 
I’ve heard purgatory explained this way once:
  1. Are you perfect now?
  2. Will you be perfect when/if you make it to Heaven?
  3. If you answered no to question #1 and yes to question #2, what about you changed? How did you become perfect?
Catholics give a name to the “change” - purgatory.
We give a name to it too.

We call it justification by faith and salvation by grace through faith. 👍
 
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