P
PerryJ
Guest
I agree with most of your post and I shouldn’t have used the word “most” etc. That was an error on my part and I apologize. My point was as you agreed that it wasn’t perfect.The elders in my church don’t have any organizational authority over the pastor at all. The pastor is accountable directly to the entire congregation membership. It takes a full members meeting to hire or fire a pastor.
Naturally we expect the pastor to be knowledgeable of scripture, he couldn’t be a pastor otherwise. But we don’t expect him to be an expert theologian either. But yes, it is possible that many could be swayed into error by persuasive and plausible sounding arguments. Thats why there is a big emphasis amongst Baptists on a degree of personal responsibility for their acceptance or non-acceptance of a teaching. They have a responsibility to check things for themselves against the sacred texts. Blaming the teacher of a falsehood didn’t work for Adam and Eve. . .
There is some truth in what you say, but I’d disagree with the 'many errors’ and 'happens** often**", at least so far as my own congregation is concerned. I’d certainly agree its not ‘perfect’ , though.
What I said was: “Catholics don’t seem to have any practical belief in the personally indwelling Holy Spirit in each believer being capable of giving them a personal ‘nudge’ if what is being preached is bad theology” .
I wasn’t meaning to be critical in any way of the Eucharist, and my apologies if you got that meaning out of it, it certainly wasn’t what I intended… What I was trying to express was that Baptists see the indwelling Holy Spirit as an ongoing state of affairs for every true believer. And He is capable of giving each of us personal guidance and help on an ongoing basis, including enlightening our understanding of the sacred texts. So the Holy Spirit is a potential source of personal authority to the individual believer.
Somewhere along the line I’ve got the impression that Catholics seem to attach very little importance to this personal guidance so far as ‘interpretation’ of scripture is concerned. The emphasis seems to be more on ‘conscience’ and what the ‘leaders’ of the church teach. That was why I used the words ‘practical belief’ - they perhaps acknowledge that personal guidance from the Holy Spirit exists, but they don’t ‘rely’ on it, or see it as a valid form of authority thats available to the lay member. Am I right in having that view?
Talking generally about authority…
In some respects there is a ‘similarity’ with the process Catholics follow, but the important differences are:
in the Baptist case we do our best to make the source of authority ‘independent’ of ourselves and also our leaders.;
and
the lay members have a very large say in what goes on so far as running their local congregation is concerned. But that is (hopefully) always constrained by what the sacred texts say… The implied assumption is that all members are lead and guided personally - to a greater or lesser degree depending on the depth of their personal relationship with our Lord - by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Thats not seen as excluding the other sources of authority, simply an additional source.
I’ve never yet seen or heard of a Baptists members meeting that attempted to introduce some new interpretation of an already established doctrinal position. Mostly meetings deal with issues such as the appointment of pastors, church finances, whether or not the congregation should accept government funding for some projects, give financial support to (say) the World Council of Churchs etc etc
The Baptist approach is not without its problems because we are just as human as everyone else. But if a congregation goes ‘off the rails’ - and that does happen sometimes - the ‘damage’ is largely confined to just that specific congregation.
Catholic do believe in Christ impacting them on a very personal level. For church doctrine; however, we hold to the Church. We do this because we hold that man is incapable of guiding the teachings of Christ. Look at all of the Popes that have failed. Man can not guide the Church we are too stained by original sin. We believe Christ guides the Church on teachings. On a personal level it is much different. We truly believe in vision and miracles. Our faith does not hold that we need to follow personal revelations; however, this doesn’t mean we do not believe they occur. Some of the greatest miracles in this world have been via personal revelations. Read a book on visions of Mother Mary. Even if you do not believe in Catholic teaching read just one book and see how Mother Mary enters this world and impacts it. Read about some of the proofs of these vision. Visions being seen over 20 mile areas. Being seen by 70,000 people. Legitimate newspaper reporting on the phenomenon. We believe in Christ more than nudging us he comes out and hits over the head if necessary. Christ went to Mother Theresa when she was having problems getting her mission started and stated to her directly in full voice “Do you deny me?” Mother Mary pledged her life upon mortal sin that she would always follow Christ no matter where it lead. He tooks her up on it and now her missions are in hundred of countries. Christ in her early mission specifically spoke to her and guided her. Her book is wonderful. Christ is a powerful force in our daily life.