Re: Protestants: How do you determine which denomination holds the truth? 2

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tomyris
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Does he share his born again conversion experience ?
Not all, just as not all departing Catholics were not poorly catechized.

That is good . Don’t think it is true for many ex-Catholics becoming Protestant. They might say they were closed minded, proud and somewhat lost, and worldly, not truth seekers, in short, not born again.
On the one hand the bible says no one seeks after God (or His Truth) yet it says seek and ye shall find, with the understanding that *no one seeks unless he is drawn, of the Father.
If I remember correctly, he was raised in a Christian Home. He shares a lot about his pre Catholic Life, the ministries he was involved in, the seminary he attended (Gordon Conwell College)

In short there are several chapters where you could fully vet his evangelical status.

On a similar note, what about Francis Beckwith? are you familiar with him? He was president of the Evangelical Theological Society and converted to Catholicism in 2007.

francisbeckwith.com
 
Does he share his born again conversion experience ?
Not all, just as not all departing Catholics were not poorly catechized.

That is good . Don’t think it is true for many ex-Catholics becoming Protestant. They might say they were closed minded, proud and somewhat lost, and worldly, not truth seekers, in short, not born again.
On the one hand the bible says no one seeks after God (or His Truth) yet it says seek and ye shall find, with the understanding that *no one seeks unless he is drawn, of the Father.
Also, Scott Hahn on the Journey Home program may help you.

youtu.be/jKdaU0snPRY
 
If I remember correctly, he was raised in a Christian Home. He shares a lot about his pre Catholic Life, the ministries he was involved in, the seminary he attended (Gordon Conwell College)

In short there are several chapters where you could fully vet his evangelical status.

On a similar note, what about Francis Beckwith? are you familiar with him? He was president of the Evangelical Theological Society and converted to Catholicism in 2007.

francisbeckwith.com
Yes , I did hear some of his stuff but again still need to hear of conversion experience,irregardless of how raised, ministries, seminary . These can all be done without really "knowing "Him .
 
Right, there is no foreshadow of transubstantiation.
:confused:
and right after His Last Supper consecratory words Jesus said, “of the the fruit of the vine I shall no longer drink …”. But yes, thank you, understand your tradition.
Just what do you think that Christ meant by those words? And he didn’t say he would no longer drink, he said " I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Once again, I am confused as to what this has to do with anything we’re discussing.
I still find it interesting that in the eating discourse of John 6 Jesus says the flesh availeth little. Though not the primary meaning it still fits for some of us…the precision and multifaceted and economic use of Words.
Well, aren’t you clever! Obviously Catholic exegetes have missed this little tidbit over the centuries. Thanks for pointing it out. Now what are we going to do?

Stop and think about this for just a minute. Do you think Christ was saying that his flesh availeth little, the flesh offered to the Father for us on the cross? “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Now do you think that this is what he was actually speaking of, Ben? That the flesh of Jesus availeth nothing? Unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood we have no life in us. His flesh availeth plenty. Everlasting life, to be exact.
 
Honestly, I think the biggest question most Protestants have to answer is the following:

Protestantism is based on the idea that, somewhere along the line, the Catholic Church went astray. Unfortunately, different groups of Protestants differ on when this actually happened. Lutherans (as far as I can gleam from this board) tend to think that it happened sometime after the first seven ecumenical councils, but before Luther. But some Protestant denominations seem to believe that this happened much earlier - often immediately after the death of the apostles. But therein lies in the problem. If the Church went astray that early, it would mean that the Church was not guided by the Holy Spirit to determine which early Christian literature belonged in the New Testament. Yet every Christian group (and even the pseudo-Christian sects of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons) considers the Bible to be the Word of God. The problem is compounded more by many of these groups believing that the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon”. This may explain why many of these divergent sects believe that the Bible came to Earth from God Himself or that the KJV is the only version of the Bible that is divinely inspired (often thinking that Jesus spoke in 17th century English).
 
Yes , I did hear some of his stuff but again still need to hear of conversion experience,irregardless of how raised, ministries, seminary . These can all be done without really "knowing "Him .
Your splitting hairs…you should be able to see that in his testimony. Of course no testimony, not even yours, can definitively show a heart of conversion.

I suppose I get why you would put impossible hurdles before accepting something that perhaps calls into question your tradition.
 
Just that many here say transubstantiation eucharist is very biblical and understood with both old and new testament. That is, the Passover is a type of making “present”, much like your CC Eucharist, but it is just not there in OT as I see it .
Just what do you think that Christ meant by those words? And he didn’t say he would no longer drink, he said " I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Of course i did not finish the scripture but did put in … to show the verse continues.Not sure how you got I Inferred he would not drink again. My point was how He referred to what was in the cup after consecration.
Stop and think about this for just a minute. Do you think Christ was saying that his flesh availeth little, the flesh offered to the Father for us on the cross? “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Now do you think that this is what he was actually speaking of, Ben? That the flesh of Jesus availeth nothing? Unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood we have no life in us. His flesh availeth plenty. Everlasting life, to be exact.
Yes, I think Jesus may have meant that in terms of literally eating the Son of Man, like don’t go there but eat by rightly by believing in just whom this Son of Man is. The ancients did not miss this .
 
Your splitting hairs…you should be able to see that in his testimony. Of course no testimony, not even yours, can definitively show a heart of conversion.

I suppose I get why you would put impossible hurdles before accepting something that perhaps calls into question your tradition.
I know I would seem to be stubborn in splitting hairs , but still feel it is proper and right to do so, for as a man thinketh in his heart,and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. So it is very important what a man says about his conversion, apart from his works of righteousness. Agree, a testimony is not perfect or "definitive’’ but you at least have to have it as one of the starting points when discussing the Pilgrim’s path.
 
Code:
Agreed and the words "token" are used to describe the elements and "ordinance" for the ceremony.
And one must wonder “why?” These terms were coined at the Reformation, as part of stripping the Apostolic understanding of the Sacraments. They represent ideas that are such a serious departure as to be “a different gospel” than the one we received.

I should have this discussion over on the Sacramental thread, but suffice to say, a “token” is a symbol or a small part of something. It does not at all reflect the fullness of Christ present in the Eucharist, and I would say, is misleading. And that in itself is puzzling, because Lutherans claim to believe in the Real Presence.

“Ordinance” is a term pulled from (where?) Exodus, maybe? Something one does because it has been “ordered”? Does one go through motions, not recognizing the power of God is present?
Code:
There elements did not change nor become those of the original "sacrifice" except in remembrance which is to make present spiritually and mentally, emotionaly et.c
I noticed you left “physically” out of your picture. During the Passover, ,a real lamb was slain and eaten. During the Lord’s supper, He calls the bread “my body” and the wine “My Blood”. So basically you are calling Jesus a liar? Or that He mispoke Himself? Do you realize that Christians for 1500 years believed that He meant exactly what He said?

Those who rejected His words were considered heretics. So, how is it that modern Christians can reject what Jesus said, and what His disciples have always believed, by saing “the elements did not chage or become…”?
Code:
Yes, but I guess we differ on what "present' ' must mean. To me it does not require CC "transubstantiation".
No, and to Eastern Christians it does not either, but all Churches founded by the Apostles are in unity on “what present must mean”.
Code:
No offense meant, for I did say it is good to "renew our mind" if that is what we are talking about. I see that as a personal quest . But corporately  don't usually consider the Table as actual fighting  but more of  a thanksgiving for  a past battle already won.
Yes, this is consistent with the Apostolic faith, but it is a much deeper mystery than just a “token” and an “ordinance”. The Eucharist brings us physically present to the foot of the cross.
Perhaps it seems like a subtle difference but may have it’s root in some folks (CC and others) as seeing the Eucharist as a sacrifice and pray/petition for it’s reception before the Father which is more of a present or current action/battle. That is different than a present thankfullness for both a past sacrifice and past Fatherly reception.
Yes, and it may be a subtle difference, but extremely critical. The loss of the concept of the passover Lamb as a true and real sacrifice compromises many essential elements of the One Faith. It fails to capture the reality that Jesus Himself is the Lamb who was sacrificed, and that He held Himself in His own Hands at the Passover meal.

The sacrifice is not an “action/battle”, though, as Jesus has already triumphed over sin and death on the cross. The Eucharist brings us present to that event as anamnesis.
 
Code:
Right but the lamb eaten is not the same lamb eaten that eventful night. It is a token lamb, not physically connected to original.
This is not the case, benhur. The ordinances were followed exactly. No one ever claimed it was the “same lamb” that was eaten! The point is that the ordinances for the selection and preparation of the lamb are the same, and the ritual consumption of the Lamb, with the telling of the story that is meant to be remembered. Where are you getting this “physically connected to the original”? Is this the angle you are using to deny that the communion elements physically connect us to Christ?

Jesus, as our passover lamb IS the same Lamb, because He does not change.
Code:
 We also don't just remember but also participate with the tokens and I respectfully understand your further transubstantiation .
Yes, I have seen many non-catholic services, and I realize there is a physical participation, but it does not reflect what happened in the Upper Room because the whole sense of sacrifice is lost. The meaning of Jesus using the elements to indicate that His Body and Blood were being given to pay for our sins has been disconnected.
 
Honestly, I think the biggest question most Protestants have to answer is the following:

Protestantism is based on the idea that, somewhere along the line, the Catholic Church went astray. Unfortunately, different groups of Protestants differ on when this actually happened. Lutherans (as far as I can gleam from this board) tend to think that it happened sometime after the first seven ecumenical councils, but before Luther. But some Protestant denominations seem to believe that this happened much earlier - often immediately after the death of the apostles. **But therein lies in the problem. If the Church went astray that early, it would mean that the Church was not guided by the Holy Spirit to determine which early Christian literature belonged in the New Testament. ** Yet every Christian group (and even the pseudo-Christian sects of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons) considers the Bible to be the Word of God. The problem is compounded more by many of these groups believing that the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon”. This may explain why many of these divergent sects believe that the Bible came to Earth from God Himself or that the KJV is the only version of the Bible that is divinely inspired (often thinking that Jesus spoke in 17th century English).
At least for me, it isn’t the Spirit’s guidance that’s an issue. there is no doubt that the Spirit is guiding His Church - in Rome, in Antioch, in Wittenburg, etc. The issue is how well we follow that guidance, and human beings being what we are, we sometimes misunderstand. the “we” includes popes and bishops, cardinals and laity.

But regardless of that, there is no need to assume that, because Church leaders made mistakes, all of their decisions were faulty. In the early church, all the up to Trent, there were disputes regarding the canon of scripture, OT and NT. Lutheran practice regarding the use of the scriptures takes those varying views of the Fathers of the Church into account.

Jon
 
Not sure he addresses the part of the mass that I find not biblical or early church, and that is the part of the mass that prays for a Fatherly reception of our “sacrifice”…
Are you aware of the vast evidence we have that the earliest Church referred to the Mass as a “sacrifice”?

See, for instance, The Sacrifice of the Mass

The Didache says:
“Assemble on the Lord’s day, and break bread and offer the Eucharist; but first make confession of your faults, so that your sacrifice may be a pure one. Anyone who has a difference with his fellow is not to take part with you until he has been reconciled, so as to avoid any profanation of your sacrifice [Matt. 5:23–24]. For this is the offering of which the Lord has said, ‘Everywhere and always bring me a sacrifice that is undefiled, for I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is the wonder of nations’ [Mal. 1:11, 14]” (Didache 14 [A.D. 70])

The Mass is a fulfillment of Mal 1:11-14 as indicated by the Church (written even before the NT was completed).
Thus, Protestant early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly writes that in the early Church "the Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice. . . . Malachi’s prediction (1:10–11) that the Lord would reject Jewish sacrifices and instead would have “a pure offering” made to him by the Gentiles in every place was seized upon by Christians as a prophecy of the Eucharist. TheDidache indeed actually applies the term thusia, or sacrifice, to the Eucharist. . . .

Read Malachi closely. It is a prediction of the future, since at the time he wrote it God’s name was not “great among the gentiles.” It tells of a “pure sacrifice” being offered round-the-clock. How many “pure sacrifices” have there been through all of history? One.
 
I’m not Protestant but I was a protestor nonetheless.

I was born a cradle Catholic into an observant family that is Catholic generations back. I grew up in a very Catholic culture.

In the 70’s when my faith was (de)formed, the demise of religious culture began in earnest. I protested Catholicism in knee-jerk fashion because the new religion had become dissent. Dissension rebels against anything that is well-established, including reality itself.
Nothing in Catholicism could be proved to me, so it was easy to ignore it. In fact there was no objective reality for me, and that proved to me that I am my own God, maker of my own religion. I would not have explicitly declared this, but my life was a self absorbed vacuum.

To make a very long story short, through conversion I began to find the missing pieces of life. I began to accept a path, a way to peace, love, joy. I began to appreciate truth as something worth searching for, that it exists. This search centers around a life, the life of Christ. It’s not just an intellectual search and theoretical pursuit, faith became an encounter with a person who really and substantially lives, Jesus Christ. Transformation is real and personal. (By personal I don’t mean exclusive to “a person”, but personal in the sense that a relationship between persons is at work.)

So after years of cynically discarding anything that didn’t meet my burden of proof, I began to accept how much Christ loves his people and wants us to be united. That requires me to accept the gifts he gives to all of us. My response needs to be gratitude for my own gifts and those of others.

One of these gifts is authority, given in his name. If I reject the charism of authority, I reject Christ. Christ really and truly walked the earth and shared his ministry. He still lives and shares himself through his Church. He is real. He is not divided. He is one. He is dependable. He is trustworthy. His guidance is good. His Church is his body, intimately connected to him.
 
Thank you for sharing your story! I know many will get a lot out of it!
 
And one must wonder “why?” These terms were coined at the Reformation, as part of stripping the Apostolic understanding of the Sacraments.
If so, it would have been by the Anabaptists, at least as a primary way of talking about them. The mainstream Reformers used the word “sacrament.” I believe that “ordinance” became popular in relatively modern times, with the explosion of Baptists and Baptist-related forms of Protestantism.

Edwin
 
Code:
That is, the Passover is a type of making "present", much like your CC Eucharist, but it is just not there in OT as I see it .
I think this lack of understanding of the nature and meaning of the Eucharist is a reflection of a deficient understanding of Passover. Unfortunately it is very common among most Christians who have little background in Judaism. As Jesus noted;

"You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews". John 4:22–23

Without an understanding of the Jewish Passover, much of the nature of the Eucharist is lost.
. My point was how He referred to what was in the cup after consecration.
20 And likewise the cup after supper, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Luke 22:20–21

To which cup are you referring?
Yes, I think Jesus may have meant that in terms of literally eating the Son of Man, like don’t go there but eat by rightly by believing in just whom this Son of Man is. The ancients did not miss this .
Yes, we certainly inculcate Christ by “eating” His Word, but the ancients also did not miss that Jesus was speaking literally of His own Body and Blood that He shed on the cross for us. This is why the Church believed nothing else until the Reformation 1500 years after the Apostles. At that point, people returned to the early heresies that were defeated by the Church, that the Eucharist was not “really” His Body and Blood.

How do you set aside the witness of the Church from the first century to 1500? Why didnt Jesus correct them, if they got it wrong?
 
I know I would seem to be stubborn in splitting hairs , but still feel it is proper and right to do so, for as a man thinketh in his heart,and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. So it is very important what a man says about his conversion, apart from his works of righteousness. Agree, a testimony is not perfect or "definitive’’ but you at least have to have it as one of the starting points when discussing the Pilgrim’s path.
Very well. Please let us know how you have judged the man’s heart.

Perhaps if you can discount his conversion story, it will make you more comfortable discounting his message. 👍
 
I think this lack of understanding of the nature and meaning of the Eucharist is a reflection of a deficient understanding of Passover. Unfortunately it is very common among most Christians who have little background in Judaism. As Jesus noted;

"You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews". John 4:22–23

Without an understanding of the Jewish Passover, much of the nature of the Eucharist is lost.

20 And likewise the cup after supper, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Luke 22:20–21

To which cup are you referring?

Yes, we certainly inculcate Christ by “eating” His Word, but the ancients also did not miss that Jesus was speaking literally of His own Body and Blood that He shed on the cross for us. This is why the Church believed nothing else until the Reformation 1500 years after the Apostles. At that point, people returned to the early heresies that were defeated by the Church, that the Eucharist was not “really” His Body and Blood.

How do you set aside the witness of the Church from the first century to 1500? Why didnt Jesus correct them, if they got it wrong?
Honestly, without an understanding of pre-Christian Judaism, Christianity doesn’t really make much sense. That’s actually the main reason why the Church decided to keep the Hebrew Scriptures as part of the canon in the first place. The apostles, especially Paul and John, referred constantly to the Old Testament writings to prove the messiahship of Jesus. Matthew considered the Torah to be so important that part of his depiction of Jesus (to the Jewish people) was as the giver of the “new law” - he has Jesus give five long discourses, one for each book of the Torah.

As I stated before, Passover, of course, was (and is) the Jewish feast of remembering their escape from slavery in Egypt. The bread is to be unleavened, as the Jews did not have time to let the bread leaven, as they were in flight. It also is reminisent of the manna given by God while the Jews wandered in the desert. When Jesus proclaimed the bread to be His Body (thus making it so), and the wine His Blood (thus also making it so), He was declaring a new meaning to Passover - that instead celebrating the escape from slavery to other people, it would celebrate escaping slavery to sin.

As the blood of the unblemished lamb was painted on the doorposts and lintels of the Jews to escape divine punishment, the blood of Jesus, the true unblemished sacrifice, could be painted on the doorposts and lintels of our hearts to escape eternal punishment through baptism. But the lamb also had to be eaten. In fact, every sacrifice (except holocausts) had to be partially eaten by the priests offering up the sacrifice, and also by the person offering the sacrifice to the priest. As such, Jesus had to give us a way to partake in the sacrifice He was offering - to be able to eat Him. As such, instead of merely giving bread to sustain us physically while in a harsh environment, God would actually become edible under the accidents of bread and wine to sustain us spiritually in a world that does not accept Him.

It is sung in the Exultet of Easter Vigil that Jesus rose from the dead on the exact anniversary of the crossing of the Red Sea, which in turn occured on the anniversary of the Fall.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top