Well, I don’t see QEII issuing the invitations. But if the Pope and the Eastern Patriarchs got together to issue the invites, wouldn’t the Oriental Orthodox and the Anglicans and the Lutherans RSVP “We’ll be there”? And would that be enough or would you require everyone else to turn up for it to be ecumenical, to the uttermost ends of what could possibly be called Christian?
No, not at all.
While in Luther’s personal view, it is Gospel that makes for apostolic writing, this is not the only thing involved, by any stretch of the imagination. The issue of authorship, and the views of the ancient Church and ECF’s are just as important.
I also read that Luther got more out of St. Paul’s epistles which advised on teaching, than the four Gospels, which only dealt with the life of Jesus.
Amen!
Sacred Tradition is the Word of God that was the oral teaching of the Apostles that was not contained only in the Scriptures.
Those are “customs”.
That is a very powerful claim of Jesus: to advise people to come to the Father only by Him. Think of the power he could exert by that simple statement. No wonder the Sanhedrin and the Romans put a stop to this preaching. It was blatantly subversive.
I agree with the earlier poster who distinguished “traditions” (customs) from Sacred Tradition. It’s a 3 legged stool, Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the living Magisterium. Even those who don’t recognize a Magisterium rely on it. They accept that some human authority could open a canon of a New Testament. Having a New Testament sounds obvious now, but in ancient times many devout Christians opposed it. It was controversial.
It seems to me that if you only use the plain text or sense in Scripture than you are missing he deeper sense God has for us. What Scripture say and what Scripture means are most often two very different things. it is not all that easy to understand everything in Scripture and that is why the Catholic Church is so very protective of Scripture and what it says.Again, FKB, you are attempting to reconcile something through the lens of the belief in papal infallibility instead of relying on the plain text in the original Greek, esp. the verb tenses and what logically flows from that. That is what most people do when trying to defend a point. The logical problem has been explained repeatedly in this thread already, some can see it and some can’t. It’s not a matter of IQ but rather one of perspective. and this is where it breaks down into; you see it from the Catholic perspective and I see it from a protestant perspective (and in this case an Orthodox perspective as well).
I’ll pray that all involved can see it as it is, and not through our biases.
Grace and peace to you,
K
We do have THE pillar and bulwark of truth: The Church. It is for this reason we came to know what Scriptures are - it was given to us through the Church!
Jon, didn’t you see the list of 50 important doctrines that Luther challenged or refuted, before he was excommunicated? Maybe the problem here is the words “revolt” and “rebellion”. Maybe those are not ‘positive’ enough, but I assure you, that they fit extremely well with the facts and in fact are mild compared to what Luther actually did.
Again, this ignores the facts. There is no argument that both sides were at fault. Luther was 100% right and 100% within his rights to chastise the Church for it’s errors in regards to practices. While that is where Luther started out, rebuking abuses of practices, it does not logically follow that those rebukes would then turn to challenging so much doctrinally. Where is the connection? The connection was that Luther HAD to ‘find’ Salvation by Faith Alone and then, believe it, and in order to do that he had to cast aside the authority of the Church.
Seriously – Rome is one of the fractures? Does your position require that kind of interpretation of history? So when Luther and the Church became separated, the Church was one of the fractures and Luther was the other? Is that your position?
My point is that in 1000 years the EOC has fractured into only 17 separate doctrinally independent factions because it took “more truth” from the Church than did Protestantism, which has fractured into an uncountable number in half the time, because it took far LESS Truth from the Church when it left. It is the Truth that resides within the Church, among other things, which protects it from division.
I that this is extremely misleading. Can you imagine Luther attending Trent, agreeing beforehand to abide by the decisions made there? As early as 1519 he was claiming that neither Councils nor Popes were infallible, so to Luther, or for that matter, of what use would it be to attend a Council? Of course, Luther saw no value in attending an Ecumenical Council. Of course, when it suited his purposes to call for a council, he did, but when the Council was actually eminent, he opposed attendance. Your response though does point to the lack of a coherent Lutheran understanding of which Councils should be followed and which ones should not. You can’t complain about Trent not being ‘Ecumenical’ for two reasons. Luther did not want to attend and he didn’t believe that they were infallible. If they weren’t infallible, then he wouldn’t have to follow their decisions if he didn’t like them. So Jon, you can’t have it both ways.
You can’t seriously want to discuss egos. If you do, then post whatever you have about Catholic egos and then see what happens. As for a ‘truly ecumenical council’, are you suggesting that Luther should have been allowed to attend an Ecumenical Council after he had called the pope the anti-christ (which you also do), and after he had written such disgusting, and crude works, just the titles of which prove how much he hated the Church?
That is not what Luther thought. He did not have faith in Ecumenical Councils and I would suggest that the Lutheran acceptance of the just the first 7 councils is arbitrary and subjective.
I agree, I found it extremely ‘unhelpful’ when you used the term ‘anti-Christ’ in regards to the papacy after you admonished me for being critical of Luther. In fact, I would say that it ‘altered’ the tone of our dialogue.
OK, so you say that you think an Ecumenical Council is a good idea and that you would follow the decisions of such a council. Now though, we get down to the details and the specifics, which are never a strong suit for Protestants. The question now is how to apportion the votes. Again, say that there are 100 votes and let’s say that the only way to achieve a final decision is to have the majority rule, after praying to the Holy Spirit to provide guidance such that a “Holy Decision” is reached. So Jon, how many votes should go to each of the various factions? A numerical answer is necessary of course.
It also breaks down when certain groups refuse to attend the Council because they have no intention of following the decisions of that Council.
Perhaps you didn’t see the intention of the 95 Theses.
Not what I responded to. You said: *Now you can say that ‘we all have that sin to confess’, but that does not apply to those who are still in communion with the Church. It might apply to the EOC, but it does not apply to Roman Catholics. *
Goodness no. Go back 500 years.
If, as some say, the Catholic church in communion with the Bishop of Rome is the one true Church, then very single division, every single schism is a fracture and division of the Catholic Church. OTOH, to say that protestantism has fractured makes no sense, because there is no such entity, never has been, of the Protestant Church. Something that never was a single monolith can be said to have divided.
Um, we weren’t discussing what Luther would do, or would have done regarding a council. Had he lived to see Trent, I suspect he might have considered it unsafe to attend.
Trent not being ecumenical has nothing to do with Luther, or the Reformers attending or not attending. The determining factor in the undivided Church that makes a council ecumenical can’t be attained today because of the Schism.
And I would add that this fracturing and splintering into over tens of thousands of differing Christian denominations has occurred in just 500 years.
Thanks for your thoughts and I agree with you on that score. This idea of SBFA really does not make any real sense. it seems to me that if it were true and Luther is correct in his thinking why did not the Catholic Church; the ECF and other theologians see this and proclaim it in their writings? IOW’s How is it that Luther saw it but no one else in the Catholic Church or any of the great many Catholic theologians since the beginning of the Catholic Church or why did not the Apostles teach this or Jesus Himself. it stands to reason tha it was not is because it does not hold water and is false teaching and doctrine.
