Stumbling Block for Protestants?

[Per_Crucem]

Episcopal in Lutheran doesn’t always mean that a Bishop ordained a successor. Although there were Bishops that supported the reformation, none of them in recorded history ordinated any successors. Are there records?

Yes.

 

[EvangelCatholic]

My point is that there is a missing gap that you haven’t put much thought in to as to how you go from the resurrection to the Bible.

Honestly, the only logical reason to listen to the Apostles is because they were known to be the the disciples of of Christ the rabbi which at that point in time would have been known (though not to us).

In the same way you listened to them, it is also reasonable to listen to their successors and so forth. There is no point saying you do not agree with them on some particular doctrine unless the successors themselves rule that the doctrine is error (or after they have ruled it to be free of error).

Maybe you could read Apostolic Succession/ Episcopacy and Lutheranism; try google.

 

[Per_Crucem]

If your plum line for truth is Scripture and Scripture has multiple possible interpretations, how do you decide if you are right?

So what exactly do you mean? You just “KNOW” its true?

The same way you do. You look at the evidence and attempt, as best as you are able, to conclude a position that you can hold to. In other words, you believe you’re right. Simply claiming that you have the support of an infallible institution to back up your beliefs really doesn’t put you in any better position, epistemologically. Ultimately, you are still making a private judgment, based on evidence, that the institution is infallible.

 

[JOHNHUS1966]

i think it depends on who you are asking first off you must admit the catholic church did a number on many of my fellow protetstants over the centuries that resentment and mistrust is found i myself i am lutheran missouri synod member and we believe our faith to be very catholic in many ways first off we believe in the real presences of christ in the commuion bread and wine also we believe that mary was a ever virgin also our pastors wear the clerical garb and we do not believe in a private interpetation of scriptures we do not hold to purgatory or selling of indullgences or that the pope has supremacy or infalibilty or that mary was born immaculaty by st ann we do hold to solo scriptura and sola fides and we do believe in assurance of salvation but we do believe you can lose your salvation we reject calvinism and pietics and rationalism and chrismatic and speaking in tongues and other espressions of protestant worship and doctrines we reject as unbiblicalof

 

[Honorius]

This is very Catholic.

Fair enough. But how do you know? Who decides?

Yes. That would be helpful.

And please note: you cannot use the criterion “it teaches something that’s contrary to the Bible, therefore it doesn’t belong in the Bible”…

because, of course, that is circular reasoning.

You need to have some other criterion for how to know what to exclude or include in the Bible.

I would assume you are talking about the fact that I cannot know whether these are 100% correct or not.There are many ways in which that these things could be wrong. Texts get corrupted, parts get left out, and some things are lost forever. It is impossible for us humans to get inside the mind of God, but is this really something that a loving God would do? After all as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

According to this verse we should understand that the Bible as available to us today is complete enough for us to be equipped for every good work. As for the Bible, I would say that would fall under the issue of what should and should not be in the canon of the Bible. I have said I am not an expert and am not able to effectively discuss the issue. (On a side note I think I will look into the issue).

And now for the fun part. A whole comprehensive list would take some time to type up, so I will have to be content with only a few examples to get started.

1. Sirach 3:3 states that “Those who honor their father atone for sins” While I there does not seem to be any problem from the verses before or after this, this verse appears to be saying that instead of begging God for forgiveness, I can simply do some good works and my sins will go away.
2. Another verse with a similar message is Sirach 3:30. It states “As water quenches a flaming fire, so almsgiving atones for sins.”
3. Tobit 8:2-3 seems to advocate magic/sorcery by the Angel Raphael telling Tobit to burn a fish liver and heart to drive away demons

These should be enough to start a good discussion. I will post some more tomorrow hopefully. :compcoff:

 

[Isaiah45_9]

I would assume you are talking about the fact that I cannot know whether these are 100% correct or not.There are many ways in which that these things could be wrong. Texts get corrupted, parts get left out, and some things are lost forever. It is impossible for us humans to get inside the mind of God, but is this really something that a loving God would do? After all as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Paul was talking about the Scriptures they had at the time, IOH - The Old Testament. And which Old Testament? Since about 70% of the quotes in the New Testament come from the Septuagint. In which case, not including the Deuterocanonical books would mean to take away some of the usefulness (Not self-sufficient, nor all encompassing) to teach, to refute, to correct, and righteousness training. Which would make these students, incompetent and ill-equipped for every good work.

Unless you can show how Paul included the 27 books of the New Testament when he wrote this?

There is another passage where God breathes in the New Testament:

John 20:19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

In this case, God gives the authority to forgive sins to the Apostles.

 

[chero23]

I would assume you are talking about the fact that I cannot know whether these are 100% correct or not.There are many ways in which that these things could be wrong. Texts get corrupted, parts get left out, and some things are lost forever. It is impossible for us humans to get inside the mind of God, but is this really something that a loving God would do? After all as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

According to this verse we should understand that the Bible as available to us today is complete enough for us to be equipped for every good work. As for the Bible, I would say that would fall under the issue of what should and should not be in the canon of the Bible. I have said I am not an expert and am not able to effectively discuss the issue. (On a side note I think I will look into the issue).

And now for the fun part. A whole comprehensive list would take some time to type up, so I will have to be content with only a few examples to get started.

1. Sirach 3:3 states that “Those who honor their father atone for sins” While I there does not seem to be any problem from the verses before or after this, this verse appears to be saying that instead of begging God for forgiveness, I can simply do some good works and my sins will go away.
2. Another verse with a similar message is Sirach 3:30. It states “As water quenches a flaming fire, so almsgiving atones for sins.”
3. Tobit 8:2-3 seems to advocate magic/sorcery by the Angel Raphael telling Tobit to burn a fish liver and heart to drive away demons

These should be enough to start a good discussion. I will post some more tomorrow hopefully. :compcoff:

It’s surprising to see a Protestant quote verses from the deurocannonical books. But if you look in acts, and in James 5:16, it says that one should confess their to one another. It never says go straight to God. In James we also see that if a person is sick, he should call the elders and they shall place oil on the person and if they have sins they will be forgiven. Once again in order to have this happened we must have a Church, it never said go straight to God.

 

[Contarini]

This is largely untrue. It wasn’t until the LCMS and WELS that Lutherans did not have an episcopal church governance.

Actually, I think it’s the other way round. The EKD (the German/Reformed umbrella church in Germany) does have bishops now (though they don’t have apostolic succession), but I think that’s a pretty recent development. Certainly none of the German bishops in the Reformation era became Protestants (while keeping their sees–Hermann von Wied came pretty close to Protestantism, and he was kicked out of his see).

Scandinavian Lutheranism has always had bishops, though I think that only in Sweden (and areas once under Swedish rule, like Finland) are they in succession from the pre-Reformation bishops.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Hasn’t it been declared even recently by John Paul II with respect to their Holy Orders being null?

EDIT: Yes, that was “Ad Tuendam Fidem”. Well we have that and the one by Pope Leo XIII. So I am not sure there is going to be a change.

EDIT2: It seems the matter is actually settled.

“With regard to those truths connected to revelation by historical necessity and which are to be held definitively, but are not able to be declared as divinely revealed, the following examples can be given: the legitimacy of the election of the Supreme Pontiff or of the celebration of an ecumenical council, the canonizations of saints (dogmatic facts), the declaration of Pope Leo XIII in the Apostolic Letter Apostolicae Curae on the invalidity of Anglican ordinations …37”

Full document here

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFADTU.HTM

The question for me, as a person desirous of full union with the Catholic Church and who does not wish to deny any truth proclaimed by that Church, is whether this note issuing from the Curia is itself of infallible authority. It would seem not–the “infinite regress” interpretation problem again.

However, I recognize that whether it’s infallible or not, it issues from the Magisterium and should be respected. And at any rate I have a lot more problem with women’s ordination and with the claim that canonizations are infallible than with the Anglican orders issue, at least in principle (practically, the Anglican orders issue and women’s ordination are the big difficulties, since my wife is Episcopalian and a postulant for Holy Orders). Clearly there was a doctrinal break at the Reformation, and I don’t find it overly hard to believe that this produced a break in apostolic succession. I know that many Anglican bishops, including my own bishop, act in an apostolic manner, feeding the Lord’s flock. And I know that I have encountered Christ in the Anglican Eucharist. But both these things are possible, I think, without Anglicans having apostolic succession. God’s grace obviously works outside the visible bounds of sacramental validity. There are Baptist pastors who also feed the flock well, and I first came to believe in the Real Presence through receiving communion in Plymouth Brethren assemblies in Romania (though in my more cynical moments I wonder if the fact that they used real wine had something to do with it . . . )

Anyway, all I was saying was that for those who do not already accept the authority of Rome, and specifically the version of magisterial authority propounded by the CDF in 1998, the matter is far from certain.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Hmm. Very interesting.

But to raise one concern, it is that none of the things you mention can be used together with some rule we are familiar with respect to attaining knowledge to conclude that we must therefore believe in it, right?

If I understand what you are saying, then you’re right–that is the key difference between “hard rationaism” and “soft rationalism.” Soft rationalism works cumulatively. In my opinion this is actually how most people make decisions most of the time. “Hard rationalism” isolates certain factors in order to try to establish a more solid, unquestionable foundation. Sometimes, for specific issues or given specific premises, that’s the right approach. Sometimes we need to talk about whether conclusion Y really follows from premise X, in isolation from other factors. But when discussing basic, fundamental beliefs, hard rationalism collapses. It seems to me that everyone who espouses hard rationalism is most likely being unwittingly disingenuous when they describe why they believe what they do. The language of hard rationalism simply can’t describe how real human beings actually make important decisions about the nature of the universe and the purpose of their own lives.

Explanatory scope of Christianity is also not that great because of most of the valuable truths it claims to explain are beyond direct verification.

But there are plenty that are. For instance, we all do things that our conscience tells us are wrong. An adequate explanation needs to account for

1. The fact that we have an intuition of wrongness
2. The fact that we often do wrong things anyway
3. The fact that we have a strong secondary intuition that our conscience (the intuition that something is right or wrong) is the most important among the various impulses that drive us, rightly regulating the others.

Atheism does not, in my opinion, adequately explain these things. It can explain them, but the explanations leave me scratching my head as to why, in their wake, atheists still think it so important to follow their consciences (point 3). If the conscience, like everything else, is a survival mechanism, why not ignore it in circumstances where it doesn’t help us survive and transmit our genes?

I’m not sure this works as a formal argument by the canons of hard rationalism. Certainly the non-believers to whom I’ve made the argument have not been impressed–they simply see no need for the level of “meta-explanation” provided by theism. But the fact that Christian faith does have an account of why conscience is so important, and of why we go against it, and of how we can be healed of the habit of going against it, is a strong point in its favor. (The fact that the healing seems to work only very imperfectly, as well as the intellectual difficulty of why God allowed matters to get into such an unsatisfactory state in the first place, are two of the strongest points against Christianity, of course.)

In short, I’m talking about the way Christian faith (and other faiths, for that matter–the explanatory value of Buddhism is also very high) explains the observable facts of human experience.

The beauty exists but we know that beauty can be skin deep sometimes.

I reject that premise. Beauty may be skin deep in the sense that a beautiful person may not be virtuous, but that is because the person’s physical beauty is reflecting the beauty of God rather than the person’s own beauty of character. I deny the claim that beauty ever exists without pointing beyond itself. If I didn’t deny that claim, I would probably not be a theist.

I was also not sure how you would know through experience that God is triune. Could you elaborate a bit more on that point.

Obviously not directly, and I didn’t say that I knew any of this with anything approaching certainty through experience alone. I am simply saying that experience is one of the facts to be explained. In the case of the Trinity, experience plays a role in that we encounter the Son and the Spirit acting in our lives. But of course we name it that way because Christian tradition teaches us to–so as you pointed out earlier, this doesn’t work on its own.

 

[Contarini]

Another question I would like to ask is, if you were an agnostic seeking for the truth, how would you arrive at Christianity as you know it? Here I do not mean how you come to know all the truths of Christianity are true. That is impossible because you cannot know most of the truths. That is why you have faith. But what I am asking is how do you verify enough truths of Christianity using reason/history to arrive at the conclusion that the truths you hold today are reasonable to accept as true and part of the package known as Christianity?

This is a really good question, and it’s actually one of the factors that make it impossible for me to remain a non-Catholic Christian in good conscience. I am, if anything, more certain of the proposition “if Christianity is true, Catholicism is true” than I am of the proposition “Christianity is true.” The more initial assumptions one grants, the surer the following conclusions. So it’s often crossed my mind that if I were an agnostic considering Christianity, and acting as hesitantly (given the evidence presented to me) as I’ve done with regard to Catholicism, I would never become Christian.

The basic problem with answering your question is that I can’t put myself into circumstances radically other than my own. I can’t say what I would think if I were not brought up as a Christian. My very doubts about my faith are the doubts of someone who has tried since earliest memory to live as a Christian, to love God and neighbor, to believe in the Bible, etc. I can, however, look at other people who have become Christians. For instance, Bernard Nathanson seems to have become convinced that abortion was wrong on purely secular grounds, but this conviction eventually led him to Catholicism (this is the kind of thing I was talking about above when I spoke of explanatory power). Lewis (who admittedly was brought up Christian but then abandoned the Faith) was led back to Christianity by, among other things, his love of mythology, his experience trying to follow his conscience, his prior conversion to a form of Neo-Platonism, and the fact that he generally liked theistic books better than atheistic ones. (Lewis’s conversion story is, in my opinion, the classic case of an attempt to make a soft-rationalist process sound like something that fits hard rationalist criteria.) Conscience and Neo-Platonism were also important factors for St. Augustine, as of course was the influence of his mother. Dorothy Day experienced overwhelming gratitude at the birth of her daughter, and felt the need of someone to Whom she could offer that gratitude. A. N. Wilson returned to the faith because he found it hard to believe that Richard Dawkins had a more profound understanding of the universe than Bach (well, that’s my paraphrase–he might not put it that way).

I can read all of these accounts of folks who converted or reverted to Christian faith and say, “Yes, these are all factors that play a role for me too.” That’s as far as I can go, I think.

Edwin

 

[JonNC]

This is largely untrue. It wasn’t until the LCMS and WELS that Lutherans did not have an episcopal church governance.

Even in the old LCA, the episcopal structure wasn’t particularly strong, as I remember, though certainly not so congregational as the LCMS.

Jon

 

[Stilldreamn]

Why do more Protestants not convert to the Church? Is the Sacrament of Penance (confession) a stumbling block to conversion? We see many Catholics no longer going to confession, and many others converting to Protestantism. Blaise Pascal several hundred years ago commented that he believed Confession was indeed a stumbling block to Protestant conversion.

Your thoughts?

I’m pretty close - but God seems to be using me effectively in my service to my Lutheran congregation as well as my volunteer service in our neighboring Catholic parish. Every morning I pray that He fill my hands with the things He has for me to do, and He does It seems my job now, is to be a bridge. I am confident that when Christ calls me home, we will truly be one, and see that in Him, we have been together all along.

 

[Per_Crucem]

Actually, I think it’s the other way round. The EKD (the German/Reformed umbrella church in Germany) does have bishops now (though they don’t have apostolic succession), but I think that’s a pretty recent development. Certainly none of the German bishops in the Reformation era became Protestants (while keeping their sees–Hermann von Wied came pretty close to Protestantism, and he was kicked out of his see).

Scandinavian Lutheranism has always had bishops, though I think that only in Sweden (and areas once under Swedish rule, like Finland) are they in succession from the pre-Reformation bishops.

Edwin

You’re correct, none of the German bishops did. The Scandinavians did. However, even if none of the Catholic bishops in Germany did, they still had their own episcopal structure.

 

[Jaberwocky]

If I understand what you are saying, then you’re right–that is the key difference between “hard rationaism” and “soft rationalism.” Soft rationalism works cumulatively. In my opinion this is actually how most people make decisions most of the time. “Hard rationalism” isolates certain factors in order to try to establish a more solid, unquestionable foundation. Sometimes, for specific issues or given specific premises, that’s the right approach. Sometimes we need to talk about whether conclusion Y really follows from premise X, in isolation from other factors. But when discussing basic, fundamental beliefs, hard rationalism collapses. It seems to me that everyone who espouses hard rationalism is most likely being unwittingly disingenuous when they describe why they believe what they do. The language of hard rationalism simply can’t describe how real human beings actually make important decisions about the nature of the universe and the purpose of their own lives.

But there are plenty that are. For instance, we all do things that our conscience tells us are wrong. An adequate explanation needs to account for

1. The fact that we have an intuition of wrongness
2. The fact that we often do wrong things anyway
3. The fact that we have a strong secondary intuition that our conscience (the intuition that something is right or wrong) is the most important among the various impulses that drive us, rightly regulating the others.

Atheism does not, in my opinion, adequately explain these things. It can explain them, but the explanations leave me scratching my head as to why, in their wake, atheists still think it so important to follow their consciences (point 3). If the conscience, like everything else, is a survival mechanism, why not ignore it in circumstances where it doesn’t help us survive and transmit our genes?

I’m not sure this works as a formal argument by the canons of hard rationalism. Certainly the non-believers to whom I’ve made the argument have not been impressed–they simply see no need for the level of “meta-explanation” provided by theism. But the fact that Christian faith does have an account of why conscience is so important, and of why we go against it, and of how we can be healed of the habit of going against it, is a strong point in its favor. (The fact that the healing seems to work only very imperfectly, as well as the intellectual difficulty of why God allowed matters to get into such an unsatisfactory state in the first place, are two of the strongest points against Christianity, of course.)

In short, I’m talking about the way Christian faith (and other faiths, for that matter–the explanatory value of Buddhism is also very high) explains the observable facts of human experience.

I reject that premise. Beauty may be skin deep in the sense that a beautiful person may not be virtuous, but that is because the person’s physical beauty is reflecting the beauty of God rather than the person’s own beauty of character. I deny the claim that beauty ever exists without pointing beyond itself. If I didn’t deny that claim, I would probably not be a theist.

Obviously not directly, and I didn’t say that I knew any of this with anything approaching certainty through experience alone. I am simply saying that experience is one of the facts to be explained. In the case of the Trinity, experience plays a role in that we encounter the Son and the Spirit acting in our lives. But of course we name it that way because Christian tradition teaches us to–so as you pointed out earlier, this doesn’t work on its own.

I did read this part of your reply several times but there is still a problem here.

What experiential based rule suggests that given the observations you have made above, it is then reasonable to accept Christianity? Nothing you have said suggests that we have to accept Christianity, yes?

 

[Jaberwocky]

The question for me, as a person desirous of full union with the Catholic Church and who does not wish to deny any truth proclaimed by that Church, is whether this note issuing from the Curia is itself of infallible authority. It would seem not–the “infinite regress” interpretation problem again.

However, I recognize that whether it’s infallible or not, it issues from the Magisterium and should be respected. And at any rate I have a lot more problem with women’s ordination and with the claim that canonizations are infallible than with the Anglican orders issue, at least in principle (practically, the Anglican orders issue and women’s ordination are the big difficulties, since my wife is Episcopalian and a postulant for Holy Orders). Clearly there was a doctrinal break at the Reformation, and I don’t find it overly hard to believe that this produced a break in apostolic succession. I know that many Anglican bishops, including my own bishop, act in an apostolic manner, feeding the Lord’s flock. And I know that I have encountered Christ in the Anglican Eucharist. But both these things are possible, I think, without Anglicans having apostolic succession. God’s grace obviously works outside the visible bounds of sacramental validity. There are Baptist pastors who also feed the flock well, and I first came to believe in the Real Presence through receiving communion in Plymouth Brethren assemblies in Romania (though in my more cynical moments I wonder if the fact that they used real wine had something to do with it . . . )

Anyway, all I was saying was that for those who do not already accept the authority of Rome, and specifically the version of magisterial authority propounded by the CDF in 1998, the matter is far from certain.

Edwin

I think the issue may be with respect to how you understand infallibility. All definitively defined matters (doctrine) are infallible. Dogma simply means that they are directly from Divine revelation.

When the CDF pronounces that something is definitively defined, then at that point it is infallible doctrine of the Church. It cannot be disputed or changed later.

But of course from the point of view of someone who has not accepted Rome, then the matter is really anyone’s guess.

 

[EvangelCatholic]

You’re correct, none of the German bishops did. The Scandinavians did. However, even if none of the Catholic bishops in Germany did, they still had their own episcopal structure.

All of this is a moot issue since both Provoo and the full communion of Lutherans and Anglicans/ Episcopalians in north America. Both are now under episcopacy and apostolic succession.

 

[GKC]

All of this is a moot issue since both Provoo and the full communion of Lutherans and Anglicans/ Episcopalians in north America. Both are now under episcopacy and apostolic succession.

I’m an Anglican, and one with more than a passing interest in the AS/ *Apostolicae Curae *subject. As I may have demonstrated.

But I am not sure I follow your logic here. Are you contending that the Lutherans brought AS to the Anglicans?

GKC

 

[Jaberwocky]

All of this is a moot issue since both Provoo and the full communion of Lutherans and Anglicans/ Episcopalians in north America. Both are now under episcopacy and apostolic succession.

Here is a question, who gets to define the office and nature of Apostolic Succession? In other words, when it ceases, when it is validly transmitted and so forth? Is it you and I or a subset of successors that broke away from what was considered mainstream teaching by almost all successors at one point?

 

[EvangelCatholic]

I’m an Anglican, and one with more than a passing interest in the AS/ *Apostolicae Curae *subject. As I may have demonstrated.

But I am not sure I follow your logic here. Are you contending that the Lutherans brought AS to the Anglicans?

GKC

Here’s an explanation via Provoo as a brief summary of the historic episcopate and apostolic succession. You can study the document’s more thorough position porvoochurches.org/whatis/resources-0201-english.php

Chapter IV deals with the question of the historic episcopate. The situation in the churches involved are different. The Baltic Churches have not always had bishops, but they now not only have bishops, but bishops who stand in the historic succession of the laying on of hands. The churches of Sweden and Finland, like the Anglican churches, have inherited that historic succession. And in Denmark, Norway and Iceland the churches have preserved the continuity in the episcopal office, but at the time of the Reformation did so by an occasion priestly or presbyteral ordination.

The Porvoo Common Statement, para. 52, argues that apostolic succession in the Church is like a rope of several strands. If one strand, such as the personal tactile succession, is broken, other strands, such as for example, the continuity of historic sees, can hold it. According to this understanding, as para. 53 points out, ‘the mutual acknowledgement of churches and ministries is theologically prior to the use of the sign’, and its resumption ’ does not imply an adverse judgement on the ministries of those churches 'which previously did not use it. This has freed churches such as the Church of Norway to embrace the sign, without denying their past apostolic continuity, as para. 52 says.

This clears the way for the Porvoo Declaration in para. 58. Which, as it now has been approved by the greater part of the churches, has established a communion of episcopal, historic national or folk churches, stretching across Northern Europe from Greenland to the Baltic States. This involves commitments para. 58 b. affecting all the members of the signatory churches, as well as ministers and church leaders.