The essentials

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mozart-250

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So there was this thread a couple days ago about the CARM forums so for grins and giggles I decided to check it out. I even registered, but how much posting I actually do depends on how intelligent the place is (I despise stupidity).

So I observed that the “Roman Catholic” faith was in the Religious Category right there with Jehovah Witnesses and Islam. I thought that odd, I would have thunk that at a minimum they would put it in the heterodox bucket.

So I started reading and found a page called the essentials. An essential would be a belief you must hold in order to have eternal life. Now in reading these essentials, I would agree this would just about cover it what I would think is essential also (sometimes I wonder about the Trinity being an absolute essential since the concept was not well formed until the 300s or so but anyway)…but my rub is…I really thought the Catholics agreed also with these essentials (which gets me back to wondering why they are in the “religions” bucket).

Ignoring the board for a minute, is my perception true that Catholics agree with these essentials here?

Note: I do know this can lead into the “faith alone” issue. Maybe I am wrong, but in my analysis the issue seems to reduce to different definitions of the word faith, eternal security, and a misleading title. It is hard to impossible to have any meaningful dialogue without common definitions of the terms used. I wonder what the level of disagreement would be if I used the Wesleyan phrase “living faith alone” instead of “faith alone” .
 
Yes, Catholics hold to all those points.

But I have to wonder: by what authority does “Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry” decide which doctrines are essential and which aren’t? Do they have some sort of apostolic mandate?

Personally, I prefer the Catholic list of essentials here. At least I know that these essentials are produced by the Church, the pillar and foundation of the truth, and are based on the deposit of faith once for all handed down to the saints.

Jeremy
 
Well, I would say yes Catholics agree with these essentials because it was the Catholic Church that defined them in the first place. And yes, in order to be a Christian one must believe in the Trinity. It makes no matter that it was not “defined” at Pentecost, Christianity is a revealed religion. As such, doctrine is not invented or changed, but our understanding of it can grow more clear over time. Even the Hypostatic Union was called into question over and over again. The Church finally had to put her foot down to the heretics who were claiming that Christ could only be one or the other. This does not mean that the Church invented this doctrine.

Okay, time to take a breath. I’m not to sure I’m even making much sense here. Curse these stupid allergies!!!
 
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