The fullness of truth

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murphdog261

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What does it mean when the Catholic Church states it possesses the fullness of truth?
  1. God sent His Son to redeem the world
  2. Salvation is offered to every person in the world
  3. God grants his saving grace through Christ to the body of Christ
  4. Therefore, the body of Christ is composed of every person in the world, regardless of religion
  5. Whether it be on a individual, communal, or denomination level, different people more readily accept and recognize the truth found in the grace that God gives us
  6. On the level of different religions, Judaism recognizes God’s truth in its inspired religion more closely than Islam does.Islam, being monotheistic, is closer to God’s truth than Hinduism, a polytheistic religion.
  7. On the individual level, a person who has the desire to go to church often is recognizing the revealed truth of God by participating with God’s grace than someone who has no desire to worship the Lord.Someone who takes time out of his day to pray more often is recognizing the revealed truth in God more closely than someone who watches television with all his free time.
  8. On the denominational level, The Roman Catholic Church finds itself recognizing a fuller sense of truth found in Christ’s Body than other denominations of Christianity. In fact it has the fullness of revealed truth because it has recognized most fully the truth found in the deposit of faith given by Jesus Christ to his apostles and their successors.
These truths include (but are in no way limited to):
  • Complete canon of Scripture
  • Apostolic Succession
  • Real Presence of the Eucharist
  • Communion of Saints
  • Papal primacy
  • All seven sacraments
  • Historical and liturgical resemblance to the early church… etc.
Other denominations vary on their levels of recognition of these truths. The Eastern Orthodox church, with all seven valid sacraments and apostolic succession, has a fuller sense of God’s revealed truth than other denominations, like the Baptist church. The Anglican church, being a part of the Catholic Church for quite some time, recognizing a great deal of the revealed truths that the Catholic Church does. No denomination, however, recognizes all the revealed truths that the Catholic Church recognizes.

Therefore, the Catholic Church could be said to be the group within the Body of Christ that most closely recognizes the truth found in the Head of Jesus Christ.

Note: this is NOT to say that the Catholic Church has a completeness of truth in the same way that God has a completeness of knowledge of everything. The Church is the Lord’s servant, its handmaid, and only readily recognizes the revealed truth that God hands to her. She just happens to recognize God’s revealed truth more fully than any other denomination of Christianity.

Also, this thread is not intended to speak about the impeccability within the Catholic Church, because that doesn’t exist. The pope, me, and you are all sinners, but we can still recognize the truth God reveals to us through His teaching members - provided they do no contradict the Tradition of previous teachers or Sacred Scripture.

Questions:

Catholics:

by including all peoples of the world into the Body of Christ (however loose the analogy may be), it allows us to say that "there is no salvation outside the Body of Christ, since only the Body can bring you to the head. However, how does one reconcile this statement with the exclusivity found within the Catholic Church. Is the Body of Christ really one? Is the Church still one? Can everyone belong to the Body of Christ, but not in the same way of recognition as the Catholic Church does? Is the Catholic Church exclusive because it possess the fullness of God’s revealed truth found in Scripture, Tradition, and in the teachings of the Magisterium?

Non - Catholics:

If the meaning of the phrase “fullness of truth” is meant by the Catholic Church to most closely and wholey recognize the revealed truth of God in Scripture, the 2,000 years of Church Tradition, and the teachings of the Magisterium, then do you agree that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of revealed truth about Christianity?

Have a blessed Easter!

Murph
 
*The Catechism of the Catholic Church, *following historic Christian theology since the time of the early Church Fathers, refers to the Catholic Church as “the universal sacrament of salvation” (CCC 774-776), and states: “The Church in this world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and men” (CCC 780).

The following quotations from the Church Fathers give the straight story. They show that the early Church held the same position on this as does the contemporary Church-that while it is normatively necessary to be a Catholic to be saved (see CCC 846; Vatican II, *Lumen Gentium *14), there are exceptions, and it is possible in some circumstances for people to be saved who have not been fully initiated into the Catholic Church (CCC 847).

The Fathers affirm the possibility of salvation for those who lived before Christ and who were not part of Israel, the Old Testament Church.

However, for those who knowingly and deliberately-that is, not out of innocent ignorance-commit the sins of heresy (rejecting divinely revealed doctrine) or schism (separating from the Catholic Church and/or joining a schismatic church), no salvation would be possible until they repented and returned to live in Catholic unity.

Iraneus

[The spiritual man] shall also judge those who give rise to schisms, who are destitute of the love of God, and who look to their own special advantage rather than to the unity of the Church; and who for trifling reasons, or any kind of reason which occurs to them, cut in pieces and divide the great and glorious body of Christ, and so far as in them lies, destroy it-men who prate of peace while they give rise to war, and do in truth strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. For they can bring about no “reformation” of enough importance to compensate for the evil arising from their schism. . . . True knowledge is that which consists in the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place * (ibid., 4:33:7-8).

Origen

There was never a time when God did not want men to be just; he was always concerned about that. Indeed, he always provided beings endowed with reason with occasions for practicing virtue and doing what is right. In every generation the Wisdom of God descended into those souls which he found holy and made them to be prophets and friends of God (Against Celsus 4:7 [A.D. 248]).

**Origen **

**If someone from this people wants to be saved, let him come into to this house so that he may be able to attain his salvation. . . . Let no one, then, be persuaded otherwise, nor let anyone deceive himself: Outside of this house, that is, outside of the Church, no one is saved; for, if anyone should go out of it, he is guilty of his own death (*Homilies on Joshua ***3:5 [A.D. 250]).

Cyprian of Carthage

Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress [a schismatic church] is separated from the promises of the Church, nor will he that forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is an alien, a worldling, and an enemy. He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother (The Unity of the Catholic Church 6, 1st ed. [A.D. 251]).

Cyprian of Carthage

Let them not think that the way of life or salvation exists for them, if they have refused to obey the bishops and priests, since the Lord says in the book of Deuteronomy: “And any man who has the insolence to refuse to listen to the priest or judge, whoever he may be in those days, that man shall die” [Deut. 17:12-13]. And then, indeed, they were killed with the sword . . . but now the proud and insolent are killed with the sword of the Spirit, when they are cast out from the Church. For they cannot live outside, since there is only one house of God, and there can be no salvation for anyone except in the Church (*Letters *61[4]:4 [A.D. 253]).

Jerome

Heretics bring sentence upon themselves since they by their own choice withdraw from the Church, a withdrawal which, since they are aware of it, constitutes damnation. Between heresy and schism there is this difference: that heresy involves perverse doctrine, while schism separates one from the Church on account of disagreement with the bishop. Nevertheless, there is no schism which does not trump up a heresy to justify its departure from the Church (*Commentary on Titus *3:10-11 [A.D. 386]).

**Augustine **

**We believe also in the holy Church, that is, the Catholic Church. For heretics violate the faith itself by a false opinion about God; schismatics, however, withdraw from fraternal love by hostile separations, although they believe the same things we do. Consequently, neither heretics nor schismatics belong to the Catholic Church; not heretics, because the Church loves God; and not schismatics, because the Church loves neighbor (*Faith and the Creed ***10:21 [A.D. 393]).

Augustine

I do not hesitate to put the Catholic catechumen, burning with divine love, before a baptized heretic. Even within the Catholic Church herself we put the good catechumen ahead of the wicked baptized person. . . . . For Cornelius, even before his baptism, was filled up with the Holy Spirit [Acts 10:44-48], while Simon [Magus], even after his baptism, was puffed up with an unclean spirit [Acts 8:13-19] (ibid., 4:21[28]).

Augustine

When we speak of within and without in relation to the Church, it is the position of the heart that we must consider, not that of the body. . . . All who are within [the Church] in heart are saved in the unity of the ark (ibid., 5:28[39]).*
 
"…
8. On the denominational level, The Roman Catholic Church finds itself recognizing a fuller sense of truth found in Christ’s Body than other denominations of Christianity. In fact it has the fullness of revealed truth because it has recognized most fully the truth found in the deposit of faith given by Jesus Christ to his apostles and their successors. "

The Catholic Church is not a denomination of Christianity. The Catholic Christian Church is the Church Jesus Christ founded. There are many, many Protestant Christian denominations, but it is not accurate to refer to the Catholic Church as a denomination.

Peace & Prayers,

Jan
 
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