The Joint Declaration on Justification did a great deal to bridge the gap with the Lutherans. I think that the case of the Reformed is harder–the doctrine of perseverance of the saints, for instance, seems on the face of it utterly incompatible with Catholic teaching on several levels (one point that is often not considered is that it undercuts the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, unless one is going to hold that all the baptized are elect!).
I appreciate you post. Yeah the thing with the Joint Declaration is that confessional Lutherans, as I understand it, did not sighn that document. In a way they just moved towards the Roman Catholic position. As far as perseveriance goes it is not an exscuse to sin which seems to be the misconception.
I am too pessimistic.
As you can see, that’s certainly not my criticism. I agree that the classic Reformed view of perseverance is anything but an excuse to sin–indeed, one could make a case that the Catholic understanding gives people more license to sin, and that the more common danger of the Reformed position is the opposite error of obsessing over one’s sin as a possible sign that one isn’t really among the elect.
I agree.
p), is that Trent did not anathematize anyone by name. So all you have to do to reconcile a group with Trent is to show that it doesn’t really teach what Trent condemns. I’m not saying that gets you all the way, but it is a bit different than the WCF’s explicit statement that the Papacy is the Antichrist!In my opinion it is unlikely as a group, likely as individuals. I form this opinion by reading all of the dialogues Catholic and Protestant of various sorts.
You raise an excellant point. The one negletad aspect of the Reformation was that it was a shift in our ecclesiology, theology of the church. Withen your ecclesiology the Papacy makes sense, withen mine it doesn’t (no offense intended).
I was not accusing you of that misunderstanding, I should have made that clearer, my apologeze. You are right about that possible inward, some have called it morbid, look to see if we are saved. That is why all Reformed confessions and catechisms stress that our assurance is in the Gospel, not in ourselves. Where Reformed folk that the way you are saying, and I’m sure they exist, is a lack of confessional reading.As you can see, that’s certainly not my criticism. I agree that the classic Reformed view of perseverance is anything but an excuse to sin–indeed, one could make a case that the Catholic understanding gives people more license to sin, and that the more common danger of the Reformed position is the opposite error of obsessing over one’s sin as a possible sign that one isn’t really among the elect.
However, my objection to perseverance is primarily about sacramental theology, and more broadly about the concept of assurance (in its Reformed version, which includes assurance of *final *salvation) and how it distorts Christian piety by making people focus on whether they are “real Christians” in some permanent sense rather than on whether they are at this moment repentant of sin and living in charity with their neighbors (and even more seriously, by making them continually ask whether other people are “real Christians” or not!).
I agree.
One advantage Catholics have, to balance the “disadvantage” of claiming infallibility
As far as the confessional Lutheran rejection of the Joint Declaration goes, I’m not sure that this stemmed from an actual conflict with the confessions so much as confessional Lutherans’ dislike of any form of ecumenism–but I could be wrong.
Edwin
No one person could ever speak for the whole group, that is not how we operate. It interesting that you bring worship as an important disagreement btween us, the other issues you raised are just as important though (if not more imortant). We take worship very seriously in the Reformed faith. We have the regulative principle that states that only those things which Scripture commands may be used in worship.
Yes, that’s definitely been the predominant Catholic perspective ever since Luther published the Babylonian Captivity.
Yes. The Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist are both found in Scripture. The division in worship is the exclusion of the Scripturally based Liturgy of the Eucharist that many Protestant ecclesial communities have excluded.
This appears to exclude your particular transition to the OHCAC and that is your perogative. The Nestorians of old as you know are now the Chaldean Christians, part of the OHCAC…
What parts of Trent do you specifically object to? (It might be easier to discuss if you named the “top” two or three.)
I’m not sure why. Did I lose you?
Why do you asks us Catholics? shouldnt you guys do this on your own? You got the Bible, and you claim to know what the Bible says, why cant you guys find what the Bible says that brings you all together?
So as you have travelled from evangelical to Episcopalian and journey on…you see bread and wine and the Lords Supper affirmed for what it is however in terms of using a name for what it is you have difficulty. We are back to saying things with different words.
Clearly you and I have trouble communicating.
There are Protestants who think that way, but they are delusional, and are certainly not representative of all modern Protestants.
Because Protestantism isn’t a new religion and doesn’t claim to be. Protestants believe in Jesus, accept the Scriptures, confess (for the most part) the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, celebrate baptism and a form of the Lord’s Supper (even if the latter isn’t valid from the Catholic perspective). You can read this in official texts of your own Church like Lumen Gentium and the Catechism. It shouldn’t be a new perspective to you.
But they are extremely unlikely to be entirely either the one or the other. Complete falsehood is an ontological impossibility. Complete truth within a human mind is a practical impossibility this side of the Beatific Vision. (Yes, divine revelation is entirely true, but divine revelation exists in fallen human minds, which inevitably perceive it imperfectly.)
That’s just obviously, empirically false. All truth that we know on earth is compromised truth. All mortal knowledge falls short of the divine reality.
Certainly. There can be no deliberate compromise with error.
Indeed. And when doctrines contradict, it is, practically speaking, never because one set of doctrines is entirely true and the other set entirely false (or even entirely false where they contradict the other set). Error would find no purchase in the human mind if there were no truth mixed up in it, and truth would not be rejected by sincere people if it were not compromised in some way by human weakness and error (as it always is).
Then you understand as per Covenant Theology…the Eucharist is seen as a sign of the New Covenant…and to unite in anyway must include dialogue of the Eucharist.
Communication as you know is as effective as the communicator in communicating and the reciever in receiving. When someone believes that there are issues in communicating a good point of reference is not declarative but preferably stated as a question with a request for clarification. I sense a one way street with you. I am OK with that. It would not be my first experience.