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benhur
Guest
Agreed .The church was quite visible wasn’t it, even before catholic had a capital “C” ?
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andrewstx
Guest
I think it is important to agree on just what ‘inspired’ means, just the one word.
For example in the solo scriptura denomination defined ‘inspiration’ to mean that God either wrote the bible itself. Or that God dictated the exact words to human robots that were prevented by miracle from making even one mistake even in history or science.
I just can’t believe that at all.
For example in the solo scriptura denomination defined ‘inspiration’ to mean that God either wrote the bible itself. Or that God dictated the exact words to human robots that were prevented by miracle from making even one mistake even in history or science.
I just can’t believe that at all.
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Cat
Guest
It’s not the practice of Protestantism that is lacking.
I was Evangelical Protestant for 47 years, and I can testify that at its best, being an Evangelical Protestant is wonderful! We were involved in awesome ministries in our churches, and worked alongside people who fervently loved the Lord Jesus and had given their entire lives and fortunes to Him. And incidentally, the music in many Protestant churches, especially the congregational singing, is fantastic.
There are many many reasons, GOOD reasons, why people continue to be disciples of Jesus in Protestant churches.
Nevertheless, Protestantism is lacking because of the incompleteness of the theology. There is much that is true about Protestant theology, but it’s not all there. The Sacraments are missing, especially the Eucharist. And the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, the Lord Himself!
In a good, lively Catholic parish (I would say my parish!), ALL of the things I mentioned above are present–awesome ministries, people who fervently love the Lord Jesus, and even decent music. But along with all this, we have the Lord Himself.
And along with the Sacraments, the authority system of the Church is not present in any Protestant denomination, and this authority was established by JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF. It’s right there in the New Testament, in the Gospels, the Acts, and throughout the various epistles.
When I was Protestant, I used to read these passages describing Church “government” and I would ask, “Why aren’t we doing this?” I would receive some kind of explanation that never made any sense, but always concluded that whatever we were doing was right. But inevitably, there was a split, in fact, many splits, and again, I would wonder why no one was able to stop the split and discipline those believers who were clearly at fault.
Often, these splits involved a pastor who committed some kind of sin (usually sex sin). Always, the pastor just “left” and usually started selling insurance (I have a phobia about insurance agents–I’m always wondering if they are pastors who got kicked out of their churches).
This didn’t seem to be the Biblical way of dealing with sin in the Church.
Eventually, after 47 years of hard work and giving of ourselves to our various Evangelical Protestant churches, my husband and I were kicked out of our Evangelical Free Church. Nothing about that ousting and shunning was “Biblical.” It was pure evil. And on the evening it happened, as my husband and I were running across the church parking lot to get to the protection of our car, I saw a vision–it was very real, not just in my mind. The vision was a huge (skyscraper-sized) wall of mica-like substance, and it was peeling away and collapsing and I had to dodge the pieces of it. I recognized that this edifice was the doctrine of sola Scriptura, and that it was a false doctrine created by Satan Himself.
I realize that not all Protestant denominations teach sola Scriptura, but most Protestants believe in the authority of the Bible instead of the authority of the Church. When people put their faith in the Bible instead of the Church that Jesus established, they can “twist” that Bible to mean whatever they want it to mean; e.g., the rightness of gay marriage.
This is what I mean by living in a tent instead of a castle. It has to do with belief in and acceptance of the Authority of the Church established by Jesus Christ and headed by Him to this day. Those people living in the tent have rejected that authority, and even though many of them respect the “castle,” they refuse to submit to the Authority Who reigns in that castle. Thankfully, He is merciful, and recognizes that tent people don’t have a full knowledge of Him and His castle.
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Picky_Picky
Guest
Can I ask whether those here would agree with the last of the statements:
… and what they understand by “the resurrection of damnation”? You will understand that I have a personal interest in that.
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ltwin
Guest
In general, evangelicals believe that the books of the Bible were written by men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They are God-breathed. However, no sophisticated evangelical theologian would claim that God wrote the Bible himself or dictated the exact words to men. Fundamentalists would likely claim something like that, but evangelicals as a whole are certainly not that way across the board.
The authors of Scripture were men like you and me who wrote within their own cultural context and from their own point of reference. The books they wrote are shaped and framed according to their own interests, styles, and intentions. Yet, all of them wrote under divine inspiration. It is not for us to change or ignore, but everything is useful for teaching, rebuke, correction, and training in righteousness, whether or not it is compatible with contemporary views of science or history or makes rational sense to us.
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ltwin
Guest
Those who do not know Christ and die in their sins will be resurrected in the last days. At that time, there will be a final judgment for the righteous and unrighteous (Revelations 20:12-14; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-9).
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andrewstx
Guest
I agree with you Itwin %100. But that is exactly what the denomination I converted from taught. The churches of Christ.
They are solO scriptura (not sola) and worship the bible more than God. My boyhood preacher quoted the bible with “God says” and not “the bible says”. I left that bibliotrous church as soon as I graduated high school! I prefer to worship God much more than the bible.
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benhur
Guest
Not sure who said what or where you get that definition.
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benhur
Guest
Yes understand the sacrament stuff where we differ. As far as doing what they did in bible not sure what P’s don’t do as far as governance. I mean they had one council which no one does anymore (where all attend). Not sure I call a pastor leaving because of sin as a split. A split is usually over dogma, doctrine, interpretation. Many churches deal with “sin” in a biblical way. Sorry about your experience. Sounds very strange to me, foreign, the threat of violence, like an inquisition or a mob or Salem. I dare say it was more than SS that lies at the root of such ugliness. Just remember all churches have ugly in their history, those with SS and those without, those with strong central authority and those without. Anyways sorry . The busybody in me wonders what precipitated your events… From our point of view one can certainly be in error in interpreting scripture as well as a church also. An individual can twist , as well as a “church”. In the end, it is divine illumination that is needed to discern, to be placed in the castle, the proper castle. Thanks for your story.
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Cat
Guest
Whenever a pastor leaves a church for any reason, but especially when he/she has committed a serious sin (adultery, fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality, theft, or has been proven addicted to a substance or to gambling with no attempt to break the addiction, etc.), it causes a split in the church. Members and friends take sides, and a contingent of members/friends leaves that church because they are unable to remain in the same church where this pastor once shepherded his/her people.
It may not be a large split–sometimes only the pastor’s family and very close friends, as well as anyone that got caught up in his sin (the mistress, the same-sex partner, etc.) depart the church.
There is logic to all this. It’s bad enough when any of the laypeople commit a deliberate and on-going sin. As you know, many Evangelical Protestants teach/believe that a “Christian” who chooses to live in sin and does not try to break away from it is not really a true Christians. (Evangelical Protestants do not believe that baptism is what makes someone a Christian, they believe that a person becomes a Christian when they receive Jesus into their heart).
So if all those years, the PASTOR wasn’t a “TRUE” Christian
, then that means that the church governing board, or the church staff, has serious problems, too, because the Holy Spirit should have revealed to them that the pastor wasn’t a true Christian.All kinds of doubts ensue, and trust is broken. Once trust is broken, it is very difficult to stay. This is true in a marriage, and it’s true in a church. That includes the Catholic Church–lots of people left the Catholic Church forever when they were caught up in the “sex scandals,” either as actual victims, family members, or just regular people who’ve lost all trust for the Catholic Church.
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Cat
Guest
Over the years, I’ve written on CAF what happened at our final Protestant church.
In brief, there were authority issues. The Evangelical Free Church that we attended (for 7 years) had an unclear authority structure, and we were not sure who was actually in charge. So we constantly butted heads in our various ministries, and the church accused us of undermining their authority. WHAT authority!!! If we asked the Senior Pastor, he would say, “Go ask the Music Committee.” If we tracked down the Music Committee and asked, they would say, “Go ask the Treasurer.” And so it went.
BTW, no one ever came to us and said, "Hey, you’ve done something wrong. Instead they waited and brought all the “charges” against us at a “tribunal.” That’s not the Biblical method to deal with problems in the church.
Along with this, a woman pastor in that church (the “children’s pastor”) became extremely jealous of me because of my success with my children’s ministries, especially my children’s choir (it grew from 24 members to over 60 members in two years). She spread very evil rumors about me. Thank God I had used good common sense and always, ALWAYS had other adults in the rooms with me whenever I was involved with the church children. But this woman was the hired “pastor,” and I was just a lay volunteer, so her words carried a lot of weight. Also, the parents were not told what was happening–they were only told that “Cat” decided to leave.
A year after our ousting, I wrote a letter to the parents (following the advice of one of the few Protestant pastors that I still trusted, a man from my childhood church), and many of them wrote me back stating that they were never told, that they had gone to the church to ask, and had been told that I had decided to leave. They were quite upset, because they truly did support me.
Also, within the year after I left, the only parent in that church who kept contact with me informed me that the children’s pastor–yes, that same woman who accused me–had been fired because she had been caught in a lie. Turned out she was a pathological liar.
But no one from the church has ever contacted me and my husband to tell us that they were wrong about us.
The tribunal was terrifying. It consisted of several men who had NEVER MET ME OR MY HUSBAND, along with the children’s pastor and the other pastors in the church. All of them twisted things that we had said or done over the years to prove that we rejected their authority.
E.g., we had gone to the youth pastor and asked if he could ask other teenagers to please reach out to our daughter and be friendly with her. At that time, she was a member of an elite synchronized skating team and was often gone (this is OK in the Protestant churches–there is no obligation to attend church every Sunday). As a result, whenever she did attend the youth group activities, she felt left out and ignored. (She was extremely popular in school and on her skating team and in all the other activities that she participated in–a beauty pageant competitor, so not a misfit in any way, other than the elite skating.)
At the tribunal, the pastor re-told this story and made it appear that we were criticizing him and his ministry and trying to tell him what to do!
The worst accusations came from the children’s pastor, who implied that I was abusing and frightening the children. There were no parents present at the tribunal, but I was able to give the names of parents who had sat in on all my work with the children and could clear my name.
This same children’s pastor had been part of a group that my older daughter had led to the March for Life. She implied that my older daughter was trying to take over the ministry, too–for heaven’s sake, this was her school “senior project!” She chose to take a group of teens and adult chaperones to the March for Life, and did a short film about it–she had the approval of the Senior pastor of the church! How could THAT be a subsersive thing?!! But this children’s pastor was a very very good liar.
Anyway, we were told to leave, and when we got home, our younger daughter, who was 16 at the time, started screaming, “I told you so! From the very beginning, I told you that that church is EVIL. We should have left way back then!”
We suspect that my younger daughter might have suffered some form of sexual abuse or harassment at that church, but have never found out for sure. There were signs that we ignored, because we naively thought that we could trust “Christians.”
At the time everything happened, I wrote it all down in great detail, with dates. It’s about 70 pages long, and it’s pretty disturbing. Perhaps someday it will be published in some form, but I can’t imagine why a publishing house would ever publish it because we couldn’t possibly name names.
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benhur
Guest
Ok .I would only add that P’s do have “carnal” christians and backslidden in their definitions also.Whenever a pastor leaves a church for any reason, but especially when he/she has committed a serious sin (adultery, fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality, theft, or has been proven addicted to a substance or to gambling with no attempt to break the addiction, etc.), it causes a split in the church. Members and friends take sides, and a contingent of members/friends leaves that church because they are unable to remain in the same church where this pastor once shepherded his/her people.
It may not be a large split–sometimes only the pastor’s family and very close friends, as well as anyone that got caught up in his sin (the mistress, the same-sex partner, etc.) depart the church.
There is logic to all this. It’s bad enough when any of the laypeople commit a deliberate and on-going sin. As you know, many Evangelical Protestants teach/believe that a “Christian” who chooses to live in sin and does not try to break away from it is not really a true Christians. (Evangelical Protestants do not believe that baptism is what makes someone a Christian, they believe that a person becomes a Christian when they receive Jesus into their heart).
So if all those years, the PASTOR wasn’t a “TRUE” Christian
All kinds of doubts ensue, and trust is broken. Once trust is broken, it is very difficult to stay. This is true in a marriage, and it’s true in a church. That includes the Catholic Church–lots of people left the Catholic Church forever when they were caught up in the “sex scandals,” either as actual victims, family members, or just regular people who’ve lost all trust for the Catholic Church.
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andrewstx
Guest
As I told Itwin. It came from the fundamentalist denomination I left. The co called, self named. “churches of Christ”.
You might not be familiar with them, they exist mostly in the South.
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Cat
Guest
That’s true.
Even though Evangelical Protestants do not believe in the doctrine of mortal and venial sins, I still think that most pastoral dismissals take place because of serious sins like adultery, theft of a great deal of money (not just a pencil from the secretary’s desk), homosexuality, etc.
I don’t think ??? a carnal or backslidden pastor would be dismissed, unless the sin that was besetting him was serious (like being with his mistress again). A pastor who is struggling with overeating or smoking would be lovingly tolerated, mainly because so many members in the congregation struggle with these faults.
I have also known pastors to be dismissed because of unwillingness or inability to work. This is very sad and controversial. When I look back, I think that the pastors I have known dismissed for this reason were probably depressed, but back then, depression was considered something that real Christians didn’t suffer from; we were supposed to be joyful in all things. I think that most denominations know better now, and would seek medical help for a pastor or staff member who was suffering from depression.
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Porknpie
Guest
Ben,
We have the best historian of all in this matter - the Catholic Church. The Church has always professed the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist with transubstantiation being a second millennium term to describe what happens when the priest consecrates the bread and wine.
For a bit of a transubstantiation understanding, here’s a short article that I thought was well written. The article quotes well known protestant historian JD Kelly as saying
“Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood.”
The author then continues:
I found it [the Real Presence] in many of the works of the Early Church Fathers, including St. Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 110), St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 151), St. Cyprian of Carthage, (A. D. 251), First Council of Nicaea (A. D. 325), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (A. D. 350), and St. Augustine of Hippo (A. D. 411) . These are, of course, not the only Early Church writings that address the nature of the Eucharist. But they are representative.
The “remembrance” that the Church has held to for 2,000 years has always been understood as the Real Presence: the wine and bread becoming the literal body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as John 6 says, “This IS my body. This IS my blood.” Jesus never corrected those that left him because he was speaking literally. The Church has always understood his speaking literally.
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Novocastrian
Guest
Polemical claims like this don’t do you a huge amount of good. It’s also begging the question.
I don’t think you need to put remembrance in scare-quotes. It is a remembrance in Catholic doctrine. How could it not be; that’s what Christ says it’s for!
Secondly, while I do think an honest reading of the Fathers leads one to the conclusion that they believe and teach the Real Presence, that’s not to say that their teaching is identical with modern Roman doctrine. The Fathers are also comfortable talking about the Eucharist in ways that the Roman Church nowadays dislikes: in terms of symbol, in terms of bread and wine, etc. As I’ve said, I don’t think these should be interpreted as denials of the Real Presence, but it’s certainly not the language of post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism.
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getysbg
Guest
By hidden, they were “hiding in plain sight”. Without those two instances, Catholics could support the statements. I do not suspect any ‘foul play’ by anyone. It is merely that once we begin to nod ‘yes’ to a statement containing a series of points, there is all too often one that ‘sneaks’ in that we can’t agree on. Here are two such cases
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benhur
Guest
Well, the CC in hindsight says that and it is partly true for some, just as it is partly true it was not the belief for all, before RP was dogamtized and made rule for all (west) ,
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benhur
Guest
OK truce.
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