Author: drummerboy (---.samnet.net)
Date: 07-24-02 04:03
Drummerboy: Peace!
grace odyssey: By the amount of detail and the persistence with which you bring up history, I'm going to guess that you must have majored in early church history in school, or at least could have.
Drummerboy: Guess again. My chosen field is unrelated to history. But God has blessed me with great gifts, and continues to share Wisdom with this poor beggar.
But my appeals to Christian history isn't nearly as strange as your distaste for it. I can only imagine that you are fearful of where that truth may lead. As Cardinal John Henry Newman says, "To be deep in history is to cease being Protestant".
grace odyssey: I once worked with a young priest who was fresh out of school. He majored in conducting masses in honor of rare saints.
Drummerboy: No. That's a lie. There is no such area to major (nor minor) in.
grace odyssey: He was not a theologian. I don't think he could have given a clear reason for his need for Jesus, but he knew how to cross the candlesticks over the throat of someone who was choking on a fish bone, and call on saint somebody or other to heal them.
Drummerboy: OK. As stupid as that sounds, let's say that's true. But I'm not him.
You aren't representing my Catholic beliefs, but are just beating up a "straw man".
But you don't know me. You surely don't know the extent of my faith, nor the depths of my personal relationship with Christ. Like many, you just pretend to.
grace odyssey: The reason why I share this with you is because you and Eden and Raphael go round and round debating who's history book is most truthful.
Drummerboy: Oh, so ridiculing the alleged behavior and weak faith of some unknown Catholic illustrates the presumed futility of discussing historical truth?
Sounds like just another deceitful way to take a cheap shot at Catholics to me.
But, tell me, how so? How does a man --- whom you stress was not a
theologian and didn't know Christ --- compare with three men who do know Christ
and are well informed in their faith? And how is debating historical truth done more in vain than debating scriptural truth? Or are we to conclude from your comments that anyone who dares debate truth (historical or scriptural) is doing so in vain?
In other words, why not just come out and say that you are a moral relativist???
Why not just admit that you don't care about what is truth since you are "saved"?
Because if that's the case, then the only thing that is futile is dialogue with you.
grace odyssey: I'm glad you enjoy the intellectual stimulation.
Drummerboy: No I don't. If I did this for intellectual stimulation, then that would be my reward. Were I seeking my own pleasure, I assure you I'd foolishly be doing something I assumed more physically satisfying, such as chasing women, drinking beers, racing cars or just being outdoors fishing. But there's more to life.
It is a burden to speak the Lord's truth. It's difficult. Yet we are all called by Scripture to give a reason for the hope within us. We're called to preach
the Gospel, to teach, to rebuke, and to do it when it's popular and when it's not.
We're called defend the truth delivered over unto the saints, until the end of time.
If you are not up to the task, then, says Scripture, you're not fit for the Kingdom.
grace odyssey: But, it seems to me, sort of like the anthropologist who spends his life digging around in the dirt, picking up little pieces of bone and scrutinizing them. When you invest your life in this kind of ancestor worship, you tend to make a 'Nebraska Man' missing link out of a pigs tooth that you find.
Drummerboy: Again, this is hardly original. But if a Christian remains disconnected from historical Christianity, he has no way of knowing for certain that his chosen set of doctrines are identical to the apostles and their followers.
For what you say to hold true, we would be basing our beliefs on one particular piece of evidence to the neglect of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But that's not the case. We have volumes and volumes of evidence of historical Christian doctrines at our disposal, enough to fill whatever room you are sitting in.
So, if anything, you and your "faith alone" fit the description of one who confuses
discovering "a pigs tooth" with the "missing link". There is more to it than that. Unless you share the faith of the apostles and their followers, yours is in vain.
grace odyssey: Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm beginning to get the impression that you would like to use your early church history lessons to re-write the meaning of scripture to read, 'No-one comes to the Father in heaven except through the Roman Catholic Church.'
Drummerboy: Not at all. But it seems you would like to rewrite Scripture to say that "Everyone comes to the Father in heaven, except perhaps Catholics". And while Catholics acknowledge that anyone who serves God in truth is acceptable to Him (cf. Acts 10:35), they also realize that Christ came to build a Church on Peter (Matt 16:18-19) so that He might save us through His Church, which is His Body.
It is for this reason that St. Paul frames the book of Romans with the phrase "obedience in faith" in chapters 1 and 16, and every instance in between where he uses the word "faith" he implies "obedience in faith". Moroever it is for this reason that St. Jude warns the New Testament Church not to follow after the rebellion of Korah (cf. Numbers 16-17). Korah rose up in protest of God's chosen leaders. This warning makes no sense unless the New Testament Church has
leaders to whom we must submit our intellect, just as humble children must do.
grace odyssey: If this is the case, then you are dangerously close to the pride of the Pharisees. To whom Jesus spoke, "How terrible it will be for you experts in religious law! For you hide the key to knowledge from the people. You don’t enter the Kingdom yourselves, and you prevent others from entering.”
Drummerboy: First of all, the Bible doesn't say that, at least not in the Greek and Latin texts. Yours is a mistranslation, likely altered to support certain ideologies.
But Jesus doesn't condemn the Pharisees for being experts in religious law, nor for being too "legalistic", nor does He condemn ALL tradition, as some imagine.
What He actually condemns is their hypocrisy for not practicing what they preach.
"Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying 'The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.'"
(Matt 23:1-3).
Did you catch that? DO WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU, He says. Just don't be a hypocrite like them. This is an amazing passage because here Jesus not only declares Tradition as binding upon the consciences of all Christian believers, but He also draws upon Oral Tradition to do it. The "seat of Moses" isn't found anywhere in sacred Scripture. It is only found in the Mishna tractate abote.
The Pharisees would later be unseated by the apostlic Church, whom Christ gave the keys to the Kingdom of heaven and the rabbinical powers to "bind" and to "loose" in all matters of faith and morals (Matt 16:18-19, 18:18). We know these teachings must be "infallible" since Christ promises to ratify them in heaven.
But if the apostles and their successors are in union with Christ and are left in control of His Kingdom on earth, it would seem to me that only those who disobey them could be guilty of Christ's complaint that "You don’t enter the Kingdom yourselves, and you prevent others from entering.” This applies much better to Protestants than it does to Catholics (as does the complaint He makes against those Jews who boast the faith of their father Abraham is sufficient to save them, which is incredibly similar to the Protestants justification by "faith alone").
At this point, I'd like to recommend to you two books: (1.) Evangelical Is Not Enough by Thomas Howard, and (2.) NOT By 'Faith Alone' by Robert Sungenis.
I'd also recommend you to the Ocean of Christ's unfathomable Divine Mercy.
In Christ's love,
drummerboy
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