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A statement against the nonsense on this thread.
Which is the reason posting here is pointless, and I for one have stopped.
Sure. It is fun (for some twisted minds), drawing a long nose on the face of an enemy, then criticising it for a very long nose. Anti semitism and anti catholicism have worked on the same principles for millenia.
It seems some people (like the most frequent posters on this thread. Ken. Jeff. Roger) feel incomplete without something to hate, and to do so feel it is necessary to invent something to hate. It somehow makes them feel cleaner to say someone else is dirtier than they.
And anything goes in the argument it seems.
Including sadly, some of the unssupportable remarks in the OP on this thread. Nowhere does RCC teach or even believe that Mary Saves. So why criticise it for what it does not believe? It is criticised for honoring mary "Mother of God" yet Elizabeth honors her "Mother of Lord" So why criticise for doing what scripture suggests? How is it heresy?
Then to even more farcical things that Ken supposes it believes. He must have had his ears closed as a one time catholic, he seems to have learned nothing about the thing he derides!
But the problem they all have is simple. Even from the first successors of the apostles, the early church was liturgical, sacramental, believed in such as real presence, appointed succession bishops. And so on. The amount of evidence for that in ECF is overwhelming.
The catholic church now is liturgical, sacramental, believed in such as real presence, appointed succession bishops. And so on. It even uses parts of the liturgy in use millenia ago!
The church fathers bear witness to the very same faith including such as infant baptism. Nothing has actually changed
The creed is the very essence of christianity. So love it or hate it RCC is clearly christian!
Doctrine cannot change since revelation has not changed. So to find the "true denomination" look for one with stable doctrine over millenia. There is only one that qualifies for that. It is RCC
Nothing has actually changed. Which is why none of them can agree on the date of the great apostasy, because none of the beliefs changed! Ken even (falls about laughing!!) thinks that the apostasy happened before Peter so he was forced to protest! How? When?
...one can only but laugh!
Until "pandoras box" to use Luthers phrase, was opened by the reformation, a lot of church names were not needed, so some use the farcical argument that because "RCC" did not appear in the words of the church fathers, the RCC then did not exist! Nor indeed did the word protestant exist! There was in essence only one church, and the odd heretical sect.
It is interesting that so little changes. The "modalism" rather than trinitarianism now believed by pentecostals was spoken against by the church fathers before the new testament was even finalized in the fourth century! I wonder how many pentecostals know that?
Since reformation everyone then felt empowered to define their own doctrine, and if you don't like it invent your own.
So now there are 20000? choices of congregation/denomination, and worse than that an army of non denominationals who think that even those 20000 do not offer a wide enough choice! Presumably because in their view, the church has to conform to them. They are not having someone else decide what they have to believe!
They criticise the pope for ultimate responsibility in settling doctrinal ambiguities, as indeed Calvin and Luther did, missing the point that the teaching elders in every protestant church are exactly the same including Calvin and Luther themselves! Criticising the pope and magisterium for doing only what they do themselves! So it is not the principle of doctrinal authority they disagree, it is just that they all want to be the pope! Except that in those case when someone disagrees, they go off and form another church, or become one man popes of one man denominations, and there are plenty of those to choose from here!
So whatever the (and there are so many permutation of names, how about this... the "disunited reformed, evangelical, rereformed, modified, remodified (because "ken jeff and roger didnt like it) church you belong to Ken invented in the last century How on earth can any of you claim any authority at all? The evangelical mantra of "read the bible, ask for guidance of the spirit" has led to 20000 denominations. None of you can pretend that process works reliably!
Luther remarked that all christianity were indebted to the catholic church for the scripture, because he saw the obvious logical folly of this statement.
And it is logically false. Not just doctrinally false. Because taking that argument one step further, What then do you consider the bible "an uninfallible collection of infallible books?" and so if the canon is therefore "fallible", how can you know it contains no "fallible" books when "fallible" books claiming all sorts of things clearly existed then? Do you God left his bible to random chance!! Or do you think the selection was done under his guidance?
Kens argument does not make sense to anyone. Even Luther. So the canon selecters were inspired for the bible to be infallible. Simple logic demands it. Suggest you sharpen your arguments Ken or read a better catholic bashing book.That argument is easy to dispose of with simple logic!
The answer is it is a false dichotomy. The two doctrines of spirit and church are not in conflict, they are exactly the same. It is your opinion that differs. Nothing else. So please Ken. .. buy a better catholic bashing book, or take a course in critical thinking!
But until there is a greater integrity of argument, and such as Jeff are restrained from inflammatory ranting, and until such as Ken are confined for criticising RCC for what it actually believes, this thread is pointless.
It, and the posters on it, lack basic integrity in what they post. They will use any argument however untrue to argue against the common enemy. And the more time I have spent here, the more I realise that the unity in RCC bashing is born mostly of the lack of unity on any other protestant doctrine: so anti RCC is seemingly all they can agree on!
Sad but true.
Which is the reason posting here is pointless, and I for one have stopped.
Sure. It is fun (for some twisted minds), drawing a long nose on the face of an enemy, then criticising it for a very long nose. Anti semitism and anti catholicism have worked on the same principles for millenia.
It seems some people (like the most frequent posters on this thread. Ken. Jeff. Roger) feel incomplete without something to hate, and to do so feel it is necessary to invent something to hate. It somehow makes them feel cleaner to say someone else is dirtier than they.
And anything goes in the argument it seems.
Including sadly, some of the unssupportable remarks in the OP on this thread. Nowhere does RCC teach or even believe that Mary Saves. So why criticise it for what it does not believe? It is criticised for honoring mary "Mother of God" yet Elizabeth honors her "Mother of Lord" So why criticise for doing what scripture suggests? How is it heresy?
Then to even more farcical things that Ken supposes it believes. He must have had his ears closed as a one time catholic, he seems to have learned nothing about the thing he derides!
But the problem they all have is simple. Even from the first successors of the apostles, the early church was liturgical, sacramental, believed in such as real presence, appointed succession bishops. And so on. The amount of evidence for that in ECF is overwhelming.
The catholic church now is liturgical, sacramental, believed in such as real presence, appointed succession bishops. And so on. It even uses parts of the liturgy in use millenia ago!
The church fathers bear witness to the very same faith including such as infant baptism. Nothing has actually changed
The creed is the very essence of christianity. So love it or hate it RCC is clearly christian!
Doctrine cannot change since revelation has not changed. So to find the "true denomination" look for one with stable doctrine over millenia. There is only one that qualifies for that. It is RCC
Nothing has actually changed. Which is why none of them can agree on the date of the great apostasy, because none of the beliefs changed! Ken even (falls about laughing!!) thinks that the apostasy happened before Peter so he was forced to protest! How? When?
Peter was what we call today a Protestant.
Until "pandoras box" to use Luthers phrase, was opened by the reformation, a lot of church names were not needed, so some use the farcical argument that because "RCC" did not appear in the words of the church fathers, the RCC then did not exist! Nor indeed did the word protestant exist! There was in essence only one church, and the odd heretical sect.
It is interesting that so little changes. The "modalism" rather than trinitarianism now believed by pentecostals was spoken against by the church fathers before the new testament was even finalized in the fourth century! I wonder how many pentecostals know that?
Since reformation everyone then felt empowered to define their own doctrine, and if you don't like it invent your own.
So now there are 20000? choices of congregation/denomination, and worse than that an army of non denominationals who think that even those 20000 do not offer a wide enough choice! Presumably because in their view, the church has to conform to them. They are not having someone else decide what they have to believe!
They criticise the pope for ultimate responsibility in settling doctrinal ambiguities, as indeed Calvin and Luther did, missing the point that the teaching elders in every protestant church are exactly the same including Calvin and Luther themselves! Criticising the pope and magisterium for doing only what they do themselves! So it is not the principle of doctrinal authority they disagree, it is just that they all want to be the pope! Except that in those case when someone disagrees, they go off and form another church, or become one man popes of one man denominations, and there are plenty of those to choose from here!
So whatever the (and there are so many permutation of names, how about this... the "disunited reformed, evangelical, rereformed, modified, remodified (because "ken jeff and roger didnt like it) church you belong to Ken invented in the last century How on earth can any of you claim any authority at all? The evangelical mantra of "read the bible, ask for guidance of the spirit" has led to 20000 denominations. None of you can pretend that process works reliably!
Luther remarked that all christianity were indebted to the catholic church for the scripture, because he saw the obvious logical folly of this statement.
The Catholic Church never wrote the Bible. It may have put the Books together, but the Catholic Church never wrote the Bible.
Kens argument does not make sense to anyone. Even Luther. So the canon selecters were inspired for the bible to be infallible. Simple logic demands it. Suggest you sharpen your arguments Ken or read a better catholic bashing book.That argument is easy to dispose of with simple logic!
Now i ask you Catholics, who has more authority on what the Scriptures teach, the Holy Spirit or the Catholic Church? Be careful on how you answer. For if you say the Catholic Church has more Authority, then this proves you do not have the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit and you have not received Salvation. If you say the Holy Spirit has more Authority
But until there is a greater integrity of argument, and such as Jeff are restrained from inflammatory ranting, and until such as Ken are confined for criticising RCC for what it actually believes, this thread is pointless.
It, and the posters on it, lack basic integrity in what they post. They will use any argument however untrue to argue against the common enemy. And the more time I have spent here, the more I realise that the unity in RCC bashing is born mostly of the lack of unity on any other protestant doctrine: so anti RCC is seemingly all they can agree on!
Sad but true.