There can be human solidarity of course, but how is that equal to unity, especially the unity the Bible commands (“being perfectly united in mind and thought”, “one faith”, “one Baptism” etc)?What unity can there be between Christian denominations that condemn abortion as the abomination it is and Christian denominations that support it?
There can only be superficial and “cosmetic” unity, but the division in those cases is fundamental and deep.
There can be a superficial sense of “human solidarity” even between Christians and Freemasons, for that matter. But that doesn’t make Freemasonry any more compatible with Christianity, nor does it make it any less of a fundamental enemy of the Christian faith. (Freemasonry espouses principles that are inherently incompatible with Christianity, and its so-called “Great Architect of the Universe” could hardly be further removed from the Christian God)
No. Free thought is one thing, lacking a means to identify orthodoxy and what is correct or incorrect or even moral or immoral (which is why I mentioned an extremely important thing like abortion) is another thing entirely.
I’m not “tarnishing” Protestants nor is that my intention at all. There are countless Protestants who are in a better standing in front of God than myself. I’m examining the principle of sola Scriptura and its consequences . This is completely different. I’m not talking about individual Protestant Christians at all, nor am I denying that there are countless devout and good Christians (far better than me, although it’s hardly anything to boast about, it’s not exactly a difficult task ) within Protestantism.
P.s
Nobody every talked about Catholics sharing the exact same views on literally everything. But Catholics have the means to separate the wheat from the chaff and distinguish truth from error. If a bishop says that the Communion is a mere symbol and Christ isn’t present he isn’t simply outlining his own opinion: he is teaching heresy and committing a grave sin, and no Catholic could claim that said bishop is in any way shape or form teaching the truth .
The Bible describes two beginnings one in Genesis and one and John. It also has two falls, the fall of 1/3 of the heavenly host and then the fall of Adam and Eve. So since there is no timeline in the Bible, we have to figure out the sequence of events.
The gospel of John tells us that the beginning of God‘s creation happened when Jesus and God were alone in heaven, and his creation went on for countless aeons. And we hear from John in the book of Revelation chapter 4 what the throne of God looked like with its seven spirits of God and 24 elders. So, before the fall, the heavenly hosts were vast. This configuration of the heavenly host was given to Moses in the shape of the menorah which depicts the seven flames and the 24 elders, broken up into the three houses of heaven and the 12 tribes.
So in the fall of angels happened 1/3 of the heavenly host was cast out and described as 1/3 of the stars of heaven, which is a number that is hard to imagine. This included three of the seven spirits of God and 10 of the 24 elders. And this all happened before the material world was created.
The second beginning is the bible is the beginning of the fall and restoration, starting with the six plans sketched out in Genesis. The separation of the waters in Gen 1:6 is representative of the sea of fallen angels in Rev 12, which I had referred to.
Adam and Eve were 2 of the 10 fallen elders and God tested them in the garden of Eden, which is in paradise. We know from Jesus that paradise is not in heaven because he told the criminal next to him on the cross that they would be together in paradise. Jesus hadn’t completed his mission to open the gates of heaven so paradise is not in heaven, but in the highest reaches of hell and this is where Adam and Eve were tested. The failed the test in Genesis 3 and were cast out. Angels were stationed to guard any unlawful enter into paradise. This is a second indication that paradise is in Hell. They would not have to place guards to protect heaven from hell’s inhabitants.
Now to your questions.
The imagery is interesting, but I have focused on the size of the fall. As I said, 1/3 of the hosts of heaven is an unbelievable large number, which include the princess and elders of heaven. The Sumerian Kings list helps with naming the other eight elders who helped to rule over hell. Lucifer is listed in Issaiah and Aholah and Aholibah are described in Ezekiel for the damage they did to heaven. Nothing is comparable to heaven being almost town in two.
This is not a one-off comparison. We have centuries of evidence that treating the book of Revelation as prophesy is folly. But if you look at all of the horrible events in this book, including the battle of Armageddon, they describe the most horrible event of our history.
I have come to this conclusion by looking at all the books and works which were destroyed by the roman empire. Fo instance, Enoch was in the early cannon, and it mentioned in Jude, yet it was declared heresy. Enoch tells this story. And if you read the anathema of Justinian against the most prolific biblical scholar who has ever lived, Origen of Alexndria, you see the same story being told. BTW Origen is still considered a great church father.
Even Sola Scriptura is not simply a thing. There are degrees from only including Scripture in Theological matters, to the YEC and beyond.
The trouble with Sola Scriptura is that it still relies on understanding what the Scripture means.
However it would appear to have been an attempt to over rule the Catholic traditional view that you are so obsessed with, so perhaps I am more in favour rhtan I thought.
It absolutely was such an attempt. Whether it succeeded or failed, or whether it is compatible with Scripture itself, the same Scripture that lists divisions and factions among the acts of the flesh (namely SINS such as sexual immorality, debauchery, hatred, idolatry, sorcery etc) well, that’s another matter entirely.
I would say that a principe that inherently fosters disunity and schism and has done so for five centuries, is a fundamental failure. Again; I’m talking about the principle itself. The fundamental notion of Sola Scriptura and the absence of a principe of coherence that can keep unity and solve theological disputes when they arise.
Sure, there are undoubtedly significant differences among them, but they all share the same underlying principle: there is no infallible means of determining, once and for all, what constitutes orthodoxy and what constitutes heresy (if this concept had been a thing back then, it could have easily been used to discard Nicaea as well, especially since the Council admittedly used a non-biblical term to settle the matter and establish what the correct interpretation was). All post-apostolic ecumenical councils are considered fallible, meaning that their doctrinal pronouncements are ultimately subject to the judgment of individual Christians.
Is that so? Your whole argument has been to prosecute Protestantism and sola Scriptura to promote the Roman Church. Yet today’s Catholicism is not really as orthodox as you’d want it to be, so arguing as if the Church is united under the magisterium sounds very fideistic to me. We could consider whether abortion or any other social issue like fascism is properly handled by the Church, but I think that’s beside the point. The issue is that you deny that a great apostasy has been foretold therefore division is unavoidable.
What I’m also saying is that no one (Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant) is above the Gospel, while you happen to think no one is above Rome.
“for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. ”
In Dei Verbum the teaching office of the Church—the Magisterium—is explicitly defined not as superior to the Word of God, but as its servant.
But if there is no way to establish the right interpretation of the Gospel, the Gospel would be a source of schizophreny and division. Which is exactly what it is within Protestantism.
God certainly is. Christ is the one who gave Peter the keys of the kingdom and claimed that the gates of Hell would have not prevailed against the Church.
I’m not sure why the great apostasy should be the responsibility of a Church that has been teaching the same things since antiquity while people who created a brand new Church with brand new sacraments and brand new principles (such as sola Scriptura which is nowhere to be found in the father, just like it’s nowhere to be found the concept that the ecumenical councils can tach dogmatic errors and that the charism of truth that the apostles had -“he who listens to you listens to me”- wasn’t transmitted to their successors) would be the bearer of orthodoxy and truth.
If the church of Rome was the Apostolic Church we wouldn’t need a reformation. And we can tell the difference between the two, by the way both of them teaches salvation. You may disagree and that’s precisely why you have to assume the apostles somehow agreed to say any late oral traditions held the same authority as the Gospel to explain the drift. And yet Paul clearly rejected that possibility.
“Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. ”
Acts 20.v28-30
That’s also why the schisms in Protestantism aren’t arguments for Rome either, those are things we should expect when we actually believe the Scriptures.
You are employing circular reasoning: you are assuming as it it were a given fact that we needed a reform as the one it effectively happened, when Luther himself at first denied such a thing and was only against ecclesiastical abuses (which have nothing to do with the idea that the Church of Christ can teach formal heresy).
Your reasoning is circolar, so it’s null and void.
Are you sure you know what the Church teaches about salvation? Because you have often used stereotypes and plainly wrong caricatures of Church doctrine.
More importantly: what did the fathers and the Christians in the early Church of the first millenium taught and believed about salvation (and the Eucharist, and the authority of the Church, and the Sacraments etc).
You mean like the ones who degraded the holy Eucharist to a mere symbol, by any chance?
Jesus prayed for Peter so that his faith may not fail and declared that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church. Do you think this is compatible with the claim that the wolves were the successors of Peter? Is there even a single father of the Church that teaches something like this? Or is that a brand new doctrine?
Now I’m furious because you are being deliberately mendacious. I claimed that the call to cleanse the church from ecclesiastical abuses was righteous (and the Church herself addrrssed the issue at Trent). I adamantly deny that the presence of ecclesiastical practical abuses justifies the later claim that Rome had lost the faith, that ever post-apostolic ecumenical council is fallible and all that stuff.
God also allowed the Holocaust to happen, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of the greatest atrocities in human history.
Why would I? The Church herself adressed the issue at Trent like I said.
Needing reform to get rid of abuses in no way justifies the later more radical and revolutionary claims.
See, you make me think that being honest is counterproductive, because you are deliberately taking my statement to make me say something I’ve never said.
You are being deliberately mendacious and that’s not a good thing at all.
The issue is the consistency in the argument. You started saying there were issues, then you decided it was now time to prosecute sola Scriptura because I shown you how those issues justified the reformation. I mean, sure we can talk of all the issues in Protestantism since I don’t have a tribe to defend at all cost, but why say
If the church isn’t subject to errors to begin with? Why shift the blame on Protestantism for the great apostasy ? If you want, we can simply agree to disagree and accept that discussion is a side issue that lead us nowhere.
“Si ergo venie secundum spiritum et mentem Pape predicarentur, facile illa omnia solverentur, immo non essent.”
Source: Martin Luther, Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, 31 October 1517, Thesis 91.
Translation: “If, therefore, indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the pope, all these difficulties would be readily resolved; indeed, they would not exist at all.”
That’s what I was getting at.
In 1517, Luther was still presenting himself as someone calling on the Church to correct serious abuses, not as someone rejecting its doctrinal authority wholesale. He explicitly stated that, had indulgences been preached according to the pope’s own intentions, the objections he was raising would essentially disappear.
So the problem wasn’t one of doctrinal nature according to Luther himself: it was a problem of human corruption within the Church.
Luther eventually went rogue and started coming up with all sorts of theological shenanigans. By 1537, in the Smalcald Articles, he was describing purgatory and the practices associated with it as devilish. But that’s Luther 2.0, not the Luther who originally wrote the Ninety-Five Theses while still acknowledging the Church’s authority.
And that’s the distinction I’m making.
Recognizing that serious abuses existed within the Church is one thing. Going on to reject Rome’s doctrinal authority, challenge the authority of ecumenical councils, and adopt sola Scriptura as the governing principle of Christian doctrine is quite another.
The latter simply doesn’t follow from the former.
In fact, Luther’s own words in 1517 make that distinction impossible to ignore to ignore as he appealed to the pope’s actual intentions and teachings as a corrective to the abuses he was denouncing.
So the existence of ecclesiastical abuses doesn’t, in itself, establish any of the far more radical theological conclusions Luther would eventually embrace. That’s the point I’ve been making all along.
So I’m being entirely consistent: there is no reason to go from “there are many ecclesiastical abuses in the Church” to “the Catholic Church is unreliable in matters of faith and ecumenical Councils are inherently fallible and should be judged by the individual Christian according to his own evaluation of what Scripture means and teaches”. There is absolutely no causal link between the two statements and Luther himself at the beginning would have rejected his later radical and revolutionary claims.
It wasn’t my intention. I just said that people who came up with brand new doctrines and sacraments and principles could be far more liable to that accusation.
In no way, shape or form you shown any of that. The causal link between “there are ecclesiastical abuses within the Church that wouldn’t exist if people preached according to the spirit and intention of the Pope” and the later Protestant claims is not simply weak, it’s completely non existent. It’s actually self-defeating, because Luther was able to identify the abuses in the first place precisely because they went against true doctrine.
I’ve been following the discussion of sola Scriptura, Christian unity, and the fruits by which different approaches to Church authority should be judged.
I’d like to offer my perspective on this question.
If we want to understand the divisions that followed the Reformation, I think we need to begin with the events that preceded Luther.
The crisis did not begin in 1517. Calls for reform had existed within the Catholic Church for generations. Abuses of ecclesiastical authority and failures of Church governance were already serious problems. Luther’s initial challenge concerned practices within the Church itself. He did not set out with a plan to establish a separate denomination.
Luther certainly bears responsibility for his later decisions. But the Catholic authorities were not innocent bystanders. They possessed the authority and responsibility to govern and reform the Church. Their own failures helped create the conditions in which the rupture occurred.
But doesn’t the duty to preserve unity fall first and foremost on those entrusted with protecting it, and not only on those who eventually separated?
Even the Second Vatican Council, in Unitatis redintegratio (§3), acknowledges that, in the history of divisions between Christians, people on both sides were often to blame.
So when we ask how Christian unity was broken, why should we begin with those who left rather than also examining the actions of those who held authority before the rupture?
And if we judge the Reformation by its fruits, why count only the divisions?
The Protestant challenge also became a powerful impetus for internal reform within the Catholic Church. The Council of Trent opened in 1545, twenty-eight years after Luther’s initial challenge, and addressed serious problems of Church discipline and governance.
Division was one consequence of the Reformation. Pressure for reform was another. Both belong to the historical picture.
The problem is real. But an institution’s ability to issue a binding judgment and the truth of that judgment are two different questions. Pointing to Protestant disagreements does not establish that the Roman Magisterium possesses divinely guaranteed authority to resolve them definitively.
And this leads to a deeper question about trust.
The Catholic Church has historically wielded enormous authority, yet failures in the exercise of that authority undermined trust in Church leadership and deepened the crisis of Christian unity. One may ground the legitimacy of an ecclesiastical office in apostolic succession, but moral credibility does not come automatically with that office. It must be demonstrated through the way authority is exercised. I will return to this shortly.
Recognizing the Church’s teaching authority does not remove each believer’s personal moral responsibility before God. Churches are responsible for what they teach. People are responsible before God for what they believe and how they act.
This applies to abortion as well. The conflicting official teachings of Protestant churches pose a genuine theological problem. But the women whose decisions are being debated are also moral agents, living in real circumstances and bearing personal responsibility. We should not lose sight of them while discussing institutional authority.
The same requirement of accountability applies to Catholic leaders. Documented cases in which Church authorities concealed allegations of sexual abuse or mishandled known cases of abuse cannot be described solely as private moral failures of individual priests. Institutional decisions and the exercise of Church authority itself were involved in these events.
This does not refute Catholic doctrine. But it matters when assessing the moral consequences of how an institution exercises its authority. Institutional responsibility does not disappear simply because the wrongdoing violated its official teaching.
Doctrinal infallibility and moral authority are different questions. But if we judge Church systems by their fruits, we cannot exclude the consequences of how their authority has actually been exercised.
For me, this is the central issue.
We cannot judge Protestantism by the failures of its historical practice while judging Catholicism solely by the ideals of its teaching.
Nor can we place the entire burden of responsibility for Christian division on those who left without asking what those entrusted with preserving unity did to contribute to the rupture.
Institutional authority may determine who is empowered to issue a ruling. But it does not, by itself, establish whether that ruling is true or whether those exercising that authority have earned the trust they ask of others.
It does follow for the reformers and for many Christians today, that’s the thing.
Comparing it to the Holocaust is quite something, given all the medieval persecutions that made it pretty much unavoidable at that point. What you fail to see though, it’s the fact that people might be justified to fear we will return to that if you had it your way, since you’ve been prosecuting Protestantism over nothing here. I hope you understand now why people might feel justified to think science through scientism has to become a substitute for faith. Hence the rise of the Brights movement positing we will never return to those things in a more scientifically minded Society.
Do you think any of the fathers of the Church could have agreed with the principle of Sola Scriptura?
Sure.
It is difficult to preserve unity when the very means of safeguarding it are no longer recognized. Indeed, unity would have been utterly impossible even in the first millennium had anything resembling the Protestant principle emerged at the time.
The failings of those within the Church do not justify fracturing its unity, perhaps irreparably
ABSOLUTELY. That’s precisely the point I was making, Roman. There were serious problems with Church discipline and governance—there’s simply no denying that. And, as I pointed out earlier, the Church addressed those issues at the Council of Trent.
But that’s a far cry from devising an entirely new principle such as sola scriptura and wholly revolutionary notions such as the fallibility of ecumenical councils.
Well, Jesus entrusted Peter with the keys to the Kingdom, and the Church of Rome was already behaving in a distinctly “Roman Catholic” manner as early as AD 96.
But the fundamental question is even simpler: If there is no authoritative principle capable of preserving doctrinal coherence and resolving disputes among Christians, how can Scripture itself condemn divisions and factions as works of the flesh?
Scripture can be interpreted in countless mutually contradictory ways. That is absolutely true. But this inevitably gives rise to divisions, often over matters of profound doctrinal importance. We are not merely talking about minor disagreements.
Now, if Scripture condemns division as something inherently wrong and sinful, how can a principle that actively fosters such division be considered true and sound?
If division is sinful and must be avoided, then there must logically be some principle of unity capable of keeping Christians together and resolving doctrinal disagreements. Otherwise, the biblical condemnation of division would seem to impose an obligation without providing any effective means of fulfilling it.
Of course, this entire framework collapses once the very existence of such an authoritative principle is no longer acknowledged. And when that happens, the very divisions that Scripture condemns become practically unavoidable.
None of this denies the shortcomings and failings of the people who make up the Church. But it does make it exceedingly difficult to justify perpetual divisions within Christianity on the basis of those shortcomings.
Even Luther himself, as I’ve already shown, acknowledged that these problems could have been remedied had the Pope’s own teachings actually been followed.
Afterwards he went rogue and started making different and far more radical claims but that’s a different matter.
Paul rebuked Peter, as I’m sure you remember. Did that incident somehow deprive Peter of his position as head of the apostles or strip him of the keys to the Kingdom?
Absolutely. But how can Christians arrive at the truth on matters of theology or morality if the very means by which such questions have been authoritatively settled since the earliest days of Christianity is rejected?
Again, I agree. Women are moral agents, every bit as capable of making moral choices and every bit as valuable as men. But acknowledging their moral agency does not mean we should refrain from teaching that taking the life of the child they carry in their womb is a sin.
Knowing that something is sinful does not deprive anyone of their freedom to choose. However, denominations that condone abortion are effectively calling evil good and good evil (something Scripture repeatedly and unequivocally condemns).
Yes, the Church herself acknowledged the problem. But she was never promised the personal impeccability of her members. What she was promised was the Spirit of Truth—the very Spirit who enables her to recognize abuses and corruption within her own ranks as well as to solve theological disputes and interpret Scripture.
That’s absolutely true.
Never argued otherwise. I was arguing against a principle that is inherently, by its very nature, divisive.
That is technically correct but we return to the issues I have outlined earlier: “If there is no authoritative principle capable of preserving doctrinal coherence and resolving disputes among Christians, how can Scripture itself condemn divisions and factions as works of the flesh?”
If there isn’t a principle of coherence that can be trusted beyond one’s own personal fallible judgments, what kind of truth and unity can be reached?
That is precisely my argument: the biblical condemnation of factions and schisms among Christians logically and theologically presupposes the existence of a reliable principle of ecclesial unity and doctrinal coherence, capable of resolving disputes and safeguarding orthodoxy and unity.
) within Protestantism.