The logic or illogic of contradiction

Faith & Science Conversation
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I cannot claim something different from what I believe. My faith is the same of the early Church, when the Church was still largely undivided.

I’ve never said otherwise. That doesn’t change that Christ founded one Church. God’s grace can still reach even people who aren’t visibly in the Church (if they aren’t personally culpable for their decision of remaining outside of her, which is not for me to judge, only God can judge whether someone is or is not personally culpable for their decision to remain in schismatic communities), and like I said yesterday I believe most people are saved thanks to God’s Grace. So you are saying something that I hace never disagreed with.

Perhaps it’s for the best.

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Which seems rather important, considering what Scripture itself says about the preservation of sound doctrine.

2 Timothy 4:3: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

And isn’t this precisely what we have witnessed in several denominations that emerged from the Protestant Reformation?

As secular society progressively abandoned traditional Christian moral principles, several Protestant denominations revised their own teachings and practices in ways that increasingly aligned with those changing social values.

The Church of England began permitting remarriage after divorce, even while a former spouse was still alive, under certain circumstances in 2002. It also began ordaining women as priests in 1994, abandoning a restriction that had characterized the historic priesthood for centuries.

The United Methodist Church provides an even more striking example. In 1972, it officially declared homosexual practice incompatible with Christian teaching. Yet in 2024, after decades of changing social attitudes and internal controversy, the very same denomination voted to remove that declaration, permit same-sex weddings, and lift its prohibition on openly gay clergy.

What had previously been officially declared incompatible with Christian teaching was now accepted within the same denomination.

Did divine Revelation change between 1972 and 2024? Did Scripture suddenly acquire a different meaning? Or did the denomination’s interpretation change as the moral convictions of the surrounding society changed?

Of course, these denominations claim that their decisions reflect a more faithful understanding of Scripture. And that is precisely the point: using Scripture to permit and justify practices that are unbiblical and unchristian, while continuing to claim faithfulness to Scripture itself.

But then again, when you create man-made churches, this is bound to happen. What I find particularly amusing is that some of these same Protestants have the audacity to accuse the Catholic Church of being a heretical and pagan institution. :rofl:

They kneel before the pagan world and its demands, while the Catholic Church refuses to do so (not because individual bishops or even popes might not wish to do otherwise, but because it is simply impossible for the Church of Christ to formally permit and condone sin or to proclaim theological and moral heresies as truth, it is impossible because the Holy Spirit would never allow it, no matter how much time passes and how much society “evolves” ) and is continually shamed and condemned for it. Yet they have the nerve to accuse Catholics of paganism.

They distort Scripture to justify sin and their theological and moral heresies, and then turn around and accuse the Church of Christ of doing precisely the same thing.

Is this isn’t funny I don’t know what is. :joy:

Says Shawn T Murphy. Who admittedly is a very authoritative and credible source .

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125

No it is not for the best. It is the root of division.

You start from a position I cannot accept:
The undisputed knowledge and authority of the Catholic Church. And because of this you will always look down and despise me, what I stand for, and what I say.

Richard

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That I despise you is an unwarranted and mistaken assumption.

That I consider your position incompatible with the truth, and that I maintain it would have been equally rejected by the early Church, is another matter entirely.

The fact that I firmly believe you are in error, and that your positions would have been rejected throughout the early Church of the first millennium, does not mean that I despise you as a person (although I certainly do not appreciate your unwillingness to fully acknowledge the principles of logic).

I have even told you in the past that I consider you fundamentally a good man, and I meant it (I would not even talk to you otherwise, if I considered you a genuinely bad person). But that does not mean I cannot regard many of your theological and ecclesiological ideas as profoundly erroneous.

I do not despise you, just as I do not despise most individual Protestant Christians*, who are still our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I certainly do despise, and profoundly so, with all my heart and soul, the men who originally brought about the Reformation and inflicted a wound upon the Body of Christ that will probably never be healed before the end of time, barring extraordinary—and I mean truly extraordinary, something we probably cannot even conceive—divine intervention. Because humanly speaking there is no hope whatsoever to repair it.

The schism between the apostolic Churches of East and West can, and I believe probably will, be healed, because what we have in common is invaluable and far outweighs the differences that divide us, many of which may ultimately prove reconcilable. Indeed, even the original excommunications of 1054 were directed against individuals, not against the Churches themselves and as I have shown the patriarch Bartolomew clearly said that he expects the restoration of full communion between Catholics and Orthodox.

But I see absolutely no way to repair what was done in the sixteenth century without extraordinary divine intervention.

Because what took place then was not merely another schism between ancient apostolic Churches. It was the creation of a brand new Christianity, founded upon fundamentally different theological and ecclesiological principles that made unity not merely difficult, but impossible even in principle, so long as those principles remain unchanged.

The Reformation represented a profound and complete departure from fundamental aspects of what Christianity, both Western and Eastern, had stood for throughout the preceding fifteen centuries.

And that is why I regard the wound inflicted upon the Body of Christ by the Protestant Revolution impossible to heal (barring extraordinary, really extraordinary, divine intervention), unlike the schism between Rome and Constantinople.

I consider the Reformation the greatest tragedy ever to befall Christianity, and the men responsible (which obviously are not modern reformed Christians) for it took upon themselves an enormous responsibility before God: that of having probably dismembered the Body of Christ irreparably, until the very end of time, when He will return.

*Unless, of course, they are like the burger flipper who styles himself a historian of theology, Busenitz, whose deliberate falsehoods and distortions I have thoroughly exposed here and here. It took me many long hours of grueling work and painstaking research, but it was worth every minute, in order to dismantle his deception. His work was one of the most comprehensive examples of deception, falsehood, and historical distortion I have ever encountered. And I could have let it slide had it been written by an ordinary Christian without professional qualifications, but the fact that it was written by a historian of theology makes the deceptive and mendacious nature of that trashy article all the more egregious.

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Your words betray you. There is no attempt at reconciliation, no olive branch, no Love, no quarter, nothing.

No it isn’t.

Your justifications are for yourself, not me.

I noted you didn’t deny the accusation of being above me and I applaud you for it. At least that is honest and forgivable, although my forgiveness is nether wanted nor required.

What you believe does not make it true.

Richard

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What reconciliation is even possible? The same kind that might be possible with a Muslim. We profess fundamentally different faiths (which is precisely the kind of division Scripture condemns) even though we are both Christians. There is simply no point in denying it.

Of course. Like I said we profess two entirely different faiths, it is not anything new. There is barely any common ground except the Baptism and the Trinity (which many modern evangelicals are challenging on the grounds of Sola Scriptura).

This is also why I wrote that I consider the harm done by the reformation unfixable, humanly speaking. It created a completely different Christianity, fundamentally and intrinsically different from faith professed in the first millenium in the undivided Church and even the faith professed from 1054 to the start of the reformation.

This is what you wrote

You have accused me of despising you personally. Which is not true at all. Believe it or not I don’t care. I find you irritating many times but I don’t despise you and I genuinely think you are a good man.

I wholeheartedly despise and loath the original reformers, that is for sure.

I certainly do NOT despise you; although your refusal of logic profoundly irritates me.

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You have quoted Catholic reconciliation but clearly they are just words. You do not believe them for one second.

Oh, so Muslims are beyond God’s reach as well then.

Aren’t you gracious and loving.

I am no different from them.

I suggest you go to your priest for confession. Loathing i not part of the Catholic faith. You might also consider the meaning of 1 Cor 11.

Richard

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Post me when I quoted words that testify that the harm done in the 1500’s is fixable humanly speaking.

I’ve never said or implied anything of the sort. I was talking about reconciliation between our faiths. My faith and your faith is about as reconcilable as my faith is reconcilable with the faith of a Muslim (and like I said many Christians today are denying the Trinity so even the biggest difference between Christianity and Islam is being eroded, if we talk about many modern evangelicals).

I have NEVER said that I consider Muslims beyond God’s reach.

I’m talking about the men responsible for the reformation. You clearly don’t bear that responsibility.

I certainly cannot appreciate the men responsible of having inflicted a probably permanent wound on the body of Christ and its unity. Yes, I loath them and despise them. Wholeheartedly. I still wish them salvation, though (although the sin they committed is of an exceptional gravity, so grave that I genuinely think that the consequences of what they have done will endure until the very end of time, and I really mean it, I see no human way of fixing what they did, literally, because they introduced completely alien principles that were subsequently adopted by an incredibly large amount of Christians, so I see what they did as a damage that cannot and will not be fixed without God’s extraordinary intervention, and when I say extraordinary it has to be taken in the most literal possible way. Lets say that I wish them salvation but I also hope that they will stay in Purgatory until Christ returns, and I also hope their Purgatory is a very very very harsh one).

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  • Inexcusable? Yes. Unjustifiable? I agree. Inexplicable? Google explains:

Martin Luther’s hostility toward Jewish people—most notoriously expressed in his later writings such as On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)—developed through a shift from early theological optimism to bitter disillusionment. [1, 2]

1. Early Hope for Conversion (Until c. 1536)

At the start of the Reformation, Luther did not start out with the fierce anti-Jewish animus of his later years. In works like That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (1523), he criticized the Catholic Church’s harsh mistreatment of Jewish people. His early attitude was rooted in the expectation that, now that the “corrupted” Roman Catholic system had been purged by his Reformation, Jewish people would recognize the truth of the Gospel and convert en masse to his brand of Christianity. [1, 2, 3]

2. Disillusionment and Frustration

When large-scale Jewish conversions failed to materialize, Luther’s tone shifted dramatically. His frustration mounted as he grew older, sicklier, and increasingly convinced that the end times were near. He could not accept the ongoing refusal of Jewish people to accept Jesus as the Messiah, interpreting their rejection not as a neutral choice or a delay until the end of time, but as a stubborn, willful blasphemy against God. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

3. Theological Core: “Replacement Theology” and Blasphemy

At the heart of Luther’s hostility was his core theology: [1, 2]

  • Replacement / Supersessionism: Luther viewed the Christian church as the true “new Israel” and maintained that God had rejected the old covenant. [1]
  • Charge of Blasphemy: In his later treatises (On the Jews and Their Lies, Vom Schem Hamphoras, etc.), he accused Jews of actively blaspheming Christ and Mary, rejecting the Messiah, and harboring malicious intent against Christians. [1]

4. Radical Calls for Persecution

Driven by this theological fury, Luther abandoned his earlier moderate stance and advocated for harsh, state-sponsored measures against Jewish communities. In his 1543 writings, he urged political authorities to: [1, 2]

  • Burn synagogues and schools.
  • Confiscate Jewish homes, wealth, and sacred books.
  • Forbid rabbis from teaching on pain of death.
  • Force Jewish people into manual labor or expel them entirely from Christian territories. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Historical analyses by organizations like the American Jewish Committee and academic studies note that while Luther’s animus was primarily theological—focused on religious rejection of Christ rather than modern racial pseudo-science—his violent polemics laid a destructive rhetorical foundation that later anti-Semitic movements and the National Socialist (Nazi) regime shamefully exploited centuries later. Modern mainstream Lutheran bodies, such as The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, have formally repudiated and deplored these later anti-Jewish rants. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Let that be a lesson to all.

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Thank you. You have no idea how many times I have heard or read people portraying him as a genuinely morally upright man who stood against the supposedly evil Catholic Church. :joy::joy::joy:

This just goes to show which side the world—the pagan world—chooses to take.

And it is actually reassuring, because Christ has been very clear in the Gospel

Luke 6:26: “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! FOR SO DID THEIR FATHERS TREAT THE FALSE PROPHETS”

So when I see the Church of Christ being endlessly vilified, shamed, and portrayed as one of the worst things ever to have happened to humanity, while genuine and veritable wastes of oxygen like Luther are celebrated and regarded as having occupied the moral high ground over the Church, I take it as yet another confirmation of where the true Church of Christ (the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church) really is.

I hope the world will continue to shame us, reject us, and vilify us every bit as relentlessly as it does now. The world is the abode of the devil, and its rejection of us is good sign.

1 John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”

1 John 5:19: “We know we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.”

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To me the biggest contradiction within the Church remains the fruits of the Spirit, or the lack thereof.

To talk about grace and never live it, speaking ‘love’ in a tough voice and call it tough love. To talk forgiveness and never forgive the past. To carry the name of the Prince of peace into fights we wanted to win more than we wanted anyone saved.

I think this is the main internal contradiction that needs to be solved, which is also why I do my best not to be a partisan.

So maybe the first thing to address is the question under the arguments. When we say Christianity, what kind of love are we saying it is pursuing?

. A love that binds to someone, given to a person and carrying claims on the one who receives it.

. A love that permits everything, refusing no one and asking nothing of anyone.

. A universal benevolence that cannot belong to one religion without wronging all the others.

Or maybe it is the thing it keeps getting accused of being, a cover for hatred with a religious name.

I’d like to know which of these reads as furthest from the gospel to each of you, and which is closest to the vocation of the Church and why. Not as a test, I’m asking because it seems the loudest fights around here are between people silently assuming different answers as self evident, and the faith cannot be one if her members are not even answering the same question.

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  • Wanna hear Jewish story?
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Who are you to judge who lives grace and who doesn’t? :laughing:

One of my closest friends died in Africa two years ago while serving as a missionary. Would you say that he “lived grace”?

You know, when someone who was a genuine criminal is spoken of as though he were some sort of St. Francis of Assisi, courageously standing up to the powers that be, a good reminder of who he really was and what he actually did can do no harm.

Especially when the prevailing narrative is so distorted that even in countries like ITALY (!!!), there are people who genuinely regard the waste of oxygen I mentioned earlier as a pious man courageously fighting against an evil, corrupt, and Pharisaical religious establishment.

The prevailing narrative is utterly skewed (but then again, Luke 6:26, so no surprise there), and a little reality check every now and then certainly does no harm.

Because watching an utter scoundrel and CRIMINAL being hailed as a veritable man of God becomes increasingly grating over time especially for someone who knows a thing or two about history.

One puts up with it, and puts up with it, and puts up with it—but eventually, there comes a point when enough is enough, and one simply has to point out that treating a pig as though he were a saint doesn’t make him any less of a pig. Because that’s what he was: A PIG.

That is precisely what he did when he called for the destruction of others, invoking the very name of Christ to justify the persecution of the Jews.

I can forgive him. Indeed, the fact that I still wish salvation even for someone I regard as such an utter waste of oxygen means that I wish salvation for everyone, because there are very (VERY) few people in the entire history of humanity whom I personally consider less deserving of it than him.

But forgiving someone does not mean condoning his actions, nor does it mean refusing to acknowledge their devastating consequences (consequences that, unfortunately, I believe will endure until the end of time, hopefully I will be proven wrong, but I don’t think I will unfortunately).

To love God and our neighbors. And to me, loving God also means respecting what He has left us. And what He has left us is far more than just a “book.

Well, alas, we can’t all aspire to the extraordinary heights of Christian love exemplified by those saintly Reformers, can we?

Luther, in particular, had such a heartwarming way of expressing his love for the Jews: burning their synagogues, demolishing their homes, confiscating their possessions, and driving them out of the country. Truly, a shining example of Christian charity.

I imagine Heinrich Himmler would have found much to admire in that particular interpretation of “love.”

And as for good old Martin and Reinhard Heydrich in Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia—well, one can only imagine the fascinating theological conversations they might have had about the finer points of loving one’s neighbor.

Ah, those saintly Reformers. Such paragons of Christian charity! Unlike the paganized and evil Catholic Church.

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Sure, why not?

I’m sorry for your friend. From how you speak of him, he sounds like a man who lived what he preached.

Sure, but there is always two sides in a story and nobody criticized Rome freely before the enlightenment.

In 2000 the pope asked a great pardon for what had been done in the name of truth. Was that yielding to the world and to the reformers, or was that Christ-like and a step toward reconciliation?

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Ok I will say my piece with all the calmness I can muster (which at the moment is very little and if I were to write what I really think right now I would not be banned by this forum: I would receive a lifetime ban from The worldwide web itself).

  1. In the past I have aknowledged that at the time of the reformation the Church was corrupt and needed a reform, an internal reform (which was accomplished at Trent), which certainly didn’t justify the accuses of heresy and the invention of foreign principles that the reformers came up with. But the corruption was real and something needed to be done. I have also aknowledged (just like the Pope JPII ) the faults of many men in the Church in the past.
  2. After presenting things done and said by Luther which frankly defy imagination, the first reaction of a specific persons was not aknowledging the abominations Luther said and did. No, the very first reaction was attacking the Church for the lack of “lived grace “ and complaining indirectly about my “inability to forgive”. Aknowledgenent of Luther’s faults (and I genuinely cannot understand how anyone can see such a man a true prophet of God but that’s just me) = ZERO.

I don’t think there is anything I need to add. Everything is clear, much more than clear. And the difference in the two behaviours couldn’t be more evident. I just ask anyone to show me the ignore button or function (if it exists, hopefully it does).

Because I don’t intend to read another word spoken or written by the person I’m talking about, so anyone who will show me the ignore function will receive my unfettered gratitude.

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The placement of the definite article I bolded is dubious – it’s an interpretation more than it is translation – though arguments can go either way.
OTOH, going with “a pillar…” doesn’t make that much difference since being “a pillar and foundation” still indicates a strong role. Going with the indefinite, another obvious pillar would be the scriptures, which makes sense since both church and scripture flow from the Spirit.
Either way, it puts Richard’s dismissal of what the church (however defined) teaches on very thin ice.

True, though that does not automatically put Rome in a privileged position – yet Richard seems to denigrate Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. in the same boat, which leaves him adrift with just a paddle.

That applies only to John’s Apocalypse, as indicated by the reference to “the plagues written in this book”.

I can’t agree with the interpolation “for all” here; that would seem to suggest that the Spirit went silent after the last Apostle died (and I’ve heard that position argued). That said, the word can carry the sense of something unchangeable.

Hebrews 1:1-2 might be relevant too.

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Sure, even the Scripture. Although the Scripture itself mentions the Church as the pillar and foundation of the truth (from what I know virtually all translations and exegetes say that that verse was actually talking about the Church, and not God, although the Church couldn’t be the pillar of anything without the Holy Spirit).

The thing is that Rome seemed to have enjoyed a privileged position from the very beginning. Von Harnack on the subject has been very clear and he was no Catholic apologist at all, unless we want to say that a Protestant theologian and historian can be an apologist of Rome. :laughing:

Yes absolutely. I wanted to post Hebrew 1:1-2 as well but I posted only Jude because it seemed more important and incisive.

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Just click your avatar (upper right), and in the drop-down notifications list, click the downward arrow expand button at the bottom of that list, which should open up a bigger window. Along all the menu options across that window should be ‘ignored users’ … clicking on that, you should be able to click “+” to add any user to a list of who all you want to ignore.

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