The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

For clarity: I cannot speak for other Protestants, but I do not struggle with any of that.

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Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." -John 6:29

Eutychus,

"Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients, saying: I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." (Mt 27:3-4)

Food for thought.

Campion

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Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere. - St. Thomas Aquinas

...Not at all... it is my contention that practices of abuse practiced by some in the Church have not been codified into mandated practice, which must be followed by all...

As Catholics believe that God continues to reveal Himself to His creation, they also believe that the Church is the authority by which this ongoing revelation is discerned. As doctrine is required to change, it does so, consistent with the continued vigilence and discernment of the Church.

What won't be found is contradiction of current doctrine, compared to previous doctrine, nor will doctrinal error be found. Catholics believe that the Church is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit, and find this to be a much more rational model of authority in regard to discernment, than some of the models out there that suggest something to the effect that the untrained, unprepared, novice, amateur reader of an English translation of Scriptures is automatically preserved from error as an individual by the the Holy Spirit, just because that person has recited "the Sinner's Prayer"...or some other similar type of belief...

..evidence abounds to support the efficacy of this method of discernment...namely 30,000 some-odd variants of Christianity loosely practiced at perhaps a congregational level, with very little of that discernment codified at a higher level (multi-congregational, diocesan, etc.) - Anglicans, of course, being notable exceptions to this...

...if this is entirely true as you have interpreted it...then there is no need for Scriptural instruction - the Apostles need never have lifted a quill...as the elect have no need for these instructions...and they are of no help to the reprobate...

Catholics believe that God draws the elect to Him, but that this influence is resistable, and is a motive within an environment of appetites, to act upon the intellect and the will to determine choices and behaviors - which look like rational options that we analyze, choose and enact.

Therefore, while noting the pre-determination of the elect from God's perspective, we recognize that we cannot possibly discern the state of any souls, and therefore must act as if we desire election, in the hope that we are, and practice charity to reflect this hope and this desire...

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..."Absence of evidence" is not "Evidence of absence"...

...in good company with the likes of Mother Teresa and St. Paul the Apostle...

...hopefully enjoying a nice game of Bridge with my grandmothers...and my father...whom I hope are enjoying eternal rest...

...not sure how or where you got this info, but its not exactly right...might be another thread...

...uhhh...incorrect...you are confusing "mediator" with "intercessor" in this type of sentence...

...I'd love to start a thread on "fiducial faith"...faith requires some assent of authority to God, and from that assent, some willed action on our part, in addition to a simple "trust" or "belief". By taking responsibility for, and making choices reflecting - fidelity to the Gospel message - our faith is active, in addition to fiducial - per the instructions of St. James. The idea of "fiducial faith" comes directly from Luther, whose original translation of Eph 2:8 included the word "alone" after the word "faith" - that's how strongly Luther was steeped in this error.

If we are called to do these good works, as you say we are....do we have to do them, or not? If we don't do them, we are being disobedient - willfully ignoring God's instruction, or discerning His call? What then?

[...I believe there is only one of two ways to resolve this. Either, you have to believe that the soul cooperates with grace, in order to bring about sanctification, as a process (therefore, hope is not lost, but the realities are that salvation is something that can be rejected, given the resistible influence of grace, all glory to God for His grace to even allow any of this to occur...)

...or you have to believe that the one that professes faith and fidelity, but does not yield charity and good works, was never regenerate to begin with...and therefore, never can be...

...is there another option in your way of thinking about this? Do the elect act as reprobate from time to time, even though they are secure in their election? What are the consequences of that - acting as the one who is not elected?

The choice I have listed above was argued and settled by about 1700 years ago...only to be resurrected by the inventors of the 17th century...this is not a new conversation about faith...

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..."Absence of evidence" is not "Evidence of absence"...

DogHouse, please provide references to your conceptions of Luther. It is my contention that you've misquoted or misunderstood him. Will you continue this aviodance of references to the reformers or will you continue to slander without giving a basis?

The lost can be sorrowful. It only has eternal significance if one repents, is born again, and lives their life for Christ. Hanging oneself after realizing their hoorible deed doesn't, IMHO, meet that criteria.

I've heard it suggested that Judas turned in Christ to bring about an uprising to usher in a literal kingdom on earth where he would be placed in a position to steal from a much larger "purse" than the 12 and Jesus. We can't know for sure, but it seems to fit what we already know about him.

In any case, I'm not willing to claim heavenly kinship with Judas.

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Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." -John 6:29

RTCrudgi,

Here is Luther himself on why he inserted the word "alone" in Romans 3:28:

“If your papist wishes to make a great fuss about the word sola (alone), say this to him: "Dr. Martin Luther will have it so, and he says that a papist and a donkey are the same thing." …For we are not going to be students and disciples of the papists. Rather, we will become their teachers and judges. For once, we also are going to be proud and brag, with these blockheads; and just as Paul brags against his mad raving saints, I will brag against these donkeys of mine! Are they doctors? So am I. Are they scholars? So am I. Are they preachers? So am I. Are they theologians? So am I. Are they debaters? So am I. Are they philosophers? So am I. Are they logicians? So am I. Do they lecture? So do I. Do they write books? So do I.”

“I will go even further with my boasting: I can expound the psalms and the prophets, and they cannot. I can translate, and they cannot. I can read the Holy Scriptures, and they cannot. I can pray, they cannot. Coming down to their level, I can use their rhetoric and philosophy better than all of them put together. Plus I know that not one of them understands his Aristotle. If any one of them can correctly understand one preface or chapter of Aristotle, I will eat my hat! No, I am not overdoing it, for I have been schooled in and have practiced their science from my youth. I recognize how deep and broad it is. They, too, are well aware that I can do everything they can do. Yet they treat me as a stranger in their discipline, these incurable fellows, as if I had just arrived this morning and had never seen or heard what they teach and know. How they do brilliantly parade around with their science, teaching me what I outgrew twenty years ago! To all their noise and shouting I sing, with the harlot, "I have known for seven years that horseshoe nails are iron."

“Let this be the answer to your first question. Please do not give these donkeys any other answer to their useless braying about that word sola than simply this: "Luther will have it so, and he says that he is a doctor above all the doctors of the pope." Let it rest there. I will from now on hold them in contempt, and have already held them in contempt, as long as they are the kind of people (or rather donkeys) that they are.”

"I know very well that in Romans 3 the word solum is not in the Greek or Latin text — the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text -- if the translation is to be clear and vigorous [klar und gewaltiglich], it belongs there. I wanted to speak German, not Latin or Greek, since it was German I had set about to speak in the translation.”

- Martin Luther, An Open Letter on Translating, 1530


As a side note, the only place in Scripture where the words "faith alone" appear (apart from Luther's version of Romans 3:28) is in St. James 2:24, where the Apostle says "Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone?" (Jm 2:24)

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Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere. - St. Thomas Aquinas

...easy now, chief...

"Martin Luther would once again emphasize...that we are "justified by faith alone", apart from the works of the Law" (Rom. 3:28), adding the German word allein ("alone") in his translation of the Greek text. There is certainly a trace of Marcion in Luther's move" - Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church. HOJ Brown. Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody (MA), 1988, pp. 64-65).

An abridged quote of Luther, as reflected in Camp's post , maybe found in Rebuilding a Lost Faith., J. Stoddard, 1922, pp. 101-102

"in his German translation, Martin Luther added the word 'only' before the term 'wrath' to Romans 4:15" The Facts About Luther, PF O'Hare, p. 201, 1916--1987 reprint ed., p. 201

This would render Romans 4:15 as "...because the law brings about only wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.", which is not the meaning of the original Script.

Luther is quoted as saying "Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still. Sin shall not drag us away from Him, even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day" M. Luther, Letter of August 1, 1521

...to which we have to observe - Hebrews 10:26-27

From a Catholic perspective, this begins to be the seed of Jansenism - the dismissal of the requirement of man's free assent to God's free initiative of salvation...and the idea that the free gift of grace must be accepted by the faithful. Again...probably save that for the "fiducial faith" thread...

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..."Absence of evidence" is not "Evidence of absence"...

eat this:

John 6:28-29 -- Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (NIV)

"He does not say, That you believe Him, but, that you believe in Him. For the devils believed Him, and did not believe in Him; and we believe Paul, but do not believe in Paul. To believe in Him is believing to love, believing to honor Him, believing to go to Him, and be made members incorporate of His Body. The faith, which God requires of us, is that which works by love. Faith indeed is distinguished from works by the Apostle, who says, That man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. But the works indeed which appear good, without faith in Christ, are not really so, not being referred to that end, which makes them good. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes. And therefore our Lord would not separate faith from works, but said that faith itself was the doing the work of God; He said not, This is your work, but, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him: in order that he that glories might glory in the Lord." - St. Augustine, In Johannis Evangelium Tractatus, xxv, xii

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Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere. - St. Thomas Aquinas

Other than the name calling I agree with Luther.




You are comparing apples and oranges. The context of Romans 3 and James 2 are totally different.

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In the Red Sea of His own blood our Redeemer has drowned the Pharaoh of our sins- C H Spurgeon

Campion -- i'd rather hear your thoughts than your search results but hey -- our views appear to be diametrically opposed -- i offered a possible new path to explore but no 1 wanted to walk it -- so be it <shrug>

As I have already mentioned, the Bible is a Jewish document. If we overlook that, we are going down a wrong turning.

Jesus was announcing the Good News that Israel would finally be able to be a blessing to the world. Of course, this meant a turn back of the Fallen State, a situation that was of interest to some Gentiles for the immediate solutions to urgent problems that they presented:

28But she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs.” Mark 7

Note also the gladness of the Gentiles in Acts at being included in the Elect (those chosen to be a blessing to the world, not those saved from the wrath of God, two different things, the latter being given to all who turned in humility to God, like Nineveh ).

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We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.
Book I, Ch. 5 (1952 edition)
Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis

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The other great theme is, of course, forgiveness of sins.  Here I want to stress a point which seems to me vital, and regularly overlooked.  From the exile to Bar Kochba, and arguably beyond, exile itself was seen as the punishment for sins; so forgiveness of sins was another way of saying “end of exile.”  We who live in the shadow of the medieval church, of Martin Luther, of soul-searching pietism, and now of navel-gazing self-help spiritualities, have to make a huge historical effort of the imagination to get this right.  Read Daniel 9, Ezekiel 34-37, Jeremiah 31, and above all Isaiah 40-55, and you will see that if exile is the result of sin, return from exile simply is the forgiveness of sins.  Forgiveness, in other words, in this period isn’t first and foremost a matter of private piety, of the individual wrestling with a troubled conscience.  If you’re in prison, being granted an amnesty doesn’t mean you can feel good inside yourself.  It means you are free to go home.  This is all summed up in a little verse in Lamentations 4:22: “The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished; he will keep you in exile no longer.”

The Servant And Jesus
by N. T. Wright

http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Servant_Jesus.htm

That's all for now, carry on discussing among yourselves...

Ha! Ha! Just kidding! I'm not the teacher here, nobody is. But it is torture to see the discussion (high calibre at that) going down a rabbit trail. Please ponder my input and come back with the same high quality (love the scholarship level) rebuttal.

Paco, you picked up on ONE element of the teaching: good on you!

Puts on kevlar helmet and body armour...

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Sam

All Scripture references from the NASB unless otherwise indicated.

No, you suggested purgatory wasn’t penal in so much as it was therapeutic and yet your church teaches or at least taught that it is indeed penal.

Why?....we’re discussing your church’s doctrine concerning purgatory not the EO’s…which differs from yours anyway. Not to mention its understanding of 1Cor 3:15 opposes that of your church. The “Ancient Communions” differ in their understanding of these verses. EO believes the verses refer to eternal torture – not purgatory - as you can see from the following:

”…. it becomes evident that the Apostle Paul does not speak of purgatorial fire, which, even in your opinion, extends not over all evil actions, but over some of the minor sins. But these words also, 'If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss,' (zemiothesetai, i.e., shall lose,) shows that the Apostle speaks of the eternal tortures; they are deprived of the Divine light: whereas this cannot be spoken of those purified, as you say; for they not only do not lose anything, but even acquire a great deal, by being freed from evil, and clothed in purity and candour."
http://orthodoxinfo.com/death/stmark_purg.aspx

In any event neither camp is correct. In 1Cor 3: 9-15, Paul is speaking about preaching the Gospel – ministering to others by bringing them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Beginning at Pentecost, all believers are mandated to bring the Gospel to others.

1. Verse 10 describes those who will build upon the foundation which Paul laid. They are laborers with him(vs 9).
2. In verse 10, Paul warns to heed how you build.
3. When anyone builds upon the foundation of Christ, this will produce either gold, silver, precious stones; these people became saved. Or it will produce wood, hay, stubble(the unsaved)(vs 12). This is affirmed in 2Cor 2:16 where Paul says that the Gospel is ”To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life.”
4. Iow, the Gospel will result in either salvation or damnation to those who hear, there are no guarantees of success for those who share Word.
5. Nevertheless, the minister's work of bringing the Gospel will one day be made known. These results are revealed in the "fire" which is a metaphor for the day of judgment(vs 13).
6. The "work" that abides (gold, silver, precious stones) will be the reward for the one who ministered to these, to see they've become saved(vs14). He had a part in seeing the salvation of the one to whom he brought the Gospel.
7. If the "work" is burned(wood, hay, stubble) the minister will suffer the loss of these insofar as they did not become saved; but this has no bearing on his own salvation(vs 15).

I’d be happy to, however, I hope you would reciprocate and give us your understanding of at least some of the references I used to support my position on purgatory and justification.

First, we don’t establish doctrines on the basis of metaphors or parables. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this discussion even should we grant that “pay the last penny” has a reference to the penalty of sin, it still offers no support for purgatory. Man is unable to “pay the last penny” or all that is due because the penalty for even one unpaid sin is eternal death(Rom 6:23).

Of course, that’s not what you’re “saying”, it is, however, the only conclusion which can legitimately be drawn. If man must pay for some portion of his sins, then obviously Christ was unable to fully pay the penalty – His work was insufficient. The Father did not accept the Son’s sacrifice in total. However, we know this to be untrue because Christ was the faithful High Priest come to make reconciliation. ”Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.”(Heb 2:17).

No doubt you can, however, it was you who made a somewhat diparaging remark about the Reformation. I simply countered such with a church historian’s view on the Reformation’s effect on the entire history of the world.

Given that explanation why would you compare my beliefs to that of Jansenism? I never said nor have I ever implied that man is “excused” from charity or anything else for that matter.

Luther translated to give clarity to the German. He had the following to say about those who attempt to discredit his abilities to translate...and just about everything else:

"I know very well that in Romans 3 the word solum is not in the Greek or Latin text — the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text -- if the translation is to be clear and vigorous [klar und gewaltiglich], it belongs there. I wanted to speak German, not Latin or Greek, since it was German I had set about to speak in the translation.” Open Letter on Translating (1530)

But to the faithful he explained:

"For you and our people, however, I shall show why I used the [German equivalent of the] word sola — even though in Romans 3 it was not [the equivalent of] sola I used but solum or tantum. (5) That is how closely those donkeys have looked at my text! Nevertheless I have used sola fides elsewhere; I want to use both solum and sola. I have always tried to translate in a pure and clear German. It has often happened that for three or four weeks we have searched and inquired about a single word, and sometimes we have not found it even then."
http://www.bible-researcher.com/luther01.html

Btw, Luther's use of "solum" was not original. The same word in the same context is found in many of the early patristic writings. "Furthermore, I am not the only one, nor the first, to say that faith alone makes one righteous. There was Ambrose, Augustine and many others who said it before me.”

It has been pointed out to you that even within that single quote it is evident that Luther is contrasting the unmeasurable mercy of God with that of our sins. "Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner."

It's unfortunate that much of the dribble is from those who some consider to be "scholars". However, an honest scholar does not omit the pertinent context of a quote nor does he omit the explanation, unless of course, his intent is simply to vilify Luther's integrity and sincerity.....you think?

Even some RCC versions of the NT also translated Rom 3:28 as did Luther. The Nuremberg Bible (1483), “allein durch den glauben” and the Italian Bibles of Geneva (1476) and of Venice (1538) say “per sola fede.”

As a translator, Luther holds company with others, and cannot be charged with a mistranslation. If he’s guilty of such a charge, so are many before him.