ECT CATHOLIC CHURCH & PROTESTANT SECTS: What's the Difference?
- Thread starter Cruciform
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He keeps pointing out Peter's authority. I don't deny the authority given to Peter. It just isn't over me.
Cruciform
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I didn't say that one necessarily has to be a formal member of the Catholic Church in order to be saved. What I said was this:
"Even those non-Catholics who are ultimately saved will be so only because they have been connected by faith and baptism to Christ's one historic Catholic Church."
In short, if a non-Catholic genuinely believes in Jesus Christ, and has been properly baptized, he may ultimately be saved. In such a case, baptism has connected him with Christ's one historic Catholic Church so that he has been placed in an incomplete, but real, communion with that Church. Thus, one may be saved without being a formal member of the Catholic Church.
It should be noted, however, that the Church also issues this sober warning in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
846 Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.
His intention was that the apostles and bishops go out into the world and preach the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, baptizing converts (making disciples) into the Church, the Body of Christ. And this is precisely what they did in the book of Acts.
Here you've engaged in both Straw Man and False Dilemma Fallacies. One cannot separate Christ from his Church, the Head from the Body, thus in effect "decapitating" the Lord. To embrace one is likewise to embrace the other, and one cannot reject one without rejecting the other as well. It is Jesus Himself who endows His Church with His very own authority, and who works in and through the Church to accomplish His purposes (Mt. 28:18-20; Lk. 10:16; Ac. 16:4; 2 Thess. 3:4; 1 Tim. 3:15; 1 Jn. 4:6).
Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
You know if you typed out "catholic" with a small "c" indicating that Greek word for universal, you would have some in agreement with you. In the Body of Christ there is neither male or female, nor Jew and gentile. We are all one body.
Don't believe me, you can even ask Mr Religion.
Don't believe me, you can even ask Mr Religion.
Still talking about Matthew 28:16 (and the following verses). Well, the original Greek clearly says mathetai, meaning disciples, not apostolou. Sorry, no apostles, church elders or whatever here (yet), but the good old disciples. But you're well within the two thousand year old tradition of the catholic church of keeping scripture from the common people (when did you guys start using a non-Latin bible ... 1970s I think) and then telling everybody what you think should be in there.
To put it differently: all you do here is try to spin the story your way by using incorrect words, pointing to non-biblical references, while ignoring my points.
So this discussion makes no sense for me, because you believe what you want to believe and there is no way I could open your eyes. Have fun!
HisServant
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The difference is that Protestants are actually studying and trying to determie what Jesus and the Apostles taught.... while the catholics frankly dont care anymore... they just do whatever they are told.
they told us peter went to rome
Cruciform
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Post #24
Cruciform
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Straw Man Fallacy. Try again.
Back to Post #5 above.
HisServant
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Who is they?... and can they produce any real evidence instead of legend or myth?
Real evidence would be something written from pretty much anyone that recorded seeing Peter in Rome... or that he was headed to Rome.. and that he appointed a successor.
Anything... anything reasonable would be acceptable.
And please don't use the old babylon = rome arguement... it doesn't hold any water on so many levels.
brewmama
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The real question is why you would question something that has been unanimously believed in the Church for 2000 years.
Total Unanimity
Peter had to die and be buried somewhere; and the OVERWHELMING CHRISTIAN TRADITION has been in agreement, from the EARLIEST TIMES, that it was actually in Rome that Peter died. F. J. Foakes-Jackson, in his book Peter: Prince of Apostles, states "that the tradition that the church [in Rome] had been founded by...Paul was well established by A.D. 178. From hence forth there is NO DOUBT whatever that, NOT ONLY AT ROME, but throughout the Christian church, Peter's visit to the city was an ESTABLISHED FACT, as was his martyrdom together with that of Paul" (New York, 1927. P. 155.).
Historian Arthur Stapylton Barnes agrees:
The strong point in the evidence of the [church] fathers is their UNANIMITY. It is QUITE CLEAR that no other place was known to them as claiming to have been the scene of St. Peter's death, and the repository of his relics. -- St. Peter in Rome, London, 1900. P. 7.
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge corroborates this by saying:
Tradition seems to maintain that Peter went to Rome toward the end of his life and there suffered martyrdom UNDER NERO. NO SOURCE describes the place of Peter's martyrdom as other than Rome. It seems most probable, on the whole, that Peter died a martyr's death IN ROME TOWARD THE CLOSE OF NERO'S REIGN, sometime AFTER the cessation of the general persecution. -- Article, "Peter."
John Ignatius Dollinger claims that the evidence "St. Peter worked in Rome is a FACT SO ABUNDANTLY PROVED and so deeply imbedded in the earliest Christian history, that whoever treats it as a legend ought in consistency to treat the whole of the earliest church history as LEGENDARY, or, at least, QUITE UNCERTAIN" (The 1st Age of Christianity and the Church, London. 1867. P. 296).
As author James Hardy Ropes states:
The tradition, however, that Peter came to Rome, and suffered martyrdom under Nero (54-68 A.D.) either in the great persecution which followed the burning of the city or somewhat later, rests on a different and FIRMER basis....It is UNQUESTIONED that 150 years after Peter's death it was the COMMON BELIEF at Rome that he had died there, as had Paul. The "trophies" of the two great apostles could be seen on the Vatican Hill and by the Ostian Way...a firm local tradition of the death at Rome of both apostles is attested for a time NOT TOO DISTANT FROM THE EVENT. -- The Apostolic Age in the Light of Modern Criticism. New York. 1908. Pp. 215-216.
The belief that Peter was martyred in Rome was NOT due to the vanity or ambition of the LOCAL Christians, but was ADMITTED, at an early date, THROUGHOUT THE CHURCH. No testimony later than the middle of the 3rd century really needs to be considered; by this time the Roman church claimed to have the body of the apostle and NO ONE DISPUTED THE FACT.
It is more than interesting to realize that there IS NOT ONE SINGLE PASSAGE or utterance to the contrary in ANY of the literary works dealing with the foundations of Christianity -- until AFTER the Reformation.
What of it?
Romans 1
15 So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also.
Why did he need to share the gospel with them? Because they were proselytes to Israel. That was Peter's church.
Romans 2
17 Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God,
brewmama
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Cruciform
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Now go ahead and indicate exactly where in these two verses anything whatsoever is said about Peter "dying in Israel."
Cruciform
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Post #10. Still waiting... :yawn: