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Helen
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:02 am |
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I need help understanding how Catholics think differently about the total depravity of man. As a Baptist I have been taught that there is nothing good about man apart from God. That once we have been "saved" we are then covered with the righteousness of Christ. But then they also teach that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creation." Baptists believe that we can never be truely holy this side of eternity. That holiness is something to be strived for but that it can not be obtained. I have a terrible time feeling that God truely loves me and I think this teaching may be at the root of that. I hope my question is clear.
Helen
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HELEN
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Intercessor
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:31 am |
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Helen, here's a past thread in which you might be interested.
Click here for past thread.
As a Southern Baptist, I was taught that one cannot hope to reach sinless perfection in this life but that one can become increasingly conformed to the image of Christ (increasingly holy) through a lifelong process of sanctification.
Perhaps it is the difference in emphasis that you now notice. Your independent Baptist background may have stressed the righteousness of Christ as applied to the believer. (When God looks at me, He sees the perfection of Christ because I am united with Christ.) The Catholic faith stresses the responsibility of the believer to move away from sin and, through the help of the sacraments, to become personally holy.
The Baptists would have stressed the completion of salvation with the acceptance of Christ's atoning work on Calvary. The Catholics stress the responsibility of the individual to cooperate with God's provision and to work out his/her own salvation. It's not over until it's over, for the Catholic.
As for feeling loved by God, both Baptists and Catholics present a God who loved us enough to die a terrible death on the cross and who longs to give Himself to us and to draw us into the union and love of the Trinity so that we can be with Him throughout eternity.Last edited on Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:39 am by Intercessor
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"If our charity is arrested by the difficulties encountered in dealing with our neighbor, . . . our relations with our brethren are not regulated by our love of God, but by our love of self." Divine Intimacy p. 781, Fr. Gabriel, O.C.D.
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Hidden One
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:43 am |
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I need help understanding how Catholics think differently about the total depravity of man.
Catholics dont' think that man is totally depraved.
As a Baptist I have been taught that there is nothing good about man apart from God.
That, in a way, Catholics beleive also.
That once we have been "saved" we are then covered with the righteousness of Christ.
Catholcis beleive in infusion - that righteousness actually cleanses us. But Catholcis look at salvation as a process.
I suggest that you read the last paragraph on this page: http://www.catholic.com/library/assurance_of_salvation.asp
But then they also teach that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creation."
As do Catholics, but perhaps mroe coherently - Catholics believe that someone with sanctifying grace has actually been changed, rather than simply had his evilness covered over.
Baptists believe that we can never be truly holy this side of eternity.
Catholics believe that we can, but if we aren't, and die without having cut ourselves off from God (or rather, die unrepentant of mortal (deadly) sin), we go to Purgatory where we are made perfectly holy and thus end up in Heaven.
That holiness is something to be strived for but that it can not be obtained
Catholics believe that when Jesus said, "Be holy as I am holy" (or something to that effect, offhand I forget the reference), he wasn't commanding us to do something impossible - but, rather, something impossible without His help.
I have a terrible time feeling that God truely loves me and I think this teaching may be at the root of that. I hope my question is clear.
I hope that my (and Intercessor's) answers have been clear, answered your question, and helped you believe that God loves you. If not, reply away and I'll try and help you (as I'm sure everyone else will).
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1 John 4:7-12
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Didi
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:02 am |
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Helen wrote: I have a terrible time feeling that God truely loves me and I think this teaching may be at the root of that.
I think this feeling comes from the enemy -- that we're not worthy of God's love. But we must remember His infinite mercy! I remember Father Corapi preaching about God's mercy. That if you consider the most horrible sins ever committed by every person throughout all time, roll them into a ball, and cast them into the ocean that they would still be merely a small drop in the infinite ocean of God's mercy.
We also must remember that we are God's children. When human parents have children that make mistakes, do they quit loving them? How much more, then, does Our Perfect Heavenly Father love us despite our failures!
Romans 8:38 -- "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Ephesians 3:14-19 -- "For this reason I bow my kness before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God."
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CajunRick
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:04 am |
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Helen wrote: I need help understanding how Catholics think differently about the total depravity of man.
Simply speaking, we reject it. Instead, we rely on scripture:
Gen 1.31:
"God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good."
If God found creation good, how can we disagree?
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
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Hidden One
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 03:16 am |
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If God found creation good, how can we disagree?
I have heard it argued that we can disagree because this declarationw as made before sin entered the world - before anything was depraved. Now that there is sin, then, creation is no longer good.
But, as I'm sure you know, Rick, the Catholic answer to this is that the advent of sin into the world alters man's state - bringing about original sin. However, it does not alter man's (innately) natural state. After all, if you pump a bullfrog full of poison, it is still a frog, it is merely a poisoned frog. Nor is is a poison (dart) frog. Cleansed, via whatever (wholesome) method (our souls are cleansed via baptism), it is a healthy bullfrog again. But it never stopped being a bullfrog, just as created man never stopped being in some way good, even though (suffering from concupiscence as a result of the fall) mankind is inclined to sin.
God created man without sin, and man was good. Now, man is with sin, but man can be cleansed of that sin, via infused grace, and thus be perfected once again.
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1 John 4:7-12
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tedjenczewski
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Posted: Mon Mar 10th, 2008 01:00 am |
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God bless you Helen. Your question is fully and completely answered in "The Salvation Controversy" by James Aiken. It is also well covered in Dave Armstrongs book "A Biblical Defense of Carholicism" which can be downloaded to a CD from his website for only $5.00. You have a lot of difficult reading ahead of you because "total Depravity" is part of the heretical foundation of reformed theology that leads to a doctrine which denies the power of the grace in baptism and in the eucharist.
Most of Reformed protestant theology proceeds from "Total Depravity". There is no doctrine of original sin which is removed from the soul along with any other sin at baptism. Reformed protestantism will not allow that man, being made in the image of God, does have a limited, yet wounded, free will and he is able to coperate with God's grace. The reformers consider man's ability to cooperate with God's grace in salvation to be a "works based salvation" and participation in the long ago repudiated Pelagian heresy. Thus they say our sins our "covered" by Christs rightousness, we are not not made clean by baptism and repentance. We do not increase in our own rightousness and sanctification. Rather, man is totally depraved before and after baptism. Man is "predestinated" to either salvation or reprobation based upon the God's eternal plan. There is a Catholic theology of predestination to salvation, the Thomistic version of which closely approaches that reformed protestantism. The Catholic problem is with predestination to reprobation which requires denial of many scriptural texts that call all men to repentance and to knowledge of the truth. Predestination to reprobation also implies man sins of necessity,according to God's will, rather than of his own free will.
Dave Armstrong should have a real good reply to your question. This will be a start.
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"...the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth." 1Tim 3, 15
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Dave Armstrong
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Posted: Mon Mar 10th, 2008 08:58 pm |
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Hi Helen,
Thanks for your question. I deal with the topic at some length in one of my papers:
The Calvinist Doctrine of Total Depravity and Romans 3:10-11 ("None is Righteous . . . No One Seeks For God")
If that is too long, here is a capsule summary:
Total Depravity and the Fall
Some of the biblical reasoning Catholics would present against the background reasoning of total depravity would be the following:
St. Paul (Rom 3:9-12) appears to be citing Psalm 14:1-3:
1: The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good.
2: The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God.
3: They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one.
Now, does the context in the earlier passage suggest that what is meant is "absolutely every person, without exception"? No. There is considerable latitude in the notion "all" in the Hebrew understanding. Context supports a less literal interpretation.
In the immediately preceding Psalm, David proclaims "I have trusted in thy steadfast love" (13:5), which certainly is "seeking" after God. Indeed, the very next Psalm is entirely devoted to "good people":
1: O LORD, who shall sojourn in thy tent? Who shall dwell on thy holy hill?
2: He who walks blamelessly, and does what is right, and speaks truth from his heart;
3: who does not slander with his tongue, and does no evil to his friend, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor;
4: in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the LORD; who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5: who does not put out his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.
(complete)
Even two verses after our cited passage in Psalms David writes that "God is with the generation of the righteous" (14:5). In the very next verse (14:4) David refers to "the evildoers who eat up my people". Now, if he is contrasting the evildoers with His people, then obviously, he is not meaning to imply that everyone is evil, and there are no righteous. So obviously his lament in 14:2-3 is an indignant hyperbole and not intended as a literal utterance. Such remarks are common to Jewish poetic idiom. The anonymous psalmist in 112:5 refers to a good man (Heb. tob), as does the book of Proverbs repeatedly (11:23, 12:2, 13:22, 14:14,19), using the same word, tob, which appears in Ps 14:2-3.
And references to righteous men are innumerable (e.g., Job 17:9, 22:19, Ps 5:12, 32:11, 34:15, 37:16,32, Mt 9:13, 13:17, 25:37,46, Rom 5:19, Heb 11:4, Jas 5;16, 1 Pet 3:12, 4:18, etc., etc.).
We see Jewish idiom and hyperbole in other similar passages. For example, Jesus says:
No one is good but God alone.
(Lk 18:19; cf. Mt 19:17)
Yet He also said:
The good person brings good things out of a good treasure....
(Mt 12:35; cf. 5:45, 7:17-20, 22:10)
Furthermore, in each instance in Matthew and Luke above of the English "good" the Greek word used is agatho.
Is this a contradiction? Of course not. Jesus is merely drawing a contrast between our righteousness and God's, but He doesn't deny that we can be "good" in a lesser sense.
Psalm 53:1-3 is very similar (perhaps the very same writing originally, or close parallel):
1: The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none that does good.
2: God looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any that are wise, that seek after God.
3: They have all fallen away; they are all alike depraved; there is none that does good, no, not one.
All the same elements are present: it starts with a reference to atheists or agnostics, then moves on to ostensibly "universal" language, which is seen to admit of exceptions once context is considered. Like Psalm 14, there is the following contrast in the next verse:
Have those who work evil no understanding, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God?
And Like Psalm 14, we see other proximate Psalms refer to the "righteous" or "godly" (e.g., 52:1,6,9; 55:22; 58:10-11). David himself eagerly seeks God in Psalms 51, 52:8-9, 54, 55, 56, , 57, 61, 62, 63, etc. Obviously, then, it is not the case that "no one" whatsoever seeks God. It is Hebrew hyperbole and exaggeration to make a point. And this is, remember, poetic language in the first place. Therefore, it is fairly clear that there -- far from "none" -- plenty of righteous people to go around.
How about those who "seek God"? Can "none" of those be found, either, according to Calvinism's literalistic interpretations? How about King Jehoshaphat? Here is a very interesting case study indeed. He was subjected to the wrath of God, yet it is stated that he had some "good" and sought God:
2: But Jehu the son of Hana'ni the seer went out to meet him, and said to King Jehosh'aphat, "Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the LORD.
3: Nevertheless some good is found in you, for you destroyed the Ashe'rahs out of the land, and have set your heart to seek God."
(2 Chronicles 19:2-3)
Not only the king, but many people in Judah also sought the Lord:
3: Then Jehosh'aphat feared, and set himself to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
4: And Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.
(2 Chronicles 20:3-4)
How can this be? Was he (and all these multitudes who "came to seek the Lord"), therefore, regenerate? The text doesn't say. He hadn't heard the gospel, though; that's for sure. Nor had the people of Judah. According to White (and Calvinism as a whole?) no one can do any "spiritual good" (as opposed to a merely natural good or natural moral virtue) whatsoever unless they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Were all these people "good men and women"? Did they seek God or not? And how can this be if the passages in Psalms 14 and 53 says that no one does so; "no, not one"?
Was Jehoshaphat himself a "good" man? Various passages state that he was (2 Chronicles 19:4-7,9; 20:3,6-7,12,18-21).
The word "righteous" appears in the book of Proverbs 68 times, and "righteousness" 19 times, but "there is none that does good, no, not one" (Ps 14:3; cf. 53:3)?
Likewise, in Psalms, "righteous" appears 65 times, and "righteousness" 47 times.
Isaiah has one or other of these words 55 times, Ezekiel: 32, Jeremiah: 13, Job:16, Ecclesiastes: 10, Daniel: 7, Amos: 5, Habakkuk: 3, Hosea: 2, Lamentations: 1, Malachi: 2, Zechariah: 1, etc.
That's a total of 346 times in the prophets and the "writings", not even counting the narratives and the Pentateuch, or the deuterocanonical books (where there are quite a few also: see my search for the whole Bible).
But the Calvinist will find a few verses of hyperbole and typical Hebrew hyper-exaggerated contrast and conclude that the overwhelming consensus of the other instances must all be interpreted in light of the few: wrongly regarded as literal. They don't even abide by one of their own supposedly important hermeneutical principles: interpret less clear biblical passages in light of more clear related cross-references.
____________________
I'm happy to offer whatever theological & personal assistance I can. My blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, contains 1900+ papers & web pages (absolutely free) & 16 apologetic books (for sale):
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/
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EMarshallBuckles
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Posted: Sat Mar 22nd, 2008 06:17 am |
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Anyone who does not believe in the total depravity of man has never lived in an East Tennessee State University men's residence hall!!  Attachment: ETSUBuccaneers.jpg (Downloaded 110 times)
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Steven Barrett
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Posted: Wed Mar 26th, 2008 08:24 pm |
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Well! What a challenge that a Catholic college graduate (BIscayne College, 74) when the college still had all male dorms, and the priests plenty of opportunities to police our utter, damnable and completely contemptible depravity, couldn't resist the temptation to comment on! What, more depravity in the Bible Belt than in Miami-Dade. NO WAY! I take umbrage!
Back in those days, you were in trouble if your parents got a letter home (after Fr. Farrell caught you with a case of beer and a member of the female persuasion as company in your dorm room and said "Friend, it seems as if we have a problem here ...") Tom Hanks and Astronaut Jim Lovell had nothing on Fr. Farrell (who was also the Miami Dolphin's head chaplain when they went undefeated and later became president.)
Oh, you feared that letter home saying you were a bad boy with a case of beer and female companshionship where both shouldn't have been. Times sure have changed when parents would nowadays sigh a lot of relief knowing their kids were with members of the opposite company. Kind of shows us how depravity keeps getting a new image as time flies and standards keep slipping.
There was one dorm wing called the Zoo, and I suppose it could've been more wisely used as a lab for studying Darwinism in action, and Calvin's notions about total depravity. The Kinsey Institute might've been interested as well.
Aw, c 'mon gang, EVERY COLLEGE has a special department dedicated towards the containment and study of depravity: they're called dormitories, especially the co-ed var iety, and the be ond co-ed variety, of which is total depravity and only one's wildest depraved imaginations could envision the sorts of wild things going on.
In that case, you'd better head off to Confession real fast!Last edited on Wed Mar 26th, 2008 08:28 pm by Steven Barrett
____________________
For anyone suffering from a mental illness or has a loved one with a mental illness, my book "Lead kindly Light: A Devotional For The Mentally Ill" might be of some help: http://www.lulu.com/ (Use search box at the top of page.)
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Jackie
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Posted: Wed Mar 26th, 2008 11:48 pm |
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Your independent Baptist background may have stressed the righteousness of Christ as applied to the believer. (When God looks at me, He sees the perfection of Christ because I am united with Christ.)
Forgive my ignorance. I hear this statement above from friends. I also hear them say that 'it is imputed' to us. So the blood of the cross covers us not washes us clean? Without sounding flippant, I get the feeling God, all of a sudden is fooled by this? And how does free will apply to this theology? Someone needs to explain this reasoning to me.
Also, Calvin is Baptist denominationally? What made him decide he needed his own church in 1535?
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David W. Emery
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Posted: Thu Mar 27th, 2008 12:25 am |
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So the blood of the cross covers us not washes us clean? Without sounding flippant, I get the feeling God, all of a sudden is fooled by this?
You know, Jackie, that was exactly my own reaction when I first heard of this belief. (Recall that my background was Methodist, which does not accept the “covering” ideology.) Apparently, it is original with Martin Luther. Now Luther (apart from Calvin) had his own notion of total depravity, and this “covering over” of sins (as “a dung heap covered with snow” — one of the better known quotes from Luther) was his idea. I will admit that verbally, it can be found in the bible. But linguistically, it is a Hebrew idiom for forgiveness (cf. James 5:20), not to be taken literally.
Why did he believe this? We can trace it to his scrupulosity, which convinced him that “forgiveness” is a fiction, because he could not, in his own life, get rid of the notion that God would never forgive him his sins. So he tried, in this devious way, to find a way around his predicament and find salvation anyway — as it were, in spite of God’s unwillingness to forgive.
And yes, you are right: both Luther and Calvin — the latter systematically and the former pragmatically — denied human free will.
David
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setapart
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Posted: Thu Mar 27th, 2008 03:00 am |
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Helen wrote: I have a terrible time feeling that God truely loves me and I think this teaching may be at the root of that.
Helen
Helen,
Your struggle with knowing that God truly loves you may have something to do with your theological struggles as your journey continues toward the Catholic Church. This struggle can take our mind off of Christ Himself and get us bogged down in apologetics and theology. Study and relection is important but it is vital that we fellowship closely with the Lord and feast on Him in His presense. Since you are in RCIA you have probalbly not recieved the Eucharist yet. So close fellowship with Him through Mass attendance, prayer, relections on the teachings of the Cathechism and Spititual writings of the Saints as a source of inspiration and not just as a theology study, and meditation on God's Word as He speaks to you on a personal level should help you to sense His love for you.
Also remember that these dark nights of the souls are part of our walk with God. If you could at least see the responses and the concern of those on the Forum to your post, this should aid you to see that God is reaching out to you through all of us, since we are indeed His Body.
YBIC,
Bill
____________________
But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture. Mal 4:2
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Dave Armstrong
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Posted: Thu Mar 27th, 2008 06:17 pm |
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Hi Jackie,
Here is a brief piece that explains the Protestant viewpoint of imputed justification:
Alister McGrath on the Protestant Innovation (Corruption?) of Imputed Justification
Calvin was not a Baptist because he believed in infant baptism and had a higher view of the sacraments than Baptists do. His Eucharist entailed belief in a "mystical" or "dynamic" presence rather than purely symbolic, like Zwingli and later Baptists. He began what later became Presbyterianism.
He started a church because Luther's newly-minted principle of the Bible as the only infallible authority meant (in practice if not in theory) that the way was open to anyone to claim authority for themselves. Calvin felt himself different enough from Luther and Zwingli (and the Anabaptists) to start a new wing of Protestantism. He rejected baptismal regeneration and the real presence in the Eucharist (both of which Luther held) and that was reason enough. He called Luther "half-papist" and later in life referred to Lutheranism as "evil."
Calvin was at least honest enough to admit that Protestant division was an embarrassing and hypocritical scandal:
Dialogue: John Calvin's Letter to Philip Melanchthon Concerning Protestant Divisions: Its Nature, Intent, and Larger Implications
Last edited on Thu Mar 27th, 2008 06:20 pm by Dave Armstrong
____________________
I'm happy to offer whatever theological & personal assistance I can. My blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, contains 1900+ papers & web pages (absolutely free) & 16 apologetic books (for sale):
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/
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NorthStar
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Posted: Thu Mar 27th, 2008 07:32 pm |
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Helen wrote: I need help understanding how Catholics think differently about the total depravity of man. As a Baptist I have been taught that there is nothing good about man apart from God. That once we have been "saved" we are then covered with the righteousness of Christ. But then they also teach that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creation." Baptists believe that we can never be truely holy this side of eternity. That holiness is something to be strived for but that it can not be obtained. I have a terrible time feeling that God truely loves me and I think this teaching may be at the root of that. I hope my question is clear.
Helen
Hi helen!
I agree with everyone else here, thoughts that God doesn't love you definitely come from the enemy! I have been where you are now! And I still struggle with it at times, and the root of it comes from not one place, but many different places. Being an independent baptist for a time, I also went through the "covering" theology...and for me, it was because I didn't really understand the Incarnation. I was, unwittlngly a Nestorian and did not truly believe that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. Oh I believed Jesus was 100% man and 100% God, but didn't understand the true union of both those realities.
Jesus doesn't just "cover" our sins, He transforms us, like He was transfigured on Mount Tabor before his Passion. Christ united us to God, and this is an act of pure love! We are a new creation in Christ, we are partakers of the Divine nature.
I know it can be hard to accept the love of God, and I can't give you an easy way of grasping it . . . just remember that Christianity is not an off and off switch. It is a journey, as St. Paul says, it is a race to be run and finished. God loves you no matter what, and even if you fall, He still loves you. Jesus still loved Peter when Peter denied him, and He still loves Judas too. (as scandalous as some protestants might find such a concept)
Anyways, just trust in God, and pray....and even if you stop praying and don't trust in God, (as I have done in my life, and I'm sure everyone has at some point) He still loves you. Not because of anything we've done, but merely because God IS love.
That probbaly doesn't help much, as I'm sure it didn't help me some years back but never the less....
lastly I remember someone talking about how the later reformers saw salvation as God covering a dung heap in snow...(we're the dung heap)...but ancient Christianity didn't see it that way, they believed God REMOVED the dung heap. It's a transformation from the inside out, because Christ has become one of us.
Hope this helps...
Chuck
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Jackie
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Posted: Sat Mar 29th, 2008 01:15 pm |
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Dave your information (links) are very helpful. Thanks
I have heard it argued that we can disagree because this declarationw as made before sin entered the world - before anything was depraved. Now that there is sin, then, creation is no longer good.
This is not exactly right so I am glad Dave addressed this also in the "good and righteous" verses he gave. My mind was climbing all over some of them as reference points to negate this thought. It seems to almost contradict it. Thanks again Dave 
DAVE WROTE:Calvin was not a Baptist because he believed in infant baptism and had a higher view of the sacraments than Baptists do........ He began what later became Presbyterianism.
Calvin felt himself different enough from Luther and Zwingli (and the Anabaptists) to start a new wing of Protestantism. He rejected baptismal regeneration and the real presence in the Eucharist (both of which Luther held) and that was reason enough. He called Luther "half-papist" and later in life referred to Lutheranism as "evil."
Soooo, Calvin first believed in (infant) baptism, then he rejected it because it was not a regeneration that he first thought it was? What was the turn around for him? Couldn't be near the same as the "half-papist" han? Hmmm
So how'd the Baptist come into view? From whom?
AND if a church teaches mostly Calvinist beliefs, holding a KJV if the Bible, yet calling themselves a non-denominational, what are they??? Not-totally-presbyterian-yet still christian-just making-it-up as we go along-church!?
Okay, maybe that's not fair but goodness gracious, people do not think this is confusing?
Calvin was at least honest enough to admit that Protestant division was an embarrassing and hypocritical scandal:
Dialogue: John Calvin's Letter to Philip Melanchthon Concerning Protestant Divisions: Its Nature, Intent, and Larger Implications
Then again I am sure they did to a greater extent. What a shame. For all of us.
edited for clarity 
Last edited on Sat Mar 29th, 2008 01:20 pm by Jackie
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Dave Armstrong
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 05:10 pm |
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Hi Jackie,
Soooo, Calvin first believed in (infant) baptism, then he rejected it because it was not a regeneration that he first thought it was?
No; he never rejected infant baptism. But he denied the belief that baptism regenerates.
What was the turn around for him? Couldn't be near the same as the "half-papist" han? Hmmm
I couldn't tell ya.
So how'd the Baptist come into view? From whom?
I'm not real up on that history, either (I know the most about Luther, from that period) but I believe the roots probably started with the Anabaptists, because they practiced adult baptism. I know that Baptists often trace themselves to the Anabaptists. Then there were the Quakers and Mennonites and that whole school. Baptists appear to me to be a hybrid between the Anabaptists and Calvinists.
AND if a church teaches mostly Calvinist beliefs, holding a KJV if the Bible, yet calling themselves a non-denominational, what are they???
Calvinist! LOL There is a fundamentalist strain that is sort of anti-intellectual and extremely sectarian, separatist, etc.
Not-totally-presbyterian-yet still christian-just making-it-up as we go along-church!?
Well, to some extent, yes. But there seems to be a core of beliefs that are retained.
Okay, maybe that's not fair but goodness gracious, people do not think this is confusing?
It certainly is. It's the arbitrariness of the whole thing that continually amazes me. We're lectured about being so supposedly "man-centered," yet we see millions of Protestants (of this sort) accepting an unbiblical, man-made rule of faith (Bible Alone) and placing their confidence in mere men to give them the entire truth. History goes out the window; any sense of an authoritative Church . . . it's thoroughly incoherent . . .
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Kim M.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 05:51 pm |
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It's the arbitrariness of the whole thing that continually amazes me. We're lectured about being so supposedly "man-centered," yet we see millions of Protestants (of this sort) accepting an unbiblical, man-made rule of faith (Bible Alone) and placing their confidence in mere men to give them the entire truth. History goes out the window; any sense of an authoritative Church . . . it's thoroughly incoherent . . .
Well, when you put it that way! lol Dave, you always make me think. You bring a fresh perspective on things to us Protestants.  When you think you have it right and someone comes along and points out the inconsistency in your beliefs, it's quite jarring...in a good way! 
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CajunRick
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 06:08 pm |
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Dave Armstrong wrote: I know that Baptists often trace themselves to the Anabaptists.
When I was 12 I attended a small country Baptist church in a small bible-belt town which had never seen a Catholic, so of course the focus of the entire service was to convert the Catholic. Every iota of the service pointed to how wrong the Catholics were (but never by name, of course ... that would be rude).
I learned something at that service. I learned that the Baptists were founded by John the Baptist, and were thus older than the Catholic Church which was founded by Jesus. I learned that the Baptists today fulfill the same missions that John the Baptist did, and that is to offer a baptism of repentence (meaningless, of course) to adults, and to prepare the way for the (second) coming of Jesus. I learned many other things in that service that were equally hysterical.
I did not laugh. That would be rude. (Even Cajun southerners are never rude except to those who deserve it.) I also did not convert.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
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Kim M.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 06:18 pm |
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I learned something at that service. I learned that the Baptists were founded by John the Baptist, and were thus older than the Catholic Church which was founded by Jesus.
Do you think John the Baptist knows about this? Maybe someone should tell him!
Last edited on Mon Mar 31st, 2008 06:20 pm by Kim M.
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CajunRick
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 07:06 pm |
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