Subject: "Once Saved Always Saved" |
Bible Note: Brian: You wrote: "The Church has long recognized that it must continuously adapt the method of conveying the message of Christ, to the community in which the message is being heard. Example, the Mass was changed from Latin, to the language of the community - English, Spanish, and so on." Just what WAS the purpose of keeping the Mass in Latin until the 1960s, anyway? No one has ever been able to explain that to me at all (and I wouldn't call the last four decades as "long recognizing" anything considering we are talking on the order of milennia). You also wrote: "Today's method of teaching the word of God, would never have been comprehended 500 years ago." Sure it was. We call it the Protestant Reformation. Started in 1517. And it is still going on today. You continued by writing: "Let's look at Christian theology. Every Christian religion today is built upon the theological principles defined by the Catholic Church over the past 2,000 years. Was the theology completely correct - no, but the Church was constantly asking the questions, and still is, to fullfill its role." You are saying that the Catholic Church was incorrect in its theology? What about papal infallibility? You don't hold to that? Now this is getting confusing. Is Church tradition fallible or not? This was one of Luther's main sticking points, you know. Incidentally, the Reformation was largely based on the truth of what you said, that the church originally taught what was correct. Luther appealed heavily to Augustine in showing that the medieval Church had departed from the Biblical truth of justification by faith alone. So in asking this question of you, I am not trying to start a skirmish, but what you have said leaves a lot to be settled. If the theology of Rome was not completely correct, why can we trust that what we have now is correct? If the standard of Rome is changing, does that mean that God is communicating imperfectly through the Roman Catholic Church? If we cannot be sure whether the Chruch's theology is correct at any given time, where can we find an unchanging standard? Psssst...think "sola Scriptura." --Joe! |