Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

I will do as you ask, but it shouldn't be necessary. Faith has already pointed out example verses that contradict you.Luke 3:15.Jesus said: "I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."If that verse is true, then good works is not enough.

That's Luke 13:5. And immediately after it is the parable of the fig tree, which ends with:

quote:

---

Luke 13:9 And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

---

The context is that you have to repent from not producing fruit.

You appear to be trying real hard to shoe horn the verse into what you want it to mean. But the context for 13:5 is the verses before Luke 13:5. It is pretty clear that repentance means repentance from sin and not from not producing fruit.

quote:

---

1 There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

​

2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?

​

3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

​

4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

​

5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

---

It is also pretty clear that 13:9 is part of the parable that starts at 13:6, in which Jesus teaches yet another lesson. And in 13:11, he teaches yet another lesson. And then in 13:18 he begins yet another lesson.Wrap them together all you want, but a parsing that separates verse 5 from 1-4 is just plain bogus. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You and Faith are good at cherry-picking your contexts. Luke 13:1-5 is about victims; Jesus asks if they were worse sinners because they were "punished". He says no, that his audience are equally guilty and must also repent or they too will be punished. Luke 13:10 begins a different occasion:

quote:

---

And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

---

It seems pretty clear that the lesson on repentance begins with, "Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," and ends with, "And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down."

No, it does not seem clear. I think the better interpretation is that verses 1-4 are examples of sinners and verse instructs that the listeners may be near that fate themselves.What is going on in the verses is Jesus telling his listeners that earthly suffering is not damnation or any indication of sin. And that the listeners who are not suffering are equally sinners who must repent.Of course Jesus is also going to speak of works because they are important. When they are not present, faith is not present. But faith is not nothing. According to Jesus, with small amounts of faith, mountains move at a command. Surely you are not saying that Jesus meant that if you do enough good deeds, you can move mountains.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No Christian tradition teaches that people 'earn' their salvation. All Christian traditions teach that a saving act of God is necessary. All Christian traditions view the life and work of Yeshua as an expression of such an act.This affirmation is basic to Christianity. It defines it.Given this reality, it's hardly surprising that we find the affirmation reflected in the thoughts of Christians throughout history--not only Augustine but Boethius, Gregory, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, and countless other figures that go missing in Faith's peculiar treatment of 'history'.Faith has been taught that outside her little sectarian camp a vast pseudo-Christian horde exists that says people 'earn' heaven on their own merit. This is an imaginary construction and a straw man. Christian theology throughout its history has rested on the opposite assertion: human beings can't save themselves. They need rescue.--Readers will note the emphasis Faith's sect places on exclusionary terms like 'alone' and'only' and 'completely.' She uses these exclusionary terms every time she talks. She can't help herself.But most Christians throughout history haven't felt the need to talk this way. This includes the Christians who penned the canon.--Historically, Christianity, like Judaism before it, has taken a holistic view. Motive and action represent two sides of the same coin. Other religious traditions recognise the same thing. That's a psychologically sound view of how human beings operate. Storytellers of all sorts, including playwrights and actors, make use of this in creating believable, motivated characters.Faith's sect has trouble leaving things at that. It wants to drive a knife lengthwise through the centre of the motive-action coin and pry the two halves apart. The sect keeps one half of the defaced coin, calling it 'faith', and throws it at the people it imagines to be holding the other half, which it calls 'works'.What players of this game have not noticed is that no one is holding the other half of the coin. It remains on the table where they left it.The Christian traditions on every side hold the whole coin.Motives are made manifest in action. Actions are rooted in motives. It was ever thus. That's how human beings do things.--Other Christians are not interested in playing one sect's little coin-splitting game. Why should they be?The game is of recent origin. It was invented in Europe in the sixteenth century. The game reflects certain emotional hangups that plagued influential personalities in that era. It also reflects controversies of the period. Splitting the coin of faith and action helped to create a wedge. Some people found this wedge useful.Today the Reformation is done. Yet we still see some of Protestantism's derivative sects perpetuating the old rhetoric, driving the old wedges and playing the old games, as if local monarchs still needed to choose up sides in a Thirty Years War.

quote:

---

‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
- Jeremiah 31.29

---

___Edited by Archer Opteryx, : clarityEdited by Archer Opteryx, : detailEdited by Archer Opteryx, : detail

Hey, Archer O. I appreciate your perspective on this. I think a lot of our modern perspective on this issue (and others as well) come from our Western philosophy of pluralism that is based on Socratic thinking. We tend to separate things into distinct categories and disconnect them from each other; work and home, sacred and secular, church and state, faith and works. I don't think the authors of the Bible had these distinctions in mind when they wrote the scriptures. This is a more recent imposition on the texts.As far as faith and works, I think the apostle James makes it most clear:

quote:

---

"Wasn't [Abraham] shown to be righteous through his actions... See his faith was at work along with his actions. In fact, his faith was made complete by his faithful actions. So you see a person is shown to be righteous through faithful actions and not through faith alone... As the lifeless body is dead, so faith without actions is dead." James 2:21-26 CEV

---

You can't separate the two without destroying them both.It's funny how these same "sects" as you put it, would accept that Jesus was fully man and fully God, but can't accept that the answer to "Is it faith or works that saves?" is "Yes." Agreed. However, in practice, it is easy to fall into the trap of keeping a checklist of our works; go to church - check; give money to charity - check; say a few "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" - check; as if somehow these things will earn us favor with God.IMO, the protestants had some legitimate things to challenge the Catholic church on. However, the pendulum may have swung too far the other way. I like what you said sometime back (I think it was you) something about representing the stages in the evolution of the Church, and I like that. The Church has always been changing, and I believe, trying to find the right way, but always managing to botch it up. Starting with good intentions, but allowing human motivations to get in the way. I have always said the Churches would be great if it wasn't for the people But I also think that the Church is on another correcting course right now, trying to steer closer to what was intended from the beginning. Fundamentalists are the group that is resisting that change, thinking they have it all figured out and their way of thinking is as close to perfect as possible. Thus the emphasis on exclusionary terms.HBD

The term "free gift" does appear in Romans 5:15 and 5:16 in the ASV, CEB and the NASB and in Romans 6:23 in the ASV and NASB. All translations I trust to be faithful to the oldest transcripts we have and they come from a different source text than KJV. As to whether the word was in the original texts, I have no idea, the originals don't exist.However, I agree with your basic premise that "free gift" is over emphasized as the end all of discussion. It is clear we must DO something. That "free gift" is intended to imply "get out of hell free" is completely missing the point. (I am not saying this is Faith's position, but it is an unintended corollary of the "free gift" emphasis)The point Paul was emphasizing in Romans is that God's grace is not something we earn, but something he gives to us, even though we don't deserve it.ABE: I should also add that the Protestants emphasized this "free gift" aspect in direct confrontation to the Catholic Church's practice of purchasing grace, whether through indulgences or through worship, rituals and traditions. As I mention in my other reply to you, perhaps they swung the pendulum too far the other direction.HBDEdited by herebedragons, : add paragraph

Some protestants have done this. There is nothing inherent in Protestant doctrine that requires people to dismiss the more difficult elements of salvation as unimportant. Some protestants choose to do this.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Which word are you referring to? An adjective, "free", in conjunction with a noun, "gift", such that the question boils down to whether there are two or just one word? I took a look the other day and I didn't see any adjective. Nor do I recall any notes about alternative versions of that verse. But it's not a question about additional words, since translating from one language to another never is not an exercise of substituting individual words; there is no one-to-one correspondence between all the words in the original to its translation. If the target language has no word that means exactly the same as a word in the original, then the translation may very well require additional words to try to convey the meaning of the original. For example, translate "Wurst" into English -- no, "sausage" is one particular type of Wurst.I only saw a single word, a noun meaning "gift". However, the bible's dictionary (it's Metzger's Greek New Testament) adds in parentheses that it's "freely given" and is of divine origin (as I recall; it's at work). I will need to look at it again, but I won't be able to report on it until I'm at home again.So this exercise will require us to investigate the meaning of that word ("khariston"? I need to verify that). One problem will be that Protestant reference works that are dedicated to their interpretation of the KJV, so you will need to consider the source. Also, for working in the English you have to keep in mind how the language has changed since the KJV was written, since that often changes the meaning, just as we see when reading Shakespeare.

Agreed. I really should have said "Protestant Reformers" instead of just Protestants. The reformers themselves did place a huge emphasis on "free gift" of grace just as they did on the elimination of icons. They had to push back hard against what they saw as wrongs of the Catholic Church because Catholic tradition was so ingrained and powerful in Medieval society. Some of the Protestant movements didn't go as far as others and some self-corrected at a later time, but these issues were emphasized very strongly during the Reformation. They were pretty much the driving force of the Reformation.Another issue like this would be "Scripture Only." This too was a strong reaction to the Catholic Church's doctrine that the Pope was the final authority on earth. The Pope was above the law and the Reformers thought that even the Pope should be subject to an authority, and therefore, the Bible should be the final authority.HBD

I am really not much of a translator, I have to rely on scholars to do that for me. I don't rely on a single translation, but look at several that I trust and compare them to try and get an adequate picture of what the author is saying. I think Archer O. was saying that "free" was not used in conjunction with "gift" in the original, nor in translations other than KJV. I pointed out that it does appear in NASB, ASV and CEB which I consider to be reliable translations. I wouldn't take the word "gift" to mean something you earn. When I work, my boss doesn't give me my paycheck as a "gift" (although sometimes he thinks it is )... I have earned it, it is owed to me. Gifts are given because you love someone, or you want to show appreciation or you want to honor them (although you could argue that appreciation and honor are earned - although not obliged).The word "free" is to emphasize this aspect of the gift being unearned. However, I think part of the problem is our understanding of the word "free." We take it to mean "with no obligation" or "with absolutely no cost involved," which is clearly not the case. Jesus said that unless we "take up our cross" we are not worthy to be his disciple. And he admonished us to "consider the cost" of following him. Clearly the gift is not "free" in the sense of "no obligation or cost."So arguments about whether it is a "free gift" or simply a "gift" kinda miss the point. I will be interested to hear what you find out. Personally, I have completely abandoned the KJV. The only time I use it is in discussions with people who see other translations as "corrupt." It is as meaningless to my understanding of the Bible as a German or Japanese translation. HBD

Yes, that's what I said. Yes. that's what I said. Yes, that's what I said. Would you care to think that through again? When anything is not present it is nothing. I know that in reality the only way to move mountains is by doing deeds. Pardon me for thinking that Jesus may have known that too.

Very quickly, since I'm at work.In the English, the word "gift" is used twice in that verse, but in the Greek two different words are used (from the KJV):"And not as [it was] by one that sinned, [so is] the
gift: ... " There the word used is δωρημα ("dorema")." ... for the judgment [was] by one to condemnation, but the
free gift [is] of many offences unto justification." There the word used is χαρισμα ("kharisma").Chosing to use two different words in juxtaposition tells me that a comparison or constrast between the two was being made. Therefore, the discussion here should include a comparison of the meanings of those two words, δωρημα and χαρισμα, how they differ, and what those differences are supposed to mean.I can't really contribute much more. I last worked with Greek about 40 years ago in college and, besides, I have very little patience with theology.

Well good, I'm glad we agree.But then you have all those anathemas of the Council of Trent against salvation by faith alone to account for, a long long list of curses of the doctrines of the Reformation, and an assertion that works are necessary to salvation. They curse the very idea that Christ saves us without any of our own works. Why do you keep making up stuff?Also if you read the testimonies of people who come out of Catholicism you find them saying they were depending on their membership in the Church for salvation, but now they understand it's all through Christ, and their allegiance is now to the Savior, with whom they now have a relationship of prayer and awareness of His working in their lives. The difference becomes apparent to them when they come to understand that it IS by faith alone.This was what Luther discovered. He was a very devout Catholic and a priest who knew what the RCC required of him for salvation and it was not faith alone. That he had to struggle to on his own, that was the whole basis of the Reformation.And over and over if you read or hear people talk about how they were saved out of the Catholic church that's what happened in one form or another. Often they simply read a Bible although they'd been taught that they might go to Hell because they couldn't understand the Bible. That's an older generation now, but not really terribly old. I just heard a testimony on Sermon Audio yesterday by a pastor who had been raised devoutly Catholic, whose parents converted by daring to read a Bible. He himself went through a period as an adolescent when he couldn't get free of the feeling he was going to Hell because of all his sins, went obsessively to confession and still couldn't free himself. It was only when he finally understood that Jesus died to pay for all his sins that he was saved. He didn't get that from the Catholic church.That kind of testimony is typical of ex-Catholics.As for the other religions, there is no Savior except in Christianity.You keep referring to my beliefs as a "sect" but I identify with an awfully broad range of Protestant Christianity, I don't deserve that label. I specifically adhere to Reformation, or Calvinist, theology, but I nevertheless identify with lots of Protestant denominations as well.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.