Can a Christian lose their salvation

[Clete]

That's it. We are the Body of Christ because we consume His body in the Eucharist. Yes.

Is this what you really believe? (That's a real question.)

 

[Clete]

Jesus did not establish, at least not in the New Testament, any new offices.

To assert He did is nothing but Roman Catholic tradition.



Bishops, sure.

But the office of the pope only exists within Roman Catholic tradition. It does not come from Scripture.



False.



I think you misspelled "tradition"....

"near 1000 years of tradition"

And "beyond what's directly out of Scripture" should tell you that it's not a guarantee of being correct.



Supra.

Appeal to tradition.



This is a case of "same word, different dictionary."

Yes, the office of "pope" is real.... within the Roman Catholic church. In that sense, and that sense alone, it exists.

But it is not a real office, as far as Scripture is concerned.

Why?

Because the head of the church is not a created bing.

The head of the church is Christ, not a pope.



I don't know why you do this, Idolate, as you're (not as) obviously sharp enough to converse about this subject.

The point you make about this being a case of "same word, different dictionary" is a good one. I'd say that the same extends even to the "office" of Bishop, the RCC version of which does not exist in scripture. This is true also of the "offices" of priest and deacon, both of which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the biblical roles of Elder (Bishop) and deacon. The Catholics believe the Bishops are the successors to the Apostles of all things and that the Pope is just the chief Bishop. There is no such teaching anywhere in scripture.

In fact, almost nothing at all about these "offices" has hardly anything to do with scripture. It is one of a seemingly endless list of Catholic "traditions" that scripture isn't allowed to affect in any way. Quite the contrary, rather than scripture determining the existence and role of these "offices", it is the people in these offices that get to determine what scripture means.

Indeed, the more I learn about the RCC, the more it seems that the entire thing is about their traditions rather than scripture. This is certainly the case for their religious practices. I haven't looked much into their theology proper, Christology or soteriology. I'm half scared to do so! It seems like the major role that scripture plays in the RCC is to give it the flavor of biblical Christianity.

 

[Idolater]

No. You missed it. You heard what you wanted to hear, not what was being said. Listen to it again.

What was said is that the bread itself is not Christ, as the RCC claims.

The point of that part of the video is that the bread is not Christ. It's only once it has been partaken of that it becomes part of Christ, because Christians are the Body of Christ, as it becomes part of us.

In that quote, Chrysostom said that the altar went from being just stone, to being a real altar.

Chrysostom believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and that is why he therefore believed the stone altar was really an altar (and an altar means a priest offers sacrifices to deity on an altar). The Eucharist is the sacrifice offered to the Father on the altar. That's why the stone becomes a real altar. Because the bread and wine becomes a real sacrifice. Because it becomes the Real Presence, the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ; and then is offered to the Father, on the altar, by the ministerial, sacerdotal priest. (And then we consume the Eucharist, and we are what we eat, which is why we are the Body of Christ; and then when the Mass is over, we are dismissed, which is where the word Mass comes from.)

 

[Idolater]

Is this what you really believe? (That's a real question.)

I believe what's in the Catechism of the Catholic Church just from rational grounds alone.

 

[Right Divider]

In that quote, Chrysostom said that the altar went from being just stone, to being a real altar.

Chrysostom believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and that is why he therefore believed the stone altar was really an altar (and an altar means a priest offers sacrifices to deity on an altar). The Eucharist is the sacrifice offered to the Father on the altar. That's why the stone becomes a real altar. Because the bread and wine becomes a real sacrifice. Because it becomes the Real Presence, the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ; and then is offered to the Father, on the altar, by the ministerial, sacerdotal priest. (And then we consume the Eucharist, and we are what we eat, which is why we are the Body of Christ; and then when the Mass is over, we are dismissed, which is where the word Mass comes from.)

The only sacrifice that is acceptable to the Father is the one time sacrifice of His Son!

 

[Idolater]

The only sacrifice that is acceptable to the Father is the one time sacrifice of His Son!

Take it up with JR, as he's the one trying to make a point.

 

[Idolater]

The only sacrifice that is acceptable to the Father is the one time sacrifice of His Son!

Also, while we wait, Catholicism agrees with this, we just believe the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, is that same sacrifice; it is an eternal sacrifice. iow at the Last Supper, the bread and wine transubstantiated.

 

[Right Divider]

Take it up with JR, as he's the one trying to make a point.

I was responding to your anti-God "sacrifice of the Mass".

 

[Right Divider]

Also, while we wait, Catholicism agrees with this, we just believe the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, is that same sacrifice; it is an eternal sacrifice. iow at the Last Supper, the bread and wine transubstantiated.

Well that's just dumb and grossly incorrect.

 

[Idolater]

I was responding to your anti-God "sacrifice of the Mass".

Well you should have been following the discussion instead.

 

[Idolater]

Well that's just dumb and grossly incorrect.

Your dumb and grossly incorrect analysis is noted.

 

[Right Divider]

Your dumb and grossly incorrect analysis is noted.

You're like a confused little child.

 

[Idolater]

You're like a confused little child.

Oh. Ouch. What a zinger. Never heard that one.

 

[Right Divider]

Oh. Ouch. What a zinger. Never heard that one.

Thanks for proving my point.

 

[Idolater]

Thanks for proving my point.

Witty. Weighty. Never heard before stumper.

 

[Right Divider]

Witty. Weighty. Never heard before stumper.

Idolaters next post: "I know you are but what am I?"

 

[Idolater]

Idolaters next post: "I know you are but what am I?"

Oh.

 

[Clete]

I believe what's in the Catechism of the Catholic Church just from rational grounds alone.

What are you even talking about?! That Catechism has to be one of the most irrational documents that has ever been written for men to read. I mean, it has stiff competition for the top position in that category to be sure (the Koran and Bhagavad Gita come to mind), but it's right up there with some of the most egregiously irrational statements of faith that anyone can read. There isn't any evidence that there was even any attempt for that document to be generated on rational grounds.

I found three statements that are more or less head nods to the faculty of reason within the minds of men....

"The Church teaches that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from His works, by the natural light of human reason" (CCC 36).​

​

"The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin" (CCC 1954).​

​

"Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth" (CCC 159).​

This lip service is far away from making the document a rational document, much less anything that can be accepted solely on rational grounds alone. The document puts forward a great many doctrines that are flagrantly irrational and the RCC openly teaches that these doctrines must be accepted as a matters of faith on the basis of their authority, not on reason. These doctrines include but are not limited to the Catholic version of the doctrine of the Trinity, Original Sin, Transubstantiation, Mary's Immaculate Conception, the "Assumption" of Mary, papal infallibility, Purgatory, the veneration of "saints", Indulgences (YES! The RCC still believes in indulgences!), etc. These doctrines, and several more, are neither rational nor biblical and they simply cannot possibly be believed in based on rational grounds alone. They can't even be presented on that basis, never mind defended or accepted as true.

 

[JudgeRightly]

In that quote, Chrysostom said that the altar went from being just stone, to being a real altar.

the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and that is why he therefore believed the stone altar was really an altar (and an altar means a priest offers sacrifices to deity on an altar).

Yes.

The Eucharist is the sacrifice offered to the Father on the altar. That's why the stone becomes a real altar. Because the bread and wine becomes a real sacrifice.

Yes.

Because it becomes the Real Presence, the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ; and then is offered to the Father, on the altar, by the ministerial, sacerdotal priest.(And then we consume the Eucharist, and we are what we eat, which is why we are the Body of Christ; and then when the Mass is over, we are dismissed, which is where the word Mass comes from.)

No.

You're still missing it.

The bread becomes a PART of Christ, AFTER INGESTING IT, because it is becoming a part of US, who are MEMBERS OF THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Until that point, it's just bread. It's just wine.

We are not the Body of Christ because we eat bread and drink wine, let alone bread and wine that is mysteriously somehow Jesus' own flesh and blood.

The bread and wine become part of us, thus becoming a part of Christ, because we are members of His Body.

 

[Idolater]

The point you make about this being a case of "same word, different dictionary" is a good one. I'd say that the same extends even to the "office" of Bishop, the RCC version of which does not exist in scripture.

Declaratory. Saying it doesn't make it so. Bald assertion. Also, a "just so", very convenient explanation. Also, you're captured by your own position so that entertaining the majority report of secular historians isn't even an ontological possibility for you, which obv has very low initial plausibility. iow it doesn't even need a defeater. It's self-defeated and auto-defeated.

This is true also of the "offices" of priest and deacon, both of which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the biblical roles of Elder (Bishop) and deacon.

Elders and bishops (and overseers and presbyters and even some fathers (cf. 1st John 2, 1st Corithians 4) are synonyms. Later in the first century priests would be distinguished from bishops, as potential bishops-in-waiting. Deacons have always been a distinct office from the beginning.

The Catholics believe the Bishops are the successors to the Apostles of all things and that the Pope is just the chief Bishop.

The papacy is a distinct office from all the rest of the bishops. He's not just "first among equals", his office is distinct. The idea that his office is just another patriarchate is partisan (the party in question being namely, Eastern Orthodoxy).

And there have been no new public revelations since the Apostles, so that part of the Apostolic ministry died with them. The bishops, in being successors of the Apostles, are therefore to preserve, teach and transmit all that the Apostles left behind, in writing and by word-of-mouth (the former being Sacred Scripture and the latter being Sacred Tradition).

There is no such teaching anywhere in scripture.

There most certainly is.

In fact, almost nothing at all about these "offices" has hardly anything to do with scripture. It is one of a seemingly endless list of Catholic "traditions" that scripture isn't allowed to affect in any way. Quite the contrary, rather than scripture determining the existence and role of these "offices", it is the people in these offices that get to determine what scripture means.

The offices were instituted by Jesus and the Apostles, and the Scripture, even the Protestant versions of the Scripture, prove it explicitly. 1st Timothy 3:1 has Paul presuming the office of bishop is already ontologically real. Jesus singles out Peter to set out particular duties just for him, and then John's Gospel, written after Peter died, into a subsequent pontificate, bolsters the Scriptural written record of the distinction of Peter's office by including the "Feed My sheep" conversation between our Lord and Peter.

Indeed, the more I learn about the RCC, the more it seems that the entire thing is about their traditions rather than scripture.

Both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are generated by the Apostles, and they were given the teaching authority of Jesus. That's called the magisterium, the bishops together with the pope have this teaching authority, but as I said, there's no new public revelation, so the magisterial power is to preserve, teach and transmit what the Apostles left with us after they all died, whether written, or spoken.

This is certainly the case for their religious practices. I haven't looked much into their theology proper, Christology or soteriology. I'm half scared to do so! It seems like the major role that scripture plays in the RCC is to give it the flavor of biblical Christianity.

The Hypostatic Union was dogmatically defined by the magisterium no later than the sixth century–about 1000 years before John Calvin ever dreamed it up.

==

What are you even talking about?! That Catechism has to be one of the most irrational documents that has ever been written for men to read. I mean, it has stiff competition for the top position in that category to be sure (the Koran and Bhagavad Gita come to mind), but it's right up there with some of the most egregiously irrational statements of faith that anyone can read. There isn't any evidence that there was even any attempt for that document to be generated on rational grounds.

I didn't say it was generated on rational grounds. I said I accept it just on rational grounds alone. To say nothing of my faith, is what I meant. Assuming there's a God (and there's a lot of defeaters against the notion that He is fictional, or not ontologically real), then there is obv authentic divine communication to us, and it is briefly that this Catechism of the Catholic Church is the lens through which we ought to look at all of the content He gives us.

I found three statements that are more or less head nods to the faculty of reason within the minds of men....

"The Church teaches that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from His works, by the natural light of human reason" (CCC 36).​

Right; that's kind of what I mean by saying there are many defeaters (with very high initial plausibility) against the proposition of Him not being ontologically real.

​

"The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin" (CCC 1954).​

The idea that morality is knowable without believing in God, is one of the defeaters against the idea that He's not real.

​

"Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth" (CCC 159).​

Right, and this is just stating the obv, right? If God is real then ofc every truth peacefully and smoothly and lovingly coexists with every other. If God's not real, and therefore the Catechism of the Catholic Church is unreliable, then you actually have to fight to support the idea that truth is even ontologically real in the first place, cf.:

Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

“ The problem of truth is in a way easy to state: what truths are, and what (if anything) makes them true. But this simple statement masks a great deal of controversy. Whether there is a metaphysical problem of truth at all, and if there is, what kind of theory might address it, are all standing issues in the theory of truth. ”

If you can't grant through faith that God is real and that He communicates to us, you can't even grant that truth isn't just a concept reified by the mind, but with no ontological reality of its own.

This lip service is far away from making the document a rational document, much less anything that can be accepted solely on rational grounds alone.

I never suggested that the Catechism of the Catholic Church in teaching about reason, is the reason I accept it. I accept, because I believe God is real, which is faith, and reason; I accept because Jesus is God, which is again faith, and reason; I accept because how Jesus is God is particularly understood by the Trinity, and I accept because Jesus started a Church ... which is actually just reason. That's not a statement of faith; that I accept Catholicism as Jesus's Church, is 100% reason, based on evidence, some of which is Scriptural, which I believe based on faith, but it is evidence either way, and so my conclusions are rational, and not statements or articles or tenets of faith. Because Catholicism has the Trinity, and because Catholicism is historically corroborated, I rationally accept the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The document puts forward a great many doctrines that are flagrantly irrational and the RCC openly teaches that these doctrines much be accepted as a matters of faith on the basis of their authority, not on reason.

On the basis of authority which is given to them since that authority is attached to their office. They hold the office which has the authority. The authority they have is teaching authority as regards us the lay faithful, not especially or primarily a secular, political authority. They have the same teaching authority as the Apostles, because this is the teaching authority of Jesus. But they don't receive new public revelations, so they're never going to introduce a new teaching, or change any ancient teaching, doctrine, dogma, de fide, dogmatically defined, Apostolic, Sacred, etc. There's never going to be another book of the Bible.

It doesn't take faith alone to believe their office has this power. It's a reasonable, rational conclusion, based on evidence, both evidence from Scripture, and also from secular history.

These doctrines include but are not limited to the Catholic version of the doctrine of the Trinity

That's just the Trinity. Unless you're Orthodox (meaning you don't believe the Holy Spirit is generated by the Son, but only by the Father), or a heretic. The Catholic version of the doctrine of the Trinity is just the Trinity simpliciter.

, Original Sin, Transubstantiation

The Orthodox believe in transubstantiation, they just don't like the terminology.

, Mary's Immaculate Conception, the "Assumption" of Mary

Orthodoxy believes these.

, papal infallibility

This teaching power was invoked exactly two times in history, the last time in 1950 I think.

, Purgatory

Again Orthodoxy believes this.

, the veneration of "saints"

"Saints" are canonized saints in Heaven, they're confirmed to be there rn. That's what makes them "Saints" with a capital S. They're deceased Christians /believers who are rn in Heaven, ontologically. It's proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

, Indulgences (YES! The RCC still believes in indulgences!)

Right, salvation, deliverance, from temporal (not eternal) punishments you have earned in anything bad done in the body (2nd Corinthians 5:10). It's grace in that it's unmerited, and it's mercy. The Church has the power to forgive sins, in this way. Forgiving sins in the sense of commuting a sentence.

Indulgences isn't really even a big deal–absolution is a big deal, and that's what happens in Confession (along with exorcism, which is not as big a deal as absolution but is still a bigger deal than indulgences).

, etc. These doctrines, and several more, are neither rational nor biblical and they simply cannot possibly be believed in based on rational grounds alone. They can't even be presented on that basis, never mind defended or accepted as true.

It's really more about the offices that Jesus set up. We see Him set them up in the Bible (His Apostles set up the office of bishop with His authority), and secular history records the continuation of those offices plain as day, without controversy. It's what we call today Catholicism and the Catholic Church.