5 Delicious Snark-Nuggets for Today
5. Hey, MSN! If you're going to peddle Joseph Stiglitz's Keynesian poo, you could at least tell us that.
4. Hey, Keith Mathison! I certainly don't see a principled difference between Solo Scriptura and Sola. In practice, I do. It's borrowing from the ecclesial authority and tradition of the undivided Church. Just admit it, and we're all better off. It need not be adopting the Catholic position. (That position is a possible answer to the problem, not the cause of it.)
3. Mathison Bonus: If the papacy inappropriately seized power and inserted the filioque in the Nicene Creed, are you denying it? Are you Orthodox? Their position doesn't help you, because they think the Reformed are schismatics and heretics, too (for 97.6% of the same reasons).
2. That first day of Lent was brutal. I didn't know about No Meat (AKA Ash) Wednesday for papists until my dinner plans were made. But I kept my vow. (No Coke or soda of any kind for Lent). It really is a suffering. I hope I can enter into Christ's sufferings through it.
1. Reformed theology is varied, and hence, inconsistent. The WCF is and was itself an ecumenical document. But it fails. Chapters XI and XV are blatantly contradictory, for one; and if we dare speak the phrase "Union With Christ" we should realize its obvious implications for theosis (which undercuts forensic justification by the nature of the case).
5. Hey, MSN! If you're going to peddle Joseph Stiglitz's Keynesian poo, you could at least tell us that.
4. Hey, Keith Mathison! I certainly don't see a principled difference between Solo Scriptura and Sola. In practice, I do. It's borrowing from the ecclesial authority and tradition of the undivided Church. Just admit it, and we're all better off. It need not be adopting the Catholic position. (That position is a possible answer to the problem, not the cause of it.)
3. Mathison Bonus: If the papacy inappropriately seized power and inserted the filioque in the Nicene Creed, are you denying it? Are you Orthodox? Their position doesn't help you, because they think the Reformed are schismatics and heretics, too (for 97.6% of the same reasons).
2. That first day of Lent was brutal. I didn't know about No Meat (AKA Ash) Wednesday for papists until my dinner plans were made. But I kept my vow. (No Coke or soda of any kind for Lent). It really is a suffering. I hope I can enter into Christ's sufferings through it.
1. Reformed theology is varied, and hence, inconsistent. The WCF is and was itself an ecumenical document. But it fails. Chapters XI and XV are blatantly contradictory, for one; and if we dare speak the phrase "Union With Christ" we should realize its obvious implications for theosis (which undercuts forensic justification by the nature of the case).
Comments
3.) The Orthodox think the Catholics are schismatics, too...
1.) I'm not sure how XI and XV contradict themselves. They seem straightforward enough... "Union with Christ" clearly is another side of the coin of deification. But potentially, theosis undercuts justification of any of the sorts that we in the Western Church like, if taken too far... not just forensic justification. As to forensic justification, I'm not sure what the problem is per se -- taken properly theosis/Union with Christ help to make sense of the the receipt of grace. If you take XIII into account, I think what we see is what the Reformed label (technically) as justification and sanctification is, in some real sense, what the Catholics speak of as justification. Both of these are subsumed almost entirely into theosis in the East.
We ought not try to hide the differences between the churches, but I think the first key is not to read different uses of the same words as necessarily pointing to contradictory beliefs. This is at least similar to "illegitimate totality transfer." After hundreds of years, our words have diverged and created divisions beyond those really present. (But to insist that this is more than a word usage matter would be the same as to, say, accuse an Englishman of being deceptive for having a different size pint when we have merely failed to recognize that the Imperial pint is a different measure from an American one. The quantity of liquid in the container is the same, even if the Brit would assign it a different number than the American.)
The question then is this: where do the Protestants and Catholics really differ in beliefs regardless of the words used, , rather than where do we _assign different words_ to similar or identical views (cf. the great "JK-Tim sacrament debate")?