Being a Christian is about Jesus Christ; we ask and discover who he is in order to discover what he'd like us to do, in general and in the particular. As I have said many times, the two most important questions you will ever ask--to yourself or anyone else--are, "Who is Jesus Christ?" and, "What is the Church?" Once you realize that whatever answer you give to the second question is awfully ad hoc and presumptuous, that question becomes, "Where is the Church?"
It seems rather obvious to me now, to realize that the denomination I had been a part of had no connection whatsoever of a necessary kind to that insvisible notion of "Church" we held so dear. That is, to separate from that body was no grave crime, and it may well not have been a crime at all. To play the trump card all Protestants have but never acknowledge using is one of the more dangerous and liberating things a person can do. My church, my denomination, could be wrong. To say otherwise, to invest said leaders with anything more than the provisional authority which they hold would be to invite the very historical scrutiny which any Protestant community cannot survive. So, having willingly and by neccessity chosen to conceive of the "Church" as the invisible group of all the elect, one faces two obvious problems: 1. explaining why one has the ability to define "the Church" in the first place, and 2. explaining what this far-flung, disconnected group of people not only believes, but must believe by necessity in order to attain salvation. The funny part is, you can't answer the second without answering the first. In all that, I wish you luck. None of this has anything whatever to do with the Catholic Church: its claims upon our lives, or the fact that I am now her loyal son.
So don't distract from the issues. Answer the question(s). Even if by exegesis you could attempt an answer to the second question, the real answer to the first is a question: "Who asked me?" Since denominations or families of denominations exist to promote and preserve one interpretation of the Scriptures, the obvious question--especially in light of opposing ecclesiastical assemblies with their disparate views quite in evidence--is why any one of them can be held correct. It is not reasonable to believe that my imperfect, fallible, reading of the Scriptures--by a mere invocation of the Holy Spirit--is any more or less plausible than the next man's. Is it any more reasonable to assume that our collective reading of those same Scriptures, as one denomination or family of them, escapes the problem? To the extent that one conceives that the Body of Christ extends outside the community one inhabits, to even those who disagree on fundamental points while remaining full members, to that extent must one be uncertain about what the Body of Christ believes. Ecclesiology and dogma are inextricably linked. More than that, there are as many ecclesiologies as there are interpretations of the sacred text. And that makes sense, since the individual determines not only what is most important to believe, but also the shape of that spiritual communion of those who hold it.
There is nowhere near this level of uncertainty in the Catholic paradigm, by the way. Looking at the paradigms themselves, there is no doubt which one is superior on those terms. It only remains to see if there is evidence in history to support the notion that this Catholic Church is that which enjoys the divine charism of infallibility.
If these guys come to your door and start arguing that you aren't even reading your New Testament correctly, can you appeal to any act of Holy Mother Church to back you up, knowing that you do not do so in a principled fashion? I'm just asking. This very truth drove me to discover the bases of what I did hold, and this led inoxerably to the Catholic Church.
It seems rather obvious to me now, to realize that the denomination I had been a part of had no connection whatsoever of a necessary kind to that insvisible notion of "Church" we held so dear. That is, to separate from that body was no grave crime, and it may well not have been a crime at all. To play the trump card all Protestants have but never acknowledge using is one of the more dangerous and liberating things a person can do. My church, my denomination, could be wrong. To say otherwise, to invest said leaders with anything more than the provisional authority which they hold would be to invite the very historical scrutiny which any Protestant community cannot survive. So, having willingly and by neccessity chosen to conceive of the "Church" as the invisible group of all the elect, one faces two obvious problems: 1. explaining why one has the ability to define "the Church" in the first place, and 2. explaining what this far-flung, disconnected group of people not only believes, but must believe by necessity in order to attain salvation. The funny part is, you can't answer the second without answering the first. In all that, I wish you luck. None of this has anything whatever to do with the Catholic Church: its claims upon our lives, or the fact that I am now her loyal son.
So don't distract from the issues. Answer the question(s). Even if by exegesis you could attempt an answer to the second question, the real answer to the first is a question: "Who asked me?" Since denominations or families of denominations exist to promote and preserve one interpretation of the Scriptures, the obvious question--especially in light of opposing ecclesiastical assemblies with their disparate views quite in evidence--is why any one of them can be held correct. It is not reasonable to believe that my imperfect, fallible, reading of the Scriptures--by a mere invocation of the Holy Spirit--is any more or less plausible than the next man's. Is it any more reasonable to assume that our collective reading of those same Scriptures, as one denomination or family of them, escapes the problem? To the extent that one conceives that the Body of Christ extends outside the community one inhabits, to even those who disagree on fundamental points while remaining full members, to that extent must one be uncertain about what the Body of Christ believes. Ecclesiology and dogma are inextricably linked. More than that, there are as many ecclesiologies as there are interpretations of the sacred text. And that makes sense, since the individual determines not only what is most important to believe, but also the shape of that spiritual communion of those who hold it.
There is nowhere near this level of uncertainty in the Catholic paradigm, by the way. Looking at the paradigms themselves, there is no doubt which one is superior on those terms. It only remains to see if there is evidence in history to support the notion that this Catholic Church is that which enjoys the divine charism of infallibility.
If these guys come to your door and start arguing that you aren't even reading your New Testament correctly, can you appeal to any act of Holy Mother Church to back you up, knowing that you do not do so in a principled fashion? I'm just asking. This very truth drove me to discover the bases of what I did hold, and this led inoxerably to the Catholic Church.
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