I've realized that I like 2 systems of Theology greatly and agree with them. The systems are Catholicism and Calvinism. The problem is that they are contradictory. Blaise Pascal always seemed like a great man and I am reading Pensees right now, so I wikipedia'd him. As I read descriptions of his theology I realized I really agreed with alot of it. It was a form of Catholicism that didn't teach the Semi-Pelagian error of Trent to believe in Resistable Grace.
It seems very good as it blends alot of the truth about the fall, the gospel, predestination, and grace together and presents a truly Augustinian theology. I am planning on reading alot more of it.
Wikipedia says it well here:
"Jansen also insisted on justification by faith, although he did not contest the necessity of revering saints, of confession, and of frequent Communion. Jansen’s opponents (mainly Jesuits) condemned his teachings for their alleged similarities to Calvinism (though, unlike Calvinism, Jansen rejected the doctrine of assurance and taught that even the saved could not be assured that they were saved). Blaise Pascal's Ecrits sur la Grâce, based on what Michel Serres has called his "anamorphotic method," attempted to conciliate the contradictory positions of Molinists and Calvinists by stating that both were partially right: Molinists, who claimed God's choice concerning a person's sin and salvation was a posteriori and contingent, while Calvinists claimed that it was a priori and necessary. Pascal himself claimed that Molinists were correct concerning the state of humanity before the Fall, while Calvinists were correct regarding the state of humanity after the Fall.
The heresy of Jansenism, meaning here its denial of Catholic doctrine, is that it denies the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace -- that God's role in the infusion of grace is such that it cannot be resisted and does not require human assent. The Catholic teaching is that "God's free initiative demands man's free response" (CCC 2002) [3] that is the gift of grace can be resisted and requires human assent."
Even if one is not allowed to believe in Irresistible Grace and be a Catholic, at least this shows me you can still believe in Total Depravity and Unconditional Election. Augustinian Thomism still offers some hope for me yet.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
God is good - a simple observation
God is good. Among every other attribute the scriptures tell us this fact. They even implore us “taste and see that the Lord is good”. Today in mass everyone around me was doing just that (partaking in the Eucharist), and as I walked up I grudgingly wondered how much longer it would be till I was ‘in the club’ so to speak, until I got to join in, until I could taste and see that the Lord is good myself. But as I approach Fr. Peter he put down the Jesus/wafer and smiled while giving me a blessing. “The Lord be with you Andrew” and he signed the cross on my forehead. As I walked back to my pew I felt so much better, I don’t know how to describe it, it was like when I was baptized at my Baptist Church and I felt this overwhelming feeling of grace, today I felt some sort of grace. It was for me a beautiful image of a priest acting in persona Christi. I was always taught that the curtain ripping in the temple meant that we never needed a priest again, that any man who tried to claim spiritual authority was a heretic or worse a Catholic. But today I saw the beauty of spiritual fatherhood and it coincided perfectly with a verse I read in the bible.
“Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (1 Cor 4:15).
I understood what St. Paul was to the Corinthians now, he was an example in faith, a Bishop who corrected their errors, but more than that, a father in the gospel who showed them in some small way the Fatherhood of God. Of course if a person abused this position (as has occurred in many sex scandals, etc) the image could be the exact opposite, but it can also be of great encouragement. I guess I was just writing this story to say that the Lord is good, and is teaching me this through his servants.
God is good, and I will live with that. In the triumphal entry in St. Luke’s gospel it describes Jesus entering the town, and the Pharisees are upset, the people are crying out hosanna (‘save us’) and other cries that anticipated the messiah, and this would probably not escape the notice of the Roman guards. Jesus has this entry in fulfillment of Jewish scriptures (Zechariah) and people are crying to them as their king. This is when the pharisses say “Teacher, rebuke your disciples” (Lk. 19:39) and this I guess was a reasonable request, for if he did not rebuke them he risked causing a riot and a rebellion with Roman force to crush it. But the Pharisees miss the cosmic significance, they miss the God they worship, even though he is standing in front of them (and we probably would too). But Jesus says this classic line to them, “If they kept quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Lk. 19:40). It’s as if Jesus is saying: ‘I am Good, I am God, this is the day Israel has been waiting for since God first called Abraham, but if you miss this, if you refuse to recognize the significance of this, Creation itself will speak be your witness’.
Even in the bad times of life I must always remember the simple truth I sung to kids in Church of England schools over and over again during outreach: “our God is a good God, he’s a good good good good God”.
“Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (1 Cor 4:15).
I understood what St. Paul was to the Corinthians now, he was an example in faith, a Bishop who corrected their errors, but more than that, a father in the gospel who showed them in some small way the Fatherhood of God. Of course if a person abused this position (as has occurred in many sex scandals, etc) the image could be the exact opposite, but it can also be of great encouragement. I guess I was just writing this story to say that the Lord is good, and is teaching me this through his servants.
God is good, and I will live with that. In the triumphal entry in St. Luke’s gospel it describes Jesus entering the town, and the Pharisees are upset, the people are crying out hosanna (‘save us’) and other cries that anticipated the messiah, and this would probably not escape the notice of the Roman guards. Jesus has this entry in fulfillment of Jewish scriptures (Zechariah) and people are crying to them as their king. This is when the pharisses say “Teacher, rebuke your disciples” (Lk. 19:39) and this I guess was a reasonable request, for if he did not rebuke them he risked causing a riot and a rebellion with Roman force to crush it. But the Pharisees miss the cosmic significance, they miss the God they worship, even though he is standing in front of them (and we probably would too). But Jesus says this classic line to them, “If they kept quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Lk. 19:40). It’s as if Jesus is saying: ‘I am Good, I am God, this is the day Israel has been waiting for since God first called Abraham, but if you miss this, if you refuse to recognize the significance of this, Creation itself will speak be your witness’.
Even in the bad times of life I must always remember the simple truth I sung to kids in Church of England schools over and over again during outreach: “our God is a good God, he’s a good good good good God”.
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Walking Wounded and the Wounded Healer
My Principal Rob Whittaker at Capernwray Bible School in England used to talk about Christians who struggled with sin as they went through life, he used this poem - or at least the phrase 'the walking wounded' to describe us. Here is a part of the poem.
"And crimson crosses on the dirty white...
The mist still hung in snags from dripping thorns;
Absent-minded guns still sighed and thumped.
And then they came, the walking wounded,
Straggling the road like convicts loosely chained,
Dragging at ankles exhaustion and despair...
Remembering after eighteen years,
In the heart's throat a sour sadness stirs;
Imagination pauses and returns
To see them walking still, but multiplied
In thousands now. And when heroic corpses
Turn slowly in their decorated sleep
And every ambulance has disappeared,
The walking wounded still trudge down that lane,
And when recalled they must bear arms again" - "The Walking Wounded" By Vernon Scannell
"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion (splagnidzomai) for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd...." - Matthew 9:36
The Gospel is our only hope to heal the walking wounded, with the wounded healer
"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." -Isaiah 53:5
"‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.’" - Wisdom of Solomon 2:12-20
"And crimson crosses on the dirty white...
The mist still hung in snags from dripping thorns;
Absent-minded guns still sighed and thumped.
And then they came, the walking wounded,
Straggling the road like convicts loosely chained,
Dragging at ankles exhaustion and despair...
Remembering after eighteen years,
In the heart's throat a sour sadness stirs;
Imagination pauses and returns
To see them walking still, but multiplied
In thousands now. And when heroic corpses
Turn slowly in their decorated sleep
And every ambulance has disappeared,
The walking wounded still trudge down that lane,
And when recalled they must bear arms again" - "The Walking Wounded" By Vernon Scannell
"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion (splagnidzomai) for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd...." - Matthew 9:36
The Gospel is our only hope to heal the walking wounded, with the wounded healer
"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." -Isaiah 53:5
"‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.’" - Wisdom of Solomon 2:12-20
A Reformed/Calvinist Catholic?
I found an interesting article written by a Presbyterian Minister who became a Roman Catholic, the article is all about the similarities between Calvinism and Catholicism and how you can basically be a 3-ish point Calvinist while being a Catholic (closer to Calvin than the Methodists are). I really like the article alot, as I find myself leaning strongly Augustinian/Thomistic on views of the fall, predestination, unconditional election, and irresistible grace (even though it got killed at Trent).
Here it is: http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/tulip.htm
It's nice to be reminded that of all the good doctrines Catholics can hold - even though the Church at large seems to hide quite well or water down quite a bit the doctrines of grace.
Here it is: http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/tulip.htm
It's nice to be reminded that of all the good doctrines Catholics can hold - even though the Church at large seems to hide quite well or water down quite a bit the doctrines of grace.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Sacraments: Are They A Lie?
I think that the Reformation initially retained a Sacramental Piety, however I've come to realize once more how important the Sacraments are in the discussion of theology. If the sacraments are means of communicating grace (Catholicism) or if they are superstitious and empty rituals.
This is also not so much a Catholic - Protestant issue, as it is a more specific Calvinist & Zwinglian versus Catholic and to a lesser extent Lutheran and Anglican.
The question is not simply one of whether there are 7 Sacraments: Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Extreme Unction, and Holy Orders, or just the first 2. It is also a question of what do the sacraments do? what is their purpose. The question after that though is one of the very character of God. Does God care about the outward and physical or is he only concerned with the inner and spiritual.
The problem is that our Christian Ethics are Ontological rather than Teleological - they are based on the motive of the doer, rather than just the outcome. Was it T.S. Eliot who said the greatest sin was doing the right thing for the wrong reason? (if not it was some other British poet). SO one has to question why God would imbue special powers to actions.
The Calvinist position as I understand it is that God works effectually outside the sacraments in that the baptism which forgives you is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which occurs at the moment of saving faith. The infant baptism is just a covenantal sign, but ultimately it has no purpose other than marking the visible from the invisible church, but since in Calvinistic Ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) the 'true' church is always the invisible church anyway, so there really isn't any point in being in the 'visible' church.
The Catholic position as I've argued before is that the sacraments have power. They actually are objective means of receiving grace. Every time you receive the Eucharist you are recieving the physical body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ (I don't know how one receives his soul if it's his body, but there is probably something about it in Aquinas or a Scholastic, so I won't argue it...maybe I got it wrong by including his soul, nevermind). Likewise when you are absolved and forgiven of your sins by a priest you are forgiven by God Himself.
There are many biblical and historical arguments I've already listed in favour of a literal interpretation of Christ's words about the Holy Communion, and the Sacrament of Confession/Penance, and an argument for regenerative baptism (it forgives your sins). If you wish to see more just check out one of these sites: http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/10/topical-index-pages.html, or http://www.phatmass.com/directory/
The basic question though is why God would promise such Power to the Church? Why would he give frail men the ability to bind and loose, why would he give the keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter and allow men to determine who enters the Kingdom of Heaven. In all honesty, it gives me two thoughts:
1) God has stupidly given too much power to the Church
2) The Bible must be written by the Church as a means to claim supernatural power
The third option of course is that the Sacraments actually do have power and are efficatious, that God does care about physical actions. As C.S. Lewis put it in his defense of grace through the sacraments in Mere Christianity, God has no problem with matter, he created it, and it's no use trying to be more spiritual than God.
I was thinking the other day about Rob Bell's "The gods aren't angry" and how he proposes that none of the Israelite offerings in the Old Covenent satisfied God as he didn't 'need' blood. He also asked the question "Does your God need to hurt someone so that he can love?" it sounds like a great atheistic question and I've finally come to believe (as all Christians holding to either Calvin's Substitution or St. Anselm's Satisfaction theology of Atonement should) that yes God does have to hurt so that he can Love. But in essence he hurts himself, in Christ, he provides the sacrifice, which becomes an eternal part of his nature (Christ's eternal sacrifice).
I also remembered the 2 stories of God's anger towards violations of his covenants. The Second is of course 1 Corinthians 11 where St. Paul writes that those who partook of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner 'drank God's wrath against themselves' and 'were guilty of the body and blood of our Lord' and that this misuse resulted in illness and death. The first however is more obscure, I read about it in Exodus 4 at Capernwray Bible School and it was a blessing to be 'forced' to read the whole bible so that now I am more aware of all these extra stories.
The story is about Moses going into Egypt after receiving his mission from God in the Burning Bush, Zipporah and Moses are travelling with their son when we hear this:
"On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’ So he let him alone. It was then she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.’ "" - Exodus 4:24-26
It seems odd to us that God would plan on killing Moses for not performing this outward circumcision rite. We are constantly taught in the New Testament that "circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything" (Gal 5) and likewise by St. Stephen the Martyr that we are to have 'circumcised hearts' not dead rituals. However it seems that in this story God disagrees, not in a way contradictory to the New Testament but in a way contradictory to my former interpretation. What if God really does care about the Sacraments about his Covenantal signs and realities. It isn't all bad though, it's also a huge gift, for maybe God really does work through the sacraments. Maybe that is why the Eucharist means 'the Good Gift' (or at least that's what someone told me).
The real question then is why no angel killed Zwingli? but I guess 'where sin abounded grace abounded all the more' (Rm 5.20)
An interesting book on this topic which I hope to buy soon is Dr. Scott Hahn's "Swear to God: God's Promise and Power of the Sacraments" http://www.amazon.com/Swear-God-Promise-Power-Sacraments/dp/0385509316/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221099823&sr=1-11.
This is also not so much a Catholic - Protestant issue, as it is a more specific Calvinist & Zwinglian versus Catholic and to a lesser extent Lutheran and Anglican.
The question is not simply one of whether there are 7 Sacraments: Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Extreme Unction, and Holy Orders, or just the first 2. It is also a question of what do the sacraments do? what is their purpose. The question after that though is one of the very character of God. Does God care about the outward and physical or is he only concerned with the inner and spiritual.
The problem is that our Christian Ethics are Ontological rather than Teleological - they are based on the motive of the doer, rather than just the outcome. Was it T.S. Eliot who said the greatest sin was doing the right thing for the wrong reason? (if not it was some other British poet). SO one has to question why God would imbue special powers to actions.
The Calvinist position as I understand it is that God works effectually outside the sacraments in that the baptism which forgives you is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which occurs at the moment of saving faith. The infant baptism is just a covenantal sign, but ultimately it has no purpose other than marking the visible from the invisible church, but since in Calvinistic Ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) the 'true' church is always the invisible church anyway, so there really isn't any point in being in the 'visible' church.
The Catholic position as I've argued before is that the sacraments have power. They actually are objective means of receiving grace. Every time you receive the Eucharist you are recieving the physical body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ (I don't know how one receives his soul if it's his body, but there is probably something about it in Aquinas or a Scholastic, so I won't argue it...maybe I got it wrong by including his soul, nevermind). Likewise when you are absolved and forgiven of your sins by a priest you are forgiven by God Himself.
There are many biblical and historical arguments I've already listed in favour of a literal interpretation of Christ's words about the Holy Communion, and the Sacrament of Confession/Penance, and an argument for regenerative baptism (it forgives your sins). If you wish to see more just check out one of these sites: http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/10/topical-index-pages.html, or http://www.phatmass.com/directory/
The basic question though is why God would promise such Power to the Church? Why would he give frail men the ability to bind and loose, why would he give the keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter and allow men to determine who enters the Kingdom of Heaven. In all honesty, it gives me two thoughts:
1) God has stupidly given too much power to the Church
2) The Bible must be written by the Church as a means to claim supernatural power
The third option of course is that the Sacraments actually do have power and are efficatious, that God does care about physical actions. As C.S. Lewis put it in his defense of grace through the sacraments in Mere Christianity, God has no problem with matter, he created it, and it's no use trying to be more spiritual than God.
I was thinking the other day about Rob Bell's "The gods aren't angry" and how he proposes that none of the Israelite offerings in the Old Covenent satisfied God as he didn't 'need' blood. He also asked the question "Does your God need to hurt someone so that he can love?" it sounds like a great atheistic question and I've finally come to believe (as all Christians holding to either Calvin's Substitution or St. Anselm's Satisfaction theology of Atonement should) that yes God does have to hurt so that he can Love. But in essence he hurts himself, in Christ, he provides the sacrifice, which becomes an eternal part of his nature (Christ's eternal sacrifice).
I also remembered the 2 stories of God's anger towards violations of his covenants. The Second is of course 1 Corinthians 11 where St. Paul writes that those who partook of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner 'drank God's wrath against themselves' and 'were guilty of the body and blood of our Lord' and that this misuse resulted in illness and death. The first however is more obscure, I read about it in Exodus 4 at Capernwray Bible School and it was a blessing to be 'forced' to read the whole bible so that now I am more aware of all these extra stories.
The story is about Moses going into Egypt after receiving his mission from God in the Burning Bush, Zipporah and Moses are travelling with their son when we hear this:
"On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’ So he let him alone. It was then she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.’ "" - Exodus 4:24-26
It seems odd to us that God would plan on killing Moses for not performing this outward circumcision rite. We are constantly taught in the New Testament that "circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything" (Gal 5) and likewise by St. Stephen the Martyr that we are to have 'circumcised hearts' not dead rituals. However it seems that in this story God disagrees, not in a way contradictory to the New Testament but in a way contradictory to my former interpretation. What if God really does care about the Sacraments about his Covenantal signs and realities. It isn't all bad though, it's also a huge gift, for maybe God really does work through the sacraments. Maybe that is why the Eucharist means 'the Good Gift' (or at least that's what someone told me).
The real question then is why no angel killed Zwingli? but I guess 'where sin abounded grace abounded all the more' (Rm 5.20)
An interesting book on this topic which I hope to buy soon is Dr. Scott Hahn's "Swear to God: God's Promise and Power of the Sacraments" http://www.amazon.com/Swear-God-Promise-Power-Sacraments/dp/0385509316/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221099823&sr=1-11.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Why No One Reads My Blog & An Apology
I've realized that although I never had a big readership, now no one reads my blog. In typical preaching style I'll outline 3 main points why no one likes reading my blog:
1. Polemical and Repetitive:
Today Michael described my blog as being jerky Catholic or something to that effect. It is true that my brief stint in Anglicanism was the only religion I ever had that wasn't constantly attacking something. My Baptist upbringing was based in attacking Catholicism and Evolution, my Catholicism was based in attacking Scripture Alone and Faith Alone.
No one wants to hear a 20 something simply rehash the same 500 year old arguments for or against a certain theology, if you've heard it once you've heard it a thousand times. Everything gets turned into a 'schismatic' or 'romish' category, there is no in between, no middle ground, it's always all or nothing.
It's also hard for readers to constantly guess which side of the Tiber I'm standing on that particular day, sometimes it switches half-way through a post. There is no ground to stand on. Scripture has been undermined by ecclesiology and ecclesiology built on the Scripture it just undermined.
2. Unoriginal:
I don't have any new theological ideas to bring to the table, I'll read others and then stand on their shoulders expounding on how "I've come to study" this or that, when really I've just read something else and put it in my own words and pretending that it means I am a theologian. This reminds me of the line from Team America: World Police when a Hollywood actor says: "I think we should read newspapers and then tell people what the newspapers said but claim the ideas are our own!". In the academic world this is known as plagiarism
3. Self Depricating and Awkwardly Personal:
Many times my objection to something will be emotionalism or sentimental reasons, many times I base my theology on personal experience (geez only Methodism does that! crazy Wesleyan Quadrilateral)
4. Uses Big Words like Quadrilateral
Most times in Theology - much like any other "ology" there are ridiculously huge words used for simple concepts like "Infralapsarianism" which I believe has something to do with Calvin telling God to ordain a fall.
5. Continually Changing my mind about John Calvin
See I just made fun of John Calvin, but now you might be thinking: "hey didn't he say he was a 5 point Calvinist just yesterday? why is he insulting the man?". That is a good question. I think I consistently insult John Calvin because it is easy to invent mean polemics against him in the spirit of the #1 reason no one is reading my blog, and most people dislike him already, so I can make myself look smarter than him by insulting him.
6. Lying
I claimed at the beginning of the blog that I would only have 3 reasons, but lo and behold, I actually have 6. As Revelation 21:8 reminds us of course in the great evangelical anthem I learned at bible school: "liars go to Hell, liars go to Hell, burn, burn, burn"
Apology:
This is an open apology to anyone who has wasted precious moments of their life trying to advance my knowledge of God, I am desperately sorry for all of the innumerable ways I have probably offended or annoyed you. Rest assured that you will probably not see me in Heaven. I also apologize for the previous sentence which was a classic example of #3 Self Deprecation.
Well I think I'm going to go read my Bible without the official magesterium of the Catholic Church or the Canons of Dordt, only the illumination of the Holy Spirit... look out Quakers, here I come!!!
1. Polemical and Repetitive:
Today Michael described my blog as being jerky Catholic or something to that effect. It is true that my brief stint in Anglicanism was the only religion I ever had that wasn't constantly attacking something. My Baptist upbringing was based in attacking Catholicism and Evolution, my Catholicism was based in attacking Scripture Alone and Faith Alone.
No one wants to hear a 20 something simply rehash the same 500 year old arguments for or against a certain theology, if you've heard it once you've heard it a thousand times. Everything gets turned into a 'schismatic' or 'romish' category, there is no in between, no middle ground, it's always all or nothing.
It's also hard for readers to constantly guess which side of the Tiber I'm standing on that particular day, sometimes it switches half-way through a post. There is no ground to stand on. Scripture has been undermined by ecclesiology and ecclesiology built on the Scripture it just undermined.
2. Unoriginal:
I don't have any new theological ideas to bring to the table, I'll read others and then stand on their shoulders expounding on how "I've come to study" this or that, when really I've just read something else and put it in my own words and pretending that it means I am a theologian. This reminds me of the line from Team America: World Police when a Hollywood actor says: "I think we should read newspapers and then tell people what the newspapers said but claim the ideas are our own!". In the academic world this is known as plagiarism
3. Self Depricating and Awkwardly Personal:
Many times my objection to something will be emotionalism or sentimental reasons, many times I base my theology on personal experience (geez only Methodism does that! crazy Wesleyan Quadrilateral)
4. Uses Big Words like Quadrilateral
Most times in Theology - much like any other "ology" there are ridiculously huge words used for simple concepts like "Infralapsarianism" which I believe has something to do with Calvin telling God to ordain a fall.
5. Continually Changing my mind about John Calvin
See I just made fun of John Calvin, but now you might be thinking: "hey didn't he say he was a 5 point Calvinist just yesterday? why is he insulting the man?". That is a good question. I think I consistently insult John Calvin because it is easy to invent mean polemics against him in the spirit of the #1 reason no one is reading my blog, and most people dislike him already, so I can make myself look smarter than him by insulting him.
6. Lying
I claimed at the beginning of the blog that I would only have 3 reasons, but lo and behold, I actually have 6. As Revelation 21:8 reminds us of course in the great evangelical anthem I learned at bible school: "liars go to Hell, liars go to Hell, burn, burn, burn"
Apology:
This is an open apology to anyone who has wasted precious moments of their life trying to advance my knowledge of God, I am desperately sorry for all of the innumerable ways I have probably offended or annoyed you. Rest assured that you will probably not see me in Heaven. I also apologize for the previous sentence which was a classic example of #3 Self Deprecation.
Well I think I'm going to go read my Bible without the official magesterium of the Catholic Church or the Canons of Dordt, only the illumination of the Holy Spirit... look out Quakers, here I come!!!
Assurance-less Christianity
Why I would never be a happy Protestant:
-Catholic apologists have won the argument on Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura, and are loaded with patristic and bible quotes to attack with.
-Catholic Historical Theologians show that there is no scriptural way that the Church could fall into universal apostasy for 15 centuries.
-Catholics hold Protestants accountable if they know about Catholicism and choose against it, J.R.R. Tolkien said that to look at the Catholic mass and the Blessed Sacrament and turn your back on it, or call it a mere symbol is 'calling Christ a liar to his face'. (...I wonder if the apostles telling Jesus he wasn't a door, a gate, or a vine, were lying to his face)
-If I were ever to go Protestant again Philip Wilson would drive to Canada and kill me on the place where the Altar should be in said Protestant 'ecclesial community' (church?)
Why I will never be a happy Catholic:
-Protestant and Orthodox Church Historians prove that the modern Papacy is complete innovation.
-According to many Protestants for me to convert would be a rejection of the gospel and thus in becoming Catholic I would be falling into apostasy, proving myself unelect, etc.
-I believe the 5 points of Calvinism or at least something very close to them.
-My friends and family are all Protestant.
-I don't "really" believe everything about Catholicism, I stand with C.S. Lewis in saying that my problem is not their doctrine but that by joining the communion I would automatically approve of every future doctrine. And if the Pope declared that salvation was not Sola Gratia then I'd have to say he was a heretic, no matter what Matthew 16 or St. Cyprian says.
Conclusion:
I have no idea what to do anymore, and am sure that either way the rest of my life will be terribly plagued by doubts and frustration...May God help me...
-Catholic apologists have won the argument on Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura, and are loaded with patristic and bible quotes to attack with.
-Catholic Historical Theologians show that there is no scriptural way that the Church could fall into universal apostasy for 15 centuries.
-Catholics hold Protestants accountable if they know about Catholicism and choose against it, J.R.R. Tolkien said that to look at the Catholic mass and the Blessed Sacrament and turn your back on it, or call it a mere symbol is 'calling Christ a liar to his face'. (...I wonder if the apostles telling Jesus he wasn't a door, a gate, or a vine, were lying to his face)
-If I were ever to go Protestant again Philip Wilson would drive to Canada and kill me on the place where the Altar should be in said Protestant 'ecclesial community' (church?)
Why I will never be a happy Catholic:
-Protestant and Orthodox Church Historians prove that the modern Papacy is complete innovation.
-According to many Protestants for me to convert would be a rejection of the gospel and thus in becoming Catholic I would be falling into apostasy, proving myself unelect, etc.
-I believe the 5 points of Calvinism or at least something very close to them.
-My friends and family are all Protestant.
-I don't "really" believe everything about Catholicism, I stand with C.S. Lewis in saying that my problem is not their doctrine but that by joining the communion I would automatically approve of every future doctrine. And if the Pope declared that salvation was not Sola Gratia then I'd have to say he was a heretic, no matter what Matthew 16 or St. Cyprian says.
Conclusion:
I have no idea what to do anymore, and am sure that either way the rest of my life will be terribly plagued by doubts and frustration...May God help me...
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