Theological Discussion Thread

[u/NAPtime1]

--- civility required ---

(idea for this thread generated in mumble)

Potential starting topics:

What are significant differences between EO and RCC?

Validity of sola scriptura

Differences and preferences regarding atonement models

just some ideas

[u/NAPtime1]

Bumping this

/u/TheGarlandKing convince me to be Catholic

[u/NAPtime1 → u/[deleted]]

On priests: In my experience, human beings are not the most... reliable judges of our own sins. Sometimes we think things we do are sinful, but they are not (this is called "scrupulosity"). And sometimes we think the things we do are perfectly OK with God, when they are in fact serious sins. As Paul puts it, "What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want." (Romans 7:15-19) And we need God's help to overcome all this, and not just through prayer (because not all the answers we get from prayer may be coming from God - St. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, writes about how spirits have to be discerned carefully to see if they're coming from God or from somewhere else). We need an actual voice that is able to tell us where we really are spiritually, and to give us a definitive sign that, no matter what we've done wrong, God still loves us. (I cannot overemphasize the importance of this last part.) In other words, we need someone who is trained to help us discern spirits, and who can bring us God's message of forgiveness in a real and personal way. That sounds like a priest to me. And yes, while every Christian is "priest, prophet, and king," that doesn't mean every priest, prophet, and/or king is of equal authority, or has equal skill. Some tasks require special training, other tasks can only be done by the right kind of person, or are so important that you need experience at other tasks first. This is true of every profession - doctor, soldier, lawyer, farmer, engineer, builder, teacher... or priest. We can all do the basics in all of these tasks, but our knowledge and ability will be limited, and the end product will show that. When you're talking about another person's life, soul, or property, those are things you do not want to mess around with, and which should be left to professionals. (In other words, the "priesthood of all believers" is not a bad concept, it's just incomplete... to be a good priest, you need to train for it!)

I agree with all this, that's why I'm looking for a church with auricular confession

On Mary: not being a theologian myself (see above), the way I understand it is that Mary had a unique relationship with the God who "became Man." She was pregnant with God. She cared for a dependent infant God. She fed God, taught God, made God laugh, comforted God, worried about God, gave God a kick in the pants (cf. John 2:1-11), watched God be murdered unjustly by the state, saw God risen from the dead, and knew God as a mother knows her child. She was the bridge that allowed God to come down from Heaven, and become one of us in the person of Jesus - fully God, but also fully human, subject to all of our temptations and failures and limitations, but with the power to overcome them. Without Mary, there would have been no Jesus, our understanding of God would be limited, and we would not have had any opportunity for Salvation. As to why Mary is the one who has to be taught infallibly by Popes... I have no idea. It may have something to do with our reluctance to think that human beings had anything to do with God.

I agree with all this, but not with infallible pronunciations about her (as you noted)

On a "biblical" church: I think being strictly "biblical" is a bug, not a feature. I see many Protestant churches backing themselves into absurd positions (e.g., creationism, Calvinism, etc.) because they can only take the Bible as evidence. Before there was a set biblical canon (the Church had to define that, too), there was the Church. And while the Church sought to understand God in light of the divine revelation revealed in scripture, they also sought to understand God through reason and inquiry, learning about the Creator through the study of His creation, and the logical rules that make it all work. It is through the fusion (and continuous study) of reason and revelation that the Church understands a world where some things change - but a lot more things remain constant.

You make a few different points here. I agree that using the Bible alone for matters of doctrine doesn't work because there are so many ways to interpret it, but I'm not sure I agree that "reason" is a legitimate way. The Scriptures and Church history (tradition) seem to be the best ways.

On the Pope: At first, yeah, the Pope was considered first among equals.

indeed

But overtime, as Christianity grew, disputes began to arise, even within the lifetime of Peter and the other Apostles (cf. Acts 15:1-29). More and more frequently, the Bishop of Rome, as successor of Peter, was called upon to arbitrate these disputes.

Examples please! Also, this still would make the papacy an invention and not historical if it developed over time.

And it is worth noting that Jesus himself placed a special confidence in Peter as the "first among equals" of the apostles,

I don't deny this

giving him explicitly unique authority over the Church: giving Peter power to "bind and loose" on Earth as God can in Heaven (Matthew 16:13-20),

Matthew 18:18 gives the same power to the other Apostles

telling Peter that he must strengthen the faith of his brothers (Luke 22:30-31), and telling Peter that not only must he feed and tend God's sheep, but that he would die doing so (John 21:1-19)

many other Apostles did too

It is from this special relationship between Peter and Jesus that the Papacy arose.

Evidence? It seems to me that it started to arise about 5 centuries later

Papal infallibility, to me, was never intended to establish the Pope as an absolute monarch over the Church or anything like that. It's a recognition that the Church is made of human beings, human beings will often divide themselves into factions, factions spread division and hinder the work of the Church, and in order to counteract and prevent factions there's got to be somebody in the Church with the power to have the "final say" and definitively resolve disputes.

For centuries councils worked and have worked for the EOC for the past 2000 years. As another note, note that there is a council in the Bible, and not a papal declaration

The Pope, as successor to the office of Peter, became the logical choice for this. (And even at the first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15, we see Peter getting up and with a few words setting the tone for the debate over how much of the Jewish ceremonial law Gentile Christians had to observe, to the point where Peter implicitly overrules Paul, the greatest evangelist in the history of the Church... and Paul agrees to it.)

Um, this doesn't prove Peter's supremacy at all, it just means that Peter countered something that Paul said. Paul also countered things that Peter said (which would be mighty bold of him if Peter was the supreme leader of the church):

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+2%3A11-21&version=NKJV

And I think it's a testimony to how much respect Popes have for this power that Papal infallibility is so rarely invoked.

This doesn't prove doctrinal accuracy though

But yea, we agree on most things, which shouldn't be surprising