I think you're right. I think prayer can do a lot more to solve problems than abusive name-calling and hatching schemes that create schisms and often scandals.
Are the Ecumenical Councils valid?
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Well since he has been promoting heresies and he is still there, looks like the system has broken down.
Philip James
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Haha, well I am not so sure he is promoting heresy, but I'll leave that to the Holy Spirit to take care of.
Many have called the Church broken and predicted its destruction throught out history.
The true miracle is , that despite the many failings of men, the barque of Peter sails on, bringing the Truth of the Gospel, and the deposit of faith, to every generation.
Peace be with you!
Marymog
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OK....sooooo once again USING YOUR THEORY I go to a local Catholic Church and you go to a local Baptist Church.
You and I disagree on baptism; is it necessary, does it save? Communion; we must take it, the real presence in it like Jesus said!!!
Which elders are to settle our difference? The Baptist elders or the Catholic elders?
Remember.....both questions are about salvation sooooo it is important for salvation sake that we get this settled!!
Curious Mary
Where there is disagreement, we need to go to the Bible to settle any issue.
Since people are at varying degrees of understanding that book, it is important that we continue to study it in order to find the proper answers.
Where there is agreement that the Bible is the inerrant, inspired word of the Lord, issues can be settled in this way.
Certainly man is not the arbitrator!
Since people are at varying degrees of understanding that book, it is important that we continue to study it in order to find the proper answers.
Where there is agreement that the Bible is the inerrant, inspired word of the Lord, issues can be settled in this way.
Certainly man is not the arbitrator!
I'd like to know what an ecumenical council is. If we say it's based on the Council of Jerusalem, we see the Apostles there making a decision about practices only. They did not vote on matters of doctrine; but future Ecumenical Councils started trying to decide doctrines.
Can an ecumenical council be called by the Emperor? Did Constantine have the right to tell Bishops what to do? We also have a head of state telling church leaders to get together to settle matters of doctrine. How is that like the 12 Apostles getting together to talk about what practices people should follow? The Council of Nicea wasn't like the Council of Jerusalem.
What good did trying to establish practices at Nicea do? Few people followed them. Almost nobody does today. Things didn't get settled. If a Pope didn't like something about the practices agreed to at Nicea, he could say he had the right to change them on his own.
That make me ask why would other churches want to try to iron out differences with Rome to establish unity in practices and doctrine when Rome felt free to break agreements and make its own practices and doctrines? I don't understand why such councils were held in the first place since almost everyone felt free to break agreements when it suited them. They obviously didn't work.
Can an ecumenical council be called by the Emperor? Did Constantine have the right to tell Bishops what to do? We also have a head of state telling church leaders to get together to settle matters of doctrine. How is that like the 12 Apostles getting together to talk about what practices people should follow? The Council of Nicea wasn't like the Council of Jerusalem.
What good did trying to establish practices at Nicea do? Few people followed them. Almost nobody does today. Things didn't get settled. If a Pope didn't like something about the practices agreed to at Nicea, he could say he had the right to change them on his own.
That make me ask why would other churches want to try to iron out differences with Rome to establish unity in practices and doctrine when Rome felt free to break agreements and make its own practices and doctrines? I don't understand why such councils were held in the first place since almost everyone felt free to break agreements when it suited them. They obviously didn't work.
I think doctrine can be gleaned from the practices; but the Catholic Church said that those decisions were about practices only, so it didn't matter if they changed them. Thus they said it was okay to consume the blood of animals.
Then after saying the Council of Jerusalem was about practices only, the Catholic Church says they can hold councils about doctrine, citing Jerusalem as the precedent which they say was about practices only. Which was is it in their minds?
The doctrine of salvation by grace was at stake at the council of Jerusalem; which is why Paul and Barnabas fought so hard to preserve it.
If the opposite decision had been made, there would be no Christianity except as another sect of Judaism. Every believer in Jesus Christ would be required to wear tefilin, tzitzit, and tallit, and be circumcised, and keep every aspect of the law; and the doctrine would be that these things are necessary for salvation.
If the opposite decision had been made, there would be no Christianity except as another sect of Judaism. Every believer in Jesus Christ would be required to wear tefilin, tzitzit, and tallit, and be circumcised, and keep every aspect of the law; and the doctrine would be that these things are necessary for salvation.
I've studied Judaism some. The controversy was unnecessary since informed Jews have always believed in the concept of the "righteous Gentile." They did then and still do. The laws of Moses were given to Israel not to Gentiles. Israel agreed to those laws when they took the vow at Sinai. My ancestors didn't. Why would I be bound by them then? If I converted to Judaism and got circumcised, then I would be obliged to keep the laws of Moses. That is what Jews believe if they're informed.
The Gentile however is bound by the Covenant of Noah. If he keeps those commandments, he's fine with God. If you look at what the Jews teach, you will find their list is very close to the list of the Apostles. I'll cite only the concluding paragraph here but provide a few links in case you're interested in reading more about what Jews teach and should teach. This is from: The Noahide Laws | My Jewish Learning
Conclusion
That Jews perceive non-Jews as bound by a set of laws–even if they are not bound by the full range of Torah law–is a significant statement. The expectation that non-Jews will set up their own system of justice became the basis for peaceful interactions between Jews and non-Jews. The Noahide laws separated humanity after the flood from the lawless violence which brought God to the point of destroying the world. The Noahide laws stand as a testament to the Jewish belief in the need for the rule of law to protect all peoples.
Wikipedia also has a good article on it: Seven Laws of Noah - Wikipedia
There are some things that all men know without any need to be taught; and those are necessary for salvation.
Romans 2:12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;
13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another-
16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
God will judge people by "the law written their hearts."
For example, a Gentile may know he should put a fence around his swimming pool so people don't accidentally drown. He is obeying the Law of Moses in spirit because Moses was trying to teach people that when they build things, they need to love other people. Thus the commandment:
Deuteronomy 22:8 When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.
People then often slept on their rooftops at night. A wall was needed to protect life. Today we don't have flat roofs. Such walls would be pointless -- obeying the "letter of the law." The Sanhedrin was supposed to keep interpreting the law then, by the spirit of the law. That law would mean you need a fence around your pool.
There was a time when the Sanhedrin interpreted the phylactery rule with only a spiritual meaning, No one had to wear them. Then a later Sanhedrin thought using a physical one would help people do the spiritual one. Over time, some people thought wearing the physical one was what mattered; and Jesus mocked them. They were keeping the law in a material sense, by the letter so to speak, but forgetting its spiritual meaning.
So if you do the right thing without obeying the law of Moses "by the letter," you are actually keeping the true law which the "written" law was supposed to teach Israel. Sad to say, observing the laws by the letter wasn't working. The Sanhedrin invented "burdens" for the people, making unnecessary and hard rules on how the Law of Moses needed to be kept -- while ignoring the real intent.
The Jews who wanted all the Gentiles to observe all the laws of Moses were "unlearned" themselves. The right position is what informed Jews today still say and what the Apostles said.
The Sanhedrin was supposed to interpret the Law of Moses to fit the changing cultural context. My objection to several practices the Catholic Church set up was they were unnecessary burdens. They did not teach people about love. All they seemed to see was that they believed they had the right to say what practices should be -- forgetting that good practices should be based on the Law of Love. I also object mightily to their setting aside of the prohibition of the eating of blood -- that is part of the Noahic Covenant which everyone should know to obey.
The Apostles' decision doesn't include fornication -- did it need to? Paul is emphatic about that though, and he was right. We shouldn't need someone to tell us that. Anyone descended from Noah should know it.
Basically, in Acts 15:5 it says that the primary thing that was being decided on at Jerusalem's council was whether those who converted to Christ should be required to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses.
BreadOfLife
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BreadOfLife
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Not to anyone because your claim is nonsense.
YOU made a claim about Trent.
If you can't back it up - you shouldn't say it . . .
Ecumenical Councils do not have the right or authority to make such decisions. Indeed they are an invention of false Christianity, since every New Testament church was directly under Christ (Rev 2 & 3) and is directly accountable to him. And the term episkopos which is translated as *bishop* applies to the elders within each church. It is interchangeable with elder.
While slavery is not condemned in the Bible outright, in view of Gospel truth it is a sin to enslave another human being whom Christ seeks to set free. The Gospel sets sinners free, and also sets the captives free. Indeed, Christ came to set the captives free.
LUKE 4
17 And there was delivered unto him [Christ] the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
DoveSpirit05
Active Member
I would say no! they had a worldly christiology or theology dat strayed away from the early church father teachings!! they became stately. just because they were in the majority doesn't mean dat they were right witch is also an ad populum. And they may have even falsely accused arius for believing dat the son was generated from nothing not proceeding out of the fathers substance in the council of nicea.
I think the loving thing for anyone who is a Christian would be to try to end slavery. If he lived in the Roman Empire where slavery was legal, he'd try to buy the slaves and liberate them. That would be obeying the Golden Rule to me.
The current Pope has spoken out against slavery; but his views on it are not the historical views of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis ended 2018 talking about the evils of slavery.
Pope Francis ends 2018 praying for victims of modern-day slavery
ROME - Pope Francis on Monday closed 2018 taking up a cause about which he’s often been outspoken, asking Catholics to pray for the homeless and victims of modern slavery in the spirit of Jesus, who saved humanity from sin.
In his Dec. 31 homily for vespers on New Year’s Eve, the pope said Jesus’ birth was meant to redeem mankind, which, he said, means “to go out from a condition of slavery and to restore liberty, dignity and freedom to his own children.”
He urged worshipers to stop and reflect “with pain and repentance” on the thousands of men and women who during the previous year have lived in situations “unworthy of human beings,” including homelessness and modern slavery.
Even in Rome there are some 10 thousand homeless, whose plight is worsened during the cold winter months, he said, adding that they are all children of God who, due to different forms of slavery and complex circumstances “live at the limits of human dignity.”
This stands in contrast to previous positions of the Catholic Church in various statements about slavery over the centuries. There was even one time, when Muslims (called Saracens at the time) were fighting Christians, that an Ecumenical Council said that anyone giving aid to the Saracens should be enslaved. So far as I know, that "practice" is still binding, still on the books.
Third Lateran Council – 1179 A.D. - Papal Encyclicals
24. Cruel avarice has so seized the hearts of some that though they glory in the name of Christians they provide the Saracens with arms and wood for helmets, and become their equals or even their superiors in wickedness and supply them with arms and necessaries to attack Christians. There are even some who for gain act as captains or pilots in galleys or Saracen pirate vessels. Therefore we declare that such persons should be cut off from the communion of the church and be excommunicated for their wickedness, that catholic princes and civil magistrates should confiscate their possessions, and that if they are captured they should become the slaves of their captors. We order that throughout the churches of maritime cities frequent and solemn excommunication should be pronounced against them. Let those also be under excommunication who dare to rob Romans or other Christians who sail for trade or other honourable purposes. Let those also who in the vilest avarice presume to rob shipwrecked Christians, whom by the rule of faith they are bound to help, know that they are excommunicated unless they return the stolen property.
The Catholic Church's views on slavery also resulted in horrendous human abuses in the Americas. The ruling then (not by Ecumnical Council that I know of but by other means) was that the native Americans could be made slaves if they retained their own religion; but if they became Christians, they had to be set free. That may sound good to some people at first glance; but the practice was not inspired by Love -- the Holy Spirit wasn't guiding into truth or telling them about things to come.
Many natives saw converting as a way of escaping slavery. They were baptized without knowing much if anything about Christianity. We read more about the Inquisition in Spain but almost nothing about it in the Americas; but it came to the Americas. Since these Indians had been baptized, the Inquisition claimed to have authority over them in a way they didn't over nonbaptized ones. So Indians had a choice: Remain as slaves or be baptized and fall into the hands of the Inquisition over things they didn't understand. Unfortunately many got baptized without knowing they could be worse off than by remaining slaves.
To me, using the threat of slavery to gain converts is abhorrent. "Convert to our beliefs, or become a slave." That tells me something about how the Catholic Church believed in the past.
The Jesuits engaged in slave trading in what was to become the United States. They finally apologized for it in 2017.
Jesuits and Georgetown apologize for slavery - CNN
One of those sales, in 1838, of 272 slaves, was made on behalf of Jesuit-founded Georgetown University in Washington, the nation's oldest Catholic university. It saved the fledgling school, but ruined hundreds of lives, tearing families asunder, while condemning men, women and children to lives of cruel bondage.
On Tuesday, the Jesuits and Georgetown repented. In a "Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope," hosted at Georgetown, the university's president and Jesuit leaders issued emotional mea culpas 179 years in the making.
"We express our solemn contrition for our participation in slavery and the benefit our institution received," said Georgetown's president, John DeGioia. "We cannot hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore this truth. Slavery remains the original evil in our republic, an evil that our university was complicit in."
More than 100 descendants of slaves sold by the Maryland Jesuits attended the service, many wearing green ribbons to symbolize hope and new life. They processed in to Gaston Hall to the strains of "Amazing Grace," sung by a gospel choir. Some wiped away tears during the readings and prayers, and stood to applaud when Mary D. Williams-Wagner, a descendant of slaves, read Douglass's remarks about Christian slaveholders.
"Their pain was unparalleled," Sandra Green Thomas, who also participated in the service, said of her ancestors. "Their pain is still here. It burns in the soul of every person of African descent in the United States."
What happened to bring about this change? The world advanced, that's what. The Catholic Church wasn't in the lead. It was only when most people saw slavery as evil that the Catholic Church decided its position on slavery made them look bad. Then they changed their minds and started preaching to people who still owned slaves about how they needed to stop it. That's how I see it. There is no tradition of the Catholic Church opposing slavery. On the contrary, we see they sometimes engaged in it themselves and even ordered it once at an Ecumenical Council. I think I could produce more "edicts" from history that showed the Catholic Church thought slavery was fine. . . for some people.
What is so hard to understand about slavery if we apply what Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
How "binding" is the edict from the Third Lateran Council when we see it goes against the Golden Rule?
KJV Isaiah 58
6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
The above is anti slavery I believe.
6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
The above is anti slavery I believe.
