Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

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CHAPTER 10 THESE BRIDGES CAN’T BE CROSSED? I have several friends who think that the Christian Unity I am advocating is a betrayal of my Protestant faith. How can an Evangelical Christian have fellowship with people who pray to Mary and the saints, or believe in transubstantiation or see the Mass as a sacrifice? In this chapter I want to address two questions. One, what is required to become a Christian? And two, if a person is truly a Christian what beliefs which they hold would cause a barrier to my fellowship with them? WHAT IS REQUIRED TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN? This question is dealt with in the Catholic Truth Society‟s booklet: What Catholics Believe 165 – here is the text taken from Section 9, Becoming a Christian: „From the beginning, anyone who wished to become a Christian had to be baptized, that is, bathed or washed in running water as a sign of God‟s cleansing from sin. Thus everyone who wishes to become a Christian must first of all recognize that he or she is unworthy of God‟s love, and has deserved to lose his friendship, both as an individual and as a member of the human race. But to say that we are sorry is not all we have to do in order to become a Christian. We must believe that Jesus is the Son of God, because, in believing this, we are led to love him as the Son of God, and so are filled with the love of God. There is no true love without faith, faith in the fact that God‟s Son loves us, and has come down to earth to show us the true way to the Father. That is why, at every baptism service, there is a profession of faith by the candidate; and even when a tiny infant is being baptized, his parents have to make the act of faith for him, until he is old enough to make it personally. And that is also why we say the Creed, the act of faith, at each Sunday Mass, to make us realize that this act of faith is not something which we do once and for all, but need to do throughout our lives.‟ The text goes on to say that: „A Roman Catholic Christian is one who believes that being a Christian also implies accepting the Pope as the successor of St Peter, and accepting the continued guidance of the Catholic Church as to matters of faith and moral conduct.‟ But the way outlined above to become a Christian differs little from the way it would be explained in many Protestant Churches, even Evangelical ones. The core of the matter is personal faith in Christ, for paedo-baptists to be expressed vicariously by the godparents but later to be affirmed by the baptized individual, for credo-baptists to be expressed at the time of baptism. 165 What Catholics Believe, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1981, p 19. Page 131
Repentance and faith are at the heart of the way of salvation for Roman Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox believers alike. The accepting of the teaching role of the Pope is not stated in this booklet as the way a person becomes a Christian, but is to be the mark of one who has become a Roman Catholic Christian. This acceptance of the supreme teaching role of the Pope most Protestants would reject, but not the declared way to become a Christian in the first place. SOME CATHOLIC DOCTRINES WHICH SOME PROTESTANTS FIND BARRIERS Let us look at some particular Catholic doctrines which some Protestants find are barriers to fellowship and united witness and worship. a) The Sacrifice of the Mass The sacrifice of the Mass is a symbolic re-enactment of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Official Catholic and Orthodox teaching is not that Christ is sacrificed again at each celebration of the Mass as he was on the Cross, but that in the Mass the victory and triumph of his death are made good to communicants. It is made clear by Catholic teaching that only Christ can take away our sins: „Only he – only Christ – was able and is always able to be the true and effective expiation for our sins and “for the sins of the whole world”. Only his sacrifice – and no one else‟s – was able and is able to have a “propitiatory power” before God, the Trinity and the transcendent holiness.‟ 166 b) Transubstantiation For Catholics and Orthodox believers the body and blood of Jesus are literally in the bread and wine after their consecration by a priest. It may be argued that this doctrine is false, but that it does not stop a person looking only to Jesus for salvation. It could be argued that such a high view of the Eucharist makes the believer more, not less, committed to Jesus as the way to eternal life. In „folk‟ Catholicism and Orthodoxy it may well be that a form of superstition surrounds this doctrine, and eating the host as literally the body of Christ is a substitute for real faith and repentance. But this is a misunderstanding of the doctrine. It is interesting and sad to reflect that that in the Protestant Reformation the doctrine of the presence of Christ in the Lord‟s Supper became the most disputed doctrine, the one that should have bound all believers together. 166 Ed Flannery, Austin, OP, Vatican Collection, Vol 2, Vatican 2, More Post-conciliar Documents, Costello Publishing Co, 1982, p 74. Page 132
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Digging Out the Embedded Church Dis
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The Maranatha Community comprises t
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Introduction CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chr
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ead, nicely browned on top. He plac
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HOW DO WE DIG OUT THE EMBEDDED CHUR
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That the Church should express this
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For Alfeyev, „Faith is a gift, th
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„heresies„ of the Early Church
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Traditionally, the Church has made
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CHAPTER 1 CHRISTIAN UNITY IN THE EA
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A certain Docetic teacher, often id
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Novatianism When the persecutions o
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The fortunes of the Arian party in
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An attempt was made in 482 AD (29 y
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was development in the interpretati
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CYPRIAN AND AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO The
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position would see baptism as not t
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The Eastern Church‟s relationship
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insisted from the second Lateran Co
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There is so much that Orthodoxy sha
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we do not talk to each other. Our t
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The question of heresy does not com
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They were missionary-minded and the
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Lollard ideas lingered in English r
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CHAPTER 4 THE SECOND GREAT SPLIT: W
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unity‟s sake in subsequent centur
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Erasmus wrote he asserts, through o
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attle-cry, is perhaps the most famo
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Regulations for the good ordering o
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Eucharist was not just a commemorat
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CHAPTER 5 QUOTATIONS ON THE THEME O
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How rare then it is to meet a man w
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are often much bigger divisions bet
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St Germanus of Constantinople - 8 t
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manner. He declared that men could
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S L Greenslade - 20 th Century: „
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CHAPTER 6 HOPES FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
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imminent return of Christ (Komensky
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a concern that merchant adventurers
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also anti-Socinian. Calixtus himsel
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The Eastern Churches were not rent
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everyone - from outward forms to in
Page 85 and 86: Women were not usually members of t
Page 87 and 88: work in America, shows him, though
Page 89 and 90: The aim of the conference was to br
Page 91 and 92: From 1768 Harris‟s home at Talgar
Page 93 and 94: twice more to congregations of Whit
Page 95 and 96: denominations was not their distinc
Page 97 and 98: It was from the overseas Protestant
Page 99 and 100: THE OXFORD TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT Anot
Page 101 and 102: the Church of England‟s doctrinal
Page 103 and 104: „We pray that… all who desire t
Page 105 and 106: thereof, in prayer, in the remembra
Page 107 and 108: honours the Lord and his Word; the
Page 109 and 110: apostolic church enjoyed, and that
Page 111 and 112: episcopate were too radical for mos
Page 113 and 114: Denominations began to form their o
Page 115 and 116: In this Shanghai Conference‟s Rep
Page 117 and 118: With so much talk of unity and coop
Page 119 and 120: „The liturgical movement in weste
Page 121 and 122: • Sharing a corporate life of wit
Page 123 and 124: • Our acknowledgement of the Apos
Page 125 and 126: (h) The Evangelical Church in Germa
Page 127 and 128: It changed nothing in respect of do
Page 129 and 130: Some Evangelical Protestants want t
Page 131 and 132: • It is in continuity with the
Page 133 and 134: But things have changed. Richard Ma
Page 135: evangelism - (and) state what the r
Page 139 and 140: outcome of being justified. Agreeme
Page 141 and 142: Virgin‟s salutary influence on me
Page 143 and 144: h) Confession The sacrament of pena
Page 145 and 146: demanding way would be sin. The que
Page 147 and 148: If the opportunity for the Church t
Page 149 and 150: Ministers, priests and laypeople in
Page 151 and 152: West Kirby, near to my home, the Si
Page 153 and 154: n) Shared Study Courses There is a
Page 155 and 156: Even some Protestant churches today
Page 157 and 158: Vincent de Lérins spoke of a „pr
Page 159 and 160: It is not likely, in the foreseeabl
Page 161 and 162: Christ and are trying their best to
Page 163 and 164: upon the name of our Lord Jesus Chr
Page 165 and 166: Perhaps this dying process is now b
Page 167 and 168: economic factors giving rise to suc
Page 169 and 170: deeper ecumenism, one that does not
Page 171 and 172: APPENDIX 1 THE NICENO-CONSTANTINOPO
Page 173 and 174: APPENDIX 2 FOUR BIBLICAL TEXTS ON T
Page 175 and 176: The „apostles and elders‟ of th
Page 177 and 178: „The purpose of the Reformation C
Page 179 and 180: What all three traditions have in c
Page 181 and 182: Cromwellian period, in a treatise o
Page 183 and 184: BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS
Page 185 and 186: Cullman, Oscar, The Earliest Christ
Page 187 and 188:
McCarthy, Tim, The Catholic Traditi
Page 189 and 190:
Letter concerning the civil princip
Page 191 and 192:
Coptic Orthodox Church, 10 Council
Page 193 and 194:
Parousia, 24, 68, 93 Paul VI, 10, 1
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