There are many "Protestants" who also avoid systematic theology because they feel the same way about the Bible. This is why they, along with the Orthodox, emphasize the subjective experience over the objective truth.
Because of Romans 4.
I'm going to listen to the video. Whiteford is not a bad guy, I respect his willingness to engage. In the comments, he seems to understand "Faith working through love" as "Faith + works."
None of us will be able to achieve this perfectly, it does not mean we ought not strive for it. Nominalism is something that exists within us all and we must wage war with it.
If both of those propositions are true, then the Bible is intrinsically systematic. When the Bible says something, it actually means something. I have been told in this thread that we don't or can't know the Will of God. Everytime I hear that, I can't help but wonder 'then what do you think the Bible is?' To paraphrase James, we ought not think the Scriptures speak to no purpose.
We know Jesus through His Word. He reveals Himself to us. We don't systematize Him through an abstract system, He tells us what we need to know about Him and how to know Him personally in the Bible.
Is there anything in Acts that teaches us to pray to icons or that there was such as thing as a priesthood in the Apostle's church government? Because the Church in Acts didn't do those things.
I dont deny these protestant Christians were great guyd Iv read many of their biographies and books in the past, Smith Wigglesworth, Spurgen, John G Lake etc they were great as individuals but the church is a body not an individual.
What do you mean when you say Calvin didn't believe in the Eucharist? Have you read the Institutes? He was known for having a higher sacramentology than Zwingli, not that Zwingli was wrong as he used the least amount of non-Biblical language in describing the Eucharist.
But isnt that a bit of a contradiction though because if people are already predestined then why try convince them with preaching to them?
I was actually referring to the icons and church traditiobs, do Calvanists believe that the Holy Communion is the literal body and blood of Christ or just symbols? Priests, elders and Bishops are mentioned in the Bible though?
I was actually referring to the icons and church traditiobs, do Calvanists believe that the Holy Communion is the literal body and blood of Christ or just symbols? Priests, elders and Bishops are mentioned in the Bible though? Mel
So why will we be facing a judgement in the next life if everything we did was not our choice? Why are there rewards? We are also told to resist the devil in the scriptures, if you think about it if this kind of fatalism of predestination is true then none of this would make any sense, what about satan and the demons are they not destined for the lake of fire for their crimes they refuse to repent of? I heard one time a monk managed to turn a demon into an angel again in his cell, he trapped him inside with the sign of the cross and told him he would only let him go if he would sing the angelic songs that he once sang at the throne of God
A topic like this is where we as Christians would go back and see whats the interpritation of the Church, the fathers and the saints, the church is the custodian of the truth not the individual although the individual can read thw scriptures whenever he wants he cant have a private intepretation, Iv been in the Orthodox church for 2 years and read quite a few books and gone into their teachings and I havent found them teaching predestination like this.
Because God has ordained the ends as well as the means. Our preaching to them is just as ordained as their belief in it. If they are appointed to eternal life they will believe, as Acts says.
Here is what Calvin said about the Eucharist:
He emphasizes the reality that the Eucharist, as a sign, points to, which is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ applied to the believer.
Biblically, Elders and Bishops refer to the same office. There is no priest other than Jesus Christ.
You are making a choice, you are choosing to sin. If you do choose God, it is because the Holy Spirit has granted it to you. Romans 9 answers this very question:
A lot of people don't like this passage, but it is sinful and unfaithful to censure it. Instead, we should pray for the faith to accept it.
You quoted Scorpion and I both, and I'd like to see his take as well.
Yet people believe in the gospel and at the same time people can also fall away, the great apostacy is a good example, we are also capable of falling into sin thats why confession is in the new testament to repent when we fail,regarding the Eucharist for the first 1500 years of Christianity all Christians believed that the holy communion is the literal body and blood of Christ just like it says so in the scriptures, Neither Christ nor the diciples called it bread and wine but my body and blood, its like the reverse of the tree of knowledge of good and evil which man fell by eating now we are restored by eating the Eucharist, some people have had visions into the spiritual world and have even seen angels taking a baby and cutting the child up in pieces and the people at church eating the child, thats Christ.
Yes, because the Spirit of God does not abide in them. Never has, never will.
I just gave you a quote from Calvin referencing a Church Father showing this isn't true.
Jesus still called it wine after the Supper was over.
Jesus Christ hold His priesthood permanently, He does not give it up to many priests who are prevented by death from continuing.
Yes. Because Titus tells us that Presbyters are the same thing as Episcopates, we have Elders/Bishops. The Monarchical Episcopacy is neither in the Bible nor in the early Church Fathers until Ignatius.
There are Elders and Deacons in the Apostolic Church. The Priest is a theological development that comes later, it is a man-made tradition.
The Book of Acts proves this is false. There is a Greek word for Priest, and it isn't Presbyteros.
The veneration of icons was almost universally condemned by the Early Church Fathers. The iconography was later added to earlier sites.
Why the Council of Hieria is not considered Ecumenical, but 2nd Nicea is, reveals the completely arbitrary nature of what makes a council "Ecumenical." 2nd Nicea is a farcry away from 1st Nicea.
