Would Baptists even exist without Catholicism?

Dualhunter,

I assure you I did not deliberately overlook your alternative as you implied - I did not see it.

As I stated before, the common word for stone, as distinguished from rock, was "lithos." "Petros" was fairly rare. "Petros" was used in Matthew 16:18 as a play off "petra," which means rock, not stone - the reason Petros wasn't used in both places.

Again, Jesus is giving Peter a three-fold blessing, including the gift of the keys to the kingdom, not undermining his authority. To say that Jesus is downplaying Peter flies in the face of the context. Jesus is installing Peter as a form of chief steward or prime minister under the King of Kings by giving him the keys to the kingdom.

According to Evangelical Biblical scholar W. F. Albright, in his Anchor Bible Commentary on Matthew, he says it is saying that Jesus in giving to Peter not only a new name, Rock, but in entrusting to Simon the keys of the kingdom, He is borrowing a phrase from Isaiah 22. He's quoting a verse in the Old Testament that was extremely well known.

Albright says, "In commenting upon Matthew 16 and Jesus giving to Peter the keys of the kingdom, Isaiah 22:15 and following undoubtedly lies behind this saying." Albright, an evangelical, non-Catholic insists that it's undoubtable that Jesus is citing Isaiah 22, "The keys are the symbol of authority and [we see] here the same authority as that vested in the vicar, the master of the house, the chamberlain of the royal household of ancient Israel."

Today, many Protestant and Baptist scholars readily admit that when Jesus gives to Peter the keys of the kingdom, Peter is receiving the Prime Minister's office, which means dynastic authority from the Son of David, Jesus, the King of Israel, but also an office where there will be dynastic succession - they just don't agree that it is the Papacy that inherited the dynasty.

We need to look at the context of the paragraphs and the whole Bible - including Isaiah 22:15 that Jesus quoted.

You can check out this site as well: http://www.ewtn.com/library/scriptur/POPE.TXT

[ May 08, 2002, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Astralis ]

 

Actally, no; I just deduced that from looking at history. The Handbook of Denominations (8th edition, p.183) is where I got the exact articulation of this point.

Just because the Church may have developed this way, doesn't mean that this was what Christ was really teaching. It can be (and I believe is) a self-justifying retrospective interpretation of scripture.

Where does it say Peter esablished a bishoprick in Rome? I heard there was no evidence he even went to Rome?

jimroboin said:

Thanks. I wonder if their practice is Jewish then, or just plain first-day Christian. "Messianic" covers a broad range of practices and doctrines)

 

To understand the meaning of what Jesus meant, we need only consider what the Church is built on. It's called Christianity so it's pretty obvious that the Church is built on Jesus Christ who died for our sins and rose from the dead, not on Simeon Peter who simply proclaimed the truth that Jesus is the Christ as it was revealed to him by the Father.

 

Dualhunter,

Then what's your interpretation for the keys and why does Jesus give Peter keys and why does he quote Isaiah?

Because Peter is the Rock, make no mistake -Catholics do believe Jesus is the foundation of Christianity. Peter is the Rock of the Church and Jesus is the builder.

[ May 09, 2002, 02:27 AM: Message edited by: Astralis ]

 

That would be like saying Bill Clinton was a pope. Constantine was a secular Emperor If you say Constantine is the pope then you create more problems for yourself. Constantine was a politician who it does not appear was a Christian at all but just manipulated Christians in the same way some Conservative politicians today manipulate the religious right.

There's no more validity in saying Constantine was a pope than saying Augustine was a Southern Baptist.

You are correct that he might be called the founder of Roman Catholicism in that Nicea was a 2 edged sword. It did affirm the Deity of Christ, Trinity in the magnificent Nicene Creed but on the other hand bishops cowarded before Secular authority ..something that would lead to the evolution of the Roman Church and the bishop of Rome into a secular/religios dictatorship and corrupt the majority of Christendom.

 

This is most certainly true and it is why the church is not the kingdom. The church is a bride, where there are no intermediaries between the husband and the wife. The church is the body, in which there are no mediators between teh body and the head.

Wait a second. I thought Baptism was the fulfilling of circumcision. (Actually it is neither but when you start assigning types without Scripture, it becomes hard to keep them straight).

They got it from the same place that you got your false beliefs--the mixture of biblical doctrine with the authority of man to create more. They took a part of God's revelation and then expanded on it to create their own system of truth. Rather than following what God had said, they created their own system to satisfy their own minds.

 

5:24 “I tell you the solemn truth,41 the one who hears42 my message43 and believes the one who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned,44 but has crossed over from death to life. - John 5:24 NET

The keys are the words which Christ spoke telling us how we can be saved. Jesus gave Peter the privilege of preaching the Gospel so that people might believe and be saved.

 

Did you ignore Isaiah? How does that relate to your interpretation?

 

This is most certainly true and it is why the church is not the kingdom. The church is a bride, where there are no intermediaries between the husband and the wife. The church is the body, in which there are no mediators between the body and the head.

Presuppositional blindness again, eh? Go read Matthew 21: 33-46. Christ clearly defines the church, which is the new nation (cf. 1 Peter 2: 9)of the parable in question, as the kingdom.

Furthermore, the Church is also called the Body of Christ. Now suppose YOU tell me how the Church can be both the Bride and Groom at the same time? If the Church can be both Bride and Groom at the same time, it can also be Kingdom.

Wait a second. I thought Baptism was the fulfilling of circumcision. (Actually it is neither but when you start assigning types without Scripture, it becomes hard to keep them straight).

Nahhhhh. It is non-Catholics who primarily assign types without reference to Scriptural precedent. Somehow, we just can't get you guys to see the connection between the Passover lamb, who's flesh was to be eaten, and the Paschal Lamb of God, offered in the Eucharist, Who's Flesh is also to be eaten, keeping in the typology.

Circumcision shows WHAT happens when one enters the covenant of God. Going through the Red Sea did the same thing. It is like two sides of the same coin. You non-catholics hyper - compartmentalize everything so that you tend to cut out any reference which seems to contradict another. We don't see issues as either/or.

They got it from the same place that you got your false beliefs--the mixture of biblical doctrine with the authority of man to create more

Oh brother!!

Larry, do you have ANY awareness of the fact that hundreds of years before the Bible even described something akin to the Trinity, there were numerous pagan cultus who believed in triadic gods?

Are you aware that way long before Christ was crucified, there were 13 crucified "saviors" in pagan mythology?

You can't say they got these ideas from the Bible because the Bible wasn't even around.

Now answer my question. The concept of a crucified savior is correct, even if the application is way off. WHERE do you think the pagans got these ideas?

Should we dump the Trinity because it was believed in thousands of years before Christ by pagans? How about the Crucifixion? The Indian religions teach that Krisna was crucified and this goes back 4,000 years. (An Indian told me this).

Well?

The fact is that God speaks to all men, but not all have the advantage of having a prophet to teach them. Thus, they can apprehend some truth, but ususally don't know what to do with it. Case in point: without knowledge of Christ, how would the Indians know to call He Who would come and be crucifed "Christ?" Thus they put the wrong spin on the right thing.

Thanks for the gratuitous insult. My tank was running a bit dry on sarcasm.

[ May 09, 2002, 07:24 PM: Message edited by: CatholicConvert ]

 

It doesn't matter, Jesus was quite clear that the way to gain eternal life was through faith in him.

5:24 “I tell you the solemn truth,41 the one who hears42 my message43 and believes the one who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned,44 but has crossed over from death to life. - John 5:24 NET

And because you need to know what the Gospel of Christ is to believe it, a person who has the privilege of spreading the Gospel can be said to be holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

10:14 How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them15? 10:15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How timely16 is the arrival17 of those who proclaim the good news.”18 10:16 But not all have obeyed the good news, for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?”19 10:17 Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word20 of Christ.21 - Romans 10:14-17 NET

The Trinity is NOT a triad.

 

"Which leads me to ask if protestantism can exist apart from Catholicism?"

Hi there, according to Orchard and others, Cardinal Hosius, President of the Council of Trent, said "If the truth of religion were to be judged by the readiness and cheerfulness of which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the oppinion and pursuasion of no sect can be truer and surer than that of Anabaptists since there have none, for these 1200 years past that have been more generally punished"
Zwingli likewise stated: "the institution of anabaptism is no novelty but for 1300 years has caused great disturbance in the church."
In other words, the question is not could Baptist belief (to rephrase your question) exist without Catholicism, but how did it survive with it? Consider that Catholicism (under Augustine and his sucessors) persecuted the Donatists out of existance, and then Christianity itself dissapeared from North Africa with the Muslim conquest (that is, the false church wiped out the truer church, and then also perished). Without institutional state church persecution, Godlier councils of fraternal churches may well have expounded a truer theology, or militant paganism may have flattened them, we just dont know. God allowed what happened to occur, but we do not need to feel that Catholicism was the thesis and we are just the antithesis, dependant upon them. As we better reflect the New Testament church, we better claim to be the original, persecuted by the intolerance of the later state church. All the best, Colin

 

This is not clear in the least. The church is never called the kingdom in Scripture apart from the presuppositions that leads you to believe that.

Not hardly. It was a sign of one entering the covenant. It did not show anything about what happens when one enters the covenant.

Read my post again. I did not say they got it from the Bible. I said it was a mixture of biblical doctrine which existed long before the inscripturation of biblical doctrine. Reading carefully before jumping to conclusions prevents this kind of stuff.

The same place I already said ... a mixture of biblical doctrine with man made ideas.

What insult?? There was no insult intended. I am sorry you understood it that way.

 

Matt 19:
4 Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning "made them male and female",
5 and said, For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cling to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh?
Eph 5:
28 So men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord loves the church.
He who loves his wife loves himself. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.
31 "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh."
32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (MKJV)

As for "the Kingdom", the Church is the "kingdom" in the sense that it is the community of people who have Jesus as their King. But this in no way justifies making it into a secular
"kingdom" or "nation" with wordly power, which had corrupted it into many things that showed Jesus was not its King.

[ May 10, 2002, 04:42 PM: Message edited by: Eric B ]

 

Mt 21:33 ¶ Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:

Planted a vineyard. Now what is the vineyard?

43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

Cordially in disagreement,

Brother Ed

The vineyard is the kingdom of God -- national Israel. It is taken away from the Hebrew nation and given to a "new nation". Now to keep within the typology of the parable, the "new nation" is a physical nation which is here on earth just like the Hebrew nation. There is NO INDICATION of any change in the substance of the vineyard, only in the administration.

The idea of an "invisible church" contradicts what Christ came to do in His redemptive work. He came to reinstate the Garden Covenant and restore the unity between God and man which was lost in the Garden. To create a "spiritual church" which is invisible, unseen, and not of this world runs counter to the redemptive purpose of His coming. The restoration of the Edenic covenantal family means that it must be earthly. The only way to deny this is to be a Gnostic (like my younger brother) and declare that the world that Adam and Eve was created in was not physical and on this earth, but "spiritual" and unseen.

45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.

Yup. And by speaking against them, He spoke against the WHOLE NATION. The covenantal heads of nations have always been responsible for the nation and therefore have been considered to be the same as the nation. Thus, when Adam sins, all mankind sins with him. This is the principle of hierarchy, or covenantal headship.

It is also why the Church Catholic cannot fail ontologically, because Her Head cannot fail. He ever lives to intercede for Her, performing Yom Kippur in Heaven, according to Hebrews 9 and 10. All the covenantal heads of mankind failed. Christ, Who is called "the Last Adam", cannot fail, and as covenant head and high priest, He keeps the Church ontologically pure. So while the Church may indeed suffer from scandals which affect Her proper functioning, She nonetheless continues in Her ontology as the kingdom of God, the place of sacrifice and salvation, and dispenser of truth. And this is why we can also make the claims of infallibility for Her even if Her members are not morally inpecable.

 

If you are referring to the Catholic Church that the Nicene Creed is referring to you are correct. If you are referring to the Roman Catholic church that has it's origins in the the 6th to 8th century you are incorrect.</font>[/QUOTE]You've read some great history books, indeed. Any thorough history of Constantine clearly shows his alignment with the bishop of Rome, the Pope. The Pope during the Council of Nicea was St. Silvester I. Constantine called this council in hopes of bringing the Eastern churches, which at the time were Arian, back to belief in our Trinitarian God. The Pope remained in the West, due to his old age, but sent to priests in his stead, one of them named Vito.

Furthermore, the modern day creed is a perfected version, receiving it's final state at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

Needless to say, the pope of this time, Damasus I, spoke often on the authority of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, as being the successor of St. Peter, at the Roman see. Amazing, considering the Papacy didn't come about until the 6th or 8th century, as you put it.

Oh, and interestingly enough, the Council of Nicea also heavily promoted celibacy in the clergy, stating that they can only live with women if they are blood relatives.

But, I guess it's cool to accept somethings from a council, but not another...right? Sure...

 

If God is the Father, and the Church is his bride, then we are the children. Children come from the Church, the bride, the mother, and thus it is this mother that nurtures the children.

There are no mediators between the body and the head? What's the central nervous system then? Last time I checked, it passed signals from the brain to the body, and vise versa. The Church is the central nervous system.

Baptism isn't the fulfilling of circumcision?

Colossians 2:11
"In him you were also circumcised with a circumsion not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead."

It's fun to say that our beliefs are wrong and yours are right, when the whole matter is up to personal faith. The Catholic belief system is just as valid as yours, regardless of truth. Truth is accepted in faith; it is not tangible.

Your authority is the Bible, but your doctrines are taken FROM the Bible, and put into your own words. You take literal stances when others take figurative, and vise versa. You believe you are led by the Holy Spirit, and I believe you are led by your own intuitions on what you desire the truth to be. You believe the same about me.

I don't think this addresses the question of the thread, Pastor Larry, but rather you are using it as a vessel to vent your own distaste for a Church you will never allow yourself to understand.

 

Australian Baptist,

Are you saying that the beliefs of the Anabaptists are the exact same as your church? Are you saying that your church is a direct relative of that particular group?

The Anabaptists left the Church to form their own ideas and beliefs, regardless. 1300 years doesn't translate to the time of Christ and onward. That clearly and effectively shows a lapse of nearly 700 years when there were no Anabaptists to when there WERE Anabaptists. Even so, what makes their take on Scripture more valid than another?

 

So what you are saying is that you are ignoring the parallel with Isiah, in which the keys meant something entirely different? Why not just come out and say that, so your belief has more validity.

And, I'm just going to point something out. The words are "believes the one who sent me," not "believes IN the one who sent me." Belief in Christ also contains the teachings of Christ. If we believe in Christ, that does not mean we are saved. But, this is digging into a battle of words that has already been fought, so I'll not pursue it, unless the thread needs to be brought to life again.

Oh, but by the way: you said "Jesus gave Peter the priveledge of preaching the Gospel." Considering the Church is centered on the Gospel, this doesn't refute the Catholic faith tradition.

 

Grace,
Australian Baptist didn't make the claim. It was Cardinal Hosius who claimed that the Anabaptists dated back to the early centuries, if not to the time of the Apostles.
DHK

 

For some reason God felt the need to call Peter a small stone rather than a rock cliff face.</font>[/QUOTE]I love it how you claim the Bible is your only source, but once you find an interpretation of something that agrees with your train of thought, it is free from error as well.

Try taking this into account. Simon is a man. When speaking of men, we take the masculan approaph to grammer. In the case of this sentence, the word for a strong rock is feminine, and here we have Simon being renamed "Rock," and he's masculan. Therefore, to avoid confusion of the renaming of Peter as being just that, a masculan noun was used. When this was written, the two words widely were used for the same thing, anyway.

Furthermore, when we get to Paul, his word for Peter, Kephas, is used, which doesn't mean "little rock" or something of that likeness.

So, take the literal stance all you want, but realize that Peter wasn't a woman, and so a masculan noun was used. There is a ton of information on this very thing if you bothered to look from a non-static point of view, in which you look through a one-sided telescope.