Heresy and Heretics

Well here is what a Mennonite says about the Waldenses:

"A fitting commentary on the pursuit of pedigree has been provided by Harold S. Bender, a leading Mennonite scholar of the 20th century":

"The tempting and romantic theory of apostolic succession from the apostles down to the Anabaptists through successive Old Evangelical groups, which has been very popular with those among the Mennonites and Baptists who feel the need of such an apostolic succession, always includes the Waldenses as the last link before the Anabaptists. It has...no basis in fact."

 

Yet Cardinal Hosius said:
"For by side these, there is an other thirde sect more perillouse, the which, because it baptizeth againe those which were lawfully baptized of the Catholics, is called the sect of the Anabaptists: of which sorte the brotherhood called, Waldenses, seemed to be, who without peradventure of late did rebaptise, althoughe some of them but even the other day, as they declare in their Apology, have given over that manner of twise baptising: notwithstanding, as sure as God, they agree in many articles with the Anabaptists."

 

I hope you will read the whole article posted on "The Trail of Blood" theory.
It is not an RCC blog-site, but is written by a former Baptist.

http://justinmartyr.blogspot.com/2004/02/i-came-across-couple-websites-today.html

If you aren't up to reading it all, here is one excerpt:

"If Baptists are the real first century Christians, then why do they not teach the Didache, one of the first books used by the early church? Why do they not use the Aramaic liturgy of St. James? Or why do they not have a liturgy older than that of St. James? Strangely, many Baptists claim the Montanists as proof of their lineage while at the same time criticize the 'sign of the cross' as a Catholic invention. Tertullian, who advocated the sign of the cross in the second century was himself a Montanist.

Montanists were known for the heresy of Monarchism, or the rejection of a trinitarian God. It can easily be argued that not all Montanists rejected the trinity, but it was a characteristic of some of them. That begs the question, would a Baptist convention tolerate a set of congregations who denied the trinity? Probably not. Then why tolerate the Montanists?"

 

DHK said: "You are just biased, and will only accept Catholic revisionist history. Do you also deny the holocaust?"

Really? Pot calling kettle . . . and not really very fair. Consider the fact that I once only viewed Church history the way you do now. I started reading Church history from non-Catholic, non-Baptist sources like Bonnell Spencer's 'Ye Are The Body' and realized I had been wrong.

You might try taking those 'Baptist blinders' off.

 

Boy, I don't know brother. John is pretty adamant about those who show no love. Even Jesus said, "love thy enemies". Calvin surely had read all the scriptures and most of them are pretty tough on those who say they love God and at the same time hate thier brothers or even their enemies.

I agree with John, I cannot consider Calvin a brother in Christ at the time of his boastings of hate and death to another, especially over an opinion.

I believe there are many who follow "Christianity" (whatever that means to them, take the KKK for example) and there are FEW who follow Jesus Christ via the Holy Spirit.

How about us DHK? We can read the scriptures. Are we more capable of understanding the gospel than Calvin was? Can you tell me what scripture Calvin could have read that led his heart to hate and kill others because of their opinion?

You know the gospel and the mountain of verses that command love, that command us to forgive infinitely. Where would Calvin ever get the idea that his actions and his heart's attitude was in line with one who has been born of God, one who has the Spirit of Jesus Christ indwelling them? As I said, the KKK claims to be Christians who follow the bible.

How is Calvin any different then those Catholics who murdered people? I know a Christian can wilfully sin. However, the Christian who wilfully sins also KNOWS he is sinning. Calvin seems to believe he was doing God a service rather than knowing it was sin and using his liberty in Christ to eleminate a rival in doctrinal debate.

According to Jesus, John and Paul, those born of God hears what God says. Those born of God may break the Law, but they do not display a consistent hate for another. While we can transgress the Law, it is quickly and consistently brought under conviction by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

From what I have read concerning Calvin I would not be able to consider him a brother in Christ. I have not read anything where he repented and confessed he had sinned against God and Servetus.

I would rather believe Calvin would fall into this verse...

1Cr 2:14But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.


Calvin did not seem to understand the gospel. So what was he then? It seems no more than a forerunner for sects such as the KKK.

:jesus:

 

Sin is sin. It is a transgression of the law. In God's sight there is no sin greater than another. Only the consequence is greater.
"He that keeps the whole law and yet offends on one point is guilty of all."
--Thus if you lie, you are just as guilty as if you murder.
The point that John, the Apostle, was making, was if you hate your brother you are just as guilty as if you murdered him. There are many Christians that go around with hatred in their hearts.
In Matthew 5 Jesus teaches if you are angry with your brother it is the same as murder. Have you ever been angry with another?

Is Moses bereft of eternal life because he murdered a man?
Or was there a special dispensation for the man that saw God face to face and yet was a murderer at the same time?

Perhaps your God is not a God of grace, but mine is.

 

I don't have them on.
I don't know of any Baptist group, or evangelical group for that fact that went out and massacred an entire nation as it were. Thousands upon thousands of people. What is with you? You compare the killing of one individual to the wholesale slaughter and pillaging of an entire village, or many villages or an entire people. How can it be??
Do you deny the holocaust too?
Are you rewriting history for the RCC.

 

Perhaps your real question is: Why do they avoid fiction, and use the Bible as their final authority in all matters pertaining to faith and doctrine?
And that is precisely what they do.

 

Yeah, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, christadelphians, etc. say they do the same thing.

 

Indeed a great many denominations do claim to use the rule "Sola scriptura" to test all faith and doctrine.

As far as I know the RCC denomination and the Eastern Orthodox are the only ones that do not make that claim.

Am I missing something?

Does the RCC think that each of those denominations "would do better" to argue "we no longer rely on scripture as the test of faith and doctrine - from now one we also add in whatever our own church magesterium tells us to think - in the mix. " - the way the RCC does?

Is it the view of the RCC that having everyone go down that road would "solve something"???

in Christ,

Bob

 

Huge problem there. Nothing "specific" is identified such that Lateran IV could be declared "fallible" or "wrong" in it's Laws. What if the Pope had said "it was WRONG of us to call for the extermination of dissenters... it was WRONG of us to burn anyone at the stake.. it was WRONG of us to torture anyone... it was WRONG of us to compel civil authorities to comply with our demands for the extermination of those who opposed our doctrines".

What a fallout that would have created!!

How well crafted then the resulting "appearance" of an apology in the year 2000 - such that it avoided all those land mines for a church claiming to be "infallible" in its canon laws.


1. No OTHER christian group ever claims to have done anything "infallibly" regarding the burning or torture or torment of anyone. For that claim there is "only ONE" group still sticking to their guns on that point.


Catholic Digest 11/1997 pg 100
The question:
A Baptist family who lives across the street gave me a book called the “Trail of Blood”, by J.M. Carroll. It attacks Catholic doctrine on infant Baptism, indulgences, purgatory, and so on. But I am writing to learn if there is anything in history that would justify the following quotation:

The answer from Fr. Ken Ryan:

In the article above – Fr. Ken Ryan makes the meaning of “extermination” of that group and “many other groups” clear for modern readers.
Catholic apologists like Catholic Digest’s Fr. Ken Ryan quoted above often argue that the RCC isn't accountable for the Inquisition, since the state carried out the torturing and the executions. It was the RCC who defined these people as "heretics", however, and the RCC handed them over to the state (John 19:11).

The Fourth Lateran Council, the council that dogmatized transubstantiation, offered indulgences to those who would "exterminate heretics" and participate in a Crusade. Since this council refers to the RCC's influence over the state (John 19:11), it points to the fact that the state was acting at the command of the RCC. The council declared (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-c3.html):

Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff [the Pope], that he may declare the ruler's vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land.

This then is the "infallible" position of the RCC not only demanding the extermination of dissenters but also describing the methods to force the civil authorities to comply with the RCC command.

Pretty hard to miss that point. Makes it very difficult to pin this on the civil authorities that are themselves being threatened by this decree if they fail to comply with it.

in Christ,

Bob

 

The Catholic church on anti-Semitism,
Will Durant writes in The Story of Civilization:

The Council of Vienna (1311) forbade all association between Christians and Jews. The Council of Zamora (1313) ruled that they must be kept in strict subjection and servitude. The Council of Basel (1431-33) renewed canonical decrees forbidding Christians to associate with Jews...and instructed secular authorities to confine the Jews in separate quarters, compel them to wear a distinguishing badge, and ensure their attendance at sermons aimed to convert them.

In 1243 the entire Jewish population of Belitz, near Berlin, was burned alive on the charge that some of them had defiled a consecrated Host. [...] In 1298 every Jew in Rottingen was burned to death on the charge of desecrating a sacramental wafer. Rindfleisch, a pious baron, organized and armed a band of Christians sworn to kill all Jews; they completely exterminated the Jewish community at Wurtzburg, and slew 698 Jews in Nuremberg.


"the ecclesiastical Council of Zamora (1313) decreed the imposition of the badge, the segregation of the Jewish from the Christian population, and a ban against the employment of Jewish physicians by Christians, or of Chrsitian servants by Jews
The Story of Civilization: Part IV "The Age of Faith" by Will Durant. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1950.


Pope Eugenius IV (1431-47)...added that [b]Jews should be ineligible for any public office, could not inherit property from Christians, must build no more synagogues, and must stay in their homes, behind closed doors and windows, in Passion Week[/b] (a wise provision against Catholic violence)....

In a later bull Eugenius ordered that any Italian Jew found reading Talmudic literature should suffer confiscation of his property. Pope Nicholas V commissioned St. John of Capistrano (1447) to see to it that every clause of this repressive legislation should be enforced, and authorized him to seize the property of any Jewish physician who treated a Christian.

As one of many examples of the decrees issued by Popes in support of persecuting and murdering non-Catholics, a 1487 bull of Pope Innocent VIII commanded that people "rise up in arms against" the Waldensians and "tread them under foot".
[/B]
Catholic historian Peter de Rosa writes in Vicars of Christ (Crown Publishers, 1988), [b]"Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine."

 

Consider the following news stories from the Vatican City. This was at a time when a number of RCC leaders thought the Pope was really going to come clean on the dark ages inquisition and torture thing.

 

These guys were so convinced that the Pope was going to own up for the history of the Church - that they were even willing to publically admit that the canard about the civil authorities being to blame for what happened under the iron fisted rule of the RCC during the dark ages - was just a smoke screen.

 

There are (among many) three doctrines that all Baptists dearly treasure:
1. sola scriptura.
2. soul liberty.
3. priesthood of the believer.

What these three have in common is that the RCC hates them all.
1. Sola Scriptura or as we define it: The Bible is our final authority in all matters of faith and doctrine. It is not so with the RCC. Their authority becomes Tradition, the Magesterium, the ECF, papal decrees, the Catechism, etc. They have many authorities. We have but one.

2. Soul Liberty. Catholics hate this as well. They have denied it to people all over this world, and killed to deny people of it. They have set up state-churches and denied freedom of religion or soul liberty to all that did not bow the knee to the RCC. The terror of their reign was in part the reason for the founding of America.
As for a Baptist, we are tolerant and grant soul liberty.
"I may not agree with the doctrines of a J.W., but I will fight for the liberty of the J.W. to believe his own doctrine."
--The RCC would never do this.

3. The Priesthood of the believer. Every believer is a priest before God and need not go through any man, but is able to go straight before the throne of God.
The RCC demands every person go through a priest, a priest who is a sinner himself and has no power to forgive sins. Some of the priests who walk the streets of North America are the most wicked men known to the public--pedophiles that prey on small children. And you think they have the power to forgive sins??

 

You need to finish what John said...

1Jo 3:15Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

According to the letters I read from the Apostles these would not be true children of God.

Anger 'without a cause' is murder. Hatred is the same as murder. In your anger do not sin.

Eph 4:26Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

I wonder how Calvin missed all of these commands. I understood them the very first time I read them.

Yes, but I had a biblically righteous cause and I did not hate them.

We are speaking of "murder" here. That is a predetermined hatred in the heart for another human being. I believe Moses struck the man in anger for the man's inhumanity towards another. Was this sin? Yes, was it "murder"? I don't think so.

Why do you believe Moses was saved at this time? Because he was a Hebrew by birth? Because he believed in God? Because God chose him?
Just curious.

And this comment does what? Did it make you feel good?

:jesus:

 

No, hopefully it was to help you see the truth about God.
Murder is murder and God does not differentiate or is not biased.
Whether it was Calvin, Moses, or Paul.
They murdered. It was sin. They were forgiven. If it were not for the grace of God, there go I.

 

So you believe from what you know of me from my post that I do not understand God's grace?

 

Please don't take it personally. I am referring to how far God's grace extends in forgiving us. Is there any sin so great God cannot forgive. No, I don't believe there is. I believe that you are putting limitations on "God's grace."

 

Ummm, what on Earth is soul liberty....I have never heard the term before?