I was recently tempted to apostasize

[Don John of Austria]

[quote]God's grace does not pull me back towads the Roman Catholic Church. It constantly shows me the errors of Roman Catholicism in light of God's Holy Word and makes me thank God that He prompted me to leave her damnable apostasy behind.

[/quote]

Well then it's not Grace, it is the Devil; the Devil always leads one away from the truth, The Church of Rome is the Holder of the Truth, so if you are being lead away it is by Satan or his minions and not by the Grace of God. I would venture to say that Satan is happier with you as a Protestant than as nothing, as nothing you might find your way back to mother Church, now you are just an apostate from the True Faith, doomed, as are all apostates.

Edited December 28, 2004 by Don John of Austria

[ICTHUS]

[quote name='Don John of Austria' date='Dec 28 2004, 01:30 PM']
Well then it's not Grace, it is the Devil; the Devil always leads one away from the truth, The Church of Rome is the Holder of the Truth, so if you are being lead away it is by Satan or his minions and not by the Grace of God. I would venture to say that Satan is happier with you as a Protestant than as nothing, as nothing you might find your way back to mother Church, now you are just an apostate from the True Faith, doomed, as are all apostates. [/quote]
Ouch! This from a man who believes that his salvation comes from how many times he receives Holy Communion, as you said in another thread...

You yourself are an apostate, sir. You have abandoned the Holy Gospel for some works-based facsimile of Christianity.

[ICTHUS]

[quote name='ironmonk' date='Dec 28 2004, 12:15 PM'] You just called the Eucharist a 'piece of bread' on another thread.
[/quote]
Which would be inconsistent, if I believed that [i]'real presence' is synonymous with 'transubstantiation'. I do not. [/i]

Christ is [i]really[/i], but not [i]substantially[/i], present, in the Eucharist.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Dec 28 2004, 12:05 PM'] Which would be inconsistent, if I believed that [i]'real presence' is synonymous with 'transubstantiation'. I do not. [/i]

Christ is [i]really[/i], but not [i]substantially[/i], present, in the Eucharist. [/quote]
Byzantine Catholics, Latin Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox, all believe in a [i]substantial[/i] or [i]essential[/i] change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The only people who deny the true transformation of the elements are Protestants.

God bless,
Todd

[Don John of Austria]

[quote]Ouch! This from a man who believes that his salvation comes from how many times he receives Holy Communion, as you said in another thread...
[/quote]

Wow you must need reading lessons, would you care to quote me on that, please link to it, so that I can see the context of the statement which you contend I have made.

[quote] You have abandoned the Holy Gospel for some works-based facsimile of Christianity. [/quote] well considering you deny the words of Christ preseved in the Gospel " this is my body" & " this is my blood" I wouldn't talk.

Edited December 28, 2004 by Don John of Austria

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
12/28 - The Holy Innocents

[quote]I was thinking about how different people would explain this. I am Reformed, so I would say that God, in His mercy, ordained that I should persevere through this temptation so that I may be strengthened in my faith and kept unto eternal life.

A Roman Catholic would no doubt relegate some power to my own will, saying that I had enough willpower to resist the temptation to apostasize. Yet this latter is not the case. I was ready to give up. But honestly, I cannot imagine life apart from Christ, as said above. God's grace, not good intentions or a strong will, enabled me to persevere through that despair and come out with an intact faith. [/quote]

So God forced you to stay the course? Sounds like you don't have freedom in this instance - God is forcing you into Heaven? One shouldn't have to be forced to love God, one should be able to choose to love God.

[bookwyrm]

ICTHUS, I am sorry that your mother doesn't support your christianity - that must be horrible and I can't imagine what it would be like. But I still really don't understand what your problem is with the Catholic Church. You talk about 'damnable apostasy', but I'm not really sure what you mean by that. I don't think that even you know what you mean by that.
Also, I'm unsure where you get the idea that a Catholic would not give credit to God's grace, because that is totally untrue.
The people on this board are very learned - I am sure that if you were willing to listen with an open heart and mind that you would realize that you are wrong about the church.

I'm praying for you!

-Bookwyrm

Edited December 28, 2004 by bookwyrm

[ironmonk]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Dec 28 2004, 04:05 PM'] Which would be inconsistent, if I believed that [i]'real presence' is synonymous with 'transubstantiation'. I do not. [/i]

Christ is [i]really[/i], but not [i]substantially[/i], present, in the Eucharist. [/quote]
This is because you do not understand the terms.
If you believe in the real pressence then you must believe in transubstantiation. By saying you do not believe in it just goes to show that you do not know what it is.

Get Educated or go on making a fool of yourself:
[url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm"]http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm[/url]
[url="http://www.catholic.com/library/Catholic_Inventions.asp"]http://www.catholic.com/library/Catholic_Inventions.asp[/url]

Transubstantiation is the technical term used to describe what happens when the bread and wine used at Mass are turned into Christ’s actual body and blood. The belief that this occurs has been held from the earliest times. It stems from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, and the biblical accounts of the Last Supper. As centuries passed, theologians exercised their reason on the belief to understand more completely how such a thing could happen and what its happening would imply. It was seen that more precise terminology was needed to insure the belief’s integrity. The word "transubstantiation" was finally chosen because it eliminated certain unorthodox interpretations of the doctrine, and the term was formally defined at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. So the use of the technical term was new, but not the doctrine.

Simply put transubstantiation is nothing more than the point at which the bread becomes the flesh of Christ and the wine becomes the blood. If the Real Presence happened at 12:00 pm and we called it "noon", I think you would deny that noon even exists because it's a label coined by the Catholic Church.

Got some news for you... Trinity is a Catholic word also.

Funny in a very sad way how you avoid all debates that involve you showing history before 500 AD to back your claims.

Ignorance is not bliss.


I'm sorry about your mother acting that way also...

Here are some great logical arguements for the fact there is God...

[url="http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio.htm"]http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio.htm[/url]


God Bless
ironmonk

Edited December 29, 2004 by ironmonk

[ICTHUS]

[quote name='Pio Nono' date='Dec 28 2004, 04:10 PM'] JMJ
12/28 - The Holy Innocents



So God forced you to stay the course? Sounds like you don't have freedom in this instance - God is forcing you into Heaven? One shouldn't have to be forced to love God, one should be able to choose to love God. [/quote]
Pio, the point I was trying to make is that the world, the flesh, and the devil, are a stronger offensive than I, a woefully sinful and stupid man, could ever hope to counter.

Praise God that the battle, for me, does not depend on my own strength or holiness, but on God's mercy in enabling my perseverance.

[Pio Nono]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Dec 28 2004, 09:02 PM'] Pio, the point I was trying to make is that the world, the flesh, and the devil, are a stronger offensive than I, a woefully sinful and stupid man, could ever hope to counter.

Praise God that the battle, for me, does not depend on my own strength or holiness, but on God's mercy in enabling my perseverance. [/quote]
JMJ
12/29 - St. Thomas Becket

Yeah, but you didn't didn't address my statement - were you forced to keep believing or did you accept the grace to believe?

[ICTHUS]

[quote name='Pio Nono' date='Dec 29 2004, 02:55 AM'] JMJ
12/29 - St. Thomas Becket

Yeah, but you didn't didn't address my statement - were you forced to keep believing or did you accept the grace to believe? [/quote]
I don't believe I 'accepted the grace'. My flesh wanted control at that point, and would have won the battle, had God not intervened.

But, I would rather be forced by God's sweet grace to be a Christian, than be one of the poor lost wretches who does not know God's grace at all. Apart from God's quickening our hearts and overcoming the sin that keeps us enslaved to the Devil, we would all be lost. So, I suppose the question is: must we be forced, in a certain sense, to be Christians? The answer is yes - praise God that He does so, in His mercy!

Edited December 29, 2004 by ICTHUS

[thessalonian]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Dec 28 2004, 09:02 PM'] Pio, the point I was trying to make is that the world, the flesh, and the devil, are a stronger offensive than I, a woefully sinful and stupid man, could ever hope to counter.

Praise God that the battle, for me, does not depend on my own strength or holiness, but on God's mercy in enabling my perseverance. [/quote]
I think this is an insult to God. If you resisted it is because he has built you up and made you strong. The scriptures tell us that he will not tempt us beyond what we can endure. Now that we endured does not mean that he is not the cause of our endurance but rather that he is the cause of our strength to endure. Growing in holliness is what it is called. Do you deny the need to grow in Holiness?

I think of Ignatius being led off to the lions, requesting that his diocese not deliver him from the trial. That man had strength. Was it his own. No. It was what God built up in him, preparing him for the extreme trial he was about to endure.

If you persevered it was because God made you strong. He may have given you some added strength at the time of your temptatoin, but he in fact had already done alot of work in you.

Blessings

[duarc]

Will you guys leave the poor man alone? He's on the right track and DIDN'T completely leave the christian church. Don't immedatly rag on him for setting himself up for attack when he tells us that god has prevented him from losing faith.

He's not as ignorant as you think he is.

[Don John of Austria]

DUARC-- you don't know Ithcus as we do, his statement was an attack.

[Paladin D]

[quote name='duarc' date='Dec 30 2004, 12:04 PM'] Will you guys leave the poor man alone? He's on the right track and DIDN'T completely leave the christian church. Don't immedatly rag on him for setting himself up for attack when he tells us that god has prevented him from losing faith.

He's not as ignorant as you think he is. [/quote]
This would be true if it were another individual, ICTHUS has a long history on Phatmass. He used to be Catholic, then was "converted" to Protestantism, and continues to misinterpret Church doctrine even though we've told him otherwise over and over and over and over.

The color is red, not pink, yet he continues to claim it's pink.

[Guest JeffCR07]

[quote name='ICTHUS' date='Dec 29 2004, 03:59 AM'] I don't believe I 'accepted the grace'. My flesh wanted control at that point, and would have won the battle, had God not intervened.

But, I would rather be forced by God's sweet grace to be a Christian, than be one of the poor lost wretches who does not know God's grace at all. Apart from God's quickening our hearts and overcoming the sin that keeps us enslaved to the Devil, we would all be lost. So, I suppose the question is: must we be forced, in a certain sense, to be Christians? The answer is yes - praise God that He does so, in His mercy! [/quote]
ICTHUS, God cannot force a person to love Him anymore than He can will Himself to sin. Just as Sin is antithetical to God, so too is compulsion antithetical to love.

God,the being that than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot sin - not because He is "incapable" but because if He did, He would not be God.

So too with Love

One cannot be "forced" to Love because if one [i]is[/i] forced, then it ceases to be Love.


- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff

[cathqat]

[quote]Christ is [i]really[/i], but not [i]substantially[/i], present, in the Eucharist.[/quote]

Someone who claims to be an "Anglican" is making statements like this? My mother would tell him to become a Baptist and run him out of the church! :haha:

Whew, there's no way my family would tolerate [i]that[/i] low church nonsense!

[LSW]

I can relate to your temptations to apostasize from the Christian faith. There where many times in my life that I actually tried not to believe in God anymore but simply couldn't do it. I just couldn't imagine life without Christ even when I tried to live it without him. Something always pulled me back.

By the way I'm Roman Catholic.

[DojoGrant]

Anglicans, at least the very learned one that I spoke to back on BaptistBoard, denied justification by faith alone. Is that something you also deny?

And please elaborate how love is forced. By nature, love is something that has to be freely given. Explain how you freely love God if God makes you love Him.

[Benedict]

Icthus is a Calvinist before he is an Anglican.