RE: [asa] some questions on doctrinal differences

I sent the following letter to the Providence Journal, which was not printed. I spent part of my summer in Providence, RI. I enclose it here not to be critical of the Catholic Church but to indicate, in answer to Wendee, what to me the essence of the Christian faith is.

Moorad

Some of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church are not biblically based, "Pope cites 'defects' in other Christian faiths," July 11.

There is not need of church leadership for salvation in the Christian faith. "For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," 1 Timothy 2:5.

Only God can forgive sins, man, even priests, cannot. "Seeing their faith, He said, 'Friend, your sins are forgiven you.' The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, 'Who is this man who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?' "Luke 5:20-21.

Transubstantiation, bread and grape wine are converted into Christ's body and blood, is not consistent with the following verse, "For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;" 1 Peter 3:18. See, also, Luke 22:14-23.

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of George Murphy
Sent: Fri 7/20/2007 8:45 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] some questions on doctrinal differences

Wendee -

The site you reference is a poor resource. Anything that begins by
stating
that Roman Catholicism is non-Christian is in pretty dubious territory.
(Yes, I believe that the Doctrine of Justification by grace through
faith,
as stated in Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession, is correct.)
Insisting
that Jesus was raised "physically" (as distinguished from "bodily")
is at
best careless - cf. I Cor.15:44. Relegating the Doctrine of the
Trinity to
secondary status, while monotheism is said to be primary, is another
serious
problem. & saying that "women pastors" is heretical is nonsense. &
there
are other problems.

I gather that what you're looking for is a brief list of issues that
have
been divisive in the history of the church rather than (like that
site) a
list of rights & wrongs. As you know, sometimes relatively trivial
issues
have been divisive so it's hard to know just how far to go in making
such a
list. But looking at the broad picture of church history, I would list:

The divinity of Christ and the Trinity (I Nicea)

The nature(s) & person of Christ (Chalcedon & other councils)

Papal authority (the East-West schism)

Justification (the Reformation)

Baptism (post-Reformation) (This may seem like an odd thing to list
but the
refusal of large groups of Christians today to recognize the validity
of the
baptisms of other Christians by its very nature makes genuine church
fellowship impossible.)

This is off the top of my head & certainly other important doctrinal
matters
could be listed. The question of what matters are necessarily "church
dividing" (kirchentrennende) has of course been discussed in ecumenical
dialogues.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

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Received on Fri Jul 20 11:43:59 2007