So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

Does parodosi and its correct to English translation appear in your protestant Bibles?

4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Brazil has been eliminated from the World Cup and a national examination of conscience will run for the next few months. Lots of Brazilian commentary out there that the Protestant conversion of Brazil over the past few decades is what has killed Brazilian futbol.

The discourse connecting Brazilian soccer to Protestantism points to a deeper cultural claim: that Brazil’s football decline is not merely tactical, generational, or administrative, but spiritual and civilizational.

The argument is that the old Brazilian style — playful,… https://t.co/yTCEanAMsO pic.twitter.com/T6MZLUWhcU

— Institute for Hispano Studies (@hispano_studies) July 6, 2026

I'm not really sure what currently ails Brazilian soccer, but the framing here is interesting in the context of our running conversation on these boards. Interestingly, I think both sides probably accept the framing.

There is also an interesting meme of Neymar making the rounds (Neymar is the current (Protestant) Brazilian superstar that has defined the last decade plus of Brazilian soccer; a player whose legacy will ultimately be one of disappointment). Delightfully, the play on words translates well to English:

"Prays like a gringo;
Plays like a gringo."

After countless posts, I doubt any of us will change the other's minds theologically, but there is something about the difference in community between the Protestant and Catholic expressions of Christianity. I'm not trying to leave the Orthodox out of this conversation; I've always enjoyed being with them and felt welcome in their spaces, even if it feels (comfortably) foreign to me. And I think they've felt the same about me when invited into my community.

To use a perhaps light hearted example of this, dating at least back to my time at Baylor, many of us have lamented just how challenging it can be to get the Baylor faithful to present a united front just as fans at games (the battles over what shade of gold people were willing to wear come to mind). Contrast to how easily Catholics can rally and unite around Notre Dame and the entire stadium will wear the same thing (or use BYU and Mormons if you prefer). Fundamentally, the specific issue is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it does speak to something bigger.

Where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity and community. I suppose where we see recalcitrance and resistance to submission, Mothra sees individual righteousness. And on and on it goes.

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I think your post actually illustrates the concern I've been raising. You treat unity as an intrinsic good, while largely ignoring the mechanism that produces it.

If a church teaches children from birth that questioning certain doctrines is spiritually dangerous, elevates institutional authority alongside or above individual interpretation of Scripture, and conditions members to defer to that authority, then yes, you will generally get more visible conformity. The question is whether conformity is the same thing as genuine conviction.

The fact that Catholics can more easily rally around Notre Dame than Baptists can around Baylor doesn't prove Catholicism is healthier; it may simply demonstrate a stronger culture of deference and institutional loyalty. Protestants have historically traded some degree of uniformity for individual conscience. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

More fundamentally, I'm a Protestant because I believe Scripture should remain the highest authority. When traditions develop that cannot be clearly grounded in Scripture, I think Christians have an obligation to question them rather than submit to them simply because an institution says so. The Reformers were criticized for creating division, but from their perspective the division was caused by the Church's departure from biblical teaching, not by those who objected to it.

So when you say "where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity," I would say that gets the issue backwards. The debate isn't whether Catholicism produces unity - clearly it often does. The debate is whether that unity is being produced by fidelity to Scripture or by confidence in institutional authority. Protestants tend to be skeptical of the latter, because history is full of institutions that were unified, disciplined, and wrong.

And that's why I'm not persuaded by the Notre Dame analogy. A stadium full of people wearing the same color is evidence of organizational cohesion. It tells us very little about whether the underlying beliefs are true.

---

You're coming across a tad bit defensive here. I made no normative statement. There was no value judgment expressed in my observations. Indeed, I acknowledged your agency and observed "where Mothra sees X, we see Y." I'm literally acknowledging the space for disagreement!

Nonetheless, let's engage the substance of your post. Sure, too much unity, especially at the expense of individual ascension to belief, is problematic, potentially to a very serious level. The Church has had to correct herself over the centuries of the downstream consequences borne of this issue. But it is also true that too much individualism at the expense of unity is a problem. 10,000+ denominations and independent churches, that continue to fracture even today attest to that. How many church plants do we really need? At what point do we work with the churches and the Church that God has already given us? There is a little bit of main character syndrome in play, IMHO.

When unity is not valued you just leave and go start another church for whatever reason. Perhpas because you couldn't reach consensus on some minor or important topic or perhaps because it is just really your dream to do you own thing. Either way, it is running away from the hardwork of being in community with one another. In its worst form, this individualism leads to a group of crazy zealots about 20 miles northeast of Waco shutting themselves off from the world and facing off with government tanks (not justifying Janet Reno, here).

You are correct that the stadium full of people wearing the same colors doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs. But it does tell us how they feel about each other and their organization and their greater place within it. And a stadium full of people who can't bring themselves to wear the same color doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs, either. But it does tell us about how those people feel about each other and their organization and their place within it.

I am comfortable saying that Christ wanted strong unity among his followers (as differetiated from unthinking unity). Think of it this way: there is a poster on these boards who seems to view himself in prophetic terms sent here to defeat the Catholic Church. If he ever somehow pulled that off, he would then turn to the Orthodox to dispatch them. And then the Lutherans (he'd start with the Missouri synod for their sin of being as close to Catholic as you can get while still being a Protestant). And then the Anglicans. And so on and so on, until all that remains are people who believe *exactly* what he believes in his individual intepretation of revelation. Odds are you will be a target at some point between here and there. Sure, you are convenient bedfellows today united by your hatred of the Catholic Church, but what happens once you actually catch the car? Is that Christ wants?

FWIW, I think you are failing to grasp Catholic unity. The Church has room for Jesuits and for Opus Dei. We have housed liberation theology (which may or may not be communist) and (until recently) the reactionary views of the SSPX. And everything in between. No matter how fierce our disagreements may be, we can and do all sit together in Mass and partake in the Sacraments together as one body.

While there are a few bright lines that cannot be crossed within Catholicism, that is true of every single Christian denomination and non-denominational church I am familiar with. I'm guessing it is true of your church, as well. But I would posit there is much greater diversity of faithful expression within the Catholic Church than just about any single major Christian denomination I am aware of. I cannot think of another denomation that is home to such a diverse range of views and expression of its faith. That mostly functions for the best and edifies us as a body, but sometimes it can get a little nutty. Either way, it really undermines the accussation of unhealthy unity.

---

I'm not sure "defensive" is a fair characterization. You specifically called me out by name, referenced my perspective and contrasted it with your own ("where Mothra sees X, we see Y"), so I responded to the observations you made about my position.

More importantly, I think you're subtly changing the issue. I wasn't arguing that unity is bad. Virtually every Christian agrees unity is good. The question is whether institutional unity should be treated as evidence of spiritual health or theological correctness. Your examples largely assume the conclusion. Yes, fragmentation can be a problem. Yes, some people leave churches for bad reasons. Yes, Christians should be willing to endure disagreement and do the hard work of community. I agree with all of that. What I don't agree with is the implication that larger organizational unity is inherently superior. History gives us examples of both excessive individualism and excessive institutional conformity. Neither extreme is a virtue.

You point to thousands of Protestant denominations. Fair enough. But numerical diversity doesn't by itself demonstrate a failure of Christian charity any more than Catholic unity demonstrates theological truth. A Baptist and a Presbyterian may worship in different churches while still recognizing one another as fellow Christians. Meanwhile, two Catholics may sit in the same pew while holding radically different views on theology, morality, and Church life. Organizational unity and substantive unity are not the same thing.

I also think you're overlooking the danger on the other side of the equation. Unity is a virtue only when it is unity in the truth. Unity at the expense of truth is not a Christian virtue at all. To use a practical example, I know many Catholics personally - including lifelong Catholics who are my nextdoor neighbors - who sincerely believe that being a "good person" is what saves someone. I also have Catholic friends who openly advocate for abortion rights despite the Church's unequivocal teaching on the issue, and I have a legal assistant who is in a same-sex relationship and attends Mass faithfully.

My point is not to single out or condemn these individuals. Rather, it is to illustrate that institutional unity and sacramental participation do not necessarily indicate a shared understanding of, or submission to, the Gospel. If people can sit in the same pews, receive the same sacraments, and identify as members of the same church while holding fundamentally different views on salvation, morality, and human sexuality, then visible unity by itself cannot be the measure of spiritual health or faithfulness. In fact, I would argue that such examples demonstrate the very danger I am describing: unity can sometimes be preserved even when truth is not. What I am describing would never happen in my church.

That is why I continue to maintain that truth must be the primary standard. Unity is a great blessing when it is grounded in truth, but unity alone is not evidence that truth has been preserved. A church can have remarkable organizational unity while still containing profound disagreement or outright confusion about the very message that Christians are supposed to proclaim. The Catholic Church is clear evidence of that. That is why I am hesitant to treat visible unity as a reliable measure of spiritual health. Truth has to remain the primary standard; otherwise unity becomes an end in itself rather than a means of faithfully following Christ.

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I think you are skirting what I am saying.

I agree that doctrinal truth (individual ascension to belief) is what matters and unity is not the end all be all. But lack of unity does tell us something, too.

The Baptist and the Presby choose to worship in seperate churches for a reason. What is that reason telling you?

The issues you identify within the Catholic Church are likely plagueing your church in some way or another. Depending on size of your congregation, odds are someone in your congregation is living in a sexually unchaste way or does not fully doctrinally assent to your dogma or buys into some prosperity gospel bs, etc...

Are you really identifying a Catholic-specific issue or is it a problem for all Christians?

---

I agree that every church has sinners. Every church has people struggling with sin. Every church has people who are imperfectly catechized. That's just Christianity this side of glory.

However, my observation isn't merely that Catholics have sinners. It's that there often seems to be a large gap between the Gospels and what the Catholic Church officially teaches and/or tolerates in practice. In my church, if someone openly rejects the core Gospel, denies our confession, or persists in conduct contrary to the church's teaching without repentance, the church addresses it. You will not be allowed to become a member. We don't simply treat mutually contradictory beliefs as equally acceptable expressions of the faith. Membership and fellowship actually mean something.

We also teach the essentials of the Gospel. Our congregants don't lack even a rudimentary understanding of the core message of the Gospel - certainly not in the way that the Catholics I know so often do.

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Ignoring areas where you formally disagree with Church theological teachings, what areas of the core message of the Gospel do you specifically believe the Church fails to teach (as opposed to people failing to learn)?

The bolded is perhaps *the* important point of distinction, and I feel like you are swapping positions here with me by prioritizing ideological unity over something else that is important (I am not making a value or normative judgment!). And I want to ackwoledge that the general idea of Protestant "membership" in a church does not have a very good analogue in the Catholic Church (subject to a caveat below). So we are approaching this from two very different paradigms.

Recent pontificates have been big on the metaphor of the Church as a field hospital. When we start talking about membership and fellowship actually meaning something, we can get dangerously close to questioning why the Messiah would choose to sit with tax collectors, sinners and outcasts.

I don't think that is what is in your heart, so please don't read that as an accusation, I'm just saying others go down that road without realizing it. And maybe this sounds like not a big deal, but it can play out in really bad ways. One of the few times I have been truly bewildered by my Protestant bretheren is when I was invited to something akin to mass baby dedication for newborn children and the single mothers were not permitted on stage wth their babies because the child had been born out of wedlock (to be clear, my friends that invited me were good Baylor Baptists who were married when their child was conceived).

Look, it is unfortunate that the child was born out of wedlock, but it is not the child's fault, and I would hold that we shouldn't be casting symbolic stones at the child's mother. Sure, membership and fellowship means something, but the child means much more to God than any concern about appearances.

The Catholic position is to keep these people in the fold, keep preaching to them, keep walking with them (Pope Francis in particular emphasized this as the form of evangelization we should treasure), keep trying to do God's work to heal what spiritually ails them. That doesn't mean you compromise on what you believe any more than Jesus compromised by sitting with tax collectors and sinners.

Again, I'm not trying to claim a superior moral ground here. There is an element of "not allowed to be a member" within the Catholic Church. If your behavior is outside of Church teaching you are not allowed to participate in the sacraments. At a serious enough level you are formally barred from the sacraments until you repent and are formally recognized as being in good standing. So I'm not suggesting exclusivity is entirely bad or that it is entirely wrong to draw theological bright lines. But importantly, even those who are excommunicated are still permitted in the pews to worship and as Catholics we are still called to fraternally fellowship with them, even if they cannot fully partake in the sacraments. So, from our perspective, the question is this: would you rather the person who is sick be in the hospital or not (again, I understand that since we don't have the concept of "membership", you probably view this question from an entirely different paradigm)?

I personally, for the most part, do not view theological differences between the numerous wings of the Catholic Church as mutually exclusive. I see them as having different points of emphasis of the Gospel message *generally* breaking along the line of compassion/justice v holiness. Yes, certain actors within those wings may push extreme measures that can undermine teachings in an unacceptable way. In recent centuries, Popes have seemed to prefer allowing the issues to develop and play out (akin to letting issues work their way through appellate circuits), waiting for the line to be clearly crossed before correcting. The SSPX is a recent example, but Rome is gearing up to crack down on the German bishops on the other end of the spectrum.

Got you, Sorry
I just think the word games that we have argued over the centuries are a bit silly.

Salvation is entirely the grace of God (Eph 2:8-9). But the same Scriptures also teach that God's grace is not passive. We are called to cooperate with it, for "it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Phil 2:13), while we are also commanded to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12).

The "work" of the Christian life is not trying to convince God that we're worthy. It is repentance, putting sin to death, growing in virtue, taking up our cross, and being conformed to the image of Christ by His grace (Romans 8:29, Colossians 3:5, Luke 9:23). Christ came not only to forgive us, but to transform us.

We don't simply sit around waiting to die so we can "go to heaven." Eternal life begins NOW (John 17:3). We are called into ever-deeper communion with God NOW, to become "partakers of the divine nature" by grace (2 Peter 1:4), growing "from glory to glory" (2 Cor 3:18).

That is why Christ tells us to "strive to enter through the narrow gate" (Luke 13:24), and why He says, "the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt 11:12). These verses describe the determined, lifelong struggle against sin and the passions, not an attempt to earn salvation, but the life of faithful cooperation with the grace that God freely gives.

Never say "I am worthy." Say with the tax collector "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13), while at the same time striving, by His grace, to become what He created us to be.

4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

It's not completely accurate. A true believer is someone who truly believes. That's all. Their works are the result of sanctification, which can take time and can vary in amount and timing from person to person. A person can be a true believer, but have no works at all to show for it - for example, in the case of a new Christian who dies shortly after coming to faith. Just like the thief on the cross (what works did he have?) Or it may be a new believer who still struggles with their past life for a while, all while being repentant throughout, but nevertheless they don't have "works" (if you don't consider repentance a work, which it isn't). All they may have during this time is a deep conviction of their sin (which is from the Holy Spirit) which is evidence of their faith. Within this snapshot of time, there may be zero works, but their faith is real. Given time, however, a true believer will eventually show works.

The point is, the blanket statement "if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer" is not necessarily true in the absolute sense. It can depend on the situation. James wasn't talking about works always existing with true faith in the absolute sense such as in these examples, but rather in the normative sense. I just think this detail needed to be pointed out.

Doc Holliday said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

I see all these posts going to extravagant detail to prove some esoteric claim in support of a single group and opposed to other Christian groups, and I cannot help but wonder about the motive. We are called to spread the Gospel and be fishers of men, but in this forum I see us bickering constantly and raising emotions more than brotherhood.

Jesus was open in His teaching and examples. In John 14:6 Christ plainly tells us to focus on Him in our journey, our search for truth, and for life. In Mark 12:31 Jesus plainly tells to love others as we do ourselves. So certainly if we wish to be heard and our perspective respected, we must do the same for other Christians.

Jesus told us plainly not to be afraid in Matthew 14:27, which would include not fearing God being angry with us simply because another person wants to be judgy. Matthew 5:9 praises peacemakers, because as we have seen those are rare even among believers at times.

Scripture offers us solutions to many questions, and in Matthew 7:7 Christ plainly promised we can ask the Father directly for what we need.

The teachings of Jesus are so plainly true and clear, that He chose common men, not scholars and legal experts, to be His inner circle.

If only we could be so open to the believers we meet here.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

It's not completely accurate. A true believer is someone who truly believes. That's all. Their works are the result of sanctification, which can take time and can vary in amount and timing from person to person. A person can be a true believer, but have no works at all to show for it - for example, in the case of a new Christian who dies shortly after coming to faith. Just like the thief on the cross (what works did he have?) Or it may be a new believer who still struggles with their past life for a while, all while being repentant throughout, but nevertheless they don't have "works" (if you don't consider repentance a work, which it isn't). All they may have during this time is a deep conviction of their sin (which is from the Holy Spirit) which is evidence of their faith. Within this snapshot of time, there may be zero works, but their faith is real. Given time, however, a true believer will eventually show works.

The point is, the blanket statement "if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer" is not necessarily true in the absolute sense. It can depend on the situation. James wasn't talking about works always existing with true faith in the absolute sense such as in these examples, but rather in the normative sense. I just think this detail needed to be pointed out.

---

no disagreement from me

Time definitely has to be part of the equation in order to manifest good works as fruit

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Blessed Ever Virgin Mary demonstrated this for us in her response to Gabriel who brought God's message to her.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that everything we need to know in order to be Christians is contained in rhe scriptures.

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

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in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

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I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

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How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

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Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

Fre3dombear said:

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Nowhere in the Bible does it say that everything we need to know in order to be Christians is contained in rhe scriptures.

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Yes, the Bible literally says that:

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." - 2 Timothy 3:16-17

DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Brazil has been eliminated from the World Cup and a national examination of conscience will run for the next few months. Lots of Brazilian commentary out there that the Protestant conversion of Brazil over the past few decades is what has killed Brazilian futbol.

The discourse connecting Brazilian soccer to Protestantism points to a deeper cultural claim: that Brazil’s football decline is not merely tactical, generational, or administrative, but spiritual and civilizational.

The argument is that the old Brazilian style — playful,… https://t.co/yTCEanAMsO pic.twitter.com/T6MZLUWhcU

— Institute for Hispano Studies (@hispano_studies) July 6, 2026

I'm not really sure what currently ails Brazilian soccer, but the framing here is interesting in the context of our running conversation on these boards. Interestingly, I think both sides probably accept the framing.

There is also an interesting meme of Neymar making the rounds (Neymar is the current (Protestant) Brazilian superstar that has defined the last decade plus of Brazilian soccer; a player whose legacy will ultimately be one of disappointment). Delightfully, the play on words translates well to English:

"Prays like a gringo;
Plays like a gringo."

After countless posts, I doubt any of us will change the other's minds theologically, but there is something about the difference in community between the Protestant and Catholic expressions of Christianity. I'm not trying to leave the Orthodox out of this conversation; I've always enjoyed being with them and felt welcome in their spaces, even if it feels (comfortably) foreign to me. And I think they've felt the same about me when invited into my community.

To use a perhaps light hearted example of this, dating at least back to my time at Baylor, many of us have lamented just how challenging it can be to get the Baylor faithful to present a united front just as fans at games (the battles over what shade of gold people were willing to wear come to mind). Contrast to how easily Catholics can rally and unite around Notre Dame and the entire stadium will wear the same thing (or use BYU and Mormons if you prefer). Fundamentally, the specific issue is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it does speak to something bigger.

Where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity and community. I suppose where we see recalcitrance and resistance to submission, Mothra sees individual righteousness. And on and on it goes.

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I think your post actually illustrates the concern I've been raising. You treat unity as an intrinsic good, while largely ignoring the mechanism that produces it.

If a church teaches children from birth that questioning certain doctrines is spiritually dangerous, elevates institutional authority alongside or above individual interpretation of Scripture, and conditions members to defer to that authority, then yes, you will generally get more visible conformity. The question is whether conformity is the same thing as genuine conviction.

The fact that Catholics can more easily rally around Notre Dame than Baptists can around Baylor doesn't prove Catholicism is healthier; it may simply demonstrate a stronger culture of deference and institutional loyalty. Protestants have historically traded some degree of uniformity for individual conscience. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

More fundamentally, I'm a Protestant because I believe Scripture should remain the highest authority. When traditions develop that cannot be clearly grounded in Scripture, I think Christians have an obligation to question them rather than submit to them simply because an institution says so. The Reformers were criticized for creating division, but from their perspective the division was caused by the Church's departure from biblical teaching, not by those who objected to it.

So when you say "where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity," I would say that gets the issue backwards. The debate isn't whether Catholicism produces unity - clearly it often does. The debate is whether that unity is being produced by fidelity to Scripture or by confidence in institutional authority. Protestants tend to be skeptical of the latter, because history is full of institutions that were unified, disciplined, and wrong.

And that's why I'm not persuaded by the Notre Dame analogy. A stadium full of people wearing the same color is evidence of organizational cohesion. It tells us very little about whether the underlying beliefs are true.

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You're coming across a tad bit defensive here. I made no normative statement. There was no value judgment expressed in my observations. Indeed, I acknowledged your agency and observed "where Mothra sees X, we see Y." I'm literally acknowledging the space for disagreement!

Nonetheless, let's engage the substance of your post. Sure, too much unity, especially at the expense of individual ascension to belief, is problematic, potentially to a very serious level. The Church has had to correct herself over the centuries of the downstream consequences borne of this issue. But it is also true that too much individualism at the expense of unity is a problem. 10,000+ denominations and independent churches, that continue to fracture even today attest to that. How many church plants do we really need? At what point do we work with the churches and the Church that God has already given us? There is a little bit of main character syndrome in play, IMHO.

When unity is not valued you just leave and go start another church for whatever reason. Perhpas because you couldn't reach consensus on some minor or important topic or perhaps because it is just really your dream to do you own thing. Either way, it is running away from the hardwork of being in community with one another. In its worst form, this individualism leads to a group of crazy zealots about 20 miles northeast of Waco shutting themselves off from the world and facing off with government tanks (not justifying Janet Reno, here).

You are correct that the stadium full of people wearing the same colors doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs. But it does tell us how they feel about each other and their organization and their greater place within it. And a stadium full of people who can't bring themselves to wear the same color doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs, either. But it does tell us about how those people feel about each other and their organization and their place within it.

I am comfortable saying that Christ wanted strong unity among his followers (as differetiated from unthinking unity). Think of it this way: there is a poster on these boards who seems to view himself in prophetic terms sent here to defeat the Catholic Church. If he ever somehow pulled that off, he would then turn to the Orthodox to dispatch them. And then the Lutherans (he'd start with the Missouri synod for their sin of being as close to Catholic as you can get while still being a Protestant). And then the Anglicans. And so on and so on, until all that remains are people who believe *exactly* what he believes in his individual intepretation of revelation. Odds are you will be a target at some point between here and there. Sure, you are convenient bedfellows today united by your hatred of the Catholic Church, but what happens once you actually catch the car? Is that Christ wants?

FWIW, I think you are failing to grasp Catholic unity. The Church has room for Jesuits and for Opus Dei. We have housed liberation theology (which may or may not be communist) and (until recently) the reactionary views of the SSPX. And everything in between. No matter how fierce our disagreements may be, we can and do all sit together in Mass and partake in the Sacraments together as one body.

While there are a few bright lines that cannot be crossed within Catholicism, that is true of every single Christian denomination and non-denominational church I am familiar with. I'm guessing it is true of your church, as well. But I would posit there is much greater diversity of faithful expression within the Catholic Church than just about any single major Christian denomination I am aware of. I cannot think of another denomation that is home to such a diverse range of views and expression of its faith. That mostly functions for the best and edifies us as a body, but sometimes it can get a little nutty. Either way, it really undermines the accussation of unhealthy unity.

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I'm not sure "defensive" is a fair characterization. You specifically called me out by name, referenced my perspective and contrasted it with your own ("where Mothra sees X, we see Y"), so I responded to the observations you made about my position.

More importantly, I think you're subtly changing the issue. I wasn't arguing that unity is bad. Virtually every Christian agrees unity is good. The question is whether institutional unity should be treated as evidence of spiritual health or theological correctness. Your examples largely assume the conclusion. Yes, fragmentation can be a problem. Yes, some people leave churches for bad reasons. Yes, Christians should be willing to endure disagreement and do the hard work of community. I agree with all of that. What I don't agree with is the implication that larger organizational unity is inherently superior. History gives us examples of both excessive individualism and excessive institutional conformity. Neither extreme is a virtue.

You point to thousands of Protestant denominations. Fair enough. But numerical diversity doesn't by itself demonstrate a failure of Christian charity any more than Catholic unity demonstrates theological truth. A Baptist and a Presbyterian may worship in different churches while still recognizing one another as fellow Christians. Meanwhile, two Catholics may sit in the same pew while holding radically different views on theology, morality, and Church life. Organizational unity and substantive unity are not the same thing.

I also think you're overlooking the danger on the other side of the equation. Unity is a virtue only when it is unity in the truth. Unity at the expense of truth is not a Christian virtue at all. To use a practical example, I know many Catholics personally - including lifelong Catholics who are my nextdoor neighbors - who sincerely believe that being a "good person" is what saves someone. I also have Catholic friends who openly advocate for abortion rights despite the Church's unequivocal teaching on the issue, and I have a legal assistant who is in a same-sex relationship and attends Mass faithfully.

My point is not to single out or condemn these individuals. Rather, it is to illustrate that institutional unity and sacramental participation do not necessarily indicate a shared understanding of, or submission to, the Gospel. If people can sit in the same pews, receive the same sacraments, and identify as members of the same church while holding fundamentally different views on salvation, morality, and human sexuality, then visible unity by itself cannot be the measure of spiritual health or faithfulness. In fact, I would argue that such examples demonstrate the very danger I am describing: unity can sometimes be preserved even when truth is not. What I am describing would never happen in my church.

That is why I continue to maintain that truth must be the primary standard. Unity is a great blessing when it is grounded in truth, but unity alone is not evidence that truth has been preserved. A church can have remarkable organizational unity while still containing profound disagreement or outright confusion about the very message that Christians are supposed to proclaim. The Catholic Church is clear evidence of that. That is why I am hesitant to treat visible unity as a reliable measure of spiritual health. Truth has to remain the primary standard; otherwise unity becomes an end in itself rather than a means of faithfully following Christ.

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I think you are skirting what I am saying.

I agree that doctrinal truth (individual ascension to belief) is what matters and unity is not the end all be all. But lack of unity does tell us something, too.

The Baptist and the Presby choose to worship in seperate churches for a reason. What is that reason telling you?

The issues you identify within the Catholic Church are likely plagueing your church in some way or another. Depending on size of your congregation, odds are someone in your congregation is living in a sexually unchaste way or does not fully doctrinally assent to your dogma or buys into some prosperity gospel bs, etc...

Are you really identifying a Catholic-specific issue or is it a problem for all Christians?

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I agree that every church has sinners. Every church has people struggling with sin. Every church has people who are imperfectly catechized. That's just Christianity this side of glory.

However, my observation isn't merely that Catholics have sinners. It's that there often seems to be a large gap between the Gospels and what the Catholic Church officially teaches and/or tolerates in practice. In my church, if someone openly rejects the core Gospel, denies our confession, or persists in conduct contrary to the church's teaching without repentance, the church addresses it. You will not be allowed to become a member. We don't simply treat mutually contradictory beliefs as equally acceptable expressions of the faith. Membership and fellowship actually mean something.

We also teach the essentials of the Gospel. Our congregants don't lack even a rudimentary understanding of the core message of the Gospel - certainly not in the way that the Catholics I know so often do.

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Ignoring areas where you formally disagree with Church theological teachings, what areas of the core message of the Gospel do you specifically believe the Church fails to teach (as opposed to people failing to learn)?

The bolded is perhaps *the* important point of distinction, and I feel like you are swapping positions here with me by prioritizing ideological unity over something else that is important (I am not making a value or normative judgment!). And I want to ackwoledge that the general idea of Protestant "membership" in a church does not have a very good analogue in the Catholic Church (subject to a caveat below). So we are approaching this from two very different paradigms.

Recent pontificates have been big on the metaphor of the Church as a field hospital. When we start talking about membership and fellowship actually meaning something, we can get dangerously close to questioning why the Messiah would choose to sit with tax collectors, sinners and outcasts.

I don't think that is what is in your heart, so please don't read that as an accusation, I'm just saying others go down that road without realizing it. And maybe this sounds like not a big deal, but it can play out in really bad ways. One of the few times I have been truly bewildered by my Protestant bretheren is when I was invited to something akin to mass baby dedication for newborn children and the single mothers were not permitted on stage wth their babies because the child had been born out of wedlock (to be clear, my friends that invited me were good Baylor Baptists who were married when their child was conceived).

Look, it is unfortunate that the child was born out of wedlock, but it is not the child's fault, and I would hold that we shouldn't be casting symbolic stones at the child's mother. Sure, membership and fellowship means something, but the child means much more to God than any concern about appearances.

The Catholic position is to keep these people in the fold, keep preaching to them, keep walking with them (Pope Francis in particular emphasized this as the form of evangelization we should treasure), keep trying to do God's work to heal what spiritually ails them. That doesn't mean you compromise on what you believe any more than Jesus compromised by sitting with tax collectors and sinners.

Again, I'm not trying to claim a superior moral ground here. There is an element of "not allowed to be a member" within the Catholic Church. If your behavior is outside of Church teaching you are not allowed to participate in the sacraments. At a serious enough level you are formally barred from the sacraments until you repent and are formally recognized as being in good standing. So I'm not suggesting exclusivity is entirely bad or that it is entirely wrong to draw theological bright lines. But importantly, even those who are excommunicated are still permitted in the pews to worship and as Catholics we are still called to fraternally fellowship with them, even if they cannot fully partake in the sacraments. So, from our perspective, the question is this: would you rather the person who is sick be in the hospital or not (again, I understand that since we don't have the concept of "membership", you probably view this question from an entirely different paradigm)?

I personally, for the most part, do not view theological differences between the numerous wings of the Catholic Church as mutually exclusive. I see them as having different points of emphasis of the Gospel message *generally* breaking along the line of compassion/justice v holiness. Yes, certain actors within those wings may push extreme measures that can undermine teachings in an unacceptable way. In recent centuries, Popes have seemed to prefer allowing the issues to develop and play out (akin to letting issues work their way through appellate circuits), waiting for the line to be clearly crossed before correcting. The SSPX is a recent example, but Rome is gearing up to crack down on the German bishops on the other end of the spectrum.

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I think you're framing the disagreement as though the alternative to the Catholic approach is excluding sinners from the community altogether, and that's not what I'm advocating.

The tax collectors and sinners analogy only works if the Church is actually calling people to repentance. Jesus ate with sinners, but He never blurred the distinction between disciple and non-disciple, repentance and unrepentance, obedience and disobedience. His welcome was radical, but so was His demand: "Repent and believe."

My concern is not whether sinners should be in the pews. They absolutely should be. Every church is a congregation of sinners. My concern is whether the Church's practices clearly communicate what repentance, discipleship, and covenant faithfulness actually look like.

In fact, your hospital analogy may support my position more than yours. A hospital welcomes the sick, but it does not redefine sickness as health in order to make patients feel included. Neither does it abandon diagnosis because some patients may reject treatment. The sick are most helped when there is both compassion and clarity.

I also think there is a category distinction being overlooked between fellowship and accountability. The example of the unmarried mother is emotionally compelling, but it isn't really the issue in dispute. I am not arguing that children should be shamed, that struggling people should be ostracized, or that those living in sin should be driven away from hearing the Gospel. The question is whether church membership and public affirmation should signify a commitment to Christian discipleship or merely a desire to remain connected to the community.

Where I think Protestantism often differs from Catholicism is that we tend to see meaningful boundaries as part of shepherding rather than a rejection of grace. Paul instructs churches to practice discipline precisely because he wants the sinner restored, not because he wants him excluded forever. The goal is remedial, not punitive.

And this gets back to the point I raised earlier about the Gospel itself. If the Church's visible boundaries communicate little practical difference between repentance and unrepentance, then over time the Church risks obscuring the Gospel message. Not the message of God's mercy, but the message that Christ calls people not merely to belong, but to be transformed.

2 Thes 2:15 - stand firm and hold to the traditions (NOT TEACHING) per St Paul

The list of biblical books was of course never written and was passed down by….tradition. The Greek again makes it clear as it always does

Protestants have a list they believe is wrong of books that cant be wrong.

The central teaching of sola scriptura is that the church can err

Prove me wrong.

Oldbear83 said:

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I see all these posts going to extravagant detail to prove some esoteric claim in support of a single group and opposed to other Christian groups, and I cannot help but wonder about the motive. We are called to spread the Gospel and be fishers of men, but in this forum I see us bickering constantly and raising emotions more than brotherhood.

Jesus was open in His teaching and examples. In John 14:6 Christ plainly tells us to focus on Him in our journey, our search for truth, and for life. In Mark 12:31 Jesus plainly tells to love others as we do ourselves. So certainly if we wish to be heard and our perspective respected, we must do the same for other Christians.

Jesus told us plainly not to be afraid in Matthew 14:27, which would include not fearing God being angry with us simply because another person wants to be judgy. Matthew 5:9 praises peacemakers, because as we have seen those are rare even among believers at times.

Scripture offers us solutions to many questions, and in Matthew 7:7 Christ plainly promised we can ask the Father directly for what we need.

The teachings of Jesus are so plainly true and clear, that He chose common men, not scholars and legal experts, to be His inner circle.

If only we could be so open to the believers we meet here.

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I agree with you and the Gospels. Protestants talk of the great schism,y concern is from a schism much earlier with Paul. Christianity as we know it is Paul's invention, Catholic and Protestant. Maybe my Mom's Eastern Rite is influencing me. But everything i read, indicates a division between Peter,Paul and James. Paul won politically and his Gentile friendly version displaced Jesus Jew centric teachings. Everyone says it all was mutual, BS mo struggle for control is mutual and friendly. We get the "for publication view.

My opinion and gut feelings, not saying it is in scripture or even church history


Where my doubts begin

Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Brazil has been eliminated from the World Cup and a national examination of conscience will run for the next few months. Lots of Brazilian commentary out there that the Protestant conversion of Brazil over the past few decades is what has killed Brazilian futbol.

The discourse connecting Brazilian soccer to Protestantism points to a deeper cultural claim: that Brazil’s football decline is not merely tactical, generational, or administrative, but spiritual and civilizational.

The argument is that the old Brazilian style — playful,… https://t.co/yTCEanAMsO pic.twitter.com/T6MZLUWhcU

— Institute for Hispano Studies (@hispano_studies) July 6, 2026

I'm not really sure what currently ails Brazilian soccer, but the framing here is interesting in the context of our running conversation on these boards. Interestingly, I think both sides probably accept the framing.

There is also an interesting meme of Neymar making the rounds (Neymar is the current (Protestant) Brazilian superstar that has defined the last decade plus of Brazilian soccer; a player whose legacy will ultimately be one of disappointment). Delightfully, the play on words translates well to English:

"Prays like a gringo;
Plays like a gringo."

After countless posts, I doubt any of us will change the other's minds theologically, but there is something about the difference in community between the Protestant and Catholic expressions of Christianity. I'm not trying to leave the Orthodox out of this conversation; I've always enjoyed being with them and felt welcome in their spaces, even if it feels (comfortably) foreign to me. And I think they've felt the same about me when invited into my community.

To use a perhaps light hearted example of this, dating at least back to my time at Baylor, many of us have lamented just how challenging it can be to get the Baylor faithful to present a united front just as fans at games (the battles over what shade of gold people were willing to wear come to mind). Contrast to how easily Catholics can rally and unite around Notre Dame and the entire stadium will wear the same thing (or use BYU and Mormons if you prefer). Fundamentally, the specific issue is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it does speak to something bigger.

Where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity and community. I suppose where we see recalcitrance and resistance to submission, Mothra sees individual righteousness. And on and on it goes.

---

I think your post actually illustrates the concern I've been raising. You treat unity as an intrinsic good, while largely ignoring the mechanism that produces it.

If a church teaches children from birth that questioning certain doctrines is spiritually dangerous, elevates institutional authority alongside or above individual interpretation of Scripture, and conditions members to defer to that authority, then yes, you will generally get more visible conformity. The question is whether conformity is the same thing as genuine conviction.

The fact that Catholics can more easily rally around Notre Dame than Baptists can around Baylor doesn't prove Catholicism is healthier; it may simply demonstrate a stronger culture of deference and institutional loyalty. Protestants have historically traded some degree of uniformity for individual conscience. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

More fundamentally, I'm a Protestant because I believe Scripture should remain the highest authority. When traditions develop that cannot be clearly grounded in Scripture, I think Christians have an obligation to question them rather than submit to them simply because an institution says so. The Reformers were criticized for creating division, but from their perspective the division was caused by the Church's departure from biblical teaching, not by those who objected to it.

So when you say "where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity," I would say that gets the issue backwards. The debate isn't whether Catholicism produces unity - clearly it often does. The debate is whether that unity is being produced by fidelity to Scripture or by confidence in institutional authority. Protestants tend to be skeptical of the latter, because history is full of institutions that were unified, disciplined, and wrong.

And that's why I'm not persuaded by the Notre Dame analogy. A stadium full of people wearing the same color is evidence of organizational cohesion. It tells us very little about whether the underlying beliefs are true.

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You're coming across a tad bit defensive here. I made no normative statement. There was no value judgment expressed in my observations. Indeed, I acknowledged your agency and observed "where Mothra sees X, we see Y." I'm literally acknowledging the space for disagreement!

Nonetheless, let's engage the substance of your post. Sure, too much unity, especially at the expense of individual ascension to belief, is problematic, potentially to a very serious level. The Church has had to correct herself over the centuries of the downstream consequences borne of this issue. But it is also true that too much individualism at the expense of unity is a problem. 10,000+ denominations and independent churches, that continue to fracture even today attest to that. How many church plants do we really need? At what point do we work with the churches and the Church that God has already given us? There is a little bit of main character syndrome in play, IMHO.

When unity is not valued you just leave and go start another church for whatever reason. Perhpas because you couldn't reach consensus on some minor or important topic or perhaps because it is just really your dream to do you own thing. Either way, it is running away from the hardwork of being in community with one another. In its worst form, this individualism leads to a group of crazy zealots about 20 miles northeast of Waco shutting themselves off from the world and facing off with government tanks (not justifying Janet Reno, here).

You are correct that the stadium full of people wearing the same colors doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs. But it does tell us how they feel about each other and their organization and their greater place within it. And a stadium full of people who can't bring themselves to wear the same color doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs, either. But it does tell us about how those people feel about each other and their organization and their place within it.

I am comfortable saying that Christ wanted strong unity among his followers (as differetiated from unthinking unity). Think of it this way: there is a poster on these boards who seems to view himself in prophetic terms sent here to defeat the Catholic Church. If he ever somehow pulled that off, he would then turn to the Orthodox to dispatch them. And then the Lutherans (he'd start with the Missouri synod for their sin of being as close to Catholic as you can get while still being a Protestant). And then the Anglicans. And so on and so on, until all that remains are people who believe *exactly* what he believes in his individual intepretation of revelation. Odds are you will be a target at some point between here and there. Sure, you are convenient bedfellows today united by your hatred of the Catholic Church, but what happens once you actually catch the car? Is that Christ wants?

FWIW, I think you are failing to grasp Catholic unity. The Church has room for Jesuits and for Opus Dei. We have housed liberation theology (which may or may not be communist) and (until recently) the reactionary views of the SSPX. And everything in between. No matter how fierce our disagreements may be, we can and do all sit together in Mass and partake in the Sacraments together as one body.

While there are a few bright lines that cannot be crossed within Catholicism, that is true of every single Christian denomination and non-denominational church I am familiar with. I'm guessing it is true of your church, as well. But I would posit there is much greater diversity of faithful expression within the Catholic Church than just about any single major Christian denomination I am aware of. I cannot think of another denomation that is home to such a diverse range of views and expression of its faith. That mostly functions for the best and edifies us as a body, but sometimes it can get a little nutty. Either way, it really undermines the accussation of unhealthy unity.

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I'm not sure "defensive" is a fair characterization. You specifically called me out by name, referenced my perspective and contrasted it with your own ("where Mothra sees X, we see Y"), so I responded to the observations you made about my position.

More importantly, I think you're subtly changing the issue. I wasn't arguing that unity is bad. Virtually every Christian agrees unity is good. The question is whether institutional unity should be treated as evidence of spiritual health or theological correctness. Your examples largely assume the conclusion. Yes, fragmentation can be a problem. Yes, some people leave churches for bad reasons. Yes, Christians should be willing to endure disagreement and do the hard work of community. I agree with all of that. What I don't agree with is the implication that larger organizational unity is inherently superior. History gives us examples of both excessive individualism and excessive institutional conformity. Neither extreme is a virtue.

You point to thousands of Protestant denominations. Fair enough. But numerical diversity doesn't by itself demonstrate a failure of Christian charity any more than Catholic unity demonstrates theological truth. A Baptist and a Presbyterian may worship in different churches while still recognizing one another as fellow Christians. Meanwhile, two Catholics may sit in the same pew while holding radically different views on theology, morality, and Church life. Organizational unity and substantive unity are not the same thing.

I also think you're overlooking the danger on the other side of the equation. Unity is a virtue only when it is unity in the truth. Unity at the expense of truth is not a Christian virtue at all. To use a practical example, I know many Catholics personally - including lifelong Catholics who are my nextdoor neighbors - who sincerely believe that being a "good person" is what saves someone. I also have Catholic friends who openly advocate for abortion rights despite the Church's unequivocal teaching on the issue, and I have a legal assistant who is in a same-sex relationship and attends Mass faithfully.

My point is not to single out or condemn these individuals. Rather, it is to illustrate that institutional unity and sacramental participation do not necessarily indicate a shared understanding of, or submission to, the Gospel. If people can sit in the same pews, receive the same sacraments, and identify as members of the same church while holding fundamentally different views on salvation, morality, and human sexuality, then visible unity by itself cannot be the measure of spiritual health or faithfulness. In fact, I would argue that such examples demonstrate the very danger I am describing: unity can sometimes be preserved even when truth is not. What I am describing would never happen in my church.

That is why I continue to maintain that truth must be the primary standard. Unity is a great blessing when it is grounded in truth, but unity alone is not evidence that truth has been preserved. A church can have remarkable organizational unity while still containing profound disagreement or outright confusion about the very message that Christians are supposed to proclaim. The Catholic Church is clear evidence of that. That is why I am hesitant to treat visible unity as a reliable measure of spiritual health. Truth has to remain the primary standard; otherwise unity becomes an end in itself rather than a means of faithfully following Christ.

---

I think you are skirting what I am saying.

I agree that doctrinal truth (individual ascension to belief) is what matters and unity is not the end all be all. But lack of unity does tell us something, too.

The Baptist and the Presby choose to worship in seperate churches for a reason. What is that reason telling you?

The issues you identify within the Catholic Church are likely plagueing your church in some way or another. Depending on size of your congregation, odds are someone in your congregation is living in a sexually unchaste way or does not fully doctrinally assent to your dogma or buys into some prosperity gospel bs, etc...

Are you really identifying a Catholic-specific issue or is it a problem for all Christians?

---

I agree that every church has sinners. Every church has people struggling with sin. Every church has people who are imperfectly catechized. That's just Christianity this side of glory.

However, my observation isn't merely that Catholics have sinners. It's that there often seems to be a large gap between the Gospels and what the Catholic Church officially teaches and/or tolerates in practice. In my church, if someone openly rejects the core Gospel, denies our confession, or persists in conduct contrary to the church's teaching without repentance, the church addresses it. You will not be allowed to become a member. We don't simply treat mutually contradictory beliefs as equally acceptable expressions of the faith. Membership and fellowship actually mean something.

We also teach the essentials of the Gospel. Our congregants don't lack even a rudimentary understanding of the core message of the Gospel - certainly not in the way that the Catholics I know so often do.

---

Ignoring areas where you formally disagree with Church theological teachings, what areas of the core message of the Gospel do you specifically believe the Church fails to teach (as opposed to people failing to learn)?

The bolded is perhaps *the* important point of distinction, and I feel like you are swapping positions here with me by prioritizing ideological unity over something else that is important (I am not making a value or normative judgment!). And I want to ackwoledge that the general idea of Protestant "membership" in a church does not have a very good analogue in the Catholic Church (subject to a caveat below). So we are approaching this from two very different paradigms.

Recent pontificates have been big on the metaphor of the Church as a field hospital. When we start talking about membership and fellowship actually meaning something, we can get dangerously close to questioning why the Messiah would choose to sit with tax collectors, sinners and outcasts.

I don't think that is what is in your heart, so please don't read that as an accusation, I'm just saying others go down that road without realizing it. And maybe this sounds like not a big deal, but it can play out in really bad ways. One of the few times I have been truly bewildered by my Protestant bretheren is when I was invited to something akin to mass baby dedication for newborn children and the single mothers were not permitted on stage wth their babies because the child had been born out of wedlock (to be clear, my friends that invited me were good Baylor Baptists who were married when their child was conceived).

Look, it is unfortunate that the child was born out of wedlock, but it is not the child's fault, and I would hold that we shouldn't be casting symbolic stones at the child's mother. Sure, membership and fellowship means something, but the child means much more to God than any concern about appearances.

The Catholic position is to keep these people in the fold, keep preaching to them, keep walking with them (Pope Francis in particular emphasized this as the form of evangelization we should treasure), keep trying to do God's work to heal what spiritually ails them. That doesn't mean you compromise on what you believe any more than Jesus compromised by sitting with tax collectors and sinners.

Again, I'm not trying to claim a superior moral ground here. There is an element of "not allowed to be a member" within the Catholic Church. If your behavior is outside of Church teaching you are not allowed to participate in the sacraments. At a serious enough level you are formally barred from the sacraments until you repent and are formally recognized as being in good standing. So I'm not suggesting exclusivity is entirely bad or that it is entirely wrong to draw theological bright lines. But importantly, even those who are excommunicated are still permitted in the pews to worship and as Catholics we are still called to fraternally fellowship with them, even if they cannot fully partake in the sacraments. So, from our perspective, the question is this: would you rather the person who is sick be in the hospital or not (again, I understand that since we don't have the concept of "membership", you probably view this question from an entirely different paradigm)?

I personally, for the most part, do not view theological differences between the numerous wings of the Catholic Church as mutually exclusive. I see them as having different points of emphasis of the Gospel message *generally* breaking along the line of compassion/justice v holiness. Yes, certain actors within those wings may push extreme measures that can undermine teachings in an unacceptable way. In recent centuries, Popes have seemed to prefer allowing the issues to develop and play out (akin to letting issues work their way through appellate circuits), waiting for the line to be clearly crossed before correcting. The SSPX is a recent example, but Rome is gearing up to crack down on the German bishops on the other end of the spectrum.

---

I think you're framing the disagreement as though the alternative to the Catholic approach is excluding sinners from the community altogether, and that's not what I'm advocating.

The tax collectors and sinners analogy only works if the Church is actually calling people to repentance. Jesus ate with sinners, but He never blurred the distinction between disciple and non-disciple, repentance and unrepentance, obedience and disobedience. His welcome was radical, but so was His demand: "Repent and believe."

My concern is not whether sinners should be in the pews. They absolutely should be. Every church is a congregation of sinners. My concern is whether the Church's practices clearly communicate what repentance, discipleship, and covenant faithfulness actually look like.

In fact, your hospital analogy may support my position more than yours. A hospital welcomes the sick, but it does not redefine sickness as health in order to make patients feel included. Neither does it abandon diagnosis because some patients may reject treatment. The sick are most helped when there is both compassion and clarity.

I also think there is a category distinction being overlooked between fellowship and accountability. The example of the unmarried mother is emotionally compelling, but it isn't really the issue in dispute. I am not arguing that children should be shamed, that struggling people should be ostracized, or that those living in sin should be driven away from hearing the Gospel. The question is whether church membership and public affirmation should signify a commitment to Christian discipleship or merely a desire to remain connected to the community.

Where I think Protestantism often differs from Catholicism is that we tend to see meaningful boundaries as part of shepherding rather than a rejection of grace. Paul instructs churches to practice discipline precisely because he wants the sinner restored, not because he wants him excluded forever. The goal is remedial, not punitive.

And this gets back to the point I raised earlier about the Gospel itself. If the Church's visible boundaries communicate little practical difference between repentance and unrepentance, then over time the Church risks obscuring the Gospel message. Not the message of God's mercy, but the message that Christ calls people not merely to belong, but to be transformed.

---

I think we are very closely aligned on this, we're probably just debating where to draw the line and how do we respond when the line is crossed. The disagreement in my view is more procedural than substantive. E.g., the goal of excommunication is explicitly remedial, not punitive.

I *suspect* that once controlled for socio-economic factors, you would find very strong factions within Catholicsm that meet your vision of what the Church should look like. My core community is made of the types of Catholic families that have 5+ kids, a fact that speaks to a broader commitment to Church teaching. I joke that whenever our community gets together we have to be the highest per capita concentration of expecting mothers in the state. The rarity in our circles is the 5+ kid families that fall under what could loosely be characterized as the more liberal wing of the Church. But these communities are also highly educated, highly focused on holiness and sanctification and I worry that we are not the unrepentant sinners and outcasts.

I also *suspect* the other seperation here is denominational in nature. Poorly catechized or people who disagree or fail to formally stand with Church teaching dont necessarily leave the Catholic Church (some do). They remain culturally Catholic to some level and/or try to change the Church form within. My observation, on the other hand, is that it works differently for Protestants. For example, those individuals raised in a Baptist environment don't remain "culturally" Baptist. They stop going to church altogether or they join different denominations more inline with their views. In the worst case scenario they split the denomiantion like the Methodists just did. My point is that the same sort of individual exists/is produced by Catholics and Protestants, just their visibility looks very different. You can point to your poorly catechized Catholic neighbor and hold Catholcism to account. The raised Baptist pro-LGTBQ Methodist is on the Methodist account.

You should keep an eye on the Catholic Church. There is currently a race in time between the baby boomer/gen x wing of the church and the future. The Catholic Church is almost ceratinly going to get a lot more conservative over the coming decades, and it doesn't appear that the boomers/gen xers are going to be able to stop it. Pope Francis was worried enough about to air some public comments on the issue. Pope Leo has not yet shown his cards on this issue, but it has Rome's attention.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

---

Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

---

A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

2Peter 1:20

Isaiah 22:15-25

Precisely relevant to the Rock Jesus assigned

Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

---

Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

---

A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

---

I find the Orthodox are more closely aligned with Gospels, Christ's divinity and Acts as commentary not on an equal footing with gospels. I actually agree most with Eastern.

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

---

Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

---

A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

---

We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

FLBear5630 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

---

Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

---

A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

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I find the Orthodox are more closely aligned with Gospels, Christ's divinity and Acts as commentary not on an equal footing with gospels. I actually agree most with Eastern.

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Yeah it tracks well with Acts 15. Peter speaks and then James renders the final judgment ("my judgment is…"), and the letter goes out as a conciliar decision: "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us".

We read it as a narrative showing the apostolic Church functioning the way it always has, through synodality. Orthodoxy has followed ever since: bishops gathering in council, discerning together, with the Spirit's guidance recognized in the consensus of the whole body.

Fre3dombear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

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in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

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I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

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How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

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Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

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A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

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We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

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Yep, truth is safeguarded by the Church as a body, not by a text operating apart from it.

Most Protestants don't even know that scripture is a liturgical text. Like how the Torah and Prophets read in synagogue worship, the Gospels and Epistles read aloud in the Eucharistic assembly from the earliest centuries. The canon emerged through liturgical practice: what got read in the Church's worship, generation after generation, is what came to be recognized as Scripture.

We actually read more scripture than anyone. Orthodox worship still reads through nearly the entire New Testament and much of the Old every year in the liturgical cycle. Scripture is something the Church proclaims and prays, not something an individual is handed to adjudicate alone in a room and derive their own theology from.

Our catechesis is also intense. My Priest requires 1 to 3 years of being a catechumen, reading the entire Gospel at least 5 times, memorizing/understanding the creed, the Holy Trinity, essence/energies distinction, ascetic practices etc. It's a slow reordering of the whole person to Christ. Compare that to most Protestant contexts, where "becoming a member" can be a single class or even just an altar call with no sustained formation process at all.

Fre3dombear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

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in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

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I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

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How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

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Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

---

A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

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We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

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Paul was not a Protestant because he died in the 1st century, many years before Martin Luther started the Reformation (October 31, 1517). It's a matter of simple historical chronology.

That passage from Paul's first letter to Timothy does not prove or disprove anything about religious disputes 1400 years later.

DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Mothra said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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Brazil has been eliminated from the World Cup and a national examination of conscience will run for the next few months. Lots of Brazilian commentary out there that the Protestant conversion of Brazil over the past few decades is what has killed Brazilian futbol.

The discourse connecting Brazilian soccer to Protestantism points to a deeper cultural claim: that Brazil’s football decline is not merely tactical, generational, or administrative, but spiritual and civilizational.

The argument is that the old Brazilian style — playful,… https://t.co/yTCEanAMsO pic.twitter.com/T6MZLUWhcU

— Institute for Hispano Studies (@hispano_studies) July 6, 2026

I'm not really sure what currently ails Brazilian soccer, but the framing here is interesting in the context of our running conversation on these boards. Interestingly, I think both sides probably accept the framing.

There is also an interesting meme of Neymar making the rounds (Neymar is the current (Protestant) Brazilian superstar that has defined the last decade plus of Brazilian soccer; a player whose legacy will ultimately be one of disappointment). Delightfully, the play on words translates well to English:

"Prays like a gringo;
Plays like a gringo."

After countless posts, I doubt any of us will change the other's minds theologically, but there is something about the difference in community between the Protestant and Catholic expressions of Christianity. I'm not trying to leave the Orthodox out of this conversation; I've always enjoyed being with them and felt welcome in their spaces, even if it feels (comfortably) foreign to me. And I think they've felt the same about me when invited into my community.

To use a perhaps light hearted example of this, dating at least back to my time at Baylor, many of us have lamented just how challenging it can be to get the Baylor faithful to present a united front just as fans at games (the battles over what shade of gold people were willing to wear come to mind). Contrast to how easily Catholics can rally and unite around Notre Dame and the entire stadium will wear the same thing (or use BYU and Mormons if you prefer). Fundamentally, the specific issue is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it does speak to something bigger.

Where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity and community. I suppose where we see recalcitrance and resistance to submission, Mothra sees individual righteousness. And on and on it goes.

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I think your post actually illustrates the concern I've been raising. You treat unity as an intrinsic good, while largely ignoring the mechanism that produces it.

If a church teaches children from birth that questioning certain doctrines is spiritually dangerous, elevates institutional authority alongside or above individual interpretation of Scripture, and conditions members to defer to that authority, then yes, you will generally get more visible conformity. The question is whether conformity is the same thing as genuine conviction.

The fact that Catholics can more easily rally around Notre Dame than Baptists can around Baylor doesn't prove Catholicism is healthier; it may simply demonstrate a stronger culture of deference and institutional loyalty. Protestants have historically traded some degree of uniformity for individual conscience. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

More fundamentally, I'm a Protestant because I believe Scripture should remain the highest authority. When traditions develop that cannot be clearly grounded in Scripture, I think Christians have an obligation to question them rather than submit to them simply because an institution says so. The Reformers were criticized for creating division, but from their perspective the division was caused by the Church's departure from biblical teaching, not by those who objected to it.

So when you say "where Mothra sees indoctrination, we see unity," I would say that gets the issue backwards. The debate isn't whether Catholicism produces unity - clearly it often does. The debate is whether that unity is being produced by fidelity to Scripture or by confidence in institutional authority. Protestants tend to be skeptical of the latter, because history is full of institutions that were unified, disciplined, and wrong.

And that's why I'm not persuaded by the Notre Dame analogy. A stadium full of people wearing the same color is evidence of organizational cohesion. It tells us very little about whether the underlying beliefs are true.

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You're coming across a tad bit defensive here. I made no normative statement. There was no value judgment expressed in my observations. Indeed, I acknowledged your agency and observed "where Mothra sees X, we see Y." I'm literally acknowledging the space for disagreement!

Nonetheless, let's engage the substance of your post. Sure, too much unity, especially at the expense of individual ascension to belief, is problematic, potentially to a very serious level. The Church has had to correct herself over the centuries of the downstream consequences borne of this issue. But it is also true that too much individualism at the expense of unity is a problem. 10,000+ denominations and independent churches, that continue to fracture even today attest to that. How many church plants do we really need? At what point do we work with the churches and the Church that God has already given us? There is a little bit of main character syndrome in play, IMHO.

When unity is not valued you just leave and go start another church for whatever reason. Perhpas because you couldn't reach consensus on some minor or important topic or perhaps because it is just really your dream to do you own thing. Either way, it is running away from the hardwork of being in community with one another. In its worst form, this individualism leads to a group of crazy zealots about 20 miles northeast of Waco shutting themselves off from the world and facing off with government tanks (not justifying Janet Reno, here).

You are correct that the stadium full of people wearing the same colors doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs. But it does tell us how they feel about each other and their organization and their greater place within it. And a stadium full of people who can't bring themselves to wear the same color doesn't tell us much about their underlying beliefs, either. But it does tell us about how those people feel about each other and their organization and their place within it.

I am comfortable saying that Christ wanted strong unity among his followers (as differetiated from unthinking unity). Think of it this way: there is a poster on these boards who seems to view himself in prophetic terms sent here to defeat the Catholic Church. If he ever somehow pulled that off, he would then turn to the Orthodox to dispatch them. And then the Lutherans (he'd start with the Missouri synod for their sin of being as close to Catholic as you can get while still being a Protestant). And then the Anglicans. And so on and so on, until all that remains are people who believe *exactly* what he believes in his individual intepretation of revelation. Odds are you will be a target at some point between here and there. Sure, you are convenient bedfellows today united by your hatred of the Catholic Church, but what happens once you actually catch the car? Is that Christ wants?

FWIW, I think you are failing to grasp Catholic unity. The Church has room for Jesuits and for Opus Dei. We have housed liberation theology (which may or may not be communist) and (until recently) the reactionary views of the SSPX. And everything in between. No matter how fierce our disagreements may be, we can and do all sit together in Mass and partake in the Sacraments together as one body.

While there are a few bright lines that cannot be crossed within Catholicism, that is true of every single Christian denomination and non-denominational church I am familiar with. I'm guessing it is true of your church, as well. But I would posit there is much greater diversity of faithful expression within the Catholic Church than just about any single major Christian denomination I am aware of. I cannot think of another denomation that is home to such a diverse range of views and expression of its faith. That mostly functions for the best and edifies us as a body, but sometimes it can get a little nutty. Either way, it really undermines the accussation of unhealthy unity.

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I'm not sure "defensive" is a fair characterization. You specifically called me out by name, referenced my perspective and contrasted it with your own ("where Mothra sees X, we see Y"), so I responded to the observations you made about my position.

More importantly, I think you're subtly changing the issue. I wasn't arguing that unity is bad. Virtually every Christian agrees unity is good. The question is whether institutional unity should be treated as evidence of spiritual health or theological correctness. Your examples largely assume the conclusion. Yes, fragmentation can be a problem. Yes, some people leave churches for bad reasons. Yes, Christians should be willing to endure disagreement and do the hard work of community. I agree with all of that. What I don't agree with is the implication that larger organizational unity is inherently superior. History gives us examples of both excessive individualism and excessive institutional conformity. Neither extreme is a virtue.

You point to thousands of Protestant denominations. Fair enough. But numerical diversity doesn't by itself demonstrate a failure of Christian charity any more than Catholic unity demonstrates theological truth. A Baptist and a Presbyterian may worship in different churches while still recognizing one another as fellow Christians. Meanwhile, two Catholics may sit in the same pew while holding radically different views on theology, morality, and Church life. Organizational unity and substantive unity are not the same thing.

I also think you're overlooking the danger on the other side of the equation. Unity is a virtue only when it is unity in the truth. Unity at the expense of truth is not a Christian virtue at all. To use a practical example, I know many Catholics personally - including lifelong Catholics who are my nextdoor neighbors - who sincerely believe that being a "good person" is what saves someone. I also have Catholic friends who openly advocate for abortion rights despite the Church's unequivocal teaching on the issue, and I have a legal assistant who is in a same-sex relationship and attends Mass faithfully.

My point is not to single out or condemn these individuals. Rather, it is to illustrate that institutional unity and sacramental participation do not necessarily indicate a shared understanding of, or submission to, the Gospel. If people can sit in the same pews, receive the same sacraments, and identify as members of the same church while holding fundamentally different views on salvation, morality, and human sexuality, then visible unity by itself cannot be the measure of spiritual health or faithfulness. In fact, I would argue that such examples demonstrate the very danger I am describing: unity can sometimes be preserved even when truth is not. What I am describing would never happen in my church.

That is why I continue to maintain that truth must be the primary standard. Unity is a great blessing when it is grounded in truth, but unity alone is not evidence that truth has been preserved. A church can have remarkable organizational unity while still containing profound disagreement or outright confusion about the very message that Christians are supposed to proclaim. The Catholic Church is clear evidence of that. That is why I am hesitant to treat visible unity as a reliable measure of spiritual health. Truth has to remain the primary standard; otherwise unity becomes an end in itself rather than a means of faithfully following Christ.

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I think you are skirting what I am saying.

I agree that doctrinal truth (individual ascension to belief) is what matters and unity is not the end all be all. But lack of unity does tell us something, too.

The Baptist and the Presby choose to worship in seperate churches for a reason. What is that reason telling you?

The issues you identify within the Catholic Church are likely plagueing your church in some way or another. Depending on size of your congregation, odds are someone in your congregation is living in a sexually unchaste way or does not fully doctrinally assent to your dogma or buys into some prosperity gospel bs, etc...

Are you really identifying a Catholic-specific issue or is it a problem for all Christians?

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I agree that every church has sinners. Every church has people struggling with sin. Every church has people who are imperfectly catechized. That's just Christianity this side of glory.

However, my observation isn't merely that Catholics have sinners. It's that there often seems to be a large gap between the Gospels and what the Catholic Church officially teaches and/or tolerates in practice. In my church, if someone openly rejects the core Gospel, denies our confession, or persists in conduct contrary to the church's teaching without repentance, the church addresses it. You will not be allowed to become a member. We don't simply treat mutually contradictory beliefs as equally acceptable expressions of the faith. Membership and fellowship actually mean something.

We also teach the essentials of the Gospel. Our congregants don't lack even a rudimentary understanding of the core message of the Gospel - certainly not in the way that the Catholics I know so often do.

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Ignoring areas where you formally disagree with Church theological teachings, what areas of the core message of the Gospel do you specifically believe the Church fails to teach (as opposed to people failing to learn)?

The bolded is perhaps *the* important point of distinction, and I feel like you are swapping positions here with me by prioritizing ideological unity over something else that is important (I am not making a value or normative judgment!). And I want to ackwoledge that the general idea of Protestant "membership" in a church does not have a very good analogue in the Catholic Church (subject to a caveat below). So we are approaching this from two very different paradigms.

Recent pontificates have been big on the metaphor of the Church as a field hospital. When we start talking about membership and fellowship actually meaning something, we can get dangerously close to questioning why the Messiah would choose to sit with tax collectors, sinners and outcasts.

I don't think that is what is in your heart, so please don't read that as an accusation, I'm just saying others go down that road without realizing it. And maybe this sounds like not a big deal, but it can play out in really bad ways. One of the few times I have been truly bewildered by my Protestant bretheren is when I was invited to something akin to mass baby dedication for newborn children and the single mothers were not permitted on stage wth their babies because the child had been born out of wedlock (to be clear, my friends that invited me were good Baylor Baptists who were married when their child was conceived).

Look, it is unfortunate that the child was born out of wedlock, but it is not the child's fault, and I would hold that we shouldn't be casting symbolic stones at the child's mother. Sure, membership and fellowship means something, but the child means much more to God than any concern about appearances.

The Catholic position is to keep these people in the fold, keep preaching to them, keep walking with them (Pope Francis in particular emphasized this as the form of evangelization we should treasure), keep trying to do God's work to heal what spiritually ails them. That doesn't mean you compromise on what you believe any more than Jesus compromised by sitting with tax collectors and sinners.

Again, I'm not trying to claim a superior moral ground here. There is an element of "not allowed to be a member" within the Catholic Church. If your behavior is outside of Church teaching you are not allowed to participate in the sacraments. At a serious enough level you are formally barred from the sacraments until you repent and are formally recognized as being in good standing. So I'm not suggesting exclusivity is entirely bad or that it is entirely wrong to draw theological bright lines. But importantly, even those who are excommunicated are still permitted in the pews to worship and as Catholics we are still called to fraternally fellowship with them, even if they cannot fully partake in the sacraments. So, from our perspective, the question is this: would you rather the person who is sick be in the hospital or not (again, I understand that since we don't have the concept of "membership", you probably view this question from an entirely different paradigm)?

I personally, for the most part, do not view theological differences between the numerous wings of the Catholic Church as mutually exclusive. I see them as having different points of emphasis of the Gospel message *generally* breaking along the line of compassion/justice v holiness. Yes, certain actors within those wings may push extreme measures that can undermine teachings in an unacceptable way. In recent centuries, Popes have seemed to prefer allowing the issues to develop and play out (akin to letting issues work their way through appellate circuits), waiting for the line to be clearly crossed before correcting. The SSPX is a recent example, but Rome is gearing up to crack down on the German bishops on the other end of the spectrum.

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I think you're framing the disagreement as though the alternative to the Catholic approach is excluding sinners from the community altogether, and that's not what I'm advocating.

The tax collectors and sinners analogy only works if the Church is actually calling people to repentance. Jesus ate with sinners, but He never blurred the distinction between disciple and non-disciple, repentance and unrepentance, obedience and disobedience. His welcome was radical, but so was His demand: "Repent and believe."

My concern is not whether sinners should be in the pews. They absolutely should be. Every church is a congregation of sinners. My concern is whether the Church's practices clearly communicate what repentance, discipleship, and covenant faithfulness actually look like.

In fact, your hospital analogy may support my position more than yours. A hospital welcomes the sick, but it does not redefine sickness as health in order to make patients feel included. Neither does it abandon diagnosis because some patients may reject treatment. The sick are most helped when there is both compassion and clarity.

I also think there is a category distinction being overlooked between fellowship and accountability. The example of the unmarried mother is emotionally compelling, but it isn't really the issue in dispute. I am not arguing that children should be shamed, that struggling people should be ostracized, or that those living in sin should be driven away from hearing the Gospel. The question is whether church membership and public affirmation should signify a commitment to Christian discipleship or merely a desire to remain connected to the community.

Where I think Protestantism often differs from Catholicism is that we tend to see meaningful boundaries as part of shepherding rather than a rejection of grace. Paul instructs churches to practice discipline precisely because he wants the sinner restored, not because he wants him excluded forever. The goal is remedial, not punitive.

And this gets back to the point I raised earlier about the Gospel itself. If the Church's visible boundaries communicate little practical difference between repentance and unrepentance, then over time the Church risks obscuring the Gospel message. Not the message of God's mercy, but the message that Christ calls people not merely to belong, but to be transformed.

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I think we are very closely aligned on this, we're probably just debating where to draw the line and how do we respond when the line is crossed. The disagreement in my view is more procedural than substantive. E.g., the goal of excommunication is explicitly remedial, not punitive.

I *suspect* that once controlled for socio-economic factors, you would find very strong factions within Catholicsm that meet your vision of what the Church should look like. My core community is made of the types of Catholic families that have 5+ kids, a fact that speaks to a broader commitment to Church teaching. I joke that whenever our community gets together we have to be the highest per capita concentration of expecting mothers in the state. The rarity in our circles is the 5+ kid families that fall under what could loosely be characterized as the more liberal wing of the Church. But these communities are also highly educated, highly focused on holiness and sanctification and I worry that we are not the unrepentant sinners and outcasts.

I also *suspect* the other seperation here is denominational in nature. Poorly catechized or people who disagree or fail to formally stand with Church teaching dont necessarily leave the Catholic Church (some do). They remain culturally Catholic to some level and/or try to change the Church form within. My observation, on the other hand, is that it works differently for Protestants. For example, those individuals raised in a Baptist environment don't remain "culturally" Baptist. They stop going to church altogether or they join different denominations more inline with their views. In the worst case scenario they split the denomiantion like the Methodists just did. My point is that the same sort of individual exists/is produced by Catholics and Protestants, just their visibility looks very different. You can point to your poorly catechized Catholic neighbor and hold Catholcism to account. The raised Baptist pro-LGTBQ Methodist is on the Methodist account.

You should keep an eye on the Catholic Church. There is currently a race in time between the baby boomer/gen x wing of the church and the future. The Catholic Church is almost ceratinly going to get a lot more conservative over the coming decades, and it doesn't appear that the boomers/gen xers are going to be able to stop it. Pope Francis was worried enough about to air some public comments on the issue. Pope Leo has not yet shown his cards on this issue, but it has Rome's attention.

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Thanks. I appreciate the respectful discourse.

Fre3dombear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

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in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

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I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

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How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

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Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

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Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

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A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

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We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

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Paul was neither Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, as such didn't exist back during Paul's times. The real question is whether Protestant doctrines can be derived from apostolic teaching. They most certainly can. Quoting 1 Timothy 3:15 doesn't establish that every later Catholic or Orthodox doctrine is correct; it merely affirms the importance of the Church in preserving and proclaiming the truth.

Indeed, if 1 Timothy 3:15 disproves Protestantism because the Church is the 'pillar of truth,' then it would also prove every local church Paul wrote to was infallible, which is obviously false, because several of them fell into serious doctrinal and moral error. 'Pillar of truth' does not mean 'incapable of error.'

Fre3dombear said:

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Mothra said:

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Fre3dombear said:

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Mothra said:

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Fre3dombear said:

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Mothra said:

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4th and Inches said:

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Fre3dombear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You have a lot to discuss with your priest the next time you go to confession.

But I doubt you will mention there the kind of things you said here.

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You are quite the judger of men in your own mind. Maybe God will have a special job for you when your time comes to take the load off Him a bit.

If you have not confessed your sins to a priest, you are living in mortal sin. Per the Bible. Assembled by Catholics, the Church founded by Jesus Christ

But mock as you wish. It is your free will

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where in the Bible does it say that? It says confess your sin to one another and to the one you sinned against, at no point does it say to confess only to a preist or you live in sin.

Comfessing to a preist is to allow a church member a safe place to confess sin as the church has tares among the wheat..

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Pearls before swine. You're dealing with someone who lacks basic reasoning abilities. He's been propagandized by Catholicism since he was a little boy. There's no getting through to him.

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Younger than that Even but thankfully born into the faith Jesus Christ left us. Helping as many as I can while I'm here. Praise God.

This here is someone posting that inly defense theyve made for their position on this board is nuh uh. Same as it ever was.

Simpleton perspective that canteven explain what they believed last 500 years.

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Yes, they indoctrinated you early, that is for sure. You were a good little altar boy. It would explain your blind allegiance and simplistic defenses.

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You have 2 defenses thus far when not losing it

Nuh uh and John 3:16. Yawn.

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There are numerous verses throughout scripture that state what Jesus said in John 3:16-18 which have been posted ad nauseum in this thread. And you have yet to refute any of them. I just thought it best to post Jesus own words, and get you on record disagreeing with Him.

If you were serious, you would at least have some retort for the numerous verses that contradict your position on salvation. But we both know you are incapable.

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I have already spoken to countless verses Jesus spoke and included in the NT, how it ties to the OT etc to where we are called ajd commanded todo more than one day at one point in life say "I believe in you Jesus" and have one's name forever written in the book of life neber to be removed.

You disagree. That is fine. To suggest i haven't stated this ad nauseum is a lie. You have free will. It is Yours todo with as you will. Doesnt make you right. Doesnt make it mean you Arent a part of a newly invented sect. Doesnt mean many of your beliefs weren't tested by fire thousands of years ago and the church said pound sand. All of that is fact.

Hundreds of posts by me to that effect at this point.

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You've made my point for me. You keep saying you've cited "countless verses," but you still haven't actually addressed the passages that have been presented to you. Instead, you continue to argue against a position I don't hold. I have never argued that someone can simply say, "I believe in Jesus" one day and then live however they want while remaining unaffected by that profession. That's a straw man. The actual question is what Scripture says is the basis of salvation and justification.

When Jesus says that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16), and that whoever hears His word and believes Him who sent Him has eternal life and has passed from death to life (John 5:24), and when Paul says we are justified by faith (Romans 5:1) and saved by grace through faith, not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9), the burden is on you to explain why those passages do not mean what they plainly say. Simply asserting that other verses qualify or overturn them is not an argument unless you can demonstrate that from the text itself.

Repeatedly appealing to what "the church" allegedly decided doesn't resolve the issue. The question is not whether a tradition exists or how old it is. The question is what the Scriptures teach. Throughout history, people have appealed to religious authority and tradition; the issue has always been whether those claims are consistent with God's word.

So let's keep this on the text. If you believe the verses you've referenced teach something different, then cite them and explain how they overturn Christ's repeated promises of eternal life to the believer. Thus far, you've spent far more time asserting that your position is correct than demonstrating it from Scripture. I'm asking for an actual biblical argument, not another repetition of claims about church history, Protestantism, or "new sects."

The fact remains that the salvation passages that have been cited are still standing, and they have yet to be meaningfully refuted.

FLBear5630 said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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I see all these posts going to extravagant detail to prove some esoteric claim in support of a single group and opposed to other Christian groups, and I cannot help but wonder about the motive. We are called to spread the Gospel and be fishers of men, but in this forum I see us bickering constantly and raising emotions more than brotherhood.

Jesus was open in His teaching and examples. In John 14:6 Christ plainly tells us to focus on Him in our journey, our search for truth, and for life. In Mark 12:31 Jesus plainly tells to love others as we do ourselves. So certainly if we wish to be heard and our perspective respected, we must do the same for other Christians.

Jesus told us plainly not to be afraid in Matthew 14:27, which would include not fearing God being angry with us simply because another person wants to be judgy. Matthew 5:9 praises peacemakers, because as we have seen those are rare even among believers at times.

Scripture offers us solutions to many questions, and in Matthew 7:7 Christ plainly promised we can ask the Father directly for what we need.

The teachings of Jesus are so plainly true and clear, that He chose common men, not scholars and legal experts, to be His inner circle.

If only we could be so open to the believers we meet here.

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I agree with you and the Gospels. Protestants talk of the great schism,y concern is from a schism much earlier with Paul. Christianity as we know it is Paul's invention, Catholic and Protestant. Maybe my Mom's Eastern Rite is influencing me. But everything i read, indicates a division between Peter,Paul and James. Paul won politically and his Gentile friendly version displaced Jesus Jew centric teachings. Everyone says it all was mutual, BS mo struggle for control is mutual and friendly. We get the "for publication view.

My opinion and gut feelings, not saying it is in scripture or even church history


Where my doubts begin

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Odd, to me the Scripture accounts show Peter, Paul and James making sure to avoid conflict or contrast. All three speak of faith, works and the Holy Spirit, and their words are compatible with each other.

I see nothing wrong with someone attending a church where they feel the Holy Spirit at work. I take issue when someone judges a congregation and people they do not know, in order to assert a sense of superiority over them. Jesus took pains to avoid showing preference to one of His disciples over the others. We ought to do the same.

Mothra said:

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Fre3dombear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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4th and Inches said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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So, if good works are not there, the person is not a true believer. So, not saved.

---

in my understanding, this is accurate.

Who determines if the good works are there is the sticking point. Faith saves, the outward expression of faith is works but no work can save you. Matthew 7:21-23 applies here

---

I appreciate that Protestants want to protect the truth that we cannot earn our way into heaven, which is true, salvation is a free gift of God's grace...but in modern times they do a terrible job of defining what faith even is.

Faith isn't "Oh I agree and recognize Christ is Lord". Its not mental assent, agreement or trust and belief that the gospel is factual and true. That's dead faith. That's the same thing the demons are aware of as Saint James reminds us.

Faith is giving your whole being to Christ and persevering in that endeavor. True faith is a total, lifelong offering of your entire being to Christ. It is inherently synergetic: a dynamic cooperation between human free will and divine grace. You can only persevere and cooperate in that relationship if you're working through love which is a combination of your own willpower and God working in you. Our faith must be alive, active, and moving us toward union with God and that can only take place if you use your free will to say 'Yes' to grace for the rest of your life.

God isn't going to save unrepentant sexual degenerates that genuinely think they have faith in Christ, but don't really think their behavior or sin is that big of a deal. People who push once saved, always saved or hyper grace theology are pushing this kind of nonsense that mental assent is all you need. We've got to put an end to that.

Our behavior matters, we can't have dead faith. And we never lose free will. Reconciling these two facts means you have to bootstrap effort with your faith.

---

How much free will cooperation and perseverance qualifies one's faith as a true faith? What is the cutoff point?

So according to this, a believer can never know if they are saved, because they can never know if their own free will effort to cooperate and persevere is enough. This contradicts Scripture in many ways.

Grace plus one's merit and accomplishment is not grace. Again, Scripture is crystal clear about this.

Salvation comes by receiving this grace through faith in Jesus alone. The process of free will "cooperation" with God and perseverance, i.e sanctification, are the fruits of salvation, not the cause or mechanism towards it.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faithand this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of Godnot by works, so that no one can boast." - if someone's salvation is contingent upon their own free will effort, as you are saying, then they will have something to boast.

---

Your position only works if monergism is true. I suspect you are a monergist because of your strict adherence to Calvinism.

"Monergism = God alone does the work of saving you; your will has no real say, faith is just the effect of God changing you, not a free choice you make.

Synergism = God's grace does the heavy lifting and makes salvation possible, but you still have to freely say yes to it, not earning it, just actually receiving it as a person, not a rock."

Do you believe the human will has any actual, uncoerced role in believing, even the passive act of not resisting grace, or is faith itself 100% caused by God with zero human agency involved at any point?

---

Do you believe your church's own canonized saint, St. Cyril Lucaris?:

"We believe that free will is dead in the unregenerate, because they can do no good thing, and whatsoever they do is sin; but in the regenerate by the grace of the Holy Spirit the will is excited and in deed works but not without the assistance of grace. In order, therefore, that man should be born again and do good, it is necesary that grace should go before;"

Pretty ironic. I've been wanting to talk about your St. Lucaris for a while. Boy oh boy, there are some doozies for you guys. Are you ready for them?

---

A patriarch's writing doesn't become Church teaching just because of his office, it gets tested against the Church's conciliar consensus. The Confessio attributed to Lucaris was condemned as heretical at Constantinople 1638, Jassy 1642, and Jerusalem 1672 (which reaffirmed synergism by name and explicitly acquitted Cyril the man while rejecting the document as spurious).

Most Orthodox historians consider it a forgery pushed by his Reformed contacts. His 2009/2022 canonization is as Hieromartyr for his execution by the Ottomans, not an endorsement of any theology attached to his name.

This is a common L from prots, because you don't understand. Orthodoxy doesn't work on "an Orthodox person said it, therefore it's Orthodox teaching." Authority runs through councils, not individuals, even patriarchs. A synod's ruling has to be received by the whole Church (clergy and laity, across time) to actually count as binding teaching. That's why Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, etc.) carry final authority, while a local synod or a patriarch's private letter doesn't .

Are you a monergist? Are you going to continue to hide your denomination and theology system your adhere to?

---

We know for 1,000,000% certainty Paul was not a protestant because of 1 Timothy 3:14-15 which flies in the face of every protestant orthodoxy

---

Paul was neither Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, as such didn't exist back during Paul's times. The real question is whether Protestant doctrines can be derived from apostolic teaching. They most certainly can. Quoting 1 Timothy 3:15 doesn't establish that every later Catholic or Orthodox doctrine is correct; it merely affirms the importance of the Church in preserving and proclaiming the truth.

Indeed, if 1 Timothy 3:15 disproves Protestantism because the Church is the 'pillar of truth,' then it would also prove every local church Paul wrote to was infallible, which is obviously false, because several of them fell into serious doctrinal and moral error. 'Pillar of truth' does not mean 'incapable of error.'

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The "local churches erred" point actually proves too much for you: those errors got corrected by apostolic authority stepping in from outside the local congregation, not by each church privately reinterpreting Scripture for itself. That's the whole point: truth wasn't self-correcting within an autonomous local body, it was safeguarded by a structured, hierarchical Church exercising authority over it. And that's the context of 1 Tim 3:15.

If 'pillar and ground of truth' just means 'preserving truth' in some vague sense with no actual governing authority attached…cool, then which Protestant body is doing that preserving?

And let's not pretend like Protestants are united. Y'all are deeply divided on the gospel, the Trinity, baptism etc. "Scripture alone plus the Spirit's guidance" guides Oneness Pentecostals to ditch the Trinity and re-baptize people "in Jesus' name only." Same Bible, same Spirit, somehow arriving at Christianity's one non-negotiable doctrine being wrong. And the Word of Faith guys ran the same method into a gospel where Jesus wants you rich, which Paul, the guy who got beaten and shipwrecked for the gospel, would find news to him. Mainlines are gay and woke.

Does Christ approve of this circus? If you say no, cool, you just admitted there's an authority above "whatever I read this morning." If you say "my criteria is just Scripture," buddy, that's not a criteria, that's the thing that broke in the first place. Scripture doesn't read itself out loud and settle disputes. So who's the tiebreaker: you, Luther, the Oneness guy, or the guy with the private jet and the prosperity gospel? Everyone's "led by the Spirit" and somehow landing in different galaxies.

Also, can we talk about the self-appointed pastor thing?

Some dude reads his Bible, gets a real strong feeling, and decides God personally commissioned him to start Grace Bible Fellowship off Route 9. No seminary, no ordination, no bishop, no laying on of hands from anyone who got it from anyone. Just vibes and a conviction he definitely didn't imagine.

When he says "I believe the Lord is telling me," that's functionally infallible to the people in the pews. Meanwhile the same folks will tell you a Pope speaking under an ecumenical council, or a bishop teaching in synodal continuity with the apostles, is outrageous overreach dripping with 2,000 years of accountability and precedent. But Dave from the strip mall church can say whatever he wants unsupervised every Sunday and that's just fine.