Well I still have every intention of completing my personal project, which is to criticaly compare what I am convinced is the truth with others are convinced is true. At the very least I will still review Carl Sagans book “Demon Haunted World” when I have the opportunity out of faithfulness to a freind. However, my plans this summer have changed. I am something like a 7th year senior and decided to take the summer off and use my extra time for personal reflection and growth. Which was what I was doing until a month ago. Now I am leading a youth group and teaching regularly on top of getting more opportunities to fill pulpit in area churches. So the content of my studies has shifted. Since I really don’t want to abandon what I have started here I am just going to blog about my discoveries from my studies for my other commitments.
It is very amazing to see how God works. For the last few years all I wanted to do was have these kinds of ministry opportunities and none came. I finally came to terms that God had importent lessons for me to learn first so I decided to sit back this summer and free myself of the usual distractions to learn them and now before I had a chance to really do anything I have more opporunities then I could have ever dreamed of. What is amazing though is that it had nothing to do with me needing to learn anything special (I’m just as dumb as I always have been and will be) it needed to be Gods timing so it was obvious that He was the one doing the ministry and just was giving me grace by using me at the moment.
A Response to Melvin
I just received a comment that posed what is a very good question. The question was: “Why differentiate between Catholicism and Protestantism? In other words, what aspects of Roman Catholic Truth contradict what aspects of Protestant Truth?” When I was first writing my introductory post I did write simply “Christianity.” However, before I published it I went back and changed it for one simple reason – the difference in the standard of truth of Catholicism and Protestantism.
According to the catechism of the Catholic church which states; “As a result the [Roman Catholic] Church…does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”( CCC Para 82) This is the result of a belief in a doctrine known as “Apostolic Succession.” If there is validity to this doctrine of the Catholic church then the Catholic Church the one true church and Protestantism is teaching a lie.
Since, my objective is to weigh what I believe to be true against other truth claims, as a Protestant, I must compare my standard of truth with that of Catholicism and because that is the case I made a distinction between them. When I begin my quest into the Catholicism my objective will not include how they interpret Scripture differently then I do, it will include what are the truth claims that church tradition makes and are those truth claims internally consistent. Thank you for your comment.
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on May 16, 2008 at 6:33 pm Comments (1)Tags: Catholocism, Comments, Protestantism