The Roman Catholic Church and her teachings have greatly changed since the days of Martin Luther when the Church was in a state of sordid decay. Indeed, unlike the Protestant Reformation that was not a reformation at all but a cataclysmic upheaval that shattered the church into countless pieces, the Roman Catholic Church has recently reformed itself by returning to the study of the Bible in the original languages. This return to the original languages was spearheaded on September 30, 1943, by Pope Pius XII when he issued his encyclical on scripture studies, Divino afflante Spiritu . The consequence of this return can be seen, for example, by comparing the only two Roman Catholic commentaries in English on the Greek text of Pauls Epistle to Romansthe commentary by Patrick Boylan published in 1934, and the commentary by Joseph Fitzmyer published in 1993. Among the other changes in Roman Catholic soteriology due to this new emphasis on the Greek text of Romans (as opposed to the text in the Latin Vulgate) is the shift from the concept of the justice of God to the concept of the righteousness of Godand not just conceptually, but practically in the life of the believer.
Many times I have read this often parroted fictional claim used to explain away the fact that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that we, Catholics and Protestants alike, are justified by faith alone. Some Calvinists even teach that the Catholic Church teaches baptismal regeneration and other aberrational theology. The fact is, however, that these Calvinists have never studied Catholic theology written and taught by Catholics, and they know virtually nothing about Catholic theology other than what they have read in anti-Catholic propaganda.
I have, of course, studied church history from both a secular viewpoint, and from a plethora of sectarian viewpoints. With each change in viewpoint, I have found a change in the interpretation of the data. In my earlier years, I read a multitude of interpretations of the writings of Augustine and came to the conclusion that I needed to read and reread his writings for myself and to study the important words and phrases in the original Latin. Doing so, stirred up my interest in reading the works of other Latin writers.
During this time a Roman Catholic friend suggested to me that I become acquainted with todays Roman Catholic Bible scholars. To prod me along, he loaned to me a set of about 16 tapes by Raymond E. Brown. These were tapes of messages that Brown had recently delivered at Bible conference for Catholic Priests. I listened to the tapes with delight for I had never before heard such fine preaching from a man who loved the Bible with every ounce of his being and who had the anointing of God upon him to share his knowledge with others. On one of the tapes, he shared with the other priests his experiences as a guest speaker in Baptist churches!
I learned that Raymond Brown had written a 1,350-page commentary on the Greek text of the Gospel of John, and I read a number of reviews of the commentary. They all highly praised the work, and I was very surprised to see that nearly all of the reviews had been written by conservative, evangelical Christians! I purchased the commentary and saw very quickly why it was so highly praised in the reviews. Some of the reviews compared it to the commentaries by Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Luke Timothy Johnsonalso Roman Catholic Bible scholars. Therefore I have purchased and am enjoying their commentaries also.
During the first few months of my first pastorate, the rector of the Roman Catholic Cathedral in our metropolis invited me to his office for a chat. I reluctantly accepted the invitation out of politeness, but I was in for a shock! I arrived at the Cathedral and stepped into the Monsignors secretarys office and told her that I had an appointment with the Monsignor. She called him on the phone and told him that I had arrived. He opened his door, invited me in, and asked to he have a seat. He asked me about my background, and asked me what I believed about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I was surprised as I realized that he did not ask me the questions so that he could correct my theology, but that he asked me the question because he actually wanted to know my opinion. He was the rector of a huge Cathedral, and I was a fledging pastor with a congregation of less than 20. To him, however, I was his brother in Christ who came from a different background and had a different perspective in which he was interested.
Our brief chat became a 90-minute conversation during which we discussed problems in the Romans Catholic Church. From his point of view, the most serious problem in the Catholic Church was that Catholics, for the most part, have far less knowledge of the Bible than Protestants. He readily admitted that the leaders of the Church were to blame, and expressed his opinion that the Church needed a Sunday school program.
I have met with and conversed with many Protestant pastors, but none of them manifested the love of Christ and their respect for me as their brother as did the Monsignor.
My little church grew very rapidly, largely because we became known as the church where the discards from other churches were welcome. In most cases, the reasons for their being discarded were obviousthey had been such severe and hopeless liabilities that their pastors had no choice but to dispose of them. They had nothing good to say of their former pastors, but three of them told me about an experience that they had had with a man in the community who had come upon them in a time of severe, urgent need and had personally helped them through their crises. In each of these cases, I learned from the people themselves that the man in the community was the Monsignoralthough they had no idea that he was a priestlet alone the rector of the cathedral!
Along with the discarded hopeless people, the Lord blessed my church with exceptionally gifted Christians who lovingly and compassionately, day after day (we never shut our church doors before midnight seven days a week regardless of the weather and holidays) ministered to the discards who found in Christ the answer to their horrific, life-controlling problems. We witnessed the discards become men and women of Godreunited with their families, going back to work (or going to work for the first time in their lives), and some even graduating from Bible colleges and seminaries, and we even witnessed a heathen pool hustler give his life to Christ and become a Lutheran pastor after graduating from a Bible college and Lutheran Seminary (we were an interdenominational church and I had a pastoral staff that included two Baptists, two member of the Assemblies of God, a member of the Christian Missionary Alliance, and a member of the Church of the Nazarene. Our graphic arts department published two periodicals to further help our members grow in Christ, and our kitchen staff served in our dining room, six evenings a week, a high-quality meal cooked in our kitchen so that the single people in our church would not have to eat dinner alone. After dinner, Monday through Friday, we had a time of worship, prayer, and a 45-minute Bible study. After dinner on Saturdays, we had a special Christ-centered program brought by guest musicians. On Sundays, we had a morning worship service, a chapel service at 2:00 with messages brought by guest speakers from other churches in the community followed by a bowl of home-made chili, and an evening service at 6:00. I was a Baptist then, and I am a Baptist today, having never wavered for a minute from my conservative, evangelical Baptist beliefs.
Anyone who has read the official documents of the Thirteen Colonies is aware of their frequent mention of Jesus Christ as Lord and God.
These are maliciously false statements.
May I suggest that you read the writings of James Arminius and some Arminian systematic theologies so that you can become acquainted with Arminian beliefs? My recommendation for a very basic Arminian systematic theologies that is easy to read is the three-volume work by H. Orton Wiley simply entitled, Christian Theology.
This is absolutely false! I have in my personal library hundreds of exegetical commentaries on the individual books of the Greek New Testament, and less than a score of them were written by Calvinists, and NONE of those were published in the last 35 years! If you know of a commentary published in the last 35 years on the Greek text of a book in the New Testament written by a five-point Calvinist scholar who is internationally known for his expertise in the Greek text of that New Testament book, please post the name and author of it in this thread so that I can purchase it and read it.
Grace is the dynamic of God by which He, in accord with His sovereign will, saves men from their sins through their faith, which He Himself enables, and equips them to serve, with clean hands and a pure heart, Him and others. I realize, of course, that Calvin did not know this.
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