My point isn’t that faith hope and love save us. My point is exactly the opposite. God saves us, and his salvation creates faith hope and love. But God saves us through Word and Sacrament (and Church). I’m not exactly sure how you can say I Corinthians hardly mentions the Eucharist, if at all. I Corinthians 10 and 11 are about the Eucharist (and indisputably, 10:16-21 and 11:18-34 are about the Eucharist).

I don’t understand your Hebrews reference. Hebrews makes it clear that Christ is not under Moses, but is rather a Melchizedekian priest. That is, Christ offers Bread and Wine. “Christ, a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, offers us bread and wine.” And Hebrews 9:20 is a clear reference not only to the blood of bulls and goats in Exodus 24:8 (which did not cleanse sins); but also to the wine of the Eucharist in Matthew 26:28, which is for the forgiveness of sins.

(The other verses I had in mind were Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:27; John 6; and I John 1:7, a reference to the Eucharist.)

This is garbled and haphazard, sorry, but we fundametally disagree on what “unity” actually represents (back to the paradigm thing). Understandably, this would make efforts at ‘re-unifying” problematic, because our goals are so different.

I very much appreciate your efforts at keeping the discussion civil and charitable, and clarifying where terms and language are at odds.

Have a prayerful weekend.
Greg R

@Greg R First, as I said earlier, I believe you are mixing words and issues. I don’t believe it is intentional or malicious – it just makes my task in responding difficult.

Unity is defined as a lacking of division. That is the distinct quality of unity. I sense you have an unspoken problem with that, and if it is, I’d like to see that expressed simply and clearly. From there, I think we would both be able to better discuss and relate our concepts of Christian unity.

How we get to Christian Unity is another matter – and so far as your view of charity as key, I agree 100%. Charity, charity, in all things, charity. Preach always, use words as necessary. But that is not Christian unity though it be one other mark of it.

(It’s taken me 30 minutes to figure out to say that much … so … I’m going to leave off there )

The fruits speak for themselves.

Firstly, I have read thousands of pages of Luther and the Lutheran confessions, and don’t recall coming across the perpetual virginity of Mary. Most certainly, it is not something that Lutherans confess. — But now that I have “googled” it, I see that some claim that he believed in it.

Whether or not he believed in it at some point in his life or all of his life, matters not to me. I don’t believe it, myself. I think it would be un-natural of her, un-Jewish of her, un-Christian of her to deny her husband, un-humble of her to keep herself as something special and aloof (and I do believe that she was humble. As she trusted and obeyed the Lord, she also would have naturally loved her husband in a normal way). Personally, I consider the whole matter a medieval type myth. But Luther had much bigger concerns and he did not want to unsettle people over things that did not matter as much as not to confuse the laypeople.) If you like to read more about it that goes a little deeper you can go here: http://www.ntrmin.org/Luthers%20Theology%20of%20Mary.htm#V

Secondly, as to the matter being Adiophra, as someone explains below, from what I read, this matter is not Adiophra to the RC church. That was the point. Something like this, puts me outside of their church.

Thirdly, the crux of the matter was not what Luther thought about the perpetual virginity. The point was that the entire set of teachings about Mary are not Biblical and that setting them alongside scripture, written by apostles, who were eye-witnesses, as something that should be believed, cheapens scripture. You did not address this. Taking an excursion about the validity of the perpetual virginity serves to distract from the point dealing with authority.

Did you get a chance to look at the catechism and its explanations?

I will tweek this little: the part of Bryan’s writing I liked the best was his underscoring agape love, a love which is supernaturlly made and maintained. I really agree with that, and the unity that I’ve seen thus far and can witness as real. Our greatest witness, our strongest apologetic to the watching world starts with how we treat each other. If we stumble here, I doubt they’ll be impressed with our theology or church history.

An aside: I know RCC who walk this out better than I probably ever will, I don’t think living out AGAPE is a respector of specific denominational theology.

hmmmm….this would make for a very challenging flannelgraph……..

makes sense to me, otherwise Joseph must have had cable out in the shop

Please do not take that to be antagonistic. It’s not meant to be. It’s only meant to petition for clarity and common understanding in the terms we are using.

I’m going to hop out of this comm box discussion now. I fear its velocity is pretty much headed towards polemics and apologetic squabbling (perhaps moreso by me than anyone else). Please understand that I’m not trying to necessarily convince you of the other position but only to explain and correct what I see as misunderstanding on your part of the Catholic position while also illustrating some of the obvious and natural questions that should exist (and be answered) by your position.

Feel free to drop me an email: sechastain at gmail. I’m OTP in the ATL. Well, actually, I’m WAAAAY OTP … but close enough to the ATL. I got out of Tech in 2001 with a CS.

Later, brother. Peace.