Be careful not to diminish the means of grace in sanctification. Correct on salvation, but it is a moment in time. What comes next is more important. The role of the sacred in both drawing people to Christ and and growing them there is vital and is often overlooked. One valid criticism of the reformers is they desacrementalized the houses of worship in deference to Scripture (regulative principle is a primiary culprit). This deprived the West of important symbols of Christ's preeminence.

Bro we don't believe we earn our salvation. We believe that we cooperate with God's command and grace, responding to the call for ALL of us. I've never heard or been taught that I earn salvation. Even the demons of hell believe in God. We must work out salvation with fear and trembling. Faith without works is dead. Only Christ's sacrifice provides salvation. *If* God elects only a few to salvation, he must therefore also elect most to damnation - right?

Sanctification begins the moment the Holy Spirit regenerates the elect sinners heart, and continues until death in this life. We teach that sanctification provides the necessary fruit in order to judge one's own election, to test oneself against Scripture.

The reformers *restored* the ordinances given in Scripture: baptism and the Lord's supper, and stripped the church of false "sacraments" that were lying to people, telling them they would be saved by those ceremonies.

"Be gone from me I never know you." = unregenerate who returns to be with the carnal world. View quoted note →

Yes. That's my point. While we are right about salvation functionally and understand the golden chain of salvation properly, as a rule reformed Christians don't live out sanctification as richly as the Orthodox and Catholics do because we have desacramentalized our houses of worship, liturgy, and traditions.

A spirtually dead being cannot cooperate with a spiritual command. At best you can cooperate in death.

Jesus Christ, is my judge and that of all humanity. Thanks though ❤️

The true church is not divided; all of God's predestined people *will be prepared (sanctified) for Him*. Regardless of which church body an elect believer belongs to, God will finish the work that He has begun in him. You need to hold God's sovereignty and ability to establish a people to Himself higher than you are. Reformed Christians have every bit of rich of sanctification in my experience, but that is to be credited to GOD, who will fail to sanctify NONE of His people.

As a reformed Christian who has been in many "reformed" churches around the country, I disagree with your assessment. We have a lot to learn from the rich tradition of our past (and yes, the Orthodox and Catholic traditions are a part of our past). Luther diverged from the Catholic Church on a critical point of theology, but he didn't seek to destroy what came before. Even Melancthon sought the advice of the Orthodox clerics. As reformed Christians entrusted with the Gospel of Christ, we should proceed with humility in the Spirit.

The gospel is fundamentally a message of hope. I'll still pray for you, will you pray for me?

Like what?

Absolute facts. And praying to anyone but Jesus/Father/Holy Spirit is literally necromancy (see Saul and the witch at Endor). Individual Catholics may not idol worship (they usually claim not to, but actually do) though "The Church" teaches that it's good to idol worship. The official church doctrine is that Mary is "Co-redemtrix" which is just straight blasphemy. Elevating a (I'm some cases VERY) sinful man to Pipe status is blasphemy. They're "born" into and brainwashed from birth to think "it's okay", but it's really not.

* in some cases * * pope * stupid autocorrect!!! 🙄

Where in scripture does it say the true authority of the church is scripture?

Prayer, liturgy, music, art, ceremony, esthetics, doctrine. These are all areas of weakness in many evangelical/reformed churches.

I wasn't questioning your belief. Just its source.

Paul, the first church father, writing to Timothy, as they are founding the Christian church? "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." - 2 Timothy 3:16 The church must be held to God's Word, and not the other way around. This is why the Roman Catholic church slaughtered Reformers who were distributing God's Word: it exposed them.

I see your point on all those things except doctrine. Wouldn't lump unreformed with reformed. Hardly any overlap.

How do you get the New Testament when it did not exist when Paul wrote that? Is the word of God only the Torah which is what he referred to when he wrote that? How (and by what authority) do you define the list of books that make up the Scriptures? Some books that existed were rejected (by the Church) for various reasons.

If the person/church is truly reformed, doctrine is likely not an issue. But you're right, there is definately a distinction between reformed and non-reformed evangelical churches.

Paul wrote this before the New Testament canon was finalized. Paul also said, “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by *our* spoken word or by our letter” and “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command” He also referred to "the church of the living God, which is *the pillar and foundation of the truth*." Protestants also slaughtered thousands for their beliefs - not a great argument imo. persecution doesn't settle theological disputes.

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If all scripture is given by inspiration of God, why did protestants remove 7 books of scripture from the bible?

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic churches, east and west. But neither teaches that. Do not bear false witness.

The Bible was recorded by Man's hand via God's Word. The Canon has a deep history that you'd appreciate. Go do your homework, or have AI summarize.

If you think I am trying to deceive instead of honestly putting forward my perception, then provide a rebuke plz.

I was talking to a catholic dude yesterday and he was telling me about how many rules they had to follow and I asked him “wasn’t that the problem Jesus had with Judaism? He got rid of all that” then he just stuttered and stammered about

Dodging the question. Referring another man-made authority in place of what you deem fallible. ✅

“The canon is self-authenticating, bro. No this isn’t begging the question, just grant me the King James Bible as a starting point. Yes the early-modern era reformers were the first have this idea and skipped over the actual work of the actual apostles that Christ gave ecclesial authority to. You can just tell it’s the scripture because of the way that it is. No, this isn’t circular. If you agree with my conclusion, you’re elect, and if you disagree you are clearly reprobate. All the libs who happen to have my same theory of scripture and come to skittles-feminism conclusions are just judging the self-evident facts incorrectly.” I also invite you to do some homework:

Goodreads

Sola Scriptura: An Orthodox Analysis of the Cornerstone…

An Orthodox analysis of a Protestant private interpret…

That was the rebuke :) Neither Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox hold to a works or merit based salvation, or a “tradition based” salvation (whatever that means). “Tradition” in both East and West is how the church maintains consensus, that is, patristic consensus, although the RC adds the magisterium as an additional layer. It is by tradition that both EO and RC reject and condemn Pelagianism (and semi-Pelagianism), which is what you’re accusing them of, but the Protestants without grounding in tradition have ongoing debates and schisms on exactly this topic (see Arminianism vs Calvinism). Ironically, in both RC and EO what you are accusing has been solved in the early church (works-based salvation was anathematized at the Council of Carthage in AD 418), predating the schism, and it’s only in Protestant traditions that this heresy resurfaced, and then false accusations made against the apostolic RC and EO traditions (even though you can only find actual works based salvation in Protestantism, such as modern Arminian traditions, Arminius himself never even went that far). When you start with false accusations (and no disrespect, but those were boomer-tier versions of theology) then it’s hard to get into the nuances of salvation, which varies between EO and RC, but varies even more so between Protestant denominations. Both RC and EO emphasize grace through faith, the RC publishes their official teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). From CCC 1996: Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God From CCC 2010: Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification At this point all faithful Christian traditions agree (including most Protestant traditions, but fewer and fewer of the mainline are holding to this, tragically). Where differences arise are very nuanced. For example, strict 5-point Calvinists will find legit disagreement with the RC view of merit as “participating in grace”, because it conflicts with their view of irresistible grace. The EO would reject that entire framing as a western presupposition amongst Calvinists and RC, and instead understand grace as the literal energy of God (see the essence/energy distinction), and caution against the western framing as man’s attempt to rationalize and systematize the mysteries of God, which were revealed in the person of Christ, who is both man and God. The person and life of Christ *is* the solution that divides the western mind. There are many important differences between RC and EO on the topic of salvation and especially sanctification/theosis (although they’re nuanced and not as contrary as most Internet apologists make them out to be), and what you’ll find is that most Protestant traditions align closer to RC than EO, but over time drift into outright heresy (dispensationalism, unitarianism, etc). Again, plenty to criticize in all of this, His church remains in schism due to our sins on these topics, but claiming RC and EO have a works or merit based salvation is not only false but a complete misrepresentation, both those apostolic traditions have explicit anathemas (from pre-schism church) against any kind of works based salvation. That heretical view was dead for over 1000 years till Arminius brought it back to life, which btw is what led to the articulation of the 5-points of Calvinism (the whole episode was a revolutionary/reactionary cycle that repeated the Pelagius/Augustine drama from the early church). tl;dr works-based salvation is anathema in both RC and EO, only Arminian Protestant tradition keep that heresy alive.

"Kruger’s version of self-attestation is actually very different than Calvin’s, but nevertheless, he claims we have every biblical reason to believe that the Spirit’s work is within the hearts of His people. He says both individually and corporately, it is affectual and that Christ makes good on His promise that My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me. He’s quoting part of John 10:27. Later, both sums it up, “Christ will establish and build his church by causing the church to accept just this canon and by means of the assistance and witness of the Holy Spirit to recognize it as His.” Now, there’s two problems with this. One of those is, the church corporately did not agree on the Protestant canon. The church had corporately agreed on a 73-book canon that Protestants thought was wrong. So if your argument is, the Holy Spirit led the church collectively, I don’t care if you mean magisterium-like leadership of the church or whether you mean the overall just like Christian community. Overwhelmingly, at the time of the Reformation, virtually everybody used a 73-book Bible, especially in the West. You will find a handful of exceptions, but they’re just at their handful. If you’re arguing that the Holy Spirit is corporately leading His people into the truth and there is a single Bible, the Latin Vulgate, used by almost every western Christian and has 73 books, and you think actually the corporate church got it wrong, choose an argument. Emphasis mine: You can’t say both The Holy Spirit is leading the church collectively into the truth and the church collectively screwed this one up and it needed reformation. They can’t both be right. End Emphasis. Nevertheless, the other problem is just that Scripture is being badly abused here in this citation to John 10:27. Go read John 10, particularly 24 to 28, and you’ll see Jesus is saying nothing about how His followers will know exactly which books are in the Bible. There’s none of that. There’s nothing that comes even closer, hints at that. He’s asked the question by the Jewish listeners, who He’s just given the good shepherd, He’s given two, one about the sheep gate, about he’s going to choose a shepherd, lead his people, and they’ll hear his voice, and the second about how He’s the good shepherd. The Jews then gather around and say, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus then answers and says, ‘I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness to Me. But you do not believe, because you do not belong to My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.'” So he’s not saying some special internal charismatic gift. Emphasis mine: Pentecost hasn’t even happened. End. He’s saying people are convicted on the basis of what? On the basis of the works that He’s doing in His Father’s name. He’s doing miracles, and those whose hearts are open to it, are saying this is the Messiah. They don’t understand everything. They don’t have all truth. You wouldn’t need only read the New Testament to realize they don’t have a perfect understanding of everything Jesus is doing. He’s not saying they have a perfect Bible, even less. There’s not even a hint about that anywhere in the text. This is just taking one sentence, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” And saying, “Therefore, if they follow Him, they must have a perfect Bible.” That doesn’t logically follow at all. That’s simply made up. But again, if you’re going to say that, if you’re going to say anyone who is one of the sheep of Christ will have a 66-book Protestant Bible, you need to be ready to say there were Emphasis: no followers of Christ between the time of the apostles and the reformation, or if there were, they were so small, we can count the known examples of them on two hands. That is remarkable if you’re going to make that claim. Otherwise, just admit, this verse does not teach what Kruger and others are manipulating it to say. It simply doesn’t teach that you’ll have some private internal gift. It’s not even about private internal gifts at all. It’s about the faithful seeing the external actions of Christ and responding to them because they realize that these miracles could only be done by Christ. The works He’s talking about are His signs, are His miracles, so it doesn’t teach that. The reformers are simply making this doctrine up. Now I’m going to return to Kruger. As I said, his version of what he calls self-attestation actually differs from Calvin’s. He claims that this does not mean that we should expect to find perfect unity among the church, but it doesn’t mean that we should expect to find a corporate or covenantal unity, which is precisely what we do find. Two arguments here. First, we don’t actually find that in the Protestant direction. Protestants have a 66-book Bible. Nobody else does. Nobody prior to, like, “Find me a Christian community prior to the Reformation that has a 66-book Bible.” If your argument is for a covenantal unity or a corporate unity, there should be no problem. But two, he claims that the internal witness of the Scriptures doesn’t mean we should expect to find perfect unity among the church, but it does to Calvin. Remember, he says, “These questions are as easy as telling black from white or bitter from sweet.”? Everybody can do that. If it’s really that easy, which is Calvin’s argument and makes sense, if you really have a special supernatural infallibility, you shouldn’t be batting 300, 400, 500. You should be batting 1,000. So what in the world is going on here if any of this stuff is true? That’s the first problem. The reformers are simply making this up. The second problem is Emphasis: ...the reformers, bizarrely, don’t actually agree on the biblical canon. I’m going to give just a couple examples. End emphasis. The first one, Martin Luther. In 1522 and his preface to the Revelation of John, he says, “About this book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.” Full episode:

Catholic Answers

Is the Bible “Self-Attesting,” or Do We Need the Church?

Is the Bible "self-attesting"? In other words, can we tell which books belong in the Bible from the Bible itself, or do we need the Church?

@Laser is a bad rep for Christianity. Don’t give him too much attention.

If scripture is the highest authority, then by what authority was scripture originally compiled and declared canon?

Anyone genuinely seeking Truth (who is the person Christ) is my brother. In the days ahead, genuine Truth seeking will be more important than ever, for even the elect (if possible) may be deceived.

If an elect is deceived against their own understanding, would that call into question their salvation? I wouldn’t think so?

That’s why that line “if it were possible” is so important. “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” ~ Matthew 24:24 There’s patristic consensus that even overwhelming deception will not (cannot) succeed in the end. And importantly, only by the grace of God will anyone be preserved.