Friday, November 18, 2005

More on Catholicity

I commend to any the post over at pontificator I have posted a brief responce there. When I have the time I will do so here as well.
Well so you don't need to read through the close to 200 comments to get to mine here is my responce:
Alvin,
Your quotes from Luther certainly show him at his most polemical and heated, of which he certainly has many. But it does not seem to me that the claim of Rome or the Orthodox is that the Fathers are infallable but that in some sense the Church is (the account of this differs as I understand it between Orthodox and Roman Catholics).
But really my ultimate concern isn't with Sola Scriptura nor with defending Protestantism. We could and can argue these things till we are all blue in the face. I remain a Protestant not because I have any great faith in Luther, as if he or any one who followed him was infallible.
The puzzel for me, is that when I encounter the Catholic faith in Catholicism and Orthodoxy (I have not stake in denying catholicity to the Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicsm, nor in claiming that the Evangelical Covenant Church is the Church.) I encounter the faith I have always had. Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism both have an attraction to me have for a long time, but the only basis for that attraction is that they exemplify the faith I have always had as a Protestant. In a sense then, if Rome or Othodoxy could recieve me not as a convert but as one who has recieved the deposite of faith (oddly perhaps mysteriously through Protestantism) I could more easily make the transition. But also, I find myself in a conundrum that I am not freed from the individual judgment by becoming roman Catholic or Orthodox based on my own judgments. What I am seeking to comprehend is my faith that I recognize in Catholicism and Orthodoxy but I have come to as a Protestant.
In the end I have little interest in my own opinions and my individual judgment and yet this is exactly what many who encourage me to convert call for. My sense that my continueing journey of faith needs to occur in a community of faith seeking catholicity seems to be viewed either as some formal agreement between a Protestant group and Rome or Orthodoxy or with puzzelment. Yet, I am not simply an individual. My questions and my arguments whether about Sola Scriptura or Catholcity or apostolicity really have to do with how do I move forward as a Person in Christ and not as an isolated individual. Can I really leave Protestantism without doing so with others. At the moment I don't think so. And this isn't an argument for Protestantism only a claim that God has not abandoned us Protestants to our individualism and sectarianism.

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