Horton on ECT and the BVM

Horton writes,

"Ask many Protestants today why they are not Roman Catholic and they may refer to `something about Mary and the saints.'  However, for the Reformers, the heart of the problem was the sufficiency of Scripture and especially the sufficiency of Christ the Mediator for sinners.  Are we justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, or by grace and our merits, faith and our works, Christ and the intercession of Mary and the saints."

To read the rest of Michael's essay, http://www.whitehorseinn.org/archives/196.html

Comments

[Lloyd I. Cadle]

It's true. If you ask most Christians why they are not Roman Catholic, they do point to Mary and the saints.

Very few of them even mention the doctrine of justification. I can't tell you how many Christians have never even heard of Dr. Martin Luther or the Reformation and they know even less about Calvin and Saint Augustine.

They know nothing about church history. The church -- for them, started with their particular group. All they know, is that if its Roman Catholic, its bad. They don't understand, that their understanding of grace, is the same as Rome's.

If someone were to drop Luther from a helicopter into the world today, he would be calling out almost the entire Christian church as heretical.

[Paul]

Thank you for this post. I find it very timely.

And further to Lloyd's post is that not only are Reformed Christians ignorant of the key differences, but this ignorance has rather unbelievable consequences.

For example, my church, a large PCUSA congregation, promotes the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola! This proves Lloyd's point that we are ignorant of history for Ignatius is the Roman Church's patron saint of the COUNTER Reformation! And worse still, the work is Pelagian and therefore heretical.

We have also had more than one pastor promote the works of Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest. And these works are, to put it kindly, violative of the PCUSA's first distinctive which is to adhere to Reformed theology.

Given Dr. Riddlebarger's Ph.D. work at Fuller, I am very much interested in his take on this: in each of the instances where Catholic theology has been promoted in our church, it has come at the hands of ministers trained at Fuller Theological Seminary - each graduates of a doctoral program. How is it possible for Reformed pastors to graduate from a Protestant (although hardly Reformed) seminary and be so smitten with Rome?

And, lastly, if Protestant seminaries allow such heresy, how can congregations be expected to protect themselves? (Which may actually bring me back on topic!)

Blessings to all.

[matt]

Great comments. I've urged the church I attend to teach a class on church history. Like Lloyd said, most think it started with them and their "heroes of the faith" like Osteen or someone similar. So instead of teaching who Luther was and what he did, they'd rather teach something from a Beth Moore study; which is just awful.