Brakelite
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Further to the above...
When the Catholic Church lost its civil authority, all political Governments in Europe thought she was finished. Many celebrated that at long last the bondage they were held by papal authority was at an end. These prophecies, among several others, give powerful historic authenticity to the reformers testimony to the identity of Antichrist.
The claims that Gregory VII made in Dictatus Papae are radical and heretical. To cite only four: “all princes shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone”—angels refused human homage (Revelation 19:10). “His name alone [the pope] shall be spoken in the churches”—displaced Jesus. That he can “depose emperors”—only God can depose or set up kings (Daniel 2:21), and that “the Roman Church has never erred. Nor will it err, to all eternity”—Paul’s pastoral letters and the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation shows that the church errs. To say otherwise is to arrogate an attribute—infallibility—exclusive to God. Indeed, the universal supremacy in religion and in politics claimed by the Dictatus Papae, no king, priest, prophet, or apostle ever claimed them in the Bible. It belongs to God alone.
Jesus Himself drew a scarlet line “from the blood of [righteous] Abel to the blood of Zechariah” (Luke 11:51, NIV), and predicted in John 16:2 that a “time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God” (NIV), and warned, “They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:15, 16, NIV). And the fruit of the medieval popes—unbridled avarice, venality, power politics, immorality, burning heretics, antisemitism, the Crusades, the Inquisition, magical religion—fits the bill of the “ferocious wolves” predicted by Jesus.
To those Catholics who blindly and resolutely believe their church is the pillar and foundation of truth on the basis of Jesus' promise that the gates of hell would not prevail, forget the long line of so called heretics who were mutilated, obscenely abused, dispossessed of land, family, culture, and home, because in the spirit of Christ they dared to point out the excesses, the sins, the evils and profanities that marked the downward spiral of the Papacy. It was they to whom the promise was given. It was they with whom Christ abode through all the trials and abuses. It was they who were the true pillars and foundations of truth. And it remains so today.
The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. A ‘truth’ that must use violence to secure its existence cannot be truth. Rather the truth that moves the sun and the stars is that which is so sure of its power that it refuses to compel . . . by force. Rather it relies on the slow, hard, and seemingly unrewarding work of witness, a witness which it trusts to prevail even in a fragmented and violent world.
This witness, encapsulated in the “theology of the cross,” and expressed in the self-accusing confession “I am a sinner” and commitment to fight evil in one’s life, is the crux of the Christian moral revolution. Precisely by turning to self the accusing finger that had been pointed at another, confession engendered what the theologian Krister Stendahl called “the introspective conscience of the West,” and thus shattered the “scapegoat mechanism,” the primordial, universal human practice to make oneself appear good by falsely accusing others. It was a radical departure from “the old path that the wicked have trod” (Job 22:15, NIV)—so radical that Paul said it meant death and a new life. “For we know that our old self was crucified with [Christ] (Romans 6:6, NIV). “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20, NIV).
People kill themselves in many ways, but never by crucifixion. That’s done by another. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6, NIV). Spiritually, the impossibility of crucifying oneself and producing a new life; or, put differently, the ability of God alone to do it is what is expressed in the Protestant credo of sola gratia, by grace alone. It’s precisely the sola, the alone, that raised the ire of the medieval Papacy, because it excluded all the sacramental-liturgical and Platonic-Aristotelian additions to the gospel upon which its power and authority was based. In short, the ire was provoked by politics.
Indeed, politics is the clue to the Counter-Reformation and the modern Papacy. “Whatever the doctrinal differences the structural one remains the most intractable. As before Luther, Rome still plays politics and claims secular and spiritual dominance . . . a church that is a state and a state that is a church,” as has often been noted. This unchristian amalgam, we must recall, was the specific target of Voltaire’s rallying cry Ecrasez l’infame (crush the infamy); and also of the anticlericalism, radical atheism, and dechristianization of the French Revolution, which set the modern world against Christianity, even as it is, in Holland’s words, “still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.”
The order of authority derives from God, as the Apostle says [in Romans 13:1-7]. For this reason, the duty of obedience is, for the Christian, a consequence of this derivation of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it.
Liberty Magazine
When the Catholic Church lost its civil authority, all political Governments in Europe thought she was finished. Many celebrated that at long last the bondage they were held by papal authority was at an end. These prophecies, among several others, give powerful historic authenticity to the reformers testimony to the identity of Antichrist.
The claims that Gregory VII made in Dictatus Papae are radical and heretical. To cite only four: “all princes shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone”—angels refused human homage (Revelation 19:10). “His name alone [the pope] shall be spoken in the churches”—displaced Jesus. That he can “depose emperors”—only God can depose or set up kings (Daniel 2:21), and that “the Roman Church has never erred. Nor will it err, to all eternity”—Paul’s pastoral letters and the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation shows that the church errs. To say otherwise is to arrogate an attribute—infallibility—exclusive to God. Indeed, the universal supremacy in religion and in politics claimed by the Dictatus Papae, no king, priest, prophet, or apostle ever claimed them in the Bible. It belongs to God alone.
Jesus Himself drew a scarlet line “from the blood of [righteous] Abel to the blood of Zechariah” (Luke 11:51, NIV), and predicted in John 16:2 that a “time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God” (NIV), and warned, “They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:15, 16, NIV). And the fruit of the medieval popes—unbridled avarice, venality, power politics, immorality, burning heretics, antisemitism, the Crusades, the Inquisition, magical religion—fits the bill of the “ferocious wolves” predicted by Jesus.
To those Catholics who blindly and resolutely believe their church is the pillar and foundation of truth on the basis of Jesus' promise that the gates of hell would not prevail, forget the long line of so called heretics who were mutilated, obscenely abused, dispossessed of land, family, culture, and home, because in the spirit of Christ they dared to point out the excesses, the sins, the evils and profanities that marked the downward spiral of the Papacy. It was they to whom the promise was given. It was they with whom Christ abode through all the trials and abuses. It was they who were the true pillars and foundations of truth. And it remains so today.
The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. A ‘truth’ that must use violence to secure its existence cannot be truth. Rather the truth that moves the sun and the stars is that which is so sure of its power that it refuses to compel . . . by force. Rather it relies on the slow, hard, and seemingly unrewarding work of witness, a witness which it trusts to prevail even in a fragmented and violent world.
This witness, encapsulated in the “theology of the cross,” and expressed in the self-accusing confession “I am a sinner” and commitment to fight evil in one’s life, is the crux of the Christian moral revolution. Precisely by turning to self the accusing finger that had been pointed at another, confession engendered what the theologian Krister Stendahl called “the introspective conscience of the West,” and thus shattered the “scapegoat mechanism,” the primordial, universal human practice to make oneself appear good by falsely accusing others. It was a radical departure from “the old path that the wicked have trod” (Job 22:15, NIV)—so radical that Paul said it meant death and a new life. “For we know that our old self was crucified with [Christ] (Romans 6:6, NIV). “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20, NIV).
People kill themselves in many ways, but never by crucifixion. That’s done by another. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6, NIV). Spiritually, the impossibility of crucifying oneself and producing a new life; or, put differently, the ability of God alone to do it is what is expressed in the Protestant credo of sola gratia, by grace alone. It’s precisely the sola, the alone, that raised the ire of the medieval Papacy, because it excluded all the sacramental-liturgical and Platonic-Aristotelian additions to the gospel upon which its power and authority was based. In short, the ire was provoked by politics.
Indeed, politics is the clue to the Counter-Reformation and the modern Papacy. “Whatever the doctrinal differences the structural one remains the most intractable. As before Luther, Rome still plays politics and claims secular and spiritual dominance . . . a church that is a state and a state that is a church,” as has often been noted. This unchristian amalgam, we must recall, was the specific target of Voltaire’s rallying cry Ecrasez l’infame (crush the infamy); and also of the anticlericalism, radical atheism, and dechristianization of the French Revolution, which set the modern world against Christianity, even as it is, in Holland’s words, “still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.”
The order of authority derives from God, as the Apostle says [in Romans 13:1-7]. For this reason, the duty of obedience is, for the Christian, a consequence of this derivation of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it.
Liberty Magazine
