Wednesday, January 21, 2004
The Protestant Blues
"Message: 2
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 18:09:24 -0600
From: Richard Leiter
Subject: Re: re - Youth Group Talk
One approach would be to point out one fundamental difference between
the Orthodox/Catholic faith and Protestantism:
Protestantism is purely rational and faith based. Protestant truth is
whatever a person believes it to be. Of course, s/he has the Bible and
various traditions to choose from and to use as guidelines, but it is
all about rational understanding that leads to faith. In protestant
tradition, the sign of a "good" worship service is a good sermon and
the sermon is supposed to lift the congregation to heaven by its
revelation of the truth....
Catholic/Orthodox faiths base their worship and religious practice on
actual experience of God through sacraments. For the Catholic/Orthodox
God has decreed specific practices (prayer, Eucharist, fasting, various
disciplines, etc.) that allow us to actually experience God. It is
from this experience that we then come to understand who God is.
Its sort of a paradox that we experience God first in the belief that
understanding will follow, but the Protestants believe that you need to
understand (study) first in order to experience God.
It is actually very interesting in the context of Judaism which was
highly sacramental. In the Old Testament, God was very clear about how
he wanted us to worship Him. (He never said, "take your bible to a
quiet place and read to worship Me!") When Christ said that He came
not to abolish the law, it is my belief that he was simply saying that
He came to put Himself at the center of all the worship: the focus of
the Sabbath, Passover, etc. Judaism was sacramental and so is the true
Christian faith.
For what its worth,
Rich"
Reminds me of a story I read once. This Jewish guy was at a monestary to decompress, and the monks noticed that he wasn't recieving at Mass. One of them came up to him while he was working one day and asked him what religion he was b/c of this. He answered Jewish, and the monk said something like "That's a relief, we thought you might be Protestant."
See, it's not just me!
Though, I don't particularly like his reading of the Law comments. But we'll see how that goes.
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 18:09:24 -0600
From: Richard Leiter
Subject: Re: re - Youth Group Talk
One approach would be to point out one fundamental difference between
the Orthodox/Catholic faith and Protestantism:
Protestantism is purely rational and faith based. Protestant truth is
whatever a person believes it to be. Of course, s/he has the Bible and
various traditions to choose from and to use as guidelines, but it is
all about rational understanding that leads to faith. In protestant
tradition, the sign of a "good" worship service is a good sermon and
the sermon is supposed to lift the congregation to heaven by its
revelation of the truth....
Catholic/Orthodox faiths base their worship and religious practice on
actual experience of God through sacraments. For the Catholic/Orthodox
God has decreed specific practices (prayer, Eucharist, fasting, various
disciplines, etc.) that allow us to actually experience God. It is
from this experience that we then come to understand who God is.
Its sort of a paradox that we experience God first in the belief that
understanding will follow, but the Protestants believe that you need to
understand (study) first in order to experience God.
It is actually very interesting in the context of Judaism which was
highly sacramental. In the Old Testament, God was very clear about how
he wanted us to worship Him. (He never said, "take your bible to a
quiet place and read to worship Me!") When Christ said that He came
not to abolish the law, it is my belief that he was simply saying that
He came to put Himself at the center of all the worship: the focus of
the Sabbath, Passover, etc. Judaism was sacramental and so is the true
Christian faith.
For what its worth,
Rich"
Reminds me of a story I read once. This Jewish guy was at a monestary to decompress, and the monks noticed that he wasn't recieving at Mass. One of them came up to him while he was working one day and asked him what religion he was b/c of this. He answered Jewish, and the monk said something like "That's a relief, we thought you might be Protestant."
See, it's not just me!
Though, I don't particularly like his reading of the Law comments. But we'll see how that goes.
