Paul,
You are going about this in completely the wrong fashion, and it is dishonoring to the Word and the Church.
If you actually want to find out answers to this question, STOP:
1. Quickly reading (sometime spending only a few hours before you post another question) blasphemous and false teachings and literature (as so pronounced by the entirety of the Protestant church)
2. Asking many non-ordained men and women, and a very few ordained men who are already overwhelmed with commitments to "irrefutably rebut" your "positions" in the swift manner of a web board.
3. Pronouncing "Rome's view as correct" after a day or so of reading quick responses.
This is folly. You are not even coming close to dealing with Scripture as it should be - pouring over it, meditating on it, praying over it for an extended time, thinking about it for an extended time, looking at the original languages, looking at commentaries, looking at secondary sources, etc.
Before you post another "question" I strongly suggest you read the following:
1. Galatians 5 times
2. Galatians in Greek
3. Calvin's and Luther's commentaries on Galatians
4. Calvin's Institutes
5. William Cunningham's Historical Theology
6. Bannerman's Church of Christ
7. William Webster's books
8. Boetner's Roman Catholicism
9. James White's material
10. Richard Bennett's material on the web
11. Warfield's volumes on Scripture
12. George Gillespie's Aaron's Rod and Dispute Against English Popish Ceremonies
13. The sections pertaining to the issue in Systematic Theologies of Turretin, Hodge, Dabney, Berkhof, and Reymond
14. Owen's volumes 14-16 (on the church) and his Biblical Theology (recently translated)
If you are going to study these doctrines, do not do so with part-time diletant theologians like myself. I have neither the time, nor the inclination to reproduce Cunningham, Gillespie or Bannerman for you. I should also not need to. READ THEM!
[Edited on 6-12-2004 by webmaster]
You are going about this in completely the wrong fashion, and it is dishonoring to the Word and the Church.
If you actually want to find out answers to this question, STOP:
1. Quickly reading (sometime spending only a few hours before you post another question) blasphemous and false teachings and literature (as so pronounced by the entirety of the Protestant church)
2. Asking many non-ordained men and women, and a very few ordained men who are already overwhelmed with commitments to "irrefutably rebut" your "positions" in the swift manner of a web board.
3. Pronouncing "Rome's view as correct" after a day or so of reading quick responses.
This is folly. You are not even coming close to dealing with Scripture as it should be - pouring over it, meditating on it, praying over it for an extended time, thinking about it for an extended time, looking at the original languages, looking at commentaries, looking at secondary sources, etc.
Before you post another "question" I strongly suggest you read the following:
1. Galatians 5 times
2. Galatians in Greek
3. Calvin's and Luther's commentaries on Galatians
4. Calvin's Institutes
5. William Cunningham's Historical Theology
6. Bannerman's Church of Christ
7. William Webster's books
8. Boetner's Roman Catholicism
9. James White's material
10. Richard Bennett's material on the web
11. Warfield's volumes on Scripture
12. George Gillespie's Aaron's Rod and Dispute Against English Popish Ceremonies
13. The sections pertaining to the issue in Systematic Theologies of Turretin, Hodge, Dabney, Berkhof, and Reymond
14. Owen's volumes 14-16 (on the church) and his Biblical Theology (recently translated)
If you are going to study these doctrines, do not do so with part-time diletant theologians like myself. I have neither the time, nor the inclination to reproduce Cunningham, Gillespie or Bannerman for you. I should also not need to. READ THEM!
[Edited on 6-12-2004 by webmaster]