Attitudes Towards The Roman Catholic Church
The declaration reflects traditional conservative Protestantism in its rejection of the Roman Catholic Church as a legitimate church. This is mainly due to the differences expressed over the issue of Justification. These rejections of the Roman Catholic Church are found implicitly and explicitly in the text of the Declaration:
- In Thesis one (Sola Scriptura), the text asserts We deny that any creed, council or individual may bind a Christian's conscience. While this has a universal application, it is specifically aimed at the Roman Catholic Church and its insistence that Scripture is to be interpreted by the church's institutions and historical councils, and of the Pope's authority.
- In Thesis four (Sola Fide), the text asserts We deny that justification rests on any merit to be found in us, or upon the grounds of an infusion of Christ's righteousness in us, or that an institution claiming to be a church that denies or condemns sola fide can be recognized as a legitimate church. It is this last phrase that indicates a rejection of the Roman Catholic Church, since it is clearly an "institution" that "denies or condemns" the Reformation understanding of Sola Fide.
- In the section Call To Repentance And Reformation, the following point is made: We also earnestly call back erring professing evangelicals who have deviated from God's Word in the matters discussed in this Declaration. This includes those... who claim that evangelicals and Roman Catholics are one in Jesus Christ even where the biblical doctrine of justification is not believed. This is an explicit reference to the issue discussed in Thesis four.
Read more about this topic: Cambridge Declaration
Famous quotes containing the words catholic church, attitudes, roman, catholic and/or church:
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—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“Rarely do American parents deliberately teach their children to hate members of another racial, religious, or nationality group. Many parents, however, communicate the prevailing racial attitudes to their children in subtle and sometimes unconscious ways.”
—Kenneth MacKenzie Clark (20th century)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“That is the great end of empires before God, to be Catholic and draw nations into their Catholicism. But our empire is less and less Christian as it grows.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realise that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)