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Enjoy... But remember
"Don't give in to winning the argument
and losing one of your eternal crowns..."
God bless you...
Evangelicals And Catholics Together: ECT II - With Catholic Commentary
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"ECT II" Document, With Commentary The Gift of Salvation For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16, 17) --- We give thanks to God that in recent years many Evangelicals and Catholics, ourselves among them, have been able to express a common faith in Christ and so to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We confess together one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; we confess Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son of God; we affirm the binding authority of Holy Scripture, God's inspired Word; and we acknowledge the Apostles' and Nicene creeds as a faithful witnesses to that Word. The effectiveness of our witness for Christ depends upon the Holy Spirit, who calls and empowers us to confess together the meaning of the salvation promised and accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through prayer and study of Holy Scripture, and aided by the Church's reflection on the sacred text from earlier times, we have found that, notwithstanding some persistent and serious differences, we can bear witness to the gift of slavation in Jesus Christ. To this saving gift we now testify, speaking not for, but from and to, our several communities. God created us to manifest his glory and to give us eternal life in fellowship with himself, but our disobedience intervened and brought us under condemnation. As members of the fallen human race, we come into the world estranged from God and in a state of rebellion. This original sin is compounded by our personal acts of sinfulness. The catastrophic consequences of sin are such that we are powerless to restore the ruptured bonds of union with God. Only in the light of what God has done to restore our fellowship with him do we see the full enormity of our loss. The gravity of our plight and the greatnes of God's love are brought home to us by the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "God so loved the world that he gave us His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16). God the Creator is also God the Redeemer, offering salvation to the world. "God desires all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:4). The restoration of communion with God is absolutely dependent upon Jesus Christ, true God and true man, for he is "the one mediator between God and men" (I Timothy 2:5), and "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). He is the holy and righteous one who was put to death for our sins, "the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (I Peter 3:18). The New Testament speaks of salvation in various ways. Salvation is ultimate or eschatological rescue from sin and its consequences, the final state of safety and glory to which we are brought in both body and soul. "Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." "Salvation is nearer to us now then when we first believed" (Romans 5:9, 13:11). Salvation is also a present reality. We are told that he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy" (Titus 3:5). The present reality of salvation is an anticipation and foretaste of salvation in its promised fullness. Always it is clear that the work of redemption has been accomplished by Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." (Galatians 3:13). Scripture describes the consequences of Christ's redemptive work in several ways, among which are: justification, reconciliation, restoration of friendship with God, and rebirth from above by which we are adopted as children of God and made heirs of the Kingdom. "When the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4-5). Justification is central to the scriptural account of salvation, and its meaning has been much debated between Protestants and Catholics. We agree that justification is not earned by any good works or merits of our own; it is entirely God's gift, conferred through the Father's sheer graciousness, out of the love that he bears us in his Son, who suffered on our behalf and rose from the dead for our justification. Jesus was "put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25). In justification, God, on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone, declares us to be no longer his rebellious enemies but his forgiven friends, and by virtue of his declaration it is so. The New Testament makes it clear that the gift of justification is received through faith. "By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). By faith, which is also the gift of God, we repent of our sins and freely adhere to the gospel, the good news of God's saving work for us in Christ. By our response of faith to Christ, we enter into the blessings promised by the gospel. Faith is not merely intellectual assent but an act of the whole person, involving the mind, the will, and the affections, issuing in a changed life. We understand that what we here affirm is in agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by justification by faith alone (sola fide). In justification we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, through whom the love of God is poured forth into our hearts (Romans 5:5). The grace of Christ and the gift of the Spirit received through faith (Galatians 3:14) are experienced and expressed in diverse ways by different Christians and in different Christian traditions, but God's gift is never dependent upon our human experiences or our ways of expressing that experience. While faith is inherently personal, it is not a purely private possession but involves participation in the body of Christ. By baptism we are visibly incorporated into the community of faith and committed to a life of discipleship. "We are buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). By their faith and baptism, Christians are bound to live according to the law of love in obedience to Jesus Christ the Lord. Scripture calls this the life of holiness, or sanctification. "Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." (II Corinthians 7:1) Sanctification is not fully accomplished at the beginning of our life in Christ, but is progressively furthered as we struggle, with God's grace and help, against adversity and temptation. In this struggle we are assured that Christ's grace will be sufficient for us, enabling us to persevere to the end. When we fail, we can stil turn to God in humble repentance and confidently ask for, and receive, his forgiveness. We may therefore have assured hope for the eternal life promises to us in Christ. As we have shared in his sufferings, we will share in his glory. "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (I John 3:2). While we dare not presume upon the grace of God, the promise of God in Christ is utterly reliable, and faith in that promise overcomes anxiety about our eternal future. We are bound by faith itself to have firm hope, to encourage one another in that hope, and in such hope we rejoice. For believers "through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:5). Thus it is that as justified sinners we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. All this is the gift of God. Faith issues in a confident hope for a new heaven and new earth in which God's creating and redeeming purposes are gloriously fulfilled. "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11). As believers we are sent into this world and commissioned to be bearers of the good news, to serve one another in love, to do good to all, and to evangelize everyone everywhere. It is our responsibility and firm resolve to bring to the whole world the tidings of God's love and of the salvation accomplished in out crucified, risen and returning Lord. Many are in grace peril of being eternally lost because they do not know the way to salvation. In obedience to the Great Commission of our Lord, we commit ourselves to evangelizing everyone. We must share the fullness of God's saving truth with all, including members of our several communities. Evangelicals must speak the gospel to Catholicss and Catholics to Evangelicals, always speaking the truth in love, so that "working hard to maintain unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace...the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God." (Ephesians 4:3; 12-13). Moreover, we defend religious freedom for all. Such freedom is grounded in the dignity of the human person created in the image of God, and must be protected also in civil law. We must not allow are witness as Christians to be compromised half- hearted discipleship or needlessly divisive disputes. While we rejoice in the unity we have discovered and are confident of the fundamental truths about the gift of salvation we have affirmed, we recognize that there are necessarily interrelated questions that require further and urgent exploration. Among such questions are these: the meaning of baptismal regeneration, the Eucharist, and sacramental grace; the historic uses of justification as it relates to imputed and transformative righteousness; the normative status of justification in relation to all Christian doctrine; the assertion that while justification is by faith alone, the faith that receievs salvation is never alone; diverse understandings of merit, reward, purgatory, and indulgences; Marian devotion and the assistance of the saints in the life of salvation; the possibility of salvation for those who have not been evangelized. On these and other questions, we recognize that there are also some differences within both the Evangelical and Catholic communities. We are committed to examining these questions further in our continuing conversations. All who truly believe in Jesus Christ are brothers and sisters in the Lord and must not allow their differences, however important, to undermine this great truth, or to deflect them from bearing witness together to God's gift of salvation in Christ. "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought." (I Corinthians 1:10). As Evangelicals who thank God for the heritage of the reformation and affirm with conviction its classic confessions, as Catholics who are conscienciously faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church and as disciples together of theLlordJjesus Christ who recognize our debt to our Christian forebears and our obligations to our contemporaries and those who will come after us, we affirm our unity in the gospel that we have here professed. In our coming discussions, we seek no unity other than unity in the truth. Only unity in the turth can be pleasing to the Lord and Savior whom we together serve, for he is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). ********************************************************************** Signatures: Evangelicals
Signatures: Catholics
************************************************************************ The following is my reply to a letter I received from a Catholic, concerning "ECT II." His words are in blue: The part of the document that worried me was this: We understand that what we here affirm is in agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by justification by faith alone (sola fide). [Paragraph 9] They (seemingly this commission, the ECT) say that they are in agreement with the Reformers concerning the doctrine of Sole Fide. If the Reformers espoused such an agreeable version of Sola Fide (as the document seems to imply), then why on earth did Trent ever anathemize this Protestant tenet? My take is as follows: The document takes pains to reiterate the three tenses of salvation: past, present, and future. Also, there is a deliberately repeated attempt to not separate faith from works and action. Protestants emphasize the past nature of salvation, Catholics the future tense, and perhaps the two camps can meet in the middle to a large extent (i.e., as much as the "present" nature of salvation is relevant in the two schemas). So I think that the above portions have to be interpreted within the context of the whole document (as with biblical exegesis itself - and as the rules of language and discourse in general dictate). The purpose of genuine ecumenism is to establish where real (not fancied) common ground exists. Agreement on one point of a particular doctrine need not at all imply carte blanche consensus. So in the case of sola fide, I think a Catholic on the committee would say that what is agreed upon is the notion that faith and works - notwithstanding the real theological differences - are not to be separated in the Christian's life. The most sophisticated, respectable, thought-out brands of early (and present-day) Protestantism would agree, even though they prefer to put the "works" and "acts" of salvation under the category of sanctification, rather than justification proper. There are great differences (the purview of exegesis, Tradition, and apologetics), but there are also great similarities and common ground (the realm of unity, charity, ecumenism). As for the absolute primacy of God's free enabling grace, the efficacy of Christ's work on the cross, etc., both sides are in full agreement, over against man-centered Pelagian views. Catholics would totally concur with regard to the completely gratuitous nature of initial justification, which is roughly synonymous to plain old justification in Protestant theology. And this is what I suspect was in the minds of the Catholic participants, as they agreed to the above statement. So I don't believe for a second that the Catholic participants have compromised themselves and forsaken the Tradition of the Catholic Church. One must always be cognizant of the nature and purpose of ecumenical language and endeavors. These sorts of statements are diplomatic in nature, not dogmatic or creedal or confessional. The failure to grasp that point creates unnecessary and quite harmful alarmism, as typified by the anti-Catholic Ankerberg/Sproul/Kennedy/MacArthur/James White/Dave Hunt "much ado about nothing" obscurantist school of hysteria about the first ECT document. I find it ironic that these ecumenical documents show that there is indeed so much agreement on some issues, that many of both Catholics and Protestants believe that the former side has compromised itself. But if both were more familiar with the nuances of Catholic soteriology, there would be no such reaction. It is the gross, silly, almost dishonest error of classifying Catholics amongst Pelagians or Semi-Pelagians (a tendency of Calvinists in particular) which leads to such quixotic surprise that the Catholics could agree to statements which highlight the primacy of grace. The more one understands the nature of both sides' soteriology, the less reason to suspect compromise and lack of principle on the part of either group. So I enthusiastically endorse this statement, with the knowledge that I now have. If someone points out to me further interpretive statements by the Catholic members which appear to be contrary to Catholic Tradition, I would be happy to take a look at that, but for now, I have no problems with it, and am glad to see that such efforts are being made.
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ECT II, Evangelical Commentary - from ChristianityToday.Com by Matthew Tan Yew Hock, 2001, Apr 18
Further Confusion! by Christopher Yip, 2001, Apr 27
No Unity Without Essential Doctrinal Unity! Beware! by Christopher Yip, 2001, Apr 21 
Of virgin mary worship, and alternative route to Salvation by edmund, 2001, Apr 22
More reasons why Bible Believers cannot go to bed with RC Doctrine and the Organised RC Church by edmund, 2001, Apr 22
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