Pope Arnold I Rebuts Posted by Bryan
Here (Sorry for no permalink...you'd think he could manage that with all the technology at his disposal), he articulates a clear evangelical response to the presentation of Benedict Ecksveeaye. A textbyte:
Evangelicals rightly point to the papacy as an unbiblical office that, by its very nature, compromises the integrity of Scripture and invests an unbiblical authority in an earthly ecclesiastical monarch. Claims of papal succession, papal authority, and papal infallibility do nothing but widen the breach between evangelicals and the Roman Catholic Church. The conservatism that leads Ratzinger to defend historic Catholic positions on abortion, euthanasia, and a host of other issues go hand-in-hand with his defense of the papacy, magisterial authority, and the evolving body of Catholic doctrine.
and
Today's evangelicals find themselves in a situation well described by J. Gresham Machen almost a century ago, when that great evangelical defender of the faith launched his attack on Protestant liberalism as a fundamentally new religion at odds with Christianity. Machen no doubt surprised many of his evangelical readers when he declared that evangelicals committed to the defense of the Gospel actually have more in common with orthodox Roman Catholics on issues such as the person of Christ and the Trinity than they would with their own liberal Protestant counterparts.
We should be chastened by the realization that so little has changed over the last century. Catholicism has undergone several significant transformations, but it still stands light years from clear biblical teachings such as justification by faith alone. If anything, the papacy is stronger than ever, bolstered by the long pontificate of John Paul II and now assumed by the energetic Benedict XVI.
All this will require that evangelicals think clearly, analyze carefully, and hold fast to our own theological convictions. We should be unashamed and unreluctant to state our agreement with this new pope in his analysis of the dangers of the postmodern challenge and in his defense of the sanctity of human life and the inviolability of marriage. In this regard, evangelicals, who rightly reject the papacy as an institution, find themselves nonetheless relieved that the vast energies of the Roman Catholic Church are not likely to be redirected in a way that is hostile to those shared convictions. But the institution of the papacy remains a great stumbling block, and this papacy will present its own challenges. Let's hope that this generation of evangelicals is ready for this task.
AaaaaaAAAaaaaaAAAaaaahhhhh-mennnnnn.
April 20, 2005 2:00 PM
