Bret Chit Chats With David The Roman Catholic

David, the Roman Catholic Dude writes me;

Jesus became human did he not?

To the extent that I depend on human works for my salvation, I do so because they are the works of Jesus Christ himself.

Bret Responds,

That’s a nice sentiment David but let’s examine it a bit before we swallow it shall we. Now, remember, this is your response to my insistence that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. You objected to that by mocking the Protestants who believe in faith alone. When I noted that Scripture clearly disallows our works as contributory to our justification you responded with the above.

So, I take this as an affirmation of yours that human works are necessary for salvation. Indeed, you say you are even “depending on them,” but that’s OK because “they are the works of  Jesus Christ Himself.”

Now, while it is true that God’s people are, as Titus 2:14 teaches, always zealous for good works, and while we affirm Ephesians 2:10

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We also affirm that our right standing and acceptability with God is solely on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ reckoned to me and received by faith alone that is characterized as completely resting in Christ and His righteousness.

But, now you want to insert our works claiming that our works are the works of Jesus. This is large scale typical hubris on the part of Roman Catholics. David, do you really think any of your works (even if you think that they are the works of Jesus through you) can meet the standard for what God finds acceptable as a work? Are your good works absolutely Holy? Are your good works without any blemish or fault? This is what is required in order for your works righteousness to be accepted by God. We Protestants understand that by that standard all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. Yet, here we find a Roman Catholic, proudly declaring that to whatever extent he is depending on his works it is ok because his works are so exalted that his works are as acceptable as our saviors works.

Allow me to suggest David, that given this view of yours, you have not yet seen either God’s holiness or your sinfulness and as a result you do not understand your need for Christ’s death. I trust that in time the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to the foolishness of thinking that your works are acceptable before a thrice Holy God because, after all, your works have all the sanctity and acceptability of the works of the savior Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholic David writes,

To a Protestant Jesus is just an idea. Yes, you have faith. But even the demons believe God and tremble.

Bret responds,

Just an idea?

Nobody puts up with the persecution that the Roman Catholics visited upon the Protestants for “just an idea,” David. Nobody is martyred for an idea David. This statement is just Roman Catholic bloviating.

And while I don’t doubt that many Protestants have demon faith, I am more sure that even more Roman Catholics have demon faith. Indeed, there is not one Roman Catholic who is epistemologically self-conscious about what they believe who aren’t involved in demon faith. Your embrace of Trent, by itself, means that you are involved in demon faith.

David the Roman Catholic writes,

You never actually unite with him. That’s the real reason you reject his body and blood, and have no life within you.

Bret responds,

And yet David, the Scripture testifies that the Holy Spirit unites believers to Christ. The Holy Spirit, by whom Christ offered Himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14), regenerates the elect when He unites them to Christ. By this vital spiritual union, God brings the elect from spiritual death to spiritual life (Romans 5:6).

Protestants don’t reject the body and blood of Christ. We merely reject the demonic Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. We are done with Priestcraft and the attempt of the Babylon Church to have complete sovereign control over who is and isn’t saved, which the evil doctrine of transubstantiation teaches.

Will you not repent David and cease with your reliance on the apostate magisterial Church for salvation and instead trust in Christ for your salvation with the Church as His faithful minister?

David the Roman Catholic writes,

It is the legacy of Luther’s poor self worth, sadly. He never really believed in sanctification. A Christian to him was nothing better than a ball of dung covered in a little bit of snow.

Bret responds,

David, the most sanctified Christian believes of himself that he is a “unprofitable servant who has only done what he ought.”

So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17:10)

The Protestant understands, David, that all our righteousness is in Christ alone and so we don’t spend much time thinking about ourselves. If we did spend much time thinking about ourselves we would understand that there is very little snow covering us as dung.

We do believe in sanctification David. We just understand that our only hope is not based on our own very real ongoing personal renewal but our only hope is found in Jesus Christ and His righteousness.

Won’t you join us and find your only hope in Jesus Christ and His righteousness?

David the Roman Catholic writes,

Jesus really does want to save you through and through. He made provision for a whole lifetime of grace. It’s not just some one-saved prayer that you prayed once when you were seven.

Bret responds,

Yes, I quite agree, that Jesus does save His people through and through. We are indeed saved to the uttermost and never fail of the salvation that is given in Christ. We know that because our Lord Christ said, “All that come to me I will in no wise cast out.”

We likewise believe that the triune God has made a provision for a whole lifetime of grace. Indeed, we even believe that Word and Sacrament are the means of grace — the way in which God conveys His grace to His “at the same time sinner, the same time saint” people.

We historic Protestants are not apologetic about our belief that the prayer of repentance is normatively consistent with the context of salvation, and that regardless the age of the one praying. However, we don’t believe that the prayer is magic or that the prayer makes the reality. We understand that a seven year old praying that prayer is the result of that seven year old being regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Word preached.

And we will teach that protestant child who prayed that prayer that throughout their life they have need to attend Word and Sacrament in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. We will also teach them that the sacraments of the Roman Catholic church are blasphemies that empty the Cross of its power since it denies the “once forever” work of Jesus Christ on the cross and replaces that finished work with a insistence that Jesus has to be continually and perpetually sacrificed in the Mass so that salvation can be obtained.

David the Roman Catholic writes,

Jesus’ provision is the Eucharist, the true bread from heaven that give flesh for the life of the world. You can lie to yourself, but John 6 does not lie.

Bret responds,

I am not lying to myself David. Like all Protestants I believe that Word and Sacrament are means of Grace. I simply don’t believe, because of the teaching of Scripture, that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross was insufficient for all time. As we read in Hebrews 10;

11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

What To Expect To See At The Annual Halloween Reformed Ball

What costumes they’re wearing this year to the annual Halloween Ball?

1.) James White is dressing up as a Crusader.
2.) Al Mohler is dressing up as Winston Churchill
3.) Russell Moore is dressing up as a Christianity Today Editor
4.) Sean Michael Lucas is dressing up in a R. L. Dabney costume
5.) Doug Wilson is dressing up as Confederate Sec’y of State Judah Benjamin
6.) John Piper is dressing up as a Ferret
7.) Aimee Byrd is dressing up in what her son recently modeled
8.) R. Scott Clark is dressing up as Oliver Cromwell
9.) Michael Horton is dressing up as a CIS Gendered white dude
10.) D. G. Hart is dressing up as court jester
11.) Toby Sumpter and Jared Longshore are wearing Doug Wilson costumes
12.) Michael Foster is wearing his Elmer Gantry costume
13.) Matt Walsh is dressing up as a raw dairy salesman
14.) Thabiti Anyabwile (aka – Ron Burns) is dressing up as a KKK Clansmen
15.) Francis Collin is dressing up as a Christian Humanitarian
16.) David Van Drunen is dressing up as a 16th century AnaBaptist (John of Leiden)
17.) Rachel DenHollander is dressing up as dutiful housewife
18.) SBC pastors are dressing up as strict moralists
19.) Stephen Wolfe is dressing up as Klaus Schwab
20.) Chris Gordon (AGR) is dressing up as the anchorman from “The Simpsons.”
21.) Kevin De Young is dressing up as Tim Keller
22.) Greg Johnson is dressing up as a Anita Bryant
23.) Matthew J. Tuininga is dressing up as a Dutch Theologian
24.) Reggie Smith is dressing up as the head butler of a Plantation home during the ante-bellum South era.
25.) Clay Libolt is dressing up as a Theonomist
26.) Ken Bieber is dressing up as “a reliable source.”
27.) Owen Strachan is dressing up as an patriotic American
28.) Rev. Aldo Leon is dressing up as a Kinist
29.) Rev. Brenda Kronemeijer‐Heyink is dressing up in one of these;https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-portrait-of-a-young-muslim-woman-covering-her-face-by-a-black-veil-89138149.html

30.) David French is dressing up as a tabloid journalist
31.) Rod Dreher is dressing up as a faithful loving husband and father

It ought to be quite the affair.

Me?

I’ll be the guy dressing up as Doug Wilson wearing a “Have You Hugged A Bagel Today?” T-Shirt while carrying a tankard of “Pale Ale” around with me.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Ethan Holden On Transparency

“I’ve always believed in a “Flags Out Front” approach to things.

Meaning:

1. Be upfront and honest with what you believe politically, theologically, philosophically, and morally.

2. Don’t be afraid to put your views out in the open, especially the ones that people will find most controversial.

3. Fight for those views without apology.

4. Eventually, you will have the “Adam Carolla” or “Howard Stern” affect. Have you ever noticed how those two men can say anything they want, and nobody calls for them to be cancelled anymore? They used to….but not anymore. Why? Because they know that both of those men are too far gone to be scolded and scorned into changing their opinions. The sons of earth are shrewd in that way, and we should be too.

5. Don’t lie or obfuscate your views unless you are dealing with your enemies. You do not owe them any information. But your family, friends, and church leadership are not the folks that you want to hide your beliefs from. To do so is to put them in the same camp as your enemies.

6. If your more controversial “flags out front” views are not shared by your Elders, do not undermine them by trying to convert the congregants to your point of view. Sure, use your public platform to discuss what you want to discuss. But do not be a subversive.

7. Lastly, enjoy yourself! Don’t be a shrill, get wrapped around the axels, and self righteous. State your business, and have a good time doing it!

Raise the flag.

They are going to find out anyway.”

On Mastering One’s Fears

“I have a friend in Hollywood. He is an actor. He is a well known actor. He has work. He strongly supports President Trump. He’s a real patriot. He just asked me to be sure that I don’t tell anybody (that he supports Trump) because of the system.”

Roger Stone
Interview with Robert Davi

I am running this quote not in connection with the political aspect but rather with the reality of the fear that people have in connection with their putative convictions. I say, “putative” because how much of a conviction can someone hold who is ashamed of that conviction, or fearful of what would happen to them should their conviction be known?

I have had, as a minister, on more than one occasion have had people speak to me the same kind of idea that Roger Stone had spoken to him by his Hollywood actor friend. More than once I’ve had people say something like, “I agree with you but I can’t be associated with you because it would put my career in danger”, or “I would lose my friends,” or “my family wouldn’t understand,” or “agreeing with you publicly would make it hard on my children.” Another version of this is, “I agree with you but you make the issue at hand far more important than it really is.” Usually, such statements circle around Theonomy, or Kinism, or my views on Government schooling.

I can be very bi-polar about my response to this. On one hand I understand the necessity sometimes to play one’s cards close to the breast. There are times when one keeps the false flag flying and doesn’t raise the Jolly Roger to let everyone know you’re a pirate. I, myself, have, in the past,  played the “clever to protect myself” game. I genuinely understand the more than a few ministers who correspond to me telling me that they agree with my Kinism but they dare not let Kinism come from the pulpit or in their online writings — and that even though they agree it is a Biblical doctrine. The price to be paid by especially clergy is a high price to be paid. It means very possibly the end of their career, the inability to provide for their family, and the hatred of countless numbers of dumb people (i.e. — the Normies).

So, I understand the sentiment captured in the opening quote. And I get people’s fears. I myself live with those fears daily.

But at some point it is my conviction that people have to rise above these natural fears because until people in the shadows come out and nail their flags to the mast, the depredations of our egalitarian culture, our lawlessness, and our thinking destroying habits is going to destroy us, first as a visible church, and then as a people.  If we will not stand up in favor of Kinism, in opposition to government schooling, and in opposition to the prevalent opposition to God’s law then we will disappear as a people and our children and grandchildren will be the victims of what too often is nothing but cowardice dressed up in the evening clothes of personal pragmatism and an egocentric self protection.

Jesus spoke about the necessity of taking up the cross, and denying one’s self. The writer to the Hebrews reminds his recipients not to give up on Christianity because of the difficulties they were facing by embracing Christianity, reminding them, “you have not yet resisted unto the point of blood.” Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progess” is all about the theme of the winning through the difficulties of following Christ. It was not about the theme of avoiding the difficulties of following Christ.

I can hear now the potential protests. “But those issues and those types of issues are not really hills to die on. They are not the issues upon which Christianity pivots.” It’s hard to believe that someone would argue this way given how government schools are brainwashing our children against Christianity, and given how our culture (and Church) is manifestly doing everything it can to evade championing God’s law, and given the egalitarianism that has now gone so far as to seek to normalize the most aberrant of behaviors. This egalitarianism did not start with the transgenderism that we are embracing as a culture now but started far further up on what turned out to be the slippery slope of all slippery slopes.

And yet people are frightened. So frightened that even some of them don’t want to it to be publicly known that they embrace what Trump symbolically stands for. (Admission … I like Trump as a symbol, but I do not think the man matches the symbol and so will not be voting for Trump.) However, fear, is no reason to not play the man and come forward consistent with one’s “secret convictions.”

Here I am in the middle. Being frightened myself I get that people are scared. However, the whole idea of courage is the ability to stand even in spite of legitimate fears.

I hope, that in the near future, Roger Stone’s Hollywood friend can have enough courage to come out of the closet and let it be known he is done being ashamed of his convictions, and that regardless of the cost.