⛨ Aaronaeus ⛨

🧵 “Bible-Believing Christians” often say Catholics preach a “different gospel” because Protestants summarize the gospel with the Five Solas of the Reformation. The claim is that Catholics reject this formula. But that accusation only works if you never actually read the Catechism.🧵

Awesome, I'm glad you're reading Catholic source material. But I see a problem... So let me make sure I'm understanding you. You’re affirming that the Church correctly recognized the canon and got 100% correct, but denying that the Church has any reliable authority? If the Church is fallible, on what basis can you be certain she didn’t get the canon wrong? It's like you’re relying on the Church to be right on the canon, while denying she can be trusted to be right on anything else. Why trust her there, but nowhere else?

@Aaronaeus @AllScript_Alone @JoshuaBarzon First Vatican Council, Session 3, Chapter 2.

Pastor, elder, and overseer are not three different offices in the New Testament. They are three terms describing the same role from different angles. Acts 20:17-28 and 1 Peter 5:1-5 use all three interchangeably for the same group of men in the same church.

@CadenJCooper @AllScript_Alone @JoshuaBarzon I see that’s in quotations. Who said or wrote that?

@Aaronaeus @AllScript_Alone @JoshuaBarzon "These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church."

If there was no New Covenant fully in effect yet, that actually explains the thief, not your conclusion. The New Covenant and what Paul calls the “law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2) don’t fully take effect until after the Resurrection and Ascension. Jesus says “It is finished” (John 19:30), but the work still has to be applied. Scripture shows that he descended to the dead to proclaim victory and free the righteous (1 Peter 3:18–19), and only at the Ascension does he enter heaven on our behalf (Hebrews 9:11–12, 24). So at the moment of the crucifixion, Jesus is still exercising his direct authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:10), not yet administering the New Covenant through the sacramental means he will command. That’s exactly what’s happening with the thief. Jesus personally grants him salvation: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise”. The word “paradise” in Luke 23:43 does not necessarily mean heaven as we experience it after the Ascension. Before the Resurrection and Ascension, heaven was not yet opened (Hebrews 9:8, 11–12, 24), The righteous dead were in Sheol / the “bosom of Abraham” (Luke 16:22), and Jesus descends to the dead (1 Peter 3:18–19) before ascending. So the thief, aka St. Dismas, is an exception based on Christ’s immediate authority, not the norm he establishes after the Resurrection when he commands, “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” (Matthew 28:19) and in Mark 16:16, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” Now on John 3:16, you’re assuming “believe” just means mentally accepting Christ. But in John’s Gospel, belief is not separated from obedience. In the very same chapter earlier Jesus says, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (John 3:5). And elsewhere, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). So belief includes responding to what Christ commands. And once the New Covenant is in force, the apostles don’t treat baptism as a symbol after salvation. When people ask what to do, Peter says, “Repent, and be baptized … for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). Ananias tells Paul, “Rise, be baptized, and have your sins washed away as you call upon his name”. Paul teaches that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death… so that we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3–4). And Peter is explicit: “baptism, which now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21). That’s not symbolic language. That’s how salvation is applied. Now a good book about this subject just came out by Karlo Broussard I really recommend it (pictured below). I have the ePub file of the book if you’d like it I can email it to you if you DM me.

I had to re do my comment. Stupid spell check. So if there was no new covenant at that point how was he promised salvation? Baptism is an act of faith after salvation, it is a commandment from Jesus as a symbol, it is not the salvation itself. The salvation itself is accepting Christ. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish but have everlasting life." that is the salvation itself right there.

So Jesus was lying in Mark's Gospel when he said he who believes and is baptized shall be saved?

My wife has tasked me to remind her that there is no meat today. I just texted this to her this morning. Pray that she makes it through today.

@plnetofcrepes @dsconsole @BasedDavePA The thief wasn’t baptized, but he also wasn’t under the New Covenant sacramental system yet and had no opportunity. That’s why the Church has always treated him as an example of baptism of desire, not as proof that baptism is optional. And no, I’ll stand.

@dsconsole @BasedDavePA How wrong are they? To my comment on this post...was the thief on the cross baptized? What did Jesus say to him. Just take a seat.

@JoshuaBarzon So is it safe to say that dispensationalism is slowly dying?

My stomach hurts from laughing so hard 🤣

@the_christnats I’m Catholic. And if being a Christian Nationalist means I have to capitulate to Doug Wilson and not being able to publicly show my faith then count me out.

Which denomination are you?

I understand the distinction you’re making, but it still leaves a gap. You’re saying the Church is fallible, yet it successfully recognized an infallible canon. So how do you know that recognition was correct? If a fallible body can make that kind of judgment without error, then in that moment it functioned infallibly. Otherwise, you have no principled reason to be certain the canon is right rather than mostly right. With your view of the canon it’s possible that it’s still open because the canon could be wrong. And even historically, that recognition didn’t happen instantly or uniformly. There were widespread disagreements for centuries about books like Hebrews, James, and Revelation. The canon wasn’t self-evident to everyone reading Scripture. It was discerned over time and then settled authoritatively. On Galatians, Paul is warning against a different gospel, not establishing a system where every individual becomes the final judge of doctrine. The Galatians could reject false teaching because they had already received the apostolic teaching directly, not because they were independently reconstructing the faith from a completed New Testament. So the real issue becomes: if the Church can reliably recognize the canon without error, why assume it becomes unreliable when preserving doctrine, structure, or apostolic teaching?

@Aaronaeus @AllScript_Alone @JoshuaBarzon I believe the canon was simply recognized as the already infallible Scriptures. The Church isn't infallible, but was able to recognize an infallible source. We have instruction like from Paul to the Galatians him telling them to reject him if he says contrary to what they had.

@NightwatchN8 @avpk11 @McBrideLawNYC I’m not arguing that most of the founders weren’t Protestant, but the statement “America was founded by Protestants” is an oversimplification that doesn’t reflect the full historical reality.

@Aaronaeus @avpk11 @McBrideLawNYC How many catholics signed the declaration of independence champ?

CATHOLICISM > PROTESTANTISM King James I of England gave the world the King James Bible. Here are some quotes from his letters to the Duke of Buckingham. “I desire only to live in this world for your sake… and that I had rather live banished in any part of the earth with you than live a sorrowful widow life without you.” "God bless you, my sweet child and wife, and grant that ye may ever be a comfort to your dear dad and husband." “I may not live without your presence… I confess I neither eat nor sleep well for your absence.” "You are the only man that ever I loved… and I confess that I love you more than any other man." Draw your own conclusions. 🤣

The best rendition is 1 Peter 3:21. RSV2CE — “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” NCB — “This water prefigured Baptism, which now saves you. It does so not by the washing away of dirt from the body but by the pledge of a good conscience given to God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

I have really been enjoying the New Catholic Bible (NCB). So you know the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and when the editors often place translation notes next to certain words. Those notes point out alternative renderings or clarifications compared to the RSV2CE translation. The NCB seems to incorporate many of those editorial insights directly into the translation itself. Romans 8:3 is a good example. The RSV2CE reads: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin*, he condemned sin in the flesh.” Next to “sin” there is a footnote annotation that says: “Or and as a sin offering.” The NCB simply builds that interpretation into the verse itself: “That which the Law, weakened by the flesh, was unable to do, God has done. By sending his own Son in the likeness of our sinful nature as a sin offering, he condemned sin in the flesh.” So instead of leaving the meaning in a footnote, the NCB places it directly in the translation.

My @WordOnFire Bible is a single column and I enjoy reading it. Having only owned two column bibles it was a good change in pace.

I think your position raises a bigger issue than it solves. You’re saying the faith was once for all delivered, but not preserved by any visible authority. So where was that faith actually located in the first century? It couldn’t have been in a completed New Testament, because that didn’t exist yet. The early Church was living and transmitting the faith before the canon was finalized, which means the faith had to be preserved within the Church itself, not in a book alone. And on your point about leadership, if the apostles taught a plurality of interchangeable elders, why do the immediate disciples of the apostles consistently describe a structure with a distinct bishop over presbyters, without any recorded controversy? If that were a deviation, it would be a massive and obvious break, yet the historical record treats it as standard, not disputed. But the bigger problem is this: if you don’t trust anyone to preserve the faith, how do you know which books belong to that “faith once delivered”? The New Testament doesn’t give you its own table of contents. The canon itself had to be recognized and preserved by the Church. So it seems like your position ends up depending on the Church to preserve Scripture, while denying that same Church could reliably preserve anything else.

@Aaronaeus @AllScript_Alone @JoshuaBarzon Yes. The evidence is in the NT itself. It's painfully clear that all bishops were considered elders, and they were always in the plural. I don't trust anyone to preserve the faith accurately. Jude says we have the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

@madys_daddy @WordOnFire x.com/aaronaeus/stat…

@Aaronaeus @WordOnFire Variety is the spice of life

So your view is that the apostles taught one model of church leadership, and then the next generation across multiple churches quickly moved to another? If that is the case, where is the evidence that this was a disputed corruption rather than something they had received? And if the post-apostolic Church got even the basic structure of leadership wrong almost immediately, why should we trust that same Church to have preserved the faith accurately at all?

@Aaronaeus @AllScript_Alone @JoshuaBarzon It's not "apostasy," for someone to have an incorrect view of church leadership. But I think it's clear that the apostles taught bishops were elders and there were always multiple bishops, and then it changed quickly after the apostles died.

Amen

“I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins” Catholics can say this with a straight face and other apostolic Churches. How many other evangelicals can?

The label “heretic” gets thrown around way too easily these days. If you profess the Nicene Creed & the Apostles’ Creed, you count as a legitimate Christian. Period. Christians will always disagree about important political & social issues and matters of doctrine. But at the end of the day, if someone affirms the essential truths outlined in the creeds, they are not heretics or apostates. 🎙️Holy Post 670 with @philvischer, @skyejethani & @kaitlynschiess

Ok, who is buying this hat? etsy.me/47XHCk2

@Bombasotta @ryanburge Yea I should have just looked at the title...

@Aaronaeus @ryanburge Looks like self id

There's a reason we call that most of the South is referred to as the Bible Belt. The states with the highest concentration of evangelicals are Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. Very few evangelicals in the Upper Midwest and New England.