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I think a Catholic might quibble with you on this.
The text is not a magisterial document
You are 100% correct and in fact its my sneaking suspicion that the church was "having its cake and eating it too" since it got to release a very inclusive sounding statement without having it be binding church teaching.
Unlike many Christian traditions that can be misrepresented unintentionally Romans are probably the easiest to check on yourself due to their top down nature.
As a catholic, obviously I agree (even as a politically libertarian catholic who distrust top heavy governments). I honestly have lots of respect for the dialog Protestantism has created. The dialog and pushback has been a net-benefit to the catholic church thru the ages (I only wish it was possible to achieve that without the splintering).
I feel that prot-cath dialog 95+% of the time winds up just being semantics and fundamentally we have no real issues between us....the one real "defect" I see with Protestantism is that there are now something like 35000 denominations? Every guy who can revamp an old KFC can make a church and he becomes his own local pope. Without a central authority to rule on teaching it becomes a real mess....I saw billboards on trip to Florida last year claiming that "Jesus is NOT God" (basically "christians" refuting his divine nature.....we're talking about sects now rejecting Council of Nicaea (300AD)).
The real issue is the modern western merging of nation with state. Even if you hold a dispensational view of the Bible, does the state of Israel seem like a God fearing government?
So true, in the Bible Israel != A Political Entity. Yet thats what the modern state of Israel is...
Did your grandparents have a copy of Scofield reference bible?
I know a few people who did. One person is a Christian Zionist but describes Cyrus as a drunk who was disbarred.
Both Darby and Scofield were trained and practiced law before they became famous or infamous.
No but I knew people who had them. Plenty in my circle were influenced by it.
Also, by the 1990s the influence had spread to other evangelical leaders and many who never heard of a Scofield study Bible were being influenced.
American evangelical Christians in my experience are very ignorant of church history and even denominational differences. Very ignorant of Catholicism and blind to our Eastern brothers. The Orthodox church was pretty much invisible.
The Internet has allowed the curious to explore these things and I think it accounts for the increasing interest in many topics. That includes the historical teachings about the nation of Israel and the relationship to the current state.
Important thing to consider for those that might not be familiar with the Roman Catholic Church and how it both allows documents like this but also doesn't always hold a stance that is the teaching of the church.
Non-Catholics like me often confuse the different voices and levels of authority when discussing "the position" of Catholics.
I think a Catholic might quibble with you on this.
The document in question actually starts with this preface.
Unlike many Christian traditions that can be misrepresented unintentionally Romans are probably the easiest to check on yourself due to their top down nature. Many of the other branches of our faith are much harder to pin down. The idea of Christian Zionism is novel as Knowles says.
I was raised in a tradition where Zionism was common and taught it to some extent. I was never really dogmatic about it but as I started asking questions and learned more about the history of the region it made less and less sense to me.
As I've studied Christian history and tradition it has completely fell apart. But really, you don't even need to do any of this. The slogans that I heard often repeated as a kid make no sense.
Pray for Israel. Well, yeah. We are to pray for all nations to find Christ. God will bless those that bless Israel. Well... aren't we commanded by Jesus to love our enemies and pray for those that seek us harm? Of course we should pray and bless Israel.
The real issue is the modern western merging of nation with state. Even if you hold a dispensational view of the Bible, does the state of Israel seem like a God fearing government? Its a secular government that is actually one that were it in place in the US most Evangelical Christians would oppose. In fact, they would probably consider at least as bad if not worse than the Democratic party.
Nations are people. States are government. Nations can exist without a state or a country. When many Christians hear Israel they may be hearing about the government there, but are thinking of the nation. The people. Americans also have this issue with their own government. When I have been critical of the US government many people have asked me why I hate America. I don't is my reply. I just think the regime is evil. I don't hate the people. I don't hate the country. I love them both. The state is another animal.