Posted on 12/29/2013 1:56:59 AM PST by GonzoII
Zionist:
I accept the Virgin Birth because it is a Doctrine of the Church, clearly stated in the Nicene and Apostles Creed. That is different than the Literal 6 days of Genesis. I am well aware that the Historical Critical method started in the German Protestant Tradition. The Catholic Church did not allow the Critical Method to used to study the scriptures until the 1940’s. Like I said it is a method of scripture study. it is not the only one. Like I said, Pope Benedict’s Letter on Scripture hermeneutics and methodology “Verbum Domini” outlines the Catholic position on studying the scriptures. It rejects Fundamentalism and it rejects the excessive Historical Critical method.
Now if you want to accept the Literal 6 day of Creation, that is your belief and I in hindsight should not attack you for it and should respect your belief if that is important to you. I just don’t see it as impacting negatively the Doctrine of Christ and the Trinity. As a Catholic, the OT is interpreted in light of Jesus CHrist, his Incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven.
I agree, Science can’t explain the creation of the Universe. It can only explain things from point a to Z that can be empirically verified. In other words, God from nothing created the world. He created it from nothing. Science can’t explain that as God has no cause. He just Is and exist outside of time and matter and space, etc..
So on that point, I agree with you.
The date of the angel’s appearance to Zachariah is certainly relevant. If we can determine when he served then we can figure out something close to the date of John’s conception and by extension the date of the annunciation.
“Blogger”? Whatever. Irenaeus was born about a generation after the death of St. John, Which means he was closer in time that that event than you are to the year of the outbreak of the First World War. They means he could have known personally people who spoke to John.
You said it...Maybe or maybe not...Bill Clinton spoke to John Kennedy...That doesn't mean I should believe everything Clinton says...
Or others should believe you or me about Kennedy because we may have known someone who talked to Kennedy???
I don't have a problem with people that are called church fathers...What I have a problem with is a religion that has perverted the scriptures thru-out history telling me what these church fathers actually said when it is known that this religion has perverted at least some of the writings of those church father and out of thin air invented fake history that is still accepted by that religion today...
Letters of Ignatius, Pseudo–Isidorian Decretal, The Donation of Constantine, the Liber Pontificalis and on and on...
One such historian is Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger. He was the most renowned Roman Catholic historian of the last century, who taught Church history for 47 years as a Roman Catholic. He makes these important comments:
In the middle of the ninth century—about 845—there arose the huge fabrication of the Isidorian decretals...About a hundred pretended decrees of the earliest Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other Church dignitaries and acts of Synods, were then fabricated in the west of Gaul, and eagerly seized upon Pope Nicholas I at Rome, to be used as genuine documents in support of the new claims put forward by himself and his successors. That the pseudo–Isidorian principles eventually revolutionized the whole constitution of the Church, and introduced a new system in place of the old—on that point there can be no controversy among candid historians.
In addition to the Pseudo Isidorian Decretals there were other forgeries which were successfully used for the promotion of the doctrine of papal primacy. One famous instance is that of Thomas Aquinas. In 1264 A.D. Thomas authored a work entitled Against the Errors of the Greeks. This work deals with the issues of theological debate between the Greek and Roman Churches in that day on such subjects as the Trinity, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Purgatory and the Papacy. In his defense of the papacy Thomas bases practically his entire argument on forged quotations of Church fathers. Under the names of the eminent Greek fathers such as Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Abbott, a Latin forger had compiled a catena of quotations interspersing a number that were genuine with many that were forged which was subsequently submitted to Pope Urban IV. This work became known as the Thesaurus of Greek Fathers or Thesaurus Graecorum Patrum.
In addition the Latin author also included spurious canons from early Ecumenical Councils. Pope Urban in turn submitted the work to Thomas Aquinas who used many of the forged passages in his work Against the Errors of the Greeks mistakenly thinking they were genuine. These spurious quotations had enormous influence on many Western theologians in succeeding centuries. The following is a sample of Thomas’ argumentation for the papacy using the spurious quotations from the Thesaurus:
I am amazed how people like you read the Bible and think they have it all right and those within 100 to 150 years of the Apostles got everything wrong...
In summary, you constantly never disappoint and your religion and is ultimately one constructed by you apart from the many orthodox Christians who came thousands of years before you.
Ya right...See post #65...
Thanks for the ping.
My only question is whether the Church officially taught that Genesis was to be taken literally. I once looked into this and had a hard time finding traditional teaching that said it HAD to be believed as literal. If the Church never taught that it HAD to be believed as literal then there is no inconsistency here.
Have you been able to find such a Catholic teaching?
My only question is whether the Church officially taught that Genesis was to be taken literally. I once looked into this and had a hard time finding traditional teaching that said it HAD to be believed as literal. If the Church never taught that it HAD to be believed as literal then there is no inconsistency here.
Have you been able to find such a Catholic teaching?
I have two responses to this question. The first is, do you actually claim that all scriptures are open to non-factual interpretation unless the Church issues an explicit statement saying otherwise? Are you claiming that the Church must first issue an official ex cathreda statement on each and every verse before one may say "if you don't accept this literally, then you're out of the ball park?"
Has the Church ever issued an official statement that Abraham ever lived? If not, does that mean one may reject the existence of a historical Abraham and still remain "orthodox?" Or how about David slaying Goliath? Is that open to a non-literal/historical interpretation unless the Church one day says otherwise?
I'm sorry, but I simply see no rational, logical reason to demand that Genesis 1-11 first be approved as literal by the Church before one merely assumes it is literal, as the Catholic Church does with so much of the rest of the Bible. What is it about Genesis 1-11 that is so hard to believe?
As for historical teaching, what are you looking for? Are you looking for some ancient pronouncement that declares "the first eleven chapters of Genesis actually happened?" Why would such a statement have been issued when this was the universal belief anyway?
I suggest that you simply believe identically to what all Catholics used to believe up to the modern era. Isn't this what your church is supposed to be all about? If it wasn't taught by the Fathers or Jerome or Aquinas or St. Robert Bellarmine, then it is an innovation, and there is simply no room in theology for innovation. Why do you, a traditional Catholic who uses the screen name of piusv, defend innovation instead of the immemorial beliefs? If higher criticism had any truth to it, would it have not been taught by your fathers and orthodox doctors? Really, the attitude that says "innovations are all okay unless an explicit statement is issued otherwise" seems a bit counterintuitive to the claims of any religion allegedly based on tradition.
Secondly, I note that Catholics have no trouble believing in the (scientifically impossible) miracles of the new testament or of the saints or of Fatima in 1917. Would you kindly tell me why science has no business pontificating on those events if you grant it the right to do so on G-d's own account of the Creation of the World? What's more, by the time explicitly Catholic miracles arrived on the scene, the laws of nature had "gelled" to the point we experience them today, whereas by the very nature of things during the Creation they had not for the simple fact that they themselves were in the process of being created. Why then is Genesis 1-11 the first thing dismissed by critics who have not a word to say of innumerable claims of the miraculous since that time?
I want you to do me a big favor. Imagine yourself catechizing a Fundamentalist Protestant who has decided to come into the Catholic Church. Are you really going to tell him that he must now accept the "miracle of Fatima" but that he may not insist on the veracity of the narration of Creation (and early history until the Dispersion)? That is simply illogical. How are you going to defend the "miracle of Fatima" if you don't even admit G-d had the knowledge of the events of Creation and early history imparted to us in the Bible?
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be harsh with you (unlike with some people who ask for it). But there is simply no logical grounds to grant science the right to dismiss the Biblical narrative of early Genesis if you're going to tell science to shut up when it wants to tell you that no miracle of any kind is even theoretically possible.
There is one and only one logical reason for Catholic hostility to the historicity of early Genesis: a sociological contempt for the people with whom that belief is popularly associated. We rednecks have enough people hating us and ridiculing us. Catholics should really be ashamed to join that despicable group.
Your posts are difficult to respond to because of their length and the inability to easily quote on this forum, so I apologize upfront if my response doesn’t respond fully to your concerns.
What I mean by prior teaching is whether there is even the mention of the 6 days. For example, the Catechism of the Council of Trent (which was well before the scientific theory of evolution and is oft cited as a great place for Traditional Catholics to reference)speaks of God as Creator, but there is no mention of his creating all in 6 days (unless I missed it). As for Abraham, yes, the same Catechism speaks of Abraham, so it is clear that the Church always taught the reality of the person of Abraham.
I tend to think that most Catholics did believe in the 6 day Creation pre-evolution days. Given that Catholic teaching doesn’t outright speak of a 6 day creation is the reason why I think that current Catholic teaching allows Catholics to believe otherwise. However, Catholics may NOT believe that God is not the force behind any kind of creation (whether evolutionary or otherwise). Catholics must also hold that God instilled a soul into man (whereas he did not do this for the other creatures).
As for your accusation that I defend innovation, I do not. I am probably one of very few Catholics here who question Vatican II as “innovation”. Haven’t you heard? I help feed anti-Catholics like yourself. And I’m apparently not a “practicing Catholic” like the others here. So please don’t accuse me of defending “innovation”. I get enough crap from my fellow Catholics.
When it comes to things that appear to be Conciliar Church “innovation”, I try to take what the Conciliar Church asserts and go back to Traditional Teaching to either come to the conclusion that something doesn’t match up or that there is nothing that it states that is contradictory to Traditional Catholic teaching. Sometimes I do come to the conclusion that what appears to be contradictory is not contradictory.
With this topic, when I go to Traditional Catholic teaching, I do not see the Church stating that God created the Earth in 6 days (just that He created it). Of course, that does not mean that most Catholic priests and Catholics taught and believed in the literal six days. I, for one, prefer to believe in the latter because I do think that IN PRACTICE that is exactly what the Church taught. I do find it interesting though that I can not find it clearly stated in the teachings. In my travels, I have found Catholic teaching to be extremely all-encompassing, so the fact that it is not mentioned is interesting to say the least.
To be fair, you keep asserting that it is now official Catholic teaching that the Creation was NOT literal. That is just not true. So, if a Fundamentalist Protestant came to me with that belief I would NOT say it was contrary to Catholic teaching and I would NOT dissuade him from believing in it. In addition, as for the Marian apparitions, it is also not Catholic teaching that one MUST believe in them. A Catholic CAN believe in them if they have been approved by the Church, but a Catholic does not have to believe in them.
I am sorry that you feel as if you’ve felt hostility for your literal belief in the Creation. Those Catholics should not be asserting that the Catholic Church does NOT believe in it or never believed in it. But these are probably the same Catholics who would be hostile towards me for defending other traditional catholic teachings.
Good.
a religion that has perverted the scriptures
I, too, despise the Protestants wholesale. Charlatans and liars all.
Irenaeus was a “hearer” of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. Therefore, it would be more like listening to someone who was a close associate of Ted Sorenson.
But that doesn't mean Irenaeus believed everything PolyCarp taught...Apparently Irenaeus supposedly claimed things that were not recorded by PolyCarp or any of the apostles/disciples who wrote the scriptures...And that is if we can believe that Irenaeus' writings haven't been tampered with...
In the piece I linked, Catholics are even calling Catholics liars when it comes to church history...I don't blame you for not reading it...It's not very pretty if you're a Catholic...
Yes, there were debates in my Church, and also mistakes made about authenticity of some documents, and the mistakes are corrected over time. This is why mine is the One True Living Church lead by the Holy Spirit today.
No one really knows, but there is a 1 in 365 chance that someone is right.
Mistakes??? How about outright lies and deception...The writings of Thomas Aquinas are based on these lies and forgeries and have never been corrected...Some of that stuff is still taught by popes today, knowing that it is false...
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