This guy knew that as well.
Posted on 01/23/2006 11:02:29 AM PST by mojito
Remember when word came down from the Vatican that Pope John Paul II had watched Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and liked it? The anonymously sourced story sparked a media firestorm around the globe as reporters sought confirmation of the papal equivalent of two thumbs up. "It is as it was," we later learned the pope supposedly said. Which sounded like the perfect biblical movie blurb; but did the pontiff actually utter the words? After some non-clarifying retractions from the Vatican, it was ultimately hard to say for sure — although not for journalistic want of trying. This natural curiosity stands in striking contrast to the media silence that has met a far more sensational, far more significant report of papal opinion: namely, that Pope Benedict XVI is said to believe that Islam is incapable of reform. This bombshell dropped out of an early January interview conducted by radio host Hugh Hewitt with Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, a friend and former student of the pope. Father Fessio recounted the pope's words on the key problem facing Islamic reform this way: "In the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it...."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
You linguistic literalists never learn. You're commenting on what Fessio says the Pope said, not on a quoted transcript of Pope Benedicts' remarks.
I fail to see how the Pope's comment in any way dispute your quote from Timothy; rather I think they confirm them.
He didn't say that. You're reading what you want to believe into his words. For example, you failed to highlight this line:
“an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations"This is why true bible believeing Christians can never submit to the leadership of the pope.
Which is why there are almost as many Protestant denominations as Protestants, since there exists no authority higher than the person interpreting (or misinterpreting) Scripture.
The misinterpretation of Scripture is exemplified by this statement...
By Faith Alone In Christ Alone!
...which contradicts Scripture
James 2:24You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.
I believe that the Pope was stating that in the muslim world view that the dictation by Mohammed (curses be upon him) are literally marching orders & anyone who thinks otherwise is an apostate/heretic subject to a throat cutting just for grins & gigles. Also the nasty habit of honor killings is a manifestation of this mindset.
Regarding the persuasive means of reforming Islam , could that possibly include experiments in nuclear fusion over certain population centers in the Mid East?
I always ask myself - WWSD... i.e. What would Sherman do? If William Tecumseh Sherman were alive today and had to deal with a recalcitrant civillian population that was allowing an adversary to make war on this country - what actions would he take.
Guess we'll never know the answer to that question, but I think it's safe to say that he would make things unpleasant enough for that population that they would reconsider their present course of action and amend said course.
LOL! The other thing that the Pope did not say - I hope simply out of tact - is that Islam cannot be reformed because it is fundamentally false. The Church has reformed itself again and again, sometimes to meet new situations and sometimes because the truth had grown faint and was overwhelmed by the all-too-earthly nature of Church members (and particularly heirarchs).
But all "reform" means in Islam is adhering even more literally to the same insane religious-political theocratic ravings that are the foundation of the cult. A bad tree bears bad fruit and no "reform" is possible without cutting it down and planting an entirely different tree.
"The Word" in that context is Jesus Christ, not the Bible. The Bible is not God.
"an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations"
"He believes the Bible can and must be adapted"
Yea, what exactly are you having the problem with, comprehension-wise?
What the Pope has said (if this is indeed reliable hearsay), is no different than any FReeper, as Constitutionalists, stating that the Second Amendment protects ownership of firearms that had not been conceived of at the time of the Constitution's creation.
This is the greatest Gospel-as-God's-Unerring-Truth Pope anyone alive will ever see in their lifetimes, and also one of the era's foremost logicians.
You may be permitting your prejudices to warp your hasty interpretation. I hope not.
The Pope merely called a spade, 'a spade'.
The Pope said Islam is stuck on stupid. He's right.
What the Pope is saying is pretty clear and is consistent with Christian and Jewish tradition: the Scriptures of Christianity and Judaism need to be interpreted and applied by means of reason in order to be made understandable and real at any stage in human history.
In both traditions, there is the view that one of the glories of the human person is the ability to reason, to see what needs to be seen in Scripture, to find the emphasis, etc. The Jewish tradition virtually places at its center the long tradition of Rabbinic discussion on the meaning of Bible texts and the laws that were handed down orally from Moses. And the Christian tradition has always seen that all of the Bible needs to be interpreted and applied (otherwise Christians would be stoning a whole lot of people every day), that the task of interpretation is to find the SENSE of Scripture, and that many passages contain more than one Sense.
The Pope is saying, in contrast, that if you believe that the sacred text is a dictation from the mouth of God, then of course the human mind can do nothing in the way of interpretation and application into life.
Thus, Islam does not have the intellectual and theological mechanism to even consider the possibility that some of the passages of the Koran should be read metaphorically or spiritually instead of literalistically.
How do you account for the fact that St. Paul, at the end of ch 15 of 1st Corinthians, deliberately uses the opposite meaning of the OT text? This text of St. Paul is a good example of how the early Church itself, and not some horrid Catholic Pope, feels free to adjust the meaning of a Bible text in service to a larger truth.
Yea, that's how I read the quote too. :)
Technically, according to Islamic practice, the Koran cannot even be translated. The few groups (such as the Sufis) that have tried to do a metaphorical interpretation - which is what Christians and modern Jews do with the more aggressive passages in the OT - have always been condemned as heretical.
The New Testament is not a problem in Christianity, because there is nothing in it that is evil, and the few things that could provide room for obsession (women keeping their heads covered, for example) are simply cultural things related to the culture of the time. Since Christianity develops, it is not tied to forms of dress.
The OT is not a problem either to Christians or Jews, because the truths that are in it are very obvious, and the historical/cultural things (such as dashing the children of your enemies upon the stones) are also obvious, and it's easy to separate the two.
The big difference is that Islam is a false religion, and Judaism and Christianity (although they conflict on whether or not the Messiah has arrived) are not.
You are absolutely correct.
And by the way, on the larger point, it seems to me that most of the West is unable to find the words to respond to the current crisis posed by militant Islam. We in the West just stare at the horror, the intractibility, the boldness, the sheer strangeness of a religion and culture that seems at the same time suave and cruel, subtle and monolithic. But also fundamentally flawed and violent. Read, for example, what Hilaire Belloc or GK Chesterton said about Islam--very prescient stuff.
I'd like to see a thousand traditionally equipped Scots go up against
an equal number of scimitar wielding islamists.. say 200 heavy horse
each and the rest afoot.. winner gets the sheep.
(It's the only common ground I can find with those nutters.)
But everything IS reformable. Children, for example, routinely "re-form" their toys, after which reform the old toys have to be discarded and the parents have to shell out for the new toys, which, in their turn, will be reformed... One should look at the things broadly.
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