Posted on 10/10/2001 10:57:30 AM PDT by malakhi
Becky: Yes.
For myself, I don't find this convincing. Here's why. "Scripture is inspired because it claims to be inspired" is self-referential. If I say to you, "Becky, you can trust me, because I always tell the truth". If you question me with, "But angelo, how can I know that it is true that you always tell the truth?" then I respond, "because I said so, and I always tell the truth". The argument is circular.
Here are what I consider two non-circular arguments for believing that scripture is inspired:
1. God has independently revealed to me that these writings are inspired. It is not circular because the evidence for the inspiration comes from outside the writings in question.
2. God revealed the authenticity and inspired nature of these writings to others, who have passed their testimony onto me.
How do you know the OT is divinely inspired?
#2, above. The truth of the Hebrew scriptures is grounded in the testimony of the people of Israel who witnessed the events at Sinai. These original witnesses passed their testimony onto the next generation, who passed it down to each subsequent generation until it reached me.
Similarly, you could argue the inspiration of the Christian scriptures on the basis of the original witnesses of the life of Jesus. They wrote the gospels, and passed them onto the next generation with the testimony that the events recorded therein were true. Each generation then passed them down with this testimony to their authenticity, until the present day. Thus you have an independent, oral tradition testifying to the authenticity of the gospels.
Most of the Roman vs non Roman issues are not my preference.
It is my assumption that there are believers on this thread that might be interested in the Codes. I mention them as a service. If doing so is uniformly 100% offensive, I can certainly avoid bothering.
God has primarily appointed me to be me. Occasionally I feel a tug in my spirit to check in again on the Codes. If there seems to be something signifcant and fruitful for prayerful consideration--AND IF I TAKE SERIOUSLY DOING UNTO OTHERS AS I'D PREFER DONE UNTO ME--then it seems that I have an obligation to apply the Golden Rule and mention them here.
I fail to understand the Biblical foundations of your pique.
This is becoming something of a running theme for me, this continuing comparison to a Dog. I'm not complaining though, I've always thought Dogs to be the best beast out there. Dogs are loyal, if not always bright, but I've never considered my self the brightest of people on this thread. I've been accused of having a canine loyalty to the Church, and I've been called "an old guard dog" I consider it something of a complement though.
Other beasts I've been accused of being by proddies are Fish(quite odd considering, it's meaning in the Bible) and, like all Catholics, sheep (are not we called to be lambs?) it seems to me that they don't know how to insult Catholics.
I freely answer any and al questions posed here about which I have an opinion or feel I can contribute. All are free to do the same.
As for the universality of the Catholic faith in its professing of one faith to all peoples, it should be remembered that the lanugage of the Church remains Latin. All written communications about the faith, beliefs, practices, anything, are written in Latin and the meaning of the Latin is the ruling meaning. By this I mean, if there is ambiguity in what a certain teaching of the Church, or directive from the Church means in English, or Swahili, the Church will go to the original language of Latin and decide what is really meant.
This is one aspect of the universality -- we are all teaching and praying and worshipping from one set of documents, translated into all of th world's tongues, and yet one. There is not a Catechism in Chinese that teaches diferently fom a Catechism in Spanish. They are all based upon, and (ideally) faithfully reflect the one teaching of the one church.
Another aspect of this universality is that the faith was spread to other cultures and peoples "on the ground" with teachers. Christian communities did not spring up in various locales in the world which were later collected under one governance. If this were the case we could expect the local organic growth of conflicting theories, like we see in Protestantism. Rather the faith was spread with local adaptations and focus, but retaining the oneness.
Now is "professing" synonymous with "practicing"? Ideally yes, but not always, or not necessarily. There is always dissent and non-standard practice, but this doesn't mean that there is not a clear defined orthodoxy and practice.
SD
This is my answer to the question: I believe in God and the Bible because my parents told me so. I trust my parents and if they believed it, and I haven't found any reason to doubt it, I can't see how I can not believe it. It is exactly this intergenerational transmission of revealed truth that so infuriates folks when their children leave "the faith," regardless of what faith it is. It is essentially the essence of not "honoring your mother and father" to take what they have held as true and brought to you as true over millennia and to discard it.
SD
Occasionally would be fine. You're 100% consumed with this stuff. I don't see you drivin' by with anthing else.
Well I think that the questions posed are very appropriate because the Bible also says startlingly clear things like "This is my Body", "You must eat my Flesh and drink my Blood", "You see that a man is jusified by works and not by faith alone", etc... and yet you don't take those teachings at face value, do you? How much clearer can the Bible get, yet you refuse to believe?
I would say about that 80% of the time you guys are the ones asking the questions, at the very least. It is becoming obvious to me that you don't like it when the shoe is on the other foot(namely ours) and that's a pity.
Pray for John Paul II
Matt 18:
18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.
20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
We went over this recently. The irony is that you quote this against the Magisterium, when it is in fact a defense of it. It all comes down to not "if Jesus meant this," but rather to whom he was speaking. And to whom it applies today.
Jesus was speaking here to his apostles and he bestowed the power to "bind and loose" on them. The apostles then passed on this power when they appointed new leaders of new churches (see Titus, where Paul tells him he has all of the authority of Paul). The new leaders then passed on this power to the next leader, who passed it on to the next, etc. And here we are today with the direct successors of the apostles, the Catholic Bishops.
SD
How many infallible pronouncements have been made and what were they.
As far as I know there are three. Possibly four.
1. The Infallibility of the Pope
2. The Immaculate Conception of Mary
3. The Assumption of Mary
4. The impossibility of ordaining women
The last is still debated by some agitators for priestesses and Rome has not definiteively identified this statement (which on its surface seems to be preaching infalllibly) as infallible.
You should also note that these are just the formal announcments made since the defining of the doctrine of infallibility itself. It shoudl not be construed to mean that the Church has never claimed an infallible teaching for such fundamental ideas like "Jesus is God" or "Christ died for our sins." These teachings almost go without saying that they are infallibly proclaimed.
SD
I hope I misunderstood your point about "two gods."
Your hope is misplaced.
In the event I did not, consider the following statements attributed to Jesus:
"I and my Father are one." (Jn 10:30)
"...He that hath seen me hath seen the Father..."(Jn 14:9)
"...I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." (Jn 14:20)
John 17
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
These verses show that the Father and the only begotten Son, Jesus, are one in unity, purpose and spirit. In this sense Jesus prays to His Father to make the disiples one as they are one. As the new Jerusalem in Revelations shows, the apostles are not one but twelve distinct parts of the whole, being a city. Do you suggest that God, Jesus and the disiples are one in the same sense? Why and how is it different?
Revelation 14
21 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
We are all members of the Body of Christ, all of us part of one great big togetherness. As we are all one in Christ, Christ is one in union with the rest of the Trinity. Our ultimate goal as Christians, our final destination, is to be brought within the Trinity, to share in the eternal (and internal) life of God. We will one day, all believers, truly be one with God. That is what our adoption means -- we will no longer be separate, distinct, outside of God. We will be with God in Blessed Unity
One Bread, One Body
One Lord of all
One Cup of Blessing which we bless
And we, though many
Throughout the earth
We are One Body in this One Lord
SD
A year ago I started writing my thoughts and mini stories and results of Bible studies on certain subjects, and since I now had a spell check at my disposal, I thought this should be a snap.
My wife is an avid reader, and had a working career in an office and showroom, so naturally I took my first great work to her for final approval.
I still have no idea why she had problems reading it, because it was so brilliantly structured, It was in one solid block of words, all in upper case (to make it very easy to read,) and I had even written it with out sentence breaks and periods, and comas, and all those funny little things so the reader could easily follow the line of thought with out all the brain interruptions that punctuation marks cause.
I asked her to read it out loud, so I could experience the brilliance of my first sure to be award-winning piece.
Well to my dismay, I found out that my wife, who I had always considered to be very intelligent, failed me completely.
She had no sense of story flow what so ever, she kept hesitating, and starting over at key points where flow is so important, and then she would mumble something about needing "cumas" or something like that, and saying such dumb things as "Oh, this should be the starting of a new sentence, as if I didn't know that. Sheeesss!!
So anyway, I said why don't you correct it (as if there was anything to correct), so she wasted three full days trying to find something wrong with my article, so she could mark it all up, and make it appear that she had done more work on it then I had.
Well I pretended to humor her along, acting like it was conceivable possible for me to make a mistake here or there, (even with a spell checker) but when she got finished, I had to go print off an un- edited copy of it just so I could see what it was when I had written it.
Well to make a long story short, after this harrowing and deflating experience, I decided to not take chances anymore, so I started to put in comas every 8 words, and a period every 32 words, paying careful attention that I never use more then 4 comas per 32 word sentences.
But do you think this satisfied her? You guessed it, and would you believe it, she then started taking them out instead of putting them in, showing me that she had no intentions of trying to get along what so ever, so in anger, I made up a sheet of nothing but periods, and another of comas, and I gave them to her and in frustration said, "here, use the damn things anywhere you want," and we have done pretty well since.
The main reason I have written this is to warn you of what this obsession with punctuation marks can lead to.
Yesterday, I was praying, and I said to God, "Help me to better understand your word "COMA" and to change with knowledge and…. and…. and...,. I don't believe it. I said "coma" in my prayers "coma" and that is frightening "coma" because "coma" can you imagine what my prayers are going to sound like when I start doing them in HTML code (question mark)
JH
Does this mean that you believe we become God, or are absorbed into God, losing our individual identity?
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