Posted on 10/21/2002 9:04:51 AM PDT by jern
BREAKING: Archaeologists Report 1st Direct Evidence of Jesus
And what's your problem with Martin Luther? Among other things, he rescued The Church from a pack of thieves, scoundrals, blackmailers and every other form of criminal lowlife known as the Clergy. The church of that time was an ecclesiastical whorehouse. Unfortunately they seem to be migrating back.........
I am sorry, your analogy is wrong. Protestants (reconstructing early church from printed paper) are rather like the Columbus followers while Roman Catholics and Orthodox are like Native Americans. Bishops - the sucessors of Apostles had the power given them by God and they had the guidance of the Holy Spirit in writting and selecting holy books. God acted THROUGH the Church and God established the Church before the books. Christ did not write any books, he appeared in person and He spoke to the living persons and He established His Church - His Body "the pillar and ground of the truth"(1Tm:3:15) made from men and not out of printed paper.
Luther was in agreement with many of the early Church fathers,
Luther was in agreement with Talmudic scholars since he trusted rabinic tradition more than he trusted Christians. That is why he removed the books which rabbis removed in the 2nd century and that is why Protestants follow late Masoretic Hebrew version of OT from IX c. (which contradicts the text of New Testament).
Excuse the crudity, but the topic merits it.
The content of Christian Faith is not defined by the desire to humor other religions. Abraham, Isaak and Jacob are our forefathers in Faith and they are with God. One can ask them for intercession, Protestant complaints notwithstanding.
"And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err."
"And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:
For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
As far as I understand, it's Catholic practice ordained by men of the Catholic church, not ordained by God.
If you think it through, my analogy is actually very correct. God "breathed" the scriptures and used men to write them down. They were a gift from God which the Church received. So I suppose in one sense the Church did "discover" the Scriptures, but they were already given by God. I "discovered" air the moment I took my first breath, but the air was a gift that God had already given me. All I did was receive it.
Luther was in agreement with Talmudic scholars since he trusted rabinic tradition more than he trusted Christians. That is why he removed the books which rabbis removed in the 2nd century and that is why Protestants follow late Masoretic Hebrew version of OT from IX c. (which contradicts the text of New Testament).
With all due respect, your history is quite wrong. The Protestant church uses the scriptures set by the Jews of Judea, also known as the Palestinian Canon. They were the same scriptures used by Jesus and His disciples. Jews acknowledged that that the prophetic gifts had ceased in Israel in the 5th century B.C. 2 Maccabees even refers to this, thus destroying later claims to its canonicity!
Catholics, on the other hand, use the books more closely associated with the Jews of Alexandria. Notably, none of the great Greek Septuagint Manuscripts (Aleph, A, and B) contain all of the apocryphal books accepted by the Catholic church. Only Tobit, Judith, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are found in the great Greek Manuscripts, and the oldest one (B) excludes the books of Maccabees. None of the Greek manuscripts contain the same list of books accepted by the Council of Trent!
The Apocrypha is one of those many cases where the "unanimous consent of the Fathers" falls apart with a resounding crash. Augustine basically accepted the books that were canonized by the Council of Trent in 1536. That's not surprising since he was from North Africa and thus had more familiarity with the Septuagint, various versions of which were used by the Hellenized Jews of the area. Jerome rejected the Apocrypha (you deftly avoided my earlier mention of this). Many others spoke out against the Apocrypha, including Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius. The earliest and best authorities all rejected the Apocrypha. Protestants are thus in agreement with the earliest Church Fathers and tradition on whether the Apocrypha are canonical.
I hear you on Elisha -- it's a one-time miracle recorded in the Bible. But you must also address the ancient Jewish and Christian tradition that God hid away the body of Moses to prevent it becoming a relic for later superstitious pilgrims.
BTW, the veneration of relics is recorded in the earliest Christian texts
Read the New Testament -- it records many early heresies! It's not at all surprising that various heresies popped up after the apostles died. Just because a heresy is old doesn't make it right. That's the problem with not recognizing something -- i.e., the canon of Scripture -- as a measuring rod for gauging what is wrong and what is right with tradition. There's nothing inherently wrong with tradition except where they conflict with Scripture.
I took Hebrew in high school and though I remember extremely little of it, I can easily make it a few letters. Of course, the manner of writing some of the letters has changed over the intervening centuries, just as the manner of writing certain English letters has changed even over the past 200 years.
The incisions look deep and the letters easily readable. I doubt that, for example, archeaologists would mistake the Hebrew equivalent of "Fred" for "James" or anything like that.
Could you expand on this topic a bit, please.
"As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of the Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church…I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in the Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon…" (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers," Second Series, vol. VI, St. Jerome, "Prefaces to Jerome's Works, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, Daniel" (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 1954), pp. 492-93) :If you support the Apocrypha as canon, then please explain this passage in light of Christian belief:
"If the Devil, or an evil spirit troubles anyone, they can be driven away by making a smoke of the heart, liver, and gall of a fish...and the Devil will smell it, and flee away, and never come again anymore." (Tobit 6:5-8).Do you really believe that?
That passage is just one of many why Protestants agree with 1st-century Orthodox Judaism and the early Church fathers in rejecting the Apocrypha. Other Church fathers who accepted the 22-book Palestinian canon include Epiphanius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen and Hilary of Poitiers. It is interesting to note that Athanasius -- the Bishop of Alexandria, where the Septuagint was translated -- also rejected the Apocrypha.
As I noted, this one topic alone topples the notion of the "unanimous consent of the Church Fathers" in determining doctrine.
It's just a typo, but that is the most blasphemous thing I have ever read.
I can't stop laughing.
No, you don't.
Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house. . .
I haven't seen a permutation of a passage the where a man prays (in other than the sense that one "prays" to a king, for instance, for mercy) that went like this: "I pray thee therefore, (name of patriarch or saint). . .". Every one is where man prays to God and nothing else, unless it be an example of Baalism.
In my humble opinion, praying to any other than God Himself is preforming before a graven image, albeit in the mind, and if it is of any deceased human being, it is that of "in Heaven above".
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Please, this is not criticism of you or your faith, but of manmade policies that presume to define mankind's relationship to God, praying directly or by intecession through a deceased person being an issue of relationship with God.
Sure, other's prayers for a person most certainly carries the authority of the Godly lives they lead and is amplified by that, as another of your posted Bible passages illustrates, but when a Joe prays for Albert, Joe prays to God.
Then name another. Does the Bible record any other instances of Elisha's bones? I don't think so!
Jesus used many methods for healing people. Sometimes he just spoke, at other times he did things as unusual as making mud with his spit and applying it to the eyes of a blind man. In the Old Testament we have the example of the man being healed by dipping himself in the Jordan River and of the walls of Jericho tumbling down after the Israelites marching around them. One wouldn't develop an entire doctrine on wall destruction by marching, eye surgery by spit mud, or leprosy healing by bathing!
As I noted, I heard you. You're not hearing me.
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