Let's see if I can play this game. I'll make up something about Protestants...hmmm...Protestants are sexual deviants and swindlers and I'll post pictures to prove my case:
Or that Protestants are homicidal maniacs:
Do I win?
Posted on 02/06/2006 1:02:10 PM PST by NYer
It's still a jolt for some people to realize this, but the Bible did not fall down out of the sky, leather-bound and gold-monogrammed with the words of Christ in red, in 95 AD. Rather the canon of Christian Scripture slowly developed over a period of about 1500 years. That does not mean, of course, that Scripture was being written for 1500 years after the life of Christ. Rather, it means that it took the Church some fifteen centuries to formally and definitively state which books out of the great mass of early Christian and pseudo-Christian books constituted the Bible.
The process of defining the canon of Scripture is an example of what the Church calls "development of doctrine". This is a different thing than "innovation of doctrine". Doctrine develops as a baby develops into a man, not as a baby grows extra noses, eyes, and hands. An innovation of doctrine would be if the Church declared something flatly contrary to all previous teaching ("Pope John Paul Ringo I Declares the Doctrine of the Trinity to No Longer Be the Teaching of the Church: Bishop Celebrate by Playing Tiddly Winks with So-Called 'Blessed Sacrament'"). It is against such flat reversals of Christian teaching that the promise of the Spirit to guard the apostolic Tradition stands. And, in fact, there has never ever been a time when the Church has reversed its dogmatic teaching. (Prudential and disciplinary changes are another matter. The Church is not eternally wedded to, for instance, unmarried priests, as the wife of St. Peter can tell you.)
But though innovations in doctrine are not possible, developments of doctrine occur all the time and these tend to apply old teaching to new situations or to more completely articulate ancient teaching that has not been fully fleshed out. So, for example, in our own day the Church teaches against the evils of embryonic stem cell research even though the New Testament has nothing to say on the matter. Yet nobody in his five wits claims that the present Church "invented" opposition to embryonic stem cell research from thin air. We all understand that the Church, by the very nature of its Tradition, has said "You shall not kill" for 2,000 years. It merely took the folly of modern embryonic stem cell research to cause the Church to apply its Tradition to this concrete situation and declare what it has always believed.
Very well then, as with attacks on sacred human life in the 21st century, so with attacks on Sacred Tradition in the previous twenty. Jesus establishes the Tradition that he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17). But when Tradition bumps into the theories of early Jewish Christians that all Gentiles must be circumcised in order to become Christians, the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) is still necessary to authoritatively flesh that Tradition out. Moreover, the Council settles the question by calling the Bible, not to the judge's bench, but to the witness stand. Scripture bears witness to the call of the Gentiles, but the final judgment depends on the authority of Christ speaking through his apostles and elders whose inspired declaration is not "The Bible says..." but "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..." (Acts 15:28).
In all this, the Church, as ever, inseparably unites Scripture as the light and Sacred Tradition as the lens through which it is focused. In this way the mustard seed of the Kingdom continues to grow in that light, getting more mustardy, not less.
How then did Tradition develop with respect to the canon of Scripture?
In some cases, the Church in both east and west has a clear memory of just who wrote a given book and could remind the faithful of this. So, for instance, when a second century heretic named Marcion proposed to delete the Old Testament as the product of an evil god and canonize the letters of Paul (but with all those nasty Old Testament quotes snipped out), and a similarly edited gospel of Luke (sanitized of contact with Judaism for your protection), the Church responded with local bishops (in areas affected by Marcion's heresy) proposing the first canons of Scripture.
Note that the Church seldom defines its teaching (and is in fact disinclined to define it) till some challenge to the Faith (in this case, Marcion) forces it to do so. When Marcion tries to take away from the Tradition of Scripture by deleting Matthew, Mark and John and other undesirable books, the Church applies the basic measuring rod of Tradition and says, "This does not agree with the Tradition that was handed down to us, which remembers that Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark and John wrote John.
Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord who reclined at his bosom also published a Gospel, while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia. (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3, 1, 1)
In other words, there is, we might say, a Standard of Roots (based on Sacred Tradition) by which the Church weighs her canon. So when various other heretics, instead of trying to subtract from the generally received collection of holy books, instead try to add the Gospel of Thomas or any one of a zillion other ersatz works to the Church's written Tradition, the Church can point to the fact that, whatever the name on the label says, the contents do not square with the Tradition of the Church, so it must be a fake. In other words, there is also a Standard of Fruits. It is this dual standard of Roots and Fruits by which the Church discerns the canon -- a dual standard which is wholly based on Sacred Tradition. The Church said, in essence, "Does the book have a widespread and ancient tradition concerning its apostolic origin and/or approval? Check. Does the book square with the Tradition we all learned from the apostles and the bishops they gave us? Check. Then it is to be used in public worship and is to be regarded as the word of God."
It was on this basis the early Church also vetoed some books and accepted others -- including the still-contested-by-some-Protestants deuterocanonical books of Tobit, Wisdom, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach and Baruch as well as some pieces of Daniel and Esther. For the churches founded by the apostles could trace the use of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in public worship (a Greek translation of the Old Testament which includes all these books) back to the apostles. In fact, many of the citations of Old Testament Scripture by the New Testament writers are, in fact, citations of the Septuagint (see, for example, Mark 7:6-7, Hebrews 10:5-7). Therefore, the Body of Christ living after the apostles simply retained the apostles' practice of using the Septuagint on the thoroughly traditional grounds, "If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us." In contrast, the churches had no apostolic tradition handed down concerning the use of, say, the works of the Cretan poet Epimenides (whom Paul quotes in Acts 17), therefore they did not regard his works as Scripture, even though Paul quotes him. It was by their roots and fruits that the Church's books were judged, and it was by the standard of Sacred Tradition that these roots and fruits were known.
These Root and Fruit standards are even more clearly at work in the canonization of the New Testament, especially in the case of Hebrews. There was, in fact, a certain amount of controversy in the early Church over the canonicity of this book (as well as of books like 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation). Some Fathers, especially in the west, rejected Hebrews (in no small part because of its lack of a signature). Yet the Church eventually accepted it. How? It was judged apostolic because, in the end, the Church discerned that it met the Roots and Fruits measure when stacked up against Sacred Tradition.
The Body of Christ had long believed that Hebrews said the same thing as the Church's Sacred Tradition handed down by the bishops. Thus, even Fathers (like Irenaeus) who rejected it from their canon of inspired Scripture still regarded it as a good book. That is, it had always met the Fruits standard. How then did it meet the Roots standard? In a nutshell, despite the lack of attestation in the text of Hebrews itself, there was an ancient tradition in the Church (beginning in the East, where the book was apparently first sent) that the book originated from the pen of St. Paul. That tradition, which was at first better attested in the east than in the west (instantaneous mass communication being still some years in the future) accounts for the slowness of western Fathers (such as Irenaeus) to accept the book. But the deep-rootedness of the tradition of Pauline authorship in the East eventually persuaded the whole Church. In short, as with the question of circumcision in the book of Acts, the status of Hebrews was not immediately clear even to the honest and faithful (such as Irenaeus). However, the Church in council, trusting in the guidance of Holy Spirit, eventually came to consensus and canonized the book on exactly the same basis that the Council of Jerusalem promulgated its authoritative decree: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..."
Conversely, those books which the Church did not canonize as part of the New Testament were rejected because, in the end, they did not meet both the Root and Fruit standards of the Church's Sacred Tradition. Books like the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas, while meeting the Fruit standard, were not judged to meet the Root standard since their authors were not held to be close enough to the apostolic circle -- a circle which was, in the end, drawn very narrowly by the Spirit-led Church and which therefore excluded even Clement since he, being "in the third place from the Apostles" was not as close to the apostles as Mark and Luke (who were regarded as recording the gospels of Peter and Paul, respectively). The Church, arch-conservative as ever, relied on Sacred Tradition, not to keep adding to the New Testament revelation but to keep it as lean and close to the apostles as possible. This, of course, is why books which met neither the Root nor Fruit standards of Sacred Tradition, such as the Gospel of Thomas, were rejected by the Church without hesitation as completely spurious.
Not that this took place overnight. The canon of Scripture did not assume its present shape till the end of the fourth century. It was defined at the regional Councils of Carthage and Hippo and also by Pope Damasus and included the deuterocanonical books. It is worth noting, however, that, because these decisions were regional, none of them were dogmatically binding on the whole Church, though they clearly reflected the Sacred Tradition of the Church (which is why the Vulgate or Latin Bible--which was The Bible for the Catholic Church in the West for the next 1200 years looks the same as the Catholic Bible today). Once again, we are looking at Sacred Tradition which is not fully developed until a) the Reformation tries to subtract deuterocanonical books from Scripture and b) the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s finally makes that Tradition fixed and binding. This is the origin of the myth that the Catholic Church "added" the deuterocanonical books to Scripture at Trent. It is as historically accurate as the claim that the Catholic Church "added" opposition to embryonic stem cell research to its tradition during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.
In summary then, the early Church canonized books because they were attested by apostolic tradition. The books we have in our Bibles (and the ones we don't) were accepted or rejected according to whether they did or did not measure up to standards which were based entirely on Sacred Tradition and the divinely delegated authority of the Body of Christ.
Not quite true. Though the RCC has not been so kind as to preserve their writings for us, we know that Messianic Jews, called Nazarines, existed in numbers right up through the fourth century. Shlomo Pines has found further evidence that they in fact survived until the 11th Century at least.
When the Inquisition broke out in Spain, its primary targets were Jews who had converted to Christianity while trying to keep their Jewish, Torah-based customs. So we know that there were what we might call "Messianics" then too.
Martin Luther wrote a pair of tractates in his own time called Against the Sabbath Keepers and Against the Judaizers. I don't think he would've found it necessary if there weren't those who were keeping the Sabbath and the "Jewish" Torah-commands.
My own Pilgrim ancestors had great regard for the Torah. They even originally set up Thanksgiving in October, and created it after the pattern of Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles).
I can't prove it with 100% certainty, but it seems to me that those we would call Messianics today--men and women who believe that Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Christ, is the Son of God and Redeemer of the World, but who also saw that God never abridged the Torah--have always been around. Heavily persecuted and forced to keep their heads down, but there nevertheless.
This was not due to any institution of Man, but rather, I believe, through the Holy Spirit writing the Torah on our hearts (Jer. 31:31-32, Ezk. 36:26-27, Heb. 8:8-12). Today's Messianic movement did not appear under any one leader, but was a spontaneous movement of the Spirit through the hearts of thousands of people who had never met, spread out around the world.
That's not to say that we're perfect or have completely recaptured the essence of the 1st Century Church, nor is it to say that all true Christians are Messianics or vice versa. We have our own problems. But the idea of being fully Christian and Torah-observant at the same time is nothing new.
That is, the Sabbath, a day to set apart from the pace of the rest of the week, a day to sleep in, to relax, and to be with God and your family and friends, is a blessing, not a burdensome religious duty.
Sounds like a gift from God to me.
I remember the first time I read the Scripture describing The Apostles walking and eating corn in the field on the Sabbath (I'm assuming the corn was really wheat?), and being called on it by the Pharisees. The way the scene is descibed what you get from it is this peaceful sense. And the Pharisees just come across like they're looking for conflict.
One last question, somewhat unrelated though to the topic at hand. You seem to know a bit about Aramaic and also Greek. And I was wondering what your opinion was regarding the standard translations of the Bible. For example, is the King James Version, an adequate translation for someone who is studying the Word?
Oh, and to go along with your nonsense, don't forget the Trinity!
Interesting view of History of the Gaps - impossible to prove or disprove. In your version: Except for those who kept their heads down, and about whom we have little record, the rest of Christianity went bad real early for you.
But I still have the same question, when did you guys, your church, come along and get it right again?
Again, no one is praying to a saint but talking to one. Didn't Jesus speak with some "dead" people during the Transfiguration? I think thats one time, or how about when they thought he spoke to the prophets during the crucifixion, thats another one
No, he just was the Rock the Church was built on, and the holder to the Keys of heaven. But I guess that's not much. Do you?
In the NT, Peter was not the first apostle to follow Jesus, but, whenever the apostles are listed, or mentioned, Peter is first, or the statement: "Peter and the apostles" is used.
How many times in the OT, did God change the name of His key person? Abram to Abraham., etc. In the NT, whose name did he change? The name Peter did not exist until that point in time, when Jesus changed Simon's name to Kephas ( Petros in greek ).
When asked about paying the temple tax, Jesus tells Peter to : go catch a fish, and in its mouth will be two coins, one for me, and one for you..".
When they were essentially ran out of the temple, where did they go? To Peter's house.
When Peter proclaims Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of the LIving God, what does Jesus do and say?
During the last supper, Jesus states, (luke)31. "And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 32. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." In this passage, Jesus is stating that Satan wants to have all of the apostles, but Jesus thens prays for "thee" ( Simon Peter ), that Peter will then "strengthen his bretheren", the other apostles.
In John, after His resurrection, Jesus appears on the shore, cooking fish, whilst His apostles are out in a boat. Who jumped into the water and ran to Jesus ( reminds you who jumped into the water and walked on water?)? John21-11 "Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, and hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken." Peter alone brought in the net full of fish ( They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.). What does this mean- Peter has the strength that all of the others did not have? The "153" fish is said to represent the total number of different fish known in the old world.
When Jesus gives his commission on the shore, who does He give it to? "So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. 17. He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep. "
To Peter alone, Jesus says Feed My sheep. Some translations use "Tend my sheep , and another uses "shepard my sheep".
But then again, you are a Bible Christian, and you know all of this.
Christ's Church is not a false prophet.
But believe as you will.
The word you are looking for is heretical.....:)
(Diego's Church)
That's actually your best option for a couple of reasons: First, because while it has translation issues and errors like every other version, they're well known and documented. Secondly, because pretty much every lexicon out there is keyed to the KJV.
However, don't rely on it alone. One of the best ways I've found to study the Bible is to read multiple translations and pay special attention to where they differ (beyond simple word choice, like "mighty man" vs. "great man" for example) and figure out why.
If you want to get seriously into the langauges, you might want to pick up some Bible software. Some free versions are E-Sword and Online Bible. The Blue Letter Bible is an online version that you don't have to download which has a few tools that the others don't. I like the interface on E-Sword, but the Online Bible and Blue Letter Bible give you the added benefit of knowing what the tenses and voices of the Greek words and conjugations and voices of the Hebrew words, which is often a help. All of them include some good public domain commentaries.
I hope that helps. Have a blessed evening!
As opposed to Israel, who according to you guys got it wrong for 1500 years before the Church came along?
Show me where I'm wrong in any of this from the Scriptures.
Greetings...By small t i mean the oral tradition that was espoused by the Apostles to the early church...this oral tradition would be in lock step to the epistles and writings of the same apostles...this is different than big T Tradition in the sense that the church later 'realized', i guess is the word i've been told many times, things...such as the Dogma of Mary's immaculate conception and her assumption for instance...nothing in scripture is ever mentioned yet the church has declared dogma on that item...That is big T tradition, it's not in lockstep with any accepted Divinely inspired text...
I, for one have never said the small t tradition is any issue...One has to be completely naive that not all information was given in written text...that being said, the written text IS the Word of God...in it contains the knowledge of the promise and delivery of Salvation by God and we learn how His Grace will forgive those who believe on Him etc...any oral teaching MUST match this clearly and explictly, it cannot be 'sort of' shown thru the scriptures...
So in algebraic terms it's this:
small t = mirror image of written scripture
Big T = items transmitted to the church that is either not in the scriptures in any form or very loosely associated.
Either way, I believe what the Apostles preached...Christ is THE only way to salvation, there is none other...and our salvation does not depend on our works of love, but on a true faith that is alive with works of love...
Please feel free to comment...all my remarks are meant to be in the most respectful tone I can give...
Blessings to you and yours!
Given how prevailant simony was in the RCC at one time, the same could be said for you.
For example, in this article from www.catholic.com, the author admits that Catholics regularly bow to statues; he just tries to separate the bowing from worship:
Sometimes anti-Catholics cite Deuteronomy 5:9, where God said concerning idols, "You shall not bow down to them." Since many Catholics sometimes bow or kneel in front of statues of Jesus and the saints, anti-Catholics confuse the legitimate veneration of a sacred image with the sin of idolatry.Of course, the author misses the point: God does not specifically forbid bowing down to a living person, like a king, in respect--but He does forbid doing so to an inanimate object, and calls it idolatry. All the justifications in the world (and we've seen a lot of them on this thread) don't change that fact.Though bowing can be used as a posture in worship, not all bowing is worship. In Japan, people show respect by bowing in greeting (the equivalent of the Western handshake). Similarly, a person can kneel before a king without worshipping him as a god. In the same way, a Catholic who may kneel in front of a statue while praying isn’t worshipping the statue or even praying to it, any more than the Protestant who kneels with a Bible in his hands when praying is worshipping the Bible or praying to it.
"but as soon as people start performing physical acts of worship towards the artwork, it becomes an idol"
Sorry to contradict, but your oversimplification of the matter has led you to an incorrect conclusion.
One must distinguish between kneeling *to* a statue and kneeling *in the vicinity of* a statue.
Idolatry consists in kneeling *to* a physical object for the purpose of worshipping it. Kneeling *in the vicinity of* religious art so that one may gaze upon it while praying is not idolatry.
Another distinction you fail to make is that not all prayer is worship. In Elizabethan times, the word "pray" was widely used in conversation to make a request of another person, as in, "I pray thee, Lord Cromwell, slay us not for our Catholic faith."
Or perhaps, "Prithee, good wife, pray for me on the eve of battle."
Catholics ask (pray) saints to pray for them in the same way that protestants ask (pray) their fellow protestants to pray for them. The only difference is that protestants, having cast about half of God's blessings back in His face, don't understand that the Communion of Saints allows them to ask saints to pray for them.
And one can plainly see both in the picture I've provided earlier in this thread and in the quote from post 336 from a Catholic website that Catholics do indeed bow to statues.
I'm not even getting into the prayer issue; it's tangental to my point here, which is that your denomination violates the specifics of the Second Commandments. However, having said that, I've read many of the Catholic prayers to Mary, including the one at the end of the Rosary (see post 105), and they are worshipful, and attribute to her the things that belong to God alone.
Hmmm. Neither will you find "sola scriptura" or "sola fide" in Scripture. Oh MY goodness.
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