Posted on 03/16/2006 5:51:01 AM PST by NYer
****. We use the complete Book.***
Oh I forgot to mention I have one of those also (Douai Rheims). Good read.
Oh? Well, according to part of that Britannica article: "Two of the Old Testament Hagiographa (Ketuvim; see above The Hebrew canon)—Daniel and Esther—contain, in their Greek translations, numerous additions." As I understand it, these were the portions removed by the Protestants.
Ignoring previous posts, you suffer from a common Protestant delusion about the nature of ecumenical councils. That's the first INFALLIBLE statement; it's not the first statement.
Not according to a Catholic site. At http://www.justforcatholics.org/a108.htm it says:
"The practice of the Church up to the time of the Reformation was to follow the judgment of Jerome who rejected the Old Testament apocrypha on the grounds that these books were never part of the Jewish canon. These were permissible to be read in the churches for the purposes of edification but were never considered authoritative for establishing doctrine. The Protestants did nothing new when they rejected the apocrypha as authoritative Scripture. It was the Roman church that rejected this tradition and ‘canonized’ the ecclesiastical books." It also affirms what I said about Jerome. I think it is you, not I, who needs to check their data. Here is another source asserting that the dispute over the Apocrypha predates the Reformation. Cite your sources, for I see no backup for your contention.
Martin Luther preached people should subscribe to any ungodly passion that occurred to them. His serial adulteries were not moral failures...
Where do you get that Martin Luther was a serial adulterer? I have not heard it before, I have not read it anywhere before, and multiple internet searches failed to yield anything. Cite your sources.
Luther, moreover, preached justification through faith in Jesus. This is a Biblical teaching. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9. Works are the result of faith, but do nothing to save us. Luther wrote to this affect.
"Works must be done, but it does not follow from this that works save....Works save externally, that is, they testify that we are just and that in a man there is the faith which saves him internally, as Paul says: 'With the heart man believeth unto rigteousness, ande with the mouth confession is made unto salvation'" --Martin Luther (What Luther Says, v.3, p.1509)
"This text, then, applies to our doctrine of justification, according to which a man must be rigteous before all works and is accepted by God without all works, through that grace alone which his faith believes and aprehends the mercy of God which is set forth in Christ. In this confidence in the mercy of God the true church goes about, with a humble confession of her sins and unworthiness, confidently expecting God to forgive her through Christ." Martin Luther (What Luther Says, vol.1, pg. 490)
The term is an invention of Luther; I use it as Luther did.
False. Sola scriptura says that the Bible alone is inerrant. You are not using it as Luther did. If you are, cite Luther.
Without such an assertion, the Pope is merely stating his opinion.
That is all he is doing. The Pope is all too human. "But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven." Matthew 23:8-9
As for 3 Maccabees, it's authorship was believed to be post-Christian, and no pre-Christian publication of it has ever been found.
My point simply being that it was included in the Septuagint and the Catholic church excluded it. As for the other books, your source (http://biblescripture.net/Canon.html)lists them as absent.
One thing you need to understand about the reasons is that they are a conglomeration.
Also, consider the geneaologies of Jesus and the events around the crucifixion for apparent contradictions.
They are not contradictions and you know it. Here is a page listing some ways in which the Apocrypha contradicts scripture: http://www.justforcatholics.org/a109.htm As for your other "debunkings", cite some sources.
Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. Please read your history before making an assertion.
You will notice, also that Northern Virginia itself had a "rump" Union government, as did Arkansas ~ in fact, Arkansas had essentially two separate and functioning state governments during most of the Civil War.
That was the last time Arkansas had "any" functioning state government ~ since then it's been pretty much "Bill Clinton", one right after the other.
Louisiana also had a Union "military government" pretty early on when it was retaken by the Union.
So, the answer is that ALL Northern states had abolished slavery. Some border states retained slavery. All Souvrn' states had slavery, even when reclaimed by the Union.
Full abolition had to await a Constitutional amendment.
You have to treat the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire after Charlemagne's death pretty much the same way. It didn't turn into just France, and just Germany ~ there was another country in the middle stretching from Nederland to Sicily. I believe it was called Thurungia.
Just for Catholics is NOT a Catholic web site. It is a Protestant web site which targets Catholics for conversion/apostasy by attacking Catholic beliefs.
>> My point simply being that it was included in the Septuagint and the Catholic church excluded it. As for the other books, your source <<
And my point is that the Septuagint, as defined as the pre-Christian canon which was popularized by Hellenic Jews and became the basis for the Christian Old Testament, included 1 and 2 Maccabees, but not 3 Maccabees.
>> The LCMS was a participant in the talks until the Appendix of the agreement was added, which basically recended the rest of the document. At that point, signing the document would have been wrong since it really didn't say anything. <<
I have encountered many LCMS who were very, very disdainful of such ecumenical dialogues (and frankly, I respected their reasoning on occasion). If I have mischaracterized the LCMS' rejection of the document, I regret it.
>> Second, you mentioned Luther's "serial adulteries", which were those? Or are you talking about Luther's friend Phillip of Hesse? <<
No, I meant Luther. Right now, I can't find the source. But since my intent was not to commit ad-hominem against Luther, but to point out that his notion of Sola Fides was very much different than what most modern Protestants believe it to have been, and that modern Protestants' notion of Sola Fides is much closer to the Catholic church, I hope this quote will suffice at making the point:
" Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, sin boldly, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. "
Luther believed that sinning, while having faith in Christ, was virtuous because it enabled the sinner to experience even more greatly the love that Jesus has for the sinner, rather than allow guilt and feelings of unworthiness to prevent him from coming to Christ. Luther is further from the "religious right" than he is from Freudianism and biblical skepticism that 20th-century Germany.
I apologize. Simple misunderstanding. Are you saying then, that Protestantism is apostasy? Do you really believe that Protestants are damned?
You still haven't answered any of my epistemological questions. Until you do, I shan't answer any of your objections. Can't you handle this young cockerel?
Are you saying that the four states mentioned were NOT considered Union states?
>> I apologize. Simple misunderstanding. Are you saying then, that Protestantism is apostasy? Do you really believe that Protestants are damned? <<
Apology accepted; I did think that you merely deceived by "Just for Catholics," and meant no deceit yourselves. My main point for including "/apostasy" is that the web site aims at promoting Protestantism not by displacing the Catholic faith with a "better" Protestant one, but by destroying the Catholic faith in a vague hope that once the person's Catholic faith is sufficiently undermined, they may happen to find a Protestant faith. That's just plain evil.
I do not believe all Protestants are bound for hell. I do believe that absent the surety of the one, true faith founded by Christ, Protestants must rely on the extra-ordinary graces of Christ. While that sounds harsh, I'm sure you'll recognize that ANY faith must believe that about itself, or be simply inter-religious mush. I may, however, put far more faith in those extra-ordinary graces than Mel Gibson and certain other traditionalists partly because I believe I have witnessed the Holy Spirit working amid Protestant faiths and partly because I find far greater conciliation between modern Catholic ecumenism and traditional triumphantalism; but I don't know whether what I have witnessed is signatory grace or prevening grace (i.e., signs that the person IS saved, or signs that the person is being called TO salvation.
>> You still haven't answered any of my epistemological questions. <<
I'm sorry. I haven't been dodging your questions, but trying to do the best I can with limited resources. Can you please restate which questions I have inadequately addressed?
***I do not believe all Protestants are bound for hell.***
That's the nicest thing you've ever said.
I think you are trying to reverse-engineer a defense for Luther's position, or your formation has been led by those who have. It is not a coincidence that the "Q" school, Freud, Marx, and Hegel (and even the more Catholic Heidegger) all spoke German; theirs is a natural extension of Germany's incumbent religious beliefs, which are from a very seperate culture from the Anglo-Scot-Dutch cultures that shaped America's protestant religious tradition.
The protestant "religious right" seems unaware that the protestant "religious left" comes from the same traditions as itself. (The Catholic "religious left" is more a reaction to hardships of the political and religious isolation of the industrial revolution, and the invidious, pernicious corruption introduced by the French, Mexican, and Spanish revolutions. One thing I think conservative Catholics (Thomas, Roberts, Scalia, etc.) deserve credit where they sometimes get blame is that they still understand the catholic left.)
The Catholic church held that both faith and works were signs of grace, and that they inherently led to each other. Luther rejected this. He also, like Freud, Hagel, and Marx, also rejected reason, whereas the Church Fathers defined the "catholic faith" as innately unified through reason. To Luther, reason was a stumbling block, and worked to convince Man that he was unworthy of God's love. Luther, therefore, believed that an experience of redemption, as witnessed through a healing from sinfulness, was a necessary part of the process of experiencing God's love.
It's not that he believed that sinning results directly in grace, but he believed in something close enough that he felt it necessary to clarify that point in the Small Catechism and elsewhere. It's that he felt that the temptation to sin was a result of a lack of faith and that having faith was the only issue. Luther's point, which was adopted by Freud and Hegel, was that the fear of the sin prevented the experience of grace. One shouldn't sin for the mere sake of sinning, but if fear of sinning held one back from doing what one must do to experience grace, than the person should not fear sin at all.
The problem with this is that Luther expected that the Catholic Church's religiosity was the only thing that made sinful people shameful. Destroy the source of that religiosity which he considered false, and Luther believed that you would destroy that shamefulness. In this, he was in near-perfect accord with Freud. Unfortunately, the true human condition is that we can innately be ashamed, and that the experience of greatly sinful acts can result in a state of "scandal."
"Scandal," as used here and by the Catholic Church, is a state where psychological and spiritual harm have resulted in a soul which is resistant to evanglization and accepting of the Love which is true precursor and fulfillment of both faith and works.
If you search, you will find me asserting that the sexual-abuse "scandal" of the Catholic church ("scandal," here, fulfills both the classical and modern use of the word) is nothing new. I believe firmly that Luther was reacting to sexual abuse he experienced in seminaries; In fact, since gaining such a supposition, I discovered that indeed he did reference "unspeakable horrors and perversions" which went on the seminaries, and, since he blamed them on celibacy, cannot one safely presume that such perversions were sexual in nature?
I believe that receiving such horrible, sinful, abuse made Luther incapable of successfully dealing with the rigors of celibacy, as Pope Benedict XVI and John XXIII both warned would happen if sexually unhealthy persons enter the priesthood. I further believe that what Luther needed was an experience of pure and unconditional love. I believe that what Freud could not recognize was that a fourth fixation exists, sexual fixation, and that he could not recognize it because he was in the midst of it, and that Luther, also, was sexually fixated. I believe that Luther is a very pitiable, even empathetic man, who sought only assurance that God did indeed love him, and was angry at a Church which was incapable of communicating that love to him. I believe that as a Catholic, I am compelled to believe in the possible redemption of such a man, in spite of what horrors he may have unintentionally released, and I am urgently led to pray for him by the church when we pray, as a church, for Jesus to "lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of [His] mercy." I believe that Luther was wrong, but was driven to his positions by the inadequacy and sinfulness of the representatives of His church, who are protected as a collective from proclaiming false doctrine, but not from performing unspeakable acts of wickedness.
Protestants will never shake the faith of truly spiritual Catholics with ad-hominems against the Church. As one faithful and, yes, very Catholic, church father said, "the highway to Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops."
>> That's the nicest thing you've ever said. <<
*scratches his head for a while, pausing to consider how to respond to what may have been nice, but very well may be the most left-handed comment he's ever received. Ah, here's a way:*
"Thanks. I had you in mind when I said it."
:^D Just teasing...
By the way, I was in a bit of a rush, and regrettably overlooked stating the most important comment:
Herm! Where've you been? I've missed reading your comments! It's good to hear from you.
( In the computer-based Role-playing games I regrettably got into in college, there was often a "senseii" or "liegemaster" who aided newbies in their initial forays into combat, and then typically faded into the background once the player has learned sufficient combat skills to survive. I kinda feel like you were my senseii on FR's religion forum. :^D )
LOL!
Based on your kind words last week, I thought you might be interested in this take of mine of Martin Luther, and also this seperate issue, on the battles with the French "Reformers" : http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1597455/posts?page=158#158, which was substantially modified on post #161.
It's good not to take ourselves too seriously. This IS supposed to be a FRiendly discussion. Cheers!
Now that is a thread all by itself. Problem is you see, the "germans" were all over by the that time. We usually talk about them as Normans, Lombards, etc. One of the charges that the Eastern Orthodox make (with some merit) is that the Western Christianity changed its view point after the Barbarian invasion.
If by the "Q" school, you mean literary critcism, remember that there are many Roman Catholic apologists who have embraced it. Despite the pitfals and dangers it so obviously has. It did indeed develop in Germany, but not just in the Protestant areas. Germany was not unified until late in the 1800's, and the trend to skepticism was endemnic in both the Protestant north and Catholic south. In many ways it was such things that led my great grandfathers to leave and come to America (that and the Prussian Union).
Interesting point about the reoccuring sexual scandals. Luther did hint at various things he saw in seminary, and his out right shock at what he saw in Rome of the time.
I feel that there is more to say here, but I have to go back to work. I will try to type more later.
Again, let's try this again ~ All America was divided into three parts. The Northern States ~ the Souvrn' States ~ the Border States.
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