| St. Peter and Rome |
 |
| 11/15/04 |
Posted on 10/27/2006 8:14:39 PM PDT by Salvation
| St. Peter and Rome |
|
| 11/15/04 |
How utterly stupid it is to say that to be admitted into the Kingdom of God after death of the body, you have to have contributed to the extinction of mankind and lack of new body for souls that must be born. I can see why the church is shot through with homosexuality; for the reductio ad absurdum of homosexuality is the same result.
It also means that, if your husband or wife is an unbeliever, you have the right to divorce them.
It is the word of God that I cited.
How great is the arrogance and lack of understanding of those who think that scripture means that to be saved you must take vows of poverty and chastity.
The Church does not tech that monasticism is the only way of salvation, although it is the surest way (Lk 14:26). She teaches that in order to be a disciple of Jesus and so to teach others, you must have consecrated life (Lk 14:26).
I don't know that I'd say vows are the surest way. And wouldn't it be variable, depending how attracted and attractive you are the opposite sex, and sadly, now the same sex?
But if vows of chastity are the surest way, the individual certainly has that within his power to take and hold to.
You consecrate your life and you do it by your choices in life. All individuals have that sovereignty by virtue of God. You don't ask any agency, you simply work that in you life, choosing to seek the Kingdom of God, and all you need is added to you, and your life is consecrated. Or else the word has no meaning.
As you work toward belief and faith, you will find others on the same path and come together. You attend a church. If you don't like the church, you go to another. And with you goes every ounce of your personal relationship with God.
Look at it like a town. If you don't like the town you vote with your feet and move. While you're there, the town has jurisdiction over you. But it has only temporary and limited jurisdiction, so long as you're there and over nobody not there.
It really has no real and lasting authority because you can leave at any time since you are self sufficient.
God gives each of us our own souls and spirits, and has made promises to us, as individuals based on our individual choice to seek Him.
Even though most of us like to gather in groups to walk our paths, we are self sufficient according to the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, in our way to find the Father and salvation by doing things only an individual can do. And this happens to be exactly what the church says it has the authority to do for us.
It can have no such authority. It would be a dramatic scriptual crisis; the scriptures gives individuals by clear and unambiguous scripture the way to salvation, those who will choose it, and only by torturous gerrmandering does the Catholic church claim that power over men.
This is like saying, "I'm going to build a wall for you, and, since you have the tools, you lay the block."
You know, I read it for a third time, and I don't understand how your thoughts relate to the scripture in view. Are they supposed to?
You quote scripture. Then you tell me what the scripture means, not by your testimony but by the church's, who has taught you those things. Another person, not under the influence of preconditioned beliefs, would not read the church's interpretation into it.
Therefore, the church's scriptural interpolation is not sovereign in and of itself, or else who could gainsay it? This is what you quote me.
Further, if God were to intend to establish a church that can judge the souls of men to exalt some up to Heaven or cast others down to Hell by its election, and specify how they shall worship and to whom they have to seek sovereign guidance in all matters of the worship, He would have specified it PLAINLY in scripture, so there could be no dissent.
I'm giving you reasons that I reject the meaning of those scriptures.
There can be no church (as to say, no collective or artificial person made of human beings) as it describes itself. I gave reasons why.
Those reasons lead to a scriptural conflict, which I described.
And I ended with an analogy of how the church stands on spiritual salvation of an individual.
You give me musings of yours that do not relate to the scripture in any way. You are welcome to try again, better.
A while ago on another thread I said that I was wasting my time, that you couldn't hear me nor understand what I say because you are completely invested in your conditioning.
On this thread, you challenge me again. I indulged you my time to discuss it with you, right down to the level of one-liners, and you have proved my point. You have ears, yet you don't hear and you have eyes, yet you don't see.
I have shown you in clear syllogisms that, according to Natural law, God's law and scriptural precept, the church you have invested your soul into can't possibly, under any conceivable cover, have the authority it claims.
You can't accept it. I knew you couldn't. I'll go as long as you like. You are certainly wasting your time and digging your hole deeper; will you continue to waste mine?
Yes I have. You refuse to comprehend them. This is why you reason not from scripture but from your social anticlerical prejudice.
Therefore there is no scripture you can quote that can mean what the church claims it means. The testimony to that is the labored and torturous ways these bits of scripture are treated to wring a preconceived meaning from them.
AND, if that were not enough, if these fragments of scripture assigned the Catholic church the authority it claims to have, that would create a scriptural crisis, and I explained that, too.
Would you like me to transport previously posted logic so you can read it again?
You can't refute the clear reasoning, and you can't explain the reasoning that underlies the interpretation you have learned from the church because yours is blind acceptance.
When faced with actual performance of argument, you are immobilized, not only out of inability to think beyond your conditioning, but out of the sheer fact that the scriptures do not infact mean what the church says they mean.
Will you continue to waste my time and your time? I will continue to press my points as long as you like.
This is not how theology is made. I gave you the scripture. Please argue from scripture and history. Syllogisms about natural law are fun thing to argue about, but the issue is theological. What you are doing is, you are injecting a bourgeois 18-20cc individualistic mentality into the teaching of the 2,000 year old Church, and, of course, you say: This cannot be. I hear you, -- I am a product of 20c myself. But our social instincts are irrelevant to what Christ teaches.
I don't care about your reasoning. I have a clear scripture that explains the authority of the Church. Rather than reasoning around it, you have an obligation as a Christian to obey it, even more so if you claim, as a Protestant, to go by scripture alone.
Scripture says things. It is clear. The Kingdom of God is within each individual, giving them the authority, each one, to take their salvation therefrom.
The church, like any other organization, can only get the authority that its members can consent to give it. It has no authority beyond that. The scriptures are clear, and reasoning from the scriptures is compelling.
You only make your argument because you are invested in the church and have chosen to depend on it for your salvation. As such, it is your salvation, because your choice gives it that power, over you, and no one else.
Scripture, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, clearly gives each individual the means, exclusively, to their salvation through faith and belief. No church is needed, therefore no church can have the authority you claim; it has been otherwise assigned. Every passage of scripture bears witness to that either explicitly or implicitly.
The statement of Jesus, saying the the Kingdom of God is within, alone, with no other scripture, assigns that authority to the individual and no church pronouncements otherwise can prevail against it.
The verses in Matthew 16 and 18 are clear scripture giving the Church as an organization headed by Peter authority over spiritual matters, including access to the Kingdom of Heaven.
I already pointed out to you that the notion of the Kingdom of Heaven being inside the individual cannot be used to disprove the other gospel, because it is not described as exclusively an internal matter.
The rest is your speculative thinking.
I see one that has an interpretation impressed on it that is inconsistent with he rest of the scriptures.
This is not arguable.
I have no idea what you're trying to say. If the Kingdom of God is within an individual, that is all that is needed for the individual, and that individual is the only one who can reach it for himself.
This sole scripture completely leaves out the church as any kind of authority outside the consent of its own membership.
It is not a "notion", unless all the other things Jesus said plainly and clearly are "notions", including your perceived meaning of Matthew, which, by the way is not rendered likewise on any other Gospel.
The Catholic is certainly free to regulate the ones who consent to its authority. Beyond that it is powerless.
Has my statement that it is a waste of time trying to reason with invested Catholic come true yet? You have a bull in your bedroom. It does no good to deny it is there.
Does Matthew 18 provide a sequence of resolving arguments that ends with the Church as the highest authority or not?
Since the scripture is God's word inspired, if God had intended that kind of assignation of authority of His own and His Son's sovereignty, it would be there using no uncertain wording, clear and unambiguous and unarguable.
The majority of the New Testament advises individuals There is no scriptural basis for any intention Jesus had of creating a central, all powerful church that interprets God's word to the people, judges the spiritual condition of the people and determines the spiritual destination of anyone.
Not only does Matthew, or any other scripture, makes any church the highest authority, but it is not possible. The authority had been assigned elsewhere: the individual, for himself.
Cognratulations. You just refused to read the Gospel because you don't like what is says.
if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican. 18 Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.
Incidentally, why are we doing this on the St. Peter and Rome thread, when I posted On Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition that specifically and systematically addresses the question of church authority?
I can't reconcile the impression you, probably the church as the source, put on scripture. Do you know scripture pretty well beyond what the church bears down on?
Show me, in the scripture you posted, where is there any indication that Paul is referring to a all powerful central church. This passage of scripture is a fragment of Paul's advice on how to handle a fellow believer's sin and transgression. Note that Paul says go first to the trespasser yourself, then bring two to help you and then ask help of the fellows of the local church of believers.
The bound and loose reference in this case obviously refers to the transgressor. This is the old spiritual law we've seen before. Cast bread on the water and it''ll return sevenfold, kill with the sword and be killed with the sword, and other ways of saying I don't call to mind right now.
You'll be called to account for your words, and deeds, each one, a record of which will be remembered in the judgment of your soul. The Eastern religions refer to it as "karma", used with reincarnation, but the same principle.
Notice that Paul is talking about a behavior of general Christian believers who have a quarrel, the word "you" refers to generally to those same people should they transgress.
This is consistent with the rest of the Gospels, and Paul, which and whom taught to individual people the way, performed entirely by the individual, capable of being done only by an individual, to salvation.
Only by ignoring the rest of the Gospels, Acts and letters can you impress such an interpretation on this fragment of scripture.
As I mentioned in a post some while back, the way the Catholic church looks on the scriptures is consistent with it's importance, the scriptures seen as the foundation for a corporate rule.
From the words and the clear meaning of the scriptures, the authority of spiritual salvation, the worthiness of one's soul for salvation, the presence of one's name in the Book, the rewards for faith and belief, the location of the Kingdom, is assigned to each individual for himself. None can do it for you; only you.
That it is a nature of human beings to do this in groups, called churches, magnifying the "two or more" promise by Christ, satisfying our gregariousness, and learning from the testimony of others, is quite beside the point.
Any such organization is created by the people, given power by the people choosing at each moment to submit to the organization's agreed upon guidelines and behavior commanded by scripture itself, exist only as long as there are people belonging to it at their election.
No such human organization creates itself, and God certainly did not create it, only the need of people to worship together, God being present if He is called by the hearts of individuals thereof by their own choice. And, if a government, by the leaders, at their choice.
This is the way God's works, from my observation and reading. He knows each sparrow, and each hair on each head. He is available to each individual in prayer, the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, and He allows salvation to come to the each individual.
No gatekeeper church that I can see. of course, the Catholic church, via you, see it differently. It has much to lose in wealth and power, for its power is the people who believe in it.
You mean St. Matthew, Chapter 18.
The passage simply says that the decision of the Church is binding on the disputants on earth and in heaven. This is the literal meaning.
Now it is fair to ask, is the reference to the local church or to the universal Church? The answer is, obviously, both. The disputants naturally have to address the dispute in some local venue, so it is local. But the decision that local church makes is binding in Heaven. Now, unless you are going to argue that there is a separate Heaven for every disputant, we have to conclude from this passage alone that the decision of the local church is uniform to every local church, and that means powerful central Church present as the background for the decision.
There is other scripture that indicates that the Church has hierachical structure:
if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you. 16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ. 17 For this cause have I sent to you Timothy, who is my dearest son and faithful in the Lord; who will put you in mind of my ways, which are in Christ Jesus; as I teach every where in every church. 18 As if I would not come to you, so some are puffed up. 19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will: and will know, not the speech of them that are puffed up, but the power. 20 For the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power. 21 What will you? shall I come to you with a rod; or in charity, and in the spirit of meekness?(1 Cor 4)
12 For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body
[...]
26 And if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it; or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member. 28 And God indeed hath set some in the church; first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly doctors; after that miracles; then the graces of healing, helps, governments, kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all doctors?
(1 Cor 12)
Any such organization is created by the people, given power by the people choosing at each moment to submit to the organization's agreed upon guidelines and behavior commanded by scripture itself, exist only as long as there are people belonging to it at their election.
This is scripturally incorrect. The authority of the Church comes from Christ, not form the assembly of believers:
I will build my churchI'd like to focus on the scripture and the question of Church authority, but if you need to discuss my personality, or what other scripture I know, let's do it later. I can generally say that as a Catholic I do not make the distinction between Church and scripture as scripture is a product of the Church (On Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition).(Matthew 16:18)
1 Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries of God. 2 Here now it is required among the dispensers, that a man be found faithful. 3 But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you, or by man's day; but neither do I judge my own self. 4 For I am not conscious to myself of any thing, yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me, is the Lord.
(1 Cor 4)
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