Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
Greetings ... Jo kus
I have already told you that the Bible tells us that the Apostles, the leaders of the Church OR the entire Church have been given that charism, not the individual.
Where do the scriptures say the the understanding of the scriptures is only given unto Christian leadership ... and not to the individual christian.
Paul says that the wisdom of God is given to the spiritual, ... as opposed to the carnal.
I believe that includes both christian organisms ... and christian individuals.
Christian individuals and organizations can be more carnal ... or more spiritual, ... and, thus closer to ... or further from God's truth.1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.Your "relationship" with God is through an invisible idea, while mine is through the medium of people and things that I can see. I personally prefer the Catholic way. Yours is too subjective and emotionally driven for me.
15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
So ... it seems that the Protestant walk ... is more of faith ... and less of sight ... like Paul's.2 Corinthians 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)In the end, the discussion of Protestant vs Catholic comes down to "who is the final authority"? Myself or the Church? The Bible is not the final authority because it is a book subject to interpretation. God no doubt knows this and certainly doesn't place man as the final authority. Thus, we see Christ forming a leadership that WOULD be guided. This is all Scriptural. Individual bible reading is NOT.
I don't believe that you can find scripture which indicates that individual Bible study is not led by the Holy Spirit.
I would say that any study (whether corporate or individual) which is pursued by the spiritual ... will reveal the truth of God.
Whatever study is pursued by those with carnal hearts ... will seem to reveal whatever those carnal hearts desire.
That's not quite correct. In supplement to my recent answer to this, I would note that I chose my words very carefully, as any good blood-sucking lawyer would do. :) I said that we all pray "about" things we are sure of. I didn't say we pray "for" those things. My point was to illustrate that prayer is much more than supplication.
Where do the scriptures say the the understanding of the scriptures is only given unto Christian leadership ... and not to the individual christian.
It is implied everywhere! For example, the Pastorals clearly tell us that the Apostle Paul had left Timothy and Titus as leaders of their respective communities with the warrant to protect the "traditions once given". It is also in John's epistles, Jude, and Peter. The author of Hebrews tells us also to obey our leaders. Since the Scriptures were part and parcel of the teachings of the Apostles, we can assume that this included the proper interpretation of Scriptures. St. Irenaeus makes it a major theme in "Against Heresies" vs. the Gnostics.
I am certainly not saying that we, as Christians, cannot interpret or read Scriptures. Heaven's forbid! However, when we look to CORRECT interpretation (when the various factions of the community disagree on interpretations), the community looks to the leaders to give the definitive reading. Does that not make sense?
So ... it seems that the Protestant walk ... is more of faith ... and less of sight ... like Paul's.
Clearly, you are not considering that the Sacraments are based entirely on faith! Do you think that when I see a piece of bread and a cup of wine that I naturally SEE Jesus? It is based ENTIRELY on faith, brother! I realize that God works through nature to show Himself, culminating in the "showing" of a Man in the flesh. The Church of the incarnation is visible and utilizes natural elements - bread, wine, oil, water, rituals, etc...This is all based on faith, because we don't SEE the granting of graces. The sacraments are based on faith!
Regards
Where do the scriptures say the the understanding of the scriptures is only given unto Christian leadership ... and not to the individual christian.
It is implied everywhere! For example, the Pastorals clearly tell us that the Apostle Paul had left Timothy and Titus as leaders of their respective communities with the warrant to protect the "traditions once given". It is also in John's epistles, Jude, and Peter. The author of Hebrews tells us also to obey our leaders. Since the Scriptures were part and parcel of the teachings of the Apostles, we can assume that this included the proper interpretation of Scriptures. St. Irenaeus makes it a major theme in "Against Heresies" vs. the Gnostics.
I am certainly not saying that we, as Christians, cannot interpret or read Scriptures. Heaven's forbid! However, when we look to CORRECT interpretation (when the various factions of the community disagree on interpretations), the community looks to the leaders to give the definitive reading. Does that not make sense?
So ... it seems that the Protestant walk ... is more of faith ... and less of sight ... like Paul's.
Clearly, you are not considering that the Sacraments are based entirely on faith! Do you think that when I see a piece of bread and a cup of wine that I naturally SEE Jesus? It is based ENTIRELY on faith, brother! I realize that God works through nature to show Himself, culminating in the "showing" of a Man in the flesh. The Church of the incarnation is visible and utilizes natural elements - bread, wine, oil, water, rituals, etc...This is all based on faith, because we don't SEE the granting of graces. The sacraments are based on faith!
Regards
Yes, and I agree with that. I suppose it's like the Lapsarian debate. On one level, it is pointless, but on another it can be intellectually stimulating and edifying spiritually. As long as one's head does not explode, you know, in the bad way.
It doesn't matter, to pray means to solicit, beseech, supplicate...when we pray we pray because we want something, even if it is simply to be heard or acknowledged.
My objection was why pray if you believe God has predetermined everything and all. If you are predestined to hell, no prayer will help you avoid it. If you are destined to heaven, no prayer will change that either. And since you are certain of your resurrection and salvation, aren't you just making mindless repetitions with prayers?
So, why not just say "Thy will be done" and be done with praying, FK? No need to repeat it as if God didn't hear you the first time; as if He needs to hear you! He knows what you feel in your heart, so why don't the Refromed just go about their lives and not bother God with prayers? The end result is the same.
Here is where I get really self-righteous. That stuff irritates me. The only pastoral privilege I'd holds to is the undisputed right to a nap Sunday afternoon. The privilege is to serve God's people.
Yes, of course it is a privilege to serve God's people in a position of leadership. I was really just talking about the style and substance of any particular Sunday sermon. Should it be Peter this week, or should it be John? That's all. No order comes down to our pastors as to what to teach when. We like it that way. In our system, the visible governor for the privileged is (to a large degree) the laity of the church. The invisible is God.
P.S. - Glad to hear the lamb turned out OK and that you didn't make the 6 o'clock news for what you had to do to save it. :)
The Scriptures are full of references to God and Messiah being One. I've been reading John 14 lately, in various versions (pick any one), and seeing in this Gospel account of Christ's Own Words (from the Father: the Father's Very Word) perfect pictures of the Trinity - the One God Who Reveals and Joins Himself to us in Three Forms, amen.
7"If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."8Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."
9Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
10"Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.
11"Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.
12"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.
13"Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14"If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.
15"If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
16"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
18"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
19"After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.
20"In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
21"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him."
22Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, "Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?"
23Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.
24"He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.
25"These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you.
26"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
For this reason we also, from the day we heard of it, have not ceased to pray and make [special] request for you, [asking] that you may be filled with the full (deep and clear) knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom [in comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God] and in understanding and discernment of spiritual things--That you may walk (live and conduct yourselves) in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him and desiring to please Him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work and steadily growing and increasing in and by the knowledge of God [with fuller, deeper, and clearer insight, acquaintance, and recognition].
~Colossians 1:9-10
We were talking about +Paul, not +John. John's Gospel was written way, way after +Paul's Epistles, at the end of the 1st century by someone who knew his theology (and Greek) quite well (and not very likely an illiterate fisherman from Galilee), and when Christianity was no longer a Jewish sect of +Paul's time, but a separate religion of the Gentiles.
Prayer is a very complex issue that is difficult to discuss on a forum like this. Do a study on prayer and you'll find there are many, many reasons and purposes to pray and what we should pray for. However, I would submit that we pray not because we want something, but that we want to know what is the Father's will for us.
There is only one instance that God commanded us "thus you should pray" and there is but one Prayer that He gives us to pray. That Prayer is pure supplication, because the Jews believed that prayers do change outcomes (cf Isa 38:5), and to a Jew and to Orthodox Christians, prayers make sense.
My point was based on the flawed Reformed theology of double predestination which makes any prayer a useless repetition, because prayers in a doubly predestined world cannot change the outcome God predestined.
What exactly is your point in that context?
Not because we want something...but that we want to know...? That's rather brilliantr, HD, to not want and want all in one breath.
Yous selectively cut and distorted the rest of my sentence which said that "we pray because we want something even if it is simply to be heard or acknowledged".
Who says you are entitled or able to know what the Father's will is for us? As a Reformed Christian you believe that whatever you do is the Father's will 24/7/365 (as we have no free will of our own), so how can you talk about you "wanting" to know what His will is for you? Robots don't want, HD.
Christ gave us one Prayer and He said "this is how we should pray." That prayer blesses God's name, establishes complete submission to God's will, petitions God to give us bread, to forgive us when we have forgiven others, and not to lead us into temptation [which is an interesting and provocaive verse if you think about it!], but to rescue us from the Evil One [which is also an interesting cocnept vis-a-vis Protestant concept of 'salvation"].
We don't know (does He tell us?), but He is not driven by possibilities, or uncertainties is He?
You don't know how people get into Heaven??? You don't know if He tells us??? I know you too well to take this at surface level, so I'll just ask you to please elaborate. :) I might disagree with the theology of your answer, but I would expect you to have an answer. What would you tell a newcomer if he asked you how people get to go to Heaven? Peter tells us that people like you and me should be able to hit this one out of the park! :)
As to Him being "driven" by possibilities or uncertainties, I really don't even know what you mean by this. In Matthew we are told that "with God, all things are possible". We are not told "with God all possible things happen." In our reality, how do you suppose that the infinitely possible is whittled down to the actual real?
FK: "Do we pass a test and then God is obligated to let us in?"
No, because that would subject God to necessity. Anyway, He would already know our test scores before we took the test, so it would not be a choice, would it? :)
But under the Apostolic view, (or at least the Latin view), of Biblical predestination God already DOES know our test scores and "predestines" on that basis. That is why it seems to me that under your view man must first pass a test before God acts by obligation. Under your view, does God NOT elect any man whom He foresees passes the test? Of course not because God is impartial. Therefore, for you God is obligated to elect those He foresees accepting Him and performing requisite works, etc.
Was there a choice or just His will? He willed Himself to die; He didn't "choose" to die as if there was an alternative, was there?
Of course there was a choice, but it was made LONG before Christ decided to surrender Himself at the Mount of Olives. God did not HAVE to create, but He chose to. God did not HAVE to create man in His image such that he COULD fall, but He chose to. God did not HAVE to provide a remedy for lost man, but He chose to. We could go on forever here. For God to HAVE will, He must have and EXERCISE choice. Otherwise, God is more like a robot, as Hosepipe said.
FK: "I find it odd that you are denying free will to God."
Not His will, only His need to choose.
Nobody is placing a "need" upon God. Do you think that choice requires need? It does not. I choose which talking heads to watch every night, but there is no "need" involved. I don't think there is an argument there. I still think that if you deny choice to God, like you believe He gave us, then you deny Him free will, like you believe He gave us. It seems like under your view, God gave man a lot more rights than He gave Himself. :)
To will something is not necessarily the same to choose.
YES IT IS! :) This is because the "willer" did not will something else, including willing nothing at all. It was a choice.
When God said "Let there be light" was He choosing? Or was He willing?
He was willing to choose to create light vs. willing to choose to not create light. He chose to create light.
A choice requires a decision and a decision requires a will. Clearly, a decision and a choice are subordinate to will. God's will is not subordinate to anything.
What? :) How is this mini-hierarchy relevant to anything? God's will IS supreme. And, choice is subordinate. However, by definition, God's will CANNOT operate if there is no choice. That is, if we assume that God's will is truly FREE.
Over on ABOVETOPSECRET.COM
there’s a retired military fellow . . . forget what branch . . . Air Force maybe . . . who had been raised a military brat and used to run around on this one base all the time as a teen with his buddies.
After retiring, he’d heard through the grapevine that this particular base had built a big detention facility on ‘the back 40.’ There was greatly increased security but he knew the base like the back of his hand, including all the back roads etc. So he went exploring successfully. Sure enough, there was the big new detention facility just where it had been rumored to be.
God have mercy on those clueless half-hearted sorts and . . . help them practice saying NO to the chip unto martyrdom for Jesus given it looks like so many are determined to be LEFT BEHIND.
However . . . .
There are Scriptures about God’s
LONGSUFFERING NATURE. And, some other Scriptures speak of God waiting . . .
I don’t think we can well wrap our minds around God . . . much less God AND HIS TIMELESSNESS . . . in the midst of this, our FINITENESS.
But clearly we are the ones who are to wait . . . on The Lord.
Where do you speak of the lamb, Mad Dawg?
I gather there were complications? Am sure you were merciful and skillful.
God be with you, Bro.
[At first I typoed . . . Fog be with you. But I wish that only for the strident atheists . . . sort of]
I have long had a hypothesis . . .
that BARRING OTHER CONTINGENCIES we may not be aware of in our finiteness . . . when
COMPLEXITY
and
. . . KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING, IQ . . .
reach certain levels, CHOICE INCREASES DRAMATICALLY.
And, it’s interesting that the animals God sanctions eating . . . sheep, chickens, cows . . . are NOT the brightest fur and feathers around.
CERTAINLY GOD HAS INFINITE OPTIONS.
He is NOT His own restricted, constipated, straightjacketed robot—enslaved to His own programming!!!
Of course, I’ve long LOVED OPTIONS. But I discern and have observed, God loves Options, too . . . at least . . . in many respects.
Certainly there is one way to The Father—Jesus The Christ.
And, THE LOVE WAY is THE WAY in daily life.
However, look at the diversity in CREATION . . . in humans . . . in a single human. God loves diversity, options, . . . and . . . “CHOOSE THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE.”
At some point, the philosophical conundrum about an all knowing God beyond time not having choice is just silly to me, even in my finiteness.
I may not understand how or all the dimensions and contingencies about an all knowing God having choices . . . but I do understand that HE IS A LOT BIGGER than to have NONE!
Do you want the Father to hear you or do you want to hear the Father?
As a Reformed Christian you believe that whatever you do is the Father's will 24/7/365 (as we have no free will of our own), so how can you talk about you "wanting" to know what His will is for you? Robots don't want, HD.
Because I would rather have most of my prayers being answered than having them being rejected. It would illustrate to me that I must have serious problems.
We are robot...we will obey...
Back there somewhere I wrote
It used to just amaze me. I mean I get thrilled when I pull a lamb -- and once, this is cool, I had one that wasn't breathing, tongue blue and lolling out. I held it so that I knew the airway was open and breathed into its mouth - no lip-lock necessary, D.G., and watches as its tongue turned pink and then finally it started breathing - and ten minutes later was on the teat doing what comes naturally.
I helped deliver my daughter, and then I had to give her injections. After that I got my flock of sheep, and giving them injections and doing ovine obstetrics was not half so scary.It can sometimes be pretty involved, as in, "Hmm, is this a front leg or a back leg .... okay, it's a front leg, where's the other one? Now, can I pull on both legs AND keep the head from flopping back?" Of course one thing we don't tell the non-shepherds is that on some cold nights you thank good that the womb of a ewe is nice and warm and comfortable on the hand.
And when you pull a lamb and it breathes and bleats and you put it in front of mama's face and she begins to clean it off and they talk to each other. Man, THAT is living! But my point which I lost was that to have the incredible privilege of being there when one of God's lambs starts breathing and bleating and talking to God, it's pretty amazing.
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