Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
[However, I've often wondered when Paul's education under Gamaliel began in Jerusalem, and if Paul had been present during the time of Jesus' ministry on this earth.]
The scriptures answer this question.
1 Corinthians 15:
8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
No.
And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. (John 8:29 KJV)
The Father was with Jesus. The Father has not left him alone. Jesus always did the things that pleased the Father.
So are the Father and the Son the same person?
Yes or no?
or
Shorthand
N3no list
Shields UP
{!}N3no list
That is understood to mean Paul's encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road.
[That IS false witness against Roman Catholic Christians. That he believes these falsehoods does not matter.]
Interesting that you call me a slanderer when you defend the Roman Church of slanders and lies, being a former Catholic who searced the scriptures and rejected the Catholic church after reading God's word and HIS establishment of the Body of Christ, the Christian Church. Marion doctrines are heresies and I am sure that Mary herself cries for the deceived in the catholic church.
How would you define 'mysticism' in the context you use?
All major religions have "scripture" they claim inspired by God; Muslims claim that God dictated their's word for word. So this is not what makes Christianity "different."
This differentiation, or competition if you will, is not between who claims the greater inspiration or more direct composition, but who has the most truth and who teaches Truth and True God.
How then is this determined? Claimed provenance and history alone will not get you there.
Since you believe that the Father is the Son, then I'd have to declare your belief to be heresy.
Also, Jesus never lied about anything.
. So, all that is to say, that there is this observational tension that we really can not understand as humans. But, there is nothing in us that God must rely upon in order to accomplish His plan. Rather, if we weren't His tools for accomplishing His will, the Rocks themselves would cry out.I don't see the above as in conflict with anything I said or think. If the tension is such that we can't' understand it, then why can't there be an aspect which is LIKE (as I said) waiting for permission. It won't be EXACTLY like. Nothing we can articulate about God is exactly like the truth.
I think there's a truth-discerning and a spiritual problem with your discourse on merit. It comes down to picking out and seeing potential bad stuff and feeling perfectly justified in going on and on over and over again incessantly without end about how bad OTHER PEOPLE (like papists) are and the on and on, etc, about how truthful the doctrine one is advocating is. I wasn't so much talking about credit in God's reckoning as credit as we give credit in conversations such as this.
As to the condemned man, of course I'd open door B, the Jesus door. SO what follows? If a letter form the governor came, and the guy said,"Tell me more about this Jsus," I would. Then, down the road, when he'd made a commitment t Christ and started taking some responsibility for his prayer life, I might talk about devotion to Mary.
If mother of God implies that Mary preceded God it does so only to those predestined to Hell. What would be the answer to that?
I reporting on my experience as a Protestant say that from my experience, on the ground in the real world it never struck me for a minute as meaning that Mary pre-existed God. What it meant was the God is just mind-blowingly amazing. I entertained the possibility of the misconstruction you seem to fear other players, to be designated later, might make, because usually I try to understand the view of the people with whom I am talking. But when I look at reality, I just don't see it happening. After a while, you have to go with reality over conjecture.
It's like you guys don't want us to enjoy the wonder of our religion, to be exuberant about it, to scatter praise, to enjoy having our human categories blown wide open by the miraculous grace of God or to use with confidence the access to the mystery His Work gives us. You all talk about God's grace, and we talk about how there are miracles everywhere, and you all scoff at us as credulous. You say God is wonderful and powerful. WE say God is so amazingly wonderful and powerful and loving that He makes a Jewish girl the Mother of God. And you all go ballistic! When we pipe you all want to play funerals, when we mourn you all want to play Senior Prom!
You all don't "get" "courtesy titles", and that to me is one of the clearest suggestions that some Protestantism is historically and culturally conditioned, relying on printing presses and the concept of the nation state and a particular family of political theories (with most of which I happen to agree.)
One of the things that bugged me when I started going to Mass as an outside was the absence of "prayer books". Then I realized that the Church got by for more than a millennium without prayer books.
Re: the attack on the Rosary. Two things: (a) can we fight on one front, or do we have to fight the entire war in each post? (b) Duh! Yeah! I grew up not only Protestant but the kind of kid who would read his Bible under the covers with his flashlight. And the kid of kid who condemned RCs for praying the Rosary. One of the ancillary causes of my being open to Catholicism was the sense that some Protestants have that anybody who disagrees with them must be a stupid illiterate unaccustomed to reading Scripture. I don't like closed minds on any side of an argument, and am suspicious when the demonstration of the closed mind is to make ridiculously condescending statements about others.
(Yes, I AM feeling feisty this morning.)
The heart of the Rosary is NOT the repetition, it's the meditation. Also there's no trace in me of thinking I will be heard because (or in anyway secondary) to the number of Hail Mary's I say. I say them because I am already heard, not to be heard. I say them as much to listen as to speak. And I don't say the Rosary to "get" something as if I were putting a quarter in the divine slot machine.
Shall I say that every Protestant who carries a Bible to church is a hypocrite because Clintoon made a point of being oten seen with his Bible? (Of course, he just had a bible cover and the latest Playboy inside but who's counting?) YES, maybe some Catholics are trying to cook the books with God by praying Rosaries. Certainly many Protestants of my experience think the Bible, the physical concrete one(s) I have is/are a sacred object. What other book comes with zippers? (I'm red-green color-blind. Somebody once gave me a VERY nicely bound and printed red-letter Bible. I didn't even know! All the letters looked black to me ...)
My glib retort, which doesn't convey much, is that Jesus was talking about VAIN repetitions done to impress God. MY repetitions are full, not vain, and not done to impress anybody. Moving right along ...
The people who have a beef against the Catholic church have a beef against it because we believe its teachings are not biblical and its gospel is a different one than the one found in Scripture.It's a whole lot easier to think that when one doesn't learn what the teachings are and embraces (as is done a LOT on this forum, though not much by you) false, sometime grotesquely false parodies of them.
It is a show of love.
I heard that excuse in Juvenile and Domestic Relations court. YES there are some pretty snotty folks on the RC side, and I WISH they'd take a chill pill. But for ANYBODY to suggest to me that I haven't read and considered our Lord's sayings on prayer and to try to teach me those passages again at worst borders on the incredibly offensive, and at best is boring. Do you REALLY think I'm unaware of that passage and haven't had it thrown in my teeth about a kafillion times before?
I see the pictures. They may be worth 1,000 words, but even those words have to be taken in context. If we're going to take stuff out of context, I'll just get my white sheets and take American Protestantism right the heck out of context. What a silly game that would be!
I'll bet a nickel that at the humongo Marian convention (which is what I assume that big crowd is) they say Masses. A priest buddy is going to Medjugorje (I am NOT responsible for Yugoslavian spelling. If they can't decently give their villages good English names, I can't be expected to write in their "vain bibble-babble".[Twelfth Night, Shakespeare]) I'll bet he'll say a Mass every day. When I go our parish Church for Rosary, the Rosary takes 20 minutes and is followed by a mass of, say, 45 minutes. On Fridays there is a devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament - maybe 20 minutes, a Rosary, then a Mass. maybe 65 minutes for God Almighty and 20 minutes for the Rosary, which as I said, while Marian, is more Christo-centric than "Mario-centric". But no amount of evidence and context setting will help my point. This is where you all would haul out the "Eyes to see, but seeth not" stuff.
Who do YOU think put Mary on the toast? (I suspect Photoshop, but that's just me.
(Did you get my Freepmail with the joke?)
You know, Dante and Chaucer knew the world was round. I think a lot of the stuff about people thinking it was flat is a part of the "Aren't we simply marvellous?" strand of self-congratulatory thought that starts (very well) with Pico della Mirandola but doesn't hit its stride until the 19th century. I WOULD Like to know who in the west knew the world was round before we got access to the Muslim Libraries, but I bet they never forgot in Easter "Christendom".
And that second Person was God.
Q.E.D.
Did he actually say that???? Or did he just dance around the question? I can't see where he actually said that.
What say ye, former lib?
Just a simple yes or no question: Is the Father the Son? Lets make it clear, ok?
I say NO!
What say ye?
I think his attitude that he'd answered the question indicated that he had decided that "The Father is the Son."
No one has denied that the incarnate 2d person of the Godhead is God.
The question is this:
Is the Son the same person as the Father?
"However, that is not what we are discussing. We are discussing clarity in communication."
On the contrary, we are discussing clarity in teaching the theology of The Church and the Creed is exactly and precisely that. Understanding the Creed also answers your question about whether or not the Son is the Father. The very question itself is either intentional sophistry or evinces an appalling lack of understanding of basic Christian Trinitarian theology (I vote for the former).
From the most ancient extant Liturgy of The Church, the Divine Liturgy of +James:
"Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, the triple and single light of the one Godhead, that exists singly in Trinity and is divided without division. For the one God is Trinity, whose glory the heavens declare, while earth proclaims his dominion, the sea his might and every physical and immaterial creature his greatness. For to him belongs all glory, honour, might, greatness and magnificence, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages."
And from some hundreds of years later:
"God is known and understood in everything in three hypostases. He holds all things and provides for all things through His Son in the Holy Spirit; and no one of Them, wherever He is invoked, is named or thought of as existing apart or separately from the two others." +Gregory of Sinai
"Please respond to the following. Some appear afraid to do so:
"Pres Bush's policies led to a war with Iraq."
Is that as accurate as it could be? Or would you think it more clear to distinguish between Potus 41 and Potus 43?"
I don't see that a distinction between 41 or 43 would add one bit of clarity to your statement which is essentially false.
The one that agrees with me?
Just a suggestion.
Okay. maybe not.
There are those who believe that. It is clearly heresy in my book. But if that is what he believes, then we ought to show him some scriptures which indicate that it is not true.
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (Matthew 3:16-17 KJV)
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46 KJV)
LoL..
Heck no!
But the fullness of the godhead dwelt in Him (or words to that effect).
BTW, You're showing that the title is more about the Trinity than about Mary. I'm going to expedia and pricing tickets to Ephesus.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.