Posted on 01/24/2007 8:41:04 AM PST by Joseph DeMaistre
Well said!
Are you absolutely certain you are Catholic? :)
And yet God allowed the likes of the Pharisees to manipulate His word and decieve the Jewish nation. (For a time)
Realy? When did God allow that? If the Jewish nation was decieved, where did the prophets come from? I think maybe you need to go back and study some more about the nature of God. God has always provided a way for people to hear the truth. some reject it, some do not. But there has never been a time where God kept himself hidden from mankind. Nor has there ever been a time where he allowed man to be deceived. God cannot deceive nor be deceived, no matter how much you or anyone else need to believe that it is so.
Certainly God's providence operates despite - even through - the actions of men who choose to exercise their God-given free will in evil ways.
Consider Pharaoh and Moses.
Because even St. Paul, one of the staunchest proponents of "sola scriptura" in his day, got knocked on his behind and saw the light.
Certainly God's providence operates despite - even through - the actions of men who choose to exercise their God-given free will in evil ways.
Exactly. which is why this arguement is starting to get down right silly. There have always been sinners. There have always been evil people in places of authority, be it Churches,government, etc. It will continue to be so until Christ returns and sets up His Kingdom. And yet here we all are, regardless of whether or not we are Protestant or Catholic, for the most part, the most important things that we need to know about Christ we all generally agree on. And yet, we will find any little, or big, difference to argue about, instead of focusing on what we do agree on. For the record, I was raised Baptist and became Catholic as an adult. But for as long as I can remember I have been a Christian. And I will say something else, there are a lot of misconceptions on both sides of this debate about one another and what each of us believes. Just because one Pope, or maybe many, did evil things, does not mean every member of the Catholic Church is evil. And just because some, or many Protestant leaders have done evil things does not mean all Protestants are evil. And I get really tired of seeing people paint religions with such a broad brush. The fact of the matter is, all of these groups are made up of individuals, and individuals sin.
(2 Thessalonians 2:11 KJV) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
(Luke 8:10 KJV) And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.
(Matthew 11:25 KJV) At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
I have it on good authority that you are older than me. IIRC, when you were in high school, they hadn't yet invented fire.
"Well said!
Are you absolutely certain you are Catholic? :)"
Since birth.
Actually, since before birth, since God knew me when he planted me in the womb.
You too.
Catholicism isn't a nationality.
We do not have to defend the "honor" of the Church.
The Church is the visible body of Christ on Earth.
God can defend Himself.
One of the ways He has been forced to defend Himself when the Devil irrupted too strongly into His Church and grabbed The Power of The Keys to do wretched evil, was by allowing His Church to divide over against itself, and thereby force the Church to purify the sin within. The Counterreformation and Trent were the purging of the Devil from the command of so many of the Sees of the Church.
Without Luther and Zwingli, Calvin and Huss, would that have been possible?
Probably.
But it would have taken other men to do the same thing.
The end result was not an unqualified victory for God. The Church divided. The South, Catholic, purified itself. The North, Protestant, splintered into national sects (and subsects) each of which sought a pure doctrinal code. The overall effect of the Wars of the Reformation was to kill millions of people and mightily disgust the vast majority of people, thereby weakening the willingness to tolerate the real power of faith over people both north and south.
The net result of the Wars of the Reformation was not simply a purer Catholic Church and pure distilled Protestantism in the north. It was enlightenment values and the ultimate triumph of rationalism and secularism, with the steady and systematic decline of Christianity in the West that continues to this day.
So, when in 2007 Catholics and Protestants take up the banners of those old murderers Pope Leo and Martin Luther, I see all too clearly that the chief benefactor is not Christ but the Devil.
And I say: STOP IT.
But, of course, I have no authority whatever, so I may as well piss into the wind.
Um... the Church preceded Moses and the Prophets?
Truth is, there were centuries of ground work laid before the Church was founded at Pentecost, otherwise the teachings of Jesus would have been largely indiscernible to his hearers. He often referenced Scripture and Characters well-known and highly esteemed by those who heard Him - pulling together the teachings of Moses and the Prophets into a coherent, unified doctrine.
I understand your frustration. It is certainly true, as you say, that "there have always been evil people in places of authority, be it Churches, government, etc." No organization of man is immune from this reality. The reason that many non-Catholics beat the drum so loudly on this issue relative to the RCC is because of the claims it makes. It claims to the the one, holy, apostolic church, and considers its traditions and teachings infallible, equal authority with the Bible.
If it weren't for the fact that such claims belie the abuses that parallel this church for the entirety of its existence, non-Catholics would find no reason to dredge up this history. So long as these claims are made by this church, there will be a chorus of detractors pointing out the hypocrisy of its claims.
2 Thessalonians 2:11 KJV) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
Nice try. Now go back and read the verse before and after and see what the "cause" is.
2 Thess. 2:10 (from the NKJV) ...and with all unreightousness deception among "those" (quotations mine) who perish, because "they" did not receive the truth, that "they" might be saved. 11: and for this reason God will send "them" strong delusion, that "they" should believe the lie, 12: that "they" all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
I said there has never been a time when God kept himself hidden from mankind nor allowed mankind to be deceived.This verse proves my point. It says they did not receive the love of truth, which means they were shown the love of truth, therefore God did hide himself from them. The "they" in this verse is "those who perish," those who "did not believe the truth", those who "had pleasure in unrighteousness", again showing that God did not hide himself from them but that they chose not to believe, again making my point. And the "they" these passages are referring to would hardly be considered all mankind.
Deeply mystic Catholics would tell you that the Church is but the Temple, with the sacrifices of the Old Covenant replaced by The Sacrifice of the New Covenant, and with the kohanite priesthood replaced, by God Himself, by the priests of the apostolic succession.
So, when you read of the Temple of David and of Solomon, and the refounding of the Temple, that is the Catholic Church you are reading of. Those were the priests of the Church. The Church IS the Temple. Once Jesus died and was resurrected, the OLD blood rites ceased to have any meaning or effect, and God destroyed the physical building of the Temple and scattered the old priesthood. But there has only been one Temple of God since Moses' tabernacle. It was in the desert with Moses and in the tent with David. It was in the stone edifice of Solomon, scattered in the Babylonian Exile, and rededicated with Ezra. The kohanite priesthood was replaced by the priests of the Apostolic Succession, by Jesus, and the blood rites of the old sacrifice were replaced by the new blood rite of the human sacrifice, of Jesus, in the covenant sealed by him, in the species of water, wine and bread.
But it's all just one Temple. The seat of the Temple went from the desert to Jerusalem, then was shattered and spread to all the Earth as the Kingdom of God. The center of GOVERNANCE of the Temple, where the High Priest (the Pope) and the Sanhedrin (the Curia) sit is Rome, but whereas the Jerusalem Temple was the only appropriate place for the blood sacrifice, in the Kingdom of God instituted by Jesus under the New Covenant, the altars of sacrifice are whereever in the world two or more are gathered in his name and invoke the Holy Spirit, and have the Priests of the Apostolic Succession - the neo-Aaronite and Levite priesthood - to perform the sacrifice.
This is why the Judaism of the Temple was so very different from the Judaism of the synagogue since the destruction of the Temple. When the old Temple was up, the religion was not about texts, it's core was the blood sacrifices of the priesthood. That is still true. The blood sacrifice of Jesus, in the body and the blood of the Mass, and the other sacraments, are THE direct access to God. This is through the consecrated priesthood, as it has been since Moses, Aaron and the tabernacle. It remains so. The center of Templar Judaism was not the Torah, it was the sacrifices of the altar. The sacrifices never ended. That is what happens, still, at the Mass, in unbroken succession back to Aaron's sacrifice, renewed by Jesus'.
What happened in the synagogue is what happens in the Protestant Churches. The deep study of the Word on its own.
What has been lost is the tie between synagogue and Temple.
Protestants think the Temple is destroyed and there is only the synagogue. But they are wrong. The Temple remains and the sacrifices continue, every day, many times of day, in blood and body, as they have since the time of Aaron and Moses.
That's what a Catholic mystic would say.
Everyone else would be free to ignore him, of course.
Excellent example of a non sequitor. What does Paul's Damascus Road experience have to do with sola scriptura?
HUh?
I also am grateful: RC priests on Prager's Religion on the Line years ago always said yes to the question "Is Jesus God?"; I was never quit certain as to how a protestant would answer.
As anyone not a Jew is a Gentile; it seems any who claim to be a Christian who is not C is considered a P; even if they deny fundamentals of the Reformation.
The Bible is so clear that we are to kneel to none but Christ, and that Christ has already paid for our sins in total, once for all time.
Yes to the power of the lazy 8.
There is absolutely nothing for us to do but Phil 2:12-13; dare not a single soul who claims to be in Christ separate 13 from 12.
the "you" in this verse is the disciples, he also in the previous verse says "He who has ears to hear, let them hear!" Again this verse proves that God does not hide himself from mankind.
because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
again hid from the wise, but not the babes.
I will not argue with this point. However, since there are at least 2 sides to this arguement, then you have to agree that the "other side" believes essentially the same thing. Otherwise, we would not be on here arguing. The fact is, both sides believe that they are the ones who are right and that they belong to the "right" church. Anyone on here who is married can understand this perfectly. When a married couple argues, both of them are right! And neither is willing to back down! :)
So it is not just the Catholic Church that claims to be the "one", every church group believes that, else people wouldn't belong to that particular church.
What happened when they did not believe the truth? What did God do?
But hidden, nonetheless.
"It claims to the the one, holy, apostolic church, and considers its traditions and teachings infallible, equal authority with the Bible."
Actually, the Catholic Church considers the Bible to be one of its sacred traditions. The holiest things in Catholicism are the Seven Sacraments, instituted by God - the sacrifices and signs of the New Covenant.
The Protestant Churches consider the Bible to be the holiest thing in Catholicism.
To return to Jewish "types", Catholics are the Sadduccees - the party of the priestly temple. Protestants are Pharisees - the party of the synagogue. Of course these analogies are completely imperfect and inadequate, but they can shed some light on just how far the real differences in actual faith lie.
Catholics believe that the holiest thing that a man can do is to practice the holy sacrifice at the altar. Offering up the body and blood of Jesus and eating it is literally eating God, direct, literal PHYSICAL communion with God. This is the priest sacrificing the bull on the altar and spreading its blood on the altar horns, pouring the rest out onto the ground, and placing the fat on the bronzed grate to make a sweet smelling offering to the lord, with incense and miter. Look at the accouterments and behavior of the priests and altar assistants/deacons a Catholic High Mass, and read Leviticus, and it will smack you in the face that you are looking at the Temple sacrifice being performed still. And then you will understand what Catholics are about. Like some of the Jews of Jesus' day (like his mother and father, for instance, who took him to Jerusalem, offered up their firstborn to the priest and redeemed him with the prescribed birds which were then sacrificed), the Temple rites ARE the covenant. THAT is what expiates the sin of Israel, then and now. When the Catholic priest cries out, at certain masses of the year: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is One!", he is in fact reciting the Shema, the holy prayer of Deuteronomy, said by every devout Jew on waking and on sleeping and once more during the day. "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad." Peter, John, James, Andrew, Paul...these men were JEWS, devout Jews. Jews of the TEMPLE. The Catholic rites were not just made up. If you want to see what happened in the Temple, with the High Priests, the closest you will ever come is to go to a Maronite Catholic High Mass. The sacrifice is different, because of Jesus, but that IS the Temple, and the Sacrifices, the rites of the covenant -"THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT! DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME" - this is the whole POINT of the Catholic religion, the CORE of it. Just like the ancient Jewish Temple. It is not about intellect and doctrine. It is about covenantal sacrifice.
Protestantism is rabbinnical Christianity. Like the synagogue, its focus is on the Word, and on logical conclusions derived therefrom. It denies that what goes on on the altar of the Catholic Church is what went on on the Altar of the Tabernacle of Moses. It denies that the Sacraments are the CORE of the religion, and places The Bible and the word contained therein at the very center.
Jews do not have this division, because the Old Temple is gone so the covenantal sacrifices cannot be conducted. Therefore, there can only be the synagogue, at least until the Temple is re-established. When the Temple was still up, Judean Jews were like Catholics before the Reformation. Some were deeply ritualistics, while others, farther from the Temple proper, were focused on study of the Scriptures. Still others, the Essenes, were monastic in their approach. The Samarian Temple with its separate rites, claiming Jewish authenticity rejected by the Judaens, would be akin to the Mormons.
Still, when one person believes that the center of the religion is a sacrament, a rite, while the other believes that it is a book, a doctrine, mutual comprehension is extremely difficult.
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