Posted on 01/29/2007 6:45:51 AM PST by stfassisi
I agree with you that the woman referred to is likely Eve, and I'm sure you realize that I (and likely others) don't agree with the road you traveled to arrive at the same destination.
"Obviously, if you adhere to Church dogma on the Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary would never have needed to be born again."
Absolutely true.
But it does raise a thorny issue with which the early Church wrestled and was of divided mind about.
If Mary was conceived and born completely free of original sin, and never sinned thereafter, then she was also born free of the curse of Adam for that sin.
So, did she die?
WHY?
Why would a woman born in the state of Eve, with NO stain of original sin, and no personal sin, die? Death was the curse, the corruption which entered the flesh BECAUSE OF original sin. Mary didn't have it. Logically, she should have been as immortal as Adam and Eve were before the fall, because she was unfallen.
The Church struggled with this for a long time.
Some said she died and was assumed bodily into heaven.
Others said she didn't die, but slept and was assumed.
Death is a punishment, a curse by God, for the corruption of original sin. A sinless Mary cannot logically have been doomed to die. She did not bear the contamination that would cause the curse to operate.
Unless of course God went ahead and killed her anyways, to be consistent, because the curse is on the whole world that all flesh must die.
If that's so, had Jesus not been crucified, he would have had to grow old and die.
In spite of being sinless.
It's a strange curse that God laid upon the earth.
And it raises another question: why did the dinosaurs die?
They were before men. And yet they killed and were killed, and they all died. Physical death cannot have entered the world with Adam and Eve. It had to already have been there.
Whatever "the death" is, in Genesis, it must be spiritual.
And yet that's not what God said. God said "die".
It's a conundrum that really cannot be answered logically. Which is why we mustn't take Genesis literally or it damages faith.
Jesus said that the whole Old Testament meant love your neighbor as yourself, and love God above all. That's what GOD meant by it. Maybe we should condense all of that morass of history and writing into those two sentences and focus on them, because we end up in terrible bash traps if we go literal with Genesis.
In which case, you just destroyed all of Scripture. There are a lot ex Christians who decided that believing in God being born of a woman is not logical.
And it isn't. It doesn't conform to our everyday reality. So if "logic" is the reason to ignore Genesis, why not ignore the Gospels as well? Since they are not very logical.
I agree. Part of faith is the acceptance of things that are on the surface quite illogical. Here are a couple to ponder:
- Why did God simply decide to punish Satan in the Garden of Eden, why not just destroy him right then and there?
- Why did Jesus have to come and be crucified for our sins? Couldn't God have simply forgiven them?
- Why did God seem to give us things "piecemeal"? Why did He make a Covenant with Noah, then a new one with Moses? Then the Lord came and gave us His New Covenant, yet He will still have to return again.
Obviously, there are a great many things that do not make sense, but we accept them on faith.
Please visit that site--it is meant as parody--and not a Catholic site.
They also sell various Jesus Bobbleheads, including a Football Jesus Bobblehead-- Do you think that's amusing as well? Or do you draw the line at Our Lord?
"In which case, you just destroyed all of Scripture."
No, I didn't.
Jesus said that parts of the Old Testament are Jewish tradition and not from God.
Jesus didn't "destroy Scripture" by pointing to pieces of it that aren't from God.
He explained it. He explained God's PURPOSE in inspiring it.
In fact, he said so directly, in the Gospels.
He said 'Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. That is the Law and the Prophets.'
"The Law and The Prophets" is Jewish speak (Torah and Nevi'im) which means the most sacred parts of the TaNaKh, what Christians call the "Old Testament".
Jesus told us, right there, what GOD meant with all of that inspired text. He summarized it into moral and spiritual rules. He corrected the Torah in a few places, striking down nettlesome traditions or pointing out where it was wrong. And then he gave a set of principles and actions to live a godly life.
Jesus told us what Scripture - Old Testament Scripture - meant to God. And he told us what it DIDN'T mean in some parts.
He didn't destroy Scripture by doing that. He perfected and explained it.
But WE can destroy Scripture by setting it up for a fall.
Genesis contradicts itself in key places, as do other parts of Scripture. If we read Scripture not like Jesus taught - for the moral - but as literal history, we end up having it blow itself up in the first few paragraphs, but presenting a hopeless conflict right off. For starters, we have no death until Adam and Eve, but we have the green plants being eaten, so we have death, of plants anyway.
Were there WHALES on the ark? Or were they in the rising seas? Whales and dolphins have "the breath of life in them".
Things fall apart in a hurry when one takes Genesis word-for-word literally. Want to DESTROY faith, and the Scripture that was inspired by faith and which inspires it? Then read Genesis literally word for word, and insist that it's all literally true. How can all the birds have been created on the fifth day, man on the sixth, but the birds then all have been created after man? They can't. But that's what the text SAYS. What that ought to tell us is that, whatever God DID mean by the Scriptures, he certainly did NOT mean: take this as literal anthropology. He inspired the text in ways that so obviously contradict that He's telling us, not very subtly, not to take it literally in Genesis. Otherwise he wouldn't have made the text irreconcilably opposed.
And then we have secular science which tells us about dinosaurs. We have the problem of there being no death before Adam and Eve, but eons of dinosaurs eating each other and dying, and fish for that matter. We have the death of plants before there was death.
Genesis taken word-for-word literally doesn't work internally. And it doesn't work with the observed external world either.
Jesus tells us what Genesis and the rest of the OT was meant to mean by God. THAT'S the part that was inspired.
Cling to that. Going literal with Genesis destroys faith, not aids it.
While I don't actually own a religious bobblehead (I see them as idols of a sort), I can appreciate the humor in those profiting from "Jesus Junk" for less than righteous reasons when compared with those profiting from the same (albeit more serious) material with apparently pious hearts.
I'll order one for your car, if you'd like:
"Hey everybody - it's Football Jesus! Don't you think that if Jesus walked the earth now instead of 2,000 years ago He'd be a big football fan? You can't work in the carpenter shop all the time. Our exclusive Football Jesus BobbleHead is made of quality polyresin - just like our original Bobble Head Jesus. He stands about 8 inches tall with red # 1 jersey, and of course the team logo on Football Jesus' helmet is the Jesus Fish! Jesus also sports some black under each eye to cut down on the glare. He likes playing QB, but can fill in at any position on offense, defense and special teams. Sorry, Jesus won't help you with point spreads or your Fantasy League. Watch all the big games with Football Jesus!
Football Jesus Bobble Head
0210001$14.95"
Contact me immediately--Super Bowl is this Sunday! Just tell me where to send it.
RD
What else are you willing to buy for people? I can send you a list of things I would like if you're interested in buying them for me.
But where do you draw the distinction? Jesus said things like "God didn't not desire divorce, but because your hearts were hard he allowed it", and "what goes into a man doesn't make him unclean, but what goes out". He didn't jettison the Old Test, or say that it was not inspired. To say so puts you into the same boat as Marcion. Thinking like that leads to some awful dark places.
I'll respectfully disagree on this issue. God asks us to "reason" with Him (Isaiah 1:18). While we certainly do not match His intellect (Isaiah 55:9), He certainly does not ask us to accept irrational or illogical positions.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life," (John 14:6). If He is Truth, then he cannot lie, logic is truth, and therefore God cannot be illogical.
Let me take a stab at your conundrums:
Why did God simply decide to punish Satan in the Garden of Eden, why not just destroy him right then and there?
Man was originally created with the ability to not sin. The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a choice. The serpent is temptation toward a wrong choice. Once man freely chose disobedience, choosing sin over God, his eyes were opened to all manner of evil. Consider the shame of nakedness that was not shame just prior to his wrong choice.
The only thing that changed when man chose sin is that his eyes were open to see evil, and be unable to refrain from it. Hence another way of saying that "sin entered the world" is to say that "innoncence left man".
God desires that man choose freely to love Him. That's why He gave us free will. Had he destroyed man or the serpent after the fall the free will creature that He created for fellowship would no longer exist. The Good News is that He was fully aware of this, and instituted a plan to save man from his own bad choice, even before He created him.
Why did Jesus have to come and be crucified for our sins? Couldn't God have simply forgiven them?
No. God has said that sin = death. If you sin, you will die (Genesis 2:17). The entire OT sacrificial system was instituted to offer substitutonal deaths on account of man's sin. However, it took a Perfect Sacrifice of The Infinite Being to pay for the sin of all men.
Think about God as the perfect Accountant. His books must be in order. Every man who sins owes a death. The man, Jesus, did not sin therefore he does not owe a death. Yet He died. If Jesus is merely man, then one man who sinned would be able to escape death - God is perfect, so He must keep the books balanced.
However, Jesus was not merely man. He is is also God. Therefore, as man he kept God's ordinance perfectly. As God, and serving as the Perfect sacrifice on the cross, an infinite being suffered the punishment which was undeserved. Hence, the fact that Jesus is God, therefore infinite, His sacrifice is perfect and complete for all men. The payment of the Infinite One can be fully applied to anyone who believes and obeys Him!
Why did God seem to give us things "piecemeal"?
This is the easy one. It is answered very clearly by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:
7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
The bottom line is that if anyone or any church asks us to accept a tenet blindly, or accept anything irrational, illogical, contradictory, their teaching must be in error. God is Truth, and cannot lie- Even He cannot make 1 + 1 equal 3.
Is there something wrong with wearing a cross? have a fish bumper sticker on a car?
Why do you ridicule those who honor Mary?
There's a sign post up ahead... cue Twilight Zone music. Key to what? Proof?
There are already four published peer-reviewed, controlled, long-term medical hospital studies of near-death experiences.
As long as we're dealing with the physical universe, we're limited to zeros & ones, ons & offs, negative or neutral. Hard to know whether or not all of the plinko balls have run their full course, unless you have a detector of some sort on each of them. We're still looking at it with the eyes of children. Life, death, at best it's an educated guess.
All four produced statistically similar results. The experiences described by the control group in all four studies were very similar as to order and content.
I've heard there are similarities in them with people who've been subjected to a high-g environment. There are other individual cases which are quite striking.
All said & done, in my mind, the examinations seem to be a form of chasing rejection, offering evidence which might be convincing to non-believers, those who can not or will not take a simple leap of "faith". I think Satan loves that sort of thing, where people of faith discount & lose sight of the nature & the true power of faith itself. Vicomte13, are you fighting too hard to be "of" this world"? I'm not saying it is wrong to examine everything with the rational mind, only that one shouldn't get oneself too caught up in it.
Essentially, the science, read in totality, strongly indicates the existence of a detachable consciousness which continues for at least some time after clinical and even brain death in about 20% of people (the rest report no memories, which might mean they had no such experiences, or it might mean that they did and don't remember them or don't want to talk about them).
Science has limitations. It is only a tool. Generally, it's a good tool, but it cannot provide all of the answers. My ex talks about doing remote viewing & told me he lied about it (said he doesn't believe in it) when he was given a psych eval. He knew he'd be tagged for extra "help" if he had been truthful with the examiner. We learn it is important to be "of this world" when we're children. Are imaginary friends always imaginary or is it possible we're dealing with a child that has not been fully grounded yet?
And then there are those people who were not clinically dead but who have had direct encounters with divine beings, angels, spirits, etc.
I think it's more common than is reported. Course, I have no proof of it. ;o)
The world is a strange place, both physical and spiritual. We understand some aspects of the physical world, but the spiritual world we can't even figure out how to test. So, all we have there is anecdotal evidence and (competing) revelations.
I agree.
And, of course, even with the same tradition (e.g.: Christianity) there are passionate, even violent, differences of opinion over the MEANING of revelation, let alone the authenticity of it (voir this thread, for instance).
You got that right!
After all we can't trust angels of light. A person who goes to heaven or hell doesn't come back, we know that from the bible. Still the Lord of the air and his fallen angels have a realm and more than likely, these deceivers are only too happy to pretend to be divine.
Network went down, then my wife called and I had to run home and get a dead bird out of the furnace exhaust.
Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmityBetween you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”
Her Seed is Jesus which is why it says "His" heel.
You left out that the woman is Israel.
"But where do you draw the distinction?"
Honestly, you don't HAVE to draw the distinction.
Jesus did all the work for us on Scripture, just as he did all the work for us when it comes to our salvation.
In both cases we just have think about what he said and follow him.
Let me make a substitution. It is a valid substitution, for these purposes, because it conforms to the use that Jesus made. "The Law and The Prophets" to Jews, like Jesus and his audience, MEANS both the Pentateuch and the Prophetic books of the Old Testament. Jews never valued the Ketuvim, "the writings", the third part of the Jewish canon, with the same authority as the Prophets, and all Jews to this day consider the Torah - the Pentateuch - to be The Law, and the most authoritative and holy part of the Bible of all.
I know that CHRISTIANS do not make this distinction, but JEWS DO, and JESUS was a JEW, talking to JEWS. When Jesus says "The Law and the Prophets", what he is saying - again to a JEW - is "The Authoritative Part of Scripture, the Part that contains The Law". Jews do not think that the writings, which is to say the wisdom books, contain any commandments. None. All 613 Commandments are in the Torah. The Torah is The Law. Nothing else in the Jewish Bible is The Law.
Again, I KNOW that Christians, especially Protestants, don't think Leviticus has greater authority than Job, but every Jew who ever existed always has. The Torah is the Law. Job is philosophical writing concerned with The Law, but contains NO law itself. All the Law in the Bible is in the Pentateuch. And where God wants to directly hammer home a point of law and make a warning, he speaks through a Prophet. Thus the authority of the Prophets, which also do not contain one single Jewish Law. ALL LAW is in the Torah. The Prophets ENFORCE the Law, and they're speaking directly for God, as oracles, so have authority. The wisdom books are for reflection. That's what Jews thought, and think, and that's WHY the distinction "The Law and The Prophets" has a specific Jewish meaning. It means THE AUTHORITATIVE, Law Giving and Law Enforcing parts of Scripture, to a Jew.
Think like a Jew for a minute and read Jesus in the Gospels again.
'Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself - that is The Law and the Prophets'.
Remember that the Law and the Prophets are where THE LAW is, and its enforcement. Remember that there was no "Bible" as such in Jesus' day - it was compiled afterwards.
Now let's read what Jesus said again, with Jewish understanding:
'Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself - that is the Authoritative Part of Scripture'
Jesus just told us what the whole Old Testament means, from HIS perspective, and he's God.
Note that Jesus himself actually repeats certain specific commandments. And gives examples of godly moral behavior.
There's no "line" to be drawn in the Old Testament. It's huge. It's a morass. It means precisely two sentences of Jesus. No less, and no more. You can read the whole Old Testament for background, but if you want to know what it means, ALL that means, and the LIMIT on what it means, Jesus said precisely what it meant in the Gospels a couple of times. He renewed the parts of The Law that are binding still, and that cannot simply be absorbed into the lines: don't murder, don't steal, etc. The rest - all of those other rules, meant 'Love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all'. That's all God ever meant by them.
You don't have to read all the words. You can read two sentences of Jesus and have the final, authoritative and complete explanation of the ENTIRE Old Testament.
Jesus didn't draw the line. He explained it all. Completed it all. Told us what it all means. If anyone should read it and think it means something MORE (for example, that we must REJECT modern biological science and believe that the dinosaurs are a Devil's trick) has run out on Jesus and run back into Jewish traditions.
What do dinosaurs have to do with 'Love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all?'
Nothing.
Dinosaurs aren't Scriptural. Opposing them isn't Scriptural.
Genesis' account of creation is Jewish TRADITION, it's quaint, and it's factually wrong. We needn't dwell on it, and we can make a mess of faith if we fiddle around with old traditions that have no place in the sacred plan.
Genesis means 'Love your neighbor as yourself, and Love God above all.' Jesus said so. Directly. Authoritatively. He was God. He defined the meaning and stated it straight.
We do not have to read the Old Testament at all.
And indeed, if we cannot read it without falling prey to the temptation to sieze onto the old Traditions, which are UTTERLY superfluous, by straining them through our new traditions, we shouldn't read the Old Testament. Or rather, we should, but we should read God's Old Testament, which is a few sentences of Jesus explaining the Scriptures' meaning from God's perspective.
Any reading of the Old Testament that challenges Jesus' two sentence explanation of the entirety of it is wrong, and is falling into the trap of tradition.
So, where do we draw the distinction?
We don't draw any distinction.
We take Jesus at his word, verbatim.
We can read his two sentences.
If we want to, we can then read the 1500 pages of the OT, but we have to remember that the only part of it that is divinely inspired, what it means and ALL it means, from a God's Word standpoint, is Jesus' two sentences. Anything that pulls away from Jesus' two sentences is not God's Word, because God only meant what Jesus said by the whole vast Scripture of the OT.
Jesus said so.
The religion Jesus left us is very simple.
It is not found in voluminous texts.
It is found in prayer, in faith, and in doing what he said to our fellow man. That's it.
Jesus reduced all Scripture to two sentences, and didn't leave a written word himself. We can read what he said in the Gospels, and that is sufficient to answer EVERYTHING.
The rest is execution. And that's hard.
It is in many ways easier to read the OT and develop a new theology, more complicated than Jesus', than it is to go out and give money, time and passion to helping the sick and poor, for instance. But the latter is godly, according to Jesus. The former is trying to reinvent the wheel, and is certain to be a botched hack job. Jesus told us all that the OT means. Why bother wasting time reading it, then? Just read him, accept it, and move on.
My starting point for Satan's abilities has to do with his role before the fall. He was cherubim, which means he has a great deal of knowledge about the underpinnings of the world in a way we are not yet able to see.
Consider what he was able to bring down upon Job.
Valid points.
Thankfully, God is absolutely on top of everything.
Thanks.
By their fruits we will know them. Are they doing what we've been taught is the will of God or are they working their own angle?
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