Posted on 03/29/2007 5:20:08 AM PDT by Gamecock
FoxNews reported today that while addressing a parish in a suburb of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI clarified his view of hell. The Pope said concerning hell, [it] “really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more,”
According to reports from the Vatican this “straightforward” language is in effort to eliminate confusion pending an upcoming release of the new Catholic catechism. One might wonder about confusion from a church that proposes that its doctrine does not change.
However, even the casual Catholic should remember the last Pontiff’s less literal view of hell. Speaking of hell, Pope John Paul II said that it is “the ultimate consequence of sin itself . . . Rather than a place, Hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy”.
According to Catholic dogma the Pope is infallible and exists as the functional head of the body of Christ on earth. So how can we have such divergent views on the reality of hell?
Hell is not the only issue with which we seem to see some contemporary doctrinal progression from Rome. In October the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a “halfway house” between Heaven and Hell, inhabited by unbaptized infants and holy men and women who lived before Christ, was “only a theological hypothesis” and not a “definitive truth of the faith”.
It is a real shame that millions and millions of folks are walking lock step with the Pope as their authority rather than Scripture. In order to be a good Catholic your theology must progress with the evolution of Papal theology, even at the expense of former Pontiffs. How dangerous it is to be blown about by Papal winds. Not so for Christians who reject Rome’s magisterial view of authority and embrace the doctrine of Sola Scriptura where God’s unchanging, inerrant, infallible divine Word is the ultimate authority in the church.
"Where is sola scriptura in the bible?"
What's your defintion of Sola Scriptura?
Interestingly, I just found this on a blog...
http://thefullcourt.blogspot.com/
3/27/2007
Catholic Pope believes in Hell, Southern Baptist Billy Graham doesn't
From the Way of Life website.
"The Orlando (Florida) Sentinel for April 10, 1983, asked Billy Graham: “Surveys tell us that 85% of Americans believe in heaven, but only 65% believe in hell. Why do you think so many Americans don’t accept the concept of hell?” He replied: “I think that hell essentially is separation from God forever. And that is the worst hell that I can think of. But I think people have a hard time believing God is going to allow people to burn in literal fire forever. I think the fire that is mentioned in the Bible is a burning thirst for God that can never be quenched.”
In his 1983 “Affirmations” for evangelists, Graham said the fire of hell could be symbolic:
“Jesus used three words to describe hell. ... The third word that He used is ‘fire.’ Jesus used this symbol over and over. This could be literal fire, as many believe. Or IT COULD BE SYMBOLIC. ... I’ve often thought that this fire could possibly be a burning thirst for God that is never quenched” (A Biblical Standard for Evangelists, Billy Graham, A commentary on the 15 Affirmations made by participants at the International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July, 1983, Worldwide Publications, Minneapolis, Minnesota, pages 45-47).
In Time magazine, November 15, 1993, Graham said: “The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from his light, from his fellowship. That is going to be hell. When it comes to a literal fire, I don’t preach it because I’m not sure about it. When the Scripture uses fire concerning hell, that is possibly an illustration of how terrible it’s going to be—not fire but something worse, a thirst for God that cannot be quenched.”
From the Pope
"HELL is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
Hell "really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more".
Although we (Prots) may disagree with much of Catholic theology, we should be glad when we find such a clear, unequivical affirmation of the truth of the Bible coming from the Pope. The world just got reminded that Hell is real.
He's right. Hell does exist, it is eternal - and very few people speak of it these days.
Show me the term Trinity.
Sola* Scriptura is derived from numerous passages, not a specific verse.
*Not to be confused with the word word solo, which is what many of our RC FRiends seem to think we are saying
Or just really, really strong.
I appreciate the gentleness of your intention. But I hope you didn't really think that the Catholic Church teaches that crossing oneself or going to church on Easter is what saves. A lot of well-meaning Protestants really have no clue what the Church teaches.
Suppose I were to post to you and say,"You know, it would be to your benefit to read the Bible. You will not be saved because you handle snakes." Wouldn't you think I was a little silly?
We think that we are justified through faith in Jesus Christ and in His atoning sacrifice on the cross, not by crossing ourselves and going to Mass on Easter. But I will continue to cross myself and I am so excited about going to Mass this Easter when a friend will join the Church that I feel like a kid waiting for his birthday.
God bless you for your kind intention. Maybe some day you will learn a little of what we believe. WHo knows, you might even find you believe it too!
He was quoting from another site.
Where?
Remember, the Bible wasn't around at the time of Christ.
What then did Christ refer to when he talked about Himself? The Law, the Prophets, the Psalms.
Hey, I like the Mohawk look! Now I know why the Pope wears the tall hat. :O)
................. Remember, the Bible wasn't around at the time of Christ.
67 posted on 03/30/2007 6:26:51 AM MDT by JustMytwocents70
If you were familiar with the teachings of Yah'shua,WOW are you lost !
b'shem Yah'shua
you would know he was quoting from the Holy Word of Elohim.
Well, to be fair to Graham, saying the fire in Hell may be symbolic is hardly the same as saying Hell does not exist. Is the fire in Hell metaphysical? I've heard that a theological issue which has prevented the Catholic Church from infallibly asserting the doctrine of purgatory is not at all that the Church is unsure that purgatory exists (since biblical and patristic sources are hardly ambiguous that it does exist), but that She did not want to add to the doctrines in which the Orthodox Churches may have points to disagree with infallible doctrine.
(An analogous case wherein the West went ahead anyway is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; the East doesn't quabble with the notion that Mary was sinless, but the language references Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin in ways which create linguistic problems for the East.)
The problem with purgatory for the East is that the West would describe it, like Hell, as having fire. Indeed, many Western descriptions of the worst sufferings of Purgatory use similar words. The East, on the other hand, prefers references to a "tempest," etc. In this case, it seems like either one church is wrong, or references to fires may somewhat be an attempt to explain a metaphysical condition with an inadequate vocabulary of human experiences. I consider the latter possibility far more likely. (What's also quite possible is that the East's concepts have been mischaracterized to me.)
If Graham believes the fires of Hell, themselves, pose the same metaphysical problems, "symbolic" may simply be a poor choice of words; I'm not at all sure that such a metaphysical understanding of Hell is heretical, or even necessarily contradictory to the papacy's. Mind you, I'm only saying I'm not *sure*.
>> WOW are you lost ! If you were familiar with the teachings of Yah'shua, you would know he was quoting from the Holy Word of Elohim. <<
WOW are you exploding things out of context !
The original post was correct as stated: Much of the Holy Scriptures were around at the time of Christ... but there was no singular publication which was called the bible, nor even which could be equated with the bible.
At the time of Christ, there were the Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and strangely, some references seem to also include Joshua and Judges), a canon of prophetic writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve minor prophets), and an unfixed, undefined corpus of miscellaneous other works, including such works Protestant-accepted works as Ruth, Job, Exra and Nehemiah, but also apparently including Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Tobit, and, according to Jesus' own words, even some books in very few Christians' canon, such as the Apocalypse of Moses (which Jesus refers to as "scripture.")
When the "Bible alone" folks refer to the bible, they are plainly referring to an anthology of works which had not only not been assembled at the time of Christ, but whose sources remained substantially incomplete; the New Testament had not been written.
Therefore, despite your bizarre condemnation and wild misinterpretation, it is entirely true to state that "the bible" was not around at the time of Christ.
Suppose someone said, "I went to the PTA meeting, but I came back. There were no parents." Your're response is like responding to that statement about the PTA like this: "'There were no parents' Wow! Where do you think babies come from?" Obviously, the person was not making the assertion you ascribed to him. You seem to be using the rhetorical trick of trying to make your opponent seem foolish by misinterpreting him.
Both posts were pulled because they were making this thread personal by attributing motives.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do NOT make it personal.
I would offer that the most famous account of Purgatory is Dante's. I don't know how it was received, and I do know that fire is PART of it - the topmost level, the tier of the lustful (MY interpretation is of the generally concupiscent, but that's just me), is fire and everyone must pass through it.
I mention Dante only to suggest that the fire language of the West might generally have been considered to be intended to indicate the amount of pain rather than the kind.
Whaddya say?
(But where DO babies come from? I've always wondered.)
Fatuous inanities? How dare you call the writings of XeniaSt "Fatuous inanities"? Don't you notice XeniaSt uses preposterously arcane transliterations directly from Hebrew? She even puts apostrophes in places that make absolutely NO linguistic sense in a Roman alphabet, just to show us how educated she is! That HAS to mean she's smarter than us! /sarcasm
>> (But where DO babies come from? I've always wondered.) <<
You see, when a Mommy and a Daddy really love each other, or they simply have really low self esteem...
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.