Posted on 05/16/2008 3:19:30 PM PDT by netmilsmom
Stemming from this comment
>>I think the RCC doctrines are a product of the enemy<<
Please tell us where we stand here. Examples welcome, but I'm not sure that actual names can be used when quoting another FReeper, so date and thread title may be better.
The practice here will be to pull that sentence out of all historical, theological and biblical context and present it alone, much as alter Christus has been twisted.
>>Don’t waste your time. You have already answered your own question.<<
There is a difference between showing disdain for those who constantly berate us and general Protestants.
Because to state that I hate Protestants would mean that I hate my Grandmother, my Brothers and Sister-in-law and even my own adopted sister. Positively silly.
You could not have view the post we are talking about. It’s post 140.
Here.
To: AnalogReigns; netmilsmom; Alex Murphy; Lord_Calvinus; Gamecock; OLD REGGIE; Uncle Chip; ...
Perhaps the answer is found in the RCC catechism itself...
“For the Son of man became man so that we might become God. The only begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.” (page 116, #460)
No numbers, no link. Not cut and pasted from Vatican.va and refered to Vatican.org which is owned by a Canadian.
The statement by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, "The Son of God became man, that we might become God", indicates the concept beautifully. II Peter 1:4 says that we have become "...partakers of divine nature." Athanasius amplifies the meaning of this verse when he says theosis is "becoming by grace what God is by nature" (De Incarnatione, I). What would otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy, has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis - it is not possible for any created being to become, ontologically, God or even another god.
It is not, in short, anything like it is being portrayed. Read more here.
Notice in some posts the childish refusal to refer to the Catechism of the Catholic Church as such.
I genuinely pity those who will take no chance of—spare no circumlocution to avoid—paying even the slightest respect to the Catholic Church.
Fetish is definitely the most accurate word.
“There is a difference between showing disdain for those who constantly berate us and general Protestants.”
The Protestant-haters have no problem painting those that disagree with some of the Roman Catholic beliefs as “Catholic-haters”. I don’t see the problem. Obviously, if one disagrees with another’s beliefs he/she must be a “hater” or at least an “anti” based on observations of these threads.
If I have been deleted, why is that awful Always Right allowed to continue to spew his/her venom? I was merely attempting to defend my religion against those whom seek to smear and disparage it with bald-faced lies such as our worship of Mary. Let’s face it, many have this agenda which overbears their sanctimonious averments of rational discourse. Like putting the wolf in sheep’s clothing (for those in Rio Linda).
>>The Protestant-haters have no problem painting those that disagree with some of the Roman Catholic beliefs as “Catholic-haters”. I don’t see the problem. Obviously, if one disagrees with another’s beliefs he/she must be a “hater” or at least an “anti” based on observations of these threads.<<
When my children say, “She hit me first.” I remind them that each of them should be like Jesus. Jesus said turn the other cheek.
When then continue I remind them how each is a Christian and should not do something just because the other has.
Christians show their love for one another, even if afronted.
I love my Protestant Brothers and Sisters!
These are the rules from another thread.
I am not the arbiter of truth, for that posters must turn to God or whoever they consider to be the final authority.
I am not the arbiter of logical proofs, for that the posters must turn to the mathematicians, logicians and philosophers.
I am not the arbiter of fact, for that the posters must turn to the scientists, physical evidence, testimonies and historians.
I am not the arbiter of the meaning of words, and I’m not sure there exists such a final authority so the burden rests with the posters to explain what they mean.
But when it comes to this Religion Forum, I lay out the guidelines and resolve disputes within those guidelines. But I do not “settle” matters of dogma, doctrine, tradition or meanings of words.
If a guideline, rule, policy or settlement exists which affects this Religion Forum, I will do all I can to see it enforced.
In that regard, the “open” threads on the Religion Forum are a town square. To quote myself:
Posters may argue for or against beliefs of any kind. They may tear down other’s beliefs. They may ridicule, similar to the Smoky Backroom with the exception that a poster must never “make it personal.” Reading minds and attributing motives are forms of “making it personal.” Thin-skinned posters will be booted from “open” threads because in the town square, they are the disrupters.
As long as the posters on the “open” threads are within the guidelines, they have a voice even if that voice may be gibberish, silly, irrational, illogical or even untruthful in the minds of other posters.
Petronski...No one needs a theological basis of Theosis to understand
"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."
It sounds like someone up the line in your religion made THAT the official teaching and belief and someone else realized they had to do some serious backpedaling to keep from alienating proselytes from other denominations...
Honestly, I expect that “some” will not show respect.
I’m simply amazed that documents can be doctored by “some”, explained by others and ignored except to spin again.
I thought we were FR not CNN.
Is that what it “sounds like?”
I don’t care.
I have posted the actual scholarship, centuries old.
As I predicted, the effort is already underway to strip away the context and contort the actual meaning.
2 Peter 1:4-11 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
10Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
>>As I predicted, the effort is already underway to strip away the context and contort the actual meaning.<<
Just like Chris Matthews.
Everytime one of you wants to back up a statement you make, you send us to a 'drop-down' menu of links and we would have to spend hours sifting thru all the 'junk' to figure out what you are getting at...
Surely you must know some of this stuff and could just summarize things like the meaning of Catholic Theosis compared to the Mormon teaching...
Of course it is, paragraph 460. You quote the statement, which is from St. Athanasius, out the context of the entire CCC with respect to Article 3 of the Creed, which states “He was Conceived by the Power of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the Virgin Mary”, which is from the Apostles Creed. Paragraph 456 states “For Us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, by the power of the Holy Spirit, me became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man.” The CCC in this section is addressing the theological question “Why Did the Word Become Flesh”?
I encourage you, and others, to look at the entire section of the CCC with respect to Article 3, which I have cited above.
http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt1sect2chpt2art3.htm
In addition, I addressed this issue in an earlier post, which I did not copy you on, so here it is again:
The criticisms levied by Protestants here with respect to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 460, are in fact, an implicit heresy with respect to failing to completely grasp the implications of the Incarnation. The Incarnation in readers digest language is the orthodox doctrine that the eternal son of God assumed a complete human nature and was born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, as Our Sunday’s Visitors Catholic Encyclopedia (p. 530) states “The union of the divine and human natures in Christ is a permanent and abiding one. In addition, a fundamental soteriological conviction is at stake in the doctrine: Whatever is not assumed is not saved. According to the scriptures, the Incarnation has the salvific purpose that embraces both the restoration of the image of God in us through the cross of Christ and the foretaste of the perfect union with God that is our destiny in Christ.”
Catholics meditate on the Incarnation constantly, as evidenced by the Annunciation being part of the Rosary and the Church requirement that the Faithful are obliged to attend the Christmas Liturgy regardless of which day it falls. More importantly, and I think this gets more into the crux of the matter, while Protestants accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, the implications for Protestants with respect to the Incarnation creates problems for their doctrines of justification. Lets take the mere fact that Christ loved our bodies (i.e. Human nature) enough to take a body himself). Since all the Creeds confess the orthodox doctrine of the “resurrection of the body” (Apostles Creed) and “We look for resurrection of the dead” (Nicene Creed), the Doctrine of the Incarnation is important and related to these statements as we will continue to have our bodies in heaven.
It is in the context of the Incarnation that paragraph CCC 460 is to be understood and again, here is where Protestants are implicitly embracing Gnosticism as many Protestant confessions have an anti-physical bias. Protestant doctrines about justification which say that God imputes his Grace, which amounts to a covering of the human person, is in opposition of the Catholic position with as I noted earlier, “God’s Grace restores us unto God’s image and is a foretaste of the perfect union with the Trinity.” The failure to contemplate the full implications of the Incarnation impacts how most Protestants view the Sacraments, as the Protestant understanding of Sacraments has the anti-physical bias which thus prevents them from understanding the orthodox understanding of the Eucharist and Baptism as they are taught in Scripture.
Earlier, Petronski linked a paper about “Theosis”, which is rooted in Incarnational Theology, and shows that this doctrine was taught as far back as St. Irenaeus of Lyons (AD 170-175), who I might add again, was writing against “The Gnostics”, hmmm, hmmm. As I noted earlier, Catholic soteriology is grounded in the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation. Thomas Howard, in Evangelical is Not Enough (p. 36) writes: “The Incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings and proclivities are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ.”
In addition to 2 Peter: 4, there are other passages that refer to human persons partaking God’s nature. St. Paul writes: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself” (c.f. Phil 3:20-21). Similar to St. Paul and St. Peter, St. John makes a reference to being like God. For example, St. John writes: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure as he is pure” (c.f. 1 John 3:2-3). If one thinks about logically, the fact that through the resurrection of Christ, we who die with Christ and our raised with him is in fact a participation in the Divine life and thus we are like God in that we will live for eternity. Thus, the doctrine in the CCC para. 460 is entirely orthodox. I have provided an Orthodox Church link which explains “theosis” in more detail for those who are interested in “learning and not polemics”
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Theosis
Regards
lol. Thankfully, it's all in black and white.
I linked to Vatican.va. No footnotes does not invalidate the citation. Yeesh. This is fifth grade rhetoric class.
And as you said, the fact remains you read those words from Vatican.va directly from the Vatican and the RCC catechism and you called them "a lie."
Yes, I agree with you. #460 from the RCC catechism is a "lie." We do not "become gods."
2. Original post was doctored with no link
No footnotes is not "doctoring" the citation.
There are literally THOUSANDS of citations on this website daily which do not bother to offer the footnotes, but instead print the citation as it is written. Some go a step further to link to the cite, which I did when I linked to Vatican.va.
3. Accused me of looking for Anti-Catholic site when I posted the Google string I used
No mind-reading. They were our own words, something to the effect that anti-catholic websites come up when the words of #460 were used.
However, when anyone actually goes to Google and puts in the words, "#460" and "Catechism of the Catholic Church" you go directly to a Catholic website which posts the catechism which is exactly what I did.
Obviously, someone would have to scroll down and search for a non-Catholic website to find one.
4. You continually quoted Vatican.org. False site owned by Canadian.
I NEVER quoted from Vatican.org.
IF you type in Vatican.org, you get an "ERROR" reading. Try it. I linked directly to Vatican.va, as anyone can plainly see.
If I at some point mis-typed and put in Vatican.org for Vatican.va, then that's a typing error. But anyone trying to go to Vatican.org goes nowhere.
Try it, because it seems obvious you haven't tried it. If you had, you would know I couldn't have read one word at that site because that site goes nowhere but to an ERROR message!
So we're left to wonder how you could have gone to Vatican.org and read anything when anyone trying to do that only gets an "ERROR" message.
Is any of this getting through?
You can spin this anyway you like it, but I'm so used to watching the alphabet networks that it's easily seen for what it is, doctored document to spin.
Perhaps you could utilize all the time you tell us you spend watching the networks to learn something better than how to spin the indefensible.
I am constantly amazed that any FReeper thinks s/he can get away with doctoring documents to spin them. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes would be proud.
LOL. No documents were "doctored." All that has been revealed is the fact you called the exact words of the RCC catechism "a lie" and that you accused me of using a cite (vatican.org) that does not exist.
Go to http://Vatican.org and see what you get. Pretty much the same as this entire thread.
I’m sorry, Mom, I know your motives are praiseworthy, but what you aver is ecclesiastical hairsplitting. It only serves to enable the most viscious in our midst.
When is someone going to cite John 1:12?
The doctrine of theosis or deification in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints differs significantly from the theosis of Orthodox Christianity. In Mormonism it is usually referred to as exaltation or eternal life. While the primary focus of Mormonism is on the atonement of Jesus Christ, the reason for the atonement is exaltation which goes beyond mere salvation. All men will be saved from sin and death, but only those who are sufficiently obedient and accept the atonement of Jesus Christ before the judgment will be exalted. One popular Mormon quote, coined by the early Mormon "disciple" Lorenzo Snow in 1837, is "As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may be."[2] The teaching was taught first by Joseph Smith while pointing to John 5:19 of the New Testament, "God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 345-46). In the Mormon Book of Moses 1:39 God tells Moses, "this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." In that chapter God shows Moses a vision depicting some of God's vast creations including a vast number of worlds created for other people—a sampling of what God created in the past and what he will continue to do forever. Each world was prepared and peopled by God for the purpose of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of humankind. By immortality is meant personal resurrection so that each individual can continue to enjoy a perfect, physical body forever. By eternal life is meant becoming like God both in terms of holiness or godliness and in glory. It is commonly believed by members of the Church that, like God, an exalted human being is empowered with the privilege to create worlds and people in an endless process of exalting humankind.Of all the Mormon doctrines including polygamy, critics generally deem this doctrine the most offensive or even blasphemous. Some Mormons argue that even assuming mainstream Christianity's definition of God's omnipotence and omnibenevolence, not only can God exalt mortal man, but God must do so. The argument is that if God is all-powerful, then God is capable of exalting man, and if God is all-good, then God should or must exalt man. They also point to comments by Christ and Psalmists among others that refer to the Divine nature and potential of humans as children of God. Some Mormons also suggest that discussions of theosis by early Church Fathers show an early belief in the Mormon concept of deification, although they disagree with much of the other theology of the same Church fathers, most notably the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Mormons' belief differs with the Orthodox belief in deification because the Latter-Day Saints believe that the core being of each individual, the "intelligence" which existed before becoming a spirit son or daughter, is uncreated or eternal. Orthodox deification always acknowledges a timeless Creator versus a finite creature who has been glorified by the grace of God. The Mormons are clear promoters of henotheism, and the Church Fathers have absolutely no commonality with their view.
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