Posted on 06/27/2009 10:33:55 PM PDT by bdeaner
Christ is not an idol. At least not in Christian churches. There is not one time in Scripture where the term "idol" is anything but a "false god."
"I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them." -- Isaiah 48:5"What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing?" -- 1 Corinthians 10:19
I put the word "idol" to connote that I was using YOUR term. YOU called the Real Presence of Christ an idol.
Transubstantiation is paganism...attributing divinity to material things. It goes hand-in-had with Rome's paganism concerning Mary. "other Christs," rituals, rites, holy water, wooden statues, etc.
All-in-all, a very consistent paganism.
And we do not. It is a re-presentation of the same one-time Sacrifice on Calvary.
Transubstantiation is paganism...
So you say. And to repeat: why would I care? I follow Christ's command, not yours.
But since a certain amount of backtracking from that error would actually be progress, God be praised.
The posts are clear. I don't expect to get anywhere with you.
Now when you're shown the error of that statement, you back-track.
I'm not back-tracking, and the error is yours.
No, we are told to DO. Any other comment is man's (or woman's) addition.
By you.
Then how do you explain Matthew 16 without all the specious protestant cross-referencing?
Do you profess to the Nicene Creed? Yes or no?
“”The RCC keeps re-sacrificing Him “”
There you go again,Dr E. In your limiting God to WITHIN TIME you limit His power.
The following is a good explanation.....
Transcending Time and Space
The quick Protestant rejoinder to Catholic teaching on the Mass is that Christ died once for all(cf. Heb. 9:26-28; 10:10), to which the Church would say,Amen! The Church has always taught that the one sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist (the Mass) are one single sacrifice, and that the Eucharistic Sacrifice re-presents (makes present) Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross (Catechism, nos. 1366-67, emphasis in original). How can this be? God the Son created time and space and therefore is not bound by them (cf. Jn. 1:1-3). As eternal Being, Christ stands outside of time, and therefore all of history is simultaneously present to Him. We cannot fully grasp God’s omnipotence. Like the dogmas of the Trinity or Christ’s being both God and man, God’s omnipotence is beyond our capacity to understand, yet does not contradict reason. To argue that God is limited by time and space is necessarily to argue that God is not omnipotent, and therefore not God.
In short, then, God cannot create something, including time and space, that can limit Him. For example, because of God’s omnipotence, all of us, not just one of us, can be temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 6:19). This demonstrates His ability to be beyond space, for the Holy Spirit is present in the souls of all believers: the saints who have died (cf. Rev. 6:9-11), as well as all the faithful who are living today.
We can also speak of God’s ability to be present throughout time on earth and also outside of time in heaven. Relative to God, Who is eternal and unchanging, everything is present; relative to us human beings, everything we experience is bound by time and space. Because the Son of God is eternal and transcends time, what He does as the God-Man in history can transcend time. Jesus sacrifice on Calvary is thus once for all, yet never ending; it is timeless. Thus, when we re-present Christ’s one sacrifice at Mass, God actually enables us to make ourselves present to this timeless offering. Analogously, we become present to the sun each morning. The sun basically stays put, while we change relative to the sun because of the earth’s daily rotation.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice is foreshadowed by the prophet Malachi: For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts (Mal. 1:11). The Church sees these verses as a prophecy of the Sacrifice of the Mass, for what other truly pure sacrifice could there be that Christians can offer throughout the world every day?
The Catholic Mass transhistorical nature is first illustrated when Christ offered His glorified Body and Blood at the Last Supper, the day before He actually died on the Cross (cf. Catechism, nos. 1337-40). It is illustrated thereafter in the Mass offered by His disciples. Saint Paul notes that Christ’s sacrifice as the new Passover Lamb is once for all, but he also explains that its celebration somehow continues on in history: For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:7-8). Thus, the merits of Christ’s sacrifice are applied to Christians throughout the centuries.
We speak of the Eucharist as an unbloody sacrifice. Christ is not killed at each Mass. If that were so, there would be many sacrifices, and Christ would not have died once for all. Rather, the Council of Trent teaches that at each Mass the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner (as quoted in Catechism, no. 1367).
Yes, and your formatting does not preserve the fact that I placed your term “idol” (which you applied to Christ) in italics, to indicate I was using your term.
Agreed. After the meeting, "11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face..." I did read a commentary yesterday that suggested this was after Acts 12 but before Acts 15, but others - and your Pope - say this came after Acts 15. After Acts 15 makes sense.
"The "list" argument is mighty thin once it's shown the "fear" argument has nothing to do with Acts 15."
And yet the inspired scripture says, "12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. 14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"
The fear may not have been related to Acts 15, or James may have been the one who "has fallen back into bad habits." But Scripture, inspired by God, says fear caused Peter to pull back, and eventually reach a point where he "force[d] Gentiles to follow Jewish customs". That goes beyond hypocrisy into teaching and enforcing what is contrary.
"15 "We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' 16 know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified."
"On it's own...hardly a credible reason to search out other meanings for Matthew 16."
I don't need a credible reason to seek out other scriptures to enlighten me on what one passage means - I do it all the time. As much as possible, I want to interpret scripture by scripture, so I an avoid error caused by my prejudices. In all my commentaries, authors will look at how a word or phrase is used in other passages to shed light on its meaning in the one being interpreted.
"Then how do you explain Matthew 16 without all the specious protestant cross-referencing?"
This is why I believe we will need to agree to disagree. I think you MUST interpret it the way you do, since the alternative is to believe the Pope isn't the Pope, but just another...Bishop? I'm not sure what he would be called, if he isn't the Head Apostle.
Meanwhile, I've explained why I interpret it the way I do. It may be "specious protestant cross-referencing", but it is standard procedure for me.
There is nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree. I never intended to convert you to becoming a Baptist. My goal was just to convince you that Protestants can be Christians (IAW Catholic doctrine, per the original article), and that Protestants can be sincere in trying to figure out what the Scripture means.
If you can grant my intentions are honest, even if you find my conclusions faulty, then I've accomplished all I hoped to do.
The fact that God "transcends time and space" does nothing to support Rome's error of mistaking the spiritual for the material.
If what you've offered here is what Rome is teaching you, no wonder so many RCs are bewildered as to the Scriptural truth.
What you have done lately is to take every questionable practice of Rome and defend it, not by Scripture, but by a goofy mindless recitation of "God is outside of time."
There are better answers for the truth. Get a Bible and find them.
The Church sees these verses as a prophecy of the Sacrifice of the Mass, for what other truly pure sacrifice could there be that Christians can offer throughout the world every day?
The sacrifice was Christ's to offer; not our own. And that sacrifice is complete. We remember it; we don't repeat it as if it hadn't accomplished all that God ordained..
The ease with which you made that remark is nothing to brag about.
Yes it is.
And that's not doing you any good.
If “The Consecrated Host is...well worthy of our worship”, then we must disagree.
Of course, I guess it isn’t too shocking that a Catholic & a Baptist would disagree...
You know that I am Lutheran right?
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