Posted on 09/21/2009 10:14:12 AM PDT by NYer
I really do try to be like Jesus. One of those ways is that I try as best I can to see everyone here as individuals. For example, there are some Catholics here that think Mary never had sex her entire life, while others think she did. E.G. My wife was a strong Catholic for decades and she always believed that Mary was a virgin only until Jesus was born and then she had honored God’s command and was free to share her body with her husband. But Even those two groups are broken into individuals.
I suppose I am what a Catholic would call a protestant, insomuch as I am a professing Christian but not Catholic. I believe Mary was blessed. How could I not? The Bible clearly teaches that she was. But do I pray to her as an intercessor? Of course not. My intercessor is Jesus, the only perfect human that ever lived and died for my sins and shed His blood as an atonement for my sins. I am washed in His blood.
I could talk about the Eucharist as well as Mary, or a dozen other things with a unique Catholic bent. I could talk about things in Churches I went to that gave me the willies (speaking in tongues, generic interpretations, etc.).
All churches have some of the truth, but there are foundational truths that are required to be Christian. If the particular organization teaches that Jesus is God in the Flesh and he died once for all and was resurrected three days later, the rest of their beliefs will almost certainly mostly fall in line with mine. As long as they don’t do things like pick the exact date Jesus is returning, stuff like that, I’m good.
And the kernal of that last paragraph is why I do not consider Mormonism to teach Christianity. Good news is that I suspect many Mormons don’t know exactly what their church teaches that deviates from the foundation upon which Christianity is built.
I try not to condemn people here but I will sometimes condemn their ideas, and rightly so. I don’t plan on overturning any tables, but I try to follow Jesus and let the chips fall where they may.
Oh Puhleaassee!
The word "worship" has undergone a change in meaning in English. It comes from the Old English weorthscipe, which means the condition of being worthy of honor, respect, or dignity. To worship in the older, larger sense is to ascribe honor, worth, or excellence to someone, whether a sage, a magistrate, or God.
For many centuries, the term worship simply meant showing respect or honor, and an example of this usage survives in contemporary English. British subjects refer to their magistrates as "Your Worship," although Americans would say "Your Honor." This doesn’t mean that British subjects worship their magistrates as gods (in fact, they may even despise a particular magistrate they are addressing). It means they are giving them the honor appropriate to their office, not the honor appropriate to God.
In Scripture, the term "worship" was similarly broad in meaning, but in the early Christian centuries, theologians began to differentiate between different types of honor in order to make more clear which is due to God and which is not.
As the terminology of Christian theology developed, the Greek term latria came to be used to refer to the honor that is due to God alone, and the term dulia came to refer to the honor that is due to human beings, especially those who lived and died in God’s friendship—in other words, the saints. Scripture indicates that honor is due to these individuals (Matt. 10:41b). A special term was coined to refer to the special honor given to the Virgin Mary, who bore Jesus—God in the flesh—in her womb. This term, hyperdulia (huper [more than]+ dulia = "beyond dulia"), indicates that the honor due to her as Christ’s own Mother is more than the dulia given to other saints. It is greater in degree, but still of the same kind. However, since Mary is a finite creature, the honor she is due is fundamentally different in kind from the latria owed to the infinite Creator.
The fact that someone kneels before a statue to pray does not mean that he is praying to the statue, just as the fact that someone kneels with a Bible in his hands to pray does not mean that he is worshiping the Bible. Statues or paintings or other artistic devices are used to recall to the mind the person or thing depicted. Just as it is easier to remember one’s mother by looking at her photograph, so it is easier to recall the lives of the saints by looking at representations of them.
>>Was he forsaken?<<
Good one.
Matthew 27:46
Mark 15:34
>>Was he forsaken?<<
Good one.
Matthew 27:46
Mark 15:34
:)
I am confused by this statement. Are you suggesting that we no longer sin? Or that we no longer need to offer penance for our sins? And, how do we know if our sins are forgiven?
I’ve never really understood what that meant, or where such a position is substantiated in Scripture.
An excellent question; one, in fact, that surfaced only last night on Fr. Benedict Groeschel's program. Recall that Jesus came to save the world. Through His death, He opened Heaven. Until that time, those who died in the faith, were in a world that was neither heaven nor hell. That is where He descended, to free those who had lived and died in faith.
“If Calvin thought Jesus suffered in hell, the fact of the matter is that no one knows exactly what went on in the life of Jesus between the cross and Sunday morning. We do know that His propitiation brought redemption to the elect.
Calvin’s speculation is not critical to salvation, nor does it represent a potential misunderstanding about God.”
I don’t know about that. It very well could be a potential misunderstanding about God. To me, at any rate, it appears that Calvin has separated the Divine Christ from the human Christ with this doctrine creating a human who becomes Divine upon Resurrection.
>>Of course, Christ descended to the dead, not hell.<<
You didn’t see the other posts regarding exactly what Hell is.
>>But according to Calvin he went to hell and suffered the full horrors.<<
Not according to what you posted: “...Whence also it was necessary that he should engage, as it were, at close quarters with the powers of hell and the horrors of eternal death...”
A prison guard has “close quarters” with prison but is not “in prison” in the common usage of the phrase. And, again, Calvin’s use of the words there suggests possible confusion on his part, or a lack of clarity in his use of words, regarding the difference between hell and the lake of fire.
I kind of see this a little differently. The verses in Psalm 22 were prophecies about the Messiah. Jesus fulfilled those prophecies. For example, how could he have known the soldiers would not break his legs which was SOP for crucifixions? Death from that cruel method was usually from suffocation but only after they suffered for hours. Breaking the legs prevented the condemned from lifting up to inhale. He was already dead when they came to do this. He didn't ask them to gamble for his clothes either.
Like I said, this passage was one of hundreds of Messianic prophecies. And Jesus fulfilled them all because he IS the Messiah!
Thank you, NYer, for an informative post.
Engage, as it were, in close quarters...
To me, this means He did not observe as a prison guard, but rather felt and was subject to the horrors of hell.
Engage is active participation, while close quarters is combative and implies Christ was subjected to torment.
It’s not a notion that is acceptable at all.
Sure...see post #100. I would have pinged you if I would have read your question before posting that response.
Since I only touched on it in passing, I might add this. Almost any decent teacher of the Scriptures will tell you that they are mistaken on some of what they teach. It is just that we don’t know what part of it is mistaken, or we would correct it.
The Catholic Church claims that it, alone, is the repository of truth in the Scriptures. When they take basic statements of the Scripture and recast them to suit their purposes, we object and find this aberrant. If the topic is sufficiently serious as to affect what someone would conclude about salvation, that is heresy. Such are, as I mentioned in the other post, many of the Catholic claims about salvation.
We do know this, many of the basic doctrines regarding salvation such as justification by faith, the election of the believers, the priesthood of the believers, and the utter transcendence and sovereignty of God are so well established from dozens of different statements in the Scriptures, that these are not the place that errors of believers outside of Rome likely exist.
And, I will be quick to note that there are likely believers connected with the Catholic Church, but not because of what the church teaches. Rather, it is in spite of it.
Peripheral issues (what does baptism actually mean?, how does one deal with another believer’s sin?, do we fall asleep in Jesus or go right into His presence at death?, etc.) are not of sufficient consequence to be heretical.
Hope that helps. Grace to you.
You are over-parsing words to prove a point that can not be proven. We can not ask Calvin exactly what he meant so we can argue indefinitely about what we THINK he meant. That is pretty pointless.
This is what I was taught:
THE APOSTLE’S CREED
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; on the third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
I think you err when you assume that someone who uses the shorthand of “Calvinist” must believe everything Calvin said or did was right.
So, if I understand you correctly, you are a Cafeteria Calvinist; in other words, you pick and choose what it is that you believe. We have many Catholics who fall into that category, as well. They claim to "love" the Catholic Church but pick and choose which doctrines and dogmas they choose to follow. Essentially, by these actions, they have excommunicated themselves from the Catholic Church.
So I am not sure why you say traditional Christianity does not believe that Jesus, in some way, “went to hell.”
St. Peter tells us that Jesus "went and preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:19). "Prison" (Greek, Phulake) here refers to hell in the general sense of the place where departed souls rested prior to Jesus’ opening the gates of heaven. The Catechism explains that "he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there" (CCC 632).
After his death Jesus descended into hell to deliver the righteous who awaited him. The Catechism explains,
The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his Resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there . . . It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell. Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him. (CCC 632-633)
“You didn’t see the other posts regarding exactly what Hell is.”
What do you make of Luke 16:19-31?
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried: and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried, and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they which would pass from hence to you, cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
Well put, DB!
Yes .. absolutely. Just posted this to another freeper. Perhaps it will clarify the issue. You may also want to check EWTN's reruns for Sunday night's program with Fr. Benedict Groeschel. The Creed was the topic!
St. Peter tells us that Jesus "went and preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:19). "Prison" (Greek, Phulake) here refers to hell in the general sense of the place where departed souls rested prior to Jesus’ opening the gates of heaven. The Catechism explains that "he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there" (CCC 632).
After his death Jesus descended into hell to deliver the righteous who awaited him. The Catechism explains,
The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his Resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there . . . It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell. Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him. (CCC 632-633)
Thank you, NYer. I will check that out on EWTN.
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.