Certainly. Let us proceed.
There is no question that a difference exists between my understanding of the message of the Bible and yours (or your organization's, since you are compelled to adhere to the party line).
Oh dear, and we were starting off so nicely. The lesson of the Ethiopian eunuch much be learned, if not now, then at our Judgement. Jesus did not leave us any written words, nor did He cause any words to be written that we know of. All the NT was either bishops writing to their flock, or the remembrance many years later of Matthew and John (who apparently knew and walked with Christ) and Mark and Luke (who apparently knew and walked with Peter (Mark) and Peter and Paul (Luke)). We have the oral tradition that was in full force long before anything that we have today was written down. Jesus created His Church, not a book. The Church created that book.
"Since you have demonstrated that there are some discontinuities between your understanding of the Faith and the real Faith, it is possible that your submission is flawed."
There is no question that a difference exists between my understanding of the message of the Bible and yours (or your organization's, since you are compelled to adhere to the party line). But, your remarks do not demonstrate that it is my understanding which is flawed. You quote a passage and then essentially say, QED you are wrong.
Let me rephrase. I attempted to say that your understanding of the Catholic Faith is demonstrably what the Catholic Faith really is. In this post (and certainly in future posts), I shall attempt to demonstrate.
Let me say, the challenge we face is to harmonize the entire Bible. This is what a good hermeneutic does.
Correct. But remember that we place higher emphasis on the words of Jesus than we do an OT clerk.
OTOH, your hermeutic tacitly claims that those passages which are addressed to the Jews directly (the Torah, w'Nebiim, w'Kethubim and the Gospel accounts up to the crucifixion) are easily picked and chosen because the "early church" did so. This may be true, but does this do justice to the text?
The text of Scripture is given the emphasis and importance that the early Church did. For instance, the words of Jesus (our Lord and Saviour) matter infinitely more than anything from the pen of the worthy, but human Chronicler.
I propose to you to consider how many Jews had the right use of the Mosaic Law? Not how many did it faithfully, but how many recognized as Paul did that it was a tutor to lead them to the mercy of God?
Don't know. The Mosaic Law was not simply tutoring the Jews for God's mercy, it was a way of life that they would be judged on.
He did not until he was knocked from his horse and blinded.
Paul was apparently given a revelation from God. It appears different from the Revelation of John, or the Revelation of Peter and the dozen or so other Revelations that were circulating.
That leads me to think that irrespective of what view those you claim were the "early Church" held(really just those whom you have been taught believed in a papist worldview), many were utterly, totally screwed up (read Acts 15).
papist? Come on now. I use the term Reformed and Calvinist and capitalize them, as you well know. I am not speaking of screwed up individuals in the Church or those who were screwed up making certain statements. That is the magisterium that is constant, not individuals. Augustine made extra-magisterial statements that he later retracted, for instance. Origen and Tertullian made statements that the Magisterium rejected.
Much of the so-called "early Church" taught heresy (simon the sorcerer, the Judaizers, Peter in Galatia, the troublers of Phillipi, Pelagius, etc.). Their opinions are incidental to the argument of the text itself.
Simon Magus was never part of the Church; the Judaizers were otherwise Christian who were eventually rousted out of the Church. Peter was wrong on occasion and was corrected by the other bishops. That is the strength of the Church and where the various other claimants to the title of Christianity do not have that strength. Example - the Anglicans, the ELCA, the Methodists and 90% of the Presbyterians and other former Reformed in the United States.
The power of the Pauline epistles lie in his speaking directly to us Gentiles (the word simply means "all other nations") now grafted into the Messiah, "at the cross" when the blood was shed.
Follow the timeline. Peter converted the first Gentile; Paul spent most of his first years in the Jewish communities. Paul was a bishop speaking to his flock. Not our Lord and Saviour. We must look at his words through the prism of Jesus, not the opposite. Else we risk turning into those who follow a man (Paul) versus God.
Here and in the letter to the Romans, Paul explains how the entire message of the Bible has been faith alone is the vehicle God used to rescue His people, beginning with Abraham (but likely included Adam and Noah). And faith is an undeserved gift, not a transaction of exchange.
Faith is an attribute of the individual, nothing else. Adam rejected God in the Garden. Noah and Abraham did not. But the nation of Israel rejected God at almost every turn and every event in their long history. Yet God persisted even in their unbelief. Remember that God showed Himself in many ways to the Jews over the centuries and hardly faith alone.
Paul step by step explains the demands of the Law (and law of conscience for Gentiles) has been to force men (called of God) to see their failure.
Now we seriously part ways. Paul does no such thing. Paul emphasises behaviour of the Christians in his flock. The Corinthians are seriously screwed up and he chastises them.
This is the tutorial work of Law/law, it is not to direct behavior.
The Sermons on the Mount and Plain are definitely to direct behaviour. The Two Commandments are exact Commandments. Matthew 25 speaks to Judgement upon the fruits of the individual. Notice the order - the fruits are done, and then the Judgement occurs. The Reformed position reverses the order.
But, here is a monster point. Your organization needs the obligatory load of the Law to be left active and blended into grace. It gives them the power, guilt, control needed over people. If they are right, then they are doing the right thing to inflict religion upon people. But, if we are right...then your organization is heretical and blasphemously teaching a salvation not contemplated by the Scriptures in total.
If there is any doubt, one must go back to the words of Jesus. Peter is made Steward by Jesus. He instructs Peter to feed his sheep. The Apostles then experience Pentecost and head out to evangelize the world. Their actions. They are doing and not being done to. Jesus created His Church and taught and taught and taught. Not wrote and wrote and wrote. If the Reformed were correct about the indwelling Holy Spirit, then there would be no need for Scripture, or anything else for that matter. The indwelling Holy Spirit would simply take over and give the Reformed elect individual all that he would need. But that does not happen, simply because each man is responsible for his own conduct and responsible for accepting or rejection the talents and Grace of God.
Rome has it reversed. They possess the power to tell what this story should mean (rather than what it means to the ordinary reader). That gives them authority over the story.
It is not Rome. It is the Catholic Church. We wrote Scripture, we chose it (and the particular version of it), and we translated it first into Latin and then brought it to the world. The Venerable Bede was the first to translate any of it into English, for what it's worth, in the 800s.
We who place the text before their authority conclude that a proper hermeneutic carefully follows the development of the story line, watching for our entrance onto the stage of the world. Thus, you quoting a passage, any passage, of Jesus teaching Law to Jews is an improper use of the Bible. You are simply reading another's mail, just as if I read Isaiah and claimed it is my country to which he refers.
But when you read Paul, it is a bishop writing to his flock, and not the words of Jesus Christ, our Saviour.
Paul claims to be the Apostle to you and I and decodes the integration between the Jews being a picture of man's inability to produce personal righteousness and God drawing some into repentence. You dismiss it as a misuse of Paul. But, that is only true if your organization has the right to misuse the normal sense of his argument and treat the Scriptures as an encyclopedia of spiritual thoughts.
We treat Paul correctly - as a bishop. A number of the Apostles went to the Gentiles. Thomas, for instance, went to India.
Paul makes it clear that repentence is not of failure to perform goodness (it is that, but a whole lot more). It is repentence from the sin of relying upon ourselves to generate the kind of righteousness that dwelt only in the Son of God.
It is not either. Repentence is the understanding that one has failed, the admission of it, and the resolution to stop doing that particular sin.
That we would think we possess the equipment on board to duplicate what is needed to stand before a holy God is sin of the highest degree. The Catholic Church implies (if not directly teaches) that men are called to do just that.
Negative. Wherever did you get this idea?
Jesus is sort of the "make up" feature for however far short I fall. But, the heavy lifting is mine.
Negative again. This is not Catholic teaching and never has been. The poster "Footsteps" kinda illustrates a little more of the Catholic perspective. Not exactly, but a lot closer than what you posted here.
The reformed perspective says that this is, according to Paul, so monumentally far off the message as to miss it entirely. We are short of personal capacity as to make Catholicism qualitatively impossible, not quantitatively in need of effort. You and I must address who's view of Paul's contentions guides the proper hermeneutic.
Yes, but remember that we revere Paul, along with Peter as the greatest of the apostles. How can we do that if, as you claim, he is that far off in his meaning? Answer: he isn't. The NT is harmonized and both James and Paul are Scripture.
Is the Bible just an encyclopedia of spiritual facts, equally applicable (or selectively applicable) or does it unfold a story which comes along and includes all of mankind at certain points in the story.
Scripture is the word of God. It is events, stories, teachings and things that the Church was inspired to include for us for all time. It is not the only documentation available to us from the Church - the Catechism (the descendent of the Didache) tells us what the doctrines of the Church are, and explains Scripture. Remember too, that the Didache was written in the first century and actually was considered Scripture by many until the Church decided that it wasn't.
So much to discuss, so little time.
First, the Church did not "create" anything. The OT existed since the time of Moses (circa 1400BC), the writer of the Penteteuch. The additional books came along througout the next millenium, until the period of silence (400BC). No prophet arose following Malachi, until John the Baptist irrespective of the "Adventures of the Macabee Family" and other interesting, but non-canonical, books. No Catholic ever touched the Old Testament and contributed absolutely nothing to its identification or recognition as Scripture. The Jews were the first and only guardians of the Scripture until the first of the epistles began to be written.
Call me sensitive, but there is a distinct tone of superiority from the Catholics that seems to "own" the Old Testament. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rome owes what little it understands to the underpinnings of the Jewish text.
More later. But, re read your post. It drips with Rome's self-importance. I would expect a more even handed treatment from you.
But, to continue...you wrote - "Let me rephrase. I attempted to say that your understanding of the Catholic Faith is demonstrably what the Catholic Faith really is."
This remark puzzles me. Do you mean it is "...demonstrably NOT what ..."? Clarify. And when you say the Catholic Church lays claim to the "...NT only." this too puzzles me. Are you saying that the Church wrote the text? We can empirically demonstrate this is not so. It was written by individual men. If you claim that they were members of the Catholic Church (a term that was not even used until the end of the third century AD), does not appear in the Bible and is foreign to the first century church, even this is such a stretch as to be disingenuous. I might as well say, Calvin appeared to many people in Jerusalem in 55AD...prove he didn't! The Catholic Church did not create the NT and it does not accept the arguments of the writers therein. As you say, "I shall attempt to demonstrate."
Paul did in fact confer with Christ. Not only was he in direct revelation on the road to Damascus, but he went to the desert of Arabia to be taught directly by Christ for three years before conferring with any of the other apostles. Gal. 1.
Now notice, this passage includes his predetermined role as the apostle to the Gentiles ("...set me apart, even from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles...") and that means he is our direct teacher.
If you really wish to give Jesus' words greater weight than others (a step not warranted by Scripture or Jesus) you must deal with this remark in Matt. 15:24 - 26 "I was sent ONLY to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." and "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs". That's you and I, Mark. We are the dog Gentiles. Jesus is the only person in the Scriptures to call us Gentiles "dogs". He was on earth to teach the weight, the enormity, the devastating requirement of the Law to the physically chosen people, Israel. When the predetermined plan of their rejection of this demand reached its fruition, they murdered Him (Acts 2:23, 24)
But to continue, when I said, "Paul step by step explains the demands of the Law (and law of conscience for Gentiles) has been to force men (called of God) to see their failure."
You responded..."Now we seriously part ways. Paul does no such thing. Paul emphasises behaviour of the Christians in his flock." Your rebuttal ignores the flow of his argument in Gal. 3. I quote...
"Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has BECOME OUR TUTOR TO LEAD US TO CHRIST, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are NO LONGER UNDER A TUTOR."
This is all that I am saying. The remarks of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount/Plain were the Law not "Christian Living". His blood had not been shed yet, so Israel was under the tutor. You and I (had we been there) would have been under the law of our conscience (Rom 2). The flow of the story is being ignored by Catholicisim. It is stuck sitting on the hills of outside of ? trying to bend "You have heard it said...every one who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court and...guilty enough to go into the hell of fire." into, "What Jesus REALLY means is just TRY to do your best, try to love men, try to talk nicely and if you don't, well then go to confession and sit in a little room with a man on the other side, tell him you are sorry and then say 5 Pater Nosters. That will make you righteous again."
The Catholic Church is guilty of not taking Jesus' words as seriously as they are really meant. If they wish to abide by the Law as a means of righteousness then they should get serious and tear out that eye when it offends. Not repeatedly offends, but whenever it offends. Do it right! You said you encouraged people to do it if they repeated. Again, that is not what the text says. You folks made that wiggle room up. But, the text says, do it. So, do it or tell us how it fits.
Paul says (Gal. 3), "For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed is every on who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them'. Now that NO ONE is justified by the Law beofre God is evident for, 'The righteous man shall live by faith.' However, the Law is NOT OF FAITH..." This from a Pharisee that knew the Law inside and out, a Hebrew of Hebrews, teaching us Gentiles.
So, does the Catholic Church abide THIS teaching of Paul? Then why the reversion to the Law as a means of teaching Christian living? Hermeneutics, Mark...