Posted on 07/25/2010 3:35:08 AM PDT by GonzoII
lmao!!!
... what their actions and words, written and oral, are toward Mary would say you are in error here.
When I see life size images/idols of Mary being carried and paraded thru a community I have to wonder what that public display is other than magnifying an idol/image. When I see Catholic Priests kissing and bowing down to images/idols of Mary I have to wonder, when scripture says not to do this, why then are catholics doing this. Not to mention vast numbers of written articles which place Mary as equal or above her son by praying to her directly ...when Christ said He is the ONLY mediator between man and God....something then isn't right about this and in fact appears to go counter to what God has written about doing these acts.
The first commandment is to love the Lord with ALL ones heart, soul etc. These acts of bowing to Mary etc. would indicate a divided heart...which is unstable in all it's ways. Not that all catholics believe this or bestow this false worship of Mary...but the general overall picture indicates most do.
So just exactly how are people suppose to believe the statement..."Catholics don't worship Mary"...when there is so much overwhelming evidence that they indeed do so?"
“The Second Person of the Trinity already existed. Jesus, however, was born as a little baby. Mary existed before Jesus of Nazareth”
Sorry, my intent wasn’t to mince words by using the name of Jesus to describe His existence prior to His incarnation.
But, by your own admission then Mary is NOT the mother of God (2nd Person of the Trinity) she is the mother of Jesus (the man). Which is my point all along.
Calling or claiming her as the mother of God is either misleading or heresy one or the other. Either way that phrase shouldn’t be used and neither should she be prayed to for reasons I set forth in another post on this thread.
Don't let the anti-Catholics fool you with flawed studied, dubious statistics and forced conclusions, the Catholic Church in America remains strong and growing. There is a phenomenon that appears to be incomprehensible to them; life-cycle Catholics. Anti-Catholics make an unsupported leap by concluding that any Catholic who wanders away from the Church does so permanently. Statistics show that many young people do wander away, but return when they have the spiritual responsibility of children. An even larger percentage are what everyone calls "deathbed Catholics".
Modalism/Sabellianism, named after Sabellius the early 3rd century proponent of it has at is core as [Our Sunday Visitors Catholic Encylopedia, pp.677-678] notes the basic error in denying that the processions of the Son and Holy Spirit are the source of real distinctions among the Three Divine Persons. Modalism in general, understands the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be roles, functions or modes adopted by by the unpersonal Godhead for the purposes of the economy of salvation.
One can see in Modalism, the notion that the Godhead can’t be known as God and only appears in 3 modes for the benefit of humanity. So in this context, one sees modern modalism being pushed by “OneNess Pentecostal Protestants” and even some modern evangelicals who argue that Christ was eternal but did not become Son until he was born of the Virgin Mary [i.e., I think John MacArthur has this view] but in eternity he was “The Word”, not the Son.
In trying to maintain the absolute unity of the GodHead, Modalism falls into Trinitarian heresy as it denys the distinctions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Pope Callistus I excommunicated Sabellius for pushing modalist doctrine in circa 220 AD.
“You might want to re-think that claim in light of Ephesians 1:4 ...?”
Your confusing the knowledge of something with the existence of that something.
I can have ‘some’ knowledge (like their names and such) of my future son or daughter long before I get married and have children (added that last part for clarification in these times). That doesn’t mean they exist.
By the way, I’m a grandpa so the preceding was only an example.
You have made the same classic mistake so many Protestants and other non-Catholics have made by analyzing the Catholic Church through a Sola Scriptura lens. While the Church believes that 100% of Scripture is the divine revealed WEord of God it does not accept or teach that Scripture contains 100% of the revealed Word. Understand this premise and you will better understand Catholics. Ignore it and you will bang your head against the "Rock" forever without ever changing it or you.
“1 Titus 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;”
Lol, I goofed, very sorry here.
This is actually 1 timothy 2:5.
thatjoeguy:
When you say Mary only gave birth to the Man Jesus, when did the “man Jesus” as you state, become God. Did it happen when he was dedicated To God [Luke 2:21-28] when he was a 12 year old in the Temple [Lk 2: 41-50], when he was Baptized in the Jordan River [cf. Lk 3:21-22; MT 3: 13-17], did Christ Become God when the Father came to his aid by sending angels in the Temptations by Satan [cf. Mt 4:1-11], etc.
Mary gave birth to a Divine Person, as Christ is One Person. If as you state, Christ gave birth to only the Human person Jesus, then how to you reconcile his Divinity in the context of Trinitarian orthodoxy. If the Holy Trinity is rightly One God and 3 distinct Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then it was the 2nd Person of the Trinity who was Born of the Blessed Virgin Mary and that person [Christ], was Divine in Sustance and thus what you then say is Christ has both a True Divine Nature and True Human Nature, i.e. Christ is True God and True Man.
What you are stating was condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431 since it is not consistent with the Trinitarian Doctrine already formulated and it actuall distorts who Christ is.
And, as a subset of the truth, when you stop believing the lies about the Catholic Church, you may be surprised at the freedom even that small bit of the Truth provides,
For later.
No, saying that she's not the Mother of God or the Theotokos ("God-bearer") denies the Divinity of Christ, or it denies the hypostatic union of the Divine and Human natures in one Divine Person.
And saying she isn't divides the person of Christ and comes dangerously close to adoptionism and some other Christological heresies.
Further to say that Jesus, the Son, is God may provide the same opportunity for Trinitarian heresy that any orthodox statement may provide.
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds, and we cannot, ought not, to compromise the expression of the truth for fear that someone may deviate from it into heresy.
Jesus absolutely created his own Mother, which is a totally unique and mind-blowing privilege he had.
And believe me, he didn't dishonor her in her very creation by creating her enslaved to the power of sin.
God is not and was not dependent upon Mary.
God is not dependent on any created thing, except to the extent he sovereignly chooses to be. He chose to ask Mary's cooperation in the mystery of the Redemption. Scripture says so.
He would have chosen another had Mary refused.
I think it's inherently bad and imprudent theology to speculate on "what God would have done had [other conditions occurred]". We don't know what God would have done. God hasn't revealed to us what he would have done, and that's the only way we could know.
Mr. Ray’s book “Upon This Rock” is one of the best I’ve ever read.
It will help you feel even more at home.
“He would have chosen another had Mary refused.
I think it’s inherently bad and imprudent theology to speculate on “what God would have done had [other conditions occurred]”. We don’t know what God would have done. God hasn’t revealed to us what he would have done, and that’s the only way we could know”
Bears repeating over and over again.
Once you understand this simple rule, you can join me in the bomb shelter.
Just curious (really)...but are you saying that Mary was not the product of human (and thereby fallen) bloodline.
I have always wondered what actually happened at this point. Obviously, God selected the most perfect human to have ever existed to serve as the Mother of Yeshuah, but how did a child of fallen humans come to such a state of sinlessness.
And of course, she had to be human because Yeshuah had to have a human aspect.
As said, just curious. Have wrestled with this for years.
Great post!
Many protestants don’t understand the Trinity. Just a few weeks a ago I was having a conversation with my mother in law,a methodist, and she did not believe that Christ existed until the annunciation. She learns all this from her weekly Bible study. What a mess!
I like what the late Blessed Fulton Sheen once said....
“It will be discovered that so called Christians who think they believe in the Divinity of Christ but do not believe in Mary as the Mother of God fall generally into four ancient heresies. They are Adoptionists, who believe that Christ was a mere man but after birth was adopted by God as His Son. Or they are Nestorians, who held that Mary gave birth to a man who had a close union with Divinity. Or they are Eutychians, who decided the human nature of Christ and hence made Mary merely, an instrument in a theophany. Or they are Docetists, holding that Christ’s nature was only a phantom or an appearance. Those who are offended at reverence paid Mary, if they will analyze their thoughts, will discover that they are holding a Docetist or some similar ancient error. Even if they profess the Divinity of Christ in His earthly existence, such people shrink from affirming that His human nature is glorified with Him at the right hand of the Father, where He makes intercession for us. As some no longer think Christ as God, so some no longer think of Christ as a glorified Man. If He is no longer Man, the relation of Mary to Him extends beyond Bethlehem and Calvary even to His Mystical Body the Church. No one, therefore, who thinks logically about Christ can understand such a question as: ‘Why do you speak so often of His Mother?’ “ (The World’s First Love, pg 71)
I've been an evangelical since I was eight years old, and I've NEVER been taught these things. I suspect this man is from a more fundamentalist and/or Baptist tradition where certain things are exaggerated.
“we believed you are not saved”
I've always understood that, as in ALL Christian denominations, some are NOT saved, if they don't understand and personally trust in the gospel of Jesus. No less true for Roman Catholics as for the average Presbyterian.
“ that you are going to hell as you follow the Pope instead of Jesus"
True enough...but I've never heard a Protestant claim Catholics followed the Pope INSTEAD of Jesus....so a straw man argument, in my case anyway.
“you pray to Mary instead of God"
Never heard instead of, rather praying to Mary or the Saints IN ADDITION to God...something I never see in the New Testament's detailed instructions to young Christians... (and if you cannot prove something from holy Scipture, please do not try bind my conscience by it...)
“you have tradition instead of Scripture"
Again, NO INSTEAD there, as it is official Roman Catholic dogma (see the Council of Trent) that Tradition has EQUAL weight as holy scripture. Of course when you have two "equal" authorities....one does tend to trump the other, especially the more flexible authority (vs. written authority)...as tradition is, when in the hands of the Church curia....(still never taught tradition is fully "instead of" scripture)
“you thought you got saved by doing good works instead of by faith in Jesus,”
MANY, Many, (many) Christians of all stripes mistakenly think that Good works, plus Gods grace in Jesus = Salvation. The gospel is that Gods grace in Jesus + Salvation = (a life full of) good works.
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