Posted on 07/25/2010 3:35:08 AM PDT by GonzoII
Evangelical Protestants are taught to recruit Catholics by exploiting their lack of Bible knowledge, but use Scripture out of context to make Catholic beliefs look flawed.
This is the claim of Catholic apologist Steve Ray, in Perth from the United States of America earlier this month as part of a national tour. Mr Ray used to take on this role.
“We were trained to evangelise Catholics – we believed you are not saved, that you are going to hell as you follow the Pope instead of Jesus, you pray to Mary instead of God, you have tradition instead of Scripture, you thought you got saved by doing good works instead of by faith in Jesus,” he told about 60 people on Thursday, 8 July, at Trinity College, East Perth.
“It was our job to get you saved and become real Bible Christians. This is what Evangelicals think – most of them, even in Australia.”
He said that he was taught the right questions to ask and memorised up to 15 verses that “were good to use with Catholics”.
Mr Ray, married to Janet for 33 years with four children, said he and his wife went from being “anti-Catholic Baptists” to “crossing an uncrossable chasm and becoming Catholics”.
The Rays were not alone. They opened their home for two years to people seeking to discuss their differences with Catholics and explained why they converted, “even if people hated Catholics”.
In that time, Mr Ray said over 200 people joined the Catholic Church.
Addressing several key issues that cause the at-times vicious divide, especially in the United States, between Protestants and Catholics, Mr Ray said he achieved “great success” by asking carefully selected questions and backing them up with isolated Scripture quotes.
(Excerpt) Read more at therecord.com.au ...
Ah, so few words and such a complex question. :-) Short answer: "Depends on exactly what you mean by that." :-)
Mary was certainly the daughter of her parents and was conceived and born in the usual way. In what way was she different?
Protestants sometimes talk about a "sin nature," and seem to be saying that original sin is sort of like a positive hereditary corruption (a spiritual "birth defect," sort of) that is transmitted by the generative process.
That isn't the Catholic belief. The Catholic belief is that the consequences of the Fall come in two parts. The first, and most important, is the loss of sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is the divine life of God in your soul. It's what makes your soul holy and beloved of God. It's what gets you to heaven.
If the Fall hadn't happened, it appears that sanctifying grace would been present in every human child simply by virtue of his humanity. After the Fall, we're born without it.
So that aspect of original sin is not a positive "disease presence," but a lack of something very good that should have been there. It's not really "transmitted" in the generative process through a "fallen bloodline" because it's a lack -- it's a failure to transmit something good that should be transmitted.
The second consequence of the Fall was the deprivation of certain gifts that were present in Adam and Eve after the fall, called "preternatural gifts". These gifts include physical immortality (usually understood to mean the ability to not age and die from natural causes, not the complete inability to die), impassability (the associated ability to avoid suffering from, e.g., disease), and "freedom from concupiscence" ("concupiscence" = our irrational and unnatural attachment to sin).
Having said all of that, here's the punchline: Mary, by virtue of a special gift from God and in view of the foreseen merits of her crucified Son, was granted sanctifying grace from the moment of her conception, and also the preternatural gift of "freedom from concupiscence", but not all of the other preternatural gifts.
She thus had some (but not quite all) of the gifts God gave Eve prior to her sin (and which he took away afterwards).
Catholics call this doctrine the "Immaculate Conception".
It is? I think you may have mistyped something there. Where does salvation come from, if not from "Gods grace in Jesus"?
The Catholic gospel is God's grace through Jesus -> applied to me -> faith + hope + charity -> salvation.
It has NOTHING to do with Sabellianism. Only Nestorians claim it does.
You, Sir, are a closet-Nestorian.
So, I take it this means you think that Mary carried the Father and the Spirit in her womb, as well?
I guess I can start referring to Catholics as "Patritokosianists" then.
Nevertheless, your point is ridiculous. Mary did not carry "God" within her, she carried "God the Son" within her, which is why people who want to be correct in their theology observe that Mary is Christotokos, rather than Theotokos - and this is true, regardless of whatever the Nestorians might have said.
To say "Christ" IS to say "God the Son," because the Messiah, even from what we see in the Old Testament, is God the Second Person of the Trinity incarnated in human flesh.
The problem is that you Catholics are sloppy in your use of terminology because by saying "God" without further specification of the Person to which you are referring, you are basically affirming that all three Persons were in Mary's womb - which is obviously incorrect. That is, in fact, Sabellianism because while you affirm that there are three Persons, you confuse them with respect to their functions and their roles, and by saying Mary is "Theotokos," in fact, you de facto reject the separateness of the Persons within the unity of the substance of the Godhead.
The Nestorians were quite right to use the term "Christotokos," they were merely wrong in what they meant by it.
“When you say Mary only gave birth to the Man Jesus, when did the “man Jesus” as you state, become God.”
This is mincing words. Mary did not exist prior to the 2nd Person of the Trinity (God) plain and simple. Therefore Mary is not the mother of God. How you wish to explain His incarnation and birth is up to you. My whole point on the conversation was that Mary was only the vehicle which God used to bring Jesus into the world, that does not give her status to be prayed to and treated as a form of Deity.
You are lost and grossly misinformed about the Church. Your references to hocus-pocus & painting by numbers shows the depth of your ignorance. I will pray for you.
Therefore Mary is not the mother of God.Says what splinter of the protestant faiths?
We make judgments every day concerning truth and falsehoods...in the workplace our homes and the relationships we forge throughout life. We are called to do so. "When you judge, judge righteously"... And yes I have indeed spoken with those performing these acts....as well many in the religious threads have shared what their worship means to them in addition to having these idols/images in their life.
It is really quite amazing you would call the evidence "superficial".......God said don't make idols, don't bow down to them as the heathen do. That is what is done and is what is seen. Simple and clear observation.
And I will most assuredly continue to judge those acts...since God has clearly stated what He has concerning them. Since Christ has been abundantly clear HE is the only mediator between God and man.... your arguments are with Him not me. I am simply abiding by his clear and precise words.
“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!”
These kinds of statements don’t really make any points other then to show that there is a lack of proper education in the scriptures.
“Those who are offended at reverence paid Mary”
This isn’t about an offense but about giving Mary the elevated status and placing her along side Jesus and in some cases even higher then Him.
And then you have the question of whether we existing and God chose us, or whether God had a catalog of potential people on a shelf, and went, "Hmm, I think I'll make one John, a Mary, and two Marshas...no, not *that* Billy, I think I'll make the other one."
I don't think eternity maps very well to our present time-space continuum; the focus is blurred further by the Incarnation; and the question of whether, even in Heaven, we will have the same perceptions, the just knowing, that God has, or merely a version with training wheels (we are still only limited creatures), I don't know...
Any Hebraic / Aramaic / ancient Greek scholars available for help on the text?
Cheers!
Lk 1: 43"And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Now that's not what was said, is it??? She didn't say the mother of my God should come to me...
Your religion, as usual, has added to the scriptures and tries to pass it off as scripture...
You DO know what God says about adding to His scriptures, don't you???
We Catholics do NOT worship anyone but God. We ask Mary and the saints for their intercession with God. There’s a BIG difference. The Hail Mary prayer ends with the words, “Holy Mary, mother of God, PRAY FOR US, NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH. Amen.”
We have statues of saints only to remind us of those who have gone before us in the love of Jesus, son on God, and their good works. Again, we ask them for intercession with God.
What about the queer cardinals...And no doubt some popes??? Those guys ARE your church and they DID not only allow it, they encouraged it...
That's pretty simple bible stuff...Jesus, while on earth, prayed to the Father who is in Heaven...Jesus who is in Heaven sent the Holy Spirit to the Earth...
Jesus commands us not to bear witness against our neighbor and it appears you have soiled your immortal soul with your blasphemous testimony. You must repent from these sinful actions as John the Baptist commands us to do. Your inability to interpret sacred scripture most assuredly forces you to submit yourself to the Holy Spirit and swallow your sinful pride.
Since when does knowledge of Catholicism supersede Gods written word? I don't need to understand falsehoods of any faith when they fly in the face of Gods revealed word. But since catholics believe Rome determines their practices one does have to believe in the infallibility of it's magisterium. Thus where most catholics stand...in what the church dictates. But solid ground is believing the clear and precise words of God.....and it is there I will stand. Not in what man dictates.
BTW.....He said do not bow down to these idols/images.....He said do not pray to them....He said do not make them. What part of "do not" do you not understand?
But you are then bypassing Christ who we have direct access to, who always hears our prayers...so what do you stand to gain by going to another? They cannot answer your prayer...Christ alone has the all power...by praying to another you have then dethroned Him from His rightful place which He shares with no other.
But one question still remains.
Since we know that God obeys His own rules and since we know that the most important of those rules is that Yeshuah/Jesus (our Lord) had to come and go to the Cross bearing our sins to pay the ransom due for our enslavement to sin, how did He extend the gift of sanctifying grace and freedom from concupiscence to one person, Mary, and not violate His own rule of not doing so except by the Cross?
BTW, thanks very much for taking the time to discuss this matter with me!
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