In Christ Alone (Happy reformation day)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExnTlIM5QgE ^ | Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;

[Cronos]

Firstly, we don't believe in your flawed theorem of SOLA sola

Secondly, it's easy enough to 1 John 3:14

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

[Cronos]

What are you talking about? St. Matthias' life is known as well as St. Batolomeo's

According to Nicephorus (Historia eccl., 2, 40), Matthias first preached the Gospel in Judaea, then in Aethiopia (made out to be a synonym for the region of Colchis, now in modern-day Georgia) and was crucified in Colchis. A marker placed in the ruins of the Roman fortress at Gonio (Apsaros) in the modern Georgian region of Adjara claims that Matthias is buried at that site.

[Cronos]

Actually members of the OPC cult don’t believe they suffer for Christ alone, but for Machen and co. Why does your group also have a baby Gresham Machen in the manger instead of Jesus (just like that other cult that masquerades as Christians: lds.org)?

[Cronos]

Firstly, thank you for equating Early Christians as being the same as early CAtholics. That is so true — right from Apostolic times, if you read the Didache (written in 70 AD) you can see that the rituals, practises and beliefs of the Early Christians are continued in the beliefs of The Church

[Cronos]

Firstly, thank you for equating Early Christians as being the same as early CAtholics. That is so true — right from Apostolic times, if you read the Didache (written in 70 AD) you can see that the rituals, practises and beliefs of the Early Christians are continued in the beliefs of The Church

In John 19:25 we read, "Standing by the foot of the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary of Magdala." Cross reference this with Matthew 27:56: "Among them [at the cross] were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." We see that at least two of the men mentioned in Matthew 13 were definitely not siblings of Jesus (although they're called adelphoi)they were Jesus' cousins--sons of their mother's sister.

The Bible is simply silent on the exact relationship between Jesus and the other two men, Simon and Jude, mentioned in Matthew 13. This proves two important things. First, it proves that the Greek word for brother is sometimes used to mean something other than sibling, and it proves that Matthew 13:55-56 in no way demonstrates that Mary had other children.

Don't you think that Jesus knows better than the men He created such as Calvin and your pastors and other crew? Being so desperate to prove anti-Christian tradition right and God's Word wrong is certainly not unique - but it does prove that it will be done according to God's Word as..."Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.." Mark 7:13

Instead of following God's tradition, your group follows 500 year old or less man-made tradition.You think the ALL KNOWING GOD might have known that man would try to override His Word with their doctrine/traditions?? If He said it - we know it will happen. And the members of those who deny orthodoxy fulfill Mark 7:13

[Cronos]

That’s the thing we believe that we are suffering for Christ — The Church is Christ’s body holding true to HIS WORD and each attack from within or without is an attack on Christ. Christ said we would be hated and that is apparent.

Anything/ANYONE that goes against HIS WORD and HIS Body (His Church) is doing the attacking and the root of that is satan.

He will use anyone/anything (doctrine/tradition) to do his dirty work. Nothing new under the sun. Your group is the same as the Marcionites, the Gnostics, the Arians, all those little cults that came up and thought themselves so big that they would bring down God, but they all failed while Christ and Christ's Church, the One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church continues.

[Cronos]

Sigh... The Church holds Paul in high respect, SAINT Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. However, we do not replace the Gospels with Pauline Epistles. The epistles of St. Paul are meant as work upon the Gospels, not a replacement for them. Hence, when we read Paul (which we do at every mass), we read it in context of the Gospels - because +Paul comments on the Gospels and you may say "expands" on them.

To read +Paul in exclusion leads to errors like the one you made here. To read each verse of +Paul out of context leads to even more errors.

Let's dissect the excerpt Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Who is +Paul's audience in Galatians? A gentile Church that now had Judaizers coming in and saying basically "you must become Jewish first to become Christian", "you must follow the Law of Moses" (and always when +Paul refers to THE LAW, he means this)

[Cronos]

I think you are both talking past each other. All three of us agree that Christ’s sacrifice is what saved us and we can not save ourselves. Just as the thorn in +Paul’s flesh, so too is our taking up our cross.

[Cronos]

Incidently, in Luther's 95 theses, it starts off saying

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

...

Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.

So hence, repentence as per Luther, was important

He also points out a belief in purgatory

17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase.

[Cronos]

I would not call him evil -- he started off meaning to reform from within and he was appalled by the guys who came later and used his reformation as an excuse to throw away everything.

Luther was a man of his time and the little secret is that the peasants were falling under the ways of the Anabaptists and Luther realised that without a strong force chaos can ensue. Unfortunately he thought that the strong force could come from the German princelings. He was wrong and they misused Luther to control their peasants.

I like to believe and from my readings of Luther, think I'm correct, that Luther sincerely meant to reform the Church not break away and he seems to have been taken away by the storms of change around him and the way the political class used him to break away from the Hapsburgs

[Quix]

INDEED.

[Quix]

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[Uhhhhhh--I don't think that works over the interwebs]

[Cronos]

Luther’s writings on Jews was a characteristic of his time.

[Cronos]

The root cause of anti-semitism is a lot more profound than we think. Remember that it plays both ways and also that if there is a distinctive minority and one or a few members are bad, then the entire community gets labelled as such.

Luther started in 1523 when he wrote That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, then he changed his position after he found he could not convert them.

I do not defend his actions, only point out that Luther was a man with failings -- his strongest and weakest point was his passion, his enthusiasm and his impatience.

If he had been patient and reformed from inside, he may have become a saint. If he realised that his fervour would not mean instant conversion of the Jews, his anti-semitic tracts might have been avoided, but he displayed human failings. The real problem is that he was such a pivotal figure in the life of Germany and his towering influence led to repercussions I don't think he fully understood.

[Cronos]

And, adding in — Luther’s position was entirely religious and in no respect racial. He was not an anti-semite in the modern sense of the term — he hated not converts from Judaism. His antagonism was based on religion, pure and simple, not race

[The Theophilus]

You are wrong in claiming that adelphos can only mean sibling in the New Testament. In Matthew 13:55-56 four men are named as brothers (adelphoi)

I understand that Rome allows you to change doctrine at will so that it fits the a priori view your handlers demand, but your Jedi powers won't work on me. I never said that adelphoi exclusively was for natural brothers, what I did say, and the Greek lexicons and Greek texts concur is that the word for "sister" 'άδελϕή' (adelphe) is used for natural relationships - never for cousin, tribesmates, distant kin etc.

The word 'άδελϕός' (adelphos) can be used for either natural brother, cousin or near kinsman.

You conclude wrongly that these are at least some of Mary's other children. The New Testament proves otherwise.

You are hurling elephants trying to assert as true that which must still be proven. How can you, in your warped logic agree that adelphos can mean either natural brother or cousin, but then assert conclusively that Matthew 13:55-56 can ONLY mean 'cousin', when it is in proximity to adelphe which only means natural sister and when the very context and purpose of the passage makes sense when brothers and sisters mean literal natural brothers and sisters? For you to declare absolutely that adelphos can only mean cousin, you violate your own argument. What is worse, I didn't demand that alephos could ONLY mean brothers (yet the context pretty much concludes that), rather I stuck with that which is demonstrated and not in dispute by reasonable people that the Greek for "sister" meant literal natural sister and an imposition other than that is just plain malpractice and inexcusable.

Cross reference this with Matthew 27:56: "Among them [at the cross] were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." We see that at least two of the men mentioned in Matthew 13 were definitely not siblings of Jesus (although they're called adelphoi)they were Jesus' cousins--sons of their mother's sister.

While we are cross-referencing, I suppose you just simply let Galatians 1:19 "But of the other apostles saw I none, save James the LORD's brother". slip from your view. How convenient. Now why would Paul care to add the identifying language "the LORD's brother" to that statement if James was merely a cousin? And why wasn't John the Baptist ever identified as our LORD's brother when he was in fact a cousin? The reason why Paul added that language in there was not to taunt the Protestants and steer them into error, rather it was to distinguish between the various James floating around at the time. This wasn't the only time Paul referenced our LORD's brothers, we see this again in 1 Corinthians 9:5. Heck, even John recognized that our LORD had brothers since John made a point that his own family didn't recognize that Jesus was the promised one (John 7:3-5).

As a side note since you care to tutor us on the language, the 'a' in adelphos is a connective particle meaning 'from' where the remaining part of the word 'delphos' means "the womb", so when you want to use adelphos it usually means "from the same mother". If you want to actually mean "cousin" we are blessed to have a couple of words that work quite splendidly to accurately convey that thought: anepsios 'άνεψιός' which literally means "cousin" and the word that you WISH was used in Matthew 13 and that is sungenis 'συγγενίς' which means 'kinsfolk' and would have been the perfect word to include female cousins. Sadly for you, the Gospel writer used the word for sister and so your argument flies against proper Greek syntax and definition.

In fact, your ham-fisted approach to rendering Greek leaves us with a bit of a quandrary. Hypothetically speaking, if the Gospel writer did indeed intend to convey the idea unambiguously that James, Joseph, Simon and Jude were literal half-brothers born of Mary, how would you recommend that the Gospel writer spell it out? He used the ONLY word that could ever be used to mean literal brother, and Matthew used the ONLY word that can ONLY mean literal sister. So if the word is hijacked for your convenience to mean something that can be represented by two other words, how exactly would he express a literal "from-the-same-womb" (adelphos) relationship?

I give you a failing mark in your Greek lesson.

, and it proves that Matthew 13:55-56 in no way demonstrates that Mary had other children.

All I can conclude to you is that reading the Bible is a waste of your time since facts, logic, context, syntax and lexicon mean nothing to you when your handlers tell you not to believe you eyes nor trust the good sense God has allegedly given you.

Please excuse the rest of us who trust the Inspired word of God before we heed the ludicrous contentions of sex-starved priests who fantasize about heavenly virgins (like our Mohammadan mad bombers also do)

[The Theophilus]

However, if one lets go of the ego of SOLA mi, and reads what early Christians actually thought, then you have...

...to also believe gnostics, heretics and others.

I think that it is cute that you will count Augustine when he allows for perpetual virginity, but will throw out everything else he says when it comes to soteriology and other doctrines Rome has rejected.

Many early Christians were also Premillennialists, and Augustine was once one, before he switched to what Rome now holds which is largely an Amillennial view. So if we look outside of Scripture, then which best represents the eschatology of Christ? Premil or Amil? (Sorry Preterists, you weren't well represented back then)

We stick with Sola Scriptura because God doesn't change, and neither does His revelation. The inspired texts locked in time serve that purpose well.

[metmom]

I don't know of anything that supersedes natural laws.

YOU don't. That doesn't mean that something you don't know about doesn't somewhere.

To make blanket statements and think they apply to all places for all time, you would have to know everything, everywhere, for all time and eternity. You don't. The only way to conclusively say what you're claiming is if you were omniscient, and you aren't.

If something exists in nature it is natural whether we understand it or not.

Making your life experiences the standard by which to measure and judge everything boxes you in. It does not allow for an honest, objective appraisal of the world around you. Restricting the explanations of phenomena to completely *natural* ones does the same thing.

It amounts to willful blindness, much like the person who plugs their ears and sings, *La, la,la, laaaaaaa, I can't hear you.....*

It's also working on the presumption that you are correct in your interpretation of the evidence and since you are within the system (of nature) so to speak, it is impossible to step outside it and be truly objective about what is observed and the source or reason for an event happening.

But this is not new ground. You've been told this before.

[metmom]

It would, now wouldn’t it.

But rather Catholics ooohhhh and aaaahhhh over his dismissal of their faith as a fake and hold him up as some kind of hero and hang onto his words thinking they’re profound.

They even claim it helps their faith and makes it stronger.

riiiggghhtttt.....

[Mad Dawg]

If you think thoughts are physical, as you seem to say, I'd like to recommend Feser's The Last Superstition. It's nouveau Scholasticism, and I think it's pretty good. His Aquinas is also good.

He argues as I imagine the love child of Aquinas and Coulter would argue. It's fun.