LOL! At least you didn't bow down to him.
Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
In Christ Alone lyrics
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;
In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless Babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save
?Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin?s curse has lost its grip on me For I am His and He is mine Bought with the precious blood of Christ
The Mary of Mark 15:40 is the wife of Clopas, (a.k.a. Alphaeus) not Mary, wife of Joseph.
LOL! At least you didn't bow down to him.
In addition, it is not only those Scriptures about His brothers and sisters which non-Catholics use to support their contention that Mary was not a virgin and Jesus had siblings.There's the verses in Matthew 1 ....
Verse 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
And the well known one in verse 25....
25but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
Both verses clearly indicate by their plain reading and meaning, that they DID consummate their marriage after the birth of Christ.
Well, I guess, God screwed up those scriptures by implying there was a true, valid, consummated marriage.
Odd, that He would leave us with such a wrong impression for the incredibly important doctrine of perpetual virginity.
Fortunately, for us, the pagan, goddess worhip influence of 300 years after the events was able to set us straight.
ROMANS 3:
20* For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
21* But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it,
22* the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction;
23* since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24* they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins;
26* it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.
27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On the principle of works? No, but on the principle of faith.
28* For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.
Did Paul exclude Mary!
How does Paul differ from your interpretation of "works" and "faith"?
I fully understand. My head hurts too.
Or more like this:
Yup. Follow the money becomes follow the power. In trying to figure out the reasoning behind so many of their extra-scriptural tenets, to me it almost always boils down to power and control. That convinces me they are on the wrong path. It simply can't be God's will that we direct loyalty and fidelity away from Him and into the hands of fallible men.
Yes, I very much agree. The true loyalty does not appear to be first to God and His word, but rather to the men claimed to have been entrusted with (for most intents and purposes) taking the place of God here on earth.
Naw, don't believe in that. But others don't seem to mind. :)
Believers should not have to be commanded to remember him any more than family members have to be commanded to remember their loved ones.
But family members very often do not remember their loved ones properly. It happens with many things from birthdays and anniversaries to not taking their feelings into account and saying hurtful things. We need reminding about that all the time too. Part of our nature is that we slack off. (Look at how long it took Peter to forget his pledge to never deny Christ.) God recognizes this and so there is much repetition in His word. That isn't by accident, He knows our weaknesses and helps us with reminders.
It's a good source of study, but of course it is not all that it's hyped to be. It would be good to debate it but on another thread.
Yes, that website is not the be all and end all. I just like it because it is so easy to use as a quick reference.
Neat, except Paul doesn't specify what constitutes scripture, by whose decision, and how. Jewish canon was not uniform. It varied greatly between the sectarian communities of Samaria, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Alexandrian Greek-speaking diaspora.
If scripture is the word of God, then God determined what it was. He informed us of what scripture was by communicating it through His Church (or members thereof). You're right that it didn't happen overnight, but we can be confident today that what we have contains the essence of what God wants us to know.
...1 Cor. 4:6-7 : 6 ...“Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not take pride in one man over against another
Unless, of course, he is Paul!
Paul was chosen solely by God to be one of a handful of people to actually write down "what is written". Therefore, he did not go beyond it. He participated in creating it.
Supposedly being an observant Jew, it is strange that [Paul] would think so lowly of oral transmission of the faith, which, in Judaism, is actually considered higher than the written, and which was not reduced to writing until well into the Christian era otherwise known as the Talmud.
But Paul was a prodigious preacher. Weren't his epistles basically follow-ups to his earlier personal visits during which he transmitted the faith orally (preached)? With the Bereans, he told them to check the scriptures against what he SAID.
...Luke 1:1-4...it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
So, how did the people before Luke know with "certainty" what they have been taught before any of the NT (or for that matter any scripture) was written and widely read? Luke himself gathered what others told him, and not something he actually read!
That's right, before any scripture was written down its truth was transmitted orally. Sola Scriptura is fine with that. The Apostles taught orally with authority from Christ, and we can be sure that what later became scripture matched what they taught. So, as Luke's statement partly implies, if one did not have a reliable oral chain back to an Apostle, one could not be as sure as getting the information from what became scripture.
FK: We also have Jesus' example of handling every temptation of satan with scripture only.
Yeah, right, in the Greek, Zoroastrian-influenced dualistic sectarian storytelling. The Jews don't believe in the devil. How could an observant Jew?
I'm not sure what you mean. Jesus was an "observant Jew", and clearly believed in the existence of satan. The story of His temptation in the desert had to have come from Him since He was the only one there to report it. Therefore, other observant Jews who were followers of Jesus would have believed the same thing.
” Therefore, other observant Jews who were followers of Jesus would have believed the same thing.”
As the apostle John, Rev. 12:9. I would say Moses was an “observant Jew” also.
The museum behind the statue is the HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF ATHENS. Its a museum of modern Greek history (since 1821). The building itself is the original parliament and was used during the reign of King Otto. It's a great museum and well worth the visit when in Athens.
"On his resume, his strongest bullet, besides throwing the Turks off the walls of Constantinople, was that he eats them for breakfast (hence the nickname turkophago!"
Almost, O Turkophagos was a fellow named Nikitaras. I have his picture hanging on the wall of my office, blood dripping scimitars raised aloft and standing on a pile of dead Turks, while angels dressed in Greek Evzone outfits hold a banner over his head proclaiming, "Our Holy Hero"! We have a sort of "muscular" style of Christianity....
The Church even then was bending itself towards harmonizing the message to the faithful. After all, having dissonant messages is not a good thing. Look at all the trouble that the dissonant Paul still causes...
The mighty have fallen; look at the riots occuring now because the retirement age in Greece is now what, 50? I look at all those Canadians who had Med tans on Cyprus. You guys should have taken care of them with your muscularity. :)
“I never said the Roman Catholic Church is necessarily that of the fourth century.”
Thanks for the info. It still would not have taken much to add a couple lines such as a suggested regarding even those things.
” Maybe you should try to let your fingers do the talking and type what your mind says. :)”
I usually do, but my fingers have been getting stiffer (dad got the same, and i used to work in a freezer) and do not walk as i want them to, and on days when it gets colder they make more misses. But someone gave me an unsolicited, unused version of Dragon (i can guess where they got the name) and i find it can be quicker.
There is a lot of potential in this type of software (I can think of a lot of things it should be able to do), and more people are using it, but it still has a long ways to go judge humans amazing linguistic recognition abilities.
And the Scriptures affirms men testing claims by the Scriptures as available to them. (Acts 17:11)
And the scriptures also say it is wrong (2 Peter 1:20).
According to.. This is a major issue, and I submit that it does not, and the attempt of Rome make its say so militates against the idea that she is the infallible interpreter of it. The text states, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. {21} For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. " (2 Peter 1:20-21)
The context is that of how the inspired prophecy about Christ was written, (2Pt. 1:16) with a corresponding text being, "Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. " (1 Peter 1:11)
That is, those who wrote the prophecies were mystified as to what it all meant, rather than being something contrived by their minds, and is not about spiritual truth-loving souls who “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
The objection by Rome to souls interpreting Scripture in order to ascertain truth is that human reasoning is fallible and only her assuredly infallible magisterium is protected from that defect, when it defines something that fulfills her criteria for infallibility. Thus the only way for men to be certain of spiritual truth is by assent of faith to her magisterium. And by which “the infallibility of the Church in its teaching is proved independently of the inspiration of Scripture.” And having assented to her, Catholics are discouraged from searching the Scriptures in order to verify her truths by examining both sides of the issue.
However, it can be well substantiated that in the Scriptures human reasoning is often appealed to judge things in the light of evidence, including by scriptural substantiation, (Is. 34:16; Lk.. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:39; Acts 17:2; 18:23) Rome even states that “St. Paul alone appeals expressly more than eighty times to those Divine oracles of which Israel was made the guardian” of, yet his means of persuasion was by “manifestation of the truth” commending themselves “to every man's conscience in the sight of God.” (2Cor. 4:2) And as stated before, common folk who examined the very apostle's teaching by such were commended. (Acts 17:11) 1Jn. 5:13 even appeals to men to judge their own lives in the light of the truth concerning what constitutes Christian faith, and out of two to have assurance that they have eternal life. And again, rather than fostering implicit faith in an infallible magisterium, those who seemed to suppose they were such were reproved by the Scriptures. (Mk. 7:6-13)
while John 8:44 is another example on Jesus correcting the fallible Jews
John is an example of the Christian attempt to demonize the Jews who kicked the Christians out of synagogues when John was writing it at the end of the first century and needed a scapegoat and a new (Hellenized) God.
So you say. Naturally, those seeking for a way to deny the authority of the Scriptures invoke this as a convenient hypothesis.
“Naturally, the Jews will try to deny this (no different than anyone else denying something undesirable), by blaming the scribes, etc...”
Certainly they would, and I affirmed Jesus correctness in reproving their forerunners, as both denied the Scriptures which manifest the devil as a real entity, and the New Testament treats such stories as historical events. Meanwhile, to hold the Scripture as infallible and supreme judge does not deny that other religions have some truth, and in fact Rm. 1+2 affirms that men have a basic revelation of truth, but which can become radically corrupted.
All of which is really irrelevant to the issue, as the Roman Catholic church affirms Jesus words as being divinely inspired truth.
Matter of faith not fact.
Warranted faith based on evidence which supplies a degree of warrant, which results in more evidence if real.
By this we understand that for something to be divine it must preclude using human recollection
Really? What is divine?
I was referring to your restriction. As for Divine, I realize it can used for something less than God so let me clarify I was speaking is something being from God. In this case, Luke was guided by God in collecting the research and inspired in writing it.
But again in this, the Catholic Church to whom you ascribe authority of the scriptures disagrees with you in what you determined constitutes inspiration.
Again, the Catholic Church is the Church of the first millennium, and that church is rather different from the its modern namesake. And also I did not determine what constitutes inspiration. And neither did the Church. The linguists did.
Its conformity with the Scriptures which it holds it authoritative and its essential basis for authority is the issue, and as for the second, it tries (see next post).
And as we agree with her in other foundational doctrines that are Scripturally substantiated, so here also.
And this must be true because you say it's true, right? Whatever.
No, we present our case, seeking to persuade men, while the issue was that “The Catholic Church has the authority because it is the author and the steward and the owner of the Christian Bible.” And it is her who asserts the veracity of things evangelicals most universally agree on with her, while she also recognizes , that those “separated Churches and Communities” as such such as “who honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal,.. in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood,” also stating. “For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation.”
Christian faith is a faith based on alleged revelation, which is a fancy way of saying uncovering of new knowledge, be it a "prophesy," or a new meaning. I take inspiration to mean what it means in English: to be inspired means to be moved or motivated by something, i.e. a 12-year old boy sees a doctor save someone's life and is inspired by this doctor's example to devote his own life to medicine.
The issue being RC's authority, part of her expression of this is fitting:
No matter where the knowledge of the writer on this point comes from, whether it be acquired naturally or due to Divine revelation, inspiration has not essentially for its object to teach something new to the sacred writer, but to render him capable of writing with Divine authority. Thus the author of the Acts of the Apostles narrates events in which he himself took part, or which were related to him. It is highly probable that most of the sayings of theBook of Proverbs were familiar to the sages of the East, before being set down in an inspired writing. God, inasmuch as he is the principal cause, when he inspires a writer, subordinates all that writer's cognitive faculties so as to make him accomplish the different actions which would be naturally gone through by a man who, first of all, has the design of composing a book, then gets together his materials, subjects them to a critical examination, arranges them, makes them enter into his plan, and finally brands them with the mark of his personality — i.e. his own peculiar style.
the very scriptures which are authorized attest that the authority of a true believer or church is not established by formal historical lineage, but by scriptural faith by which it exists
You seem to lack neither verbosity nor empty suppositions. Whatever your sentence was supposed to prove, I will reword it to reveal to you how it sounds to me: the pink unicorns which are real prove that the authority of those who believe they exist is not established by formal historical lineage, but by the faith that they exist.
Your insistence rendering of such things is why detailed replies are often necessary, nor is my supposition faulty.
In short, “the mythical pink unicorns prove that the authority of those who believe they exist is by the faith that they exist,” by analogy meaning that “the inspired Scriptures prove that the authority of those who believe they are is by the faith that they exist.” However, mystical pink unicorns have nothing to say, and the issue is not whether the Scripture exists, but as they do and faith is grounded in them, it is that whether these material writings, even apart from the inspiration attributed to them but which a church claims consistency with, upholds her historical argument as the essential basis for her authenticity. Even if you make the pink unicorns analogous to faith in Divine inspiration of Scripture, those who believe in them must be consistent with what they say. Thus the real issue is Romes autocratic interpretive authority.
Supernatural qualities and attestation, which was given to such men as Moses, Jesus, and the apostles, and which contrite, repentant, believing souls in the Lord Jesus Christ find today today and due measure.
The problem with this is that biblical God used "miracles" and "signs" to convince people that Moses was right or that Jesus was right, and then had to go on "fixing" things, regardless, because very few people believed them. And when the miracles and signs had stopped, people believed, and still do, the stories more than they believed alleged miracles and signs.
I have responded to your narrow thinking in this before, and God was never under any delusion that majority would choose the broad path of destruction, but gave grace anyway, nor is it any wonder that it is only those who are of the humble and contrite spirit that manifestly come to Christ. (It would be good we they all stayed that way). No have miracles never stopped, even if not as prevalent and powerful as when God was instituting new revelation, as under Moses, Jesus and the apostles. But neither was i only referring to overt miraculous, but also to endure suffering and afflictions, needed for individual and corporate character, and overall that of the transformative effects of the new birth, with immediate new affections and other, ongoing, effects of regeneration, and of God's leading and working in other ways in the lives of faithful Christians, in the midst of all that passes for it.
I think we all understand that despite your affirmation of the Orthodox Church has concerns historical warrant, you reject its Bible and its God most antagonistically. And for that I think both sides here are grieved and saddened.
The Orthodox Church deserves due consideration because it is the Church that still uses the same language in which the New Testament and the Septuagint were written, and in the spirit of the languge and culture of the times. The EOC provides an invalueable perspectvie on the phronema and the interpretation of the faith by early Christians.
Certainly of historical value to you.
I have no antagonism towards God, whatever God may be. Nor do I hate the Church as some former Catholic seem to. As for condemning biblical collusion and extensive doctrinal "harmonization" of biblical authors and copyists by using manipulative techniques to get people to believe them ..
Kosta, need i post some of it and let other judge? And it is the former which can easily drive the latter view. And if we wanted to could go into far more extensive posting than we both probably are able to now on manuscripts variants and their import, i could deal with that.
Both groups seem to have a certain view they believe is true, along with the idea that ends justify the means.
Indeed, and also a type of firewall which disallows objectivity. I do try to analytically look at both sides of the issue despite my shortcomings, and myself have dealt with the venom of militant atheists and considered enough of their arguments while attempting to be reasonable to recognize a narrow mindedness particularly among such, which they often seem determined to justify. The arguments of such can present challenges, though it does not personally threaten my faith, and the reality of Christ on life for the past 30 years after becoming born again certainly gives me a different perspective, which I am sorry such do not know and resist allowing any possible valid warrant for.
You have real email!
Not yet. Will monitor.
I was thinking about this subject some more today about the belief that Mary was a specially dedicated lifelong virgin who was somehow only placed under the care of a much older man, Joseph, who did not expect a natural marriage, so that she remained a virgin her entire life. Now, putting aside the Roman Catholic Church's dogmas about this, why don't we look at it in a different light.
What came to my mind was if Mary was indeed a life-long dedicated virgin, etc., then why does the Bible not say that? There would have certainly been no shame in her doing this and Joseph would be admired for taking the mother of the Messiah under his wing to care for her. We are given instead a narrative that sounds just like a normal young couple in ancient Judaism. In Luke 1 we are told:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
A virgin (normal for back then) pledged to be married (she was betrothed/engaged, also normal back then and it was supposed to last one year) to a man named Joseph (not her protector/benefactor, but a man), a descendant of David (he as well as Mary was descended from the lineage of King David which meant their offspring would also be heirs to the throne of David).
All we are told was that this was not unlike any number of couples who were probably in an arranged marriage (very much normal back then). So, why is there a need to invent an entirely new narrative to jive with the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity? Like I said, why, if that was God's intent, are we told what happened and nothing is said about any vows of virginity?
I, in no way am trying to denigrate Mary and Joseph, they were honorable and faithful young people who were obedient to God and through their faithfulness, they and all of mankind have been blessed by the incarnate God who came to take away the sins of the world.
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