Posted on 04/03/2013 3:43:07 PM PDT by NYer
Q: Okay, so what is the Christian account of how revelation occurred?
As Elmer Fudd might say, “Vewy, vewy swowly.” Divine revelation didn’t happen in a blinding flash—such as God dropping the Summa Theologiae on top of a mountain and waiting for people to invent the Latin language so they could read it. (Though He could have given them magical spectacles that would translate it for them….) It seems that God preferred to slowly unfold His personality and His will for us through the course of tangled, messy human history. We might wonder why, and call up the divine customer service line to ask why in heck human nature arrived in the mail without the instructions. I don’t pretend to know what He was thinking here, but I find it aesthetically fitting that our knowledge of God evolved in much the way that animal species did, over a long time and by fits and starts, with sudden leaps whenever God saw fit, until finally the world was ready to receive the final product: in creation, man, in revelation, the Son of Man. God seems to prefer planting seeds to winding up robots.
So we start with traces of a primitive monotheism among some scattered peoples of the world—which might have been long-faded memories of what Adam told his children about the whole “apple incident,” combined with crude deductions that boil down to “Nothing comes from nothing.” But mankind pretty much wandered around with no more than that for quite some time, and this was when he employed the inductive method to discover the hemorrhoid god.
The first incident in Jewish-Christian scriptures that suggests God revealed Himself to us after that is the rather discouraging narrative of Noah. According to the story, the human race went so wrong so fast that God decided to backspace over most of it, leaving only a single righteous family, trapped on a stinky boat with way too many pets. When they landed, they had no more idea of what to do with themselves than the cast of Gilligan’s Island, so God gave them instructions: We call this the Covenant of Noah. The Jews believe that these are the only commandments God gave to the Gentiles—7 of them, instead of 613—and that the rest of us can please God just by keeping them. That’s the reason that Jews don’t generally try to make converts. (Who are we to run around making things harder for people? Feh!) The Jewish Talmud enumerates the 7 laws of Noah as follows:
Most of this sounds fairly obvious and commonsensical—though we might wonder why it was necessary to tell people to stop pulling off pieces of live animals and eating them. They must have gotten into some pretty bad habits while they were still stuck on that ark.
Q: That ark must have been the size of Alabama…
I know, I know.
Q. …to fit all those elephants, hippos, rhinos, tree sloths, polar bears, gorillas, lions and moose…
Okay, smart guy.
Q. …not to mention breeding pairs of more than 1,000,000 species of insects. Sure they’re mostly small, but those creepy-crawlies add up.
Spoken like a true-believing member of Campus Crusade for Cthulu, complete with a bad case of acne and involuntary celibacy. Maybe you should focus on Onan instead of Noah.
Look, there’s a reason why Catholics don’t read the bible in an exclusively literal sense, and haven’t since the time of Origen (+253). The Church looks at the books of scripture according to the genres in which they were written (history, allegory, wisdom, prophecy, and so on). And this story, clearly, was intended as allegory—which means that on top of some historical content (and there’s flotsam from flood-narratives in the basement of most ancient cultures) the writer piled up details to make a point. Unlike liberal Protestants, we don’t use this principle to explain away Jesus’ miracles and the moral law. Nor are we fundamentalists who take everything in the bible literally—except for “This is my body,” (Luke 22: 19) “Thou art Peter,” (Matthew 16: 18) and “No, your pastor can’t get divorced.” (Cleopatra 7: 14) The Church responded to biblical criticism with appropriate skepticism at first, and accepted the useful parts (like reading original languages and looking for ancient manuscripts), without throwing out the traditional mode of reading the bible in light of how the Church Fathers traditionally understood it.
Q. Why should the Church be the interpreter of the bible?
In the case of the New Testament, the Church had transcribed the books; shouldn’t we own the copyright to our own memoirs? When the list of accepted gospels and epistles was drawn up, there were more surplus candidates milling around than in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, before a primary—some of them inspirational but probably inauthentic, like the Protoevangelium that tells the story of Mary’s childhood; others creepily gnostic, like the “Gospel of Thomas,” which has Jesus using His “superpowers” to wreak revenge on His schoolmates. (That gospel is always popular, since it shows Jesus doing exactly what each of us would really do in His place.) The decision on which books were divinely inspired was based largely on the evidence of the liturgy: which books had been used in churches for services in the most places for the longest. As I like to tell Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my door: that bible you’re waving at me was codified by a council of Catholic bishops who prayed to Mary and the saints, baptized infants, and venerated the Eucharist. So you could say that as the original, earthly author and editor, the Church has a better claim of knowing how to read it than the reporters at National Geographic—who every Christmas or Easter discover some new and tantalizing scrap of papyrus containing gnostic sex magic tips or Judas’ “To-do” list.
In the case of the Old Testament, the Church draws heavily on how Jews traditionally read their own scriptures—but with one important and obvious difference. We are the descendants of the faction of Jews who accepted Christ as the Messiah and evangelized the gentiles, all the while considering themselves the “faithful remnant” who’d remained true to the faith of Abraham. So we see throughout the Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ, for instance in Abraham’s sacrifice, and Isaiah’s references to the “suffering servant.” The Jews who were skeptical of Jesus believed that they were heroically resisting a blasphemous false prophet who’d tempted them to idolatry. As the Church spread and gained political clout, and Christians began to shamefully mistreat the people from whom they’d gotten monotheism in the first place, there surely was genuine heroism entailed in standing firm. I often wonder how many Jews would be drawn to Jesus if they could separate Him from the sins committed against their great-grandparents in His name….
The version of the Old Testament that Catholics and Orthodox use is different from what Jews use today. Our version, based on the Septuagint translation into Greek, is somewhat longer, and includes some later documents that Jews accepted right up to the time Saint Paul converted—books that illustrate a lot of the mature developments in Judaism which led up to the coming of Christ. The very fact that Christian apostles were using these books may have led the rabbis to eventually reject them. (Since the biblical references to Purgatory can be found in these books, Martin Luther and the Anglicans also excluded them.) Ironically, the Book of Maccabees exists in Catholic bibles but not Jewish ones, and right up until Vatican II we had a Feast of the Maccabees—which means that you could call Chanukah a Catholic holiday. But don’t tell the judges in New York City, or they’ll pull all the menorahs out of the schools.
Yeah; the world is FULL of them!!!
Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.[1]
Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]
Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]
Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony[4]
Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.
Sums it up quite well.
Jesus, actually standing in front of His disciples, holding as chunk of bread, saying "This is my body" does kinda make a fella's brain do mental flip-flops.
The converse is equally true.
“Trent only reaffirmed the Canon that had been established in 381 AD in response to the Reformation.”
You’re speaking of the First council of Constantinople? What canon, in respect to books of the Bible, did they establish? I’m going to need a link on this claim, because your Catholic Encyclopedia doesn’t even try to claim such a thing. The Vulgate hadn’t even begun to be translated yet at that time!
I'm sorry, but there is a fundamental deficiency in your apparent understanding of "the Word". I suspect it is a result of the limitations of English. What has been translated into English as "Word" is really the Greek word "Logos". It means a complete system of order, logic and knowledge; the active, material, and rational principle of creation.
Catholics worship God, we do not worship a book.
You mean "here WAS." Regardless how often TRCs (traditional RCs) invoke a 104 year old teaching by the Pontifical Biblical Commission (in the same period Prot. fundamentalism/evangelicalism arose as a distinct movement to combat liberal revisionists), the fact is that the RCC is not the same yesterday, today and forever, and as an lengthy article at http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=4679&CFID=47744606&CFTOKEN=14006738 states,
By the time of the Second Vatican Council many members of the hierarchy were expressing the desire that the PBC be reformed [due its increasing . It was, in fact, restructured by Pope Paul VI in 1971 to the effect that it became no longer an organ of the teaching Church, but rather "a commission of scholars who, in their scientific and ecclesial responsibility as believing exegetes, take positions on important problems of scriptural interpretation and know that for this task they enjoy the confidence of the teaching office."6 The PBC now tends to be composed mainly, if not exclusively, of historical critics.
Your church sanctioned notes in your own official Bible make it clear that the liberal view is what predominates.
You are not the first to feel that way.
"The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.” - John 6:52-58
Peace be with you
“all the other sects, (There is but One Church) have as their founders, sinful men”
Nonsense. There were many congregations founded by the Apostles who, holding the same doctrines from their founding, were suddenly declared heretics because they would not confess new doctrines that had become popular. The Catholic church has a long habit of doing that. It’s quite easy to claim there is universal agreement in the Body on your peculiar doctrines, when you routinely chop off the limbs that don’t agree.
You replied: There's an oxymoron for you!
On the link were different translations of the King James Bible. On the bottom of the page were translations of other Bibles. There are different "versions" of the KJV of the bible due to translation. I suppose you are telling my that because the Catholics have only one version that all other translations are invalid. That is a conclusion that I do not share. But on the other hand, I am not nor will I be Catholic. And it is not because of theology, but because of dictates made by men of your church.
Since I have an FR account, He asked me to post this...
Who Holds the Bible’s Copyright?
I do.
Signed,
I AM Who AM.
5.56mm
“After all,so much of it is simply poetic stories and can’t be taken at face value.”
Yes, it’s pretty ironic that those who would set themselves up as the divinely appointed interpreters of Scripture try to interpret so much of Scripture to be of no consequence.
“That way, whenever anyone notices that a RC teaching is contradicted by Scripture, they can say that whatever the Church teaches is the truth and you just have to take their word for it because they are THE church.”
Call me a cynic, but it is my experience that the guy who has to say “Trust me!” is usually the LAST person you want to trust.
No, I am referring to the Council of Rome, called in 381 and concluded in 382. Pope Damasus did not attend the First Council of Constantinople making its standing dubious for another 70 years.
Peace be with you
Well, my copy may have come via Barnes & Knobles, but I don’t need to ask them how to interpet it :)
” your last pope taught that “over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else..,””
Well, Benedict was always a much sharper theologian than most of the RC apologists around here!
The first 11 chapters of Genesis come to mind.
I asked, “exactly where does the Bible tell you 2 Timothy is scripture?” What you posted in no way answered that question.
2 Pe 3:15-16 in no way verifies that Paul wrote Timothy one letter let alone two. Nor does it mention that 2 Timothy is inspired.
So, I’ll ask AGAIN, “exactly where does the Bible tell you 2 Timothy is scripture?”
Wikipedia sez:
“According to a document appended to some manuscripts of the so-called Decretum Gelasianum or “Gelasian Decretal” and given separately in others, at this council the authority of the Old and New Testament canon would have been affirmed in a decretal, sometimes referred to as the damasine list. The document was first connected to this council of Rome in 1794, when Fr. Faustino Arevalo (1747–1824), the editor of Coelius Sedulius, expressed his theory that the first three of the five chapters of the Decretum were really the decrees of a Roman council held a century earlier than Gelasius, under Damasus, in 382.
Arevalo’s conclusions were widely accepted until the early 20th century, but further studies led by Ernst von Dobschütz showed this decretal to be a forgery, probably from a scholar of the 6th century.[1]”
So, you’re now using a known forgery to continue to falsely accuse Luther? If I were you, I’d stop digging this hole already.
I am not accusing Luther of anything. I am only providing the background to the Canon.
However, you should reconsider establishing any firm theological or historical position based only on the Wikipedia or Ernst von Dobschütz.
In 1912 Dobschütz gave his historical rationale for doubting that Damasus made a decree on the canon at Rome in 382 by pointing out that in the Gelasian decree is a quotation from St. Augustine dating from 416. He therefore declares that no other part of the decree could have originally been from Damasus in 382 concludes that the entirety of Damasus' decree has "no historical value." We see, of course, that this is specious reasoning.
In reality Pope Damasus declared a canonical list in 382, and Gelasius in the 5th/6th century added to that a quote from Augustine when he added a list of prohibited books. That would not invalidate Damasus' original declaration.
What you are not addressing is that St. Jerome produced his Vulgate in 405, matching the Canon declared in Rome the same Canon was affirmed in the at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage.
Peace be with you.
G*D
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