Hah. Very good. THAT is what I object about Protestantism the most: the notion that the Bible should be read as a single legalistic space, Genesis to Revelation, as a set of prohibitions and authorizations. You discovered a new Protestant sect: Judaism. Rent some space, start a "church". soon, half the town will be at your door, waving hands in the air.
It was my understanding that Catholics object to the historicity of the events described in the Bible. Some of them, at any rate.
The Bible doesn't even include "Revelation" (or any other part of the "new testament"). The laws are contained only in the Torah, not the Prophets or Writings. Furthermore, most of the laws are contained in the Oral Torah and include the rulings of the Sages. This is the authentic holy oral tradition which chrstianity (the protestantism of its day) rejected. For Catholics/Orthodox/what-have-you to turn around and then bash Protestants for not accepting their pathetic imitations is the height of hypocrisy.
No, authentic Christianity, which is Catholicism, is like I described in my previous post: the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus as told in the Holy Gospels and explained by His Holy Church. Everything else: the interest in the Bible in general, the Old Testament in particular, and the delivery of the Law on Mount Sinai is attendant to that central belief.
Why does the "resurrection" of J*sus negate the fact that the Torah says its commandments are eternal? Why doesn't the Torah say that it was only temporary until the "messiah" came to "fulfill" it?
Why do all you people assume that chrstianity is "obviously" true? That's the one thing that unites all the chrstian sects, from the most ancient to the most modern, despite their fanatical hatred of each other. You can't ignore that the Torah (which came first) does claim to be eternal and does not allow for any such religion as chrstianity in the future. Or do you prefer to ignore this fact again?
You cannot explain the Torah to me: I am in charge of explaining the Torah to you.
Now you're just being ridiculous. A Jewish child knows more about the Torah than you will ever know. You're "knowledge" of the Torah is identical to that of the most fundamentalist Baptist: that "it all points to J*sus!!!" I doubt if you've ever even read the entire thing in translation.
The Written Torah contains only a string of consonants and nothing more. The Oral Torah contains the vowels, the punctuation, and the trope. The Written Torah is the keyhole, the Oral Torah is the key, and only the Jews have the key. And incidentally, every single chrstian translation of the Torah in existence assumes that the Oral Torah knows how to vocalize and punctuate that string of consonants. Obviously Oral Torah is also the only authentic interpretation of the Written Torah.
I am Catholic, you are not.
Whatever happened to "once Catholic, always Catholic? I guess that doesn't apply to the unpardonable sin of "Biblical literalism." Now c'mon . . . you don't want a "literalist" like me in your church, do you?
Then, if you want to get legalistic I can: the Law of Moses was given the J-s just like when I deliver the law to my children: do not play outside the fence, do not eat worms, do not talk to strangers. The J-s still can follow these laws of they want to be J-s, even though, for two thousand years, they do not really have a reason to. Or they can violate them and follow Jesus Who made these laws done and gone, to the last jot and tittle, fulfilled and finished, alleluia, free at last. Then they will be Christians, and they should hurry.
That's what the "new testament" says. It is not what the Torah says. G-d gave Israel the Torah on Mt. Sinai and warned them to never depart from it either to the right or to the left. Your implicit insistence that the "resurrection" of J*sus automatically "makes it obvious" that the Torah was only temporary and a "pedagogue" leading to chrstianity is an example of the logical fallacy known as "affirmation of the consequent." Did you ever study logic or argumentation?
Once again, all the claims of chrstianity fail to take into consideration that the Torah claims to be eternal and does not provide for chrstianity. Therefore chrstianity is false, whether J*sus rose from the dead or not. You ever read the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy?
Appreciate the post, but I am running late today and will get to it in detail tomorrow.
Certainly, if I did not answer a specific question that remains in your mind, or you think deserves to be answered specifically, in my previous post, please point that out and I will be glad to elaborate. Due to the pressure of time, and also for ease of understanding, my post was trying to give you the necessary framework rather than go point by point. I believe I gave you that framework, but I will give a response to this post also, God willing, tomorrow.
most of the laws are contained in the Oral Torah and include the rulings of the Sages. This is the authentic holy oral tradition which [Christianity] (the protestantism of its day) rejected
Yes. Christ did two things: (1) liberate Christians from the legalistic attituide to any law, regardless of whether the law, on some new level is upheld in Christianity and (2) repeat and often strengthen the natural-law core at the heart of the J-wish legalisms. So, Christianity obviously keeps the Ten Commandments (excluding the meaningless after the Incarnation prohibition against pictures of Christ and his saints), and moreover, Christ expanded the Ten commandments bringing it to the level even of thought.
For Catholics/Orthodox/what-have-you to turn around and then bash Protestants for not accepting their pathetic imitations is the height of hypocrisy.
There is no symmetry. The Christian world is not a line from past to present but a ray from the center, and the center is the Incarnation of God as Jesus Christ. So obviously the Jewish Old Testament is seen as pre-history of Christ and today we live in the post-history of the first Coming of Christ. J-daism is then a separate proto-religion now wholly consumed in Christianity and owing its independent of Christ existence to human inertia. Protestantism and other heresies as merely blimps on that glorious ray of history from the Incarnation to the Second Coming. They will either correct themselves or they will wither away, but they do not represent anything as cosmic as the Incarnation, the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Why does the [Resurrection of Jesus] negate the fact that the Torah says its commandments are eternal? Why doesn't the Torah say that it was only temporary until the "messiah" came to "fulfill" it?
First, Christianity does not reject every law. For example, the passages of Deuteronomy 13 regarding false prophets are very much the commandment of God today; no one rejects the foundational passages of God in relation to man -- including the promise of victory over death and Satan wrought by Christ by his sacrifice. What is roundly rejected is (I repeat) the legalistic attitude about Divine Law and the dietetic and ritualistic law of the Torah given specifically the Jews anyway. Here are the operative passages:
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision: but faith that worketh by charity. (Galatians 5:6)...there came a voice to him: Arise, Peter; kill and eat. [14] But Peter said: Far be it from me; for I never did eat any thing that is common and unclean. [15] And the voice spoke to him again the second time: That which God hath cleansed, do not thou call common. (Acts 10:13-15).
...it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary things: [29] That you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which things keeping yourselves, you shall do well. (Acts 15:28-29)
In the last passage especially you can see the Catholic Church speaking in the name of God and sorting out diverse commandments of the Old Testament age in application to the Age of the Church.
A Jewish child knows more about the Torah than you will ever know.
Here I need to clarify my previous post. I did not intend to claim that I in my personal scholarship exceed any J-w in the knowledge of the Old Testament. Obviously there are levels of both textual knowledge and systematic theological training not attained by most,-- or perhaps all, -- Catholics. I meant a different thing: that an illiterate Mexican grandmother (forget me, a sinner) has the depth of the understanding of the Old Testament not by virtue of any learning but by virtue of being Catholic and being holy. You count the prohibitions and authorizations; she knows what it means because the Spirit of God in her Church taught her.
you don't want a "literalist" like me in your church, do you?
Of course I do. I want you all to be saved and come to the knowledge of God.
Whatever happened to "once Catholic, always Catholic"?
Everyone validly baptized (even outside of the visible Catholic Church) is indelibly Catholic by baptism and is lead by God to salvation. But he can resist God even to the point of apostasy and then be lost, for God is not going to save anyone against his will. Such a man is in a different situation than one never baptized who often is prevented by coming to the Church due to a cultural or ethnic bias.
Your implicit insistence that the [Resurrection of Jesus] automatically "makes it obvious" that the Torah was only temporary and a "pedagogue" leading to [Christianity] is an example of the logical fallacy known as "affirmation of the consequent." Did you ever study logic or argumentation?
Once again, all the claims of [Christianity] fail to take into consideration that the Torah claims to be eternal and does not provide for [Christianity]. Therefore [Christianity] is false, whether Jesus rose from the dead or not.
Jesus did rise from the dead, despite those who believed in the Torah "not providing" for Him succeeding in killing Him. So therefore, if one accepts the fact of His resurrection, -- which is a matter not of blind faith but examination of historical evidence, -- then he knows that either the Torah is false or those reading the Torah so devotedly do not understand it. Indeed, the Church He set up to lead us likewise to resurrection understands the Torah and proclaims it inerrant. They, -- I, -- can teach you what is in the Torah.