Posted on 09/02/2013 9:07:37 AM PDT by bkaycee
Count me in as well.
Well, I think that now includes every Protestant FReeper here.
LOLOL!!!!
There were many, many Jewish texts available in the first century, which were not later included by the Rabbis. The Rabbis finally settled on the general standard that the texts had to be in the Hebrew language. But though the Pharisees were their precurors, we do not know exactly which books the Pharissees scholars commented. The Talmud tradition developed after the final desecration of Jerusalem. The three fold division of law, prophets and wisdom is too vague to justify your claim that the Jews of Palestine used the equivalent of what we call the Old Testament today. Further, we do not know what the role of Jewish books in Greeks played in the Judaea of Jesus’ time. The simple fact that we call Our Lord by the Greek form of his name, that the New Testament is written in Greeks us how much variation in the Judaism of that time.
Jesus is “in heaven?” Is he there physically as well as spiritually?
I agree with you metmom and boatbums. I can't fault the Orthodox church. Catholics would like to say they haven't changed but indeed they have. Although I disagree with the Orthodox view, they certainly can't be faulted for consistency.
I am shocked that a Catholic would ask that question...
Of course Jesus is in heaven...He is not at the Vatican...
What do you mean by “heaven.”?
How many passages would you like me to post to answer that question?
Ephesians 1:15-21 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
Hebrews 8:1-4 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.
Hebrews 9:24-26 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Hebrews 10:12-13 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
More?
No, they think He's in a wafer in a chalice on an altar in their churches waiting to be re-sacrificed.
Do you think that maybe some nefarious organization printed their Bibles with disappearing ink? I’m beginning to believe just that. Or maybe they’re printed upside down and backward. SOMETHING is keeping these poor people from reading God’s Word...
What do you mean by the word “heaven?”
How many ways can one misstate Catholic doctrine? You even get a proposition wrong. Have you ever bothered to crack a Catholic Catechism?
Ask God. It’s HIS word.
All the words are his, you have an obligation to use them correctly,
You are talking to the wrong guy - I dispute the very idea of canon as being a Roman invention. And the Spirit tells me what He will.
The Spirit always speaks through a human agent. Someone wrote these books. Someone else decided they were inspired. The Bible is a product of the Holy Tradition, which is the Holy Spirit working through the church at large. The role of the papacy in this has been a minor one, that of a custodian.
Well said. Rome has spoken, that does not settle it.
With all due respect, RobbyS, you really need to expand your knowledge base. Even a cursury search into the history of the Old Testament (the Law and the Prophets) would reveal that even secular historians recognized the estabished Jewish sacred writings. One of them is:
We have but twenty-two [books] containing the history of all time, books that are justly believed in; and of these, five are the books of Moses, which comprise the law and earliest traditions from the creation of mankind down to his death. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, the successor of Xerxes, the prophets who succeeded Moses wrote the history of the events that occurred in their own time, in thirteen books. The remaining four documents comprise hymns to God and practical precepts to men (William Whiston, trans., Flavius Josephus against Apion, Vol. I, in Josephus, Complete Works, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1960, p. 8).
What We Learn From Josephus
There are at least four important things can be derived from this statement of Josephus.
1.Josephus includes the same three divisions of the Hebrew Scripture, as had the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus and Philo.
2.He limits the number of canonical books in these three divisions to twenty-two. This would be the same as the current twenty-four – Ruth was attached to Judges, and Lamentation attached to Jeremiah.
3.He says there has been no more authoritative writings since the reign of Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes (464-424 B.C.). This is the same time of Malachi – the last book in the Old Testament.
We know that Artaxerxes ruled for forty years. Ezra came to Jerusalem in the seventh year of his rule. The Bible says:
Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king (Ezra 7:8).
Nehemiah came in his twentieth year:
In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before (Nehemiah 2:1).
Therefore the last canonical books were composed in this period.
4.Between the time of Malachi and Josephus’ writing (425 B.C. to A.D. 90) no additional material were added to the canon of Scripture. Consequently there was the notion of a long period of time without a divinely authoritative Word from God.
The People Were Willing To Die For The Scripture
Josephus also declared the willingness of the Jewish people to die for their sacred writings:
And how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them or take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willing to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in numbers, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws, and the records that contain them (Josephus, Ibid. p. 609).
Josephus Was Aware Of Other Writings Apart From The Hebrew Scriptures
Josephus also wrote concerning books that were composed after the completion of the sacred books.
From Artaxerxes to our times a complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit, with the earlier records, because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets (Against Apion 1:41)
From this statement we learn that other writings had been composed after the completion of the Old Testament. However these books were not considered to be divinely authoritative as was the Scripture. There had been no authoritative Word from the Lord after Malachi.
The views of Josephus would have represented those of Palestinian Judaism in the first century. http://blogs.blueletterbible.org/blb/2012/05/29/josephus-historical-evidence-of-the-old-testament-canon/
TRUE... But they are invariably the means used to defend your sacred tradition. In every argument, comes the incessant role of what Irenaeus said, or what Augustine said, or what Aquinas said - and here we find that what they said is leaning upon stuff made of whole cloth. In a nut shell, that which y'all cannot defend within the Scriptures is needfully defended in your history. There is a reason why if one finds leaven, one must throw out the whole lump.
And while I am not accusing you here, it is interesting to me that your focus is on Gratian in our discussion... Holding him out with one hand, while the equally damaged Aquinas is pushed off center stage... And I would reiterate once again, that these forgeries (while powerful, and oft pointed to) are by no means the limit of this discussion.
AND he finally realized where the error was, declared it himself, and did what he could to make it right.
There's your problem right there.
Once again, your distress is triggered by a category error. If some element of Sacred Tradition or a de Fide dogma were really and truly in error --- say, the authenticity of the Four Gospels, the canon of Scripture, the Christology expressed in the Nicene Creed, the foundations of Holy Orders, the essential elements of the Liturgy --- if these were wrong, then the Catholic Church would be shown to be pervasively and irredeemably false.
But that is in fact the problem - Since y'all rely upon a demonstrably faulty history, that which you say we must stand upon cannot be proven. Shoot, the very proofs y'all use to bolster your authority are nothing but a house of cards... And where y'all go against the written Word, or wrest things out of it, your proofs are almost completely without pedigree... That pedigree being the evidence of your authority, I find therein no reason to cede to y'all at all.
Do you understand that?
Yes I do, and I have all along... And again, we are speaking of much more than these forgeries which have been singled out, and certainly more than Gratian.
The succession stands, even if we remove the forgeries as we must, and sink them in the deep blue sea. You may apply the same principles that you would apply to Scriptural genealogies: unexplained lacunae do not make the whole series false.
I reject that outright. Your authority derives from one Apostle laying hands upon the next, with no other ancillary proofs possible in evidence. Ergo, if even one gap is discovered, the pedigree is not guaranteed, and one then relies upon faith rather than an evidential claim. Real Apostolic authority comes with power, and that power has been lacking all along, so the proof, lying solely in patriarchy, must necessarily be air tight.
[...] in doing so have made a grand confusion of the spaghetti pot. [...] I am convinced by my own evaluation of evidence, that the Church, in her dogmas, has her spaghetti straight.
Your kind assurances aside, I too have wandered far seeking evidence, not only in your religion, but nearly in every religion - and I do not see what you do.
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