Posted on 12/15/2013 2:24:52 AM PST by GonzoII
Spiritual blindness. The god of this age has blinded their minds from the truth. It takes a genuine miracle to rescue a person from the bondage of Romanism.
God opens the minds of who He will. I certainly don’t understand and have to admit to getting frustrated at why He doesn’t open the minds of some. I think to myself “it’s right there in front of them Lord, why don’t they see?” Thankfully He knows better than I and His ways are above my ways.
the illusions of those who dis Mary.
Yep
On Pay-Per-View
O...
K...
But nothing you posted here mentioned any speed at all.
(How long is a 'moment'?)
My argument assumes two things:
1. A knowledge of biology at about the ninth grade level.
2. Honest responses, not pedantic ones.
Honesty does not always present accuracy.
THAT is what I am striving for. Someone makes a statement that seems incredulous to me; I may have not had the access to the information the statement maker has had.
I would like clarification.
I don't want to assume stuff not in evidence.
What is important to me is that people I converse with display at least a modicum of honesty and sincerity in their words, a rarity here.
If you don’t know the answer to a question why would you not be honest enough just to say you don’t know? When you say, “I can.....” the collary is “Why don’t you?”
Does what you say matter to YOU?
And that is an answer in itself.
I have looked over your recent posts. They are invariably snarky, short, and devoid of any rational argumentation. They are indicative of a great deal of prejudice and bile, and a very low quality of thinking.
I leave my best game at home when I cruise these Catholic/PROTESTant threads.
It's not needed.
Would you ever ask a close friend to pray for you or someone you love? Just sayin’
It’s not as simple as eisogesis. The RC’s have been challenged and they have provided scripture. That is commendable. Now it is a matter of determining if their scripture applies to Mary. Obviously, Mary is not mentioned in their scripture. Nor is any other clearly former human being.
It is more an interpretive task, and eisogesis is an issue, but I’d place analysis and interpretation before it.
“It is more an interpretive task, and eisogesis is an issue, but I’d place analysis and interpretation before it.”
When you start with a preconcluded belief and then go to the Bible and read that belief into anything that sounds similar, concluding it supports the elephant that followed you into the room, you are engaged in eisogesis. ie. Praying to saints, praying to Mary, etc.
When you start with God’s Holy Word, study it to understand language, sentence structure, context, historical context, etc. to rightly divide its meaning, you are engaged in interpretation. You are willing to accept what God has revealed in His Word, authoritatively, determining your beliefs and accepting what it teaches.
Doing the first is what mormons do with their “see and say” method of “interpretation”. They see a similar word and then infuse it with the meaning they started with.
Whether someone laid out the evidence first or the other way around is beyond our answering, since we weren’t there.
What we can do is take the evidence, analyze it, and then come up with our biblical interpretation. Adjusting that interpretation to fit our preconception rather than simply dealing with what’s there is the type of eisegesis that I’m most familiar with...after the fact rather than before the fact. Before the fact is really hard to pin down.
“Whether someone laid out the evidence first or the other way around is beyond our answering, since we weren’t there.”
There is no record in Holy Writ of any Christian praying to a departed saint.
No commands to pray to departed saints.
No exhortation to pray to departed saints - or angels either.
No non-Biblical, but Christian writings during the first 100 years of the Church of praying to departed saints.
No secular writings of the era reporting that Christians practiced this.
No sacred art depicting such a practice.
No secular art depicting such a practice.
It is a total argument from silence until you see pagan practices appear between 100-200 ad.
So, no, it is not beyond our answering, if we can read Scripture and history.
bump
I, of course, am talking about the passages they use in Revelation. Those have existed since John wrote them.
Historical writings are not God-breathed. The only God-inspired writings are Old & New Testaments in my view.
“The only God-inspired writings are Old & New Testaments in my view.”
Agreed. My point is that there is absolutely no evidence in the Holy Bible, nor in documents outside the Bible that praying to departed saints existed as a belief of Christianity until a hundred years after Christ at the earliest. Zero evidence to support praying to departed saints ever existed as a belief of the early Church, or as part of an Apostolic Tradition. It is a total argument from silence.
In Revelation, proponents of this later pagan belief bring that belief to the passages and do violence to the context.
Reading a pagan belief that never existed into a passage is eisogesis.
Ignoring context, historical background, language, etc., is interpretation.
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