Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain! Catholic History and the Emerald City Protocol

reformation21 ^ | April 2012 | Carl Trueman

[LurkingSince'98]

Your whole post with the exception of Acts is Old Testament, Old Covenant, bloody sacrifices and burnt offerings.

The problem you have is that John 6:53-56 is a quote DIRECTLY FROM THE MOUTH OF THE LORD which trumps all other scripture each and every time it appears. Christ’s money quote which you can take to the spiritual bank is:

“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” (John 6:53–56)

There - right there Christ own words repeated FOUR TIMES directly contradict your claim “Don’t eat blood” (sic)

This is another case of a protestant YOPIOS ‘Your Own Personal Interpretation Of Scripture’ which DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS CHRIST and goes completely off the Scriptural rails.

You can contradict Christ all you want - in the long run good luck with that..

For the Greater Glory of God

[LurkingSince'98]

hey I never said Fund Baptist don’t count and its my contest.

You prots can argue amongst yourselves whether someone is or isn’t in the mix - but it doesn’t matter because they are in the mix as are Eastern Orthodox.

AMDG

[metmom]

Here are a couple references I found. There is another than I'm thinking of but this will do for now.

Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Bishop of Rome

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2482796/posts

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing that, dear xone! Independent Baptists and most Southern Baptists would probably also relate directly to the early house churches.

[xone]

You prots can argue amongst yourselves whether someone is or isn’t in the mix

Catholic arguing that. If the Mass you posted is your exemplar, you have already lost, without the readings the sermon or hymns. Just pay the cash now.

[LurkingSince'98]

ante up then put up.

waiting..

[boatbums]

See my above post to Cynical Beaver

Said he who not all that long ago exhorted someone to:

Learn to behave like among the adults if you want your posts to be read and perhaps even answered.

Is juvenile name calling "adult" behavior in your view?

[boatbums]

WOW! You put a lot of work into that. I had thought about doing the same thing until I realized that it would both BE a lot of work and would probably not make any difference to the minds already made up. There are some who imagine a superiority in all things over those who are not joined with them in their sola ecclesia. As we have witnessed hundreds of times over the years on this forum, the ONLY way truth breaks through delusion is when the Holy Spirit illuminates it to the hearts of those who are diligently seeking it. Thank you for your efforts. I truly believe they WILL be used of God.

[boatbums]

You said it all right here... And unfortunately, not being conversant with God’s Word, they don’t understand.

And, apparently so, with the "Protestant" friends who supposedly agreed that the Mass contained "more" Scripture than their own worship services. Had the list been presented as first given, with no research on their part to validate said Scripture usage actually matched what was asserted, I guess it might appear to be true. However, as Daniel1212 has demonstrated, that "man behind the curtain" has pulled another fast one!

[boatbums]

Satan always does use only parts of scripture and the Catholic Church works with him. Why do they always stop at verse 56 of John 6? Jesus Himself explained that it was really the flesh later in that same chapter.

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.

That “flesh” you think you are eating prophets you nothing. Catholics don’t understand the Spirit and “believe not”.

This is FAR from a new idea:

They thought His discourse was harsh and intolerable, supposing that He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat his flesh, He, with the view of ordering the state of salvation as a spiritual thing, set out with the principle, It is the spirit that quickens; and then added, The flesh profits nothing — meaning, of course, to the giving of life. He also goes on to explain what He would have us to understand by spirit: The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. In a like sense He had previously said: He that hears my words, and believes in Him that sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life. Constituting, therefore, His word as the life-giving principle, because that word is spirit and life, He likewise called His flesh by the same appellation; because, too, the Word had become flesh. We ought therefore to desire Him in order that we may have life, and to devour Him with the ear, and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith. (Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 37) http://onefold.wordpress.com/early-church-evidence-refutes-real-presence/

[boatbums]

Two people in the same family, each praying for each other to be in the Kingdom of God. May it come to pass. Amen. Indeed, For with God nothing shall be impossible.

It is said Martin Luther was crawling on his knees up the stone steps of the Castle church for penance when the verse came to his mind, "The just shall live by his faith." (Habakkuk 2:4). He got off his knees and proceeded to produce his "95 Theses" which began his journey to genuine faith and contributed mightily to the cause of the Reformation. An example of the Holy Spirit turning on the light of illumination to the gospel of the grace of God to a heart diligently seeking to know the truth. That is my prayer. I know I am redeemed by grace through faith and hope that Mom can know the same peace that passes all understanding. She's not there yet.

[Springfield Reformer]

It should be obvious what low quality the KJV is. "εχαριτωσεν" is "accepted"? Good grief.

Actually, the more I study this matter, the more impressed I become with the good translation skills and in-depth language knowledge of the KJV translators, though I do not assign to them what you appear to assign to Jerome: The plenary power to adjust an angelic communication to make it more memorable for the common folk. In fact, I suspect Jerome would reject such a claim about himself. I suspect he had some prior textual basis for his choice of words, such as he appears to have had for the Johannine comma as well.

But all that is a distraction. We are not debating the skill of the KJV translators. We are examining your “special pleading” for the eclectic use of κεχαριτωμενη. To continue then, you assert that:

"Graced" is the correct translation for Eph 1.6

Really? Only in the most technical sense. Nine out of ten people I know would have no idea what “graced” meant. They would think it had something to do with with graceful movement or beauty, etc., as in “she graced the room with her presence.”

And that’s the problem with translation work. The two languages don’t always map well one to the other.

For example, how do you translate “love” when the target language has no such word, when it doesn’t even have much of the concept either? Or even more concrete things, such as the language that has no word for “ship?” How do you explain the travels of Paul in that boat if they really don’t know about boats? It happens. And it can take some deep thought and creativity to get past those linguistic barriers.

So here, it may well have been a useful adaptation for a monarchical society to use “accepten” (middle English “to take, to receive”) as a way to express grace as a verb, where “graced” would have been unintelligible, and even more so in Tyndale’s day. Because for the King to accept or receive you was life itself (see Proverbs 16:15). If you were still in his “good graces,” you had his favor, and that was a wonderful place to be.

But as intriguing as that is, it still doesn’t get us to the main point. Under either phrasing in Luke 1:28, whatever the textual justification, does your “special pleading” from κεχαριτωμενη to infer the sinlessness of Mary from conception actually work, or doesn’t it?

I contend that it does not, because even if I were to give you what I see as your most important assumption, that grace produces sinless perfection, you could not demonstrate from this expression in Luke 1:28 that it tracks back to the moment of Mary’s conception. There is nothing in the participle or the aorist or the perfect which can tell you or anyone else a specific time this purported sinlesssness came to be in Mary’s life. It is therefore a permissible reading of your own chosen language that Mary was or could have been a sinner right up to when she met Gabriel.

It is the equivocal nature of the evidence that makes it impossible to serve as proof. This is essential to sound reasoning. A court cannot accept as proof of natural born citizenship a card that says “I live here now.” Even if the proof of present residence was true, it would NOT speak to conditions at the time of birth. The evidence is equivocal. It fits two or more conflicting scenarios. It doesn’t work.

And why you think the verb form provides that extra bit of evidence you need is completely unclear to me. Participles are a dime a dozen, so there’s nothing in that. The κε at the beginning is just a reduplicated consonant used to signal the perfect, which we have already discussed as not relevant to the ontological nature of the event it describes; when combined with the aorist it only shows the event is done and has some relevance to the present circumstances. It doesn’t tell you the event started, say, at conception, or that it means she could not commit sin subsequent to experiencing grace.

Even Paul would disagree with that last posit, because as one who had also experienced grace, he still wrestled with sin, and was not always successful:

Romans 7:22-23 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

And again, I get that the counter to that is to make a special pleading that the grace Mary experienced was more absolute that what Paul experienced or what the believers of Ephesians 1:6 experienced. But it is precisely that, a special pleading:

“Special pleading is a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.”

See: https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Special_pleading.html

You have, thus far, IMHO, failed to show why Mary’s experience of grace (or divine favor etc) in Luke 1:28 is necessarily different from that of any believer as described in Ephesians 1:6. Instead, your unverifiable claim, as I understand it, is that she is an exception, unlike any other human besides Christ Himself, having received grace in such a way as to render her sinless from birth. Yet the textual basis for this claim is non-existent. Every part of the term κεχαριτωμενη can be explained adequately in terms of ordinary rules of inflection. The special pleading doesn’t work.

[Luk 1:30] should have "grace" also, this is another KJV mariophobic deception

Meh. Modern lexicons are based on very broad surveys of word usage, including literature both inside and outside the Biblical corpus. Paul elevated “grace” to theological significance well beyond its common meaning. But secondary meanings are still valid meanings.

Thus, if we are using “grace” like Paul used it, we necessarily imply an undeserved gift of God that overcomes our sins, but does not necessarily make us sinless. If we accept a less Pauline meaning, we must at least consider whether “favor” or some other more generic sense is exactly what was meant.

As for “favor” versus “grace” in the KJV, you cannot based your own translation work on the supposed flaws of other translators. That is simply irrational. The objective is to know what God has said. Like Paul said, even if some preach the word with less than the best motives, nevertheless, God’s word is being preached, and that’s the main thing.

But to be fair to the KJV translators, one can find a basis for the distinction without resort to unfounded accusations of anti-Mary-ism. If you look at each of the examples cited, you will notice a pattern, not absolute, but a definite trend. Whenever an individual is found dealing with God more or less directly, as a part of the historical narrative, that is where you are most likely to see “favor” versus “grace.” And you see that pattern across both Old and New Testaments in the KJV.

By contrast, when you see Paul and the other apostles diving off into theology 101, talking about believers as a class, rather than individuals in a narrative history, you see the term “grace” coming to full fruition.

So looking at this as a question about the English translators, we have Job finding favor with God (Job 10:12), Noah finding favor with God (Genesis 6:6-8), Abraham finding favor with God (Genesis 18:3-10), Samuel finding favor with God (1 Samuel 2:26), King David finding favor with God (1 Samuel 16:22), and of course Mary finding favor with God (Luke 1:30). So really this is probably nothing more complex than narrative style by the English translators, using this method to distinguish between grace per se (a theological term of art) versus specific historical instances of God selecting someone for some special purpose. Mary of course resides in both categories, but in Luke 1:28 she is a part of the historical narrative and is experiencing being chosen for a most amazing purpose. It fits the pattern.

Real tired. Nearly 3:30am here. Going to bed now.

Peace,

SR

[Elsie]

Obviously you are taking the words at face value.

You MUST be a Catholic to claim they do not apply to you.

[Elsie]

Fair use is based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.

[Elsie]

Such services can go for hours, and the number of "amens" alone would be huge - but LS'98 would not relent.

He doesn't SMOKE Camels; but might possibly PLAY one on TV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWBhP0EQ1lA

[Gamecock]

**It's unscriptural for a child to have access to his own Father?**

Upsets the Roman applecart. You know, where God says ask your mother. <sarc>

[Elsie]

As the contest went on, additional requirements kept being piled on.

That's why APPEASMENT never works.

[Elsie]

Here is tomorrow's bulletin. There just MIGHT be some Scripture mentioned...

ORDER OF WORSHIP – 4/13/14 – Palm / Passion Sonday

 

 

 

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

 

VIDEO

 

OLDER TESTAMENT LESSON                                 Zechariah 9:9-13

 

GOSPEL LESSON                                                      Matthew 21:1-11

 

SONGS OF PRAISE
          “Hosanna"
          “My Glorious”
          “Holy Is The Lord”

 

HYMN OF PRAISE
          “All Glory, Laud, and Honor”  (tune: “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”)

 

WORSHIPING GOD WITH HIS TITHES AND OUR GIFTS AND OFFERINGS

 

GOSPEL LESSON                                                         Matthew 16:21-28

 

NEW TESTAMENT LESSON                                        Philippians 4:2-8

 

MINISTRY OF GOD’S WORD               Pastor Dan   “Identifying With The Cross”

 

HYMN OF RESPONSE
          “There Is a Fountain”  (verses 1, 4, 3)

 

WORSHIPING GOD IN PRAYER AND CONFESSION

 

CLOSING SONG
          “Lead Me to Calvary”  (verses 1, 4)

 

BENEDICTION

 

 

[Elsie]

It is, indeed Jesus Christ Who may save the invincibly ignorant, the Muslim, and also the Protestants, because the Salvation is in the One Catholic Church where He will meet you all.

Does he still post on FR?