Posted on 10/15/2001 6:54:40 AM PDT by malakhi
| Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams |
Yes, I agree.
But the rub lies in how we define “genuine.”
I think we should see what the Bible says about what a “genuine” Believer is:
Romans 10:
[9] That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
[10] For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
[11] For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
[12] For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
[13] For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Believing on the Lord Jesus is the mark of a “genuine” Believer.
Two or three gathered together in His name can generate some pretty strange ideas. Does that mean that anyone “following” Jesus, in whatever way shape or form it strikes them to do so, is a Christian? I don’t think that you would say that. I certainly would not. So we must draw lines or “being a Christian” loses any meaning whatever. I provided my definition of where those lines should be drawn. I’ll send it to you if you’re interested and don’t feel like going back through all these posts.
Following Jesus does not make one a Believer. Believing on Jesus is what makes one a Believer. I would be interested in reading your definition of a “genuine” Believer, if you could just point me to the post.
This is true, but works in both directions. The revelation of the Church can shed light and understanding on scripture, just as the revelation of scripture can shed light and understanding on the Church. Traditions made my men should be subject to change. But traditions instituted by Christ Himself, should not.
What do you mean “works in both directions”? Do you mean that we should also judge the Scriptures based on what the “Church’s” traditions are? If that is what you mean then I would vehemently disagree.
How do we decide what is a tradition of men vs. what is a tradition instituted by Christ? Christ instituted the sacrament of Communion, but did He say that the bread and the wine (Welch’s grape juice in my church), turn into REAL flesh and blood? What about the Assumption of Mary, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, Papal Infallibility, etc.?
I contend that everything instituted by Christ is contained in the Bible. The traditions that the Apostles spoke about were written down in the Bible by the time it was complete.
-ksen
Gee thanx for urinalysis Mr. Donahue.
Sure is. I'd venture to say its "THE issue." Sort of like the fate of Jerusalem in the Palestinian/Israeli negotiations. We tend to try to address the other stuff first, although much of the discussion comes back to the role of the Roman see. The Orthodox position is that we'd be happy to return to communion with Rome once Rome returns to the Orthodoxy it abandoned 1000 years ago. Obviously, Rome doesn't agree! The decretals are of course out the window, and there needs to be honest discussion about what is the true meaning of Rome's justifiable claim to "first in honor." Neither the Orthodox nor the Anglicans see this as anything like a universal jurisdiction. I don't expect these issues to be worked out in my lifetime (and Lord willing I've got a good half century left!), but I think that continuing dialogue can help us better understand each other. And to be honest, I think that it can also play a role in leading those RC's and Anglicans who come to a full understanding of what has been preserved in Orthodoxy to join the Orthodox Church. God Bless.
And you would be right again Oh Great One! :)
How do you divide up this universe? There is a man who designed the shield that has been on all these space crafts to make their re-entry. He is a scientist who is an authority on heat. He said, “You know, this universe is made up of just three things. I believe that God has put His fingerprints on everything—the Trinity is everywhere.” Then he explained what he meant. The universe is divided up into time, space, and matter. Can you think of a fourth? The very interesting thing is that time, space, and matter include everything that is in this universe as you and I know it. Then time can be divided into just three parts: past, present, and future. Can you think of a fourth? And what about space? Length, breadth, and height. Is there another direction? Also there is in matter energy, motion, and phenomena. Those are the three divisions of the three divisions. The universe in which we live bears the mark of the Trinity.
Now notice the way in which the Incarnation is geared into this observation. John Verse 1: Time: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”
Space: “The Word was made flesh”—became flesh, came down into space. Where? To Bethlehem, a little geographical spot—and even this earth was a pretty small spot for Him to come to—and He pitched His tent here among us. We beheld His glory, full of grace and truth.
Matter: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Because He became matter, became a man, took upon Himself humanity, men could see and know God. This is the time, space, and matter of the Incarnation. Let’s divide each of these into three.
Past: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Present: “The Word was made (became) flesh” (in our day).
Future: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son … hath declared him.” The apostle Paul, at the end of his life, said, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection …” (Phil. 3:10). That will be for the future—to really know Him; today we actually know so little because we are finite.
Then look at space, divided into length, breadth and height. Length: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Breadth: He came down to this earth and was made flesh. Height: No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father—He has come from the heights to set Him before us.
Consider the divisions of matter: energy, motion, and phenomena.
Energy: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God—that’s energy. How did this universe come into existence? God spoke. Every rational person has to confront this problem of how this universe began. That is the reason evolution has been popular—it offers to the natural man an explanation for the origin of the universe. You must have an explanation for it if you do any thinking at all. Where did it come from? Well, here is the answer: “In the beginning was the Word.” God spoke. That is the first thing that happened. When God speaks, when the Word speaks, energy is translated into matter. What is atomic fission? It is matter translated back into energy—poof! it disappears. Creation began with energy. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. Motion: The Word was made flesh. He came out of heaven’s glory and He came to this earth.
Phenomena: The greatest phenomenon in this world is Jesus Christ. The wonders of the ancient world, the wonders to see in our day are nothing in comparison to the wonder of the Incarnation—God became man!
These statements are bigger than any of us, and yet they are so simple. We have read them, probably memorized them, yet no man can plumb the depths of them. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.….And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.….No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (vv. 1, 14, 18).
BigMack
OR would clearly benefit from a good course in Church and Imperial history. First, St. Constantine, Equal-to-the-Apostles, moved the Imperial capital from (Old) Rome to New Rome, built on the site of the ancient Greek Byzantium, and soon universally called Constantinople. It was a Greek speaking city. He attended Liturgies in Greek most of his life, presided over some sessions of the First Ecumenical Council, whose proceedings, Acta, canons, and Horus (including the first draft of the Nicean Creed) were written initially in Greek with a Latin translation for the benefit of Latin speaking Christians in the West.
Second, although some of the pre-Nicean Fathers in the West did write in Greek, most wrote in Latin, since it was their native language, just as the Fathers in the East wrote in Greek or Syriac.
The normative practice of the Church, except in the Patriarchate of Rome, was to have the Holy Scriptures and the Divine Services celebrated if not in the language of the people, at least in a language "understanded of the people" (to borrow a phrase from the Anglicans): thus there are ancient Latin, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian and Armenian liturgies. The brothers, SS. Cyril and Methodius, Apostles-to-the-Slavs, created Old Church Slavonic to be a language with both written and spoken forms, which while not the native tongue of any particular Slavic people would be understood by a broad array of the Slavic peoples with whom they were familiar.
The difficulty with services in Latin in the Patriarchate of Rome indeed predates their schism from the Church in the 11th century: they did not, following the usual Church custom, provide the Germanic peoples who lay within their boundaries with Scriptures or services in a generally understood language.
In the East, the ancient practice has been maintained: the Russian monks who slowly converted the peoples of Siberia and Alaska made a point of translating the services into the languages they found, St. Nicholas of Japan took great care in preparing Japanese translations--using the high literary style of Buddhist and Shinto liturgics, but being careful that no words used could introduce confusion between Christian and non-Christian concepts. In America, we are finally breaking through the ethnic chauvanism which afflicted Orthodoxy here in the wake of the disunity of administration caused by losing contact with the Patriarchate of Moscow in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, so that, even as St. Innocent of Alaska and St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, New Martyr of the Bolshevik Yoke avocated more and more the services of the Church in North America are in English (or in some areas Spanish).
So are you saying that if he had stopped drinking, he would not have "been delivered of it"?
No, I'm saying he did stop drinking for a long time. It made him no less an alcoholic because the spiritual problem had not been dealt with that was causing him to want to drink in the first place. If he had been delivered of it, he would not have returned to drinking.
OK. So likewise, if a "homosexual" addresses the "spiritual problem" does he cease to be a homosexual? Does an alcoholic ever cease being an alcoholic, or does he just become a "reformed" alcoholic?
We would contend that an alcoholic remains an alcoholic, even after accepting Jesus and reforming. And a homosexual remins a homosexual even after accepting Jesus and reforming.
SD
The RCC won't call sin for what it is and ya'll are defensive about it. Carry on.
After all that, Havoc returns to form and attacks again the Catholics. We refuse to call a "homosexual" who has accepted Jesus and reformed his life a sinner. That makes us bad.
Carry on.
SD
I'm hoping to get to the Baptist Church near me sometime within the next month. Will definitely report in.
I have decided to do the Orthodox church near my home... Are there any "special " days coming up or anythink I need to know?
As I think someone else mentioned, the last Sunday before Lent starts for the Orthodox might be nice. One thing to keep in mind is that the morning Liturgy that day is mostly the "regular" Liturgy, as Lent hasn't yet started. Most Orthodox parishes would hold the additional forgiveness service that officially begins Lent after sundown that day, when Monday and Lent have begun - we count days sunset to sunset for Church purposes. God Bless.
It doesn't have to lead to experimentation, but it leaves an opening. If you have a bunch of vandals running amock inside, it gives them an opportunity to disturb the people. We say "Lex orandi, lex credendi" (roughly, how you pray is how you believe).
We have been pretty consistent about the need for both the Liturgy and the Scriptures to be available to people in a language they understand. The development of the Russian language, and the almost-universal use of English for the Liturgy in America, being but two prime examples.
I had been curious about the use of Greek or Russian or Antiochian or whatever. So you don't really use anything other than English in your Liturgies?
I've been surprised at what seems to have happened in the RCC. From the outside, it looks like there was so much pent up urge for the vernacular among Catholics that when Vatican II made it permissible you went way too far in the opposite direction and lost the structure and poetic truth of the Latin Liturgy.
I don't think there was so much pent up urge among the laity. I think there was as much demand for it as the people today who are "Demanding" campaign finance reform. In short, none. The elites, the vandals, wanted it so they could eat out our substance from within. Obviosuly, they went to far and have brought the Church in America to the point of schism. But the Emperor has no clothes and the vandals are dying where they best hope for purgatory.
SD
Homosexuawalwity is vewy vewy scewewy - Elmer Fudd
Carry on Dave.
BigMack
BigMack
A strictly literal interpretation is rare. And the kinds of excesses seen in some of Origen's work represent the opposite extreme. There is much ground between these two extremes. All Christians who are not "young earth creationists" are deviating from a strictly literal interpretation. Our fleshly sensibility must be transformed by God for us to be able to rightly comprehend Scripture. To acknowledge this is not "spiritualization," if this term is intended as a criticism. I'm not sure of the background of this term, but it seems you have a particular definition in mind. If the "Spirit" involved in our "Spiritualization" is the Holy Spirit, how could this be bad? I doubt this is what you mean, and am assuming that your use of "spiritualization" is a jargon I'm not familiar with.
The rule isn’t “how do you feel” about your interpretation of Scripture, but how does your interpretation line up with the whole of Scripture.
But in the case of the Baptists vs. the JW's, who is to say which group's interpretation lines up better with the whole of Scripture?
Case in point, there's been healthy debate between DouglasKC and others here the past few days. He seems to have as much "Scriptural support" for his position as others do for their's. Who arbitrates? If the written Scripture is the law, who is the judge? Christ, of course, but who speaks for Christ? Not all judges are revisionists.
I don’t know why people insist upon making the Scriptures overly difficult. God says what He means.
Yes, He does. The fault is ours, and always has been. But even those who witnessed Christ in the flesh talked of His "hard sayings." It is not contradictory to say that God's Word is both true and difficult.
When taken in context with Jn 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.” I also take into account that God warned Israel not to eat anything with the blood still in it, so why would He then go and tell the Disciples to drink real blood?
You choose to take in to account this passage. I choose to take in to account different passages. One of us may be more right than the other, but neither of us is being "unscriptural." This was my point in saying that when we claim to interpret the hard passages with the easy passages, we haven't resolved the problem that one man's hard passage is another's easy one.
On a tangent, do you only eat meat that is prepared kosher - if that's the right word for without blood? I didn't think that was a Baptist practice.
God Bless.
If only He'd left us a Vicar. :-)
SD
Oh that is what I would like to do..If I call will they tell me ? Does the service have a special name?
If only He'd left us the Holy Scriptures.
Christ came to save individuals by making them part of a group. We are each the lost sheep called to return to the flock. The Orthodox have a saying, "if we are lost, we are lost individually; but if we are saved, we are saved together as part of the Church." Scripturally, let me crib from trad_anglican's response:
Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.
God Bless.
We know of Christ through His continuing presence in the Sacraments of the Church and the continuing counsel of the Spirit which He has sent. The Scriptures are the highest written expression of this revelation, but as others have said Christ did not leave a book, He left an institution which He then led to produce written works. God forbid we ever have to do without the Holy Scriptures! But even if the written work was denied us, the Church would remain.
What Protestants do or don't do doesn't concern me. You should take up what they did with them.
Orthodox tend to think of all the Christian progeny of the West that are separate from Rome as Protestants. A more accurate term would probably be heterodox. Or "NC," to use Freeper terminology! In our view, the beginnings of all such groups in the West are bound up with the falling away of Rome from the truth.
God Bless.
You can’t really think that this is all that is required. If this is it, then why did Paul and the others talk about what people should and shouldn’t do? To confess and believe means to order your life after a certain fashion. To conform your will to God’s.
I would be interested in reading your definition of a “genuine” Believer, if you could just point me to the post.
See post # 30169
What do you mean “works in both directions”? Do you mean that we should also judge the Scriptures based on what the “Church’s” traditions are? If that is what you mean then I would vehemently disagree.
No, we don’t “judge” the scriptures. But tradition can clarify. For example, someone was saying a while back that Paul had installed Timothy into some office, but what particular office that was isn’t clear. Well that stuck me as kind of silly. It is pretty obvious that the “office” in question is that of a bishop. Now Paul’s epistle to Timothy doesn’t specifically say that, but we can discern it nonetheless by looking to tradition. We can find things in scripture but can’t always agree on what they mean. This is where tradition can “shed light.” This is what TRD and Wordsmith have been talking about, too.
How do we decide what is a tradition of men vs. what is a tradition instituted by Christ? Christ instituted the sacrament of Communion, but did He say that the bread and the wine (Welch’s grape juice in my church), turn into REAL flesh and blood?
We look at what the words mean and have meant. Not the 17th century translation/connotation. The example you provide has been discussed many times. The808bass has provided an excellent exposition on the word “anamnesis.”
What about the Assumption of Mary, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, Papal Infallibility, etc.?
I don’t think they are scriptural and therefore, adherence to them is not necessary for salvation.
I contend that everything instituted by Christ is contained in the Bible. The traditions that the Apostles spoke about were written down in the Bible by the time it was complete.
I agree and if you read my post # 30169 I think you’ll find that there is nothing there that contradicts this.
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