Posted on 01/29/2007 6:45:51 AM PST by stfassisi
Everyone on this forum has a sense of humor. It's a prerequisite!
When I say, "by their fruits you will know them", what's that mean to you? They ate "death", the fruit of Satan.
"When I say, 'by their fruits you will know them', what's that mean to you? They ate "death", the fruit of Satan."
When you say it, as when Jesus said it, I take that to mean that by looking at what people do and the outcomes the things they produce, you will be able to evaluate if they are good people or not. Thus, if you look at a group that some despise and others do not - such as the early Christians for instance - and you see an outpouring of real charity and the alleviation of human suffering, then you know these people are good.
Regardless of theological doctrines (or the lack thereof) the key reason we know the 19th Century Quakers and 20th Century Chinese Pentecostals are truly blessed by the Holy Spirit is the tremendous good they did in abolishing slavery and spreading the gospel in difficult circumstances. You know them by their fruits. That's what that means to me, and I would say that that's what that means as a general rule.
But when you say "They ate death, the fruit of Satan", it's highly imaged, but I don't get that out of the text. In the text, I have Adam and Eve eating fruit from a tree God has forbidden them. They do it at the serpent's temptation (the Genesis text doesn't say that the serpent is Satan, but we identify the serpent with Satan). God then comes and condemns them to death, and to exile from Eden, to pain and suffering and labor. God goes further and condemns not just them, but their offspring forever. It seems to me as though God is the one who metes out the death, not the fruit.
Another tree was specifically mentioned & they were not told they couldn't eat of its fruits until after the fall, the tree of life.
They do it at the serpent's temptation (the Genesis text doesn't say that the serpent is Satan, but we identify the serpent with Satan).
It is why I called it Satan's fruit. Satan's fruit is death, as he has been the only one who has been condemned to die.
God then comes and condemns them to death, and to exile from Eden, to pain and suffering and labor.
Do you think Adam, Eve & all of their children die? Tell me why people pray for intercessions again? The fruit didn't bring death in the sense of death on earth, but the death of the lake of fire.
God goes further and condemns not just them, but their offspring forever. It seems to me as though God is the one who metes out the death, not the fruit.
The fruit did it, through corruption of men's minds. If we die, it is because we've brought it upon ourselves.
That said, back to my irreverent humor:
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Yes. I think that the curse of Adam is physical death, not spiritual death. "You are dirt, and to dirt you shall return" - God's words to Adam, refers to physical dissolution. In a similar vein, when God worries about Adam reaching out to the tree of life and living forever, he expels them from Eden and puts the Cherubim with the flaming sword there. (Presumably the Tree of Life drowned in the flood, so there isn't some valley somewhere with a Cherubim and a flaming sword in it, waiting for some hapless Dr. Livingstone to blunder into it.)
When I read this, it seems very much to be talking about physical death.
Likewise the whole list of the ancients, each of their lives is described. Then it says "And then he died."
I don't take "died" to be in a spiritual sense but in a literal physical sense, just as the description of Enoch walking with God and not being here I take literally, and I take Elijah being taken up literally.
Or rather, I should say that I take them literally for the purposes of reading the text.
Pulling back, I know that there isn't any evidence of a world-wide, planet drowning flood. High seas everywhere, yes. Mount Everest under water? No.
Similarly, I know that man probably descended from primates, and that the genetic markers strongly indicate that hominids walked out of Africa a million years ago, and dispersed and differentiated. To the extent there was a Garden of Eden where man originated, it may not have been by the Tigris and Euphrates at all, but somewhere near Lake Victoria and Mt. Kilamanjaro.
I know that creatures have been dying on this planet for a billion years and more, and that man didn't cause that.
So, what am I to actually make of Genesis?
It's too late to go into it tonight. Perhaps tomorrow. I think it is the story of Everyman and Everywoman, and describes each and every one of ours naked birth rise in innocence to adolescence, and Fall, when that knowledge of good and evil blossoms in us with that temptation to sin, that overwhelming temptation, which none resists.
I don't think physical death is a punishment for anything, but a change of state from the circles of this world to the unadumbrated soul which goes back to God.
And I don't expect anybody to share this view, so I don't think I need to elaborate on it even tomorrow.
Good night.
Night & I look forward to getting into this further with you tomorrow.
You missed the party last fall. She was quite a show! LOL.
Revelation 2:7
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God."
words mean things. they just can't be explained away. what you wrote was clearly heresy. it reads like marcion has been resurrected. you also state you are the final authority.
that makes your writings heretical and your imagined exercise of authority protestant.
that's nothing new around here - even for putative catholics
I was agreeing with Redgolum, I have no qualms about supporting Protestants who point out such blatantly heretical views. The opinions suggested were totally removed from anything that either Catholics or Protestants are taught.
LOL It is unremarkable that men roar like lions in accusing the Bible and Church as sources of error but mewl like kittens when it is correctly noted their words are heretical.
and far from me acting as though I were in league with Satan, what I have done is Commanded by Scripture and taught as an act of corporal Mercy.
if other Catholics are too timid to act, so be it. I aint
Yeah, I thought the XXII was a good enough tipoff. I've enjoyed that word "Romish" ever since I first read it. I'm quite Romish myself, I'm pretty sure there's a purgatory, and I'll consider myself fortunate if I make it there.
Thank you for the comment linking the dead with prayers for the dead and the fact that the dead aren't really dead.
When Jesus says, in Luke, that 'some of you will be killed', but then promises that not a hair on their head will be harmed and they'll all keep their lives, it seems like a direct contradiction.
But of course it isn't. Jesus is talking about life, not just physical life. The body dies, but the soul goes on.
I always say that Jesus is the prism by which the whole rest of the Bible must be interpreted. It didn't dawn on me until your comment last night to apply that directly to the eating of the fruit and the curse of Adam and death.
Read through Jesus, the death in Genesis makes sense, and Genesis need not then be read to mean, perforce, that nothing physically died before Adam. Dinosaurs, for instance. They may have physically died, but to the extent than at animal has a soul, it didn't die. To the extent they don't, it didn't die either, because it was never "alive" in the first place, in the spiritual sense.
Of course there is still the problem that Genesis pretends that all (land) animals (it is silent about the fish) were vegetarians before The Fall, but dinosaurs weren't. "My, my, Grandma T-Rex, what BIG TEETH you have!" So I still cannot take Genesis literally as to natural science, but an important spiritual lesson about death, specifically human death (the Bible isn't the gospel to the animals, so whatever their relationship is with God, we do not know...other than the cryptic line in Genesis in the story of Noah that God will hold animals accountable, too, for the human blood they share. NDE experiencers report animals and plants in the place they go to, and there's no reason to disbelieve that, considering God proclaimed those things good and obviously took delight in making them. Anyway, Fido's relationship with the Almighty is none of our business - the Bible is about man's relationship to God).
So, thanks again for making the connection. It was fruitful.
"if other Catholics are too timid to act, so be it. I aint"
No, you are not afraid to be a loudmouthed fool, bellowing charges of heresy over and over and over again.
I have committed no heresy. You simply don't agree with my interpretations, which is your right.
You have chosen to repetitively bear witness that I am a heretic, and you consider this "acting". It isn't acting at all, other than in the prima donna sense of the word.
If you want to truly ACT, then go and get authority - which you are not - to discipline me.
Of course, he might discipline you instead.
A heresy charge is a very strong thing to be flinging about.
You're not an ordained clergyman. You're a peer.
You don't like what I have to say.
You've chosen to start shouting "Heresy!" from the rooftops.
Apparently at least one other Catholic agrees with you, although he has not addressed me directly about this.
You have no greater authority in the Catholic Church than I do.
You have called me a heretic - serious charge.
I have called you "opinionated".
To this I will also add "bearing false witness".
Keep it up in public, you are doing a marvelous job of explaining just why it is that there was a Reformation in the first place!
Time was, folks like you could silence whoever you disagreed with with a charge like that hurled from the rooftops, and if someone with as much concern for the faith didn't knuckle under to your loudmouthed approach, he would be put to the torture for it and killed. Lots of clergymen sent themselves to hell doing this, and ended up blackening the name of the Catholic Church forever for it.
Here in the 21st Century, you are their heir.
I have committed no heresy whatever.
What I said about Genesis, especially, was mirrored in the quotations from the bishops' committee in the front of my Catholic Bible which I quoted last night.
You have borne false witness again and again, and I am certain you are going to do it yet again.
Which is not just spiritually unwise on your part (you do not know of what you speak), but certainly confirms everybody's suspicions of what the Catholic Church is REALLY like, when you drill past the facade.
Except of course that the Catholic Church is NOT really like that, I am well within it, and you're a nobody without authority pretending that you have it.
Rather than continuing to bear false witness against me for violating your idea of "heresy", go get an ordained minster - surely you know several, given the authority you have taken it upon yourself to act as the public disciplinary arm of the Catholic Church here - and have him, who has authority, come here, read everything that has been posted, and pronounce a decision.
He may tell me to stop posting what I have posted, although I doubt it.
He will certainly tell you to shut up and not fling charges of heresy around again.
I, of course, have no authority to tell you to do so, and if you want to spend your time calling me a heretic, go ahead. I'm no heretic. I'm just a Catholic layman, like you. Your peer. Not your spiritual or hierarchical subordinate.
I have spoken things as I see them.
You have borne false witness.
I am sure you will do so again.
And I am certain that, when you do so, I will respond again in kind.
It's not much fun, but overbearing people like you need to be put right in your place, which is an exact peer of me in the Church, nothing more. You do not speak for the Church. You speak for yourself but pretend to speak for the Church. It is an ill-advised move, especially when it is laced with calumny.
Your sin of pride, however, will be on full display again, I am sure. And again and again and again.
I have no wish to fight with you, and would prefer to just ignore you, just as many who disagree with me ignore me.
But you have taken it upon yourself to be the Grand Inquisitor. You have no commission. You have no ordination. You have no authority. You are a nobody presuming to exercise spiritual authority over a peer.
And you will not be granted anything other than the same lecture every time you do it.
It is not edifying to the Church to see you act this way.
If you have a heresy charge to bring, then BRING IT.
I will not hide my identity from any true authority of the Church who wishes to investigate.
Go to De Fide or any other group. Go to your priest. Go to the diocese. Go to the Charismatic Renewal Council. Go get a religious cop and bring him to the table and make your charge.
Otherwise, stop bearing public false witness against me, repeatedly and stubbornly. It's a deadly sin, as is the flaming sin of overweening pride which drives it.
With Christian charity and brotherly love, I advise you to put a sock in it.
Peace.
You're welcome.
Where Adam & Eve once knew only good...
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
See it now? Adam & Eve were the parents of all who "live", they were the parents of God's "chosen people". When you look at the sixth day again, you may see men & women were created on that day, plural. Notice how "adam" (man, men, mankind) is used in Genesis 1, while "Adam" is used in Genesis 2.
The Bible tells the story of God's "chosen people", yet it offers us clues about the exsistance of other people. Cain went to live in the land of Nod, "away from the face of earth", away from the face of God & he married. Where'd his wife come from?
Anyway, there's a purpose to all of the "begets", knowing how to identify the children of Adam's line. He was the father of all who live. Mary's lineage is given in Luke.
Call me crazy, if you want, but I think the accepted plate mapping currently used is... interesting & in need of a lot of tweeking. There are "sea bottoms" near the tops of peaks.
"Anyway, there's a purpose to all of the "begets", knowing how to identify the children of Adam's line. He was the father of all who live."
Well, now you're taking this to a different place, a bloodline of salvation, with those outside of that bloodline having no eternal life. I certainly hope that's not so.
All can gain salvation through Jesus Christ. His bloodline is a sign. We needed to maintain awareness of the lineage until His birth & it is why it became possible to spread the good news to gentiles after He was born.
Near the tops of some peaks. And the flood only lasted for a part of a year, not long enough at all for the development of anything like a seabottom. Go digging down in the mire at the bottom of a lake reservoir a year, or five, after the valley has been flooded. You will find nothing that looks like a seabottom, with seashells, plants, etc. You'll find a drowned piece of muddy land.
The flood didn't last long enough for there to be sea bottoms formed over most of the earth.
Beyond that, uplifting has raised the former seabed in some areas, but by no means all. We do not find uplifted sea bottoms in all the great mountain chains of the world, only here and there.
However, you do touch upon an interesting point. All paleogeology, paleogeography, paleobiology, esp. the crucial radioactive decay dating techniques used to date very old things, rely upon the uniformitarian assumption: that things happen today as they happened in the past, and that in the past things happened at the same speed. Certainly it's the most defensible assumption imaginable, because it looks at what is and has been recorded for 400 or so years and says: no variation in this time period, so extrapolating back is reasonable. Reasonable, but not completely bulletproof. When we look at starlight and say that such light was radiated millions of light-years ago, and thereby calculate the distance to those stars by multiplying the speed of light, we make the uniformitarian assumption.
If that assumption is wrong, then virtually anything could happen in the past at rates of speed that seem wildly accelerated today.
To return to your point about decendants of Adam, the traditional view would require Cain's wife to be his sister, or perhaps niece, grand-niece, et al.
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