Posted on 07/11/2007 7:32:55 AM PDT by kellynla
Why do you think that the Greek Orthodox Church is older than the Church of Rome? Certainly it already existed when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. We don’t know when that Church was founded, but likely Christians early found their way to the capital of the Empire, because ships like the one that picked up the prisoner Paul was a grain ship from Egypt, which was the breadbasket of the Empire, and Caesaria was a port of call along the way. There was many Jews in the capital and it is possible that some Roman Jews were in Jerusalem the day of Pentecost.
Which doesn't tell us very much about the identity of these individuals.
Sure.
GOD has said He will be with His Church forever, “I will never leave you, neither will I forsake you,” Heb 13:5. In Mt 28:20, Jesus said, “I am with you all days, even until the end of the world.” That means He will be with His Church every day in every century until the end of time.
“I will ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate to dwell with you forever, the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you shall know Him, because He will dwell with you, and be in you,” Jn 14:16-17,26, Jn 15:26,16:13. The Holy Spirit will dwell in the Church that Jesus Christ founded and He will be with that Church forever.
“Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as Bishops to rule the Church of GOD,” Acts 20:28. Does your church have Bishops?
Your definition of Church is not the one I asked. In Which Church can one be saved? Lutheran, Baptist, Mormon? What do you consider “Non-essential” beliefs? And if they are not “essential”, why not worship together?
It is through the Catholic Church that we recieve Jesus in the Eucharist. To say that the Catholic Church “has done very little to lead them to the risen Christ” is a bit disengenuous. The Catholic Church was founded by Christ and has stood for almost 2000 years. No other Church can say that. Perhaps you should ask a Catholic what we believe instead of disinformation from other denominations with axes to grind and professional anti-Catholics.
This is taken from the website of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine, CA:
"One summer afternoon in the year 1054, as a service was about to begin in the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) at Constantinople, Cardinal Humbert and two other legates of the Pope entered the building and made their way up to the sanctuary. They had not come to pray. They placed a Bull of Excommunication upon the altar and marched out once more. As he passed through the western door, the Cardinal shook the dust from his feet with the words: 'Let God look and judge.' A deacon ran out after him in great distress and begged him to take back the Bull. Humbert refused; and it was dropped in the street.
"It is this incident which has conventionally been taken to mark the beginning of the great schism between the Orthodox east and the Latin west. But the schism, as historians now generally recognize, is not really an event whose beginning can be exactly dated. It was something that came about gradually, as the result of a long and complicated process, starting well before the eleventh century and not completed until some time after."
How is the Catholic Church any more “worldly” than, say, the First Baptist Church of Dallas. or the First Gospel Church of Podunk? All exist, as we do, in time and space and have a history, long or short.
The Pope is the successor of St. Peter, the one whom Christ entrusted His Church until He returns. And since Jesus ordered the Church to spread the Gospel throughout the whole world, well, yes the Church is world-wide.
Your mistake is equating it with a “worldly” Church. We function in this world like everyone else. It is a hopital for sinners, not a hotel for saints. I think you have been taught errors in regards to the Catholic Church. I suggest you pick up a copy of the Catholic Cathecism ($9) and ask a Catholic who knows their faith.
Even St. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107 A.D.) Understood this as he was sent to be executed. “Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”.
Not everyone who says Lord, Lord...
I see and hear and read from individuals who proclaim that they have received the Holy Spirit. I see no evidence in their actions and in their words - well, many of them.
As a Catholic, I was baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit. I pray that I will have everlasting life in Heaven. God holds out His mercy and His grace to me. But it is up to me whether or not I accept or reject it - every single moment of my life. As is repeated throughout the New Testament.
I know that there are lot of people who believe in once saved / always saved which is Biblical bubble gum or in predestination (to heaven is Biblically correct, to hell is simply incorrect). And it seems that they are doing their best to test it to the limit.
The Pope doesnt’ rule.
He is the Servant of the Servants of God. The last shall be first and all that...
>Your definition of Church is not the one I asked. In Which Church can one be saved? <
You don’t need a church to be saved.To believe otherwise is to deny the soverienty of God.
Jhn 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
Jhn 3:15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Jhn 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Jhn 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Jhn 3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
It says whosoever not what church believes in him.
Wouldn’t you want some certainty that you are beling saved?
What was the point of Jesus’ establishment of His Church? Do you think Jesus was in error? You know better? I certainly don’t which is why I am Catholic. The “Church is the Pillar and foundation of the truth”. So says in Timothy. Besides, we have the Church Father’s letters from ancient times to confirm it...
“There is no doubt, and in fact it has been known in all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the Apostles, pillar of faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, and that to him was given the power of loosing and binding sins: who down even to to-day and forever, lives and judges in his successors. The holy and most blessed Pope Celestine, according to due order, is his successor and holds his place...” Philip, Council of Ephesus, Session III (A.D. 431).
“We must hold to the Christian religion and to communication in her Church, which is Catholic and which is called Catholic not only by her own members but even by all her enemies. For when heretics or the adherents of schisms talk about her, not among themselves but with strangers, willy-nilly they call her nothing else but Catholic. For they will not be understood unless they distinguish her by this name which the whole world employs in her regard.” Augustine, The True Religion, 7:12 (A.D. 390).
“They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.” Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to Smyrnaeans, 7,1 (c. A.D. 110).
“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66 (c. A.D. 110-165).
“[T]he bread over which thanks have been given is the body of their Lord, and the cup His blood...” Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV:18,4 (c. A.D. 200).
So, you believe the saints in Heaven are “dead”?
Thank you very much, good sir. :)
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The FALSE claim:
If your sole Biblical basis for claiming the Pope's infallibility is the verse that Peter is the rock upon which the church will be built then you are making at least two questionable assumptions.Please, with charity, gently rebut this!
The next FALSE claim:
But all of this is irrelevant. The Catholic church teaches idolatry. Whether or not a pope ever held the authority of Peter, the leaders of present age certainly do not. 262 posted on 07/12/2007 8:32:44 AM PDT by newguy357Another opportunity to rebut with charity!
This is problematic is accepting the Roman Catholic's adoption of the apocrypha contained in the Septuagint.
In his quotations/allusions Jesus referenced all of the Septuagint, the Tanankh, and the Talmud, but whenever he refers to a collection of texts, whenever he referred to an actual collection of texts, it was always, without fail, the Hebraic text, not the Septuagint.
(i) Luke 11:50-51, which relies on the Genesis-Chronicles ordering of the Hebraic text, and does not make sense in the Septuagint's ordering of books.
(ii) All mention of the "Law and the Prophets" or the "Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms" which Jesus uses repeatedly to refer to the scriptures. The Septuagint had no such contextual division.
(iii) In addition, we have "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished." The expression is based off a reference to the written Hebrew, perhaps more evident in the KJV translation: "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." The jot (yodh) is the smallest Hebrew letter, and the tittle is a small projection on the letters. So not only is Jesus yet again talking about the Hebrew form of the OT, it is this form of which he is saying that not a single stroke shall pass away.
So, again in your own words, Do you think Jesus was in error? You know better? Jesus clearly accepted the Jewish OT canon. The Roman Catholic bible is problematic in that it adopts the unofficial Alexendrian canon with extraneous texts which are not merely uninspired, but also erronenous (in Judith, you have a king known from one empire leading an entirely different empire, which had ceased to exist by the time of his reign, and he is living in a city that was long since destroyed. Is it really believable to say that's the result of a typo?) and indicative of false doctrine (such as witchcraft in the book of Tobit) Jesus could easily have cleared up any question by quoting from the books directly... but He never did.
In addition to their 'expanded canon', the Catholic church, for obvious reasons, downplays the authority of the scriptures in favor of the church's ability to interpet them. Doctrines such a purgatory contradict the scriptural affirmation of the sufficiency of Christ's salvation, and immaculate conception contradicts the scriptural conception of man as born into sin. (Do you really think if Mary would have just been so fortunate as to die before conception that she would have gone to heaven as perfect as Our Lord? The catholic deification of Mary is a huge problem unto itself.) If we believe in the transmutation to blood of sacrament wine, then we would rather have to wonder at the letter written to the gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, which stated in Acts 15:29 to "abstain from blood." The bad popes further bring into question the 'divine backing' of the papacy.
If not for these things, I would happily join the catholic church. For that matter, I would happily join if they practiced an open communion (funny how Christ even let Judas Iscariot partake, but I, as a Christian, am not allowed) but since Christ ordained that sacrament, and they will not allow me to partake without a profession of beliefs I do not hold, I really have no choice other than join with another sect.
But the church that Jesus established was 'the body of believers', not some bureaucratic hierarchy. Even if we made the statement in Matthew 16 out to be an appointment of supreme executive authority over the church (which there is no reason to assume)--do you really think Peter walked around in fancy robes and sat on an ornate chair and issued edicts? The papacy, like the Roman Catholic church, is garbed in human traditions, and it cannot be asserted that this rest in the same authority as Peter might have given them. As Paul says, Christ is the head of the church... he is curiously mum about Peter.
All in all, the Pope's declaration is hurtful, just like the church's closed communion is hurtful, because it establishes a divided table of believers, when truly there can be no division between those united in Christ. Further, "Who are you to judge a master's servant? The master shall judge his own."
For myself, I am satisfied in my religion to have the words of Christ Himself at my disposal. If the Pope will accept me into his church or not is his business, but he can hardly overrule the Son of God.
This is ridiculous. I was referring to the BOOK of Mormon. Not mormons themselves. And I was belitting that bizarre scenario, for the record.
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