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(Mad Dawg wrote) in contemplation of Scripture

Yet contemplation or meditation in a Christian context is not the emptying of ourselves or the reliance upon 'our' wisdom... rather it is the listening to the Spirit of God which is His gift of guidance to all who call on His name.

But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. (Jn 16:13-14)

I understand your comments on the origins of Marianism, yet there are several severe flaws with it. Firstly and most critically, it ignores what Christ himself says about his mother and his family in other scripture. As an example, when told that Mary and his brother were without (we're not going to even get into Immaculate Conception and the siblings of Christ here!), He replies,
Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?". Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Mt 12:48b-50)

Please note that this is not to devalue Mary or James as people blessed and chosen by God, but to affirm that all honor and glory belong to God.

When looking and contemplating scripture, we should look and consider it in it's totality, and not as isolated parts.

The second problem (there are more imo, but let's try to be slightly more brief) is that it assumes human wisdom in the things of God. We are told both that the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom (1Cor 1:25), and if I recall correctly, there is also a passage which equates human wisdom with the thinking of Satan.

Your comments on witchcraft are interesting, but think also on why God so detests witchcraft. As I read (especially in the OT) on witchcraft, God does not say it is not real, rather He commands that we place no Gods before Him, and honor no Gods except Him. The essence of witchcraft is to try to control (or to give the illusion of control... after all, Satan is the prince of lies) your surroundings, to place your trust and faith in a God other than God. In one sense, reliance on birth control can be seen as that, yet it is not the thing itself that is evil, but the warped usage of it which is.

My 'physical' comment was for any readers with a Gnostic bent. There are always those who attempt to remove God from any physical act, and who see spirit and flesh as entirely in opposition to each other. Yet, in it's proper place (in a union before and in God, of a man and a woman into one), love in all it's aspects, including physical love, is a truly beautiful thing.

On both the ABC and my 'new law' comment, I'd like to post this passage of scripture;
Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Col 2:21-23)

Like the OT Law, any rigid law does not restrain us... rather it makes us aware of how we fall short and sin.

The essence of Christ is that we are no longer under law, but under grace. All things are permitted of us, yet not everything is beneficial, and we are to judge all things by the Spirit which has been given us as a guide (along with scripture, which is the Word of God). We are to judge our actions not in light of rigid rules which can be bent, misunderstood or misapplied, but rather by the greatest commandments.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Mt 22:37-40).

As Paul continues in Collosians,
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:1-3)

Sorry if this is a bit disjointed... writing late at night, and now it's time to rest.

May our Lord be glorified in all we do.

Neither the Roman Catholic Church, nor Protestant churches, can declare that they alone possess the fullness of truth.

No argument there.

Okay the"Who are my brothers ...." argument: I just don't see that as definitive and dispositive as others do. Again, that positioin maintains that Gabriel is mistaken when he says "Blessed are you among women", which is superlative form meaning, in contemporary English as she is spoke "you are the most blessed of women." It also suggests that Mary is mistaken in the Magnificat or that her statement is vague. It's going to be a tough sale to maintain that when she said,"All generations will call me blessed," She meant, "But of course everyone who does the will of God is just as blessed." Do you think that's what we're supposed to conclude from the Lukan account? I just can't go that far.

When looking and contemplating scripture, we should look and consider it in it's totality, and not as isolated parts.

Well, I seriously wonder if there can be any objectively measurable claim that Mr. A is better at handling the "totality" than Mr. B. I very much wonder what "prove from Scripture" means, because of that concern of mine. What I see happening in the classic fight of Prot and RC over works and faith is that the Prot seems to the RC to "explain away" James's saying that man is NOT saved by faith alone. Here on this forum there are folks who will quote "For it is GOD that worketh in you, both to will and to do for His good pleasure - and punctuate it as though it were a complete independent sentence. But, of course, it is preceded by "Work out your own salvatoin with fear and trembling," and to offer the dependent clause without the main clause is inecplicable to me, yet evidently these folks think it's "Taking the totality of Scripture into account."

As a principle,l of course it's fine. But as a diagnostic of somebody else's argument, I think it's dicey.

Actually St. Paul includes witchcraft in a list of works of the flesh. I take that to mean NOT work's of the spirit, NOT works that lead to or manifest life in Xt, but rather works that tend, as uninspired flesh does, to death.

I'm a fraid there IS a disjointed aspect to yo0ur post, which I suspect may have to do with (not only fatigue but) with having a lot of your opinions and thinking about what we think and teach and HOW we think about what we think informed largely by people who don't like us much.

I would suggest that to treat the Torah as only Mossissimus Moses, as ONVLY convicting us of sin, is to miss the meaning of the word Torah, inter alia. That is, the word is not just LAW, but also teaching. I like to use the word "instruction" because when one sees those dread words "some assembly required" (and, in the case of guys, after several attempts at asswembly have failed) THEN suddenly Law is Gospel, and the teaching frees rather than burdens.

And in respect of ABC, we do not hold it to be ritual law but moral law. So the "do not taste, do not touch" don't quite apply, we would hold. I'm all for bacon and pork sausage with eggs after chaste sexual intercourse ....

I'd like to see the Greek on the "human wisdom" passages. I'll bet its phronema sarkos or something of the kind. Here's why I have a problem with "human wisdom". If we are going to toss out the drawing of conclusions following normal patters of thought, then all we can do is quote scripture at each other, since everything else will be using "humaqn wisdom. Everything!

The ani marian dogma crowd are going to have to argue either thaqt Jesus was a bad son, OR that his goodness as a son was so far above what normal expectations of a good son would be that we can't really form any opinion of it. A non-divine human type son gives his mother what ever he can to make her happy, but Jesus is SO very good that he doesn't give his mother whatever he can to make her happy. And though merely touching his garment with faith leads to healing when it is a woman with an issue of blood, when Mary touches him, nothing happens?

If we cannot reason that way, then can we reason at all? God is good, but His goodness is so high above ours that it really has nothing to do with us, and in fact we only say He is good because, well, because this book says so, but we don't know wht we mean when we say it ...

I'm not saying YOU're saying that. I'm criticizing an kind of approach to interpretation on the grounds that it breaks its tools.

Rest. It's a pleasure to talk with you. Get good rest.