Posted on 05/20/2008 7:45:05 AM PDT by NYer
I do understand and believe the Scripture.
What I do not do is accept your own personal interpretation of Scripture.
Golly swell, you're welcome, "Anna."
Your incessant and vacuous sarcasm is a weak rebuttal.
Ann is my wife. I am Alex.
... but you both (Ann and Alex) use the annalex ID, right ... ?
Please do not make this personal.
Pleased to meet you Alex...
What I do not do is accept your own personal interpretation of Scripture.
Ok Petronski...What's the correct interpretation of the verse???
Eph 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
Do you imagine I am your student? That I am on your stand, to be tested by you?
LOLOL
Yeah, wish it wasn’t so funny because it’s hurting them in the long run.
OK, you've missed the essence of what I just said. (The mathematics of 9 vs. 1).
Let's say I was your elementary teacher & I gave you a math problem: "Johnny's mommy has two former husbands. Each ex-husband has a child in Johnny's family and owe the same amount of child support and are steady in supplying it. But for every appeal Johnny's mommy makes to her first ex-husband for extra assistance, she makes nine such appeals to her second ex-husband. Who gets 90% of these appeals?"
Now I would think that an elementary student wouldn't do what you just did--start looking into the precise wording of the math problem to find where somebody might read into the interpretation that somehow Johnny's mommy was "devoted" in any way to either of her two ex-husbands.
IOW, my main point of the 9 vs. 1 reference was to show that the Catholic practice of the rosary only reinforces the idea in young Catholics that 90% of the "provision" power & "intercession" mediator power is not in Jesus Christ, but Mary. Mary is the primary provider. Mary is the primary intercessor.
Now once you realize this exterior experiential reality, then this whole question of devotional worship takes on understanding. My point is that it's not going to be just the bare word of "worship" that is directly linked to Mary in the same sentence of a catechism. Before a catechuman ever digests one word of the catechism, he/she has already been inaugurated & inundated in the presence of thousands of such prayers, and each utterance of that prayer in full is a 9-time petitioning of Mary, who then becomes identified as the "go-to" person (and Jesus then gets even further diluted when you toss in all the prayers to the saints).
I get if I had to give an analogy I'd pick Brigham Young and his 56-57 wives. Did Young love them all? Probably. (9 divorced him, so it wasn't always or remained always "mutual"). Did he give attention to all of them? Probably. But if he gave 9 times the communication preference to an add-on "wife" in comparison to his first, and then if each additional "wife" represented a saint in our analogy, then you see communicative dilution at work.
The question comes back to a question I asked another poster: "why, according to the Catholic Catechism, is your 'devotion to the Blessed Virgin...instrinsic to' your 'worship?'"
Regarding your VIS press release, do you have a link? I'd like to look the whole thing over before I respond.
http://users.stargate.net/~ejt/wc23.htm
Where does the priest talk about a "new plan of salvation"? He talks about God using Mary in the plan of salvation, giving us Christ through her. And you notice that everything he says is about us being perfected through her Son. Mary points to Christ, always.
(1) "Because without her the Lord did not want to save us without her"...
Oh really? The Lord-as-Savior & Redeemer of the World was 100% motivated by Mary to save us? (Change John 3:16 then from "God so loved the world..." to "Mary so loved the world...")
(2) "That we need her in our lives as Christians. We need a personal relationship with her just as we need a personal relationship with Jesus. In fact, it is her who is always bringing us closer to her Son..."
Well, boy the apostle John needed to know this...he would have properly re-edited John 17:3 then: "And this is eternal life, that you know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent." The "Marian" version of John 17:3, according to this priest, would be: "And this is eternal life, that you know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He sent, and Mary, whom He blessed and is full of grace."
(3) "There’s no faster way to the Son than through His mother. And that is true in general, and that is true in particular, for each one of us...We too can call her 'mother' and she will help us come to eternal life in her Son."
Sorry, but Scripture contradicts this, and Mary is usurping the role of the Holy Spirit here: ...no one can say Jesus Christ is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:3) [Oh, I know, I'm sure somebody may come back with a comment along the lines that "Mary is only a helper, advocate, and mediatrix to the Advocate Himself, the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit would in no way reject the mother of Jesus' intercession...that's not my point, and it wasn't the point of the priest. The priest explicitly said: "There's no faster way to the Son... -- he didn't just say there are multiple ways to the son, including Mary.]
(4) "We need her in our life to reveal to us her Son to be born through her as Jesus was."
OK, on this one I just need to get "technical." Had he said: "We need her in our life for the revelation of His life proceeded from her womb," that would have been fine. But notice the future and present tense of this phrasing: We need her in our life to reveal to us... [Why would we need her to reveal anything to us other than what Scripture has already revealed thru her life and thru her sacrifice and thru her Revelatory Son?...While the example of her earthly life is tremendously beneficial to us, and the future of our heavenly fellowship with her will be a great blessing, it's not her current revelatory or intercessory status that we "need" her for!
Do we "need" all of the body? (Yes) But Scripture doesn't highlight for us details of how we "need" those who have gone on before us. Revelation-wise, we need the tri-une God, and that's it!
Beyond that (other needs), yes we need the body of Christ, Mary included...but no more Mary than anybody else in the body!
The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. (1 Corinthians 12:21-23)
(The message we keep hearing from Catholics is, "Mary is indispensable to you, because she's indispensable to me." Well, the "error" of that according to 1 Cor. 12:21-23 is that the entire body--not just Mary--is "indispensable." The message we keep hearing from Catholics is, "Mary is the object of dulia worship, not lutria worship and we just 'honor' Mary." Well, if it's only "honor" why are ya stopping at Mary? According to the apostle Paul, "the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.")
Easter celebrates the Resurrection of Christ. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ. If you do not think Christ was either born or resurrected, I would think you are not a very orthodox Christian.
From what I’ve seen of your posts (and I could be wrong here), it seems to me you might want to take a closer look at the first heresy listed: Circumcisers.
Peter was not the head of the apostles. That title belongs to Christ alone.
"Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am." -- John 13:13
The bishops are not the "successors" to the apostles. The apostles had no successors and Peter had no successor because in order to succeed the apostles a man needed to be a witness to Christ's resurrection.
Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." -- Acts 1:21-22"Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
The Magisterium is not the authoritative teacher of the church. That title belongs to the Holy Spirit alone.
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." -- John 14:26
He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." -- John 16:13-14"Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
"But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." -- 1 John 2:27
And the primary means of this instruction is the word of God made known to us by the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
I realize this unsettles many members of the RCC who feel adrift at having to search the Scriptures for themselves, and thus they prefer to rely on what they are told by an authoritarian body of fallible, inconsistent men. But that is not God's plan or purpose in giving us His word.
According to Catholic doctrine, [Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century] do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery[19] cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called "Churches" in the proper sense[20].
According to Scripture, there is no such thing as "apostolic succession." Those who have been given true faith in Jesus Christ are the church of Christ, guided by teachers and pastors, none of whom are "successors to the apostles."
According to Scripture, there is no such thing as "sacrament of orders." There are only two sacraments in the New Testament, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
According to Scripture, there is no "sacramental priesthood;" there is the priesthood of all believers who make up Christ's church on earth.
The "eucharistic mystery," or transubstantiation is a pagan abomination of the true spiritual sustenance Christ instituted at the Last Supper of our Lord.
The church of Jesus Christ on earth is made up of all the elect of God, from all the nations and races and eras, chosen by Him from before the foundation of the world to be among His family.
"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." -- Ephesians 1:4-6"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." -- Romans 10:13
As for being "proper," there are some churches more pure than others. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states (including footnoted Scriptural proofs)...
"V. The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error;[10] and some have so degenerated, as to become no Churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan.[11] Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth to worship God according to His will.[12]
Another heresy is ignoring keeping holy the day of the L-rd on His day of rest.b'SHEM Yah'shua
The Westminster Confession of Faith
Chapter XXV
Paragraph VI:
There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ.[13] Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.[14]
Acts 1:21-22 says no such thing.
I came into this thread rather late last night (I was watching the election returns and my wife was working on her Inter-session course she is taking), so I am not sure the entire context of the quote by Iscool.
I think more of the passage needs to read in the context of the entire passage, which is Peter’s confession that Christ is the “Son of God”. So if we look at it this way “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (c.f. Matt16:18-19). So, the symbols of Keys and binding and loosing, which was given to St. Peter alone, are clearly a power given to St. Peter by Christ to lead and guide the Church. As for gates of hell, which Iscool used, while that can be translated in that way, other translations use the word “netherwold”, which is also an accurate translation of the Greek word “hades”, which meant the place of the Dead. So, being brought into the Church, which is Christ’s body, through Baptism, one is incorporated through God’s Grace into the Holy Trinity. So, even death itself will be overcome by those people who are brought into communion with God through the Christ and his Church.
In summary, I respectively, but also totally, disagree with Iscool’s post and interpretation of the passage he quoted.
Regards
I've been thinking of this question recently, and this is why I asked it of Tao Yin. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it.
As I asked Tao Yin, if the Holy Spirit can guide and teach individual men truth (which I do believe He can, I just don't believe that can be used as a justification for rejecting Church authority), then why can't He guide an entire Church in the same way? After all, the Church (on Earth) is comprised of men, so, if we believe the Holy Spirit can and does teach men on an individual level, then why is it so hard to believe He would teach an entire body of men, or at least keep that body of men from making any mistake that would doom them for eternity (which is really less than actually "teaching" them something, it's just keeping them from error)?
Whatever you agree to doing about nicknames, Petronski, do not use that nickname ever again.
That alone, is Scripture Alone, enough for me...
And if you don't believe in Faith only as Paul teaches it, I can't imagine you would even know why Jesus died on the Cross...
AMEN.
Our differences go to the heart of why Christ died and rose from the cross. Was it to make it possible that we could become good in our own right, or was it to cover our sins by the offering of Christ alone?
"...in due time Christ died for the ungodly." - Romans 5:6
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