Posted on 05/30/2008 10:21:34 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
Some of you will remember my recent decision to become a Catholic. I suppose I should be surprised it ended getting derailed into a 'Catholic vs. Protestant' thread, but after going further into the Religion forum, I suppose it's par for the course.
There seems to be a bit of big issue concerning Mary. I wanted to share an observation of sorts.
Now...although I was formerly going by 'Sola Scriptura', my father was born and raised Catholic, so I do have some knowledge of Catholic doctrine (not enough, at any rate...so consider all observations thusly).
Mary as a 'co-redeemer', Mary as someone to intercede for us with regards to our Lord Jesus.
Now...I can definitely see how this would raise some hairs. After all, Jesus Himself said that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that none come to the Father but through Him. I completely agree.
I do notice a bit of a fundamental difference in perception though. Call it a conflict of POV. Do Catholics worship Mary (as I've seen a number of Protestants proclaim), or do they rather respect and venerate her (as I've seen Catholics claim)? Note that it's one thing to regard someone with reverence; I revere President Bush as the noted leader of the free world. I revere my father. I revere Dr. O'Neil, a humorous and brilliant math teacher at my university. It's an act of respect.
But do I WORSHIP them?
No. Big difference between respecting/revering and worshiping. At least, that's how I view it.
I suppose it's also a foible to ask Mary to pray for us, on our behalf...but don't we tend to also ask other people to pray for us? Doesn't President Bush ask for people to pray for him? Don't we ask our family members to pray for us for protection while on a trip? I don't see quite a big disconnect between that and asking Mary to help pray for our wellbeing.
There is some question to the fact that she is physically dead. Though it stands to consider that she is still alive, in Heaven. Is it not common practice to not just regard our physical life, but to regard most of all our spirit, our soul? That which survives the flesh before ascending to Heaven or descending to Hell after God's judgment?
I don't think it's that big of a deal. I could change my mind after reading more in-depth, but I don't think that the Catholic Church has decreed via papal infallibility that Mary is to be placed on a higher pedestal than Jesus, or even to be His equal.
Do I think she is someone to be revered and respected? Certainly. She is the mother of Jesus, who knew Him for His entire life as a human on Earth. Given that He respected her (for He came to fulfill the old laws; including 'Honor Thy Father and Mother'), I don't think it's unnatural for other humans to do the same. I think it's somewhat presumptuous to regard it on the same level as idolatry or supplanting Jesus with another.
In a way, I guess the way Catholics treat Mary and the saints is similar to how the masses treated the Apostles following the Resurrection and Jesus's Ascension: people who are considered holy in that they have a deep connection with Jesus and His Word, His Teachings, His Message. As the Apostles spread the Good News and are remembered and revered to this day for their work, so to are the works of those sainted remembered and revered. Likewise with Mary. Are the Apostles worshiped? No. That's how it holds with Mary and the saints.
At least, that's how my initial thoughts on the subject are. I'll have to do more reading.
There was no reason to canonize the OT up to that point. It was simply understood and all Bibles contained the Deuterocanonicals.
Our OT was the Septuagint, written by the Alexandrian Jews which contained all the Scripture. The Septuagint was accepted by the Jews for 400 years. Including the Deuterocanonicals.
The Council of Jamnia in 90AD decided that they had had enough of the Christians and threw out the Septuagint. The Protestant “Reformers” decided against the canon held dear by the Apostles in favor of a canon determined by Pharisees some decades after Jesus rose from the dead — the same Pharisees who denied the Truths of the entire New Testament, even accusing the “Nazarenes” of stealing Jesus’ body from the tomb and lying to the world! (Interestingly, it was Zakkai’s successor, Gamaliel, who forced the “Nazarenes” out of the synagogues. Gamaliel also made it obligatory for Jews to pray the “Prayer of Eighteen Petitions,” the 12th petition, which is still prayed today, known as the birkat, being “For apostates may there be no hope, and may the Nazarenes and heretics suddenly perish.”)
And do you know why the Book of Maccabees was thrown out by the Jewish Council? Because the Council was conducted under the auspices of the Flavian Roman Emperors and they decided that that particuar book, which tells of the Maccabean Revolt, might be inflammatory and incite rebellion by the Jews. So, all those Protestant Bibles are lacking the Book of Maccabees, which speaks clearly of praying for the dead, because a pagan emperor pressured the Pharisees to exclude it. And lest anyone is still tempted to think that it was the “Roman Church” that came up with these books and that they were not written by pre-Christ Jews, Jews in other parts of the world who didn’t get news of the Council of Jamnia’s decisions still use those “extra” 7 books to this very day (research the canon used by Ethiopian Jewry).
The Septuagint was used by the Apostles (and therefore Jesus). The lesson, though, is this: relying on the “Bible alone” is a bad idea; we are not to rely solely on Sacred Scripture to understand Christ’s message. While Scripture is “given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), it is not sufficient for reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. It is the Church that is the “pillar and ground of Truth” (1 Timothy 3:15)! Jesus did not come to write a book; He came to redeem us, and He founded a Sacramental Church through His apostles to show us the way. It is to them, to the Church Fathers, to the Sacred Deposit of Faith, to the living Church that is guided by the Holy Spirit, and to Scripture that we must prayerfully look.
I do think the mod missed my point though.
Sorry, He’s in my heart, not my hatstand. LOL. How foolish...
They do. Even the most basic biology will tell you that members of each sex have both estrogen and testosterone rushing through their systems, just in wildly different ratios.
You wrote:
“1. The Roman Catholic Church did not officially canonize the Apocrypha until the Council of Trent (1546 AD).”
Irrelevant. When the Church - because of the attacks of Protestants - decided to close the issue is in no effects the inspiration of the books.
“2. Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament.”
Irrelevant. 1) God can inspire people through any language. 2) Hebrew was no longer used as commonly as it once was. 3) The New Testament is inspired and yet few Protestants woulc claim it was written in Hebrew!!!
“3. Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration.”
Irrelevant. Neither do most of the authors of the New Testament or the Old Testament.
“4. These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures by the Jewish Church, and therefore were never sanctioned by our Lord.”
Irrelevant. 1) Jesus Himself mentions that the Jews corrupted good scriptural teaching with their traditions. 2) There was no method for Jews to “acknowledge” any book except by acclamation and/or commonality. These books were common enough.
“5. They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.”
Untrue. There was a dispute about their inspiration. To say that means they were “not allowed a place among the sacred books” is not only incorrect, but hints at a Church structure and discipline which Protestants otherwise repeatedly deny existed.
“6. They contain fabulous statements, and statements which contradict not only the canonical Scriptures, but themselves; as when, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in as many different places.”
Did Judas hang himself (Mt 27:5) or did his bowels burst open (Acts 1:18)? Which is it? How many beings were in the tomb of Jesus when Peter and John arrived there on Resurrection Sunday? Was it one man or one angel? Two angels or two men? Was Jonah really in the belly of a fish (note: not a whale) for three days? Do serpents talk? Do dragons exist? Are those fabulous statements or are they the word of God or can they be both?
“7. The Apocrypha inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection...”
Uh, actually orthodox Christians have no problems with all of the Bible and all that it teaches. Only those who pick and choose (i.e. Protestants) struggle with Biblical teaching or claim the Bible contradicts itself.
Is this the best Protestants can do?
FReepmailed.
AMEN.
Exactly. You aren’t a Christian by just going to church any more than you are a mechanic when you take your car to a garage. It’s all JESUS. Many people go to church and don’t have a real clue as to what it takes to be saved.
Excellent.
And when the vowel-pointing process of the Tanakh undertaken by the Pharisees in the aftermath of the Bar Kochba rebellion and eclipse of daily use of Hebrew is examined, we can see strong evidence in such things as comparisons of the Septuagint and Qumran versions of Psalm 22 (”they have pierced my hands and feet”) with the Masoretic text (”like a lion my hands and my feet”), it’s pretty clear that even the Masoretic text which WASN’T pitched out after Jamnia was combed-over to remove as much support for Christian argument as possible.
Many early Reformers were too easily impressed by contemporary Jewish claims of the immutable purity of the Masoretic text, which such things as Qumran have shown to be a post-facto pious fiction.
The Jewish canon, the early church, Josephus, Melito, Origen, Eusebius, Hilary, Jerome, Cyril, all rejected the Apocrypha as outside the accepted, inspired canon of Scripture.
"The Jewish canon, or the Hebrew Bible, was universally received, while the Apocrypha added to the Greek version of the Septuagint were only in a general way accounted as books suitable for church reading, and thus as a middle class between canonical and strictly apocryphal (pseudonymous) writings. And justly; for those books, while they have great historical value, and fill the gap between the Old Testament and the New, all originated after the cessation of prophecy, and they cannot therefore be regarded as inspired, nor are they ever cited by Christ or the apostles" (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, book 3, chapter 9)
Read the link. Those were just the first seven of 21 reasons why the Apocrypha is not part of the inspired word of God.
Paragraphs are your friends...
You mean a Swiss-born, German-educated protestant theologian and historian doesn’t like the Deuterocanonicals?
I’m shocked!
Simple, they were unbelievers in the first place,only following him to see some easy miracle, read the whole chapter.
But we can know OUR own state, Mark. And no angel has deluded us about that.
Brother Leland was constructing a reductio: THIS is the clown they are putting forward as an infallible Pope.
I was fine-tuning the reductio, that's all. He was disputing our claims. I was clarifying them.
“2. Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament.”
Irrelevant. 1) God can inspire people through any language. 2) Hebrew was no longer used as commonly as it once was. 3) The New Testament is inspired and yet few Protestants woulc claim it was written in Hebrew!!!
LOL. God COULD inspire in Pig Latin, but He didn't. I'll stick with the Jewish canon as the Jews received and delivered it; not with Rome's rewrite centuries later by way of the Greeks.
“3. Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration.”
Irrelevant. Neither do most of the authors of the New Testament or the Old Testament.
?????
The New Testament does not attest to the authorship of God?
No wonder the RCC ignores so much of the Bible.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." -- 2 Tiomothy 3:15-17"And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
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