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.
No, it's because you never give us answers to the questions we actually asked.
The Hebrew used in Psalm 69:
H1121
בּן
bên
bane
From H1129; a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etc., (like H1, H251, etc.): - + afflicted, age, [Ahoh-] [Ammon-] [Hachmon-] [Lev-]ite, [anoint-]ed one, appointed to, (+) arrow, [Assyr-] [Babylon-] [Egypt-] [Grec-]ian, one born, bough, branch, breed, + (young) bullock, + (young) calf, X came up in, child, colt, X common, X corn, daughter, X of first, + firstborn, foal, + very fruitful, + postage, X in, + kid, + lamb, (+) man, meet, + mighty, + nephew, old, (+) people, + rebel, + robber, X servant born, X soldier, son, + spark, + steward, + stranger, X surely, them of, + tumultuous one, + valiant[-est], whelp, worthy, young (one), youth.
The Greek used in John 19:26
G5207
υἱός
uihos
hwee-os'
Apparently a primary word; a “son” (sometimes of animals), used very widely of immediate, remote or figurative kinship: - child, foal, son.
Yes.
Why do you suppose I am not the Son of God? I have a mother and I don't come in pieces.
Do you not you believe in the God of the Bible? I ask this because your reasoning seems to indicate that we have no way of knowing whether the scripture is trustworthy (please correct if I have misunderstood you.) The question of God’s character can indeed be answered. But one must use scripture to do it. Christ says in John 14:9
Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?
It is the Lord, Himself, revealed in the scriptures, who proves the thesis of God’s character. Or do you have some other way of determining the character and nature of God?
Do you reject these words recorded in John as being the words of the Lord Himself? If so, what other scriptures do you reject? On what basis? Which ones do you accept? Again, on what basis?
If the words recorded in the gospels (let’s just take those for the moment) are true, then by looking at them, especially where the Lord is speaking, we can draw conclusions about His character. If so, and He, being the express image of His (God’s) person (as He attests in John), then we can draw conclusions about the character of God. If we can do that, then we can certainly identify when God would have us to listen to those He has called (whether they be the David who brings the Ark of the Covenant in from Obed-Edom, or Peter, when he tells us we are “a royal priesthood, a holy nation...) because their words and actions are in agreement with God’s character and when we need to ignore them (let’s not follow David’s example of lusting after another man’s wife, or Peter’s example of presuming to tell the Lord, “Far be it from you...”) because they are acting contrary to God’s will.
You say:
If not than shame on you for not knowing the bible better, ... Suddenly I realized that the Sola Scriptura gang thinks that the battle belongs on their field. And that's not clear at all. We are presented with a new development in Christian thought (YES, folks had said something like it before, but it hadn't caught on) and you guys act like we have to prove to your satisfaction that what we believe can meet your standards, AND though we are called haughty, you act like your late to the party ideas of Scripture are so graven in stone that you presume to say shame on me if I don't know them up to your standards and with your interpretations.
Well how about shame on you guys for attacking what was THE Church in the West even by your derogatory reckoning for something more than 1,100 years at the time of the Reformation (so-called) and for not knowing squat about it.
You spend only enough time in Aquinas to find something to disagree with. You cherry pick your way through the Catechism. You are so unfamiliar with Catholic thought that you rarely can present it in a recognizable way, and yet you say shame on us! You've forgotten Dante, if you read him at all, few if any of you have read Veritatis Splendor, Salvifici Dolores, or Fides et Ratio, and yet you are telling us what we think and what our Church teaches and wishing shame upon us if we fail to understand in depth the several interpretations among your various denominations.
You make our Church out to be a harlot and a deceiver and yet you don't take the trouble really to know your enemy, gaining only enough knowledge as can be gotten from polemical literature, which is mostly propaganda and lies anyway.
I say shame on you for only knowing enough about us to get us wrong and for still thinking the battle with us is important enough for cartoons and mockery and long lists and the rest.
I utterly reject the "shame" you direct at me and I return it multiplied. Shame on you all for prizing disunity and contention above the unity prayed for by Jesus. Shame on you for glib retorts and barrages of scarcely relevant Scripture, for mockery and condemnation, and for the prizing of ignorance above everything else. Shame on you for making charges and having only trumped up and edited evidence with which to back them up and for hiding this pennyworth of evidence in an intolerable deal of abuse.
One of you asks if Dominic was in charge of the Inquisition which started a decade after he died, and yet you try to cast shame on us.
THAT's shameful.
'Cause you don't have a white robe and a sort of glowy thing around you?
Why don't you try making the point in declarative sentences? You may think there is some clear distinction in the question you posed, but it goes right past me. (I guess it's the shame.)
As far as I know, which is nothing, you have a human father. You were not conceived by any extraordinary act of the Holy Spirit.
Mary was the mother of all that Jesus is. Just as your father contributed to your makeup things which your mother did not have, His father contributed to His makeup things which Mary did not have. Your mother does not say she is the mother of your hair but not your eyes, your humor but not your intelligence (or whatever). She is the mother of all of you.
Mary is not the mother of Jesus's humanity only. She is the mother of Jesus. And Jesus has the Divine nature, exogenous to Mary as black eyes would be to a blue-eyed mother.
The whole being of the offspring does not originate with the mother. They didn't think so then, we don't think so now.
Catholics giving short explanations are mocked because they "don't read scripture" and while Catholics giving long explanations are accused of too much legalism or introducing too much complexity or who knows what's next?
I remember clearly the complaint that precise grammar was causing dizziness. I note recently being castigated for using the definition of Christian found in every dictionary I checked. I also note being slandered as a stalker for posting replies to other posts on open threads. I remember thousands of posts quoting Calvin at length to argue sola scriptura.
And all around that dances a clown spewing idiotic made-up words while in the same breath complaining about rubber dictionaries.
Yet they show every indication of believing they are winning the argument.
It's a circus, really. Our side brings scholarship, the other a tiny car filled with an improbably large number of clowns.
Yet sola scriptura is all you need because the Holy Spirit will lead one to the right answer.
The Holy Spirit is certainly wise enough to know that two mutually-exclusive beliefs cannot both be true.
She is the mother of her Son, not one of His natures.
Where there is a mother, there is a Child, not a nature.
"...they 'don't read scripture,' and while Catholics giving long explanations..."
May God have mercy.
To the extent that a mother is just a vessle.
Did you understand a word he said? Did you read it?
I wasn’t pitying Catholics, I was pitying those who hate Christ’s Church so much that they will use desparate, extra-Biblical sources which slander Christ, himself.
I have no pity for Catholics, they have the fullness of faith in God to protect them. I also don’t hate non-Catholics but I have complete disgust for a few of them.
Well, let’s see how it goes:
Mary is the mother of Jesus, and,
Jesus is God, therefore
Mary is the Mother of God.
To deny this, one must engage in some theological gymnastics:
a) Christ is not God (Protestants don’t engage in this), or,
b) Jesus is not the son of Mary (Protestants don’t engage in this), or,
c) Jesus is not fully human and divine at the same time (some have engaged in this), or,
d) Jesus was divine, but not while He was in the flesh (some have engaged in this).
I can’t see any other possibilities justifying denying this. And all are heresies, anyway.
St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.
from http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/assumpt.htm
Where did you say that Paul speaks of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura? I can’t seem to find it.
Perhaps a Solomonic cleavage of the Christ Child is contemplated...
Nice to see that Nestorianism is alive and well, in addition to the long list of previously exhibited heresies.
Just a question, do you actually read what you write?
The bible certainly speaks of honoring the scriptures rather than looking for every possible wiggle room to invent doctrine. It's similar to the way a liberal treats the Constitution.
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