Posted on 11/24/2009 4:10:44 PM PST by NYer
Statistics released Nov. 24 by the FBI show hate crimes against religious groups increased by 9% from 2007 to 2008.
USA Today reported that in 2008, there 1,519 incidents against people based on their religion, the statistics show.
The figures reveal that while anti-Jewish attacks made up the highest percentage of the attacks (17%), there was an increase in hate crimes against Catholics — 75, up from 61 in 2007.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said the increase may be due to the Church becoming more vocal on life issues such as abortion and homosexual unions.
As the Catholic bishops take a stronger stance, he said, it filters down to the laity, and as more traditional Catholics become more vocal, they become targets for those who disagree with them.
“Unfortunately, it spills over into violence,” he said, adding that it’s just going to get worse before it gets better.
“I’ve never seen our country so culturally divided and so polarized,” he said. “These issues are not going away.”
I can't define divine. What I meant was: they don't portray him as God. Don't ask me how does one define God! :)
Words mean something "and" is not "or", "fully" is not "partially". I understand how a child grows, but how can God grow from grace to grace? It doesn't make sense.
Not sure where you are coming form Tenten. Obviously you do not consider Christ as human. God does not grow, but Christ is doctrinally also fully human. If he didn't grow as any other child (under grace), then he wasn't fully human, was he?
You mean how realistically does this description represent the ineffable God? Not very. But if you are willing to accept it in faith, then it's very detailed and deceptive. It makes you feel that you 'know' him.
I'd venture, not much. It's important for Church theology, but for the goal of knowledge sufficient for intimate relationship? I don't think so.
Yup. That's why +Paul kept insisting on faith and the idea that one is saved by faith alone.
I think it does. Else our belief is nebulous and ill-defined. I think the Church spent many a General Council trying to achieve an exacting definition.
It is certainly galling for the intelligent and intellectual to admit defeat in understanding. The Church had to come with as good a definition as they could, but throughout the centuries, it has always admitted that God is unknowable. The Orthodox have even branched out into defining what God is not. That by itself is an admission that we are nowhere near up to the task of defining God.
If it comes down to it, define electricity; or electromagnetism, or matter, or energy, or the universe itself, for that matter How we relate to electricity, electromagnetism, or matter is qualitatively different and incomparable with how we relate topersonal relationshi ; with the latter we do.
You are sounding positively Evangelical here. What kind of personal relationship does a rotifer have with the Creator? The relationship we have (if any) is with the lowered hand of the Creator reaching way down to us.
I believe it is only proper that we know exactly who we have that intimate relationship with, to know exaclty who that person is.
God is on the other side of the gulf that is unknowable and uncrossable for us until our death. We have inadequate descriptions and man made 'maps' of God. The map is not the thing. Descriptions are not the thing. We attempt to make sense out of the infinite and to know the unknowable. We try to create some sort of definition so that we can deal with God in some sort of way. God may have some kind of personal relationship with us, but the other thing that we can have a relationship with is the lowered hand of God reaching out to us.
Not to me. It's like saying of your spouse: "She's a bipedal primate belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae having a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving."
It's descriptive and accurate but insufficient for your well-stated desire to "know exactly who we have that intimate relationship with, to know exaclty who that person is."
A great figure in early Christianity, yet was excommunicated and then condemned at Council 300 years later because of a number of issues including his Christology. Kosta is correct in stating that Origen's beliefs were not particularly heretical in the most part during his life; the Church however developed its doctrine to the point where Origen's beliefs were incompatible to the growing Church.
No, however, if one believes in an unrecognizable Jesus or God, then one is pagan.
Unrecognizable to whom? We have no pictures/photos/or physical description of Jesus Christ. All we have is the OT and NT to gauge who he is. As Kosta wrote earlier there is no evidence for the historical Jesus. How much is interpolation, well-meaning or not?
I mean in what little definitions that we have. We believe that Jesus is God, One forever and eternal. There are many who believe that Jesus is a construct, who grew into godhood. We believe in the Oneness of the Trinity. There are many who believe that either there is no Trinity (ie the Jesus Only Pentecostals) or else there are modes of God or that Jesus is subordinate to the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the messenger boy of both.
Compare this:
Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανεν, καὶ ἐκραταιοῦτο πνεύματι, πληρούμενον σοφίας· καὶ χὰρις θεοῦ ἦν ἐπ' αὐτό.
with this:
τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανεν καὶ ἐκραταιοῦτο πληρούμενον σοφίας, καὶ χάρις θεοῦ ἦν ἐπ' αὐτό.
The word πνεύματι is missing in the second variation, an Alexandrian type text. The word means "spirit". As you have noted, it is missing from the New American Standard version. The first version is the Byzantine version and speaks of Christ's spirit.
I like the NKJV, I suppose but the difference between that and the Literal translation isn't of any consequence. Does leaving out πνεύματι in the New American Standard say something about Alexandrian thought on the soul of Christ and thus His natures or nature?
At any rate, if one believes, as I do, that Christ's spirit appertains to His human nature, then growing spiritually is what one would expect. Does this explain the agony in the garden?
You know, this same talk is applied earlier in Luke to John the Baptist and, I think, to Samuel in the OT.
It does; however let us also consider that the fledgling Jesus was able to lecture in the Temple; a thing that the vast majority of grown men were unable to do. And what is Christ's spirit as separate from His Godhood; how do you explain that? I think more of Christ's Incarnation for our benefit than for His. God reaching down to us with His Hand from the infinite heights is for our benefit. I'm not sure about the applicability of Jesus growing from from grace to grace merely or mostly so He could experience the agony in the Garden more fully.
***Paging Mr. Kierkegaard, Mr. Soren Kierkegaard, please go to the nearest courtesy phone...:o)***
“Ethel the Frog”
SUBTITLE: ‘HARRY “SNAPPER” ORGANS’
Organs: Doug and Dinsdale Piranha now formed a gang, which the called ‘The Gang’ and used terror to take over night clubs, billiard halls, gaming casinos and race tracks. When they tried to take over the MCC they were for the only time in their lives, slit up a treat. As their empire spread however, we in Q Division were keeping tabs on their every move by reading the colour supplements.
Presenter: A small-time operator who fell foul of Dinsdale Piranha was Vince Snetterton-Lewis.
Cut to Vince in a chair in a nasty flat.
Vince: Well one day I was sitting at home threatening the kids, and I looked out of the hole in the wall and sees this tank drive up and one of Dinsdale’s boys gets out and he comes up, all nice and friendly like, and says Dinsdale wants to have a talk with me. So he chains me to the back of the tank and takes me for a scrape round to Dinsdale’s. And Dinsdale’s there in the conversation pit with Doug and Charles Paisley, the baby crusher, and a couple of film producers and a man they called ‘Kierkegaard’, who just sat there biting the heads of whippets and Dinsdale says ‘I hear you’ve been a naughty boy Clement’ and he splits me nostrils open and saws me leg off and pulls me liver out, and I said my name’s not Clement and then he loses his temper and nails my head to the floor.
Interviewer: (off-screen) He nailed your head to the floor?
Vince: At first, yeah
By "pagan" do you mean not monotheistic or is there another more specific definition? (I ask only for economy's sake, if we don't have the same definitions we end up going around in circles. I don't want to spend hundreds of posts just to discover that we don't even define things the same way...like with the Protestant posters.) ;-]
The accounts of a meeting with gods/angelic beings/divine beings are accepted in Judaism and it is interesting that God (the Father? the Son? the Word?) would condescend to meet with anyone.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by Judaism being in a state of "apostasy" when Christ arrives. Why was it in a state of "apostasy?" I would say , to the contrary. Beginning about 300 years before Christ, the Jews returned to worshipping Eli and observing the Sabbath.
Christ original mission is to the Jews. Why? They had the Law, they had Tradition, and Rabbis, then what was missing? Why did they need Christ? The Gentiles are an after-thought, once the Jewish rejection is complete then they come into focus. The Pharisee/Sadducee conflict is one of tradition v. modernity. The Hellenization introduced new ideas and ways of life. Gymnos is nudity no? The Gymnasium was a direct threat to the Jewish way of life. Yet, the High Priesthood had been bought and sold and was a political office, not a Priestly one. John the Baptist by right of lineage should have been the presiding High Priest. Why was he baptizing in the wilderness?
I would say they did not quite return to worshipping YWH, but that the worst elements had been mixed in with the surrounding tribes and lost or carried off to who knows where. The Samaritans had a temple and their own rights and were an abomination to the Jews. Today the majority Pharisee view is lost along with its ideas and Judaism is almost exclusively a Sadducean sect. Shammai has lost out to Hillel.
If their worship were correct you'd not need Christ. A Jewish friend of mine thinks that the reason Moses was denied entrance to the Promised Land is because he'd been asked to share the "Gospel" with the Gentiles and refused. I don't know Jewish tradition very well, but it must have been influenced powerfully and in the wrong direction for God to send a corrective. They had the appearance of worship, but not the proper form or authority. This is thematic of Christ's interactions with the Jews, no?
1010RD: Belief in Jesus Christ (as a real historical figure) and his fulfillment of his mission as "restorer"/Savior for mankind & baptism.
Kosta: That is a doctrine that developed at a later date.
Which of the above are you referring to as a later doctrine?
The point is, as a doctrinal tool, Matthew 25 does not say we will be judged on on our faith but on our works and intentions, and how they conform to Christ's.
OK, but don't faith and works go hand in hand. I only practice what I believe. People who practice and believe different things are called hypocrites. A name applied to the ruling Jews by Christ. You are masterful in the art of language. I've seen too many of your posts. Let's not play literalist with Matt. 25 and ignore the implied message of faith. We believe many things in our daily lives without knowing for certain. Certainty comes with practice (obedience).
It is a parable of parables that progresses from faith (oil in lamps) to abilities (talents - "money", but don't waste it or hide it) to actions. The progression seems clear unless you have another definition for the oil, but what else could it represent and what else could there not be enough of?
Anything strike you as ironic in the above? So a great figure in Christianity is excommunicated and condemned after death? That's particularly cruel. I can understand work for the dead toward their salvation, but toward their damnation? Is there a chance for Origen to repent in Catholic dogma? If not that's utterly despicable, no? My hope is he's beyond any earthly proclamation and in God's hands. No one deserves that kind of treatment, despite the expediency.
Or am I misunderstanding the CC teaching on excommunication and condemnation?
Is it vitandus or toleratus? How does the deceased resolve the situation? Are there Priests or Bishops in the afterlife? Is there Holy Communion? This doctrine really disturbs me and I did not totally get it until I looked it up. You'd mentioned it before, but without further explanation. Isn't condemnation equivalent to damnation? Please explain this.
As to the latter part of your post, all three are mentioned in the NT. Their roles are not explained there nor is their relationship sufficiently described to draw a certain conclusion. Ignoring the other two and focusing on Jesus alone seems heretical given the NT verses in which Jesus clearly defers to and shows sonly respect for His Father. The Holy Ghost is not a "messenger boy" (I know you are simply paraphrasing the belief of others).
Monty, hang up, I paged Soren. Is he anywhere around where you can't see him, by the way?
You know, this same talk is applied earlier in Luke to John the Baptist and, I think, to Samuel in the OT.
I will not be so rude or presumptuous as to argue with your belief that the spirit mentioned in Luke 2:40 is human spirit. I do wish I read Greek, though. Are you saying that Jesus grew as a human and eventually merged into the part of him that was God? Even as I type this it seems so weird. Look at what I just wrote: "part of him". If he is fully human and fully God what part is left? 100% human plus 100% God is a mathematical impossibility.
In the Garden isn't the agony caused by sin, not his but ours?
Your comment got me looking at John's experience and there it refers to the Holy Spirit, not just spirit (soul?). It also says something I've never noticed consciously (an angel (messenger)of the Lord is speaking):
Luke 1:16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’[b] and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
b. Malachi 4:5,6
That is the evidence for Jewish apostasy - that many would be turned to the Lord their God. But, why the reference to Malachi? What is the spirit and power of Elijah? The disobedient get turned toward "the wisdom of the just" (what is that?) and a people are prepared for the Lord. Curious, no?
Luke: 1:8080 So the child grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel. (about John)(NKJV)
40 And the Child grew and became strong in spirit,[k] filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. (about Jesus)(NKJV) but the note k: NU-Text omits in spirit.(as you’ve stated)
So John and Jesus parallel each other, but Jesus gains wisdom and the “grace of God”. What is the “grace of God”?
Depends on which God, no? There clearly is some indication that he is moving to theosis, yet is more than a prophet and not as high as Heavenly Father (the most high God?).
Obviously you do not consider Christ as human. God does not grow, but Christ is doctrinally also fully human. If he didn't grow as any other child (under grace), then he wasn't fully human, was he?
He was human, but maybe not in the way we are human. He never sinned and in a Jewish household that would include respecting his parents, which the story in the temple seems to contradict. We are throwing out "doctrine" and trying to get to the essence as captured in the Scriptures, no? If we accept doctrine as the fundamental guidepost then there's no need for a Religion Thread is there? Doctrine gives some clues, but it is political and subject to the unclean hands of men.
So we can logically surmise that a baby Jesus grew physically and spiritually and mentally (wisdom - the righteous application of knowledge?). So that his godhood was suppressed until some future date/act? What other conclusion can you come up with from a plain reading of the text. Must we be constrained by monotheism or polytheism as our only choices? If there is a divine hierarchy, yet Jesus achieves theosis thus equalling Heavenly Father - of whom he says they are one - is it common polytheism as practiced in pagan histories?
Mark: It does; however let us also consider that the fledgling Jesus was able to lecture in the Temple; a thing that the vast majority of grown men were unable to do....
The lecturing in the Temple is an excellent point. To lecture effectively you'd have to have mastery over the written law and the oral tradition (it would not impress the Pharisees or Sadducees otherwise), but you would not just have to recite them, but in a profound way apply them. At 12 y.o. that is very precocious, but not impossible for a devoted Levite. Is the example then proving His deity, His human growth, or that He was an exceptional Levite? Who is the audience for the message?
Mark: And what is Christ's spirit as separate from His Godhood; how do you explain that? ... I'm not sure about the applicability of Jesus growing from from grace to grace merely or mostly so He could experience the agony in the Garden more fully.
Why mention his growing at all if he's fully God? No growth required. What is the purpose of the agony in the Garden?
IIRC, the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection of the dead and the Pharisees did believe but that it would only apply to those who kept the law perfectly. Modern Judaism IS primarily Sadducean, in that even a belief in the afterlife is denied.
Let’s not forget, though, that the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was a forsign of the coming Messiah. The High Priest entered into the Holy of Holies once a year to make an atonement for the sins of the people. It was always a blood sacrifice upon the altar, symbolic of a “life for life” covering for sin.
One more thought, too. In Genesis 1:26, the word for the creator “God” is ELOHIM in Hebrew, which is a noun of plural number. Curious, hmmm?
That's the inevitable admission anyone honest enough who tries to "figure out" what this is all about will come to admit. But Orthodox diod not "branch out" into this sort of thinking, it is the original Church teaching. Origen (late 2nd, early 3rd century) used apophatic theology (negative reasoning, what God is not), is (along with Platonism) the very foundation of the original Church.
The cataphatic approach (positive reasoning, what God is) is the "branching" associated with of Scholasticism and Aristotelianism characteristic of the western Church development.
You have to remember, the Eastern Church is very much a living fossil in its way of thinking, worship, and organization. When you walk into a Orthodox church, and I mean genuine Orthodox church (that leaves out most OCA churches), you step back 1700 years or more, and hear the liturgy that hasn't changed since the 4th century.
No, Mark, that is positively Orthodox. The whole idea that the Christian God is both divine and human is something that is often neglected in the west. God, to most westerners I would say, especially in cultures where Protestantism rules supreme, is more akin to the Hebrew, Pauline God, than to Christ. The the eastern Christian, God is Christ.
Christianity is the only religion where believers can have a personal relationship with their God. This is why Christianity is everything all other religions are combined, and then some.
The Orthodox kiss their God as they walk into the church. They bow, fall on their knees, but the most important thing is that the Orthodox kiss their icons. That is very personal.
In the East, the understanding is that God the Father is "beyond everything and all," and that as such, ineffable, and incomprehensible, we could never be his children in a true sense. But though Christ's humanity the Christians see Father when they see him. They kiss the Father when they kiss him. They can relate to that God as someone of their own.
It is a mix of Judaism and Platonism, and it is pagan hands down, but because of Christ the eastern Christians never feel that they worship some distant and unknowable deity (which he is!); Christ is the two-way filter through whom you can reach the Father and through whom the Father reaches you.
Theosis is becoming like Christ, Chrits-like, restoring the likeness of God that was lost in the Garden. But how is one to become "God-like" unless one knows what God is like? Easy, he is like the Christ known to the Church!
By imitating Christ, by becoming like the human Jesus, you become like the ineffable God. The eastern Christians then see their imitation of Christ as a personal relationship, following their divine role-model in his humanity.
Although he Church would never admit it, Christian God is unlike the elusive and often tyrannical Jewish God, unlike Allah, or Zeus; he is not some object like the Sun, or Mount Fuji...he is a real person, with eyes and ears, who feels, suffers and loves, someone you hope to become like one day, someone you recognize in those who have to varying degrees attained his likeness.
But in the west, he is a powerful, cold, exacting, mighty unapproachable, unrecognizable king, and judge who is to be feared, respected and obeyed.
The eastern Christains would never say that. Their God is Christ and all that is expected of them to know God is to know Chirst and become Christ-like. Those hwo are like Chirst are saved (cf Mat 25). Humans get to know God throgh grace, not though nature. What God revealed is all there is. There is no more revealtion.
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