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.”
“Also, especially British, judgement.”
That is probably why I usually spell it with an ‘e’ - my first real bible was the New English Bible, and I learned how to spell from reading it. It used to make my teachers mad when I would write ‘colour’, and to this day I delight in too-long sentences!
“The verse in Isaiah says God “declared” the end from the beginning.”
That can be looked at 2 ways - as God declared what he knew (like when I declared last fall that Obama was a huge spending Anti-American jerk), or that God will cause it to be that way. Both interpretations are possible. Which one you choose - if you can choose - probably depends on what beliefs you bring with you to the reading.
Those of us who reject the idea of ‘selective salvation’ do not reject the idea that God knows the ending before the beginning. We apply ‘election’ against those who believe, rather than against individuals picked out beforehand without reference to their faith...a category, rather than individuals. And since God knew the outcome before we were made, he ‘foreknew’ us. And those he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to His Son...
It is sort of like our political elections - the elected are those with the most votes, rather than predetermined individuals...at least, outside of Chicago & Philadelphia!
“For the record, could you remind me of what you believe that God-breathed means?”
Don’t know about Dr E, but for me, it means the scriptures say what God wants them to say - they are the written Word of God, the written expression of who He is, just as Jesus is the living Word - the expression of God in humanity.
I have no idea if that is right, it is just how I’ve always figured it.
I would say that 1 Chronicles 25 is as relevant and as important to [someone] as Matthew 5 [is to us]. My eyes glaze over at genealogies, but in some cultures, those are critical to their understanding. Tribal cultures, for example, would have a hard time understanding the flow without genealogies, while nation-states generally ignore them.
Thanks...that was beautifully stated.
That is an interesting statement, especially in the light of friend Kosta's extensive postings showing the evolution and deliberate changing of the NT Scripture. Given that these are true, does that mean that God's word to man changes over time, as the Church changed its wording, in your opinion? I would say that 1 Chronicles 25 is as relevant and as important to [someone] as Matthew 5 [is to us].
Is it as important to Christian belief and doctrine? I do not doubt that it is Scripture; but consider this: since it is not the Penteteuch, the Jews do not believe that God dictated it. Did God want it included? I believe that He did. Did God write it? I don't believe so.
In my opinion, in the entirety of the Bible, 1 Chronicles 25 is absolutely required. But I also look at it this way: the revelation of the two testaments was progressive. The ancients were taught some things, as one might teach toddlers. Later, as these children grew in spiritual understanding, Jesus Incarnated, and the next step in revelation occurred. Christians, once the NT was starting to be accepted, started to view the NT through the Gospels (chronicles of Jesus and the prism of Christ) and the OT through the New (the prism of the revelations of Christ).
That was the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Muchly obliged.
I have no idea what you mean. :)
Both interpretations are possible. Which one you choose - if you can choose - probably depends on what beliefs you bring with you to the reading.
Here's the thing: if you can choose, then predestination is moot. If you cannot choose, then it doesn't matter and no exhortation to believe the other can possibly be of avail.
Those of us who reject the idea of ‘selective salvation’ do not reject the idea that God knows the ending before the beginning. We apply ‘election’ against those who believe, rather than against individuals picked out beforehand without reference to their faith...a category, rather than individuals. And since God knew the outcome before we were made, he ‘foreknew’ us. And those he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to His Son...
You are correct in that one must differentiate between foreknowledge and predestination. The Church admits of predestination to Heaven, but never predestination to hell. The Church believes that that is a personal choice; God merely confirms what the individual chooses.
And what I find so awesome in that is not only did God foreknow all things, but he also knows all the what ifs as well. Whew!!!
“That is an interesting statement, especially in the light of friend Kosta’s extensive postings showing the evolution and deliberate changing of the NT Scripture.”
kosta50 and I disagree on this happening...see here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2316798/posts
A lot depends on which expert you believe...assuming you can choose!
I think that Kosta was proven or recognized correct in that thread. There were a number of copies of what is now Scripture (or almost-Scripture) floating around for the first 400 years. I can just imagine the Councils trying to figure out which versions were correct.
I must have missed them. :)
I think kosta50 was and is wrong.
Perhaps you will explain what doctrine rests on a disputed passage?
Wrong about what? Wrong about myriad versions of Scripture floating around up to and after 400 AD?
Perhaps you will explain what doctrine rests on a disputed passage?
First, let us agree on which passages are in dispute and what their wording is. Kosta, your help, please.
But that's not what the Bible teaches.
Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." -- Ephesians 2:8-10"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Of course some books of the Bible are more relevant than others.
Pity the papacy ignores just about all of them since it considers the Bible to be subservient to Rome's enfeebled magisterium and its doctrines of men.
If you want to revert to some Old English spelling, no one is stopping you from looking foolish.
It's interesting to note Roman Catholics appear to be habitually incapable of saying they (or their church) have erred in anything.
Mark: let us agree on which passages are in dispute and what their wording is. Kosta, your help, please.
Mr Rogers resorts to a banal, if not naïve, baseless slogan many Protestants like to use when it comes to this issue. The truth is, all doctrinal disagreements are based on the reading of disputed passages. Matthew 16 is a fine example where the Catholics read one thing and the rest of mainline Christianity another. The other one is Isaiah's virgin. or John's bread being Jesus' flesh. Or, for example, Mr. Rogers' insistence that God really didn't harden Pharaoh's heart (even though the Bile says is clearly), he just made it more "obvious"!
The variants are not only textual but hermeneutic. All of Christological disputes were based on variant readings of scriptural verses. Mr Rogers asks his question knowing that no particular variations in biblical text today. The majority of biblical alterations are simply human errors, and do not affect doctrine. That doesn't mean early alterations didn't.
These can be divided in the nature of Christological dispute. The first century Christianity was a mix of Christian and Gnostic beliefs. Some of this is obvious even form the NT, and we know that base don the fact that some NT authors (Apostle John for ex maple) were quoted as scripture prior to them being quoted by Christians. Others (such as Apostle Paul) was particularly liked by Gnostics who recognized a great deal of their own theology in him.
Early Christians were also divided as regards Christ's origin based on whose Gospel a particular church was reading. Thus those who had copies of Mark's Gospel tended to believe that Jesus was made divine at his baptism. This is otherwise known as the adoptionist heresy in the Catholic Church.
First evidence of antiadoptionist changes in biblical text were made public by J. J. Wettstein, a 17th century Swiss German Protestant New Testament theologian) who noticed in the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus in 1 Tim 3:16 an alteration was made (in slightly different ink), in fact only a line drawn through the letter omicron ("O") in the word OΣ (meaning who) to make it look like the Greek theta ("Θ") instead, changing the word to ΘΣ (meaning God).
Since KJV was based on the 16th century Textus Receptus, which was based on copies known as the Majority Text, based on C. Alexandrinus it reads
Whereas older Alexandrian text reads
Clearly, someone was concerned with the passage being interpreted in a way that might put in question the dogma of Incarnation and Jesus' eternal divinity, so they changed "who" to "God."
In Luke 2:33, the oldest mnuscripts read "And His father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him." A number of medieval copies of this verse reads "And Joseph and his mother..." as they became concerned that someone might say this proves he was not of divine birth since he had a father and a mother. In other examples, the oldest versions say "his parents" only to be fixed" by later scribes to read "Joseph and his mother..."
In Mark 1:11, more recent copies say "and a voice came out of the heavens: "You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased" but one older Greek surviving manuscript precedes this by saying "Today I have begotten you!" (directly from Psalm 2:7) but this was apparently removed for fear of aodptionist overtones, and Ps. 2:7 is probably not read very often! :)
There are many other examples of this. Other Chrisotlogical issues tackled early was the so-called docetist heresy which found ts way into Islam, and which denies Jesus' humanity. Rather it suggests Jesus only appeared human (from δοκηω, dokeo to "seem"), associated with Gnosticism which considered body a prison for souls and a source of all evil. This, God could not have real flesh. This is where the "spiritual flesh" comes in and why the Church insisted on the real Presence, real flesh and real blood – it was to counter Gnostic beliefs. Most of the anti-docetic textual alteration come form Luke's Gospel (Luke was the only other author besides Paul acceptable to Marcion, precisely because of the existance of many docetic verses in some versions of Luke). Luke, as you know, exists in two variants: a long one and a short one. These are 5:43-44, 22:17-19, or 24:51-52, among others.
There were also alterations to the text countering what is otherwise known as the seprationist heresy, an early belief that Christ was actually two persons, one divine and one human. Antiseparationist alterations are found in Heb 2:9 which in the older versions says that Jesus died "apart form God" later change "Christ died by the grace of God." Also similar changes were made in Mark 15:34,etc.
Another set of theologically motivated changes in the early Christian period were made in the Chirstian Apologetic period by such theological giants as Tertulliian and Origen. These had mainly to do with countering pagan criticism of Christianity. Anything that seemed to give pagans some canon fodder would be modified.
So without making this any longer, most of the theologically dependent variants were made early in the Christian period. Once Christian dogma was established in the 4th century, smaller forgeries like the Comma Johanneu or Pericope adulterae and hundreds if not thousands of variants in word order do not affect post Nicene theology. But theology-alteirng or fixing changes were definitely made in the early Christian period in order to "harmonize" the scripture with the doctrine, and counter various compete beliefs.
Modern theological differentiation is based on interpretation rather than on actual word smithing and intentional alterations of the text, although some modern translations do seem to put a twist on how things are read. Sometimes it is forgotten that the etxt being read is actually a redacted text that was intentionally changed to make Christ divine, or one person, or things to that nature.
“The truth is, all doctrinal disagreements are based on the reading of disputed passages.”
You change the subject. The question was what doctrine rests on passages whose existence is disputed, rather than disputed interpretation of the agreed on text.
“for example, Mr. Rogers’ insistence that God really didn’t harden Pharaoh’s heart (even though the Bile says is clearly)”
Except you distort my position. I did NOT claim God didn’t harden Pharaoh’s heart, but said that in doing so, God was pushing him further in the direction he was already going. We may harden concrete, but we do so because it is the nature of concrete to be hard.
“The other one is Isaiah’s virgin. or John’s bread being Jesus’ flesh.”
Actually, I don’t know of any commentators who deny that the word used in Isaiah can refer to both a young woman and/or virgin. I suppose I shouldn’t say ANY...there are a few fringe groups that worship the KJV uber alles, but I don’t think of them as serious or honest commentators. John 6 is a passage I have discussed with y’all at length. I find it amazing that anyone claims it means the bread is literally the flesh of Jesus. Obviously, some disagree - but notice! NO one disputes the TEXTS! Neither Catholic nor Baptists claims that we don’t know what the text of John 6 was in 150AD, or 300 AD.
“Mr Rogers asks his question knowing that no particular variations in biblical text today.”
One of the great failures of the church in 500+ AD was to start ignoring scripture. If you read some of what passed for serious theological debate by 1400, it was appalling. And since scripture was in disrepute, it isn’t surprising that there were increasing variants. Thus the text Erasmus put together had flaws - flaws many men have laboured hard to remove. And we have largely been successful.
However:
“Clearly, someone was concerned with the passage being interpreted in a way that might put in question the dogma of Incarnation and Jesus’ eternal divinity, so they changed “who” to “God.”
No, someone so clearly assumed, at the core of their being, that Jesus is divine, made an error in copying and didn’t notice it because it didn’t register as a possible error. However, the divinity of Jesus doesn’t rest on that verse.
The divinity of Jesus is clearly taught throughout the NT. The exact wording used in councils hundreds of years later is NOT clearly and explicitly taught, which is why I don’t care if someone holds to them. Knowledge of the exact way that human and divine existed in Jesus is not required for salvation, nor for holy living - which is the purpose of God’s revelation. That is why God provided us with the scriptures and not a systematic theology text.
Jesus is God. He lived as a man. He is both Son of Man and Son of God. I believed in him and was saved long before I first read the church council decrees on how it worked - and I still find those decrees to be more concerned with human philosophy than divine revelation.
I accept those decrees as being accurate because, in my experience, those who start with denying them end up in la-la land, following internet prophets, believing in extraterrestrials and spaceships, denying Jesus was/is God at all, etc. I tend to view the Trinity as the easiest test of someone’s adherence to the revelation of scripture - not because the Trinity is clearly laid out in scripture, but because those who depart from it depart from the rest of scripture - sooner or later.
Joseph as the father of Jesus...what of it? Whatever else is true, medieval folks had no doubt about the divinity of Jesus. They didn’t add stuff in to prove what everyone accepted as true anyways!
“This is where the “spiritual flesh” comes in and why the Church insisted on the real Presence, real flesh and real blood...”
No, the discussion of spiritual bodies came about from the knowledge that the physical body of believers dies, so how will we be resurrected? Real presence came in because it has a significant amount of truth to it...as Baptists put it, “The outward elements in this ordinance, when correctly set apart for the use ordained by Christ, bear such a strong relation to the Lord crucified, that they are sometimes truly, but figuratively, called by the name of the things they represent, namely, the body and blood of Christ.”
The main marks of a Christian, what identified him as such, were baptism and Eucharist. Many church fathers who taught ‘real presence’ also discussed it as metaphor.
The Catholic Church went further and created transubstantiation, so their ‘priests’ could offer a sacrifice.
But again, these are not disputes based on the reliability of the texts, but about the meaning of what we find in the texts.
“So without making this any longer, most of the theologically dependent variants were made early in the Christian period....Sometimes it is forgotten that the etxt being read is actually a redacted text that was intentionally changed to make Christ divine, or one person, or things to that nature.”
Making an assertion does not prove the assertion.
As FF Bruce put it:
But how different is the situation of the New Testament in this respect! In addition to the two excellent MSS of the fourth century mentioned above, which are the earliest of some thousands known to us, considerable fragments remain of papyrus copies of books of the New Testament dated from 100 to 200 years earlier still. The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, the existence of which was made public in 1931, consist of portions of eleven papyrus codices, three of which contained most of the New Testament writings. One of these, containing the four Gospels with Acts, belongs to the first half of the third century; another, containing Paul’s letters to churches and the Epistle to the Hebrews, was copied at the beginning of the third century; the third, containing Revelation, belongs to the second half of the same century.
A more recent discovery consists of some papyrus fragments dated by papyrological experts not later than AD 150, published in Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and other Early Christian Papyri, by H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat (1935). These fragments contain what has been thought by some to be portions of a fifth Gospel having strong affinities with the canonical four; but much more probable is the view expressed in The Times Literary Supplement for 25 April 1935, ‘that these fragments were written by someone who had the four Gospels before him and knew them well; that they did not profess to be an independent Gospel; but were paraphrases of the stories and other matter in the Gospels designed for explanation and instruction, a manual to teach people the Gospel stories’.
Earlier still is a fragment of a papyrus codex containing John xviii. 31-33, 37 f, now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, dated on palaeographical grounds around AD 130, showing that the latest of the four Gospels, which was written, according to tradition, at Ephesus between AD 90 and 100, was circulating in Egypt within about forty years of its composition (if, as is most likely, this papyrus originated in Egypt, where it was acquired in 1917). It must be regarded as being, by half a century, the earliest extant fragment of the New Testament.
A more recently discovered papyrus manuscript of the same Gospel, while not so early as the Rylands papyrus, is incomparably better preserved; this is the Papyrus Bodmer II, whose discovery was announced by the Bodmer Library of Geneva in 1956; it was written about AD 200, and contains the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John with but one lacuna (of twenty two verses), and considerable portions of the last seven chapters.’...
The study of the kind of attestation found in MSS and quotations in later writer’ is connected with the approach known as Textual Criticism.’ This is a most important and fascinating branch of study, its object being to determine as exactly as possible from the available evidence the original words of the documents in question. It is easily proved by experiment that it is difficult to copy out a passage of any considerable length without making one or two dips at least. When we have documents like our New Testament writings copied and recopied thousands of times, the scope for copyists’ errors is so enormously increased that it is surprising there are no more than there actually are. Fortunately, if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The variant readings about which any doubt remain’ among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice
To sum up, we may quote the verdict of the late Sir Frederic Kenyon, a scholar whose authority to make pronouncements on ancient MSS was second to none:
‘The interval then between the data of original. composition and the earliest extant evidence become so small to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scripture have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.’
Doctrine in the Catholic Church rests on the Magiosteirum's interpretation of existing official scirpture and historical teachings of the Church. Doctrine among Protestants is up to an individual based on extant copies of the Bible.
Be it as it may, doctrinal among all Christians at the present time is over the interpretation of extant verison of the scirptures.
This was not the case in the first 300 years of Christendom, when there were many variant verison floating around. There is biblical evidence that many passages were redacted to reflect doctrine or to bring it into ahmrony with the current doctrine. We know about some of these through references made by others repeatedly, or by actually having variant copies at hand.
All doctrinal differences result from either (1) variant biblical text or (2) variant interpretation of biblical text. Since all biblical text was aritifically made to agree with the earliest condices known, because they agree wiht the verison of the Bible accepted by the Church. Competing verison were either destroyed or buried.
So it is no wonder that all our copies of the Bible closely agree; it's artifical agreement! It does not prove that this is as close as it gets ot the original or that God preserved his scriptures from corruption.
From extant copies of variants we can see apt tern applied by Church scribes in trying to diminish or eliminate various divergent doctirnes based on variant copies of the Gospels and other NT books. Specifically, older versions of the NT were changed to reflect Church doctrine more closely. This was accomplished by chaing verses that sounded docetist, Gnostic, separationist, adoptionists, etc., and replacing them with vereses that sounded more "orthodox."
I seriously don't understand what you are disputing here except the banal position that changes in scriptures have no effect on doctrine.
What exactly do you mean by this? Of course some books of the Bible are more relevant than others.
Would you rank them for us, please?
Pity the papacy ignores just about all of them
Pity that you are wrong, since attending Sunday Mass alone will result in one going through the whole Bible every three years; if one attends weekday Mass and/or Bible study, then that ensures a more frequent or complete reading in a shorter period. Compare the proofs in the WCF to the Catechism for completeness of Biblical quotations and reliance, for instance. Your government-created religious documents enslave your religion. Imagine that: a secular government creates religious documents (the KJV and the WCF) and even today there are willing individuals who enslave themselves to them, rather than the Christian faith.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.