Posted on 01/05/2010 9:46:47 PM PST by the_conscience
I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"?
I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?
Now you can deny it, but that is exactly what she said, and it is different from what you claim she said. Intelligent discussion is impossible when basic facts are misrepresented.
ph
Professional Hunter?
Potential of Hydrogen?
Pulmonary Hypertension?
And that was no more my argument than Sister Faustina said she saw the Father.
Are we having a conversation here or are we playing some game where words sorta kinda like what somebody said are wrong so we attack them? Include me out.
If Christ is no longer on the cross how could one see the REAL Christ on it. There is no cross in Heaven .. Only the throne of David on which Christ sits..
Scripture tells us to try EVERY spirit (because we are all subject to satan's deception)
The tool we are given to test spiritual things to is scripture. If we see incidents or direct teachings that support a vision then we can hold it as truly from God..but if there is no support then we must assume it is not from God, but from our heart or satan.. Seeing the resurrection is the proof of Gods acceptance of the sacrifice and an assurance of our future resurrection. Christ defeated death, He had victory over it..why would he put himself back on it?
Acts 15:13-18 -- We are without God and without hope if Jesus is not seated on David's throne. Because then there was no resurrection
Heb 12:2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
I guess what I am saying if someone tells me that they have seen the Father or Christ on the cross, or Mary etc.. I test that vision against the word of God and find no support from the infallible word of God on that and so I discount it, because I am interesting in worshipping the God of the bible, not one proceeding out of the mind of a man..
Ex20: 3“You shall have no other gods beforea me. 4“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
BTW the empty tomb is not the same as Christ on the cross because the tomb is empty :)
Okay. So we have to parse. There is a prepositional phrase: "With God the Father in the midst of it." "God the Father" is the object of the preposition "with."
The whole phrase has an adjectival function, modifying "light." "Light" is a noun, the direct object of the verb "saw." The plain meaning is that she saw a light which she characterizes with the prepositional phrase.
IF there were any real ambiguity left, she says, "Between this light and the earth ... ." She does NOT say, "Between the Father and the earth."
She was not writing for a hostile cross-examination, so on the one hand she is not as precise as she might have been in that circumstance. But on the other hand she is not as self-conscious as she might have been under that circumstance. So the "between the light and the earth" seems to certify the natural grammatical interpretation of the first sentence, namely: that she saw a light.
It COULD be that she meant, "I saw the light and I saw God the Father in the midst of it," but it is not certain. And since theologically it makes more sense to speak of the crucified Christ between the Father and the world, if she had meant to say that she saw the Father rather than to describe the vision, one would think she would have said so.
Your construction is possible, but by no means certain.
If you disagree, then I think you have the burden of showing that my grammatical analysis is wrong or of finding evidence that she did not intend what her words actually convey.
Then you and I are probably walking the same road, dear brother in Christ! May the Holy Spirit continue to light it for us!
May God bless you and all your dear ones!
(I don't think the Church MADE the Bible authoritative. I DO think the Church rightly perceived and promulgated the authority of the canonical texts. That's not really part of what I'm arguing about.)
Yes, the scriptures of the OT were important, and hooray for the Bereans. But the Bereans were looking at the OT to see if what they HEARD were true or not.
The reason I say "Bogus" about this (as about atonement) is not that I think the arguments are lame. I don't. I think the QUESTION is lame. I think it's a made up question that it hardly occurred to anybody to ask until the spirit of rebellion was in the air.
I'm thinking the part of the standard of Sola Scriptura that is in question is the part that says we ought not to teach anything that cannot be proved thereby. I think that the Scriptures indicate that the Church has that kind of authority.
P.S. I just had a thought: Part of the premise of Sola Scriptura requires that there was 1.5k years of mean nasty evil and/or stupid Catholics who never read or thought about the verses you cite.
Professional Hunter?
I wish.
I was beginning to fear you might be a prophylactic helper.
OK, I think I "see" where you guys are coming from. Let me try:
"SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
"LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"
"LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"
"MY LAN-LORD!"
“The reason I say “Bogus” about this (as about atonement) is not that I think the arguments are lame. I don’t. I think the QUESTION is lame. I think it’s a made up question that it hardly occurred to anybody to ask until the spirit of rebellion was in the air.”
No sale, MD. Wycliffe was an opponent of the Catholic Church, but he was driven there by his revulsion over the difference he saw between the scriptures and the Catholic Church of 1370. That was why he eventually made a translation into the common tongue - he thought his case was best made by scripture itself.
I think this excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia actually gives a good review of how Wycliffe matured and developed the way he did:
“Wyclif must frequently have preached in London at this time, “barking against the Church”, and he refers to himself as “peculiaris regis clericus”. The Good Parliament, however, with the help of the Black Prince, was able, in 1376, to drive John of Gaunt and his friends from power. A year later the death of the prince gave Lancaster his opportunity, and the anti-clericals had once more the control of the Government. Under these circumstances the attempt of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to bring Wyclif to book was not likely to succeed. He appeared at St. Paul’s escorted by his powerful friends, and the proceedings soon degenerated into a quarrel between Lancaster and the Bishop of London. The Londoners took their bishop’s side, but the council broke up in confusion. The papal authority was next invoked against Wyclif, and a series of Bulls were issued from Rome. Nothing much came of them, however; Oxford, on the whole, took Wyclif’s part, and a council of doctors declared that the propositions attributed to him, though ill-sounding, were not erroneous. When Wyclif appeared, early in 1378, at Lambeth, both the Princess of Wales and the London crowd interposed in his favor. The summons, however, led to the formulation of eighteen articles which give a fair account of Wyclif’s teaching at this period. But before his next summons in 1381 his heresies, or heretical tendencies, had developed rapidly. The Great Schism may partially account for this and also the fact that Wyclif was now becoming the leader of a party. It was about this time that he began to send out his “poor priests”, men who, except quite at the beginning, were usually laymen, and to lay much more stress on the Bible and on preaching. In 1380 Wyclif took the momentous step of beginning to attack Transubstantiation. It was at Oxford that he did so, calling the Host merely “an effectual sign”. This open denial of a doctrine which came home to every Christian, and the reaction which followed the Peasant Revolt, lost Wyclif much of his popularity. In 1381 an Oxford council of doctors condemned his teaching on the Blessed Eucharist and a year later an ecclesiastical court at Blackfriars gave sentence against a series of twenty-four Wyclifite propositions. The Government was now against him. Westminster and Canterbury combined to put pressure on the still reluctant university authorities. A number of prominent Wyclifites were forced to make retractations (cf. LOLLARDS), but nothing seems to have been demanded from the leader of the movement except a promise not to preach. He retired to Lutterworth and, though he continued to write voluminously both in Latin and English, remained there undisturbed till his death. He was probably cited to Rome but he was too infirm to obey. Indeed he was probably paralyzed during the last two years of his life. A second stroke came in 1384 while he was hearing Mass in his church, and three days later he died. He was buried at Lutterworth, but the Council of Constance in 1415 ordered his remains to be taken up and cast out. This was done in 1428.
It is impossible to understand Wyclif’s popularity, the weakness of the ecclesiastical authorities, or even the character of his teaching, without taking into account the extraordinary condition of the country at the end of the fourteenth century. The discredit which had been brought on the principle of authority in Church and State and the popularity of revolutionary ideas have been touched upon in the article LOLLARDS, and the causes which explain the spread of Lollardy are responsible, to some extent at least, for Wyclif’s own mental development. His earliest writings are mainly logical and metaphysical. He belonged to the Realist School, and claimed to be a disciple of St. Augustine, but it was his attitude in the practical and political questions of Evangelical poverty and Church government which gave him influence. The question of Evangelical poverty was a burning one throughout the fourteenth century. Originally a subject of bitter controversy within the ranks of the Friars Minor, it had received a wider extension, and the chief theological writers of the time had taken sides. When the papacy declared for the moderates, the extremists, with their literary supporters, Marsiglio of Padua, William of Ockham, and others, assumed an attitude of hostility to Rome, and soon found themselves advocating a church organization without property and practically under the control of the State. From the mendicants, then, Wyclif inherited his hatred of clerical and monastic endowments, and in this he showed no great originality. Throughout the Middle Ages the wealth of the clergy was liable to attack, and that sometimes from the most orthodox. What is, however, characteristic of Wyclif is the argument, half-feudal and half-theological, with which he supports his attack on the clergy and the monks; yet though connected with his name it was in part borrowed from Richard Fitz-Ralph, an Oxford teacher and vice-chancellor, who had since become Archbishop of Armagh. Fitz-Ralph had been himself an opponent of the “mendicants”, but Wyclif found in his theory of “lordship” a convenient and a novel way of formulating the ancient but anarchical principle that no respect is due to the commands or the property of the wicked. “Dominion is founded in grace” is the phrase which sums up the argument, and dominium it must be remembered is a word which might be said to contain the whole feudal theory, for it means both sovereignty and property. “Dominion”, then, or “lordship”, belongs to God alone. Any lordship held by the creature is held of God and is forfeited by sin, for mortal sin is a kind of high treason towards God, the Overlord. Fitz-Ralph had used this argument meaning to justify the distinction between “property” and “use” which the moderate Franciscans had adopted and the extremists had rejected. Wyclif, however, brought it down into the market-place by applying it to clerical possessions. He even went further than the argument authorized him, for he came to hold that no monks or clergy, not even the righteous, could hold temporal possessions without sin, and further that it was lawful for kings and princes to deprive them of what they held unlawfully. Logically, Wyclif’s doctrine of lordship should apply to temporal lords as well as to spiritual; but this logical step he never took, and he did not, therefore, contribute intentionally to the Peasant Revolt of 1381. Yet the assaults of so well known a man on church property must have encouraged the movement (of this there is a good deal of evidence), and the “poor priests”, who were less closely connected with laymen of position and property, are sure to have gone further than their master in the communistic direction. Wyclif’s attack on the property of the monastic orders and of the Church would necessarily bring him before long into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities, and he was led to guard himself against the results of excommunication by maintaining that, as he put it, “no man can be excommunicated unless he first be excommunicated by himself” (viz. by sin), a statement which may be true of the effect of excommunication on the soul, but which cannot be applied to the external government of the Church.
Thus by 1380 Wyclif had set himself in open opposition to the property and government of the Church, he had attacked the pope in most unmeasured terms, he had begun to treat the Bible as the chief and almost the only test of orthodoxy, and to lay more and more stress on preaching. Yet he would have protested against an accusation of heresy. Great freedom was allowed to speculation in the schools, and there was much uncertainty about clerical property. Even the exclusive use of Scripture as a standard of faith was comprehensible at a time when the allegiance of Christendom was being claimed by two popes.”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15722a.htm
Those who lived under 2 Popes, both with many adherents, can be forgiven wanting something “more sure”, as Peter put it:
“16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty...18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
MD: “I’m thinking the part of the standard of Sola Scriptura that is in question is the part that says we ought not to teach anything that cannot be proved thereby. I think that the Scriptures indicate that the Church has that kind of authority.”
If being taught by scripture can make a man of God fully equipped for every good deed, then going beyond may be interesting, but not vital. And it is dangerous. Paul said he taught “the full counsel of God”.
In Jude we read, “I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Once for all doesn’t seem to leave much need for centruies of unfolding.
John wrote, “7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8 Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. 9 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, 11 for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.”
This doesn’t mean every teaching must be found in scripture, but it certainly supports the idea that every critical idea can be found. “Full counsel of God”. “Once for all”. “Abide in the teaching”.
MD: “Part of the premise of Sola Scriptura requires that there was 1.5k years of mean nasty evil and/or stupid Catholics who never read or thought about the verses you cite.”
Not quite 1500. The church fathers seemed quite content to seek authority in the words of scripture. But lets face it - 1000-1600 AD wasn’t exactly the high point of glory for the Catholic Church!
This may unite the ENTIRE thread....against me; however, once I read the scripture (this morning), I knew I had to talk about it. I have stated in previous posts (1500's - 2000 maybe?)that I did not believe The Father, Son and Holy Spirit were actually one. I do believe they work in "unison", but are three separates.
"Mat 12:32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
Now, if believing in the trinity....God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are One, why are they separated? If Jesus is the Holy Spirit, why would forgiveness be given for speaking against Him, but not the Holy Spirit, if they are one in the same?
Also...Philippians 2:10-11 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
John 8:42 - Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
Matthew 20:23 - And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.
These are just a few examples of many I have found in my Bible.
I thought of starting a new thread; however, so many of you have been here since post #1 and I truly believe your hearts belong to Him, which is why I am seeking now, here, in this thread.
I beg of all of you to only use scripture. There are so many others being posted here, however, only scripture will do.
Please keep in mind I am on my own here. I have no one to bounce things off of, or at least anyone I take to heart when it comes to scripture. I just know, that in the end of days, most be will deceived....and I don't want to be one of them. So please, scripture only.
One more "P.S."..... I just want to learn. As I have stated previously, this has been such a wonderful Bible study and I would love to continue.
If I am wrong, I need to be shown the way. If you are wrong, you need to be shown the way. Isn't this what these threads are about?
I would suggest to you that the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are different in more ways than this, and that perhaps these necessary differences are WHY there are three persons.
The nature of the Trinity is a mystery to us and Mat 12:32 is one facet of that mystery. But I do not think rigid consistency as mortals define it is a constraint that concerns God in any way. It is for us to come to understand Him in His terms rather than for Him to confine Himself to ours.
I don't expect you to look back on all previous posts, but to a lot, it is no mystery. The churches TEACH that all three are one (well most).
Is it not up to us to learn right from wrong? If a church teaches you one incorrect thing, what else are they teaching incorrectly?
You've never wondered about that?
The organization must have been strong in numbers, but only those who were seized for heresy are known by name, and it is only from the indictments of their accusers that their opinions can be gathered. The preachers were picturesque figures in long russet dress down to the heels, who, staff in hand, preached in the mother tongue to the people in churches and graveyards, in squares, streets and houses, in gardens and pleasure grounds, and then talked privately with those who had been impressed. The Lollard literature was very widely circulated - books by Wycliffe and Hereford and tracts and broadsides - in spite of many edicts proscribing it. In 1395 the Lollards grew so strong that they petitioned parliament through Sir Thomas Latimer and Sir R. Stury to reform the church on Lollardist methods. It is said that the Lollard Conclusions printed by Canon Shirley (p. 360) contain the substance of this petition. If so, parliament was told that temporal possessions ruin the church and drive out the Christian graces of faith, hope and charity; that the priesthood of the church in communion with Rome was not the priesthood Christ gave to his apostles; that the monk's vow of celibacy had for its consequence unnatural lust, and should not be imposed; that transubstantiation was a feigned miracle, and led people to idolatry; that prayers made over wine, bread, water, oil, salt, wax, incense, altars of stone, church walls, vestments, mitres, crosses, staves, were magical and should not be allowed; that kings should possess the jus episcopale, and bring good government into the church; that no special prayers should be made for the dead; that auricular confession made to the clergy, and declared to be necessary for salvation, was the root of clerical arrogance and the cause of indulgences and other abuses in pardoning sin; that all wars were against the principles of the New Testament, and were but murdering and plundering the poor to win glory for kings; that the vows of chastity laid upon nuns led to child murder; that many of the trades practised in the commonwealth, such as those of goldsmiths and armourers, were unnecessary and led to luxury and waste. These Conclusions really contain the sum of Wycliffite teaching; and, if we add that the principal duty of priests is to preach, and that the worship of images, the going on pilgrimages and the use of gold and silver chalices in divine service are sinful (The Peasants' Rising and the Lollards, p. 47), they include almost all the heresies charged in the indictments against individual Lollards down to the middle of the 15th century. The king, who had hitherto seemed anxious to repress the action of the clergy against the Lollards, spoke strongly against the petition and its promoters, and Lollardy never again had the power in England which it wielded up to this year.
If the formal statements of Lollard creed are to be got from these Conclusions, the popular view of their controversy with xvl. 30 the church may be gathered from the ballads preserved in the Political Poems and Songs relating to English History, published in 1859 by Thomas Wright for the Master of the Rolls series, and in the Piers Ploughman poems. Piers Ploughman's Creed (see Langland) was probably written about 1394, when Lollardy was at its greatest strength; the ploughman of the Creed is a man gifted with sense enough to see through the tricks of the friars, and with such religious knowledge as can be got from the creed, and from Wycliffe's version of the Gospels. The poet gives us a "portrait of the fat friar with his double chin shaking about as big as a goose's egg, and the ploughman with his hood full of holes, his mittens made of patches, and his poor wife going barefoot on the ice so that her blood followed" (Early English Text Society, vol. xxx., pref., p. 16); and one can easily see why farmers and peasants turned from the friars to the poor'preachers. The Ploughman's Complaint tells the same tale. It paints popes, cardinals, prelates, rectors, monks and friars, who call themselves followers of Peter and keepers of the gates of heaven and hell, and pale poverty-stricken people, cotless and landless, who have to pay the fat clergy for spiritual assistance, and asks if these are Peter's priests. "I trowe Peter took no money, for no sinners that he sold.. .. Peter was never so great a fole, to leave his key with such a losell." In 1399 the Lancastrian Henry IV. overthrew the Plantagenet Richard II., and one of the most active partisans of the new monarch was Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and the most determined opponent of Lollardy. Richard II. had aided the clergy to suppress Lollardy without much success. The new dynasty supported the church in a similar way and not more successfully. The strength of the anti-clerical party lay in the House of Commons, in which the representatives of the shires took the leading part. Twice the Commons petitioned the crown to seize the temporalities of the church and apply them to such national purposes as relief of taxation, maintenance of the poor and the support of new lords and knights. Their anti-clerical policy was not continuous, however. The court party and the clergy proposed statutes for the suppression of heresy, and twice at least secured the concurrence of the Commons. One of these was the well-known statute De heretico comburendo passed in 1401.
In the earlier stages of Lollardy, when the court and the clergy managed to bring Lollards before ecclesiastical tribunals backed by the civil power, the accused generally recanted and showed no disposition to endure martyrdom for their opinions. They became bolder in the beginning of the 15th century. William Sawtrey (Chartris), caught and condemned, refused to recant and was burnt at St Paul's Cross (March 1401), and Other martyrdoms followed. The victims usually belonged to the lower classes. In 1410 John Badby, an artisan, was sent to the stake. His execution was memorable from the part taken in it by the prince of Wales, who himself tried to reason the Lollard out of his convictions. But nothing said would make Badby confess that "Christ sitting at supper did give to His disciples His living body to eat." The Lollards, far from daunted, abated no effort to make good their ground, and united a struggle for social and political liberty to the hatred felt by the peasants towards the Romish clergy. Jak Upland (John Countryman) took the place of Piers Ploughman, and upbraided the clergy, and especially the friars, for their wealth and luxury. Wycliffe had published the rule of St Francis, and had pointed out in a commentary upon the rule how far friars had departed from the maxims of their founder, and had persecuted the Spirituales (the Fratricelli, Beghards, Lollards of the Netherlands) for keeping them to the letter (cf. Matthews, English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted, Early Eng. Text Soc., vol. lxxiv., 1880). Jak Upland put all this into rude nervous English verse: "Freer, what charitie is this To fain that whoso liveth after your order Liveth most perfectlie, And next followeth the state of the Apostles In povertie and pennance: And yet the wisest and greatest clerkes of you Wend or send or procure to the court of Rome,. .. and to be assoiled of the vow of povertie." The archbishop, having the power of the throne behind him, attacked that stronghold of Lollardy the university of Oxford. In 1406 a document appeared purporting to be the testimony of the university in favour of Wycliffe; its genuineness was disputed at the time, and when quoted by Huss at the council of Constance it was repudiated by the English delegates. The archbishop treated Oxford as if it had issued the document, and procured the issue of severe regulations in order to purge the university of heresy. In 1408 Arundel in convocation proposed and carried the famous Constitutiones Thomae Arundel intended to put down Wycliffite preachers and teaching. They provided amongst other things that no one was to be allowed to preach without a bishop's licence, that preachers preaching to the laity were not to rebuke the sins of the clergy, and that Lollard books and the translation of the Bible were to be searched for and destroyed.
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Lollards
If there are three persons, but all are God, then they are one.
“4”Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deut 6
No wiggle room.
I believe that anyone who professes to understand completely the Blessed Trinity has not made a profound study of the matter and is—innocently enough—fooling himself.
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