this sounds, Dear Sister,
"Truly, to God be the glory, not man, never man."
like a contradiction to some of your assertions up-thread.
Or are you meaning it . . . uhhh . . .
'Truly, to God be the glory, not [a] man, never [any] man--though a special case was made for one woman.'
Is that your meaning? I'm really at a mystifying loss as to how to take the meaning of your words any more.
I'm sorry your working all this out with this Pentecostal is so difficult, annoying, offensive. I'd make it less so, if I could figure out a way to do that with Biblical integrity, accuracy, and personal straight-forwardness.
Alas, I just don't seem able, currently, to rise to that level of maturity or saintliness. Very sorry.
BTW, I would still appreciate your response to my post #1,692 to wit:
Sez you, dear brother in Christ!
AT post #1,483 you said:
BB:
But from whence did Quix derive this list of titles? Certainly not from Catholics, I daresay!
QX: About that you are exceedingly mistaken.
I cited the reference. I gave the page numbers and quotes from the book published by a well known and cherished, approved, sanctioned, lauded ?Roman? Catholic Order's publishing house. I gave the official Vatican affiliated institutional censor's and Cardinal Cushing's affirmations of the text.
If those are not from ?Roman? Catholics, nothing is.
Therefore, your:
And on what basis does he associate them with Mary? Catholic thought makes none of the associations that have been alleged from certain quarters round about here.
is also mistaken and wholesale mystifying on the face of it.
Frankly, I went to bed shocked and seriously grieved by your assertions. I still am. I find them exceedingly difficult to explain, If not now mystifying to understand with any confidence, at all.
BIG Sigh.
I'm sure you would try to make it less offensive if you could find a way to do that, dear brother in Christ, one that would not compromise your sense of "Biblical integrity, accuracy, and personal straight-forwardness." On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive what the purpose of this thread might be, other than to set the stage for Catholic bashing (given the historical record). Yet another in a long succession of same, though this one has caused an unusually high degree of offense to many Catholic FReepers, as I have learned via private FReepmail. And all this has somehow been (mis)labeled as a "research thread."
I'm not angry with you, dear brother Quix. Though I do despair of our ever coming to common ground in our theological understandings — and that seems pretty odd to me, because we're both biblically based. And I have been wondering about that. Some thoughts:
I gather you adhere to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. I do not. In the first place, I believe that God gave us four Revelations — the Holy Scriptures; the Incarnation of Christ (Son of God, Logos, Redemptor, and Judge); the Book of Creation (i.e., the natural world of human experience, the outworking of the Logos of the Beginning, unto its End); and the Holy Spirit Who abides with us. Each is fully consistent with all the others — there are no contradictions among revelations. At least I have not found any in about a half century of "proofing" the problem....
Someone recently suggested that Catholics are idolators because they "bow down to [statues of] Mary." Evidently such people take the Old Testament proscription of graven images very much to heart — even though with His New Dispensation, Christ made everything anew....
But if one thinks an idol, by definition, is a graven (physically tangible) image of some kind, then one will likely overlook the possibility of an intangible idol. There's nothing that says an idol has to be tangible — a statue, a painting, a religious relic, etc. All an idol is, is something we put before God in our most hallowed worship, despite the First Great Commandment's clarion call to us:
Matthew 22:37 And He said to him, "'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.'"And your neighbor as yourself." This second command is a corollary of the First Great Commandment, and our fidelity to the second is sign and testimony of our fidelity to the First.Mark 12:30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.'
Luke 10:27 And he answered, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."
Respecting intangible idols,
Question: "What is bibliolatry?"
Answer: The term bibliolatry comes from combining the Greek words for Bible and worship. In a Christian context, simply stated, bibliolatry is the worship of the Bible. Typically, the accusation of bibliolatry is used as an attack on those who hold to the inerrancy, infallibility, and supremacy of Scripture. It is often employed as an inflammatory and derogatory attack on believers who hold to “sola scriptura” and/or a literal interpretation of the Bible.I am not "accusing" you or anybody else of being a bibliolator. But if you took offense all the same, understand that is how Catholics feel when they are called idolators because they "bow down and worship [a statue of] Mary."It is important to note that the charge of bibliolatry does not claim some Christians literally bow down before a Bible and worship it, as if it were an idol. While there may be some strange cult out there that literally worships the Bible, that is not what bibliolatry is referring to. The accusation of bibliolatry is that some Christians elevate the Bible to the point that it is equal with God, or to the point that studying the Bible is more important than developing a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. [itals added]
In general, Catholics do not pray to the Holy Mother, rather through her. She is not the "end" of worship. She points always to her Son. I can probably say this over and over, and still not be understood by people who are generally already unsympathetic to Catholic thought.
But to get back to the Bible — one of the four great Revelations of God. There are different ways to read the Holy Scriptures. Some read it at the level of "face value," plain, "literal" text — akin to the way one reads, say, a textbook or an instruction manual. Others read it as the most sublime piece of literary art in the history of the world — literally supernatural in its perfection — akin to a cosmic work of poetry.
As a work of literature, the Holy Bible remains the single greatest "best-seller" of all times, with 20 million volumes sold in more than 2,000 languages each and every year.... But I digress.
On the second type of reading, the language is not literal (i.e., denotative); it is symbolic and allusive (i.e., connotative). Depending on how one reads the work, different understandings are possible. But the fact remains that all understandings are premised on God's Truth in the first place (the divine language of the text), according to the Light He gives us, via the Holy Spirit, at whatever given stage of our spiritual development, our walk with Christ, we may have attained.
God does not save by groups. He saves souls one by one. And HE alone judges.
wmfights allows that I was correct to point this out:
Matt 7:1 "Judge not, that you be not judged. (2) For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged...But then he added:
If the lesson ended there you might be right, but it finishes with:In what way does my refusal to judge another human soul have anything to do with me giving holy things to dogs, or casting pearls before swine? There must already have been a judgment, if we conclude we are dealing with swine and dogs — but this is precisely the type of judgment we are not supposed to make (cf. Matt 1–2)! I.e., to judge that a fellow human being is a "pig" or a "dog"....
Matt. 7:6 Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine,...
Earlier I raised a couple of potential objections with Dr. Eckleburg regarding her perception of implicit blasphemy in the names of Mary; but more importantly, the distinctions, if any, between faith and reason. Essentially she stuck to her guns on the former; she simply reiterated her position without further ado. WRT the second point, she totally ignored it.
To reprise that second point here, I wrote: "There is faith, and there is reason. Faith cannot be reduced to reason — but if one tries to do that, it seems to me one loses both."
That, to me, is a point well worth pondering.
Which I have done, and continue to do. But I am already overlong here, so need to conclude.
So I'll just say, without good faith and good will, "research threads" like this one are exercises in futility and frustration; and I do not see what purpose they serve. I will no longer be a party to such.
Anyhoot, all the above is set forth according to my faithful understanding. I do not presume to speak for Roman Catholics. Possibly Roman Catholics would not agree with me on every point.
You, dear Quix, are my brother in Christ and I honor and respect you as such.
You and all your dear ones are in my thoughts and prayers.
PAX CHRISTI