Posted on 10/06/2010 7:56:37 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
And it makes no sense that Jesus came to earth in a human body, was tempted in every way just as we are, and was spared the fullness of the human experience.
This nonsense about how Mary gave birth is RIDICULOUS.
Mary was a normal human woman, a virgin at the time of conception and birth as necessitated by prophecy, and that was all.
The rest is all fairy tales. There is no scriptural support for all the speculations and Catholic church teachings about Mary.
If it’s not clearly defined in Scripture, there’s simply no justification for making things up about her and teaching them as fact and then saying, *Well, the Bible didn’t say it didn’t happen, so we can assume it did because we have out *tradition*.
Hogwash.
Tradition is NOT infallible.
Absolutely INDEED.
Good point.
“ALMOST UNANIMOUS”
. . . the early ‘fathers’ were all over the water front on many things—like the RCC has been it’s 1600 years of existence.
The Israelites had the tabernacle with them, constructed in such a way that the outer court was open to all of Israel. The inner place, the Holy Place, was accessible to only the tribe of Levi priesthood. The inner Sanctum sanctorum was only entered by one man, the high priest, who carried the blood into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, where God came to Israel once a year. The one man entered in and the blood was upon the mercy seat, and the one man then exited, if he was not in sin at that point. One occasion, a high priest or other given the task would enter in and die in the presence when God came to the mercy seat. because of this, the Israelites tied a cord to the ankle of the man entering the Holy of Holies.
The mercy was taken by the one high priest, back out of the Holy of Holies and out to the people. The Israelites also had a goat who would be sent from the encampment into the wilderness, carrying the sins of the whole tribe--by their faithing that this analogous goat represented their sins also.
One time when the Israelites offended God Who was leading them through the wilderness in a cloud by day and a shaft of light by night, serpents plagued the people biting and killing scores. A snake was fashioned and raised up on a pole, and the people were instructed that all who looked upon the serpent raised up would be saved from the serpents plaguing the people.
The tribal concept instruction was very interesting, Mr. Rogers, and very instructive for understanding the very different perspective. But God saves the individual, in an intimate relationship of substitutionary atonement. I believe this is accomplished via the spirit God placed in man, which is dead until God's life comes in to the 'mercy seat where the blood of the sinless one is applied'. THEN the human spirit is alive with the earnest of our inheritance as members of God's eternal family.
All since Adam (except Jesus) would have inherited the human spirit which is dead in trespasses and sins until the blood is sprinkled upon the mercy seat and atonement is finished for the spirit, reconciling the individual spirit to God through the individual atonement by Jesus Christ The Righteous.
Tribally, we are all descendants of Adam, inheriting that which Adam uniquely had, the human spirit. But in Adam, the sin brought the absence of God's life in the human spirit, thus the dead spirit is passed to all of Adam's descendants. So also, tribally, the atonement is finished in in Jesus, but it must be individually applied to the individual spirit in each of us. The question perhaps should be, 'Was Mary 'under the blood of the righteous one as she carried Jesus gestating in her womb?'
If one believes that the pain of child birth is a remnant effect of the fall of our first parents, then would a woman 'under the blood as that blood was in her be subject to the consequences of the original death passed to all men? ... I don't have an answer for that, and it implies also that perhaps--if Mary was no longer under the consequences of original death passed to all others--Mary would not die as men die, and that She might be alive still in the Heavenlies. I don't have an answer for that one, either.
Well put.
LOL.
Well put.
Thx.
Wonderful points and posts.
Thx.
"Travail" is simply a French word,travaille anglicized, and meaning "work".
It is an observation, no number of holy books to the contrary notwithstanding, that parts of the process or parturition are not painful.
By the figure of metonymy and by the usual coincidence of pain and parturition, one might say "travail" and mean "pain". In the quote from Thessalonians I would say the point is not the pain but the sudden, seemingly arbitrary, and utterly irresistible quality of childbirth.
I have watched ewes hold back on labor for as much as an hour. They will sit there giving me the hairy eyeball, and if I step away for a 5 minutes, when I come back there are twins on the ground!
But for human type personnel, the normal case seems to be that once it starts there's no stopping it. I think that's what Paul was talking about: sudden and unstoppable.
(Isn't "throe" a great word?)
Fascinating. Thx.
THX THX.
INDEED.
THX THX.
Love it. Thx.
THX THX.
Some of us have different concepts about what the boundaries and definitions of Godly Love entail.
I don't mean to demean anyone by references to sheep, but all the obstetrics I know relates to them. There are certainly some for whom lambing, especially prima gravida ones, is traumatic. But some were so business like! Clover takes a few steps from the stall toward the pile of hay, pauses, looks back, turns around and goes back into the stall. An hour later, twins on the ground and at the teat, Clover gurgling happily to them while she chows down on the finest alfalfa. Now THAT's a ewe!
To join the tribe of Jesus, one must believe. By faith we are united with Christ, and IN HIM we have everything else (89 verses):
http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Criteria=in+Christ&t=ESV&sf=5
Individuals are saved by repenting and believing. United with Christ, our ‘guilt’ is the guilt of our new Jid, which is none. If we are in him, then God:
“...even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Those who refuse to repent and believe remain in the tribe of Adam, and in him are separated from God and headed to doom.
Also - to the extent thinking of tribes helps, use it. Where it confuses, drop it. I bring it up from combining reading about ‘corporate election’ (http://evangelicalarminians.org/node/124) with my experience in Afghanistan and reading about societies.
I do believe it gives food for thought on many passages of scripture.
The Early Church Fathers were all men who had no idea what childbirth was like...
Thanks for that. I think I am seeing why it was so hard to get the Israelites in Jesus’s day to accept the individual atonement concept. It is noteworthy that Jesus in John 3:14 told Nic that as Moses raised up the serpent so also must the son of man be raised up. Serpents bit the Israelites individually and looking upon the raised up serpent, believing deliverance would be individually received, resulted in individual deliverance from serpent bites.
The question about angels on the head of a pin is NOT ridiculous. This is a canard by post Scholastics. It is not a question of angelology but of geometry and infinitessimals. Scholastics had a wit too, y'know. One of Satan's triumphs is to have used academia and the culture to lead everyone to think that they just know, without looking into it, that all Scholastics were dry as dust, joyless, wizened old men arguing in cumbersome vocabularies about microscopic points of abstract logic. The idea that Aquinas could crack jokes about his own not inconsiderable size just escapes their awareness because it does not fit with the prejudice.
The question, posed without scholastic wit, is "How many points are there in even the smallest conceivable area?"
The answer is left as an exercise for the reader.
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