Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
In Christ Alone lyrics
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;
In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless Babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save
?Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin?s curse has lost its grip on me For I am His and He is mine Bought with the precious blood of Christ
But no neat little moon like orbits though even if you really, really believe, er, “know”.
I’m civil toward all just not respectful of any.
God is obligated, bb? By whom? This is exactly the sort of heretical thinking that the West is so prone to, namely that God is governed by an implacable and all powerful Necessity, that God really isn't "free" or omnipotent. If God Himself isn't free, how can we be free? The among the greatest gifts which God gives us is our freedom, or so we Orthodox believe, and it is precisely that freedom which creates the milieu within which the "rational flock, us, can become like God. And becoming like God, you will remember, is our created purpose.
bb, the next time you look at an icon of Christ, you will notice the Greek words, "Ο ΩΝ" written on it. They mean, very roughly, "the Being which creates Being (or the Existence which creates the state of Existence)". Such a "Being" is not subject to "Necessity". It is the origin of "Necessity", not subject to it. Positing that God is obligated or compelled to do or "feel" anything is dangerous thinking for Christians, bb.
A Blessed Thanksgiving Day to you and yours!
What Calvinists always seem to forget is where their bitterness originates. What's seldom talked about by any follower of Calvin is that his father and brother both worked for the bishopric of Noyon in Picardy as a treasurer and lawyer.
Calvin's father, Gerard, was involved in some financial misdeeds and refused to provide the financial records to the Bishop of Noyon . Gerard was excommunicated for his misdeeds and later on so was his son Charles.
Gerard then made John Calvin leave his theological studies to become a French Lawyer, which is very apropos considering what John learned from his father. John's ever growing bitterness against the Church for the excommunication of his father and brother forced him to leave the Church altogether.
These are the roots of Calvinism and its bitterness.
- Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
- Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite
- A man who publicly protested against the reformer's doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
- Calvin's Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."
BB-””I don’t get this aversion to the idea that God is capable of hate. Did God have hate in Him?””
God wills all things love,bb,because His essence is love, and willing anything other than love would change and move God
From Saint Thomas Aquinas...
The will of God is directed to things other than Himself, in so far as, by willing and loving His own being and His own goodness, God wills it to be diffused as much as possible through the communication of likeness. This, then, is what God wills in other things, that there be in them the likeness of His goodness. But this is the good of each thing, namely, to participate in the likeness of God; for every other goodness is nothing other than a certain likeness of the first goodness. Therefore, God wills good to each thing. Hence, He hates nothing.-Saint Thomas Aquinas
Our sin is OUR hatred of His love where WE freely move away from that love. This does not effect God and cause Him to hate since God is NOT moved from the Love He wills
BB-””why don’t you explain to me why you think the Bible would say God hates certain things if he doesn’t?””
Here is your answer from Saint Thomas Aquinas...
[7] However, God is said by similitude to hate some things, and this in a twofold way. In the first way, because God, in loving things and by willing the existence of their good, wills the non-existence of the contrary evil. Hence, He is said to have a hatred of evils, for we are said to hate what we will not to exist. In the words of Zechariah (8:17): “And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his friend and love not a false oath. For all these are the things that I hate, saith the Lord.” These, however, are not effects in the manner of subsisting things, to which properly love and hate refer.
[8] The second way arises from the fact that God wills some greater good that cannot be without the loss of some lesser good. And thus He is said to hate, although this is rather to love. For thus, inasmuch as He wills the good of justice or of the order of the universe, which cannot exist without the punishment or corruption of some things, God is said to hate the things whose punishment or corruption He wills. In the words of Malachi (1:3): “I have hated Esau”; and the Psalms (5:7): “You hate all workers of iniquity: You destroy all who speak a lie. The bloody and the deceitful man the Lord will abhor.”Saint Thomas Aquinas
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There's another way to look at such things. The Fathers called these reoccurring pagan concepts "Σπόροι του Θεού", "seeds of God", the idea being that throughout human history and across cultures we see these sorts of "divine" actors because God planted these seeds of understanding among people so that all humanity, not just Jews or Greeks or other Hellenes, would in due course be ready and able to accept the Incarnation.
I really don't find any humor in the OPCult, nor any joy for that matter. What I do find equally disgusting is the sham of Protestant unity presented by OPC practitioners. Following the Muslim tenent of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" they reach out to any other group they believe they can turn against the "greatest evil", the Catholic Church.
What's funny in an ironic way is that history has proven that, absent Catholics and the Catholic Church to hate, the OPC turns on any other rival Protestant sect with all of the zeal of the Schutzstaffel and with the same effect.
Works are not the means for salvation. When one gives their heart and life to Christ, the heart is changed.
When a person is redeemed by submitting to Jesus and the acceptance of salvation from Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, then it follows, sometimes slowly, the person desires to follow God's instructions, the commands of Jesus and do the good works that come as a result of being led to 'love our neighbor as our self/. The Good Samaritan parable is the example Jesus gave. The good deeds are to follow our Lord's instructions, and to be pleasing to Him. Not the means of salvation.
It is Satan that keeps people confused and misunderstanding the Scriptures. He is a master of deception. Agreed?
Father God, help us in our day, in Jesus name, amen.
But let's say there are grounds to condemn the theology on the Protoevangelium. Still, it does nothing to take away from the fact that a 2c. book recorded Mary's intention to not consummate her marriage to Joseph carnally, even before the Annunciation.
It appears you are assuming the "fact" of her intention to remain a virgin without evidence.
This story was written over 150 years after the facts, most likely to insert perpetual virginity belief where the bible seems to oppose it. It is not surprising you find validation in this fanciful apochryphal myth rejected by Jerome and called "apochryphal ravings" by Aquinas.
We don't know who wrote it (written around 150 AD) but it certainly was'nt James the Lord's brother, so the named author is a liar, it also says Mary lived in the Holy of Holies from age 3 to 12 being fed by an angel among other fantastic and false claims.
While an immediate answer is that our knowledge of Joseph comes from the Bible, it is not difficult to see that the Scriptures make no mention or implication of Joseph's advanced age, or other similar details. Such particulars are imaginatively supplied by certain apocryphal writings. Though non-canonical and never considered historical by the Church, such writings have had a great influence on popular devotion.Originally written around the second half of the second century, the aim of this book is to glorify Mary, which means her virginity must be reconciled with the Gospel phrase regarding Jesus' "brothers."
What weight should be given to these texts? From apostolic times, Irenaeus considers that "apocryphal" means "forged" and Tertullian considers it synonymous with "false." Mary and Joseph are made into leading characters, rather than supporting participants in the great mission of Christ. The purpose of these works is apologetic, doctrinal, or simply to satisfy one's curiosity. Though they have a certain literary worth, their stories are much too fantastic to be given historical value in their own right. A decrepit widowed Joseph does not seem capable of performing the role of husband, father and protector that is clearly ascribed to him in the Gospels. Jerome and a number of the fathers flatly rejected the central assertions about St. Joseph found in The Protoevangelium of James and in the other apocrypha which build on it.
http://www.osjoseph.org/stjoseph/apocrypha/
Hate is a strong word (VERY).
Not knowing Hebrew, Arabic, or Greek we are essentially at the mercy of interpreters. There are other words loath, despise, etc. So what we have is the Scriptures in the best translations available. The Rabbi's do say we misunderstand the Hebrew culture of the day, so we impose our idea of what the verse means, rather than understanding of what it meant to the hearers at the time it was spoken.
That said. It has been a bit of a puzzle to me for the Bible to say, ‘Jacob I loved and Esau I hated’ before they were born.’ Then it says, Esau hated or despised his birthright. Joseph's brothers hated Joseph.
‘Hate’ has numerous references in the bible. So since everything that is exists within the presence of God ...???
It describes an unwanted emotion, like sin is an unwanted action. God's thoughts are beyond our thoughts, His ways are above our ways. Trust God. Do what He instructs and all will be well.
God help us in our day, in Jesus name, amen
All four Gospels were written anonymously, and between 40 and 50 years after the events. The Church assigned authorship to each Gospel by the end of the 2nd century "according to tradition" (read: legend, or myth). And yet, all Christians accept it on not much more than blind faith, even if they reject the Church!
And while alleged Mary's abode in the Holy of Holies may sound a little over the top, it's not as if the rest of the Bible stories lack in that department to a much greater degree!
Your flat out rejection of Mary's story in Protoevangelium is based exactly on what objective criteria? It's not as if we have some independent corroborating evidence to come to such a conclusion! The best you can do is say that it's "not "inspired". First, how do you know that it isn't, and second, truth doesn't have to come from "inspired" works. The Book of Enoch is not, and yet Jude quotes from it as truth.
People believe what they want to believe because it makes them comfortable. That's what faith is all about—a self-derived comfort from a conviction that something is true, like saying "I am saved," or "he is in a better place now," etc. You can't prove it false and you can't prove it true, even if it seems fantastic. You can either accept it or reject as a matter of faith, but never as a matter of fact.
To all,
Let us praise the Lord Our God, Who in His infinite mercy condenscended to live among us as man, died, emptying Himself in His love for us, His wayward pilgrims, rose and went to Heaven, and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead according to our works. Deo Gratias.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the company of saints in Heaven we pray, alleluia, amen.
Amen.
Excellent essay and accurate analysis.
When catholics speak of types they point to things like the ark .. which is clearly a type of Christ
When I speak of types and shadows I look to Noahs ark ,Moses, the blood over the door posts, the priesthood, the sacrifice of the lamb Jacobs ladder , the manna in the desert , the jewish holidays, like passover, a huge one is the temple, the sprinling of blood etc. ect. ect.
There are many OT figures that show us part of the character of Christ like Jonah, Melchizedek , Joshua and Boaz...
Seeing Sarah or Hannah as "types" is a non essential difference, what is essential is attributing a type of Christ to Mary because it is blasphemy
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