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
I still believe that it is you who doesn't understand grace and to assure you, I most definitely understand works and the role they play in the Christian's life. You seem to be going on an assumption that I am the kind of person who thinks works have NO place in my faith. I get the impression that you, along with many other Roman Catholics - based on repetitive comments - that sola fide means we have a license to live in sin with no need for a changed life for the better. That once we are saved, we are always saved, so "let the good times roll!". Please! How many times have you been told that that is simply not the case, yet it gets repeated over and over again, much like what you accuse "Protestants" of doing when they insist Catholics worship Mary.
Let me build a narrative for you - almost like a challenge - for you and anyone else game to try it. How about for one month, you live like you believe you are really going to Heaven when you die. That Jesus Christ really did pay for all your sin upon the cross and, by his sacrifice, you have been justified, sanctified and made righteous in Him. You really accept that you are saved by God's grace through your faith and that your good deeds or way of life are because of the new nature within you that desires to please God out of love for him and in gratitude for his unspeakable gift. When you do slip up and "sin", which is human, you are remorseful and you confess your sins to God and then, as Scripture assures us, you are forgiven and clean of all unrighteousness and your walk with Christ is back on track. When you go to bed at night, in your prayers you thank your Heavenly Father for his love and mercy and the grace that reminds you every day that you are his child and that you are never going to be cast out, he will never lose you and you are safe and secure held in his hands.
During this experiment, you should continue going to whatever church you feel God is leading you to. When you sing praises to God with others during the worship service, you let yourself be open to the blessings God pours down and you bask in his love and the serenity that comes from knowing he is yours and you are his for all eternity. You rest in his love, you fall upon his mercy, you rejoice in his abundant grace.
After this month, you can go back to the way you always looked at your walk with Christ. Go back to thinking that God is keeping score of all your deeds and sins. Return to the belief that your good works along with your faith are what can get you into heaven when you die. Go back to pleading with God, Mary, the saints to help get you into heaven. Try not to think about what it felt like to be really free, to know you had eternal life, to do your works simply because you were a changed person and you loved God so much you hated offending him. Go back to worrying every moment that you may not make it and that all your efforts were wasted because you slipped up.
Maybe then you will understand what I mean about GRACE. It is undeserved, unmerited favor. It means God loves us so much that he will not give us what we rightfully deserve and he lavishes on us what we do not deserve or could ever merit - grace.
They do have to then explain what the following verse means under that kind of logic:
Titus 3:5
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
So, tell me, why didn't The Church "harmonize" Paul's writings, too, while they were at it? Just, think, they might have avoided the Reformation and all us filthy Protestants!!! ;o)
Thank you mark. I try to stay with facts. Everything else is a conjecture which some apparently confuse for "facts."
The Church even then was bending itself towards harmonizing the message to the faithful
It's human nature. I never imply the motive.
After all, having dissonant messages is not a good thing. Look at all the trouble that the dissonant Paul still causes
Worth repeating, Mark. But it's not just Paul. The Bible as a whole is dissonant and imprecise, open to interpretation and speculation.
Ditto!
The context is that of how the inspired prophecy about Christ was written, (2Pt. 1:16)
Oh, yes, especially the part of "nor by fables " but by "eyewitness" account, in a book written a hundred years after Christ that even hard-line Christian apologetics had a hard time incorporating into the canon.
That is, those who wrote the prophecies were mystified as to what it all meant, rather than being something contrived by their minds
What prophesies? All these "prophesies" are either twisted into being prophesies or written after the fact, such as in the book of Daniel, the last book of the OT to be written (2nd century BC), which pretends to be written 400 or so years earlier.
The objection by Rome to souls interpreting Scripture in order to ascertain truth is that human reasoning is fallible and only her assuredly infallible magisterium is protected from that defect, when it defines something that fulfills her criteria for infallibility
No, the objection by the Church (not just by Rome) is that by private interpretation the morality of the Bible becomes relative. It is clear that Jesus wanted his message taught by "experts" and not read.
Paul, on the other hand, is inconsistent, as usual. On the one hand, he teaches that Bereans could somehow "verify" his preaching the risen Christ (the only one he supposedly witnessed) through the Old testament, and on the other hand he writes that God appointed (ordained) some people for specific roles in the Church , and that no all can be apostles, prophets, teachers and interpreters, etc. (1 Cor. 12:28)
Thus the only way for men to be certain of spiritual truth
The Church teaches that there is no certainty in faith, just hope. There are those who say "Lord, Lord," and believe, with certainty that they are saved, and yet the Bible says otherwise. (Mat. 7:21) The Church teaches against excessive self-confidence in second-guessing God.
And by which “the infallibility of the Church in its teaching is proved independently of the inspiration of Scripture.”
Well, if no one's interpretation is infallible, then the truth isn't and cannot be known. End of story. I could have told you that from the beginning.
And again, rather than fostering implicit faith in an infallible magisterium
Whether you place your faith in an infallible magisterium of men or in your own personal infallible magisterium, it is fallible human beings interpreting writings of other fallible human beings. Second, if the Holy Spirit guides you personally why not the magisterium? Are members of the magisterium also not believers in whom indwells the Spirit?
So you say. Naturally, those seeking for a way to deny the authority of the Scriptures invoke this as a convenient hypothesis.
Asserting the authority of the scriptures is a matter of faith. The Jews reject your scriptures as Christians reject Mormon scriptures; and all three accept theirs on faith alone.
But, here is the futility of all these arguments: the Bible contains enough self-contradiction, because it's so open to personal interpretation, and because of factual contradictions, as to make it possible for every extant sect and cult to defend its beliefs using the very same Bible! All heresies are judged and founded on the biblical interpretation.
What I wrote about John's Gospel is a reflection of history, namely that the tensions between the Christians and Jews were intensifying and that by the time John & al wrote their Gospel, the Christians were declared apostates and cursed by the rabbis. Since then Christianity took a progressively anti-Jewish turn, and became progressively more Hellenized.
Certainly they would, and I affirmed Jesus correctness in reproving their forerunners, as both denied the Scriptures which manifest the devil as a real entity, and the New Testament treats such stories as historical events
The NT is a reflection of a particular sect adhering to Zoroastrian dualism, which is unknown to Judaism before the Persian liberation of the Jews from Babylon, and is soundly rejected by Judaism.
Meanwhile, to hold the Scripture as infallible and supreme judge does not deny that other religions have some truth, and in fact Rm. 1+2 affirms that men have a basic revelation of truth, but which can become radically corrupted. And the same can be said of Christianity.
Matter of faith not fact.
Warranted faith based on evidence
Such as?
Really? What is divine?
I was speaking is something being from God.
How do you know it's from God?
In this case, Luke was guided by God in collecting the research and inspired in writing it.
How do you know that?
Again, the Catholic Church is the Church of the first millennium, and that church is rather different from the its modern namesake. And also I did not determine what constitutes inspiration. And neither did the Church. The linguists did.
Its conformity with the Scriptures which it holds it authoritative and its essential basis for authority is the issue, and as for the second, it tries (see next post).
The Church was never based entirely on scripture, especially because the scripture was a loose term for quite a while. If anything, the Church was, and is to this day based on the Gospels first and foremost, the only Christian scripture uniformly accepted by what is known as the orthodox faction of Christianity.
And this must be true because you say it's true, right? Whatever.
No, we present our case, seeking to persuade men, while the issue was that “The Catholic Church has the authority because it is the author and the steward and the owner of the Christian Bible.”
Persuade with what? Your own infallible interpretation? The Church at least can claim the authorship; you can't. You are just a reader.
The rest of your paragraph still doesn't say why is it supposedly true. I guess because there is no answer to that. It's something people like others to accept on thin air. Despicable.
The issue being RC's authority, part of her expression of this is fitting: Thus the author of the Acts of the Apostles narrates events in which he himself took part...
Oh, sure, Luke was there in person in Chapter 1...so much for that. Luke never saw Jesus in person.
I have responded to your narrow thinking in this before, and God was never under any delusion that majority would choose the broad path of destruction
Oh yeah, raise a lot of children and let the dumb ones play in traffic. The smart ones will survive and enjoy your rewards. Nice God.
But neither was i only referring to overt miraculous, but also to endure suffering and afflictions, needed for individual and corporate character, and overall that of the transformative effects of the new birth, with immediate new affections
Oh sure such as John 3:9. The born again do not sin, to which some say "as a habit." Oh, really? Every religion claims some transformative effects as a "sign" of its authenticity. Hogwash.
I have no antagonism towards God, whatever God may be. Nor do I hate the Church as some former Catholic seem to. As for condemning biblical collusion and extensive doctrinal "harmonization" of biblical authors and copyists by using manipulative techniques to get people to believe them ..
Kosta, need i post some of it and let other judge?
If that would please you, I don't mind. When I say I have no antagonism towards God I mean whatever God may be, not whatever man has made God to be. Nor do I, as a matter of habit attack the Catholic/Orthodox Church. I do object to some of their manipulative practices that are common to all partisan organizations, but not as to what the Church seeks to accomplish in good faith.
Both groups seem to have a certain view they believe is true, along with the idea that ends justify the means.
Indeed, and also a type of firewall which disallows objectivity. I do try to analytically look at both sides of the issue despite my shortcomings, and myself have dealt with the venom of militant atheists and considered enough of their arguments while attempting to be reasonable to recognize a narrow mindedness particularly among such, which they often seem determined to justify.
What about the venom of militant, narrow-minded, dogmatic zealots?
a) The Church read scriptures liturgically in a cycle at least from the third century onward. God only knows what was read and how before that, but I would chance to bet that the traditional Churches are closer to the ancient custom then the newly invented man-made religions. In the Orthodox Church it is still annual and in the post-Vatican II Catholic Church tri-annual.
b) The readings are select verses from the Pauline Epistles and the Gospels which repeat every cycle. The Novus Ordo Catholic Church also reads liturgically from the Old Testament (the Orthodox only at Vespers).
c) The Orthodox Church chants the entire Old Testament during the Great Lent (40 days) in passing, without homilies, in what is more a biblical retelling of events leading up to Jesus' birth and crucifixion and resurrection then actual Bible reading.
d) Pauline Epistles are read by laity and are not considered the word of God (and the congregation sits). The Gospels are read by ordained clergy only and are treated as God's own words (and the congregation stands).
e) The Church teachings are based on the Gospels, and Pauls' Epistle sare interpreted in the light of and subjected to the Gospels. Paul's Epistles are selectively used when they are in agreement with the Gospels.
f) Paul's writings are clearly "harmonized" in the Nicene Creed in the beginning (where it adds to Paul's words that the Father and the Son are of the same essence) as well as in the part where it says that Christ raised himself (rather than being raised by God, as Paul says), indicating that Paul was "close" but not on the mark.
From all this, it is clear that Paul's words in the Church are never to be confused with Christ's, or perchance placing Paul above the Gospels, as the Protestants do (and as their Gnostics relatives did).
john 3:9 says "Nicodemus said to Him, "How can these things be?" and John 5:18 says "For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God."
Maybe it wouldn't hurt to check on those references every now and then.
That which we call a rose by any other name.....
I guess that's how they can justify claiming that the Mafia and hit men are *good Catholics* and honor them with Catholic funerals when they die, just like they did with Kennedy.
Faith denotes confidence in something or someone, and reliance upon such. A missionary was once struggling in his hut to find a word or phrase for faith in the native language of the locals, but to no avail. While he was yet seeking, one of the natives ran in and sat down in a chair and said. “Oh how good is to rest all my weight in this chair.” The missionary then realized a way to describe faith.
However there are two kinds of faith, qualified and unqualified faith. Everyone lives by faith to some degree, including driving a car on a divided highway, or the food we may purchase, but this is faith that is qualified to certain degree, that is, such as varying degrees of warrant based upon evidence. In this is actually the faith we see in the Bible. It is God who took the initiative to manifests itself before man, from Adams to Abraham to Moses and so forth, and whose faith He attested to, and which then was passed on by others who knew them. This in turn was placed in writing, faith in which resulted in the realization things promised in that word.
Christianity, true Christianity, is not simply the result of men passing on stories, but of God attesting to the veracity of those words, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in those who trust and obey his words.
The church that is the pillar and ground of the truth is called the “Church of the living God,” as it manifests to varying degrees effects that attest to a cause, with obedient believers realizing effects and graces which correspond to the claims of Scripture, and are contingent upon faith and obedience thereto. This includes the often dramatic transformation that results when a contrite sinner repents and places all his confidence in Jesus Christ to save him from his sins, and the many manifestations of His providence done as a result. And which also includes the grace to respond to the negative things in a way as to form better character.
Of course effects of faith and not unique to Christianity, as the flesh has its counterparts, while even the magicians of Egypt duplicated Moses first three miracles, (Ex. 7:11,22; 8:7) but i see the the scope and degree of effects in relation to their cause and means of realizing such as serving to set New Testament Christianity apart.
As regards justification, this is appropriated by God-given faith, when a person yields to God and calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus, (Rm. 10:9,10) salvific faith being reliance upon and confidence in Almighty God, that he can and will have mercy upon the repentant soul who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the divine son of God, that He died for sinners and rose again.(Rm. 4:21-25)
In contrast, those who hold to a gospel of works trust that God will save them on the basis of the merit of their works, thus they trust in a God whose is not so holy as to preclude man from ever becoming worthy of eternal life apart from perfectly keeping the law, or they suppose they do, the needed righteousness of which is never abrogated, (Rm. 8:4) and thus have faith in their own own worthiness of eternal life. (Rm. 10:3) (A variant to this is a class of souls which erroneously believe that God is not so just as to preclude man from saving himself apart from the need for an atonement, specifically that of Christ, but will save them simply because He is merciful, although they usually also trust that their works will help.)
In Biblical salvation, while a response of faith is necessary to be saved, it is not by any merit of the faith response and other works that follow that one is justified, but it is faith which is counted for righteousness, yet a faith that is manifest by works of faith. The danger of the Galatians here was that of assenting to a gospel of works-righteousness, of justification by merit, and by so doing they would have effectively forfeited that which faith in Christ had appropriated.
They did, however, the early Church considered the writings of and about individual men to be lesser than the writings of the life and actions of Christ to be more important and therefore the focus of greater attempts at harmonization than any of the Epistles or Revelation. That is the focus of the Church - Christ. Not Paul, nor any individual man. Our understanding of Peter's role is as steward in the classical sense, not as ruler and not as despot. A bishop is the physical representative of the real ruler - Christ. The bishop is supposed to be servant to the people in his area. Hence, the reference of the Pope as the servant of the servants of God.
Our non Catholic friends and opponents support that idea with overwhelming evidence.
From all this, it is clear that Paul's words in the Church are never to be confused with Christ's, or perchance placing Paul above the Gospels, as the Protestants do (and as their Gnostics relatives did).
There is no reason not to suppose that Paul's epistles were massaged. We have overwhelming evidence of Gospel and Petrine editing. I wonder what of those Pauline letters that did not make the cut. What were their contents? From what I've read, Paul wrote hundreds of letters during his ministry. If these were the best (after massaging), then what were the worst?
But Paul after all, was a rather pushy guy with a chip on his shoulder and a large inferiority complex towards the Apostles. I can understand his appeal to some when I look at some of the more successful televangelists who seem to pattern themselves after some of his character traits...
EXCELLENT POINTS WELL MADE.
THX
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