Posted on 04/14/2011 9:21:51 AM PDT by marshmallow
Which of course is the pope....
Funny that was not what Jack Kennedy said when he ran... do you think that is true for gingrich?
Truth be told, your question was ridiculous. Comparing a document to a man is like comparing apples and oranges.
Popes come and go. Any Catholic man can be pope. The teachings of the Church and pope give are more important than the particular man himself, although our current pope is certainly a good one.
And why would you think for an instant that I care a flying rats hindquarters what a Kennedy says?
If education was the goal, why are these dunces heaping up the doctorates from diploma mills? That tells me that it matters to them, but that they are willing to lie and cheat in order to be seen with them, without actually having to earn them.
The fruits, you know. They want to be known as having the fruits of their labours, without actually labouring. Scarcely Christian behaviour, wouldn't you say?
Also, like Paul, I “am glad that I speak in tongues more than you all.” I am surprised that with all of the Catholic doctrine that is out there, almost all Catholics that I run in to are very uninformed when it comes to the elementary teachings concerning Christ as set forth in Hebrews 6:1-2 - namely, repentance from dead works, faith towards God, baptisms, the laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
Knowing more than one language is normally very educational in itself. I have friends in central Europe (Switzerland) who know all four official Swiss languages, plus English, plus Hungarian, and some of the older ones have some Russian, Polish or other Slavic languages they can get by in. Very good.
Catholic catechism is poor especially in this country, I grant you that. That is changing even as we speak, and flush the remnants of the Augean stables out of the USCCB, but for the moment, I do not dispute that.
By the way, if you get a good translation, you will realize that Jesus never says born again. Nicodemus says it. Jesus does not. My NAB says:
John 3: 1 1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 2 He came to Jesus at night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him." 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born 3 from above." 4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can a person once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot reenter his mother's womb and be born again, can he?" 5 Jesus answered, "Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I told you, 'You must be born from above.'
Jesus says from above and of water and the Spirit. I am glad for your childrens' education, but first we must ask that all Christians actually read Scripture and not rely on their pastors or hearsay in order to guide their beliefs. The KJV is not the best when it comes to accurate translation in many areas.
It is the pope lets not play word games ...
That takes catholics out of the presidential role..
Exactly.
**One question on this thread..were the chuch fathers infallible?**
What’s a ‘chuch’? ;)
Actually, whoever is regarded as church fathers must meet the sola scripture pattern, teaching no other doctrine than that which is found in the Word.
No teaching that Mary was sinless,
No teaching that she was forever a virgin,
No teaching an ‘assumption of Mary’,
The original apostles baptized souls in the NAME of JESUS FOR the REMISSION of SINS. If any that claimed to be ‘church fathers’ didn’t agree with that, then they were certainly not ordained of God. I don’t care how educated, articulate, or pious, or how many ‘good works’ were performed; to not teach the biblical command for remission of sins is simply a great and terrible error.
And no, that doesn't take Catholics out of the presidential role any more than holding the bible above the constitution takes protestants out of the presidential role. Nice try.
Let us go back to the real issue. I have preached repeatedly to you and to the children of the Reformation that it is possible to defend most heresies directly from the pages of Scripture.
By selecting the appropriate Scripture, for instance, one can defend modalism, for instance. It is not that most of the Reformation cannot point to somewhere in Scripture where if the snippet is small enough, and pieced together with enough other snippets, almost any doctrine can be defended.
To turn back to the point of the Reformation's departure from the Church and some of the main points of that departure, let us bring up some of them:
The authority of the Church to teach and to declare correct (and incorrect) teachings.
The Eucharist and the rest of the Sacraments (including absolution).
The doctrine of double predestination. These will do for now, I think. The teachings are clear; Scripture and Apostolic teachings are what the Church relies on since they were given them by God.
Seems to me that using Scripture alone is exactly what the Reformationists were and are criticized and condemned for, because they didn't accept the extra-Biblical teachings of various men's opinion pieces.
The Reformers used selected Scripture and used the Church Fathers even more selectively (and significantly less as the Church Fathers who agreed with these departures from Church teachings are few and far between) in order to differentiate themselves from the Church. The issue is less Scripture alone, and more snippets of Scripture alone and when mixed in with solo (as opposed to sola), opens up complete and infallible interpretation to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Each one of them claims the Holy Spirit, and as long as snippets or logical extensions of Scripture snippets are used, why then almost anything can be concocted. And who is to say that Tom's interpretation is any less valid than Dick's? Both claim infallible powers from the Holy Spirit. Who can gainsay either, as long as there are actual snippets?
Which is it? Are those of the Reformation to be criticized for following Scripture alone (sola scriptura), or for holding to doctrine not found in Scripture (tradition).
You guys follow solo Scripture, not sola. That is the whole deal with the WCF and the various Catechisms and Confessions that came out of the Reformation. At first, the Reformers stuck with sola, but the second generation of Reformers, beginning with Calvin went solo, and constructed novel systems out of the snippets. That is solo and what the last 300 years or better (certainly brought to the light of day in the Restoration) has seen almost exclusively in Reformed circles.
With the abandonment of the Creeds of Christendom, solo Scriptura has led to the creation of the LDS, the JWs, the Pentecostals, the Churches of Christ, the decline of the mainstream denominations and the increasingly visible apostacy of the nondenominationals. We have the Apostolic and Church Fathers and their writings as to what Christians believed and practiced before the NT Scripture was chosen. All rejected and sneered at by those who discover new things every time they take all the words of Scripture, shake them into a pile and assemble them anew in ever diverse arrangements.
We reject the doctrines and practices of the children of the Reformed because they a) do not rely upon the whole Bible and even more because they do not read the words of Jesus in the NT as the pinnacle of God's revelation to man; and b) because they reject the teachings of the Church Fathers in spite of Scripture which instructs us to follow the teachings of the authority of the Church (Jesus, Paul and Peter are most instructive on this).
I do wish Catholics would make up their minds.
That mind was made up all the way back in the upper room at Pentecost. We haven't changed. Not for Simon Magus, not for John Calvin, and not for the likes of Joel Osteen either.
The world that you rejected, mm, is the world of constant Scripture and constant interpretation. St. John Chrystostom received the Eucharist then, just as any Catholic does today. St. Augustine went to Confession the same as any Catholic does today. St. Jerome venerated the Theotokos the same as any Catholic does today. We reach back to St. Luke for his writing of the Virgin Mary icon as an example of how that first generation of Christians practiced Christianity. And it isn't what the children of the Reformed fantasize about.
That takes catholics out of the presidential role..
Oh dearie me, does that mean that the Supreme Court of the United States is illegitimate? No Protestants at all. Why is that, dear Rn? Why is SCOTUS (including the Chief Justice) 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 Jewish? Is it because even the Protestant Presidents of the United States know something that the rest of the children of the Reformation don't? Funny, I've never gotten an answer back on FR whenever I've a variant of this question at all. You charge that Catholics could not be Presidents of the US (I guess that JFK being shot makes up for it); why is it that SCOTUS can be staffed with a majority of Catholics - by Protestant Presidents? Hmmm?
Oh really...
Care to provide a link to that alleged conversation?
It’s ludicrous that Catholics claim that the Catholic church wrote the Bible, quote all kinds of men who they claim are *church fathers* as if that means anything (just like this article does), and then dismiss the Scripture written by really godly men as being of no account.
Catholics have things so backwards.
Bless you, sister.
A “Revenge” thread, how quaint.
I use the original Greek as much as possible when I have questions about translations. Jesus words can be translated several ways born “from above”; born “anew.” Nicodemus’ question makes no sense if Jesus wasn’t saying you must be born again. Whether born from above, born anew or born again - Jesus was telling Nicodemus that a transformative event needs to take place in a person’s life in order to see the Kingdom of God. The bottom line is most evangelicals are much more familiar with the Scriptures than most Catholics - at least in my experience. No matter what you say about the KJV translation - at least it was honest - and once Gutenberg invented the printing press and the Scriptures were put in the hands of the common man, the Reformation was inevitable. People no longer needed priests to tell them what to believe - they could read for themselves.
It is not that most of the Reformation cannot point to somewhere in Scripture where if the snippet is small enough, and pieced together with enough other snippets, almost any doctrine can be defended.
I believe Chesterson said it this way: "One is either Catholic or anything they want to be."
"The first thing to note is the context. This major topic from 5:13-18 is prayer. We are given in verses 13-15 that God hears and responds to our prayers. The key word is "anything." Then John remembers there is an exception: praying for a disobedient, sinning brother or sister in Christ. What to do? How do we pray for that one? Here is the sequence we must keep in mind for such a one as we pray. First of all, the Apostle John tells us that there is a sin not leading to death (physical). In verse 16, he tells us that it is possible for Christians to fall into this sin not leading to death. [See also 1 John 2:1,2--the ideal is to "sin not." But if anyone sins (and we will), we have an Advocate, a defense attorney.]
When Christians observe disobedience in brothers and sisters, they are to pray for him/her (16b); as a result of these prayers, God may choose to preserve, prolong, extend the person's physical life (not eternal life, since that life is determined by one's personal faith decision). This intercession is effective only in the case of sin not leading to death (16c): that is, the person has not reached the end limits of God's patience and grace (His "last straw"). See also v. 17 where John says, "All unrighteousness is sin, but there is a sin which is not unto (physical) death."
Secondly, there is a sin which results in physical death--the sin unto death (v. 16d): This is the death of a believer characterized by persistent, willful sinning in which "the flesh is destroyed [physical death--1 Cor. 5:1-5] so that the spirit might be saved." John tells us that this is a sin not to be prayed for, because God's immutable law concerning this final, "last straw" disobedience is involved and will be unaltered by intercessory prayer (16e), and frankly, we do not know another's heart condition before the Lord. We are not encouraged to speculate about the cause of any believer's untimely death. In our prayer life, we can continue to intercede for a wayward brother or sister, but we are not to draw any conclusions about what may, should, or has happened in regard to a believer's death.
Thirdly, when some Christian we know dies, we might be inclined to ask the question of ourselves, "Was this the sin unto death or not?" John is telling us in this passage not to speculate, because we just don't know.
All through this Epistle (1 John) the Apostle has been addressing sin in the life of the believer--yours and every Christian you know. It is fitting that John portrays the remedy of habitual sin on the part of a believer in the context of the new birth."
Kinda like Pelosi telling us that the bill had to be passed to see what was in it......LOL Gee, come to think of it.....maybe with her upbringing that's where she got the idea.....
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