Posted on 04/14/2011 9:21:51 AM PDT by marshmallow
The Ascension of Isaiah
“[T]he report concerning the child was noised abroad in Bethlehem. Some said, ‘The Virgin Mary has given birth before she was married two months.’ And many said, ‘She has not given birth; the midwife has not gone up to her, and we heard no cries of pain’” (Ascension of Isaiah 11 [A.D. 70]).
The Odes of Solomon
“So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies. And she labored and bore the Son, but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose. And she did not seek a midwife, because he caused her to give life. She bore as a strong man, with will . . . ” (Odes of Solomon 19 [A.D. 80])
Justin Martyr
“[Jesus] became man by the Virgin so that the course which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would be put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, for which reason the Holy One being born of her is the Son of God. And she replied ‘Be it done unto me according to your word’ [Luke 1:38]” (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 100 [A.D. 155]).
Irenaeus
“Consequently, then, Mary the Virgin is found to be obedient, saying, ‘Behold, O Lord, your handmaid; be it done to me according to your word.’ Eve, however, was disobedient, and, when yet a virgin, she did not obey. Just as she, who was then still a virgin although she had Adam for a husband—for in paradise they were both naked but were not ashamed; for, having been created only a short time, they had no understanding of the procreation of children, and it was necessary that they first come to maturity before beginning to multiply—having become disobedient, was made the cause of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary, betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. . . . Thus, the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith” (Against Heresies 3:22:24 [A.D. 189]).
“The Lord then was manifestly coming to his own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation that is supported by himself. He was making a recapitulation of that disobedience that had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience that was upon a tree [i.e., the cross]. Furthermore, the original deception was to be done away with—the deception by which that virgin Eve (who was already espoused to a man) was unhappily misled. That this was to be overturned was happily announced through means of the truth by the angel to the Virgin Mary (who was also [espoused] to a man). . . . So if Eve disobeyed God, yet Mary was persuaded to be obedient to God. In this way, the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin. Virginal disobedience has been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way, the sin of the first created man received amendment by the correction of the First-Begotten” (ibid., 5:19:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
“And again, lest I depart from my argumentation on the name of Adam: Why is Christ called Adam by the apostle [Paul], if as man he was not of that earthly origin? But even reason defends this conclusion, that God recovered his image and likeness by a procedure similar to that in which he had been robbed of it by the devil. It was while Eve was still a virgin that the word of the devil crept in to erect an edifice of death. Likewise through a virgin the Word of God was introduced to set up a structure of life. Thus what had been laid waste in ruin by this sex was by the same sex reestablished in salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel. That which the one destroyed by believing, the other, by believing, set straight” (The Flesh of Christ 17:4 [A.D. 210].
Pseudo-Melito
“If therefore it might come to pass by the power of your grace, it has appeared right to us your servants that, as you, having overcome death, do reign in glory, so you should raise up the body of your Mother and take her with you, rejoicing, into heaven. Then said the Savior [Jesus]: ‘Be it done according to your will’” (The Passing of the Virgin 16:2–17 [A.D. 300]).
Ephraim the Syrian
“You alone and your Mother are more beautiful than any others, for there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon your Mother. Who of my children can compare in beauty to these?” (Nisibene Hymns 27:8 [A.D. 361]).
Ambrose of Milan
“Mary’s life should be for you a pictorial image of virginity. Her life is like a mirror reflecting the face of chastity and the form of virtue. Therein you may find a model for your own life . . . showing what to improve, what to imitate, what to hold fast to” (The Virgins 2:2:6 [A.D. 377]).
“The first thing which kindles ardor in learning is the greatness of the teacher. What is greater [to teach by example] than the Mother of God? What more glorious than she whom Glory Itself chose? What more chaste than she who bore a body without contact with another body? For why should I speak of her other virtues? She was a virgin not only in body but also in mind, who stained the sincerity of its disposition by no guile, who was humble in heart, grave in speech, prudent in mind, sparing of words, studious in reading, resting her hope not on uncertain riches, but on the prayer of the poor, intent on work, modest in discourse; wont to seek not man but God as the judge of her thoughts, to injure no one, to have goodwill towards all, to rise up before her elders, not to envy her equals, to avoid boastfulness, to follow reason, to love virtue. When did she pain her parents even by a look? When did she disagree with her neighbors? When did she despise the lowly? When did she avoid the needy?” (ibid., 2:2:7).
“Come, then, and search out your sheep, not through your servants or hired men, but do it yourself. Lift me up bodily and in the flesh, which is fallen in Adam. Lift me up not from Sarah but from Mary, a virgin not only undefiled, but a virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin” (Commentary on Psalm 118:22–30 [A.D. 387]).
Augustine
“Our Lord . . . was not averse to males, for he took the form of a male, nor to females, for of a female he was born. Besides, there is a great mystery here: that just as death comes to us through a woman, life is born to us through a woman; that the devil, defeated, would be tormented by each nature, feminine and masculine, as he had taken delight in the defection of both” (Christian Combat 22:24 [A.D. 396]).
“That one woman is both mother and virgin, not in spirit only but even in body. In spirit she is mother, not of our head, who is our Savior himself—of whom all, even she herself, are rightly called children of the bridegroom—but plainly she is the mother of us who are his members, because by love she has cooperated so that the faithful, who are the members of that head, might be born in the Church. In body, indeed, she is the Mother of that very head” (Holy Virginity 6:6 [A.D. 401]).
…
“Having excepted the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, on account of the honor of the Lord, I wish to have absolutely no question when treating of sins—for how do we know what abundance of grace for the total overcoming of sin was conferred upon her, who merited to conceive and bear him in whom there was no sin?—so, I say, with the exception of the Virgin, if we could have gathered together all those holy men and women, when they were living here, and had asked them whether they were without sin, what do we suppose would have been their answer?” (Nature and Grace 36:42 [A.D. 415]).
Timothy of Jerusalem
“Therefore the Virgin is immortal to this day, seeing that he who had dwelt in her transported her to the regions of her assumption” (Homily on Simeon and Anna [A.D. 400]).
John the Theologian
“[T]he Lord said to his Mother, ‘Let your heart rejoice and be glad, for every favor and every gift has been given to you from my Father in heaven and from me and from the Holy Spirit. Every soul that calls upon your name shall not be ashamed, but shall find mercy and comfort and support and confidence, both in the world that now is and in that which is to come, in the presence of my Father in the heavens’” (The Falling Asleep of Mary [A.D. 400]).
“And from that time forth all knew that the spotless and precious body had been transferred to paradise” (ibid.).
Gregory of Tours
“The course of this life having been completed by blessed Mary, when now she would be called from the world, all the apostles came together from their various regions to her house. And when they had heard that she was about to be taken from the world, they kept watch together with her. And behold, the Lord Jesus came with his angels, and, taking her soul, he gave it over to the angel Michael and withdrew. At daybreak, however, the apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb, and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; the holy body having been received, he commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise, where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary’s body] rejoices with the Lord’s chosen ones and is in the enjoyment of the good of an eternity that will never end” (Eight Books of Miracles 1:4 [A.D. 584]).
“But Mary, the glorious Mother of Christ, who is believed to be a virgin both before and after she bore him, has, as we said above, been translated into paradise, amid the singing of the angelic choirs, whither the Lord preceded her” (ibid., 1:8).
I’m wondering what you mean by this comment.
Read post #1. I think you'll understand. Have a blessed weekend.
Oh, now you've gone and done it. :) You've given me a good excuse to repost this from G.K. Chesterton's "The Catholic Church and Conversion":
"To this I owe the fact that I find it very difficult to take some of the Protestant propositions even seriously. What is any man who has been in the real outer world, for instance, to make of the everlasting cry that Catholic traditions are condemned by the Bible? It indicates a jumble of topsy-turvy tests and tail-foremost arguments, of which I never could at any time see the sense."The ordinary sensible sceptic or pagan is standing in the street (in the supreme character of the man in the street) and he sees a procession go by of the priests of some strange cult, carrying their object of worship under a canopy, some of them wearing high head-dresses and carrying symbolical staffs, others carrying scrolls and sacred records, others carrying sacred images and lighted candles before them, others sacred relics in caskets or cases, and so on. I can understand the spectator saying, 'This is all hocus-pocus'; I can even understand him, in moments of irritation, breaking up the procession, throwing down the images, tearing up the scrolls, dancing on the priests and anything else that might express that general view.
"I can understand his saying, 'Your croziers are bosh, your candles are bosh, your statues and scrolls and relics and all the rest of it are bosh.'
"But in what conceivable frame of mind does he rush in to select one particular scroll of the scriptures of this one particular group (a scroll which had always belonged to them and been a part of their hocus-pocus, if it was hocus-pocus); why in the world should the man in the street say that one particular scroll was not bosh, but was the one and only truth by which all the other things were to be condemned? Why should it not be as superstitious to worship the scrolls as the statues, of that one particular procession? Why should it not be as reasonable to preserve the statues as the scrolls, by the tenets of that particular creed?
"To say to the priests, 'Your statues and scrolls are condemned by our common sense,' is sensible. To say, 'Your statues are condemned by your scrolls, and we are going to worship one part of your procession and wreck the rest,' is not sensible from any standpoint, least of all that of the man in the street."
There, fixed it for you. We don't dismiss Scripture. We simply dismiss the solo interpretations which agonizingly wring ever more novel doctrines from snippets and individual words excerpted from any Bible the happens to float by the vicinity of the perpetrator.
1 Corinthians 11: 1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. 2 1 I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions, just as I handed them on to you.
Church teaching predates NT Scripture because it comes directly from Jesus to the Apostles, from the Apostles to the Apostolic Fathers, to the Church Fathers, to us. The Reformation violates this passage from 1 Corinthians because the Reformation does not hold fast to the traditions passed down to it by the Church.
Catholics have things so backwards.
If you pay attention to Scripture, it not only that Catholics have things according to Scripture, it is also that non Catholics have so much so wrong.
That is good about the Greek - do you speak it or rely on available translations?
If Nicodemus had understood Jesus properly, then Jesus would not have had to come back and correct him. If Nicodemus had understood Jesus correctly to mean 'born again', then Jesus would not have had to correct him with an explanation in reply. He would have agreed with him or congratulated him, not correct him. The NAB says:
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.'
Notice the Nicodeman implication - born again - emphasis on the physical. Notice what Jesus tells him in reply: born of water, Spirit, from above. A complete separation in meaning here.
The bottom line is most evangelicals are much more familiar with the Scriptures than most Catholics - at least in my experience.
That is what is commonly held, but to jump from Scripture to that great Catholic author Tolkien: a tale that grew in the telling. I find that the loudest of the evangelicals here know their own snippets somewhat - but suffer from embarrassing misquotes and misinterpretations when verses offhandedly tossed about are examined in the light of day. My own posting history includes a number of debunked Protestant claims based upon Scripture posted to various threads.
No matter what you say about the KJV translation - at least it was honest
I disagree. It was political. The individuals who ran the project were selected by a government commission. They were paid for by the English Parliament. They were overseen by the equivalent of Tim Geithner or Hillary Clinton or Janet Napolitano. And there were so many errors recognized before publication, that they were already planning the next edition to correct their errors.
and once Gutenberg invented the printing press and the Scriptures were put in the hands of the common man, the Reformation was inevitable.
Notice that Gutenberg was Catholic, and the first book printed was a Catholic Bible? The romantic notion of Bibles in the hands of the common people and only kept back by the bad old Church is just fairy tale as well.
You appear to be looking at things through the eyes of English history. England was a third rate nation of savages in the 1200s without a true or at least a systematic written or spoken language (mostly Germanic, Norwegian and French plus whatever it was that the little blue men spoke) - a few million individuals scattered about, and raided by the Norwegians and the French for fun and a little profit.
The first German language Bible that we know of is by Wulfila in the mid 300s. Like Church Slavonic, it established much of the existing Germanic vocabulary. Charlemagne published Frankish Bible translations in the 9th century. The Augsberger Bible and the Wenzel Bible were published in the 1300s.
The first French language Bible that we know of is by Jean le Bon in the 1200s, followed by a number of other medieval translations.
Italian translations only go back to the 1400s, because of the similarity to Latin.
The first Spanish translation was Alfonsine translation in 1280.
The advantage of the printing press was that every man could now afford a book - and their availability became widespread. Before printed books, illiteracy amongst most countries was well above 90%. By contrast the illiteracy rate amongst civilized areas of the world such as Detroit does not top 50% (by much)...
The point? Functional illiteracy rates in the United States (I am assuming an American bias here - if that is not in effect please let me know) are such that individual understanding of Scripture is weak at best amongst the majority of Americans and therefore they are being led in their Biblical understanding. By whom? The Ken Copelands and Jimmy Swaggarts and Oral Roberts of the evangelizing world. Scripturally, the authority of teaching Scripture and the Good News of Salvation rests upon the Church, not the sucessors of Simon Magus and the like.
I believe Chesterson said it this way: "One is either Catholic or anything they want to be."
My friend, that sentiment is correct, as far as it goes. But if you look at the Judgement of Christ as an either/or, you either are Judged to eternal Salvation, or you are judged to eternal hellfire. It is not that Catholics have a lock on salvation (as our Reformed and OSAS brethren claim to), but it is only by daily picking up our cross and following Him that we can even approach that narrow gate. Once you believe that you are already saved, the only thing left to do is to jostle for the window seat on the free limo ride to Heaven, so that you can gesture out the window at those who walk the Via of Christ while drinking the best champagne (or bubbly grape juice for the Prohibitionists).
It will probably take a while for the limo riders to realize that those who are imitating Christ and bearing their own crosses for His sake are walking in the opposite direction from the way that the limo is taking them...
Very well done; Chesterton was very underrated in his time, and in this country, vastly underrepresented.
We understand very well the reasons behind these actions - they are all of men and their greed. Simon Magus was the prototype; his successors are still all getting theirs while the getting is good...
I can't. It wasn't important enough for me to copy and I don't even know if the records exist anymore. But there is a much easier way to solve this question.
I will ask the question again Metmom, which is more important to you, the Constitution or the Bible? Or in other words when the two are in conflict which do you support?
"That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones."
- G.K. Chesterton
Can’t find the link?
It wasn’t important enough for you to copy it but it obviously left enough of an impression on you to remember it.
OK, show me where they’re in conflict.
Eve was still a virgin when the serpent tempted her? Really? Unneccessary doctrine. Only a presumption, and not necessary to the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the words of church “fathers,” notwithstanding.
Adam named the animal creation, watched them, saw that they had mates, but there was no help meet for him, and yet it is said by these church “fathers” that Adam and Eve had not learned about procreation or enjoyed a gift God gave for the marriage state? This lowers my estimation of the reasoning skills of some of these who are called “fathers.”
The pope is your prophet king and priest ... another christ ...the head Alter Christus...
According to Church teachings, Christ's is The Priest Prophet and King, and all baptized Catholics (including the pope and you too, by the way) are called to imitate Him in all three of those roles.
As for your continual harping on "Alter Christus" as a heresy or whatever you think it is, I suggest you reread Luke 22: 19-20.
No. Not at all.
In fact, before I got saved, I was convinced that I had to prove my self worthy. If I had ever been able to do that, I could have and would have been prideful.
As it is, God made me realize that I did not deserve salvation, not even one bit.
I still know that I do not deserve salvation.
I am grateful to Him, since I know that I am such a sinner that I never could have done anything to deserve his gift of heaven.
I am not looking for the link.
You seem to be afraid to answer a simple question. Which takes priority with you, the bible or the Constitution?
You and I both know that the Bible is your highest priority and the Constitution isn't even a distant second. Muslims also place the Koran first, they aren't conservatives either.
I don't particularily remember the statement, but I may have said "you know nothing about the Catholic church based on your prior comments" if inane statements are made concerning any particular subject, one can certainly determine the eligibility of the speaker to expound on that subject. I mean no insult to any one, but some tend to comment on subjects of which they have no knowledge whatsoever.
Hey, you’re good! 357.
Thank you!
I guess some of these threads really are predictable.
WRONG
The foulest blasphemies are leading this thread.
Using “blasphemy” to describe detractions to the HORRIFICALLY FALSE Marian fantasies
PROVES she is worshiped.
“blasphemy” applies only TO GOD!
DOH!
it seems though that Catholics have nearly one of five threads going at all time. It is not informative, it is an attempt to push religious dogma. JMHO, and forgive me if I offended anyone.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
AT LEAST.
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