Posted on 04/03/2013 3:43:07 PM PDT by NYer
Q: Okay, so what is the Christian account of how revelation occurred?
As Elmer Fudd might say, “Vewy, vewy swowly.” Divine revelation didn’t happen in a blinding flash—such as God dropping the Summa Theologiae on top of a mountain and waiting for people to invent the Latin language so they could read it. (Though He could have given them magical spectacles that would translate it for them….) It seems that God preferred to slowly unfold His personality and His will for us through the course of tangled, messy human history. We might wonder why, and call up the divine customer service line to ask why in heck human nature arrived in the mail without the instructions. I don’t pretend to know what He was thinking here, but I find it aesthetically fitting that our knowledge of God evolved in much the way that animal species did, over a long time and by fits and starts, with sudden leaps whenever God saw fit, until finally the world was ready to receive the final product: in creation, man, in revelation, the Son of Man. God seems to prefer planting seeds to winding up robots.
So we start with traces of a primitive monotheism among some scattered peoples of the world—which might have been long-faded memories of what Adam told his children about the whole “apple incident,” combined with crude deductions that boil down to “Nothing comes from nothing.” But mankind pretty much wandered around with no more than that for quite some time, and this was when he employed the inductive method to discover the hemorrhoid god.
The first incident in Jewish-Christian scriptures that suggests God revealed Himself to us after that is the rather discouraging narrative of Noah. According to the story, the human race went so wrong so fast that God decided to backspace over most of it, leaving only a single righteous family, trapped on a stinky boat with way too many pets. When they landed, they had no more idea of what to do with themselves than the cast of Gilligan’s Island, so God gave them instructions: We call this the Covenant of Noah. The Jews believe that these are the only commandments God gave to the Gentiles—7 of them, instead of 613—and that the rest of us can please God just by keeping them. That’s the reason that Jews don’t generally try to make converts. (Who are we to run around making things harder for people? Feh!) The Jewish Talmud enumerates the 7 laws of Noah as follows:
Most of this sounds fairly obvious and commonsensical—though we might wonder why it was necessary to tell people to stop pulling off pieces of live animals and eating them. They must have gotten into some pretty bad habits while they were still stuck on that ark.
Q: That ark must have been the size of Alabama…
I know, I know.
Q. …to fit all those elephants, hippos, rhinos, tree sloths, polar bears, gorillas, lions and moose…
Okay, smart guy.
Q. …not to mention breeding pairs of more than 1,000,000 species of insects. Sure they’re mostly small, but those creepy-crawlies add up.
Spoken like a true-believing member of Campus Crusade for Cthulu, complete with a bad case of acne and involuntary celibacy. Maybe you should focus on Onan instead of Noah.
Look, there’s a reason why Catholics don’t read the bible in an exclusively literal sense, and haven’t since the time of Origen (+253). The Church looks at the books of scripture according to the genres in which they were written (history, allegory, wisdom, prophecy, and so on). And this story, clearly, was intended as allegory—which means that on top of some historical content (and there’s flotsam from flood-narratives in the basement of most ancient cultures) the writer piled up details to make a point. Unlike liberal Protestants, we don’t use this principle to explain away Jesus’ miracles and the moral law. Nor are we fundamentalists who take everything in the bible literally—except for “This is my body,” (Luke 22: 19) “Thou art Peter,” (Matthew 16: 18) and “No, your pastor can’t get divorced.” (Cleopatra 7: 14) The Church responded to biblical criticism with appropriate skepticism at first, and accepted the useful parts (like reading original languages and looking for ancient manuscripts), without throwing out the traditional mode of reading the bible in light of how the Church Fathers traditionally understood it.
Q. Why should the Church be the interpreter of the bible?
In the case of the New Testament, the Church had transcribed the books; shouldn’t we own the copyright to our own memoirs? When the list of accepted gospels and epistles was drawn up, there were more surplus candidates milling around than in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, before a primary—some of them inspirational but probably inauthentic, like the Protoevangelium that tells the story of Mary’s childhood; others creepily gnostic, like the “Gospel of Thomas,” which has Jesus using His “superpowers” to wreak revenge on His schoolmates. (That gospel is always popular, since it shows Jesus doing exactly what each of us would really do in His place.) The decision on which books were divinely inspired was based largely on the evidence of the liturgy: which books had been used in churches for services in the most places for the longest. As I like to tell Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my door: that bible you’re waving at me was codified by a council of Catholic bishops who prayed to Mary and the saints, baptized infants, and venerated the Eucharist. So you could say that as the original, earthly author and editor, the Church has a better claim of knowing how to read it than the reporters at National Geographic—who every Christmas or Easter discover some new and tantalizing scrap of papyrus containing gnostic sex magic tips or Judas’ “To-do” list.
In the case of the Old Testament, the Church draws heavily on how Jews traditionally read their own scriptures—but with one important and obvious difference. We are the descendants of the faction of Jews who accepted Christ as the Messiah and evangelized the gentiles, all the while considering themselves the “faithful remnant” who’d remained true to the faith of Abraham. So we see throughout the Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ, for instance in Abraham’s sacrifice, and Isaiah’s references to the “suffering servant.” The Jews who were skeptical of Jesus believed that they were heroically resisting a blasphemous false prophet who’d tempted them to idolatry. As the Church spread and gained political clout, and Christians began to shamefully mistreat the people from whom they’d gotten monotheism in the first place, there surely was genuine heroism entailed in standing firm. I often wonder how many Jews would be drawn to Jesus if they could separate Him from the sins committed against their great-grandparents in His name….
The version of the Old Testament that Catholics and Orthodox use is different from what Jews use today. Our version, based on the Septuagint translation into Greek, is somewhat longer, and includes some later documents that Jews accepted right up to the time Saint Paul converted—books that illustrate a lot of the mature developments in Judaism which led up to the coming of Christ. The very fact that Christian apostles were using these books may have led the rabbis to eventually reject them. (Since the biblical references to Purgatory can be found in these books, Martin Luther and the Anglicans also excluded them.) Ironically, the Book of Maccabees exists in Catholic bibles but not Jewish ones, and right up until Vatican II we had a Feast of the Maccabees—which means that you could call Chanukah a Catholic holiday. But don’t tell the judges in New York City, or they’ll pull all the menorahs out of the schools.
I will not attempt to excuse the sins of priests but the facts are that the safest place on earth for a child to be is in the presence of a Catholic priest.
I do find it interesting that those who post extensively against the sinless Blessed Mother claim that priests on the other hand must be sinless for the Sacraments to be valid. I am more than wiling to discuss the validity of Sacraments you, but I will not be dragged into the gutter.
Peace be with you
.....”the facts are that the safest place on earth for a child to be is in the presence of a Catholic priest.”....
You’d have a heck of a time convincing people of that, regardless of what the church now does or doesn’t do...too many still on the loose...and that’s not counting those who haven’t been caught.
“And you lie when you say this. You have no intention of submitting yourself to anyone. :)”
“Mind reading” is not allowed on the Religion Forum.
LOL. Good way to put it. They run around saying, "What lumps?! Those aren't lumps, they're part of the embroidery!"
“So you submit to the authority and the government of your particular Protestant community of faith that 1 Timothy is inspired and you do not submit to the authority and the government of much older Catholic Church that the Wisdom of Solomon, for example, is also inspired. That is what it boils down to: from scripture alone you cannot conclude so. “
I don’t regard the Catholic Church as the older denomination. I regard the reformed, Protestant church as the continuing church from the apostolic age.
You see, from our perspective, it’s the Roman Catholics who went wayward and left the farm, not the other way around.
I agree. Of all the possible human authorities that exist or have ever existed in the history of man, NONE have the endurance, the objectiveness, the honesty, the assurance or the immutability of the word of God. We CAN rest on it indeed, and that by Divine design!
“I will not attempt to excuse the sins of priests but the facts are that the safest place on earth for a child to be is in the presence of a Catholic priest.”
Is it really? Somehow, I doubt the victims of molestation, or of Torquemada (You can’t talk him out of ANYTHING!) of Inquisition fame would feel very safe around them. In fact, pedophiles tend to seek out roles in which they can have “trusting” access to children. It is no wonder then that the Roman Church, being just another human institution, would be prone to infiltration from such predators. There was a Pope, you know, who was killed when caught sleeping with another man’s wife. Did the Holy Spirit infallibly choose him through the Cardinals who elected him? More importantly, how safe is the soul of a man in the presence of a Catholic Priest? I would venture to say, not safe at all, as the Priest is just another sinful man with pretensions of Holy superiority.
Rom 3:9-11 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; (10) As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: (11) There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
Jerome called it the “arrogance” of the Priests and Bishops to pretend that they had the judicial power of forgiving and absolving sins. I would go even further than Jerome and say that their very act of calling themselves Priests, in exclusion of the rest of the body of Christ, is also a great arrogance.
It is Christ, of course, who is our one and only High Priest, who mediates between God and man (1 Ti 2:5). What room is there for another mediator between us and Christ? When Christ says to pray, He never tells us to pray to another. He tells us to pray, expecting even the mountains to move at our petition to Him:
Mar 11:22-24 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. (23) For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. (24) Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
In fact, our prayers are best in secret, and not to Priests or in front of everyone:
Mat_6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
If my secret prayer can avail to my forgiveness and the moving of mountains, why do I need a Priest?
More importantly, because of the blood of Christ and our joining into His body, we are all made Priests and Kings in the sight of God:
1Pe_2:5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
1Pe_2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
Rev_1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Kings in the sense of our dignity as Christians; priests in that we can now march boldly into the throne room of God and ask and receive freely, not from a God who is our enemy and needs the intercession of Priests or Mary to hear us, but because He is our Father who chose us before the foundation of the world:
Rom 8:29-30 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. (30) Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Or as Augustine says, “That the predestinated are called by some certain calling peculiar to the elect, and that they have been elected before the foundation of the world; not because they were foreknown as men who would believe and would be holy, but in order that by means of that very election of grace they might be such,...”
“I do find it interesting that those who post extensively against the sinless Blessed Mother claim that priests on the other hand must be sinless for the Sacraments to be valid.”
It’s because it’s logical. You cannot hold that Priests are holier than other people since we all know how evil they can be. If a Devil gives absolution for a sin, or handles what Romanists claim is the body of Christ, speaking the words which give rise to the transformation, then the Devil is your captain through whom you say God works.
“but I will not be dragged into the gutter.”
The whole Roman church is in the gutter. I counsel you to get out of it.
Unfortunately, the risk is still not zero, but it REALLY is the safest place for a child to be.
Peace be with you
“There are plenty of other works which survive that are not canon.”
Yes, and those works meet only one the two criteria I mentioned, and not the most important one at that.
“Let me ask you something. Suppose you look around and find something that you didn’t know before. What would you think if looked back and found that it’s been known a thousand years prior?”
Your question doesn’t match the context of the matter we are discussing, since the NT was not unknown to Luther and the reformers. So, my response to such a scenario would be irrelevant. Let’s stick to discussing things that are relevant.
“I’m just saying. You got it from us. Not the other way around. The bible predated Protestants. Protestants didn’t create the bible. Before there was anything that could even conceivably be called a Protestant, the bible had been in existance for over a thousand years.”
So, you obey the Jewish authorities, since their Scriptures predated Rome, right?
“What you guys did - was take our book and crib off of it. That’s it.”
Again the prideful boasting. The Book is GOD’s, not yours. The men who God picked to deliver His revelation to credited it to HIM, not themselves. Yet, you would credit it, not to God, or to those He revealed it to, but to some later editors and compilers? Then use your spurious claim to lord over others who attribute it correctly? How exactly is that seemly behavior for a Christian?
“Arguing you should change something you didn’t make is not really a very good argument.”
So, why do you argue to change the Hebrew canon that Rome did not make?
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
These books do not make any claim to inspiration. On the contrary, the prologue of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) asks pardon from the readers for all inexactitudes: "I entreat you... pardon us for those things wherein we may seem, while we follow the image of wisdom, to come short in the composition of words." The author of Maccabees concludes by saying, "I also will here make an end of my narration. Which if I have done well, and as it becometh the history, it is what I desired: but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me" (2 Maccabees 15:28, 39). That is not the language of divine inspiration!
First Maccabees notes that there were no prophets in Israel at that time (1 Maccabees 4:46; 9:27; 14:41). Since the New Testament frequently refers to the Scriptures as "the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 5:17; 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16; 24:44; John 1:45; Acts 13:15; 24:14; 28:23; Romans 3:21), how could a writing that specifically states that there were no prophets at the time when it was written be called Scripture?
What is more serious, the apocrypha teach doctrines that contradicts Scripture (see, for instance, Sirach 3:3,30, in contrast with Galatians 2:16,21; 3:10-14; Tobit 12:9 contradicts 1 John 1:7 and Hebrews 9:22; Wisdom 8:19,20 contradicts Romans 3:10). They encourage practices that do not conform to Scripture (Sirach 12:4-7 disagrees with Luke 6:27-38 and Matthew 5:43-48).
These books do not make any claim to inspiration. On the contrary, the prologue of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) asks pardon from the readers for all inexactitudes: "I entreat you... pardon us for those things wherein we may seem, while we follow the image of wisdom, to come short in the composition of words." The author of Maccabees concludes by saying, "I also will here make an end of my narration. Which if I have done well, and as it becometh the history, it is what I desired: but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me" (2 Maccabees 15:28, 39). That is not the language of divine inspiration!
First Maccabees notes that there were no prophets in Israel at that time (1 Maccabees 4:46; 9:27; 14:41). Since the New Testament frequently refers to the Scriptures as "the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 5:17; 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16; 24:44; John 1:45; Acts 13:15; 24:14; 28:23; Romans 3:21), how could a writing that specifically states that there were no prophets at the time when it was written be called Scripture?
What is more serious, the apocrypha teach doctrines that contradicts Scripture (see, for instance, Sirach 3:3,30, in contrast with Galatians 2:16,21; 3:10-14; Tobit 12:9 contradicts 1 John 1:7 and Hebrews 9:22; Wisdom 8:19,20 contradicts Romans 3:10). They encourage practices that do not conform to Scripture (Sirach 12:4-7 disagrees with Luke 6:27-38 and Matthew 5:43-48).
“claim that priests on the other hand must be sinless”
There is a difference between being sinless and being simply godly. None of the Apostles were sinless, yet they were godly men, and exhibited the outward evidences of such godliness. Someone who is an unrepentant sinner, such as a serial child molester, is not a godly man.
Does not the Catholic church declare that an unrepentant sinner is de facto, even without any church proclamation, placed outside of communion with the church as long as the condition persists? Does not the Catholic church also hold that those not in communion hold no spiritual authority over believers? Does not the Catholic church also hold that the authority for such things as forgiving sins flows from Christ, through the church, and cannot be found outside of it?
If those things are true, then it appears, by the church’s own doctrines, that a priest who is an unrepentant sinner couldn’t have any power to forgive sins. One might as well ask a nonbeliever to forgive your sins!
What change to the Hebrew Canon? Is there a Septuagint that excludes these books to which I was unaware?
The Church declares that the Sacrament of Ordination (Holy Orders), like Baptism, confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily. It is through Holy Orders that the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church.
It is true that someone validly ordained can, for a just reason, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them, but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense because the character imprinted by ordination is forever.
Ultimately, it is Jesus who acts through the ordained minister. The priest's unworthiness cannot prevent Jesus from acting. Light can pass through a dirty window. St. Augustine described it this way:
"As for the proud minister, he is to be ranked with the devil. Christ's gift is not thereby profaned: what flows through him keeps its purity, and what passes through him remains dear and reaches the fertile earth.... The spiritual power of the sacrament is indeed comparable to light: those to be enlightened receive it in its purity, and if it should pass through defiled beings, it is not itself defiled."
Peace be with you
“Let’s stick to discussing things that are relevant.”
Knowing that the bible predates the Protestants is kinda relevant to the topic at hand.
“So, you obey the Jewish authorities, since their Scriptures predated Rome, right?”
Absolutely I do.
“Yet, you would credit it, not to God, or to those He revealed it to, but to some later editors and compilers?”
As opposed to crediting it to Luther? Absolutely.
“How exactly is that seemly behavior for a Christian?”
How is a statement of historical fact arrogant?
So let me ask you a question then. Do you believe that Christ is a bigamist? After all his bride is the Church.
Are you not aware that priests go to Confession too?
In fact, there is a story about a priest who had deteriorated, I believe, into a state of beggar-like existence and was living on the steps of a church. (There was a thread posted about this story.)
Pope John Paul II found out about this priest and invited him to come talk with him. He then ask this priest to hear his Confession.
It brought the priest out of his depression (might have been alcoholism) — in fact John Paul II and most Popes go to Confession weekly.
Well first His Bride are Christian Believers ......so we’re already going in opposite directions... there are many false religions and cults who claim they’re THE Church.
Your first question reveals where your head is at...and not worthy of discussion.
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