You are in good company...
Posted on 08/05/2013 10:31:02 AM PDT by Gamecock
I thank you for sharing your experiences and your faith with me. I am not sure how to relate to you how wrong I think it is to worship at a crucifix and grieve like that, without insulting you. It is not my desire to insult you.
I will say that my issue is not with individuals, but with the Catholic Church.
I do not believe that the Catholic Church is preaching about Jesus, but about a man made religion or a hierarchy that they wish to form society around. Further, a religion that does not show you how to have victory over the darkness, and even puts you INTO the darkness at times.
I have no doubt that you love Jesus and want to learn his ways, but I am sad that you would have been indoctrinated as a small child to grieve or quench the Holy Spirit of God.
We are told not to do that in Ephesians 4:30.
Mary called Jesus: “Rabonni”, which means “My Master”. John 20:11
No, it's not quite so simple, since in human beings, the physical affects the spiritual: Jesus needed to be, in all ways, a perfect human.
Consider what Scripture says about this:
Scripture indicates, in the very first prophecy concerning the Messiah (Genesis 3:15-16) that there would be enmity between Satan and the Seed of the Woman. "Seed" is all about genetic inheritance and the transmission of human nature, as you know. Biblically it always refers to male semen, as well as offspring through the generations. In only one case does it refer to the "seed" of a woman. Very strange. Think about that.
The Messiah would have to be born from the "Seed of the Woman" who is NOT a slave of sin and Satan, but who is in "enmity" --- in opposition to --- sin and Satan. He would have to be born with a sinless human nature.
How does Original Sin affects us? This is how: because we receive from our parents a defective human nature. As you know, human nature is both physical and spiritual, because we are a composite of a physical body and a spiritual soul.
This defective human nature we receive, by natural transmission from our parents, results in a moral trait called "concupisence," a darkening of the intellect and weakness of the will, which strongly inclines us to fall into personal sin.
What we receive from our parents is not personal guilt for a personal moral wrong in itself --- since we have not committed any acts as zygotes, embryos or fetuses which could be called personal sins --- but a strong tendency to sin as a result of a defective and corrupted human nature.
Therefore the physical and genetic has a direct impact on the spiritual: our corrupted human nature strongly inclines us to think wrong, speak wrong, and do wrong.
Without Divine grace, we will always sin.
With this in mind, we can see that the physical and spiritual are intertwined in us, since we are composite beings; and Jesus needed to be spotless in the nature He got from His only human parent, His mother.
Here's a video I highly recommend. A short fly-over on Mary in Scripture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBGm5CnEJvU
Enjoy!
As to my Bible, my belief started where it says "In the beginning God created ..." and no matter how one approaches translation and interpretation, the body of a man was created first. And the body of the first woman was formed from Adam, not from the elements. Believe what you want, but
a) the woman did not have anything in her that wasn't already in the first man's body;
(b) one of the things the woman's body did not have was manhood;
(c) manhood comes from what we now know is the presence of the y-chromosome;
(d) in the Garden, death entered; and
(e) since then (except for the appearance of Jesus) nothing has changed.
(f) In reproduction, some kind of death factor, warned of by God, was passed on at conception until now.
Death was introduced by simple disobedience: first by cleverly deceived Eve, but then deliberate by Adam (as a type of Christ, to save Eve?)(1 Tim. 2:11-14)(This is why women were nor are to be undertaking to teach doctrine, ever).
In making the woman's body from Adam's bone and bone marrow, all God needed was one white blood cell with one y-chromosome--remove it, replace it with one x-chromosome from another leucocyte, and then cause it to multiply.
Just thinking of the no-death case, why could God not save the remainder of cells from Adam's "rib" from which to make a body for The Son to occupy in the fullness of time? Those cells could not die'corrupt, could they? this is a concept not at all impossible.
Actually, I don't buy your arguments at all. I believe the Preserved and literal equivalency-translated Word of God, and your interpretation does not match up with that.
You must admit that a person, a soul once created, will live for ever, but it is the physical body through which its own death is propagated, whose entropy clock is set back to zero and begins again each time a new being is conceived. Thus, no matter how full of grace, willing, and obedient Mary is, any contribution from her sin-bearing body to Jesus' flesh body would bring death. The death factor is a dominant characteristic, present in the cells of all humans as well as all other moving creatures.
But in Mary's womb, the placenta effectively isolates each from the other. That is why I would not at all be surprised if Jesus, the last Adam, possessed a perfect body ab initio like that of the first Adam, not made to die; perhaps even the same body replicated (an identical twin representing all the bodies of males and females that have or will ever appear), but with His different Spirit than that of the first Adam.
This is speculative, but offers much greater biological (sarkikos), logical (psukikos), and spiritual (pneumatikos) possibilities than the opinions formed and advanced as truth by the ill-conceived theology of humans who would not live in faith in their time and leave imponderable matters up to God.
But wise Paul by the Holy Ghost spoke truth to the quibbling congregation. In the midst of the discourse of the resurrection of the saints, he wrote:
"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45; cf Gen. 2:7, Jn. 1:4)
(Here "written" is in the perfect tense, meaning "stands written once, still in force," or "a present state resultant upon a past action.") One might pause to consider the first and the last (hu)man Adams not only figurative in type, but literal in purpose.
Mrs. Don-o: Am I getting your meaning here?
Yes, you surely are getting the idea that, based on current technology, it is entirely possible that this is the way He chose to come into the world, despite the inescapable death-to-flesh factor transmitted in the union of fallen human gametes that produces a new, but also death-slated cell.
Mrs. Don-o: If so, this is surely false.
Now, that is a silly claim in truth-finding. You may believe in that doctrinally and/or emotionally, but the constructions of practiced logicians not exercising spiritual discernment can turn out to be very clever, but misleading. What you seem to be saying is that with time and chance, somehow the perfect genetic combination will be found in a Jewish maid. Even supposing that hypothesis to be true, where is the matching male gamete coming from, eh?
And if it takes the Holy Ghost to supply such a God-gamete, why not the whole prototype cell for the last-Adam's body? It is the God-made perfect body that is once more deathless, that is the suitable vehicle for the Son of God to occupy, suffer in, and to allow to experience death through His yielding His Spirit to the Father, and his soul leaving it to go to Paradise.
Of course, it stands written,
"Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (Ps. 16:9,10; cf Ac. 2:27).
Could that Holy Body, bereft of His Blood, His soul, and His Spirit, have begun to degrade? We do not now know, for He became the Firstborn from the dead, of many other Spirit-born brethren who are also to be resurrected. The Merciful Father did not permit Him to see (οραω=horaoh:- to see, to become acquainted with by experience) corruption (decay of the body after death, Thayer's).
He was reunited with a bloodless body to ascend into the Heaven to offer His Blood Sacrifice once, for all sins, on the True Mercy Seat in the Holiest of All, from which we freely receive the Father's grace.
Mrs. Don-o: God bless you.
That is a very thoughtful desire, and He has, in numberless ways and means, and long before my commitment to be his bond-slave.
Grace to you, and peace, through stepping in the Light.
Never said.
I already said that your clock on this thread with me is run out.
For you, this may be true, but it is clear that you and all others who take this position cannot exercise spiritual discernment. Christ spoke in both literal language and in figurative-literal language. Referring to the bread-loaf, "This is my body" is figurative-literal language, the hearers knew that, as do spiritually mature people now.
The basis was explained clearly way back in this discussion. If you cannot grasp this simple explanation of the things of the Spirit, and think it is foolish, it is because you are blinded by false doctrine and cannot spiritually discern it.
That is why there is continual needless debate over this matter. The impasse is insurmountable except through intervention by the Holy Ghost, and He is not going to break down the barrier between those clinging to a natural mindset, and those moving on to spiritual rebirth, IMHO.
Just for clarification: you think the same about a bare cross?
OH?
If HE was born that way; HE didn't STAY that way 8 days after birth!
The Calivinasaurusization of Scripture to create the MARY persona Catholics now adore?
I have an old AC 620 model.
The bare cross isn’t AS offensive to me and in places where a symbol is needed, I prefer an empty cross, but I would equally question a person who worshiped an empty cross.
The life, death and purpose of Jesus can not be contained on that cross.
And just as a side note, the star of David is annoying to me as well, for the same reasons as a crucifix bothers me.
I study a Messianic( baptist) interpertation, and I equally reject the Star of David as a symbol of my faith.
I read somewhere, where someone was blogging about their trip to Jerusalem, and this person’s observation that the early church did not use a cross, but a flower, as a symbol of their belief in Jesus.
I think there is something to learn there.
In the Bible, man was created first. Pretty clear from the text. But the other things you list are neither explicitly sated, nor are they logically proven from that fact.
For instance:
" a) the woman did not have anything in her that wasn't already in the first man's body"
Do you really believe that God made Eve from one white blood cell which He got from Adam, genetically modified, and "caused to multiply," meaning that a woman can be generated by breeding leucocytes? Come on. You can't make a zygote out of a leucocyte; and even if you could, you can't grow an adult out of a zygote without a maternal-placental support system or the equivalent. This is neither Biblically not biologically well-founded.
"Why could God not save the remainder of cells from Adam's "rib" from which to make a body for The Son to occupy in the fullness of time?"
Because Jesus would not then be the son of Abraham, son of Isaac, son of Jacob, son of David. His genealogy in Luke, at least, would be meaningless. He would not be a real Jew because he would not be the real, genetic child of His Jewish mother, Mary.
"Actually, I don't buy your arguments at all. I believe the Preserved and literal equivalency-translated Word of God, and your interpretation does not match up with that."
Not tobe a smarty-pants, but: same to you. :o)
"Thus, no matter how full of grace, willing, and obedient Mary is, any contribution from her sin-bearing body to Jesus' flesh body would bring death."
True, if she had a sin-bearing body. But she didn't. This is how God saw her: "Full of Grace." She was grace-bearing, not sin-bearing. She was Kecharitomene. As God's messenger proclaimed.
"But in Mary's womb, the placenta effectively isolates each from the other."
So it was believed, but erroneously. We now know about microchimerism (link) and other processes by which stem cells and other factors cross the placenta. Some of the mother's cells find they way into the gestating child, and some of the child's cells into the mother. Therefore, some of Mary's cells would be found in Jesus, and --- even more intriguing ---- some of Jesus' cells found in Mary! (Recent research shows that fetal stem cells help the mother's body repair damage. Something we moms can thank our kids for!)
"That is why I would not at all be surprised if Jesus, the last Adam, possessed a perfect body ab initio like that of the first Adam
Yes, He did. And He was the true child of Mary, according to the flesh.
Galatians 4:4
" But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law..."
"One might pause to consider the first and the last (hu)man Adams not only figurative in type, but literal in purpose...
I don't know it for a fact, but I consider it plausible that Jesus and Adam might have had an equivalence or near-equivalence on many levels, including genetic.
" What you seem to be saying is that with time and chance, somehow the perfect genetic combination will be found in a Jewish maid. Even supposing that hypothesis to be true, where is the matching male gamete coming from, eh?"
God could create that. Or are you saying He had one in storage somewhere, a whole prototype cell (haploid or diploid?) for the last-Adam's body? (Scratching head.)
" Grace to you, and peace, through stepping in the Light."
Same blessing back atcha! :o)
But it was in obedience to the Law, to which He didn't have to submit (being God) but He did everything that would make Him a perfect Jew. So. Still perfect.
Define, please?
I rather think it's the Christoexegeticalization of the Tanakh!
Historical question: Did such an objection ever arise amongst Christians, in, say, the first 1800 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus?
"the early church did not use a cross, but a flower, as a symbol of their belief in Jesus."
I never heard this, and I'm inclined to doubt it. I don't, for instance, know of any particular floral theme from the catacombs --- the earliest extant examples of Christian art --- or from Dura-Europos (Link), the earliest identified Christian house church. Follow the link and see for yourself: no flowers. Do you have a link showing the flower, or explaining this notion that the early Christians used the flower and not the cross? ?
Would you like to buy a solar powered clock?
I have the plans for one that my great-great-grandfather used if you'd like a copy.
You are in good company...
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