Posted on 12/28/2013 3:59:04 PM PST by NYer
Stone, no one always lives the truth. It’s why we need a savior.
If we sin, we should confess to Him.
You been watching too much Jimmy Swaggart.
“You been watching too much Jimmy Swaggart.”
Actually, I’ve never watched him. Seems you are reverting to your straw man. Were you really into him at one time?
Think of Jeff Foxworthy when you read this.
“If you believe that water is not required for baptism”.....
You might not understand scripture.
Yes!! That is why we need a savior - however the issue here is how our free will fits in with His saving grace.
John 20:21-23 clearly confers the power of forgiveness to men. Why would Jesus do this if it wasn’t needed??
“If you believe that water is not required for baptism”.....You might not understand scripture.
Actually, it is not:
Israel was baptized IN THE DESERT.
Christians are baptized (in, with, by) the Holy Spirit.
You need a teacher that is more familiar with Scripture than Jeff!!
verse 23 about forgiveness...
The second part of each conditional clause in this verse is in the passive voice and the perfect tense in the Greek text. The passive voice indicates that someone has already done the forgiving or retaining. That person must be God since He alone has the authority to do that (Matt. 9:2–3; Mark 2:7; Luke 5:21). The perfect tense indicates that the action has continuing effects; the sins stand forgiven or retained at least temporarily if not permanently.
... when His disciples went to others with the message of salvation, as He had done, some people would believe and others would not. Reaction to their ministry would be the same as reaction to His had been. He viewed their forgiving and retaining the sins of their hearers as the actions of God’s agents. If people (“any” or “anyone,” plural Gr. tinon) believed the gospel, the disciples could tell the believers that God had forgiven their sins. If they disbelieved, they could tell them that God had not forgiven but retained their sins. Constable, T. (2003). Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Jn 20:23). Galaxie Software.
“me too - It is clear in the bible that baptism IS being born again”
Clear without evidence you can share...
Throughout my life, there were many times when I attended Sunday mass out of obligation, rather than desire.
And please do not misunderstand, I am not criticising this motivation on an individual level. We all go through it, and it is not a bad thing. Attending Mass out of a sense of obligation is not a sin. But, consider the perspective of what I am speaking of here. I am writing not in response to individual motivations, but to what the Church is doing institutionally in response to that. The Church, at least in this country, seems set on aiming the liturgy at the people least able to respond to that attention. Liturgy is a part of the treasury of the faith, and is not meant to be a lowest common denominator thing. It is terrible policy, just considering it from a purely practical perspective, to strip it down until all the traditional beauty is gone so that it is inoffensive to the people least worth pursuing.
Look at it this way. Nothing the Church does will please everybody. Somebody will always want something else. But, for almost 2000 years the liturgy was a direct connection to the historic faith and it was an opportunity to really step out of the world and into something eternal. Did everyone like that? No, but it wasn't about that. It meant something and it was the way we did it, and effectively always had. But now it has been changed, and artificially, so that it can please those people who didn't like it before. And now the other people don't like it. At best it was a zero sum game, and it did nothing except sever it from the past and the historic Church. In reality, though, the losses have far outstripped the gains.
And, more importantly, the people who now feel distanced from the meaning of the liturgy and the Church are those who were the most loyal sons of the Church, to use a popular phrase from this pontificate. It is wrong, in my opinion, to reject any tradition for some sort of popular opinion or idea of innovation, but to do so in hopes of chasing down people who never cared about the faith in the first place, and so you can alienate those who were most faithful in living a life dedicated to the Church at that, is beyond outrageous. It honestly makes no sense.
And so the churches may be filled, but with people who cannot discriminate good from bad. This is what I am speaking of. Our local parish has all sorts of events in the Church, right in front of the Sacrament. Does anyone mind? No, they like it. It is more comfortable they say than the parish hall. They have classes from the school in that space too, and the kids are just told to come and go without any regard to the Sacrament. Do people care? No, they do not. I have talked to them and voiced my problems and they have all shrugged me off as a crank. I will tell you this. If our parish switched to distributing Communion in plastic cups in the pews 80% would not mind at all, and most would likely approve. They do what they do and the whys and wherefores just don't matter to them. And this is now the target audience of what the Church does. We have thrown away the wheat and kept the chaff.
Now, you may say, why do you think these people unworthy? I don't. I think all people are worthy of the liturgy. But, you should not make arbitrary changes to the liturgy in an attempt to target this group or that group. It is not a tool. The liturgy has no end but itself. If tradition had been the only rule then all of those people would be able to come to the Mass and not only participate as all others, but actually gain something from the participation. Right now they may receive Christ, but because they give it no thought it does them no good. In a traditional liturgy you do give it thought as it is all presented in a way making sure you are aware you are participating in something timeless and special. And that is what I am really getting at.
If someone opens the bible and actually reads the verse - it is very powerful that for some reason Our Lord gave the power to forgive sins to men. Remember- He Himself was castigized for forgiving sins and the Jews of the time were outraged (justly so for them; I am not an anti semite!) And then according to scripture (John 20:21-23) he gives the power to men.
I am a serious student of church history.
Question 1) Did the Church Fathers ecclesiology reflect the Catholic and ORthodox hierarchical Model or the modern American Protestant fill in your blank independent Pentecostal, Baptist, or whatever model
Question 2) Did the Church Fathers have a view of Sacraments like the Catholic Church and Orthodox Model or the the modern American Protestant fill in your blank....?
Question 3) Did the Church Fathers view justification similar to the Catholic Church and Orthodox model or this Penal substitution imputed grace that only covers man rather than transforms him?
In summary, I could go on and on, but the to the degree that Modern Protestantism is consistent with the Church Fathers, it is on those points not different than the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church. Those that have a higher view of Sacraments, Traditional Anglicans, Lutherans and Some Reformed are because they retained on that point more of the truth, those that have no sacraments at all are implicitly Gnostic
It is you and your cohort that reject history, and create a religion fashioned by your own ideology or an ideology far removed from the early Church.
You can’t refute anything in my previous post regarding the High Sacramental theology of the Church Fathers regarding, in the major point of my post, the Sacrament of Confession. Even the translations by Schaff over at CCL when you read the footnotes admits, begrudging, the Catholic theology in the Fathers. Lightfoot, the great Anglican Patristic Scholar and all the other Protestant Patristic scholars that were his peers, Harnack, Zahn, and Funk, along with Scaff etc, when they did the translations into English were so astonished by the Catholicity of the early Fathers they hedged at publishing them or said, they can’t be accurate because they are too Catholic. Of course, they were honest enough scholars to understand the style of Greek that those writings were written and all of the Protestant Patristic Scholars of the 19th century [and they were very good translators, for the record] all now agree that those early writings of St. Ignatius, St. Clement of Rome, the Didache are authentic.
And again, the reason those letters were all questioned by the Protestants was because of the Clear Catholic Theology in them relating to a hierarchical Church, Single Bishop, Sacramental Theology, particularly the Eucharist, etc.
In closing, given my Sicilian Italian ancestry, I will now sing a song for you, OOOOOOOO SOLA MEOOOOOOOOOOOOO, OOOOOOO, SOLA MEOOOOOOOOOOOOO [Note, I am Singing, not yelling, for the record]
Well, you know, on a side note, the term Civil War technically is not what it was. the South was not seceding to overthrow the Government, which is what a civil war technically is. They were fighting to leave the Union. So War between the States is to me the best term.
Of course, if you say War of Northern Agression, the answer you get from those Historians with a Union perspective is the South fired the first shot of the war at Fr. Sumpter SC when the Confederates fired on the Union forces their.
“...really step out of this world into something eternal...”
Run - don’t walk to your nearest “Extraordinary Form” Mass. The liturgy became a volkswagon in the 60’s. Literally a person might as well have driven the hippie bug/or van up the aisle.
“Liturgy is part of the treasury of faith” and we have teenage cantors waving their arms about to attempt to get people to sing to the most banal music I have heard. Ever
AND the Church INTRODUCED produced polyphony!!!
WHY??? (the banality)
Ha sorry to rant - you get it - the Fiath is the liturgy. The Faith if Grand- it is Jesus - must we bing it down? Let us bring the people up intsead.
Anyway - go the Extraordianry Form - GO - I went yesterday in my miserable Diocese where the Churches of the industrial age becasue we have water built by the workers have been shut - ruined abandoned - the altars torn out like hearts.
Your beef is with Jesus then.
John 3:3 Jesus answered, and said to him: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 3:7 Wonder not, that I said to thee, you must be born again.
Great version, thanks!
However, no one since then can make the claim to having free will.
We are now slaves to sin.
No man can come to God unless God draws him first and convicts him of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
Union - Many thanks! Enjoy the work out. It does come down to tenses in the end!!
St. Jerome suffered in the desert about clauses - you do know about St. Jerome - right? He was awesome and prayed and fasted about every clause he could think of - and was conversant in Greet, Latin and Aramaic and he was only a couple of centuries shy of Christ Himself - Does your pastor have these credentials???
PS Research St. Jerome and explain to me why he is wrong and the modern Pastor is right!!
PS St. Jerome was supposedly grumpy
Don’t take it wrong - I am not not trying to be obnoxius
“no one has free will?.. is this for real?
Haha - now I understand the bitterness and inability to understand catholicism.
Catholics believe in Free Will. (Thank God)
We are humans. My neighbors are “born again” and they have normal human foibles (with a touch of hubris) I might add - Pride?? Pride got Eve into trouble.
They try not to show it however they feel superior that they are “saved” whereas we mere Catholics aren’t - how does that fit into the Gospel?
In other words, they don’t always live the Truth
Nobody does, nor does God expect us to. HE knows we are incapable of it.
Our recourse is to confess our sins to restore the fellowship of the relationship. If we don't, God will discipline us and will not be able to bless us in our sin.
However, sin does NOT break the relationship. It just damages the lines of communication.
sorry - Greek
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