Posted on 03/07/2014 10:14:06 AM PST by matthewrobertolson
Only trusting the Bible without the Church would be like loving "Romeo & Juliet" and hating Shakespeare's explanation of it.
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Yep. Ever since about the 5th century AD. You are in the X ring on that one
Not a one of your Catholic ancestors watched a protestant TV evangelist and was told they had to be “born again” or they were going to hell.
Never knew Jesus was a protestant evangelist in John 3, but hey, it is why I hang out on FR. Learn new stuff every day. Interesting that Jesus told a man he had to be baptised into a church that did not yet exist to go to heaven. "HANG ON, DUDE! IT IS COMING" The application of this is just silly, since the Christian ordinance of baptism had not even been instituted when Nicodemus had his conversation with Jesus
They all believed in praying the rosary. They all believed in confessing their sins to the priest.
This is false. You cannot point to this being a mandatory practice of the early church. This is what I mean by telling you that you don't know the history of your own organization.
But for some reason they were all wrong and only “born again” protestants that have only existed for 500 years all right.
Not so. I hung out with some beautiful and gracious nuns in Colombia who clearly knew Christ. The testimony of one of them was "I have been a nun for 20 years but have only known Jesus as my savior for 5" When I told her that this was quite an unorthodox statement and VERY unusual for a Roman Catholic, she told me "not among those of us who know the Lord!" I was flabbergasted and told her that her language was more akin to a protestant. She just smiled and told me of her ministry, which was to teach bible study methods to lay people in Colombia. That kind of stuff is RAMPANT through the history of the Roman Church. You are simply mistakened and believing falsehood and lies if you think that just because there was no ORGANIZATIONAL schism in the Western Church (really, not even that is true) that there was not a current of true faith in the church. This is a lie that is believed by both ignorant protestants and ignorant roman catholics.... though it is believed by ignorant fundamentalist protestants more often than catholics, in my experience.
If you believe this, I saw a sighting for Bigfoot outside the back door a few minutes ago. Come on down start looking for him. Maybe you’ll find two or three.
Your understanding of what your own church teaches and its history is more akin to the Bigfoot stuff. You really should read the writings of one of the Popes. Bernard of Clairvaux would set you straight on much of this foolishness.
Jesus started the sacraments. Jesus died 2,000 years ago. Ignorance of Christianity is why Luther ripped the Church apart and ignorance of Christianity keeps it ripped apart.
Yes. We know.
This is the point that Jesus was making using hyperbole.
We know this because there are more than a dozen examples in the NT of Paul and Peter referring to their spiritual fatherhood, father/son relationships, or teaching roles.
"...for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel." --St. Paul
"For this I was appointed a preacher and apostle . . . a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth" (1 Tim. 2:7) -- St. Paul
"God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers" (1 Cor. 12:28)-- St. Paul
"his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers" (Eph. 4:11) --St. Paul
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." --Jesus
And there are many more such examples in the NT.
After all, what do you call your father?
Have you ever called anyone, "teacher"?
Why are these words unspeakable? A literal interpretation results in all kinds of absurdities.
I agree with the depiction of the woman as being the daughter of Zion, the Church of God.
Wherever the context is found, I would hope it is appended to further iterations of that quote. As it stands, the context missing, implies a falsehood. By referencing the document, the curious can read for themselves, and make their judgement as to whether the context or the implication of the quote is true.
You really need to stop the history lessons, they are most inconvenient.
The Catholic church stands in opposition to that. then you're wrong
The rest:
In order for you to be correct, John would have to be wrong. Your argument is with him and the Holy Spirit for that is what John says in Chap 20:30-31
From a Catholic site of theirs...
The King's bride is his mother...I believe there are some pagan historical references to that scenario...
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “...why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"Elizabeth can rightly call Mary, the "mother of my Lord," because Jesus is God.
Born again believers are all graced as Mary was.
In one sense, yes. In another sense, no. Catholics believe that having been chosen to be the perpetually virginal...
[When told by the angel Gabriel that sometime in the future she would bear a son, she replied, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" Did Mary not understand the birds and the bees? Her answer only makes sense if she intended to remain as a virgin.]
...Mother of God is a singular grace.
[“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" "from now on all generations will call me blessed"]
Similar to when Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, Simon’s name was changed to Kephas (Rock), or Peter, Gabriel names Mary as "Kecharitomene."
χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ.
Chaire, kecharitōmenē, ho kyrios meta sou!
Hail, "Full of Grace," the Lord is with you!Chaire kecharitomene. "Hail, Full of Grace," we translate it. In Latin, following the venerable St. Jerome's translation known as the Vulgate, it is Ave, gratia plena.
The word that Luke uses--κεχαριτωμένη, kecharitomene--appears to have been crafted out of thin air, appearing into the Greek vocabulary as unexpectedly as the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and as silently as the Word became Flesh. It was the word for the moment.
The word is used nowhere else in the Scriptures or in secular Greek literature. The technical name for such a novel, unique word is hapax legomenon. Hapax legomenon--which comes to us from Greek--means "expressed once."
This sort of word is sometimes also referred to as a nonce word. In this case, it is a one-of-a-kind word for a one-of-a-kind person in a one-of-a-kind situation. No one else in human history is κεχαριτωμένη (kecharitomene).
Though a nonce word, it is not nonsensical. Grammatically, the word kecharitomene is the feminine present perfect passive voice participle of a verb, specifically, the Greek verb χαριτόω (charitóō). In the passive voice, the verb means to have been made graceful, to have been endowed with grace.
The Greek verb charitóō is itself a little scarce in Scripture. Other than its unusual form in Luke 1:28, it is used by St. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians. Here we read St. Paul use it for the redeemed sinner: "for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted (ἐχαρίτωσεν, echaristōsen) us in the beloved."
Here, the word charitóō is in what is known as its aorist active indicative form, obviously an entirely different form from Luke 1:28. So though the root verb (charitóō) is the same in Luke 1:28 and Ephesians 1:6, the words are used in entirely different tenses, voices, and senses. The only commonality, it seems, is sanctifying grace.
The traditional English translation for kecharitomene is "full of grace." While the translation "full of grace" for kecharitomene not perfect--because it doesn't go far enough--it is far better, it seems, than the rather insipid "most highly favored" with which some have wanted to replace it.
In Scripture, the Holy Spirit calls her *mother of Jesus*.
John 2:1 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
John 2:3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”
Acts 1:14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
Scripture is clear in calling Mary *the mother of Jesus*.
The only people who believe that the Church teaches this are some Protestants.
Even Wikipedia understands this:
Within the Orthodox and Catholic tradition, Mother of God has not been understood, nor been intended to be understood, as referring to Mary as Mother of God from eternity — that is, as Mother of God the Father — but only with reference to the birth of Jesus, that is, the Incarnation. This limitation in the meaning of Mother of God must be understood by the person employing the term.
The term, Theotokos can be traced as far back as Origen, in 254 A.D.
And really, the term goes all the way back to the New Testament, when Elizabeth refers to Mary as, "the mother of my Lord."
The term is simply a shorthand way of expressing the profound and singular grace of having being chosen to be the Mother of the Man/God, Jesus, with the emphasis being given to Jesus' divine nature. Certainly, her having given birth to a human son would not have been seen as especially significant.
Yeah; we PROTESTants have noticed that they were SO 'insignificant' that Rome denies the FACT that there WERE any!
Do you not see how Mary can be both?
Was Elizabeth wrong?
You're proposing a false dichotomy.
You lost me.
Nice strawman.
Truly human and truly divine = Jesus
Mary was the mother of both natures of Christ! *With the help of the Holy Spirit, of course!*
Amen.
The title of "Theotokos" can be traced as far back as 250, and ultimately St. Elizabeth, who refers to Mary as "the mother of my Lord."
Interestingly, the Church debated the most appropriate title for Mary at the Third Ecumenical Council.
The use of Theotokos was formally affirmed at the Third Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus in 431. The competing view, advocated by Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople, was that Mary should be called Christotokos, meaning "Birth-giver of Christ," to restrict her role to the mother of Christ's humanity only and not his divine nature.Nestorius' opponents, led by Cyril of Alexandria, viewed this as dividing Jesus into two distinct persons, the human who was Son of Mary, and the divine who was not. To them, this was unacceptable since by destroying the perfect union of the divine and human natures in Christ, it sabotaged the fullness of the Incarnation and, by extension, the salvation of humanity. The council accepted Cyril's reasoning, affirmed the title Theotokos for Mary, and anathematised Nestorius' view as heresy. (See Nestorianism)
In letters to Nestorius which were afterwards included among the council documents, Cyril explained his doctrine. He noted that "the holy fathers... have ventured to call the holy Virgin Theotokos, not as though the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of their existence from the holy Virgin, but because from her was born his holy body, rationally endowed with a soul, with which [body] the Word was united according to the hypostasis, and is said to have been begotten according to the flesh" (Cyril's second letter to Nestorius).
Explaining his rejection of Nestorius' preferred title for Mary (Christotokos), Cyril wrote: "Confessing the Word to be united with the flesh according to the hypostasis, we worship one Son and Lord, Jesus Christ. We do not divide him into parts and separate man and God as though they were united with each other [only] through a unity of dignity and authority... nor do we name separately Christ the Word from God, and in similar fashion, separately, another Christ from the woman, but we know only one Christ, the Word from God the Father with his own flesh... But we do not say that the Word from God dwelt as in an ordinary human born of the holy virgin... we understand that, when he became flesh, not in the same way as he is said to dwell among the saints do we distinguish the manner of the indwelling; but he was united by nature and not turned into flesh... There is, then, one Christ and Son and Lord, not with the sort of conjunction that a human being might have with God as in a unity of dignity or authority; for equality of honor does not unite natures. For Peter and John were equal to each other in honor, both of them being apostles and holy disciples, but the two were not one. Nor do we understand the manner of conjunction to be one of juxtaposition, for this is insufficient in regard to natural union.... Rather we reject the term 'conjunction' as being inadequate to express the union... [T]he holy virgin gave birth in the flesh to God united with the flesh according to hypostasis, for that reason we call her Theotokos... If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is, in truth, God, and therefore that the holy virgin is Theotokos (for she bore in a fleshly manner the Word from God become flesh), let him be anathema." (Cyril's third letter to Nestorius)
Jesus never instituted anything remotely resembling the office of of holy orders. He never commanded penance, never instituted a practice of annointing the sick, nor confirmation. I defy you to find any evidence that He did.
Luther simply brought that out, and refused to knuckle under to the papacy's insistence that he recant clear and unambiguous teachings of scripture.
Yup
To be sure. How can it possibly be read any other way?
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