Posted on 04/16/2014 5:37:55 AM PDT by Salvation
Featured Term (selected at random:
ROSMINIANISM
A system of philosophy formulated by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797-1855), founder of the Institute of Charity. Encouraged by Popes Pius VII, Gregory XVI, and Pius IX, he undertook a renewal of Italian philosophy, ostensibly following St. Thomas Aquinas. But the influence of Descartes, Kant, and Hegel shifted his thinking. He came to hold that the human mind is born with the idea of "being." In time it analyzes this basic idea to discover in it many other ideas, which are identical with those in the mind of God. Rosmini also taught that reason can explain the Trinity and that original sin is only a physical infection of the body. After his death forty of his propositions were condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1887 and 1888.
All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.
ROTFL!
HMMMmmm...
I've heard that Protestantism is as well.
Do you agree with that assessment?
Repaint! And thin no more!
over THERE!
But at the same time -- not really
All the bush league batters
Are left to die
on the diamond.
In the stands
the home crowd scatters
...For the turnstiles [youtube, Neil Young]
And let's not forget, that we have never seen any Catholic ever post anything that was even a tiny fraction as insulting and abusive as the posts made by Protestants every day all over FR!
I mean the New Testament. It was not written before the Pentecost, you know. The inspired writers of the New Testament expressed nothing that would not be Catholic, and which work to canonize and which not to canonize was a decision not of theirs but of the Holy Catholic Church.
your interpretation of Scripture is driven by the premise that the Latin church (Rome) is infallible
I argued nothing but the plain text in front of us. You don't have any evidence for allegorical usage in either case.
I don't see the rest worth much, sorry. You just list your opinions; I am not interested in them. We discussed the scripture. There is no allegory there in these passages. That is the salient point.
And that is fine. Daniel, at least initially does scrutiny and challenge and I respond to his analytic posts without complaint. It is when people post feelings and opinions that I lose interest.
What a joke you make of your own words...
Do you have any theological questions? I can provide some assistance as towards untangling what Romanists (not you) have tangled up, long before you or I were born.
I'm beginning to see it more clearly with each passing day.
As you would say, and have to many others -- in regards to your own last note here to which I give reply; I see nothing of value (or of interest, either)
Spare me your own "opinions" and hurt feelings, while we are at it.
Get real, or go get lost.
However...
Catholic writers express all kinds of things that are not New Testement.
oOH...he got all of that one!
[mixing sports metaphors] You just knocked/spread those scintillas all over the place, and right out of the park.
We become Christians when God makes us Christians.
Are you a Calvinist then? But no, because here you say:
Like anything else I do there is grace of God in it and also my own private reason cooperating with grace
In which I see the word "cooperating" as an admission of volition. When someone believes, and is baptized, as is the model for all individual NT conversions, said belief is a volitional act, a turning of the mind from the depredations of sin (repentance) to focus on the Savior for His power to save (faith):
Rom 10:9-11 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
Baptismal regeneration, I do understand, is the issue here for you, and it confuses the issue I've been raising of private judgment. The thing I am getting at, which has been raised numerous times in the past by other RC apologists, is that no one (except perhaps your special case of someone being presumptively RC from infancy) can avoid the use of private judgment in becoming RC, so why is private judgment condemned? True, it is fallible, but everyone must use it, and you admit that you do. Yet supposedly it is only really bad when Protestants use it, for example, to try to understand Scripture. Double standard fallacy.
As to allegories (Jesus is the Door etc):
Just obvious
According to whose rules for “obvious?” My previous quote to you of Augustine was his attempt to search out some of those rules, but there is no formal set. It remains to the judgment of the interpreter, and as I have already pointed out, a number of the fathers agree with Protestants that the linguistic signaling in John 6 suggests a spiritual and not a corporeal understanding of consuming Christ’s flesh and blood, which is confirmed by Jesus himself in verse 63, as we have already discussed.
But this last point is perhaps easier to understand in light of the immediately preceding passage:
John 6:61-62 When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? (NKJV)
Here Jesus has made a statement that seems impossible, especially under Jewish law rejecting cannibalism, and it has them confused and complaining. Then Jesus ratchets up the “impossibility factor” by telling them, in essence, if you think it’s hard to accept now, just how much harder will it be when Jesus is removed to Heaven?
It is at precisely this moment when he explains to them that their carnal understanding, their thinking of this in terms of his literal flesh, is the key to their misunderstanding, that instead they should be seeing this in spiritual terms, not carnal.
BTW, there is no reference here to your proposed hybrid meaning of spiritually nutritious consumption of corporeal flesh. That is an anachronistic insertion into the text of ideas developed much later which are alien to the "face value" meaning of verse 63, which is, as Jesus says, that it is His words that are to be spiritually understood, that produce a spiritual benefit, as opposite from the unprofitable view of seeing his body and blood as physical foods.
Put another way, the crowds were hungry; they craved that physical food, they clamored for more of that physical food from Jesus. That was their frame of reference. Jesus tells them flat out that frame of reference is wrong, that they should be looking for the spiritual reality bound up in His words.
By analogy, consider Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman. When Jesus confronts her with her personal sins and spiritually needy condition, she immediately deflects from that to the popular debate about where, physically, to worship. Jesus condescends to answer the physical question, but then redirects her to think of worship not in physical terms, but rather that those who worship God must do so in spirit and in truth. In other words, she needed to tend to her heart and her sins, not which building she worshipped in.
As well in other places. The point is, Jesus made a habit of redirecting his hearers to rise above their carnal misunderstanding of spiritual truth. This passage is just a part of that larger pattern, and fits in well with the Johannine presentation of Jesus as the Logos.
It is in the context of real physical events.
To a limited extent, yes, but as pointed out above, always with a view to redirecting his listeners to matters of the sprit, the cleansing of the heart, the warm reception of the words of Christ, the life and death of Christ, as the true nutrition of the soul.
Furthermore, unlike most literature, we have the formal declaration of a presumption in favor of analogical language:
Mark 4:34 But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.
And lest one be tempted to think this was a one-time event, the parallel passage makes it even clearer that it was a sustained pattern with a divine purpose:
Matthew 13:34-35 All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: "I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS KEPT SECRET FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD."
And again, after teaching the larger group using analogy, he always offers his close disciples an explanation, an intimate look at the spiritual realities lying behind the figures of speech his carnal audience so often found confusing. But what is the divine purpose? Why set up the carnally-minded for failure?
Mark 4:11-12 And He said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that 'SEEING THEY MAY SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE, AND HEARING THEY MAY HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND; LEST THEY SHOULD TURN, AND THEIR SINS BE FORGIVEN THEM.' "
God had determined judgment, and judgment would fall. They would not be given the opportunity to escape. This too is a hard saying, but God is sovereign, and His judgment is not to be questioned. Or, as I like to think of it, God is perfectly good, and we are not. If we were perfectly good, and understood everything as well as God understands it, we would never disagree with any of His acts. Ever.
In any event, this means that the burden of proof is on any interpreter whose interpretation contradicts this presumption of analogy. Put another way, if any opportunity is presented to take a difficult saying and render it as an analogy (or more precisely as a parable), then that analogy is the presumptively correct interpretation. We have Jesus and the prophets to back that up, not the Johnny-come-lately crowd of the 8th, 13th, or 15th centuries.
In fact, so obvious is this mode of interpretation that Augustine himself could not escape it. You rightly point out he is not infallible. But then no one but God is fully without error at all times and in all ways. This means that your citation of Ignatius has the same limitation. His words, made to stand alone and out of context, might be understood in a literal sense. But just as well he could be using the verb of being figuratively, just as happens with so many of the analogies of Scripture. It was a pattern of speech typical for the day, and does not unequivocally demonstrate his belief in real presence in the RC/Aquinian sense, but even if it did, could not be regarded as greater authority than any other fallible father.
So on the one hand, I do recognize Augustine as fallible, and I am not presenting him here as proof on a par with Scripture of the memorialist view of the Eucharist. But on the other hand, if he is allowed statements such as follows, and yet remains a doctor of the Church in good standing, how do modern RCs justify condemnation of those who agree with him in every respect on this matter?. For example, he says:
If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” says Christ, “and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” John 6:53 This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share [communicandem] in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory [in memoria] of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us.Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book III, Chapter 16.
See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm for full context.
Now before, you said:
Good, if you deal with a sign. We don't, in this case
Yet here we have Augustine practically writing Zwingli’s confession for him! Augustine clearly here says it is a sign.
Now to reiterate, you miss my point if you think I am raising Augustine as proof per se for a figurative approach to John 6:53. I am not. He is, as you say, quite fallible, as are we all. But last I checked, he is still regarded as a highly commended doctor of the church in good standing, and it is not death to listen to his teachings, even here. Whereas in Ignatius’ case, listening to the Gnostics deny the fleshly coming of the Christ would indeed be death.
And so the two are harmonized with each other AND with Scripture IF one allows that the presumption of figurative language, as set in place by God Himself and prophesied through the Holy Spirit, is in effect for John 6. Which presumption by no coincidence at all squares nicely with the rules of ordinary language to confirm the figurative usage, both implicitly in the impossibility of cannibalism, and explicitly in the flat denial of the profitability of the flesh in understanding these words of Christ.
But this is odd, because Trent anathematizes anything short of transubstantiation, even some generic form of real presence. They specifically sign off on Aquinas’ pseudo-Aristotelian accidence versus substance:
"If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which change the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema." (Council of Trent, Second Canon, 13th Session).
So how either Augustine as a virtual Zwinglian or you as one not committed to transubstantiation per se can avoid anathematization is not clear to me. Has something changed since Trent? But if Augustine is accepted, and his words here simply put off as mere fallibility, why are Protestants not accorded the same grace, even though we adopt an essentially Augustinian position in this matter?
One last footnote, then I have to get to bed. You somewhere chided me for limiting myself to the historical grammatical hermeneutic that is so typical of Protestantism, i.e., the natural use of natural language, because you thought it would prevent me seeing all the many supernatural doctrines of Scripture. But that is a serious misunderstanding of the hermeneutic. There is no rejection of divine truth. But there is an operating assumption that God speaks to us of His divine treasures using words that in themselves are ordinary and mundane. They only acquire their divine meaning when they convey the divine message in ordinary language. They do not become infused with magic meanings which we by some lost art of gnosis must ferret out.
For example, if I say “Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,” I need no special meanings for any of those words. They all have their mundane meanings, but taken together convey a totally earthshattering divine truth, that Jesus has the power to raise the dead, and so death is not final, that regaining life after death depends on one’s relationship with Jesus.
So this hermeneutic does not prevent us from seeing any of the divine truths of Scripture. What it does do is act as an insurance policy that we will not go the way of the gnostics or other offshoots by inventing elaborate networks of hidden meanings which only our “enlighted” group has the power to interpret correctly. God knows perfectly well how to communicate with us, and he has done so in such a way that it is hidden from the self-wise but fully accessible to those with the faith of a child:
Luke 10:21-22 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.
Amen.
Peace,
SR
Since you are one whose "argumentation" is that of making personal judgments against Prots, while acting as an autocratic judge of what constitutes bigotry (and thus decrees Catholics have never been guilty of it against Prots here), i think your accusations of sowing discord based on an exchanges btwn others which insults Prot faith, is insolent.
None that the Holy Catholic Church hasn't answered.
Of course, -- we had two thousand years of Christian practice to put into words.
In your eyes thru Rome's, versus the many and critical differences referenced and gone over her.
and which work to canonize and which not to canonize was a decision not of theirs but of the Holy Catholic Church.
Which final indisputable decree over 1400 years after the last book was penned made writings no more the Word of God than they were before.
I argued nothing but the plain text in front of us. You don't have any evidence for allegorical usage in either case.
You argued based upon the premise that Rome could not be wrong, and thus Scripture can only support her, and thus force texts to do so, as was shown. Thus despite the evidence for allegorical usage being clear and abundant and consistent with Scripture, you see none thru your Roman eyes. While you effectively interpret her as damning most every Prot who does not believe in the Catholic Real Presence.
I don't see the rest worth much, sorry. You just list your opinions; I am not interested in them.
I don't see the rest worth more reproof, sorry. You must just support Rome's opinions - which sometimes is more as you interpret her - while I substantiated mine based on objective examination. That is the salient point. I am not interested now in more Roman propaganda.
Do you mean like --- the difference between taking dictation, being inspired, or by other less narrowly defined processes being led to infallibility? (sometimes -- by majority vote)
But that "infallibility" --only for the Latin branch of the church nowadays of course, according to the Latin church that is...
Stuff like that? Well then me too, me too, "they" have taught me all I know about "them" and theology too --- well -- other than that which can be gained in this day and age we live in, since we have better access to pertinent info studying such as history, and very importantly also the writings of those many refer to as "early church fathers" and the like, and scripture too -- which when all falls into fit together well enough, tells of theological precepts somewhat differently (and notably so) then this "Holy Catholic church" which you speak of --- which I must assume that church to be to yourself --- the Latin branch of the universal church which has as it's topmost administrative personage one titled or called "pope"? That one -- right?
Do you recall those "tangles" I was just speaking about?
Those are very much the work of persons from within the [Roman] Catholic church. Other theological tangles from outside that ecclesiastical body --- those not so much the fault of any of the Latin branch of "the church", but instead are the fault of one's which could be looked upon as theological free-booters.
When time comes to unravel those of the Latin church --- I can help, for I do know the ropes, so to speak.
Ask any question you like. But please, be a sincere seeker when you do ask.
Baptism marks the soul. God does it, so no volition needs to be involved. The result is a Christian soul, ready to be saved at that moment. (You realize that we understand salvation as a process that ends with judgment upon death; this is different from Protestant concept of salvation already achieved at the moment of willing acceptance of Christ as Lord ans Savior).
Unless that baptised infant dies and goes to heaven, an adult will emerge and he will develop both reason and inclination to sin, and he will sin. At that point an upward cycle of confession, absolution, strengthening of the soul through the reception of the Eucharist and generally life in the Church leads a man to salvation. All these are acts of volition on the part of man. If the man wills not to eat the Eucharist, -- perhaps for reasons that seem good to him, -- he loses his salvation, the doors of the Temple close to him and his soul is near death. But of course, grace continues to bathe him and often it breaks though and he comes back, and dies saved.
So, no, free will is central to the Catholic anthropology. "Private judgment", however, is something else. Whether or not it is as you say "condemned" depends on what is being privately judged. For example, -- and I suspect that is what you have in mind, -- the private judgment of what the Bible means is indeed condemned, -- not not because we are not supposed to think for ourselves but because private judgment of the Holy Scripture is an act against reason. Why is it an act against reason? Because the Church gave you the Bible (wrote in part, translated, canonized all of it, refused to canonize other works, promoted as a tool of sanctification to all) as a part of her sacred deposit of Faith. Just like you would not have a private judgment about what Freeper X writes without asking Freeper X to clarify, so shouldn't you read the Bible without asking the Church to clarify.
It is at precisely this moment when he explains to them that their carnal understanding, their thinking of this in terms of his literal flesh, is the key to their misunderstanding, that instead they should be seeing this in spiritual terms, not carnal.
I agree, but let is clarify what "carnal understanding" we are talking about. To understand the Eucharist is an act of cannibalism is that carnal understanding. We are accused of practicing cannibalism today. There are two extremes here between which Jesus steers through a difficult idea. One extreme is that just how the disciples ate the breads and the fishes, and just how the ancient Jews ate the manna, so we should eat Jesus's flesh. That line of thinking Jesus opposes first by pointing to the manna not leading to eternal life, and at the end of his discourse by poitning to His divinity and immediately after directly explaining that the Eucharist does not feed the stomach. Its "profit" is spiritual.
But at the same time He insisted passionately: "the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world"; "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day"; "my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed". And indeed, the words at the Last Supper are plain "this is my body". With that He militates against the other extreme: spiritualizing the Eucharist to the point that it becomes only a symbol. He wants us to do something that would speak to our senses directly, go to our belly and become a physical indwelling of God in us.
as Jesus says, that it is His words that are to be spiritually understood, that produce a spiritual benefit, as opposite from the unprofitable view of seeing his body and blood as physical foods.
Eh, no. He does not say that. I inserted nothing; He said
It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing
He is not referring to "unprofitable view"; the text says "η σαρξ ουκ ωφελει ουδεν", -- the flesh does not profit. Profit from what? From the thing in focus, the Eucharist. That is the final rejection of the "cannibalistic" view, but it comes after the insistence on physically eating Him has been made with great force.
Jesus made a habit of redirecting his hearers to rise above their carnal misunderstanding of spiritual truth
Yes, and so it is here, but he pattern intertwines with the insistence of the Eucharist being really Him and really food. Indeed there is another pattern, of giving us physical objects in addition to theory. So, baptism is of water, mud heals the blind, His clothes heal hemorrhage, and above all His Incarnation gave us a man-God of flesh. By giving us the Eucharist Christ gave us a direct, first hand experience of His Incarnation (tasting His flesh), His Passion (consuming his flesh) and His Resurrection (abiding in us forever in spirit).
if any opportunity is presented to take a difficult saying and render it as an analogy (or more precisely as a parable), then that analogy is the presumptively correct interpretation.
No, that is radically wrong. That kind of hermeneutics is what takes half the scripture and throws it away. When Christ speaks in parables, He first indicates that it is a parable and when there is a misunderstanding, He immediately explains it. In John 6 we clearly have misunderstanding, people even leave, and He still does not explain His words about eating the flesh "indeed" anyhow differently. He is only concerned about them eating only the Eucharist form then on. and at the Last Supper He again says "this is my body". Finally, St. Paul understood Him in the perfect Catholic way in 1 Cor. 11: (1) feed your stomachs at home; (2) This is Christ's body according to His words; (3) if you don't understand that this is His body, you die. So you can cite Augustine, not a universal authority in Catholicism, I'll stick with St. Paul in 1 Century and St. Ignatius of Antioch in the 2 Century.
how ... you as one not committed to transubstantiation per se can avoid anathematization
Real Presence means that the bread and the wine become truly Jesus and not conjoined with Jesus. I am with Trent. What I said is that the medieval scholasticism is not a necessary part of the dogma; it is a way to explain it. Also note that anathemas correct error; they do not establish dogmas. The error is co-substantiation and it ought to be condemned.
You somewhere chided me for limiting myself to the historical grammatical hermeneutic
I did? I think I perhaps "chided" you for going for an allegorical explanation without evidence the text being written allegorically. "This is my body" is indeed on par with “Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead”, requiring no "special meanings of words". I wish you read John 6 as you read John 11.
O...
K...
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
The "co" part or the other?
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