Posted on 04/28/2015 8:36:56 AM PDT by RnMomof7
Its a question that requires little thought to answer; are you infallible? It ranks right up there with, Are you God? But to Catholic apologists the question is quite serious; thats because they believe that there is a man on earth who, on the subject of faith and morals, is infallible; they call him, holy father. See, it does rank right up there with, Are you God, at least when coming from people who think their leader is equal with God on deciding issues of faith and morals.
According to Catholic apologist, John Martignoni, this question should cause Protestants to suddenly doubt everything they believe, and Catholics should take comfort in knowing they and only they, have an infallible leader here on earth. But how can they know? Is there one Catholic person out there, besides the pope of course, who will confess to being infallible? And if a Catholic is not infallible, how can he or she know their pope is infallible? They cant! So if they cannot infallibly declare their pope to be infallible, then their assertion is nothing more than a fallible opinion. And if they are wrong, which my fallible counter-assertion says they are, then they are being deceived.
The logic that so often accompanies claims of papal infallibility goes something like this: Jesus did not leave His people vulnerable to the doctrinal whims of competing leaders.
The logic used is quite revealing; it indicates very strongly that those who use it have no idea what it means to have the gift of the Holy Spirit, because if they had the gift of the Holy Spirit they would not be looking to Rome for infallible direction. It also reveals that they think everyone else is like them, wanting to follow the whims of their leaders. It also denies the notion that Christ has relationship with man through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their magisterium reserves that privilege for themselves and people buy into it. Its no different than Mormons following their prophet in Utah.
The pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Apostle Paul explicitly said that Christ is the head of His Church and He reconciles all things to Himself. To wit, Catholics will be quick to agree that Christ is the head, but then immediately contradict themselves by saying, but He established the papacy through which He reveals His truths . Based on what? If Christ is the head and we are the body, where does the papacy fit in? I see no evidence of this claim in Scripture or history, so if the evidence is not there the papacy must belong to a different body; one that is not associated with Christ and His church.
In his newsletter on his website where he shares chapter one of his new book, Blue Collar Apologetics, John Martignoni instructs his faithful followers to establish the fact that Protestants are not infallible early on in discussions with them. The purpose of doing this is to attempt to convince the Protestant that he could be wrong about what he believes. The funny thing is Martignoni never tells his readers what to do if the Protestant turns the question back on them; and that is most certainly what is likely to happen.
Does Martignoni really not see this coming, or is he simply at a loss for how to address it? Once a Catholic apologist is faced with admitting their own fallibility, they will immediately be forced to deal with the realization that their claim of papal infallibility is itself a fallible opinion; so they must, therefore, admit that they could be wrong as well. And once they realize the playing field is level, the evidence will do the talking.
A Catholic apologist who is willing to concede that his belief regarding papal infallibility is nothing more than a fallible opinion will likely ask another similar question, What church do you belong to and how old is it? In their minds this is the true gotcha question. They believe, in their fallible opinions of course, that they belong to the church founded by Christ nearly 2000 years ago. But the fact is, and yes it is a fact, there was no Roman Catholic Church 2000 years ago; it took a few hundred years for that to develop. Furthermore, by their own admission, the doctrines they hold equal in authority to the Bible, which they call sacred traditions, did not exist at the time of the apostles; that also is a fact.
There is something, however, that is clearly older than any Protestant or Roman Catholic Church and that is the written books of the Bible. If a person bases his or her faith on these written works then no supposed authority that came later can undermine the power of God working through them. It is unfortunate that when a person comes to Christ in faith through reading the Bible, that there are so-called Christians who come along to cast doubt in their minds. For example, in a tract on the Catholic Answers website called, By What Authority, it is stated, In fact, not one book of the Bible was written for non-believers.
Not according to the Apostle John who explicitly wrote, These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name? He did not say these are written because you believe; he said, these are written that you may believe. Johns gospel is a firsthand written testimony of the ministry of Jesus for the purpose of bringing people to Him, and Catholic apologists are telling us it was never Johns intention for us to become believers by reading it? Amazing; isnt it? The Catholic Answers philosophy seems to be to make up facts rather than face them.
So for the sake of the next John Martignoni disciple who wants to ask me if I am infallible, the answer is no; and incidentally your answer to my identical question is also no. Thus I am not interested in your fallible opinion that your pope is infallible when speaking on faith and morals. Perhaps one of you can go tell Mr. Martignoni that chapter his one is incomplete, and that he might want to consider adding a realistic response to his question rather than a bunch of scenarios where the Protestant is simply dumbfounded. His current scenarios might have been fun for him to write, but they are only going to embarrass his readers when they go out armed with the Martignoni sword.
I don't know it's all right there...And it's so simple...I had no trouble reading and understanding when I first read it...But then I didn't have any preconceived notions when I started...
Well, who knows? I would venture a guess, though I don't know for sure. It might be spiritual blindness. In vain do they worship Him, teaching for doctrine, the commandments of men. Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Am I getting close? I had preconceived notions, because I was a catholic myself, but when I started reading the Bible, the ONLY source of truth, I got saved too. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure it out, does it? 🇵🇭😎 It is so simple, a child can understand it. 🙀😂 So maybe most can't see the forest because there are too many trees in the way. 😕😞 They think it can't be so simple, but it is. 😆😃😀😁😇😄
https://www.youtube.com/embed/daqwGRdRIsk?feature=player_detailpage
Time to look at Ezekiel 45:17 to find out what Paul was referencing in Colossians....
17 Then it shall be the princes part to give burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings, at the feasts, the New Moons, the Sabbaths, and at all the appointed seasons of the house of Israel. He shall prepare the sin offering, the grain offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offerings to make atonement for the house of Israel.
The drink, meat and holy day, new moon sabbath day OFFERINGS..
Not the ‘days’.. the offerings that were to be offered on those special ‘days’..
Which were done away with one atoning Lamb sacrifice on
the 14th day of His 1st month, Feast of Passover.
Which is interestingly, always the 6th and final Work day of His 2nd week on our Heavenly Father’s calendar regardless of when it falls on the pope Gregory calendar..same way the Work of Creation was finished on the 6th and final work Day in His 1st prophetic week within His month.
And if you will see, it is a shadow of things to come... not a shadow of things past.
People are free not to observe the Kingdom calendar that points to the Son.
Rome and the world have a substitute for people to place their faith in...
All of our life , work and worship are faith steps.. I have been blessed to reject Rome fully but everyone has their own faith walk.
Prophets like ezekiel and Isaiah have hints that what christendom says is done away with, like new moon days and Sabbaths are there for quite a while, like when the new heaven and new earth is made..
Amazing if Christendom saw Rome the way the first reformers saw Rome, the papacy and the pope.
Then maybe the world running on Antichrist’s calendar in these last days would register , at least with people who fight other roman lies and counterfeits.
Rome’s lies and counterfeits can only be seen when held up to the Light.
Nobody seems to do that with their calendar..
Quite a blind spot...
Do you think anyone would be so foolish as to actually try that line? On second thought, don't answer that. I am reasonably sure many will try that, and find themselves up the proverbial creek. 🚣🏿😱😭😹 Why anyone would be so presumptuous as to think they actually have anything coming, is beyond me. 😩😭👎 No one has anything coming. No one. No way, no how. 🚯🚷
This issue is actually one of the core issues I examined before returning to the Church. The Catechism was helpful in this regard (para 106, that’s what I was thinking of when I was posting before on this subject) however the forums at Catholic Answers was also helpful.
You might find this post of interest http://forums.catholic.com/showpost.php?p=10337477&postcount=11
However the entire thread there is useful for this.
But returning to the post cited, the main point is this:
The term dictated can be understood in a couple ways. There is dictation in business, such as reciting something you want someone else to write word for word. Or there is dictation as in a non-mechanical steering. We see this in sports, for example, when we say, “Team X dictated the pace of the game.”
In the 1994 Magisterial text Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, we find this:
The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation of this kind is that, refusing to take into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human. It refuses to admit that the inspired word of God has been expressed in human language and that this word has been expressed, under divine inspiration, by human authors possessed of limited capacities and resources. For this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by various periods.
The magesterial document referenced is found here http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/pbcinter.htm
Thanks,
IPhone 6. 🇵🇭😄😃😀😇😂😎
But which rushed reply (I was going to be gone for some hours) needed some proof reading, sad to say).
P1: An infallible magisterium is necessary to know what is of God P2: Only Catholicism possesses an infallible magisterium Therefore: Only Catholicism provides what is necessary to know what is of God
Which premise is what i was responding to, and includes both knowing what Scripture consists of and means, and which is behind all "The Catholic Church gave us the Bible" polemical assertions in response to refutation from Scripture.
Cardinal Avery Dulles: People cannot discover the contents of revelation by their unaided powers of reason and observation. They have to be told by people who have received in from on high. Even the most qualified scholars who have access to the Bible and the ancient historical sources fall into serious disagreements about matters of belief. - Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, p. 72; http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/08/magisterial-cat-and-mouse-game.html
It is the living Church and not Scripture that St. Paul indicates as the pillar and the unshakable ground of truth....no matter what be done the believer cannot believe in the Bible nor find in it the object of his faith until he has previously made an act of faith in the intermediary authorities..." - Catholic Encyclopedia>Tradition and Living Magisterium; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm
The whole argument is that the Cath magisterium has uniquely received the revelation from on high, only by which we assuredly know what Divine revelation consists of and means, thus we need faith in in this intermediary authority to assuredly correctly know what the word of God is and means.
Thus the now classic quote by Keating:
the mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true. Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
And Manning,
The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour.
Which means Rome can "remember" a specific event Scripture never records or foretells, that of a fable that lacks even early historical testimony , and even make binding doctrine out of it though even her own scholars were adverse to it:
Ratzinger writes (emp. mine), Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative . What here became evident was the one-sidedness, not only of the historical, but of the historicist method in theology. Tradition was identified with what could be proved on the basis of texts. Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Marys bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared.
But,
subsequent remembering (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously [because the needed evidence was absent] and was already handed down in the original Word [via invisible, amorphous oral tradition] - J. Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), 58-59.
People can not honestly believe that nonsense, do they? LOL.
Amen. People are being led astray by both Catholics and Mormons.
Are you saying baptism Is not part of protestant religions? If so, that is as fake as most of the stuff posted by some Catholics on here. I accepted Christ as a child and was baptized in a farm pond! Every Protestant church I have attended, practiced that belief. When I go by that pond on the way to my family in MS, I remember that day.
Which is pretty much a strawman, as far as scholarly evangelical understanding recognizing that God used both the writers personality (as seen with the passionate Paul) as well as cultural expressions. I did hear an effective evangelist once state that "they gnashed on him with their teeth" (Acts 7:54) meant the Jews at issue where literally biting Stephen though.
However, let us consider the opposite manner of exegesis which Rome has taught for decades, right in her own sanctioned Bible notes.
You may hear interpreters of the Bible who are literalists or fundamentalists. They explain the Bible according to the letter: Eve really ate from the apple and Jonah was miraculously kept alive in the belly of the whale. Then there are ultra-liberal scholars who qualify the whole Bible as another book of fairly tales. Catholic Bible scholars follow the sound middle of the road. (15. How do you know)
However, they are clearly driving on the left.
It explains, under Literary Genres (p. 19) that Genesis 2 (Adam and Eve and creation details) and Gn. 3 (the story of the Fall), Gn. 4:1-16 (Cain and Abel), Gn. 6-8 (Noah and the Flood), and Gn. 11:1-9 (Tower of Babel: the footnotes on which state, in part, an imaginative origin of the diversity of the languages among the various peoples inhabiting the earth) are folktales, using allegory to teach a religious lesson.
It next states that the story of Balaam and the donkey and the angel (Num. 22:1-21; 22:36-38) was a fable, while the records of Gn. (chapters) 37-50 (Joseph), 12-36 (Abraham, Issaac, Jacob), Exodus, Judges 13-16 (Samson) 1Sam. 17 (David and Goliath) and that of the Exodus are stories which are "historical at their core," but overall the author simply used mere "traditions" to teach a religious lesson. After all, its understanding that Inspiration is guidance means that Scripture is Gods word and mans word. What this means is that the NAB rejects such things as that the Bible's attribution of Divine sanction to wars of conquest, cannot be qualified as revelation from God, and states,
Think of the holy wars of total destruction, fought by the Hebrews when they invaded Palestine. The search for meaning in those wars centuries later was inspired, but the conclusions which attributed all those atrocities to the command of God were imperfect and provisional." (4. "Inspiration and Revelation," p. 18)
It also holds that such things as cloud, angels (blasting trumpets), smoke, fire, earthquakes,lighting, thunder, war, calamities, lies and persecution are Biblical figures of speech. (8. The Bible on God.)
The Preface to Genesis in my St. Joseph's 1970 NAB edition attributes it to many authors, rather than Moses as indicated in Dt. 31:24, and the footnote to Gn. 1:5 refers to the days of creation as a highly artificial literal structure.
Even in the the current online NABRE, the The footnote (http://www.usccb.org/bible/gn/1:26#01001026-1) to Gn. 1:26 states that sometimes in the Bible, God was imagined as presiding over an assembly of heavenly beings who deliberated and decided about matters on earth, thus negating this as literal, and God as referring to Himself in the plural (Us or Our) which He does 6 times in the OT. Likewise, the footnote to Ex. 10:19 (http://www.usccb.org/bible/ex/10:19#02010019-1) regarding the Red Sea informs readers regarding what the Israelites crossed over that it is literally the Reed Sea, which was probably a body of shallow water somewhat to the north of the present deep Red Sea. Thus rendered, the miracle would have been Pharaohs army drowning in shallow waters!
And after affirming all of the Bible is the word of of, in its preface to the Pentateuch, it asks, "How should a modern religiously minded person read the Pentateuch?," and in answering that it asserts (consistent with the aforementioned discredited liberal JEDP theory, which holds the Pentateuch was not written mainly by Moses, but was the work of later writers, editors and redactors as late as the sixth century BC), "The story had to be reinterpreted, and the Priestly editor is often credited with doing so. A preface (Gn 1) was added, emphasizing Gods intent that human beings continue in existence through their progeny and possess their own land. Good news, surely, to a devastated people wondering whether they would survive and repossess their ancestral land. The ending of the old story was changed to depict Israel at the threshold of the promised land (the plains of Moab) rather than in it." (http://www.usccb.org/bible/scripture.cfm?src=_intros/pentateuch-intro.htm)
Its (NABRE) footnote (http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/6#01006001-1) in regards to Gn. 6 and the sons of heaven having relations with the daughters of men explains it as apparently alluding to an old legend. and explains away the flood as a story that ultimately draws upon an ancient Mesopotamian tradition of a great flood. Its teaching also imagines the story as being a composite account with discrepancies. The 1970 footnote on Gen. 6:1-4 states, This is apparently a fragment of an old legend that had borrowed much from ancient mythology. It goes on to explain the sons of heaven are the celestial beings of mythology.
In addition, even the ages of the patriarchs after the flood are deemed to be artificial and devoid of historical value. (Genesis 11:10-26)
All of which impugns the overall literal nature the O.T. historical accounts, and as Scripture interprets Scripture, we see that the Holy Spirit refers to such stories as being literal historical events (Adam and Eve: Mt. 19:4; Abraham, Issac, Exodus and Moses: Acts 7; Rm. 4; Heb. 11; Jonah and the fish: Mt. 12:39-41; Balaam and the donkey: 2Pt. 2:15; Jude. 1:1; Rev. 2:14). Indeed the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety (2Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9), and if Jonah did not spend 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the whale then neither did the Lord, while Israel's history is always and inclusively treated as literal.
Regarding the Gospels, the teaching of my 1970 NAB speculates that some of the miracle stories of Jesus in the New Testament (the fulfillment of of the Hebrew Bible) may be adaptations of similar ones in the Old Testament, and that the Lord may not have actually been involved in the debates the gospel writers record He was in, and thinks that most of which Jesus is recorded as saying was probably theological elaboration by the writers.
Going beyond the Holy Spirit condensing or expanding the words of Christ, as seen by duplicate accounts, it states under "Reading the Gospels,
The Church was so firmly convinced that the risen Lord who is Jesus of history lived in her, and taught through her, that she expressed her teaching in the form of Jesus sayings. The words are not Jesus but from the Church. Can we discover at least some words of Jesus that have escaped such elaboration? Bible scholars point to the very short sayings of Jesus, as for example those put together by Matthew in chapter 5, 1-12
It does allow that the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod, was extremely probable, and that people leaving Bethlehem to escape the massacre, is equally probable, but outside the historical background to this tradition, the rest is interpretation. This means is taught as justified due to the authors intent.
It additionally conveys such things as that Matthew placed Jesus in Egypt to convince his readers that Jesus was the real Israel, and may have only represented Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to show that Jesus wa the s like Moses who received the law on Mount Sinai. (St. Joseph edition, 1970; How to read your Bible, "The Gospels," 13e, f, g. and i)
The Conditioned thought patterns (7) hermeneutic also paves the way for the specious argumentation of feminists who seek to negate the headship of the man as being due to condescension to culture, a very dangerous hermeneutic, and unwarranted when dealing with such texts as 1Cor. 11:3.
The NAB has gone through revisions, but I have found the same O. T. footnotes in The Catholic Study Bible, Oxford University Press, 1990, which also has the proper stamps, and uses the 1970 O.T. text and the 1986 revised N.T. And a Roman Catholic apologist using the 1992 version also lists some of the same errors described below, and is likewise critical of the liberal scholarship behind it (though he elsewhere denigrated Israel as illegally occupying Palestine), while a Roman Catholic cardinal is also crtical of the NAB on additional grounds.
1Cor. 5:1; 6:13; 7:2; 10:8; 2Cor. 12:21; Eph. 5:3; Gal. 5:19; Col. 3:5; 1Thes. 4:3; but simply has immorality, even though in most cases it is in a sexual context.
It is a slippery slope when historical statements are made out to be literary devices, and Muslims have taken advantage of the NAB's liberal hermeneutic to impugn the veracity of the Bible, http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Shabir-Ally/nab.htm.
On the other hand there are Catholics who only sanction the Douay-Rheims Bible, yet one Roman Catholic apologist criticizes it as well. (http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=4300&CFID=45541857&CFTOKEN=30609021)
More .
But since neither you or those who believed the OT prophets and became the NT church are infallible, then according to some RCs neither you nor they can even truly know what is good!
All right. But can you explain, step by step, HOW your Scripture quote (John 20:30-31) proves anything of the sort?
Should have read Christianity instead of Protestant religions. My brain has a fibro fog moment. I do not think well when I hurt like a truck ran over me. Guess I should have gone to the dr after my resident ghost pushed me down. : ). Really do not know what she could have done.
Now, I would like to hear your plan of salvation. What will you use to get to Heaven? Preferably the short and to the point version. I will pray that we see each other at the Pearly Gates. 🇵🇭😎🙉🙈🙊
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