What we have here is the typical shallow Protestant response. Rain down a few scriptural quotes from here and there and ignore the broad breadth and depth of the history of the early Church Fathers and their coherent doctrine and instead resort to acting as internet theologian.
Perhaps you should engage yourself in serious scholarship reading.
The early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes,
“[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation. . . . Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).
You wistfully ignore the writings of St. Irenaeus AD 189 before the canonical texts were established. In the same view you have no clue of the earlier writing of St. Ignatius of Antioch in AD 110, himself a contemporary of the Evangelist John who wrote in 21: 25 that there were many things Christ did that cannot fill all the books in the world.
Your eclectic views of scriptures are utterly risible because it would mean that for eleven centuries the constellation of theologians, saints, and martyrs all got it wrong. When you swim in shallow theological waters, it is daunting to try venturing into the deep end of theological discourse. This is why the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict to say nothing of the scores of Protestant theologians who converted to Catholicism flies well over your heads.
Elsie spouts the stuff that emanates from the musings of a local neighborhood self-ordained pastor trying to lure guppies to his congregation. Without undertaking an effort to educate the likes of Elsie and others here’s good starting point.
What the Catholic Church says about Mary cannot be understood without a particular hermeneutic of the Bible, which is commonly referred to as typology: interpreting events and things in the Bible as types, or symbols, of something else. So when Luke’s angel Gabriel describes Mary as “full of grace,” Luke is explicitly using language that applies to the Holy of Holies of the Temple, and saying that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant. Now, this is not spelled out in so many words. But that’s the point: the Bible often as in Genesis, speaks to us as poetry does, through literary reference and allegory and imagery. And it is fundamental to understand this dimension.
Alas, as Protestant converts have conceded this is beyond the intellectual grasp of born-again Bible believers or because admitting to it would shatter their fragile bubble.
Catholic Mariology uses Biblical typology over and over again, so that Mary is referred to by the Genesis prophecy of the “seed of the woman” and is the woman of the Apocalypse, and is referred to by the constant Old Testament imagery of Israel’s covenant with God as a marriage, with Israel as a woman who is both virgin and mother, so that Mary is literally at the center of history, she is the link between the Old and the New Covenant. So of course Jesus is speaking to all of us when, from the Cross He makes Mary the mother of the beloved disciple.
The very existence of the Marian dogmas tells us something about God’s generosity, but of course so does the content of the Marian dogmas. It is essentially about God bestowing special favors to Mary as His mother.
She gets perpetual virginity. She gets to be glorified before anyone else. She gets protected from original sin. She gets appointed Mother of the Church and Queen of Heaven. Why? Just because He loves her, and that is reason enough.
Nice how you replied to me by including my name in a response that has nothing to do with what I presented.
Please address my post with your vaunted RC documentation on the canonicity of James. Stating that I am wrong because my argument does not line up with your authorities is a circular argumentation, because it is your authorities that I am challenging.
Of course, I realize (as do you) that you have no choice in the matter, because you have no answer of substance to my conundrum.
And that's nothing like cherry picking some verse or parts of verses to support a works based, pope based religion which supports eating Jesus, and putting the opinions of men above Scripture, to be saved.
Well, if I stand condemned by Catholicism for adhering to Scripture over the "broad breadth and depth of the history of the early Church Fathers and their coherent doctrine", so be it.
I do NOT stand condemned by God for fidelity to HIS WORD.
Your eclectic views of scriptures are utterly risible because it would mean that for eleven centuries the constellation of theologians, saints, and martyrs all got it wrong.
Might doesn't make right. Neither does consensus.
Spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, not intellectually determined or understood.
SPIRITUAL TRUTHS ARE SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 2:1-16 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Therefore, since He did not do that for the rest of us, then God doesn't love the rest of us.
Now we'll get the DEEP Catholic response of many words.
What wishful thinking by Catholics!
Every bit of this is totally made up by Rome, and yet the duped swallow it whole!
Here is the creature that Rome has created...
Joseph: Mary; are you asleep?Mary: You bozo; you KNOW I have to do my prayers.Joseph: I was just wondering if....Mary: You hornytoad; you KNOW I have had this HEADACHE for nigh unto these 12 years or so!Joseph: A fella can HOPE eternally; can't he?Mary: Hope all you want; you ain't gettin' it: I HAVE to remain a VIRGIN for my FOLLOWERS!!Joseph: What 'followers'?Mary: The ones who will be bombarding me forEVER with their heartfelt requests!!!Joseph: I may as well be dead...Mary: What did you just mumble? I ain't DEAD; just FRIGID. Now roll OVER and go to sleep.Mary: Son? are You listening?? I've got a bunch more good, Catholic prayers for you to deal with. Ready?
The following will not be, by God's grace.
Rain down a few scriptural quotes from here and there and ignore the broad breadth and depth of the history of the early Church Fathers and their coherent doctrine
Meaning you seem to ignore the different non-unanimous view of so-called "fathers," versus the often stated “unanimous consent” of the fathers and those which are contrary to Rome, while effectively elevating them "above that which is written" as needed, contrary to Scripture.
The non-inspired writings of these so-called church fathers, the relative little we have available from them, with most of which on the web being due to Anglican churchmen, stands in contrast to the inspired writings of Scripture in quality (thus the former remains in basic obscurity), and often in teaching. And no less than Jerome engaged in manifest wresting of Scripture to support his erroneous views on marriage (as unclean, and that it is bad to touch a women) versus virginity, which others ECFs also guilty of.
Meanwhile, your premise that the opinion of the lettered is to be primarily determinative of where the wisdom lays in contrary to how the church began.
Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said unto them, Why have ye not brought him? The officers answered, Never man spake like this man. Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. (John 7:45-49)
Perhaps you should engage yourself in serious scholarship reading. The early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes, “[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church,
Yes, let us read Kelly, whose Early Christian Doctrines is on my lap, and in the quote you enlist he is describing the view of Irenaeus, and adds that Irenaeus held that “what the apostles at first proclaimed by word of mouth, they afterward by God's will conveyed to us in Scriptures,” and that "provided the Bible was taken as a whole, its teaching was self-evident," and which was the "foundation and pillar of our faith." (pp. 38,39)
However, it is rather obvious that by yoking tradition as equal with Scripture and determinative of its meaning - which likely was a result of their difficulty in combating aberrations who employed Scripture, as the devil did, but whom the Lord defeated by Scripture, not tradition - Scripture ceased to become the supreme standard, but the church did. And rendered Scripture to be its servant to support doctrines she channels out of her amorphous "oral tradition."
The veracity of which does not rest upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, by which the church began, but upon the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility.
Thus Rome can even decree as binding the belief in a specific event not recorded or promised in Scripture, and contrary to its order, and even though it lacks early testimony of tradition, and the sanction of church historians and theologians, but which Rome "remembers" and guarantees to be true over 1800 years after it allegedly occurred, under the self-proclaimed premise that she cannot err. Which is cultic, not Christian.
But as the teaching of Scripture is so self-evident, then it is manifest that a whole list of accumulated Caths teachings are not of Scripture .
You wistfully ignore the writings of St. Irenaeus AD 189
"You wistfully" is personal mind reading, but let us see what is unknown or ignored by RCs (as "coherent doctrine") in the writings of St. Irenaeus, among others from Kelley, and which is related to the Assumption. For Kelly finds that Ireneaus, Tertullian, and Origen all felt Mary had sinned:
In contrast to the later belief in her moral and spiritual perfection. None of these theologians had the least scruple about attributing faults to her. Irenaeus and Tertullian recalled occasions on which, as they read the gospel stories, she had earned her son's rebuke, and Origen and insisted that, like all human beings, she needed redemption from her sins; in particular he interpreted Simon's prophecy in Luke 2:35 that a sword would pierce her soul as confirming that she had been invaded with doubts when she saw her son crucified. Page 493 (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian doctrines)
Also,
You also have the findings on Cyprian:
"Cyprian made plain, that each bishop is entitled to hold his own views and to administer his own diocese accordingly...[In Cyprian's view] There is no suggestion that he [Peter] possessed any superiority to, much less jurisdiction over, the other apostles. - (Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978], pp. 205-206)
And consistent with Roman deformation of the NT church, even by the 4th century you have the election of Pope Damasus 1, who is officially a Roman Catholic Church "saint," engaging in unholy means to secure his throne from his rival Ursinus (such unity):
....the rival faction of Felix's adherence elected Damasus, who did not hesitate to consolidate his claim by hiring a gang of thugs, storming the Julian Basilica in carrying out a three-day massacre of the Ursinians...the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus reports that they left 137 dead on the field. -Kelly, J. N. D. (1989). The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. USA: Oxford University Press. p. 32
you have no clue of the earlier writing of St. Ignatius of Antioch in AD 110, himself a contemporary of the Evangelist John who wrote in 21: 25 that there were many things Christ did that cannot fill all the books in the world.
There are indeed as revealed by Scripture, but your use of this fact in order to extrapolate support for whatever Rome decrees is simply an exercise in sophistry. Mormons also invoke Jn. 21:25, but the fact that there is more information than what is written neither means God made such available and necessary to be known now, much less validate the claims of Rome regarding such, based upon her self-proclaimed ensured infallibility and veracity.
And what RCs ignore is that rather than inferring that a whole body of oral tradition is to be channeled by Rome into doctrine, what John states is,
And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31)
There is also much that was not written in OT times, but which does not validate the Talmud with its superstitions, nor the fables of Rome passed off as doctrine.-.
The oral preaching Paul enjoined churches to obey, which a SS preacher can also do, would be that of Scriptural Truths, as that was what he claimed the gospel was of. Nor is there any evidence that what Rome teaches were things Paul referred to, and that these were not subsequently penned. And Paul was also an wholly inspired writer of Scripture, which Rome cannot claim for her doctrines.
And that the word of God/the Lord was normally written, even if sometimes first being spoken, and that as written, Scripture became the transcendent supreme standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the wholly Divinely inspired and assured, Word of God, is abundantly evidenced
And which testifies (Lk. 24:27,44; Acts 17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23, etc.) to writings of God being recognized and established as being so (essentially due to their unique and enduring heavenly qualities and attestation), and thus they materially provide for a canon of Scripture (as well as for reason, the church, etc.)
Your eclectic views of scriptures are utterly risible because it would mean that for eleven centuries the constellation of theologians, saints, and martyrs all got it wrong.
It is Caths whose use of scriptures is eclectic, and often that of ECFs, while rejection of the errors of ancients as well as Rome, which are not necessarily the same, does not equate to the constellation of theologians, saints, and martyrs getting it all wrong. These were pious men as are many Jews, yet one can be off in many ways and yet still be a child of God, as The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalms 34:18)
But Rome's progressive accretions of traditions and errors is manifest in the light of Scripture, as said, from infant regeneration and justification thru sprinkling or water, to ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, to the Lord's Supper being that of offering the "real" but not bloody body of flesh and blood of Christ as a sin offering, and literally consuming this as in order to obtain spiritual life, to a separate class sacerdotal believers distinctively titled "priests" since they uniquely engage in the former practice, to praying to created beings in Heaven, to becoming good enough to enter Heaven thru purgatorial torments, etc.
This is why the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict to say nothing of the scores of Protestant theologians who converted to Catholicism flies well over your heads.
The use of which serves to illustrate the deformation of Rome as well as ignorance of RCs or their interpretation of them and of church teaching. Consider the variant views on EENS with some invoking historical papal and conciliar teachings which stand in contrast with modern ones. Some disallow even baptized Prots from being separated brethren, let alone non-Christians from being part of the body of Christ. Which Dulles interprets Augustine and Aquinas as supporting.
“According to Vatican II, the communion of the church of Christ extends far beyond the visible borders of the Roman Catholic Church. The Council's teaching on this point was not a new departure, but an assertion of a very traditional position, held by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. All who have the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, even though they be not Catholics or even Christians, are in some sense members of Christ's body, and therefore of the church.” (p. 59) — Cardinal Avery Dulles, A Church to Believe; In http://www.crowhill.net/journeyman/Vol1No3/dulles.html
So when Luke’s angel Gabriel describes Mary as “full of grace,” Luke is explicitly using language that applies to the Holy of Holies of the Temple, and saying that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
Actually, that language applies to all believers. The word for “full” is not even in Lk. 1:28, as kecharitomene (one form of the verb "charitoo") in Lk. 1:28, is never used for "full" elsewhere, but Lk. 1:28 simply says she was graced, favored, enriched with grace, as in Eph.1:6. In contrast, the only one (though in some manuscripts Stephen in Acts 6:8) said to be full of grace is the Lord Jesus, "full ("plērēs) of grace (charis) and truth," using "plērēs," which denotes "full" 17 other places in the NT. If Mary was uniquely perfectly full of grace as bearing Christ then it would say she was, as Christ was, (plērēs charis) and RCs would not have to engage in such egregious extrapolations in seeking to left this invention.
Your own official RC Bible for America does not say “full of grace,” and Lk, 1:28 was wrongly rendered "full of grace" in the DRB, rather than "highly favored" or similar, as in Rome's current official New American Bible, “Hail, favored one!" (http://usccb.org/bible/luke/1) Yet the DRB correctly translates Eph. 1:6 as "in which he hath graced us."
For as CARM finds,In Greek: καὶ εἰσελθὼν πρὸς αὐτὴν εἶπεν Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ. κεχαριτωμένη, is the pf. pass. ptcp. of χαριτόω (charitoō). It is the single Greek word kexaritomena and means highly favored, make accepted, make graceful, etc. Repeated: It is a passive participle derived from charitoō. It does not mean "full of grace" or ‘completely filled with grace’ which is "plaras karitos" (plaras = full and karitos = Grace) in the Greek. More technical data from source here
Mary is said to be “full” of grace, or uniquely so, nor from what i find does kecharitomene being a perfect passive participle translate into meaning a "a perfection of grace," or distinctively a past action, as per RC argumentation, in distinction to echaritosen (another form of the verb "charitoo") used in Eph. 1:6, as there also it refers to a present state based upon a past action, "To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted [echaritosen] in the beloved." (Ephesians 1:6)
See more on this issue here as White gets into detail with the Greek. (And notes that the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has to attempt to build such a complex theology on the form of a participle in a greeting should say a great deal in and of itself.)
Even Roman Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin said of Luke 1:28 on the word kecharitomene:
"This is a Greek term that you could use in that exact grammatical formation for someone else who wasn't immaculately conceived and the sentence would still make sense" like Mary's grandmother). He went on to say, "This is something where I said previously, we need the additional source of information from tradition and we need the guidance of the magisterium to be able to put these pieces together." Meaning the text does not teach the IM, nor is that necessary, but tradition becomes binding doctrine under the ultimate presumed authority of Rome.
Moreover, while Mary is highly blessed among women, and is to be honored according to what is written, this does not translate in the type of supererogation of praise seen in Catholicism, in which humble Mary is made into an almost almighty demigoddess!
Catholic Mariology uses Biblical typology over and over again,
So does the book of Mormon, as the devil knows the Bible, and is the author of Marian doctrine such as makes her an almost almighty demigoddess and dispenser of all graces, who is a more immediate sure recourse for help than Christ.
The very existence of the Marian dogmas tells us something about God’s generosity,
Rather, God allows heretical teachers in order to test the people, like as He allows Israel's enemies to exist, and the very existence of the Marian dogmas examples such, by which many are deceived, succumbing to the psychological appeal of a heavenly mother, like as the pagan Queen of Heaven, (Jer. 44).
In contrast, while out of over 200 prayers in Scripture to Heaven not one is to any created being , except by pagans, while the Holy Spirit sets forth Christ as the only heavenly intercessor btwn God and man, (1Tim. 2:5) and the uniquely qualified immediate recourse to pray, by whose blood believers have direct access into the Holy of Holies in Heaven to commune with God, not Mary or saintly secretaries! To the glory of God and the damnation of Catholicism.
She gets perpetual virginity. She gets to be glorified before anyone else. She gets protected from original sin. She gets appointed Mother of the Church and Queen of Heaven. Why? Just because He loves her, and that is reason enough.
Why? Because mostly lost souls persist in thinking of mortals above that which is written, and essentially deifying them, including ascribing the ability to hear and respond to incessant mental prayers to Heaven, which only God is shown able to do.
Why? Just because He loves her, and that is reason enough.
No no no! That since God has motive and can do something never warrants teaching than that He did! Under that hermeneutic one can sanction multitudes of other unScriptural teachings, like as Catholicism has, as well as cults!
And as they also basically operate out of the Roman model of sola ecclesia, in which the leaders are the supreme authority which possess ensured veracity, then the real issue is the RC basis for assurance of Truth. That of the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, or the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, under which the church began. Which is not taught in Scripture and relies upon the