Posted on 03/17/2016 7:49:46 AM PDT by ebb tide
Rome has found a name for a new Square in the heart of the city, an open space in the middle of a leafy garden park in a choice area near the Coliseum: Martin Luther Square.
Almost 500 years after Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg, Swabia (October 1517), and 494 years after the bull of excommunication issued by Pope Leo X ("Decet Romanum Pontificem", January 1521), the city of Rome has honored the man who sparked the Protestant Reformation, a movement premised on what Luther condemned in that very city, the headquarters of the Catholic Church.
The nameplate “Martin Luther – German Theologian (1483-1546)” is assigned to an area laden with history: nearby are Emperor Nero's Domus Aurea and the boulevard named after the Greek-Egyptian goddess Serapide. The square was officially inaugurated on Wednesday, September 16 of last year.
The decision came six years after an official request was advanced by the Union of Seventh Day Adventist Churches and the Union of the Lutheran Evangelical Churches in Italy.
While no official comment was issued by the Vatican, Lutheran circles have understandably been all abuzz. “I'm very pleased that our request has come true before the anniversary of the Reform in 2017,” said Pastor Heiner Bludau, senior pastor of the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Italy:
When we researched [in 2010] the meaning of Martin Luther's visit to Rome … we saw that his stay was clearly a part of the history of the Reformation and therefore of the history of Europe. So to dedicate a square in Rome to the great reformer is a highly symbolic and momentous step; in the light of world history it is a step that reflects the level reached by the process of European unification. On both counts I am extremely grateful.
The news, however, barely registered on the press radar, not only because Italy is grappling with engrossing social and economic troubles, but also because the revival of the memory and cult of Martin Luther has become almost normal fare now, both in secular and ecclesiastical circles.
In secular circles it has been powered in part by Germany's effort to unify the separate cultures which were shaped in the formerly partitioned East and West sides of the country, quietly renewing pride in a common national history so as to get over the country’s guilt complex for the World Wars and the Holocaust, so often mentioned in post-war German education.
The endeavor to get past the memories of the twentieth century, not to mention the economic morass inherited from East Germany in the 1990s, has been so successful that Germany today enjoys a hegemony over the European Union. (Germany trails only the U.S. and the U.K. on the “Elcano Global Presence Report 2015”.) This is the case not just from an economic point of view but also a renewed admiration for the country’s apparent efficiency, moral rigor and hard work.
The process can be illustrated by the success among children and families of the plastic toy Luthers recently marketed by Playmobil, which is the fastest-selling Playmobil figure in the company’s history. Related toy replicas have also been popular, including one of Wittenberg Cathedral, one of the castle of Warburg, and one of Luther’s wife, Katharina von Bora, the ex-Cistercian nun he married in 1525, which are sold as specially numbered collector's items.
Gemany's Catholic authorities also had a part in the revival and unprecedented universality of respect for the father of Protestant Christianity. In January 2015, the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx—President of the German Bishops’ Conference and coordinator of Pope Francis's Board of Economic Advisors—summed up Martin Luther’s long march through the institutions of ecumenism in Politik & Kultur: “Now having completed fifty years of dialogue, a Catholic Christian, too, may respectfully read the texts penned by Luther and benefit from his ideas.” The same acceptance has been variously expressed by Cardinal Walter Kasper, German Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, and Fr. Hans Kung. In his 2008 publication “Night-time Conversations in Jerusalem”, written in German, Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini praised Luther as having somehow inspired the changes that came after Vatican Council II, thereby effectively recasting as the greatest of reformers he who had previously been seen as the prototypical excommunicated heretic.
Last November, Pope Francis caused a stir when, in the words of Vatican reporter Edward Pentin, he appeared “to suggest that a Lutheran wife of a Catholic husband could receive holy Communion based on the fact that she is baptized and in accordance with her conscience.” Pentin reported a month later that Pastor Jens Kruse of Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church “said he believes Pope Francis ‘opened the door’ to intercommunion when the Holy Father spoke to his church last month, and that his parishioners generally have the same opinion.” When asked if he interpreted the Pope’s remarks as “allowing Lutherans to receive holy Communion, leaving it up to their conscience?”, Kruse replied in the affirmative:
The Pope said that’s a question each person has to decide for himself. I think it’s typical for Pope Francis to open doors, and now we, as churches, have the duty to find ways to fill this open door with more of a life of ecumenism, of unity. The image of an open door is, I think, a very good one because we are in front of this door at this moment and now we have to find ways to go through this open door.
Following the November 2015 event, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, told Aleteia.org, “Intercommunion is not permitted between Catholics and non-Catholics. You must confess the Catholic Faith. A non-Catholic cannot receive Communion. That is very, very clear. It’s not a matter of following your conscience.” In order to receive Holy Communion, Cardinal Sarah emphasized, “I need to be in the state of grace, without sin, and have the faith of the Catholic Church. … It’s not a personal desire or a personal dialogue with Jesus that determines if I can receive Communion in the Catholic Church.”
Prior to his pontficate, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger invited the faithful to reflect “very seriously” on Luther's message and “save the great things in his theology”. But he did so without blurring the lines that define the radical change that Luther brought about in “the relationship between the Church and the individual, between the Church and the Bible”, which to this day prevents Catholics and Protestants from sharing “the certainty that recognizes in the Church a common conscience which is greater than private intelligence and interpretations”.
On his trip to Germany, less than a year and a half before abdicating, Pope Benedict XVI stopped at Erfurt, where Luther studied theology and celebrated his first Mass. In the talk given on that occasion, Benedict dwelled on the importance attributed by Luther to the issue of sin, a particularly significant facet of Luther’s teaching in the light of the current emphasis on mercy that often seems to downplay the reality of sin and the real possibility of judgment. Benedict stated:
“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God mean in our lives? In our preaching? Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. The question no longer troubles us.
In January, it was announced that Francis plans to travel to Sweden in October of this year “for a joint ecumenical commemoration of the start of the Reformation, together with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation and representatives of other Christian Churches.” The event will be the start of events marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation; it will also “highlight the important ecumenical developments that have taken place during the past 50 years of dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans.”
I hope, however, that the warmth to Luther’s ideas will not go even further and fashion the formerly excommunicated heretic into a hero and a saint, whitewashing history until even actual events lose all meaning. For the former Augustinian monk was as much a man of the flesh and of turbulent spirits as Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), whose sins we are in no danger of being allowed to forget.
If there is a reciprocal owning up of mistakes all around, on the part of the Protestants this might include, for example, a formal disowning of Luther's most virulent invectives, such as the ones against the Jews, contained in Luther’s 1543 book On the Jews and Their Lies, and the ones in his “Admonition to Peace”. In the latter, with regard to “The Twelve Articles of the Christian Union of Upper Swabia” (April 1525), Luther pleaded with the German nobility to suppress all the “murderous and thieving hordes of peasants” in the following terms:
What reason be there for leniency with the peasants? If there be any innocents among them, God will know how to best defend and rescue them. If God doesn't rescue them, then that means they are criminals. I think it's best for God to kill farmers rather than princes and judges, as the peasants have no Divine authority on which to base their wielding of the sword. No mercy, no patience towards the peasants, only wrath and indignation, from God and from man. This moment is so exceptional that a prince can earn heaven through bloodshed. Therefore, dear gentlemen, go ahead and exterminate, slay, strangle, and may whoever has power, use it.
Ironically, it was reported that at the September 2015 event in Rome, Michael Kretschmer, representative of the Bundestag (the national Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany), “remembered the sensitivity of the father of the Reformation for the last (of the world). ‘If he were here today, he would tell us to take care of the poor,’ he said.” Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, stated: “Today gesture means that Rome has to respect every religion and faith. It is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice, Einstein said. And here we have broken some prejudices.” By all means, let’s welcome the ridding of wrong prejudices, but let’s not reject a prejudice for the truth.
BTW....the founder of my religion is Jesus of Nazareth. A Jewish carpenter.
Actually, you have a relationship, not a religion.
Jesus didn’t come to establish a new religion.
He came to reconcile mankind to God.
1. I have no "religion" - but instead a relationship with a living Savior.
2. Luther is not the leader of anything.
But to answer your question... from metmom's earlier link. It appears you have at least 1941 years of condemnation and disavowing to do...
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Origen of Alexandria writes that the Jews "have committed the most abominable of crimes" in conspiring against Christ, and for that reason "the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election" |
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St. Cyprian writes that the Jews have fallen under the heavy wrath of God, because they have departed from the Lord, and have followed idols |
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The Council of Elvira decrees that Christians and Jews cannot intermarry, have sexual intercourse, or eat together |
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Conversation and fellowship with Jews is forbidden to the clergy by the Council of Nicaea |
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Christian emperors of Rome decree that Christians converting to Judaism, and Jews obstructing the conversion of other Jews to Christianity, will incur the death penalty; Jews can not marry Christians, or hold public office, or own slaves |
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St. Gregory of Nyssa refers to the Jews as "murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels and detesters of God,... companions of the devil, race of vipers, informers, calumniators, darkeners of the mind, pharisaic leaven, Sanhedrin of demons, accursed, detested,... enemies of all that is beautiful" |
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St. Ambrose calls the synagogue "a place of unbelief, a home of impiety, a refuge of insanity, damned by God Himself" |
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A mob of Christians, at the instigation of their bishop, looted and burned the synagogue in Callinicum, a town on the Euphrates. The Emperor Theodosius wants those responsible punished and the synagogue rebuilt at the expense of the bishop, but St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, pressures him to relent and condone the action |
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St. Augustine writes: "the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue to till the ground of an earthly circumcision, an earthly Sabbath, an earthly passover, while the hidden strength or virtue of making known Christ, which this tilling contains, is not yielded to the Jews while they continue in impiety and unbelief, for it is revealed in the New Testament. While they will not turn to God, the veil which is on their minds in reading the Old Testament is not taken away... the Jewish people, like Cain, continue tilling the ground, in the carnal observance of the law, which does not yield to them its strength, because they do not perceive in it the grace of Christ" |
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Calling the synagogue "brothel and theater" and "a cave of pirates and the lair of wild beasts," St. John Chrysostom writes that "the Jews behave no better than hogs and goats in their lewd grossness and the excesses of their gluttony" |
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A group of monks sweep through Palestine, destroying synagogues and massacring Jews at the Western Wall |
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St. Cyril of Alexandria expels Jews from his city |
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Jews are required by law to observe Christian feasts and fasts and to listen to sermons designed to persuade them to convert |
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The synagogue in Constantinople is turned into a church |
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The Code of the emperor Justinian decrees that in Christian Byzantine society Jews cannot read their sacred books in Hebrew in their synagogues, and the Mishnah and other rabbinic interpretations are banned |
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The Third Synod of Orléans decrees that Jews cannot show themselves in the streets during Passover Week |
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Pope St. Gregory the Great decrees that Jews are not to be forced into baptism "lest they return to their former superstition and die the worse for having been born again" |
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Pope St. Gregory the Great decrees that Jews should not have excessive freedom, but also "in no way should they suffer a violation of their rights" |
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The Synod of Toledo orders the burning of the Talmud and other books |
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Pope Stephen IV decries ownership of hereditary estates by "the Jewish people, ever rebellious against God and derogatory of our rites" |
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Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, writes anti-Jewish pamphlets in which he refers to Jews as "sons of darkness" |
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Pope Leo VII encourages his newly appointed archbishop of Mainz to expel all Jews who refuse to be baptized |
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In Rouen, Orléans, Limoges, Mainz, and probably also in Rome, Jews are converted by force, massacred, or expelled |
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The Synod of Narbonne decrees that Christians are not permitted to live in Jewish homes |
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Pope Alexander II warns the bishops of Spain to prevent violence against the Jews because, unlike the Saracens, they "are prepared to live in servitude" |
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The Synod of Gerona decrees that Jews must pay the same taxes as Christians to support the church |
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Pope Gregory VII writes to King Alphonso of Spain telling him that if he allows Jews to be lords over Christians, he is oppressing the Church and exalting "the Synagogue of Satan" |
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Rüdiger, bishop of Speyer, grants the Jews a charter allowing them to keep Christian servants and serfs, own fields and vineyards, and carry arms |
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Massacres of Jews takes place in the First Crusade, destroying entire Jewish communities in Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne and other cities. The Jewish chronicler reports: "The enemies stripped them naked and dragged them off, granting quarter to none, save those few who accepted baptism. The number of the slain was eight hundred in these two days." The chronicler Guibert de Nogent reports that the Rouen Crusaders said: "We desire to go and fight God's enemies in the East; but we have before our eyes certain Jews, a race more inimical to God than any other" |
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Jews are expelled from France, all their property is confiscated, and Christians' debts to them are cancelled with the payment of one-fifth of their value to the treasury |
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The Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lion-Heart, stirs anti-Jewish fervor and results in the mass suicide of the York Jews in Clifford's Tower on March 16 |
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Jews are allowed to return to France |
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Pope Innocent III decrees that Jews are to be allowed to worship in their synagogues, they are not to be coerced into baptism, and that Jewish cemeteries are not to be mutilated |
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The Fourth Lateran Council decrees that Jews are to wear distinctive clothing, and on the three days before Easter they are not to go out in public |
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The Council of Oxford prohibits the construction of new synagogues |
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The Council of Narbonne orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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Jews in France are forbidden to lend money on interest |
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The Council of Arles orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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Thirty-four Jews are burned to death in Fulda on a blood-libel charge |
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The Council of Béziers orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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Pope Innocent IV defends the Jews: "they are wrongly accused of partaking of the heart of a murdered child at the Passover... Whenever a corpse is found somewhere, it is to the Jews that the murder is wickedly imputed. They are persecuted on the pretext of such fables... they are deprived of trial and of regular judgment; in mockery of all justice, they are stripped of their belongings, starved, imprisoned and tortured" |
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The Council of Albi orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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The Council of Arles orders Jews to wear a round patch, but not when traveling |
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The Synod of Vienna decrees that Christians cannot attend Jewish ceremonies, and Jews cannot dispute with simple Christian people about the Catholic religion |
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The Synod of Breslau decrees compulsory ghettos for Jews |
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Pope Clement IV instructs the Franciscans and Dominicans to deal with the "new Christians" who had reverted to Judaism |
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St. Thomas Aquinas writes that the Jews sin more in their unbelief than do pagans because they have abandoned the way of justice "after knowing it in some way" |
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Pope Gregory X defends the Jews: "It happens sometimes that Christians lose their children and that the enemies of the Jews accuse them of having kidnaped and killed these children in order to offer sacrifices with their heart and blood, and it also happens that the parents themselves, or other Christians who are enemies to the Jews, hide the children and attack the Jews, demanding of them, as ransom, a certain sum of money, on the entirely false pretext that these children had been kidnaped and killed by the Jews" |
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Jews in England are forbidden to lend money on interest |
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The Synod of Ofen decrees that Christians cannot sell or rent real estate to Jews |
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Jews in France are forbidden to live in the countryside |
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The Council of Nîmes orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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The Council of Vienna orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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Jews are expelled from England and southern Italy |
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Jews in France are restricted to special quarters of the cities |
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Jews are expelled from Bern |
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The Jews of Röttingen, charged with profaning the Host, are massacred and burned down to the last one |
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The "Shepherds' Crusade." A Christian chronicler records: "The shepherds laid siege to all the Jews who had come from all sides to take refuge... the Jews defended themselves heroically... but their resistance served no purpose, for the shepherds slaughtered a great number of the besieged Jews by smoke and by fire... The Jews, realizing that they would not escape alive, preferred to kill themselves... They chose one of their number (and) this man put some five hundred of them to death, with their consent. He then descended from the castle tower with the few Jewish children who still remained alive... They killed him by quartering. They spared the children, whom they made Catholics by baptism" |
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The Council of Avignon orders Jews to wear a round patch, but not when traveling |
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King John authorizes his subjects in Liegnitz and Breslau to destroy the Jewish cemeteries in order to use the tombstones to repair the city walls |
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During the Black Death, Jews are accused of poisoning wells in order to overthrow Christendom, and many thousands of Jews are killed. Pope Clement VI defends the Jews against these charges |
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Jews are expelled from many parts of Germany |
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Jews are expelled from Hungary |
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The Council of Vabres orders Jews to wear a round patch |
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Jews are expelled from Strasbourg |
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The expulsion of Jews from France, begun in 1306, is completed with an edict promulgated on the Jewish Day of Atonement |
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Jews are expelled from Mainz by the archbishop |
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Jews are expelled from Austria |
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Jews are expelled from Fribourg and Zurich |
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Pope Martin V denounces anti-Jewish preaching and forbids the forced baptism of Jewish children under the age of twelve |
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Jews are expelled from Cologne |
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Jews are expelled from Saxony |
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The Council of Basel decrees that Jews cannot obtain academic degrees |
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King Alfonso orders the Jews of Sicily to attach a round patch to their clothing and over their shops |
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Jews are expelled from Mainz by the town councilors |
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Jews are expelled from Augsburg |
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Jews are expelled from Wurzburg |
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Jews are expelled from Breslau |
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Pope Callistus III bans all social communication between Christians and Jews |
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Jews are expelled from Mainz following a conflict between two candidates for the archepiscopal seat |
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Jews are expelled from Tlemcen |
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Jews are expelled from Mainz by the archbishop |
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The entire Jewish community in Trent, northern Italy, is put to death on the allegation that it had murdered a boy for religious purposes |
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Jews are expelled from Warsaw and Cracow |
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After forcing many Jews to be baptized and then referring to them as Marranos (swine), and after an Inquisition in which some 700 Marranos were burnt at the stake for showing signs of "Jewish" taint, Spain expels all Jews from the country |
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Jews are expelled from Portugal |
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Jews are expelled from Regensburg |
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Cardinal Carafa instigates a public burning of copies of the Talmud and other Jewish religious works in a square in Rome |
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Pope Paul IV restricts Jews to ghettos and decrees that they are to wear distinctive headgear |
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Pope St. Pius V expels Jews from the Papal States, allowing some to remain in Rome's ghettos and in Ancona for commercial reasons |
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Pope Clement VIII includes a ban on all Jewish books in the expanded Index of Forbidden Books |
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Pope Leo XII decrees that Jews are to be confined to ghettos and their property is to be confiscated |
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Edgardo Mortara, 6-year old son of a Jewish family in Bologna, is abducted by the papal police and brought to Rome. He had been secretly baptized five years earlier by a domestic servant who thought he was about to die. The parents try to get the boy back, and there is a universal outcry, but Pope Pius IX rejects all petitions submitted to him |
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In an interview with Zionist leader Theodor Hertzl, Pope St. Pius X says: "I know, it is disagreeable to see the Turks in possession of our Holy Places. We simply have to put up with it. But to sanction the Jewish wish to occupy these sites, that we cannot do... The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people... If you go to Palestine and your people settle there, you will find us clergy and churches ready to baptize you all" |
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Newly independent Poland passes a law making Sunday a compulsory day of rest in Poland. The law is intended to force Jews to observe the Christian sabbath in addition to their own |
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Speaking for Pope Benedict XV, a Vatican spokesman informed representatives of the Zionist Movement htat they did not wish to assist "the Jewish race, which is permeated with a revolutionary and rebellious spirit" to gain control over the Holy Land |
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At a conference of Catholic academicians in Innsbruck, Austria, Bishop Sigismund Waitz calls the Jews an "alien people" who had corrupted England, France, Italy, and especially America |
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In a series of Advent sermons, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich defends the Old Testament against Nazi attacks but emphasizes that it is not his intention to defend contemporary Jewry, saying that a distinction has to be drawn between Jews living before and after the crucifixion of Jesus |
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In a pastoral letter on January 23, Bishop Johannes Maria Gföllner of Linz, Austria, declares that while the radical anti-Semitism preached by Nazism is completely incompatible with Christianity, it is the right and duty of Christians to fight and break the harmful influences of Jewry in all areas of modern cultural life. The Austrian episcopate condemns the letter in December for causing racial hatred and conflict |
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The general consensus among the Catholic papers in Poland is that Jewish influence should be reduced in all areas of life, that the Polish and Jewish communities should be separated as much as possible, and that the most desirable option is mass emigration of the Jews from Poland. St. Maximilian Kolbe is an active promoter of antisemitic literature |
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The Polish Catholic Church gives full support to a government policy encouraging Jewish emigration from Poland |
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Cardinal August Hlond, the primate of Poland, issues a pastoral letter, stating: "I warn you against that ethical attitude that is fundamentally and uncompromisingly anti-Jewish. It is contradictory to Catholic ethics. It is permissible to love your nation more than others, but it is not permissible to hate anyone. Not even the Jews... You should close yourselves to the harmful influence of Jewry... But you may not attack Jews, beat them, hurt them, slander them. In a Jew you should also respect and love a human being and your neighbor" |
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Austrian bishop Alois Hudal publishes a book defending Nazi racial ideology, supporting laws preventing a flood of Jewish immigrants, and criticizing the "Jewish" press for playing off Austrians against Germans. His book receives the support of Archbishop (later Cardinal) Theodor Innitzer of Vienna |
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In a speech before Belgian pilgrims, Pope Pius XI denounces antisemitism and says: "Spiritually we are all Semites." His comments are reported in various newspapers but not in the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano |
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Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest with a doctorate in theology, became president of independent Slovakia. An extremist hater of Jews, he allied Slovakia with Nazi Germany and, with strong objections from the Vatican, deported most Slovakian Jews to their deaths in the camps. He declared: "It is a Christian action to expel the Jews, because it is for the good of the people, which is thus getting rid of its pests." Monsignor Tiso was executed after the war as a war criminal |
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The "Final Solution" takes place in Nazi-occupied Europe. This Holocaust, the killing of some six million Jews, "happened in the 'heartland' of Western Christian Europe... It happened with the passive acquiescence or active collaboration of most European Christians, and no decisive protest from church leadership, Catholic or protestant" (Rosemary Radford Ruether) |
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In Croatia, Bishop Ivan Saric of Sarajevo appropriates Jewish property for his own use. His diocesan newspaper declares that "Jewish greed increases. The Jews have led Europe and the world towards disaster, moral and economic disaster. Their appetite grows till only domination of the whole world will satisfy it." Bishop Aksamovic of Djakovic teaches that "today it is the sacred duty of every citizen to prove his Aryan origins." Meanwhile, Archbishop Aloys Stepinac of Zagreb preaches in a sermon that "it is forbidden to exterminate Gypsies and Jews because they are said to belong to an inferior race" |
True.
That reminds me of those who claim to love Israel while hating Jews and Judaism. Are you one of those ?
If what you wrote were true, you would not have defended Luther twice; it seems to me your theology is fundamentally based on Luther being saved, so that no matter how wicked he was you must try to excuse him since his doctrine of justification by faith alone is a fundamental tenet of your religion.
Credibility in the Day of Our Lord?
I thought you guys believed in you’re own pre-destination. Why wait for the Day of Our Lord? Isn’t it like an express pass at Disney World? Why wait?
Elohim. Uniplural. It's the "-im" that does it, eh? "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen.1:1 AV)
In this verse, "God" is "Elohim" translated into English.
Strong's Number H430
אלהים
'ĕlôhı̂ym
Brown, Driver, & Briggs Definition:
1) (plural)
. . 1a) rulers, judges
. . 1b) divine ones
. . 1c) angels
. . 1d) gods
2) (plural intensive - singular meaning)
. . 2a) god, goddess
. . 2b) godlike one
. . 2c) works or special possessions of God
. . 2d) the (true) God
. . 2e) God
Part of Speech: noun masculine plural
Therefore, "Elohim" is uniplural.
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, . . ." (Gen. 2:4 AV).
In this verse, "LORD" is a word substituted for the Hebrew word pronounced "Yehovah" meaning "I AM." "God" is Elohim.
Strong's Number H3068
יהוה
yehôvâh
BDB Definition:
Jehovah = “the existing One”
1) the proper name of the one true God
. . 1a) unpronounced except with the vowel pointings of H136
Part of Speech: noun proper deity<
Jehovah Elohim is the name of the Mighty God. Jehovah is uniplural in character.
שׁמע ישׂראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד׃
"Sh'ma Yisroel, Adenoi Eloheinu, Adenoi Echad" (Deut. 6:4 Hebraica Stuttgartensia, translated, reverentially subsituting 'Adenoi' for 'Jehovah')
"Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD:" (Deut. 6:4 AV)
"Adenoi" is substituted for and represents "Jehovah," the Uniplural God.
"Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me" (Isaiah 48:16 AV).
The Son was at the beginning, and is now One with The Father and The Spirit in the Godhead, Jehovah Elohim. This is not three Gods. This is One Uniplural God of One Substance, composed of three manifestations. An example in the physical universe is that of an element or a compound, one substance, existing in three phases. One employed in Biblical accounts is the compound dihydrogen oxide, whose liquid phase is water, whose solid phase is ice, and whose vapor phase is steam. All three can coexist, with continual transformation of one to another at the interface between phases.
There is no other GOD like Him.
"To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like? . . . Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, . . ." (Is. 46:5,9 AV).
Alleluiah!
The doctrine of faith alone was written by a Jewish follower of Christ.
Perhaps you've heard of him? His name was Paul.
28For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. 29Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one.
Again, and I really hope you can understand this....I am a follower of the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.
You cannot be anti-semittic and be a follower of Jesus.
The question still begs to be answered by you....are you a follower of Jesus?
Are you relying upon Him and Him alone for your salvation?
Jesus makes it clear that faith is through Him and only Him in John 14:6...."I am the way, the truth and the life...."
The leadership of my Church, the only true Church, is Jesus Christ. Not some fat, adulterous slob.
Was Luther "a follower of Jesus ?"
I can only speak for myself.
The question still remains to answered....are you a follower of Christ?
I'm sorry, but I just don't believe you follow Christ. Otherwise, you would not reject His Church, the one and only Church, that He founded.
Were the popes?
Christ didn't found any church. He founded His assembly.
I've put it on the internet that I believe Jesus died for me.
He does not tell us to join a church but to come and follow Him. The church is the body of believers of which I am a part.
He offers forgiveness of my sins for which I am thankful.
I know that it is only through Him that I have forgiveness.
There are no good deeds I can do to earn salvation.
Based on the promise in Ephesians 1:13-14, I, along with any follower of Christ, have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise Who is given to us as a pledge of our inheritance.
Are you a follower of Christ? Do you believe He will forgive your sins?
+1
These ‘guys’ will not be standing for Judgment on The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord. You don’t know what that means, do you!
If anything non-Catholic is to be rejected and renounced because of the writings of one non-Catholic man, then anything Catholic should likewise be rejected wholesale based on the lengthy history of Roman Catholicism and the MANY popes who also displayed antisemitism.
Anything less would be hypocrisy of a high degree.
But when it's a pope, hey, they're just human, all sinners just like the rest of us.
Catholics demand perfection out of Luther and excuse the basest and grossest sin and immorality in their own leadership.
And for the record, our theology is not based on Luther being saved. It has nothing to do with it.
Logical, certainly. Will it happen? Never!
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