Posted on 10/16/2002 6:55:59 AM PDT by ELS
God knows my name personally..I am not nameless or faceless to Him..The decision is what constitures the family of God? How do you see it?
Of what are you speaking here? Holy Tradition?
And of course you remember that your rendition of the Bible came first from the Catholic Church? Correct?
Amen, Amen. If only Luther had not added to, deleted from, and played general havoc according to his whims with the Holy Scriptures. Alas!
Don't know if I quite understand what you're asking. I think in my original Post #104 I was making a point concerning the expression of "for our sake..." in the Nicene Creed. Your reply in Post #110 indicated that the Incarnation of God's Son would have occured even if only for one person, i.e. "for MY sake...". I was trying to explain that Catholics also agree with that statement.
Of the two expressions, linguistically both are first person; one plural, the other singular. God does know all of us personally, better than we know ourselves. He literally Loved us into being. In Christ, His Love Redeems us, so that in accepting His supernatural and sanctifying Grace, we all are, or can be, restored to God as His adoptive children. The Family is constituted by God through His Grace.
In believing in and accepting Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, and therefore being in relationship to Him - as His brother (or sister); I also am brought into relationship with His other brothers and sisters whom He has Redeemed - the Church. This is the Family of God.
There are many instances in the Holy Scriptures which use the plural form of expressing what was expressed in the Nicene Creed (which itself comes from Scripture). Such as St. Paul in Romans (5:8 RSV):
But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
I just did not know what you would call the family of God..some would use baptism as a marker ,but I would not.
For a little while our father's grave was the throne room of heaven where we all gathered around the Blessed Trinity in the company of Our Lady, St. Joseph and all the saints.
Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier. I've just seen it (I'm out quite often for various lengths of time). Baptism certainly plays a most definite role in our salvation! See my Post #10 to Becky (PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain) in the thread titled "Todays Reading II and Gospel refutes AntiCatholicism of Works, Apostolic Tradition, Tradition of Men"
It contains an assortment of a few of the statements in Holy Scripture concerning Baptism.
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