Your post is evidence that you are an admire of Alinsky since anyone in their right mind can tell that it is not pro-Obama!.
Posted on 08/28/2009 8:53:44 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Saying there was a Bible prior to the Catholic Church is like saying a forest is a lumber yard or a stack of bricks is a chimney.
Yes, the raw material was there, but it took the Catholic Church to determine what was in and what was out of the Bible.
Martin Luther simply removed those Books which were not in keeping with his own theology.
Now, it is not my point to bash non-Catholics, but it is very obnoxious for you to come on these threads and claim that you have the only valid faith and the only valid interpretations of Scripture.
You clearly don't -— and you clearly violate the teachings of Jesus Himself when you arrogantly claim otherwise.
You believe that you can get to Heaven without Books of the Bible that existed, in the Jewish Temple, at the time of Jesus, Books which Jesus never objected to.
You are probably right. Those particular Books, though Sacred, are not absolutely required for sound faith, but should at least be consulted for historical and cultural understanding of the times right before the Christian era.
You, as a Protestant, have judged part of Scripture not binding.
Very well.
You are still Christian.
Likewise, I am still Christian, though I did not completely rip Genesis out of the Bible.
I simply have a different interpretation of Genesis.
Face it, there could be no measurement of a “day” without the Earth revolving on its axis. Therefore, “day” as it relates to the very creation of the Heavens and of the Earth, is not literal, how can it be?
And, if “day” had meaning then, what WAS that meaning?
Time is a measure of distance.
Just ask Einstein.
Time means absolutely nothing in Heaven, IMHO.
You are charged with bringing people into the Faith, not kicking them out (as if you had the authority) and NOT with discouraging Christian inquiry.
You seem to like being a “better Christian” than the rest of us.
You would have made a good Pharisee. Jesus did not care for the know-it-alls of his time.
I propose to you that, of all the things you can find in the Bible, the Creation story in Genesis is probably the least important, once you absorb the meaning that God is the creator.
We are not required to take it all literally, and most of us good Christians do not. You are giving a victory to the atheists that they do not deserve. You are driving some away from the Faith, and you are putting God to the test, something Jesus told you not to do.
Amen to that cyc! Kansas58 no one on here, claiming to be a Christian, has any authority to decide what is or is not true Christianity. The only litmus test is for God to decide - it is His Word that declares only God knows the true intentions of our hearts. But by what you are saying many here are concerned that you just don’t quite get it.
Genesis sets the foundation for sin and death - that mankind appointed this condemnation of God’s perfect creation when Adam and Eve dis-obeyed God and surrendered to the temptations of the devil. If evolution were true for eons, wouldn’t death have already been part of God’s perfect creation? Did He not declare it all good (perfect) when He rested on day 7?
Now how is Genesis not necessary as the foundation? Since it is literally the reason Christ had to come down, setting his rightful authority aside, humbling Himself and dying a sinner’s death as substitution for our sins. To restore righteousness (imputed righteousness for true believers / saints) and provide a way of salvation (see Romans 10:9-15). To restore that which was lost.
Only a small portion of evolution is true - the changes that have observed to occur within kinds. You assume much about me in post 141 that is simply not true.
See if this link helps you separate evolution fact from fiction as it did for me. Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html
The manuscripts were preserved by the Catholic Church.
The verses were determined by the Catholic Church.
Neither Moses nor Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, or Paul wrote anything with verse numbers after each paragraph or sentence.
The Catholic Church was the publisher of the first Bible, and before that happened, the various “Books” were separate and not bound together.
Also, it is RARE for any New Testament verse to refer to any other New Testament verse, especially to a verse by a different Author -— Because the Bible, when it was written, never, in its scattered geographic and historical creation of the separate Books, EVER, EVER, EVER contemplated all of the Books being combined into one finished product.
The Bible has virtually no awareness of itself.
The Bible as it exists today is a creation of Man, in all of its various forms.
There was valid Christian faith before there was a Bible.
Therefore, there can be valid Christian faith without complete, literal, reliance on the Bible.
The manuscripts were preserved by the Catholic Church.
The verses were determined by the Catholic Church.
Neither Moses nor Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, or Paul wrote anything with verse numbers after each paragraph or sentence.
The Catholic Church was the publisher of the first Bible, and before that happened, the various “Books” were separate and not bound together.
Also, it is RARE for any New Testament verse to refer to any other New Testament verse, especially to a verse by a different Author -— Because the Bible, when it was written, never, in its scattered geographic and historical creation of the separate Books, EVER, EVER, EVER contemplated all of the Books being combined into one finished product.
The Bible has virtually no awareness of itself.
The Bible as it exists today is a creation of Man, in all of its various forms.
There was valid Christian faith before there was a Bible.
Therefore, there can be valid Christian faith without complete, literal, reliance on the Bible.
Also most of the things you assume incorrectly about me can be found very easily on my homepage (just double-click on my nametag at the bottom of this post).
Seems to me God created and defined time not Einstein and if God declares it as a numbered day where there is evening and morning than it would be quite a stretch for me to decide it is anything other than 24 hours.
Forgive my short hand.
Genesis, of course, contains far more than the Creation story.
What we must take away from Genesis is the idea that God IS the Creator, and that man feel from Grace and is therefore in need of Salvation.
feel fell, darn
Your post is evidence that you are an admire of Alinsky since anyone in their right mind can tell that it is not pro-Obama!.
Not really. Most Christians could not read and had no Bible to read and the Bible was most probably not in their native language. They only knew what the church told them.
How many sects are there in Christianity? How many sects consider how many other sects to be non-Christian?
One question that is totally avoided is:
Is God the Intelligent Designer?
“The verses were determined by the Catholic Church.”
A bit of information from Wikipedia on our present day system of verses:
“Robert I Estienne (Paris 1503 – Geneva, 7 September 1559), known as Robertus Stephanus in Latin[1] and also referred to as Robert Stephens by 18th and 19th-century English writers, was a 16th century printer in Paris. He was a former Catholic who became an Evangelical late in his life and the first to print the Bible divided into standard numbered verses.”
Hmmmm.....an editorial work by a printer.
Kansas, I don't have to further to show you don't know what you're talking about.
If you had any support for you statements you would have offered it, wouldn’t have you?
I did. In an earlier post to you.
Look up the Hebrew word for image.
God was never an ape, no matter how you want to split hairs about the word “image” .
Don't play redefinition with me.
In the meantime, you should enjoy this:
“(3) Open a Protestant Bible, and you will find there are seven complete Books awanting – that is, seven books fewer than there are in the Catholic Bible, and seven fewer than there were in every collection and catalogue of Holy Scripture from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Their names are Tobias, Baruch, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, I Machabees, II Machabees, together with seven chapters of the Book of Esther and 66 verses of the 3rd chapter of Daniel, commonly called ‘the Song of the Three Children’, (Daniel iii., 24-90, Douai Version). These were deliberately cut out, and the Bible bound up without them. The criticisms and remarks of Luther, Calvin, and the Swiss and German Reformers about these seven books of the Old Testament show to what depths of impiety those unhappy men had allowed themselves to fall when they broke away from the true Church. Even in regard to the New Testament in required all the powers of resistance on the part of the more conservative Reformers to prevent Luther from flinging out the Epistle of St. James as unworthy to remain within the volume of Holy Scripture – ‘an Epistle of straw’ he called it, ‘with no character of the Gospel in it’. In the same way, and almost to the same degree, he dishonored the Epistle of St. Jude and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the beautiful Apocalypse of St. John, declaring they were not on the same footing as the rest of the books, and did not contain the same amount of Gospel (i.e., his Gospel). The presumptuous way, indeed, in which Luther, among others, poured contempt, and doubt upon some of the inspired writing which had been acknowledged and cherished and venerated for 1000 or 1200 years would be scarcely credible were it not hat we have his very words in cold print, which cannot lie, and may be read in his Biography, or be seen quoted in such books as Dr. Westcott’s The Bible in The Church. And why did he impugn such books as we have mentioned? Because they did not suit his new doctrines and opinions. He had arrived at the principle of private judgment – of picking and choosing religious doctrines; and whenever any book, such as the Book of Machabees, taught a doctrine that was repugnant to his individual taste – as, for example, that ‘it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’, 2 Mach. xii., 46 – well, so much the worse for the book; ‘throw it overboard’, was his sentence, and overboard it went. And it was the same with passages and texts in those books which Luther allowed to remain, and pronounced to be worthy to find a place within the boards of the new Reformed Bible. In short, he not only cast out certain books, but he mutilated some that were left. For example, not pleased with St. Paul’s doctrine, ‘we are justified by faith’, and fearing lest good works (a Popish superstition) might creep in, he added the word ‘only’ after St. Paul’s words, making the sentence run: ‘We are justified by Faith only’, and so it reads in Lutheran Bibles to this day. An action such as that must surely be reprobated by all Bible Christians. What surprises us is the audacity of the man that could coolly change by a stroke of the pen a fundamental doctrine of the Apostle of God, St. Paul, who wrote, as all admitted, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Bu this was the outcome of the Protestant standpoint, individual judgment: no authority outside of oneself. However ignorant, however stupid, however unlettered, you may, indeed you are bound to cut and carve out a Bible and a Religion for yourself. No Pope, no Council, no Church shall enlighten you or dictate or hand down the doctrines of Christ. And the result we have seen in the corruption of God’s Holy Word.
(4) Yet, in spite of all reviling of the Roman Church, the Reformers were forced to accept from her those Sacred Scriptures which they retained in their collection. Whatever Bible they have today, disfigured as it is, was taken from us. Blind indeed must be the evangelical Christian who cannot recognize in the old Catholic Bible the quarry form which he has hewn the Testament he loves and studies; but with what loss! At what a sacrifice! In what a mutilated and disfigured condition! That the Reformers should appropriate unabridged the Bible of the Catholic Church (which was the only volume of God’s Scripture ever known on earth), even for the purpose of elevating it into a false position – this we could have understood; what staggers us, is their deliberate excision from that Sacred Volume of some of the inspired Books which had God for their Author, and their no less deliberate alteration of some of the texts of those books that were suffered to remain. It is on consideration of such points as these that pious persons outside the Catholic fold would do well to ask themselves the question – Which Christian body really loves and revers the Scriptures most? Which has proved, by its actions, its love and veneration? And which seems most likely to incur the anathema, recorded by St. John, that God will send upon those who shall take away from the words of the Book of Life? (Apoc. xxii., 19.)”
http://www.geocities.com/militantis/biblechp5.html
Martin Luther, by his own records, had a degree of distaste even for several Books of the Bible that he was forced, by others, to retain!
Then you’ll have to make the connection because I don’t see one.
You might also enjoy this, if you really want to see how many Christians view the Bible -— We believe it is important, but we understand that there was a Christian Faith long before the Bible existed!:
http://www.geocities.com/militantis/biblechp3.html
If you disapprove of being “less than truthful,” then look to the beam in your own eye and cease your misrepresentation of both ‘Yoteman’s position and that of mine. ‘Yoteman left this forum of his own volition through the expediency of ‘suicide by moderator.’ He deliberately provoked his own banning. So his absence is of his own doing. If you wish to dispute me on that issue (as I have no doubt you do), then I invite you, and any curious lurker, to turn to the archive and check out Don’t Call it “Darwinism” [religiously defended as "science" by Godless Darwinists] where everyone may see for themselves. As far as I’m concerned, the issue isn’t debatable, but I have no doubt that your interpretation will be at variance with that of others. At the time (January 28, last) I predicted that his defenders would claim he was banned for ‘defending’ science (see post #109). Here you now come, making me look like a prophet.
I’ve said nothing about ’Yoteman that I haven’t said to his face (on more than one occasion). Sometimes he had a response. Often he did not (see Stemming the Tide - Let’s pay science and math teachers more. where I criticized him fairly hard – post #137 and forward). Now that he is gone (by his own hand), revisionists like you would like to confer him with martyr status. I like ’Yoteman well enough, but not well enough to grant him martyrdom.
’Yoteman talked a good line of science, but it was a cover permitting him to heap scorn and disdain on Christianity. As events wore down to his self-inflicted banishment, his game became increasingly apparent. And there were other, ancillary symptoms that gave away his game:
His indifference to the principles of government by the consent of the governed and what it portends for ‘public’ education.
His complete unconcern over the implications of government coming to view the public school system as nothing more than a function of its information ministry.
His apathy over the invasion of government at all levels by socialist louts.
Everyone is on to your game. This is a fight for public money and for control of the lives of Americans. It has nothing to do with the precious ‘sanctity’ of Science.
This is the entire table of contents on the work of an author I think you should be aware of, even if you do not agree:
http://www.geocities.com/militantis/biblecontents.html
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