Posted on 02/06/2006 1:02:10 PM PST by NYer
I think Constantine a great Christian saint? You've got me confused with somebody else. No evidence? I beg to differ. The whole concept gods becoming human is pretty much all the evidence I need.
The numbers are irrelevant (and more like 60-40 to 75-25%)
Very generous number.
, for God made Jew and Gentile into one Body in the Messiah.
No, the vast majority of Jews won't join you in the body of trinitariansim. But no prob, we're all God's children.
And who else should I credit Trinitarianism to?
Surely not those you've listed below. They'd never heard the word "trinity". That's a concept you adopted from proto-orthodox and orthodoxy. You also accept their canonization but then reject most other things these same people attempt to give you. Such as the perpetual virginity of Mary, papal authority, apostolic succession. Your approach is rather smorgessboardlike.
Yeshua was Jewish. So were Kefa (Peter), Yochanan (John), Ya'akov (James--both of them), Y'hudah (Jude), Sha'ul (Paul), etc. All of those who penned the Bible, with the possible exceptions of Job and Luke, were Jewish.
Just go ahead and call them by their trinitarian given names. Orthodoxy says its ok.
I think ya'll are sincere in and don't necessarily know any better with your Messianic Judaism approach but hopefully someday you'll realize how insulting it is for Jews.
Please excuse a simple-minded question, but: WHAT centuries-long attack?
If you look at authoritative teachings of the Church --- Ecumenical Council documnts, encyclicals, catechisms, statements from Synods of Bishops --- you will not find any attack on Scriptures.
Explanation or documentation, please?
I disagree. In the Unam Sanctam thread, you yourself said: "I have gone to great pains to make it clear that I claim no denomination. I am a Christian who attends church because of the command to be aligned with other believers my beliefs my be viewed by as protestant beliefs, but my faith and values are not defined by you nor other men. My faith relies solely upon Christ, his grace, and his sacrifice. I have resigned my salvation to Christ as well as the control of my life. I have resigned myself to follow his commands, as well as to search and digest his word, this is how I understand his word." That is a pretty individualistic approach to me. Your stance would work if you had a direct pipeline to God to get His judgment on your daily learning, but I imagine you don't have that. In the meantime, the very fact that NO early Christian adopted this mindset as a basic rule of life should be most instructive to you.
I commend you again for your zeal for learning. But, as someone pointed out on that same thread, your self-study has led you to become an unwitting Nestorian. Mary IS the Mother of God. When you deny her that title, there are, among other things, soteriological consequences.
Be careful of the implications of your statement. By saying that Mary is *not* the Mother of God, you deny the entirely "mainstream" Christian doctrine of the hypostatic union. Jesus did not merely indwell a human body, and therefore was both a human person and a divine person. Nor did He have His human and divine natures comingled in such a way as to constitute one nature, a la monophysitism. He was a divine Person with both a human and a divine nature. Since His natures do, in fact, exist distinctly, yet inseparably, in one hypostasis, within the divine Person, Mary, giving birth to a divine Person, IS the Mother of God.
No Catholic or Orthodox or historically literate Protestant is going to offer a different understanding of Christ than that He was a divine Person with distinct human and divine natures. He was not merely a human person. To deny this is to be either a Monophysite (He had only a divine nature) or a Nestorian (He was both a human person and a divine person).
A main problem with Nestorianism is, if Jesus was two persons, which one was offered on the cross? If merely the human person suffered and died, then how could that death be sufficiently perfect to be a sacrifice for all men? Monophysitism is different but has a similar result: if Jesus had only a divine nature, then how could the Eternal Word really "become" a man, and how then could Jesus' sacrifice really be efficacious when He merely "took over" human flesh as a mere shell to put on the cross? Either, way, the God-Man Jesus did not die on the cross for our sins as the Church has held from the beginning.
As the Council of Ephesus stated in 431: Jesus is a divine Person with two distinct yet inseparable natures: human and divine. As such, Mary is the Theotokos, the God-bearer, or the Mother of God.
All of this is the result of your refusal to even read the early Church councils, simply because they are "not Scripture." If you are already a Nestorian as a consequence, what else do you believe that is not mainline, orthodox Christian belief? You see, my friend, you have demonstrated major gaps in basic understanding of Church history, doctrine and cultural surroundings (remember your assertion that Vulgate Latin needed to be translated for the common people) just in the last day, all because your only source of Christian information seems restricted to the Bible and a few myopic, agenda-driven websites.
If you cannot or will not attempt to grasp that the Church was given to us by Christ as a sure guide, "the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth" (1Timothy 3:15), intended as such throughout the age (Matthew 28:20), and that, throughout that time, it is authorized to clarify teaching through, among other means, ecumenical councils and its magisterial authority, then there is little more to be said. The discussion of invincible ignorance in that Unam Sanctam thread you were on will, I hope, apply to your situation. Only God can know. But I hope the prayers of your Catholic brethren here on FR will someday lead you to explore the fullness of the Faith, and render "I.I." a moot point in your case. Godspeed.
bookmark
"Ignatius was a Bishop. Endowed with the Holy Spirit, He was not inerrant, but he certainly had a closer understanding of the Savior than you or I."
Doubtless.
But he was not have had a closer understanding of the Savior than John!
And we HAVE John's own words.
"Catholics do not pray to saints."
Catholics DO pray to saints.
(Infact sometimes that pray to saints and ask tose saints to pray to other saints for them.)
"You are rather obtuse."
Thanks!
"God surely did not use some semi literate southerner to give us the Bible. He worked throught the Curch He Created to give us the Bible."
No. He used poor middle eastern fishermen. (And a tax-collecter adn a doctor).
"You "biblical" Christians are funny.I love how you beleive that God wants you to constantly misinterpret and use His Word out of context."
Hmmm. Like purgatory, the immaculate conception, praying to saints, bowing before statues... stuff like that???
2 Thessalonians 2:14
"Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle."
Comment?
Not sure what little "t" is versus big "T". "Tradition" is "tradition" which is formally recognized by the Magisterium as part of the deposit of faith.
This is one of the most absurd statements I've ever read on Free Republic. Did you post that with a straight face?
". . .we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses . . ." (Hebrews 12:1 - RSV)
What Catholics call the invocation or intercession of the saints means not so much praying to saints, as it does praying with them to God. The practice existed with development - from the beginning of the Christianity, and was only questioned at the time of the Protestant Revolt in the 16th century.
Dead Christians are unquestionably more alive and holy than we are, since they are with God (Rev 21:27), and they are aware of earthly events (Heb 12:1, 1 Cor 13:9-12). In Revelation 6:9-10, "the souls of them that were slain" pray for those on earth, using what is known as an "imprecatory prayer," as in Psalms 35:1, 59:1-17, 139:19, and Jer 12:20 against the wicked and on behalf of the righteous. In Revelation 5:8-9, the "24 elders," usually interpreted as representing the Church (perhaps the 12 tribes and 12 apostles), act as intercessory intermediaries, presenting the "prayers of saints."
Your explanation is insightful, and lucid and to the point!
Excellent Post!
Not true again John 20:31
You cited: "But 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."
This doesn't make any case whatsoever against oral tradition. Are you implying that ONLY the written inspired word is capable of making a believer of Christ? What about the SPOKEN inspired words of Christ? Since Jesus wrote nothing down, by your logic, doesn't that throw out the entire New Testament? Of course not. Likewise, there's nothing in this verse that removes the authority of the Hoy Spirit from Apostolic Tradition.
ACTS 1:8 “…[The Apostles] shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth.”
Comment?
The word "Trinity" never appears in the Bible. Thus, the Trinity is false doctrine.
Your turn.
80. The reading of Sacred Scripture is for all.
81. The sacred obscurity of the Word of God is no reason for the laity to dispense themselves from reading it.
82. The Lord's Day ought to be sanctified by Christians with readings of pious works and above all of the Holy Scriptures. It is harmful for a Christian to wish to withdraw from this reading.
83. It is an illusion to persuade oneself that knowledge of the mysteries of religion should not be communicated to women by the reading of Sacred Scriptures. Not from the simplicity of women, but from the proud knowledge of men has arisen the abuse of the Scriptures and have heresies been born.
84. To snatch away from the hands of Christians the New Testament, or to hold it closed against them by taking away from them the means of understanding it, is to close for them the mouth of Christ.
85. To forbid Christians to read Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels, is to forbid the use of light to the sons of light, and to cause them to suffer a kind of excommunication.
Sadly, there is much more should you desire to see it....
Funny, "the Church of Peter" was being referenced well into the THIRD century...
The Lord says to Peter: "I say to you," he says, "that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it" [Matt. 16:18]. On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [cf. John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. . . . IF SOMEONE [today] DOES NOT HOLD FAST TO THIS UNITY OF PETER, CAN HE IMAGINE THAT HE STILL HOLDS THE FAITH? IF HE DESERTS THE CHAIR OF PETER UPON WHOM THE CHURCH WAS BUILT, can he still be confident that he is in the Church? (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4, first edition [A.D. 251]).
I know, I know. Word must have traveled fast to North Africa since Cyprian already entitled his work as "The Unity of the Catholic Church".
Let's go back to St. Ignatius' letter to Smyrna. That's 110 A.D.:
"Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church."
Bible-waving Protestant clergymen wrongly burned people at the stake for being "witches".
Protestants base their faith on Scripture Alone.
Thus, this display of sanctioned Protestant injustice is proof that the Bible is not inspired by God.
Comment?
This was shortly after the tremendous damage done to the faithful by the Albigensian Heresy through the early 13th century. The Albigensian Heresy was the result of sacred scripture ending up in the hands of people who had no authority to interpret it.
Context is your friend.
Bible-waving Protestant clergymen wrongly burned people at the stake for being "witches".
My faith is not based on "Bible-waving Protestant clergymen" and either their sucess or failure to live up to their professed beliefs. My faith is based on the Bible and it's witness to the beautiful and flawless Savior, Jesus Christ. Through the Bible I have come to know Him.
"Comment?"
Your post was an attempt to deflect attention from my proof of the statement "I can see not other reason for the centuries-long attack."
I proved my statement. You don't like it so you shift attention to another topic.
I don't have a problem with you. In fact I think you're kind of a nice person. But you need to know the unblemished facts about what the organization you belong to has done in the past.
"Context is your friend."
On this topic it truly is my friend for there is no shortage of examples of the Catholic Church trying to keep the Bible out of the hands of the common people down through history.
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