(Don't know if site can be trusted.)
Posted on 10/04/2008 10:00:19 PM PDT by Salvation
The word there profit was used in the sense that Paul used in his letter to the Corinthians when he said, 1 Cor 14:6 6 But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching? (NKJ)
"What's the use of it?" If I understand you, I'd say that stigmatists prompt some of us to recommit ourselves or to strengthen our commitment to holiness of life.
Mark 8:36-37 36 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37 "Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (NKJ)
I guess I've always understood the "profit" here as in the same line of country as "What's the point? What's the good of it?" And of course there's no good in gaining the world and losing your soul.
Are you asking then what is the good to the stigmatist? I guess we'd have to ask the stigmatist. My impression from my very little reading is that the stigmata spur them to deeper devotion.
It appears that you have a very large chip on your shoulder.
I'll think and pray about that, and if there indeed is a chip, maybe God will give me the grace to, well to do whatever one is supposed to do with chips.
Christ never said that we were to share His sufferings, He said that we would suffer for His sake ...(the question of the origin of suffering is a wholly different one, hence the break.)
To me this is a dramatic difference in view. To me every Christian husband who grieves over his wife's loss of something that means nothing to him but a great deal and dole to her, every Christian who takes up the boredom and bad smells and frustration and likely failure of helping a drunk make yet another attempt to clamber out of the gutter, every Christian soldier who is wounded or killed helping his unit and defending the country, heck every Protestant who swallows his anger and frustration and tries, in charity and sincerity of heart, to straighten out us befuddled Catholics is sharing in Christ's mission and suffering.
When on a fair day with family and iced tea beckoning someone goes into the the room of an aphasic stroke victim and holds her hand and strokes her hair and whispers to her of God's love, the renunciation of iced tea and cool breeze and the patient soft evangelism is a participation in the work of Christ, and comes with His pain, albeit, in that case, not very great measure of his pain. — though maybe that night the terror of being trapped in an unresponsive and uncommunicative body may disturb his rest.
I thought that when, as a protestant, I was a hospital chaplain. Why would I go out of my way (unpaid as I was) to become close to a dying child and to his family so that when the death came I would grieve with them, if I didn't think I was privileged to walk where IHS walks and suffer as he suffers? "What profit" indeed in intentionally entering that world of grief?
... but as far as I've read God does not lay illness or suffering on His children just as a father would not put sickness or suffering on his child.
And so again we have the 90 degrees difference of view. I do not see God gratuitously throwing pain around, but I see an awful lot of pain. And while no humane father would lay sufferings on his children for no reason, yet a young boy (a very young boy — by the time they're old enough to be useful helping Dad is the last thing on their mind!) would eagerly blister and tear his skin and strain his muscles for the privilege of being allowed to help his father cut down a tree, saw it into logs, and stack the logs for the winter fires. (I have no son, but we heat with wood, so this is a vital example to me, and the 'orrible brat child did help me a few times before I became a ludicrous fossil in her eyes. Fortunately my fossilhood was brief and we have a lot of fun and many many good talks these days.)
Between the Fall and the Kingdom there is suffering. That just seems to be a commonplace to me, so true that I would not know how to dispute it. There's no avoiding it, as far as I can see, at least without serious harm to the soul.
It also seems true that willingly entering into suffering for the sake of others is something nearly everyone admits to be noble and virtuous. It's why we respect warriors, not so much for their victory as for their willingly taking on great risks and pains for our sake.
And, to provide a hint of where I think this line of thought goes, we are made members of His body, grafted into it. By His love and grace and by His Spirit and His life in us, our sufferings are His and His are ours.
I try to avoid arguing from my own authority. (It never works with my wife or my kid; why should it work here?)(joke) But I first learned the Greek alphabet in High school, from which I graduated in 1965. That was self taught, but I studied Greek in College and in Seminary. In the more than 30 years since then I have spent some time in the Greek New Testament and in various dictionaries and grammars. Never have I heard the letter called "stigma", not once, until your post.
Are you going to tell me that proctologists examine the stigmoid colon, which is named the sigmoid colon because of it's 's' shape?
As to the form of the letter, get a Greek testament and note the three forms. Or examine some old MSS.
And in that connection, last line of the table makes no sense. The Greek letters are χ (chi) and ι (iota) while the English gives THREE letters, chi, xi and the famous "stigma". The conjecture of a loss of concentration leading to a typo is attractive to me.
I sent a mesage to the site:
see the last line of the table onhttp://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/c.pl?book=Rev&chapter=13&verse=18&version=KJV#18
There must be an error. The two Greek letters χ and ι are given and explained as chi, xi, and "stigma". I am guessing someone meant to give χ, ξ, and σ, but got tired or distracted.
**And, to provide a hint of where I think this line of thought goes, we are made members of His body, grafted into it. By His love and grace and by His Spirit and His life in us, our sufferings are His and His are ours. **
John 15: The Vine and the Branches BTTT!
I don’t have a Strong’s. Just a Young’s analytical. What’s the URL of the Strong’s boo-boo?
I just Googled "Strong's Concordance stigma" and found some fun stuff.
I don't know my way around Strong's.
Another thing that vexes me: In my Greek NT there is not only no "Chi, Xi, [whatever]" but none of the textual apparatus gives any indication of a textual variant including it!
So now I have to wonder in what texts it appears. And I have to wonder since it looks just like a terminal sigma, how the reader would know it wasn't a terminal sigma.
And it's interesting because the word στιγμα, (stigma) meaning mark or brand, is used in the NT, notably by Paul in Galations:(I bear on my body ...).
Do you know of a source other than Strong's and not depending on Strong's which refers to this obsolete character? I see reference to the chi xi [whatever] sequence in my Young's. I'm beginning to think that there is a major textual issue here.
You've ruined my morning, and I thank you. I hit my IDB, my Interpreters one volume Commentary, my Theological Dictionary of the NT, my Greek NT, my Greek lexicon of the NT (Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich)and just about everything I have. Oh, wait, I have a Greek Grammar (Blass Debrunner) somewhere.
OKay, I'm back. I have NOTHING on this sequence of characters. Nothing whatsoever!
I don't know what to make of this I'd feel a lot better about this if there were independent confirmation.
it seems there's the question of the character (or numeral?) "stigma" and the textual question of the sources and texts used for the KJV. It's clear that subsequent sources have appeared which discredit SOME parts of some of the sources used by the KJV translators. (For example the differences in Isaiah 9) but clearly the magisterial references for the KJV (Young's and Strong's) think there is good reason to go with this notion.We need some scholars here!
Then that doesn't even touch the connection, if any, between stigmata as we Calf licks talk about them and the use of this character in Rev 13:18.
But again, I thank you for the work out and the question.
I found
http://bible1.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Greek/grk.cgi?number=5516&version=kjv
and while they know of the Theological Dictionary of the NT it APPEARS, I could be wrong, that for their article here they only refer to Thayer's and Smith's, which comports, (but by no means proves) my contention that this is a KJV textual/source issue.
Oh Wait. I looked it up under Chi in my B.A.G. lexicon and they have it as "textus receptus". Heigh ho, off to the 10 volume dictionary again .....
NO joy.
I'm back to my guess that this is a discredited variant of the t.r.. I would assume the KJV (and therefore Strongs, Young's Thayers; etc) would work off the t.r.. And maybe the obsolete "Stigma" is not archaic but a medieval type of obsolete.
Thanks again. More work needs to be done, nut not by me. I have a deadline I've been neglecting.
Does a greater devotion lead to more evangelism? Do it lead to feeding the poor preaching the Word? There is a old saying of one being so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. So many want to eat at the Lords table but no one want to work in the field.
;-)
I guess the short answer would be that if it doesn't inspire it in the stigmatist, it inspires it in those who hear or read of him or her.
But to sort of spread it out a little, I'd say that the world "profits" from the prayers of the hole, and even from the prayers of such a moiself. While I think few are called to be hermits or 'enclosed', still not only histories of their lives, but their lives themselves benefit all of us.
Catherine of Siena, a lay Dominican and one of the heroes of our order, was a stigmatist and she was very active in the world, not only consoling and evangelizing, but writing and counselling. The cause and effect relationship might not be very clear, but nobody could say she hung around the house doing nothing. She seems to have been nourished and energized by her prayer.
Thanks for the ping.
You really start your days early.
TRUE for "hole"= "whole".
I like to get a head start on my procrastination.
I don’t do early. I’m not built that way.
Seems to me that this discussion could benefit from one of our esteemed members...Kolo...tros.unfortunately I can’t remember the exact spelling.
Input could save a lot of head banging.
Yo! Kolo.
When you get done thrashing those four Turks who didn't know you were Greek when they started the fight, could you give us a run down on Rev 13:18 and the numeral presented to us as Xhi Xi Stigma, where "stigma" is described as an obsolete Greek character?
I'd never heard of it, but it is in my Greek Lexicon of the NT, and I've been busily asserting with the kind of certainty that nearly always accompanies ignorance that it don't exist.
Dang, now I’m all frazzled.. I mean “Chi Xi Stigma”
Professional training as a problem solver occasionally comes in useful.
I’m not extremely well versed in stigmata, judging from the list provided of some well known “joyous sufferers” is it true that as a group the one thing that would be in common with them is “Catholic Mystics”
(Individuals so emptied of ego in themselves that they have allowed Jesus Christ to fill them to capacity?)
The Greek in the Byzantine text, which is what we use and is the oldest extant, is "ἑξακόσια ἑξήκοντα ἕξ", nothing like "Ξ Χ Σ" or "ξ χ σ (or ς)" "ς" as a capital is a Byzantine form of Σ, or as a lower case letter it is used in place of "σ" at the end of a word. The Church in the East has never had much use for revelations, as you likely know. The code +John uses, and in some cases its "616" instead of "666", is for someone's name but as early as 100 years after it was written, it seems no one knew what the code meant. An undigested bit of beef is my bet.
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