Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
In Christ Alone lyrics
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;
In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless Babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save
?Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin?s curse has lost its grip on me For I am His and He is mine Bought with the precious blood of Christ
:)
The verse you provided in no way supports your comment. You're talking about taking communion. The verse supports faith alone.
You bet, and older. Righteous Abel is a saint of the Catholic Church, for example.
So, where are the people living on the earth today who are over 2,000 years old?
Can this be verified?
Saying that they're alive in heaven is meaningless because all that's doing is taking one portion of the passage and interpreting it in a spiritual sense, and taking another portion and interpreting it in a literal, physical sense.
It's not stunning ignorance of Christianity, as you state; it's pointing out the hypocrisy and double standards of interpretation that the Catholic church uses in interpretation to justify their messed up doctrines.
It's totally duplicitous of the Catholic church to apply two different standards of interpretation to ONE passage of Scripture to interpret something to support their doctrine, especially when one of the interpretations contradicts the whole body of Scripture.
If the Catholic church is going to demand that the host becomes the literal, physical flesh and blood of Jesus and that we must eat it literally and physically, then to be consistent in their interpretation, they must also teach that by doing so, the person will never die on this planet, that he will physically live forever here in this physical, material universe.
If the church insists that the living forever is in the spiritual realm, then it must interpret the command to eat His flesh and drink His blood as a spiritual truth as well, which is consistent with the interpretation that communions is a symbolic representation of a spiritual truth. That interpretation is also consistent with the body of Scripture that prohibits the eating of blood, from beginning to end.
The only ignorance of Christianity on display in this thread is the continual insistence,in spite of the passages which forbid the eating of blood, that the cup becomes the blood and must be eaten.
As with chapters of material to prove otherwise, that works must be added to faith to earn salvation. There is NOTHING we can do to make ourselves worthy of salvation. We are totally incapable of it. If we were, then salvation would have come through works and Christ would not have needed to die.
You can't do anything to save yourself, or merit God's mercy. If you could, it wouldn't be mercy. Both mercy and grace are undeserved and unearned. They are completely the generous gift of the giver.
To reject that mercy and grace given freely as a gift by insisting on paying for it or earning it, is to spit in God's face and tell Him that what He's done is not good enough- that humans can add their puny little efforts to somehow satisfy God's justice.
It's too late. The only way to merit heaven on our own efforts is to be absolutely perfect our entire life. One sin is all it takes to condemn us. Even if you could live the rest of your life perfectly sinless from here on, it is already too late.
Can't be done.
How could anyone express the "existence of God better than the Cappadocians, save perhaps to say as the icon writers have taught us Christians, that God is Ο ΩΝ!
Forest Keeper, here is your answer to the conundrum of how can the Father be the cause of existence of both the Son and the Spirit and for all three to be co-eternal. That is—assuming this anthropomorphic story describes how God really is.
I hope all here realize that the Trinatrian doctrine is no less anthropomorphic then say, the Old Testament God, or the mythology of Greek pagan gods, which is why I say that I don't know of any other God(s) except the man-made one(s).
What Church Trinitarians did was a fantastic feat of rationalization that is nothing short of sophism, imo. They basically "personalized" aspects of a supposed divine being, such as this being's words or speech, or discourse, the way we may "personalize" our words or hands as tools that express our thoughts and the 'spirit' contained therein.
We can equally rationalze that our words or hands are all the same "person" that we are, sharing the same essence or nature as out thoughts and minds, just as some may equate emotions with our heart (even though, I hope, no one here seriously believes that the heart is the seat of emotions!). It is easy to see how such word games then can lead to concepts such as that the brain "creates" and the words "make," while the heart "leads," and how such 'make up" of a man-made God is throroughylo anthropomorphic, that is— a God made in our image.
I suggest in all earnest studying in detail the development of the concept of the logos, its use by Plato and Neoplatonists, by Aristotle as opposed by the Sophists, by the Stoics from whom much of Hellenized Christianity of John's Gospel appears to come from. It was Stoics from whom such essential Eastern Christian concept of sin being essentially an error of judgment, missing the mark, or hamartia comes from.
Also important is being familiar with the works of the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher by the name of Philo, who had a tremendous influence in the struggling Christian thought in the latter part of the 1st century, etc. He is the first to compare the logos ontologically to the OT God by about 45 AD. He is the one who introduced the divine or uncreated energies concept which are so prominent, actually essential in the Eastern Christian dogma of salvation, officially codified as the Palamite Doctrine, the official theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church since the 14th century.
It's almost impossible to fully understand John's Gospel without the context of the Greek mind set of the time and where Christianity was. The divine Logos doctrine was born in the post-Jamnian Christianity by Hellenizing the Jewish sect, which was eventually thoroughly remade in the terminology and concepts of Greek pagan philosophy (it was after all much more familiar and palatable to the pagan Greeks than Judaism, and the concept of logos, ill defined as it was was, however was also very much present in the Greek thinking of the 1st century).
But, that's only for those who want to know. Those who are "comfortable in their belief," as boatbums says, will believe what they want to believe and there is, as she says, comfort in it. I am different. If I only sought comfort in belief, then I would still believe in a Tooth Fairy, I guess.
There is much to the wisdom of the old adage: Ignorance is bliss.
I see, but we can call him the "Father" or the "Son," or the "Spirit," even the "Word"? We can say God "loves," and "thinks" and "wants" and is "tired of repenting" [my tagline]. It's okay to refer to God as "He"; it's just that the "self" is somehow "problematic." Interesting how selective ratinalizations work.
AMEN.
WELL PUT.
THX THX.
Actually that wasn’t my comment but since you sent it to me I’ll respond.
What you term “her historical knowledge is in its aliquot sum a mixture of history and story narrative.
Catholic apostles spoke Catholic teachings and decided, along with Catholic Church “Fathers”, what orally preserved Catholic teachings should be included in THE Catholic Bible.
Since wise and pious Bishops in councils decide what would be accounted as “Scripture” it follows that they can expound on what traditions subsume those Scripture. Is that about it?
That is story telling not history, that is self justification not Gospel.
A fair example is the debate over whether the bread at the last supper really was bread, “this REPRESENTS my body”, or whether “eis”, English “is”, means Christ actual flesh.
Can the Greek “eis”, English “is”, mean represent?
Any lexicon will say yes, as does translations by Barclay, who translates Matt 26:26, as “mean”, Schonfield, “signifies”, Moffatt, “means”, Weymouth, “signifies, represents, symbolizes” in a footnote.
And that is the sense “eis” is used elsewhere in the Gospels, as symbolizes, etc.
But the Catholic narrative is able to ratioalize the exact moment the bread becomes flesh without anyone being to detect it but somehow the Catholic Church knows. How? By “is” of course!
Further on these threads I’ve learned from Catholic responses that God can and was killed, went to one or more of four hells, took a punctured and broken body of flesh to heaven, and even performed his own birth.
Now why would I not believe the “historical knowledge” of the Catholic Church in preference to the Gospels?
"Now why would I not believe the “historical knowledge” of the Catholic Church in preference to the Gospels?"
Maybe because the "translations" of the Gospels you are reading are nonsense. At least the The Church understands, and even prays in, Greek.
Since the whole Christian system of theology and Scripture is manmade (with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we believe), does that make it any less true? I think of Christianity as a language, no less than mathematics is a language, describing God in our own poor fashion. If God exists, does our own failures and shortcomings in description of Him, negate Him?
There is much to the wisdom of the old adage: Ignorance is bliss.
Actually the saying is: if ignorance be bliss, 'tis folly to be wise...
My typo eis should read esti or estin.
1But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.
10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. 12Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,13while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
Catholics are great with their convoluted explanations, tradition based theology, and labels that they like to slap on everyone to pigeon hole them, but are oblivious to the actual truth of Scripture.
Catholics just need to get to the beautiful simplicity of the gospel message and throw off the chains of tradition and convoluted ceremonies and sacraments that make getting to God far more complicated that it is, and that He intended it to be.
Catholicism puts people into bondage to a God who is never satisfied with their efforts. The best the majority of Catholics can hope for is an extended stay in the torment of purgatory. Some God they serve. One who would torment people for their sins after telling them He died for them to be forgiven.
Grace and mercy and forgiveness are gifts freely given by a God of love. Any god who demands payment for those sins, hasn't forgiven them. Requiring payment negates grace and mercy.
The wages of sin is death. That's all we can ever earn for what we do.
Not the Roman Catholic church.
Are you saying that they are NOT The Church, then?
Is the Orthodox one the only true one since it understands and prays in Greek?
Well, as unaccustomed as I am to defending the Latins, as a matter of fact, there are portions of their Mass which are in Greek and prior to the promulgation of the Latin Mass centuries ago, the Liturgies in Rome were chanted in Greek. In fact, they were nearly the same in form as ours are today. In the early Church at Rome, the language was Greek. The Roman Church learned its most basic theology in Greek, mm. Latin, Rome's theological language, isn't Greek, nor is it Slavonic, but it does come a close third when it comes to a theological language. In fact, though, Greek is the liturgical language of a number of particular churches whose hierarchs are in communion with the Pope of Rome.
"Are you saying that they are NOT The Church, then?"
Not at all. The Church of Rome is very much a part of The Church. The fullness of The Church is found in every single Roman Church diocese, just as it is in my Orthodox metropolis.
"Is the Orthodox one the only true one since it understands and prays in Greek?"
I don't know if Holy Orthodoxy is the "only true one" praying in Greek or not. These matters are up to God. That said, we do pray,
"We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity, for the Trinity has saved us."
but we pray this because we believe we do have the True Faith. We don't know everywhere it can be found, though we generally can say where it is not found. Forming a theology based on very bad translations of Scriptures probably will lead to one of those situations where the True Faith is not found, at least not in anything approaching its fullness.
I assume you mean Catholics of the Roman variety?
“Catholicism puts people into bondage to a God who is never satisfied with their efforts.”
Worth repeating.
No, there is no mention of dunking in water at all. Jesus never baptized anybody but his disciples did and they were nowhere around, however, in this passage Jesus is speaking to a Samaritan woman, they were at the well and he definitely spoke about drinking this water he would give.
John 4:14
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Amen! Hallelujah and praise the Lord that he looked beyond our faults and saw our need!
I never said anything about being "comfortable" in belief, I said confidence. Sure, there are millions who are comfortable in whatever religious system they were brought up in. They never think to question anything because, for many, they really don't care that much to seek out the truth, it isn't that important to them or they are too intimidated to question. On the other hand, many people (me, for instance) have a deep, intuitive sense that what they have been told all their lives needs to be confirmed so that they are not just comfortable, but confident in what they believe. It's the confidence in knowing not only what but why we believe what we do.
” At least the The Church understands, and even prays in, Greek.”
And this is significant how, I wonder.
VERY WELL and BIblically put.
THX THX.
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