New Mexico: Family Sues Minister For H--- Of A Prediction

BBC On Line ^ | July 17, 2003 | staff writer

[wideawake]

I think anyone acquainted with Russian Orthodoxy is aware of the disputes between the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR - disputes which have occasioned mutual accusations of heresy, apostasy, etc.

[MarMema]

They're working on unity. It's a battle with the evil one all the way. You don't know much about us. I think you should be careful with what you think you know. This is an Orthodox issue and one we are all involved in and working out together. It is not the same as issues with outside churches.

[wideawake]

It is not the same as issues with outside churches.

That's just the thing, isn't it? Some ROCOR believers do not consider the MP to be part of the Orthodox Church at all, but call it an apostate organization. In the mind of some ROCOR Christians the MP is an "outside church."

You don't know much about us. I think you should be careful with what you think you know.

Should I be as careful as you were in quoting "Seattle Catholic" as some kind of definitive source for Catholic teaching? That's a bit of a double standard.

I'm not offering an opinion or a judgement on the relative merits of the dispute between the ROCOR and the MP - I'm simply remarking on the fact that (1) there is a division and (2) there are people on both sides who are being less than civil about it.

Those two facts are obvious.

[wideawake]

To see the real success of Rome in the modern era, look at Europe.

Shall we look to Scandinavia and Germany as the real success of Martin Luther?

To Switzerland as the real success of Ulrich Zwingli and Jean Cauvin?

To Scotland as the real success of John Knox and the Presbytery?

I expect its influence will become even more marginal than it is at present except in countries which are impoverished and uneducated.

Sounds like the words on the lips of many Roman nobleman in the first century.

I appreciate the implication that I'm stupid and penniless.

[George W. Bush]

I don't even know what ROCOR is. I think it has something to do with the Russian Orthodox and assumed that wideawake was taking the usual Roman cheapshots at the Patriarch of Moscow. Not that I am personally fond of some things done by the Russian churches during the Soviet era. Or what seem to be an attempt to restrict other churches from proselytizing in Russia. Being rather thoroughly American in this matter, I prefer freedom of religion. For instance, as much as I despise some of the mummery and the pressure being brought to bear by Rome in their pursuit of establishing themselves firmly in Russia (and to eventually destroy the Russian Orthodox church), I don't favor excluding them in any legal way from Russia or anywhere else. I believe that exposing their practices to the public are the best remedy, much as revealing the conspiracy of their bishops to rotate their serial pedophile priests has done so recently (and to the benefit of the American Orthodox churches). It seems to me that God sorts these matters out when people have a free choice in their faith.

Given what I know of their history, when I speak favorably of the Orthodox churches, the Russian branch scores toward the bottom. This has to do with their secular history, mostly in the last century. However, historically speaking, they are not in Rome's league by any measure.

My remark was just a poor attempt at humor.

[George W. Bush]

Sounds like the words on the lips of many Roman nobleman in the first century.

Sorry. I don't know any of them personally.

[wideawake]

You intentionally miss the point.

Basically you argue that to accept the Catholic faith one is to be presumed uneducated.

Are you telling me that John Henry Newman, Malcolm Muggeridge, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Jacques Maritain, Edith Stein, etc. were all ignorant simpletons? Or were they in fact far better educated than you or I?

Additionally, I would think that a fundamental Baptist would be sensitive in portraying other Christian traditions as peopled by the ignorant, seeing that your tradition is continually (and unjustly) caricatured as being populated by rubes.

[George W. Bush]

Actually, Baptists were quite resistant to the professional education of clergy. There are still a remnant who oppose it among the Primitive Baptists.

One can find Baptist writings from a hundred years or so back that extoll the ignorance of Baptist preachers. These were written largely in response to the challenge presented by Eastern-educated Methodist circuit-riders and Presbyterians and Episcopalians who embraced professional clergy long before Baptists did.

I'm not kidding.

[George W. Bush]

Are you telling me that John Henry Newman, Malcolm Muggeridge, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Jacques Maritain, Edith Stein, etc. were all ignorant simpletons? Or were they in fact far better educated than you or I?

I don't know of any of them except Muggeridge. I saw him once on PBS on Buckley's show. He came off as an enlightened atheist type, the kind that destroyed the Anglican church by embracing a god which is so puny, powerless and poetically conceived that one cannot readily discern the difference between such christian thinking and that of atheists/agnostics. These are the kind of people that have destroyed many churches with their enlightened views, avoiding the crassness of ordinary orthodox Christian thinking and faith. The program aired 10-12 years ago and focused on Buckley's stupid observations on Muggeridge's most recent book, one of his best known as I recall. On Buckley's show, Muggeridge did not make a single statement of sound faith or theology.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

ROCOR ping - its a doozy

[wideawake]

One can find Baptist writings from a hundred years or so back that extoll the ignorance of Baptist preachers.

I'm sure one could.

Parenthetically, I've had someone tell me that all a Christian needs is a King James Bible and Strong's.

How exactly does one use Strong's and why is it such a favored tool?

[wideawake]

Why is it a "doozy"?

Are there or are there not disputes between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia?

[George W. Bush]

Parenthetically, I've had someone tell me that all a Christian needs is a King James Bible and Strong's. How exactly does one use Strong's and why is it such a favored tool?

I'll quote a bit from this web page to give the idea:

The Strong's concordance is a very useful tool for studying the scriptures. It takes every single word of the King James Version and lists where each word can be found in the scriptures. It is useful for locating scripture verses that you know the words to, but don't know the book, chapter and verse.

For example, let's say that you know of a verse that says our hairs are numbered. You could look up the word "numbered" in a Strong's Concordance and it would give you a listing of all the verses that contain the word "numbered". You would then find Matthew 10:30, where Yahushua said that "the very hairs of your head are all numbered". You can find the Strong's Concordance in most any bible bookstore.

Also beside each verse reference there is a number. That number represents a Hebrew word (if in the Old Testament) or Greek word (if in the New Testament). In the back of the book it lists Hebrew and Greek words used to translate the bible into English. Each has a a number beside them so that we may only need to know the number to locate a Greek or Hebrew word. Then we can do a word study by reading the meaning of the original word. Whenever I refer to a number in the Strong's concordance, you can look up the number for yourself in the Strong's Lexicon or other lexicons that use Strong's numbers to verify everything.

The web page lists a few of the deficiencies in relying upon Strong's too heavily. It is also in many non-Roman circles the first study aid any Bible student will make use of. For many laymen, Strong's has been the gateway to deeper studies in scripture or to learning Hebrew or Aramaic.

I'm not sure Roman sources have ever endorsed a comparable concordance for Roman students. But when you hear non-Roman students refer to a 'word study', i.e. comparing verses to determine the proper meaning in context of a particular word or the range of possible meanings of a given word, then most often they started their search with a Strong's listing. It's a good base reference and so universal among Bible students that people know it well when anyone refers to it.

Personally, I like it because, like many people, I can most often remember a substantial fragment of a verse but can't remember where to find it. And in the course of using Strong's to find the verse, I will then often find other verses that bear upon the same subject. A Strong's will, even to a very casual user, open up the scriptures on a given topic and arouse your curiousity to find all the verses that are considered to bear upon a given subject. In this way, it is perhaps more useful and usable to lay Bible students than a mere scripture commentary, even a fine comprehensive commentary like Calvin's or Gill's.

Too bad Roman sources never compiled their own Strong's reference for the Jesuit bible, a translation as close as possible to the KJV for RC students. It would be quite handy for comparisons. At least we could then abbreviate our arguments over scripture by hurling Strong's numbers back and forth. It would save a lot of typing, nyet?

[wideawake]

I use Mandelkern's Concordantia which cross references the Hebrew to the Vulgate.

It's a pretty useful tool if you know Latin.

But yes - there's nothing comparable in Catholic use.

Am I to understand that Strong's is just a bare reference, or does it gloss words like "prevent" from their Middle English meaning to their modern English meaning? Are there different ones for the NIV?

[George W. Bush]

Am I to understand that Strong's is just a bare reference, or does it gloss words like "prevent" from their Middle English meaning to their modern English meaning? Are there different ones for the NIV?

I'm not sure about 'glossing' words from Middle English to modern English. Strong's is only about a hundred years old, I think. It doesn't really address the list of about hundred archaic words (the ones that can give a false meaning) in the KJV text. And yes, there are NIV and NASB versions too. I think we're at the crossover point now where the most serious Bible students are going digital and will have several versions of the Bible on computer with concordances and lexicons and such all available instantely.

I have a 16MB Palm device (Visor Pro). I run a KJV Bible program on it. It accepts plugins like Strong's, an 1828 Websters (the current KJV that most people know is a nineteenth century revision, not the hard-to-read 1611 AV; few KJV-only people seem to know that they don't actually own a 1611 AV which would actually offend them by including the Apocrypha), Calvin's commentaries (about 50 volumes), Gill's commentaries (about 15 huge volumes), several other large commentaries, Spurgeon's masterful work on Psalms, Geneva Bible footnotes, and more that I can't even recall at the moment. Naturally, I have an expanded memory (256MB flash) which holds some of the extra materials. It's like having a whole Bible library in your pocket, the size of a calculator. It's a little distracting in church though. When following the scripture reading, you just touch any word on the screen with the stylus and it starts offering Greek/Hebrew lexicons and commentaries to you. Very distracting to explore the Berean impulse and check everything the preacher is telling you. I think the other Baptists are a little intimidated by it. No printed Bible that you could actually carry around could compete with the stuff I have in that tiny thing.

BTW, I've noticed that Calvinists tend to favor the PDAs loaded with Bible software very much. When you think about it, it makes sense for a sola scriptura person. And you can't carry 70-80 volumes of your favorite printed references very easily.

[wideawake]

My Palm V has the Vulgate, the Tanach, LXX and NA27 on it. Quite handy. I want to upgrade, though. The niqudim are almost impossible to read.

[wideawake]

Also the Ordinary and Canon of the Mass of St. Pius V.

[George W. Bush]

I might have known that Rome wouldn't leave the entire PDA field open to us Baptist/Prots without a challenge.  ; )

[wideawake]

Trust me, you guys are light years ahead.

[George W. Bush]

Well, it makes sense. If you're sola scriptura, the development of such resources is a more important matter than if you rely upon the Roman tradition and magisterium and priesthood. Simply a very different situation.

Nevertheless, I expect the Roman offerings to improve. Today's RCs are simply, to use your phrase, "light years ahead" of previous generations of RCs in Bible study. It is quite noticable. Of course, it does move RCs, especially American ones, somewhat closer to us sola scriptura folks. No doubt, Rome thought long and hard about this matter before they started officially encouraging Bible study among their parishioners.