Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Kosta: "That's a novel concept for our Protestant friends! But they will come back and say something profound like "if that's true, then God's not in control...there was no propitiation..." or an even deeper one "our sins killed Him." LOL!"
Ummm ...... no. :) We would say something profound like Jesus went willingly to His death and Jesus was God. Jesus came only to do the will of the Father, so God was in control the whole time.
The Old Testament laid out the attempts and failings of man to live as God would have us live. The gospel laid out the ministry of Christ. Paul laid out the doctrine for us. Revelation tells us the end. It’s all connected.
Yes, I was called, but quietly, with a nudge here and a nudge there. God let me have a taste of discomfort (!), but for the most part, He guided me gently and steadily. And I have been rewarded far beyond my deserving. That is yet another reason that I believe so strongly. I don’t know how good a Job I’d make, but I pray that I never have to find out.
Yes, I couldn't have said it better. I wish I could remember to do as you have said more often - it is easy to place God in "second place" as life goes by. Posts such as yours helps.
Regards
Zwingli was the leader of the German speaking Swiss Reformation; the most liberal of all the Reformation leaders. From 1523 to 1525, he gradually converted from being a Catholic priest into a Protestant; in January 1525, his dispute with Grebel and Manz led to a break between Zwingli and the Brethren.
I am in error in citing Wesley and not Knox as the founder of the Presbyterians and offer my apologies. You are of course correct in that matter.
If you had the complete Bible, it is specifically mentioned. With the hacked up abridged Bible, it has equal Scriptural support as does the theology of the Trinity.
The Bible wasn’t amassed by Jewish scholars. It was amassed by the Church. Are you a Jew or a Christian?
I'm not sure, wmfights. I imagine Purgatory is similar or analogous to purgation here, but even more intensive because THEY have SEEN God. There must be some sort of joy involved mixed with regret that they are not able to join God immediately - "if only I had been more loving" I suppose they'd say. What do we do to be purged, to become more virtuous, to become "one-minded"? I would imagine that happens in Purgatory.
Regards
Good link. Thanks. Unfortunately, the calvinist methodists died out.
They would have been a good balance to our excesses.
Paul. A Christian. A man. Not God.
Man does not live on bread alone but on every word from the mouth of God. Paul is not God. When you elevate Paul’s words above those of Jesus, you are elevating Paul above God. Idolatry.
I was wrong in identifying Wesley instead of Knox.
Apologies.
Known to be fallacious? By Protestants, no doubt. A number of Fathers accepted the Septuagint as inspired by God and 2 Maccabees was part of that. Both the Orthodox and Catholic Church have accepted it for at least 1700 years. You should have said "it is my OPINION that 2 Maccabees is fallacious", perhaps also giving your reasons why you think that, rather than your proclamation that is at odds with a vast majority of Christianity.
Regards
Why should men repent if the non elect will go to hell? Under Reformed theology, they will go to hell regardless if they believe or not; they will go to hell regardless if they repent or not.
There is fundamental illogic with the Reformed thought. If all of men’s efforts are worth nothing, why should they do anything? If one views Scripture through that prism, then anything one does is mechanical and means nothing.
I disagree that God does NOT give all men the ABILITY to repent. We believe that God gives SUFFICIENT graces to all men, sufficient in of themselves to bring a man to repentance. However, a MAN must ALSO WANT to repent. Otherwise, it is not HIS repentance.
Again, we are back to "who is judged, God or man?" If God provides only some men with sufficient grace to repent, then it is GOD who would be judged, because that man could then say "you didn't give me the ability to repent, so HOW could I?" Regards
The point about the Jewish scholars is that they are the ones who’ve dated 2 Mac in the latter part of the 1st century BC. That means it’s at least a hundred years removed from the events, nearly at the time of Christ, and pharisaical in nature.
There are a variety of ways to look at 2 Mac. First, it wasn’t accepted as scripture and incorporated into the Masoretic Text. Second, it is not cited in any of the works of any apostle.
I would not use the words “amassed by the Church,” although I don’t have any heartburn with that characterization. I would say that the church testified to the historic origin of scripture. With the OT it simply testified to the body of scripture accepted by Jesus & the Apostles. With the NT, it testified to the apostolic underpinnings of each of the NT books. Once their historical mission was completed, they subordinated themselves to the preserved message of the Apostles.
Well, I guess you had to be there - it was said in an attempt to trip me up...
Regards
It really depends on the concept of the elect.
If the elect means those who have been baptized, have received the Sacraments on a regular basis, who believe in God, who act according to His instructions, and who strive to imitate Christ (poorly of course), then yes I do.
If the elect means all men except those who have rejected Christ, then yes I do. If the elect is all men, who have all been offered the Grace of God, and have reached out for it, then yes I do.
If the elect means an exclusive club that you are entered into before you were even born, with little radio voices telling you things, preprogrammed behaviour that means nothing anyway, and everlasting heartburn, then no I don’t.
Indulgences are not wrong. They were not wrong, they are not wrong, they will always be not wrong. The manner of administration and the reasons for granting them were corrupt and were dealt with. Now the timeliness is of concern, certainly, and I think that a follow up nasty email to BXVI after the first one that we sent him is called for. :)
Yes, the Bible is all connected. The Law and the Gospel are connected by Jesus Christ. I would be careful, though, about saying "Paul laid out the doctrine". That would imply that Jesus didn't lay out any doctrine. He most certainly did. And James does a very good job of laying it out. The Sermon on the Mount and James are very closely related.
Regards
http://www.apuritansmind.com/Apologetics/ApocryphaArticle4.htm The books are expressly stated by Gregory the Great as apocryphal, who was Pope of Rome (Morals. Lib. XIX. c. 16.) Eusebius says the same (Lib. De Temp.), as does Richard of S. Victor. (Except. Lib. II. c. 9.) and Occam (3 Part.Dial. Tract.. I. Lib. III c. 16) Will worship is seen in 2 Maccabees 12, where Judas Maccabees is praised for sacrificing to the dead, something God never commanded (See Leviticus 101-3). Judas is said to have been slain in 152 during the reign of Seleucide in Mac. 9:3; but 2 Mac. 1:10 he writes a letter to Aristobulus in the year 188, 36 years after his death (I wish I could do that!) So much more can be added, but I will add one more. Within the 2 Maccabean books, Antiochus is said to have died 3 different ways and in two different geographical locations. (See 1 Macc. 6:18, 16; 2 Macc. 1:16; 2 Macc 9, etc.) Josephus was not careful.
How sinful did man become after the fall? Was it totally sick or just partially sick?
Did he have ebola or did he have a cold?
You bring up some interesting points. I’ll do my best to address them.
Luther removed those books from the canon that lent support to orthodox doctrine, and contradicted his own developing heresies, relegating them to an appendix. Removed in this way were books that supported such things as prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12; 2 Maccabees 12:39-45), Purgatory (Wisdom 3:1-7), intercession of dead saints (2 Maccabees 15:14), and intercession of angels as intermediaries (Tobit 12:12-15). Ultimately, the “Reformers” decided to ignore the canon determined by the Christian Councils of Hippo and Carthage (and reaffirmed and closed at the Council of Trent4), and resort solely to those texts determined to be canonical at the Council of Jamnia.
Now we have to back up a bit: after the Temple fell, a rabbinical school was formed by Johanan ben Zakkai. The “Council of Jamnia” (also called “Jabneh” or “Javneh”) is the name given to the decisions made by this pharisaic school. I repeat: the gathering at Jamnia was a Jewish, not a Christian, “council” consisting of Pharisees some 40 years after the Resurrection of our Lord. At that time, Jews were being scattered, and the very existence of Jewry per the Pharisees’ vision of “Jewry” was being threatened. At this time, too, Christianity was growing and threatening that same Jewish identity, resulting in severe persecution of Christians by Jews. In reaction to these things and to the fact that “Nazarenes” (i.e., “Christians”, who at that time were overwhelmingly Hebrew) used the Septuagint to proselytize other Jews, Zakkai convened the Jamnian school with the goals of safeguarding Hillel’s Oral Law, deciding the Jewish canon (which had theretofore been, and possibly even afterward remained an open canon!), and preventing the disappearance of Jewry into the Diaspora of the Christian and Roman worlds. So, circling their wagons, they threw out the Septuagint that they had endorsed for almost 400 years. Note that at the time of Christ, most Jews spoke Aramaic, Latin (the official language of the area), and/or Greek (the lingua franca at that time), not Hebrew, which was a sacred language used by priests for the Hebrew liturgy. In any case, a new Greek translation was created by Aquila — but one without the ancient Septuagint’s language that proved more difficult for the Jews to defend against when being evangelized by the Christians, the point being that any idea that a book “had” to have been written in Hebrew to be “Biblical” wasn’t the issue.
Moving the story along: in other words, the Protestant “Reformers” decided against the canon held dear by the Apostles in favor of a canon determined by Pharisees some 40 years after Jesus rose from the dead — the same Pharisees who denied the Truths of the entire New Testament, even accusing the “Nazarenes” of stealing Jesus’ body from the tomb and lying to the world! (Interestingly, it was Zakkai’s successor, Gamaliel, who forced the “Nazarenes” out of the synagogues. Gamaliel also made it obligatory for Jews to pray the “Prayer of Eighteen Petitions,” the 12th petition, which is still prayed today, known as the birkat, being “For apostates may there be no hope, and may the Nazarenes and heretics suddenly perish.”)
And do you know why the Book of Maccabees was thrown out by the Jewish Council? Because the Council was conducted under the auspices of the Flavian Roman Emperors and they decided that that particuar book, which tells of the Maccabean Revolt, might be inflammatory and incite rebellion by the Jews. So, all those Protestant Bibles are lacking the Book of Maccabees, which speaks clearly of praying for the dead, because a pagan emperor pressured the Pharisees, around 40 years after the Resurrection of Christ, to exclude it. And lest anyone is still tempted to think that it was the “Roman Church” that came up with these books and that they were not written by pre-Christ Jews (an assertion I’ve actually read at “Messianic” websites), Jews in other parts of the world who didn’t get news of the Council of Jamnia’s decisions still use those “extra” 7 books to this very day (research the canon used by Ethiopian Jewry).
By the way, “Masoretic texts” refers to translations of the Old Testament made by rabbis between the 6th and 10th centuries; the phrase doesn’t refer to ancient texts in the Hebrew language.
Relying on the “Bible alone” is a bad idea; we are not to rely solely on Sacred Scripture to understand Christ’s message. While Scripture is “given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), it is not sufficient for reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. It is the Church that is the “pillar and ground of Truth” (1 Timothy 3:15)! Jesus did not come to write a book; He came to redeem us, and He founded a Sacramental Church through His apostles to show us the way. It is to them, to the Church Fathers, to the Sacred Deposit of Faith, to the living Church that is guided by the Holy Spirit, and to Scripture that we must prayerfully look.
Tobit 12:15
I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One. [see Revelation 1:4 and 8:3-4 below]
2 Maccabees 7:29
[A mother speaking to her son:] Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again with your brothers. [see Hebrews 11:35 below]
2 Maccabees 12:44
For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. [see 1 Corinthians 15:29 below]
2 Maccabees 15:14
And Onias spoke, saying, “This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah [bodily dead], the prophet of God.”
1 Corinthians 15:29
Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? [see 2 Maccabees 12:44 above]
Hebrews 11:35
Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection. [see 2 Maccabees 7:29 above]
Revelation 1:4
...Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne. [see Tobit 12:15 above]
Revelation 8:3-4
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. [see Tobit 12:15 above]
I trust that this is sufficient answer. If not, well, let us reason further together.
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