Posted on 07/07/2008 10:49:08 PM PDT by Gamecock
I have many friends and aquaintances who use the G-d referred to by the person who questioned why you use it. Frankly, some of them are Jews, and the others are non-believing Christians claiming no faith, but wanting to be respectful in making mentioning of the God I love and serve. My non-believing friends who use the hyphen do not believe in the deity of Christ, or the God of the Bible as the One to whom each of us must give an account of our life someday. I personally find it offensive. Are you trying to say you use G-d because of not wanting to disrespect the Almighty one, like Yahweh in the Old Testament?
Hmmmm....that’s interesting. Never EVER heard it used for that reason before. As children of the Lord, we are perfectly “allowed” to speak and use his name as it appears biblically, in any way that is reverent and reflective of our faith and trust in Him. His name is holy, and we as the Bride of Christ have the freedom to speak of our Bridegroom without abbreviations.
JMHO....
Maybe St. Peter should update the Book of Life to PGP 9.x already.
One who, as God, introduces a New Covenant.
Now, works themselves do not merit grace - they, along with faith, are the means of accepting God's gift. Faith and works do not exist independently - they compliment each other! Why else would Jesus command actions of his followers and not mere faith?
Oh, about the same as the rest of ya do here.
I am not a chr*stian.
What kind of messiah abolishes Torah laws but not post-Torah laws?
One who, as God, introduces a New Covenant.
Funny that the Bible contains the "obsolete" laws rather than the ones in effect now.
Once a Protestant begins opening up to the concept of law and merit/demerit, it is almost impossible not to "go all the way." Do you understand this?
Fundamentalist Protestants believe in J*sus because they believe they are in need of "salvation." Salvation is passive. One does not "obtain salvation." One is passively "saved" as one free-falls. If there are laws and rituals, then religion is not salvational at all but statutory.
Judaism/Noachism is consistent because it is a non-salvational, statutory religion. Antinomian Protestantism is consistent (somewhat at least) because it is salvational. Catholicism and Orthodoxy seem to be a hodgepodge of statute and salvationism. To put it bluntly, "salvation" is invoked as an excuse to replace the old rituals, after which their religion becomes statutory.
If Catholic/Orthodox laws, rituals, and traditions are beautiful, then so are those of the Torah. If Protestants are out of line in demanding that Catholics and Orthodox drop their laws, rituals, and traditions, then Catholics and Orthodox are out of line in demanding that Jews abandon the Torah.
If there is still a "law" in effect, then there was no need to do away with Torah/Noachide law and no new religion was necessary. If a new religion was necessary, it would have to be an antinomian (or at least post-nomian) one in order to have an excuse to replace the religion already in existence.
It seems to me, in the last paragraph of my post 107, I did address the Catholic (generic, really, it is hardly restricted to just Catholics) take on why the Law was abrogated. That you don't accept that is fine, as the grace of faith is needed, and you don't have that sort of faith. But my thumbnail sketch of the matter at hand, it seems to me, should give you a coherent reason why Christianity feels empowered to consider the Mosaic Law, as it bound the Jews, to be moot. The Decalogue is still in force, as it applies to all men as an encapsulation of the natural law writ large in each man's conscience, so I don't see how you conclude that we are "antinomian." I object, not to the fact that you reject the conclusions of the Church in this matter (that faith thing again), but that you do so in such a condescendingly dismissive fashion that it is clear to me that your take on this makes our position so transparent to your eyes that there is no position at all. This, to me, makes you look obsessive about this, since you seem to be railing against a vacuum, or, at least making a mountain out of a molehill.
That Judaism and Christianity should differ on numerous key points is part of the "speciation" that, by definition, is inherent in two faiths that have different names. That Christianity attaches a specific "setting apart" of the chosen people to the Law, and that, once the Messiah who was to come out of that people had accomplished His earthly mission, the purpose for His ancestral people to be set apart no longer applied, is hardly something I'd expect someone of your beliefs to simply accept. But, while you may not accept it, in the context delineated by the Church, it certainly has coherency. But your position makes it sound little different from saying that the Church believes that the Law was abrogated because Oreo cookies have a creme-filled center. In other words, that our reasoning is founded entirely on a non-sequitur. While you labor to explain your position to us who wallow out here in the hustings of idolatry, you in turn, might do well to at least try to understand - even if you cannot accept - how a Christian interprets the abrogation of the Mosaic Law as a perfectly natural and temporally necessary action. The Jews needed it to set themselves apart from other men, and keep Revelation (up to the point of the Messiah) and their bloodline as pure as possible. But Christ came for all men, and, once His earthly mission was accomplished, and the sending forth of His disciples into the whole world commenced, the "setting apart" of any particular race was no longer needed. Ergo, the behavioral, hygienic and dietary restrictions once in place for the Jews could be dispensed with.
As you seem fond of saying to Christians when talking about the Law, "you just don't see the argument." Where is the inconsistency you allege? We Christians acknowledge that the Old Testament is equally the Word of God along with the New Testament. And, without a doubt, the Torah delineates the Law that the chosen people were expected to follow. The Old Testament, then, as the inspired Word of God, gives us a perfect historical record of those Laws that the Israelites/Jews were expected to follow, by God's command. We accept and acknowledge this wholeheartedly. But we see why the Jews were expected to follow the Law with a different slant than the Jews themselves do, because our New Testament explains it in a way that the Jews did not need to hear while the Law still had a God-mandated role to fulfill in them. It is therefore hardly as inconsistent of us as you imply that we reject the Law while accepting (half-heartedly, according to you) the Old Testament as Scripture.
If Catholic/Orthodox laws, rituals, and traditions are beautiful, then so are those of the Torah. If Protestants are out of line in demanding that Catholics and Orthodox drop their laws, rituals, and traditions, then Catholics and Orthodox are out of line in demanding that Jews abandon the Torah.
No. The Torah was imposed by God on the Jews. The ceremonial laws and rituals in Christianity that surround the essentials of the various Sacraments grow out of the experimentation and experience of men through an organic development. They can be changed or abrogated at the whim of the proper human authorities, if felt necessary. The Jews could not do that with the Torah. But, since Christians live by Grace and not the Law, what laws and traditions we have pertain to orderliness , consistency and discipline, and do pertain to salvation per se. Big difference.
There are degrees of maturity and we believe the same order is followed for everyone. First:
Matt 3:11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fireThis indicates that the baptism by fire is at the point of regeneration. This occurs further on as I'll explain below.
We understand "belief" as:
"Believing in the Lord is not just a matter of acknowledging Him, but includes keeping His commandments. Merely to acknowledge Him only demands some thought on the part of the understanding, but to keep His commandments requires acknowledgment too on the part of the will. The human mind is made up of the understanding and the will. It is the function of the understanding to think, of the will to act. So as long as a person's acknowledgment is merely in thought on the part of the understanding, he approaches the Lord with no more than half his mind; but when he acts, then he does so with his whole mind, and that is what believing is. " (TCR 151)
So right there this implies that we are to compel ourselves to repent our lives to make the commitment to the Lord and to cooperate with Him. The time this takes is up to the individual, but it's never instantaneous with conversion. Bad habits are hard to break.
"Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are to receive those spiritual benefits, because He Himself is salvation and everlasting life. He is salvation, because He is the Saviour, for this is the meaning of His name Jesus; He is everlasting life, because those in whom He is, and who are in Him, have everlasting life. This is why He is called everlasting life in 1 John 5:20. Now since He is salvation and everlasting life, it follows that He is also every means which leads to salvation and everlasting life. Thus He is the whole of reformation, regeneration, renewal, quickening, sanctification and justification, cleansing from evils, and finally salvation. In the case of every single person the Lord confers these benefits, or rather, He attempts to impart them; and when a person makes himself ready and suitable to receive them, He does impart them. The activity of readying and making oneself suitable comes from the Lord too, but if the person does not receive them with spontaneity of spirit, then the Lord cannot go beyond the attempt to introduce them, and this attempt is constantly kept up." (TCR 150)
Note that salvation is at the end of the process. Again, some years may pass and the regeneration process lasts to eternity -- it's not a 'one time deal'.
I'm very sorry to learn you feel this way, because it's nonsense. The TaNa"KH very plainly states that G-d rose up pagan enemies of Israel at various times as a punishment for them. Does this mean He approved of their paganism? Not at all. Nevertheless Assyria was the rod of His anger, though it was punished in due turn.
The raising up of scourges to punish Israel is so much a part of the resume of the Biblical G-d that I cannot help but wonder if you are too liberal to believe in such a Deity. Do you also reject His right to order the exterminations of entire nations of people, including children, sucklings, and animals? Are you among those who say "obviously G-d would never do such a thing, so He didn't, but the primitive Israelites thought He did because that's how people thought back then"?
It seems to me, in the last paragraph of my post 107, I did address the Catholic (generic, really, it is hardly restricted to just Catholics) take on why the Law was abrogated. That you don't accept that is fine, as the grace of faith is needed, and you don't have that sort of faith.
I used to, but back then I thought that G-d no longer used laws, rituals, or traditions of any kind. I had to reject this to become Catholic. Thing was, once I started along this path there was no logical reason to stop short fo the ultimate conclusion.
So why, after the Torah was "abrogated" (chas vechalilah!) did G-d feel compelled to replace it with something else that isn't even in the Scriptures?
The Decalogue is still in force, as it applies to all men as an encapsulation of the natural law writ large in each man's conscience, so I don't see how you conclude that we are "antinomian."
True, though the `Aseret HaDibberot (the Decalogue) does not now and never has applied to non-Jews (the Seven Noachide Laws do). What you don't want to admit is that the Torah is still in force in its entirety for Jews and always will be. And the Catholic Church is only "antinomian" in that it believes the Torah has been abrogated. Protestants are much more antinomian, and they have their problems with consistency too. I think at the end of the day only Jews/Noachides (one one side) and Fundamentalist Universalists (on the other) are truly consistent.
But your position makes it sound little different from saying that the Church believes that the Law was abrogated because Oreo cookies have a creme-filled center.
Hmm. I suppose I can see how it looks that way to you, but my point is simply that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and if the Torah was abrogated, then Paul's condemnation of "works" in Galatians should apply to all rituals, all oral traditions, all holidays, all ceremonials, etc. However, if these rituals, oral traditions, holidays, and ceremonials of the churches are valid, then how much the more so (`al 'achat kammah vekhammah) are those of the Torah, towards which your attitude is identical to that of Luther's towards Catholicism.
Just a word to all: I realize I got on late today, but I was away from my computer and logged on later than usual. I also want to thank you, Magisterium, for being willing to discuss these issues with me.
Perhaps I need to be more nuanced. It is one thing for God to use pre-existing people or circumstances to send a scourge to His people by pushing them to the fore; it is something else again to suppose that God creates a group of people, with beliefs highly contrary to His Truth and Will, specifically to effect the same purpose. That seemed to be what you were implying, and, if such were the case, then you seemed to be accepting the notion of Jesus as God, since God would not raise a "false concept" ex nihilo to be anyone's scourge.
So why, after the Torah was "abrogated" (chas vechalilah!) did G-d feel compelled to replace it with something else that isn't even in the Scriptures? Hmm. I suppose I can see how it looks that way to you, but my point is simply that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and if the Torah was abrogated, then Paul's condemnation of "works" in Galatians should apply to all rituals, all oral traditions, all holidays, all ceremonials, etc. However, if these rituals, oral traditions, holidays, and ceremonials of the churches are valid, then how much the more so (`al 'achat kammah vekhammah) are those of the Torah, towards which your attitude is identical to that of Luther's towards Catholicism.
I think you miss my point again. St. Paul, clearly, condemns "works" which are attempted as a means to storm Heaven as sufficient for entry thereto. All of the ceremonials surrounding the bare-bones of the Sacraments themselves are not directly imposed by Jesus,; therefore, they do not have a direct counterpart in the Torah, which was, in fact, imposed on the Israelites by God Himself. Our "works" of worship, as I think you mean them, do not claim any salvific power, while the Jews consciously believed they were saved by the Law. You are forcing more of a correlation here than is warranted. Luther's problem was similar, insofar as he tried to demonstrate that Catholics view "works" the same way the Jews did. But this is a false assertion, a straw man set-up to justify his total rejection of "works" as even a necessary fruit of sanctifying grace. That Luther's views were what they were detracts not a whit from my Catholic Faith. I cannot help what he chose to believe.
The raising up of scourges to punish Israel is so much a part of the resume of the Biblical G-d that I cannot help but wonder if you are too liberal to believe in such a Deity. Do you also reject His right to order the exterminations of entire nations of people, including children, sucklings, and animals? Are you among those who say "obviously G-d would never do such a thing, so He didn't, but the primitive Israelites thought He did because that's how people thought back then"?
I could call that "mind reading," but I won't. I think I understand your thought. But you err. No. Clearly, the inspired Word of God that is the Old Testament relates the command for these exterminations you allude to. God was within His rights to use natural disasters and Israelite armies to exterminate various peoples for their wickedness. They had utterly rejected even the natural law, and had reduced themselves, among other things, to such practices as infant sacrifice. God had not yet given man the opportunity to live in sanctifying grace, and was in no way obligated to do so before "the appointed time." The utter depravity of the peoples in question required, even under the Noachide Laws you refer to, the punishment that was meted-out. Indeed, when it was Israel's turn to do the same sorts of abominations under just about every-other king, God used similar means to deal with them, too. I have no problem with this, and I object, if anything, to the fact that you seem to assume every Catholic would have problems here.
Sure. Here:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
followed by this:
http://www.e-sword.net/bibles.html
LOLOL
How old is the earth?
How big was Noah’s Ark?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits, according to the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible. How big does 'tradition' say that it is?
A cubit is roughly half a yard.
Did this vessel hold a male and female of every species on earth, plus silage/meal/meat for six weeks?
Here’s a reference page from a quick google search:
http://www.worldwideflood.com/ark/noahs_cubit/cubit.htm
Of course not. That's why we have possums and bunnies running around the back yard, not dinosaurs.
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