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
What proof would you require?
I have no idea why the word wasn't translated into "sacrament". We don't use translations so there's no problem for us. Maybe the people who did the English translations didn't like the idea of Latin Church sacraments? "...according to the Strong's concordance, it means a hidden thing or secret."
For us, the essence of a "sacrament" is hidden or secret thing. "So I'm not getting the sense that it is really like you say in that it implies the same thing as the Church's term "sacrament".
The "sacraments" do not comprise all of the mysteries of and around and about God, bb. In the East we don't constrain God, putting Him in little boxes, having Him compelled by Necessity and limiting Him to what we can fully understand.
"I did not find anywhere a mystery of marriage, of baptism, of communion/Eucharist, of Holy Orders, of healing or of last rites that would justify your assertion of the sacraments being described in Scripture."
I assume you are familiar with the biblical (not Traditional) basis for the Mysteria so I won't go into that. So far as I recall, the only one actually called a Mysterion in the NT is marriage but calling it a Mysterion is not the point. Mysterion and Mysteria are not "magic words". The point is that we do not fully (or even marginally) understand the what and how of the Mysteria because these are matters of God, not us. When we claim we do, we inevitably fall into error. Can you explain how baptism works on us (not what it does visibly), or Holy Orders, or the Annointing of the sick, or confession or Holy Communion or how matrimony is a type of Christ's relationship to The Church and how it advances us in theosis?
The West is fixated on "proving" and explaining matters of Faith and rejecting matters of Faith when it cannot "prove" or explain what is essentially unprovable and inexplicable. It is absolutist and legalistic, whether in Latin Rite or Protestant vestments, which leads to otherwise perfectly rational human beings arguing over whether bats really are birds! What does this lead to? Simple, it leads to atheistic secularism. Western Christians need to learn humility. A step in that direction will be to accept that they don't need to know everything!
"The power to bear Mysteries, which the humble man has received, which makes him perfect in every virtue without toil, this is the very power which the blessed apostles received in the form of fire. For its sake the Savior commanded them not to leave Jerusalem until they should receive power from on high, that is to say, the Paraclete, which, being interpreted, is the Spirit of consolation. And this is the Spirit of divine visions. Concerning this it is said in divine Scripture: 'Mysteries are revealed to the humble'. The humble are accounted worthy of receiving in themselves this Spirit of revelations Who teaches mysteries" +Isaac the Syrian
I don't see to many references in the OT to that effect. The OT God appears to those he chooses to communicate with, not to every Tom, Dick or Harry who kneels down and prays. Prayer is petition, not a two way communication. That doesn't mean God is accessible, for the Bible says God will do whatever he want regardless what we say. After all, since you as a Calvinist believe in double predestination, prayer is meaningless except as a senseless commandment that will not change what God has preordained.
Obviously, the New Testament God is different in that regard. He hears you and listens to you, and in fact Jesus is quoted as saying that whatsoever you ask you shall be given. That's novel compared to the OT, don't you think? So, it seems like God changed...
It's like Christ fulfilling the Law. It doesn't mean God changed.
If he fulfilled what cannot be fulfilled, what is eternal, and what is to be observed forever (according to the Old Testament), then either God changed or someone didn't get it right while taking down notes.
If you think telling lies is unimportant, you belong with the Protestant gang.
That it illustrates the miraculous nature of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Just as someoe wonders how did He pass through the hymen of His mother not violating it, one wonders how did He pass through a bolted door. It does not prove anything, but it explains, and I am here to explain.
Communism is the imagined ideal society, where the greed has been eliminated by the fact that all means of production and goods are owned by everyone, and that no social inequality exists. Three is no money, no tax, no social difference. Everything that one could need is accessible to anyone at any time.
Once free from the basic human instinct of hoarding and ownership, social inequality, etc., crime, corruption and greed would disappear. How is that different from the imagined life in heaven? Both sound Utopian.
But since He created our individualities differently :) I would presume that different people will have different things to do in Heaven.
Same thing in communism; those who like to fish would fish; those who like to golf would golf. What will you do in heaven? Fish? Golf? You can't be serious!
In addition, there is the matter of whatever specifically "Heavenly reward" entails.
Your guess is as good as mine. :) But it's just a guess, regardless.
When did He claim it, and are you sure the legalisms of the Old Testament, -- not that we care either way -- exclude cases of virgin birth?
If you read it, it actually said that Mary most certainly did not have a sister named Mary. Therefore, the "adelpheh" in "there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary" (John 19:25) is another case of expansive use of "brother/sister" semantic, common to the Scripture. If you don't pay attention, how would you learn anything?
How do you know I talked to my grandfather? People I trust told me. That is how I know most facts.
:)
This does not make sense if God can't be moved or changed.
What MOVES God that He needs to change direction?
To make it sound more "mysterious." :) Well, why not translate the word "amen," or "why not translate the word mystery as secret because that's what it means, or Christ as the Anointed One, or Messiah as the Anointed One, or the Kingdom of God as Israel, or Satan as the Accuser, which is a title and not a name, etc.?
There are also other Greek words translated as mystery that doe not come form the word mysterion, thus adding to the confusion and erroneous conflation of concepts.
No it is not "necessary for salvation" in the same sense as "I believe in God" is. But this part, "I believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" is in the Creed, and comes without a disclaimer about "unless it is a historically known fact".
laying heavy burdens on people rather than [...] preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
To believe the Mary was a virgin all her life is no burden any more than remembering her name is a burden (your scriptural allusion is to a very real burden to exclude half of the menu in the time when getting fed with anything was a life's challenge, Acts 15:28).
More than you word for it.
Why, Implacable Necessity, of course! /s
If there is anything I say that is in ignorance of facts, please point me to it without trying to get cute, and I will give your post a careful and public consideration like I always do. At the same time, it is not my habit to respond to personal one-liners without substance like that post of yours, so if you have more in that style, there is no promise that I will respond. I ingore, for example, most Quix's posts, for reasons that should be obvious.
To which I would add that the confusion and erroneous conflation of concepts is "inevitable" without at a minimum, access to Holy Tradition and at best, HT combined with a knowledge of biblical Greek.
“”I have heard Protestants tell me “God told me.” “”
This is why there is so many heretical teachings today
The late Bishop Fulton Sheen said it best....
“Every heresy in the history of the Church has been either a truth exaggerated to an excess, or diminished to a defect. Calvinism, for example, had a very good first principle, which is a sound Catholic principle, namely, the absolute Sovereignty of God; but Calvin carried it so far as to rule out human merit. Bolshevism, too, is grounded on a very sound Catholic principle, which is the Brotherhood of Man, but it has exaggerated it so far as to leave no room for the Sovereignty of God. And so it is easy to fall into any of these extremes, and to lose one’s intellectual balance. The thrill is in keeping it.”- Bishop Fulton J Sheen
It is legalism because Christ's Jewishness is based on it, and his Jewishness is absolutely required by the OT for him top be the "Anointed One" (the "Meshiyah," aka "Messiah," aka "Christos").
But in order for him to be the firstborn of redemption (i.e. the firstborn of the matrilinear line) he would have had to be the first to "open the womb" and not just "jump" out, so to say, as if walking through closed doors.
Now, being the firstborn of the Father simply means that he inherits twice as much as the rest. Yet that is a problem as well, since Christ inherited all, since there is no "rest"! So, basically, Jewish legalism were retained where they were needed and discarded or modified where they were a stumbling block. :)
You can't interpret something without a standard to compare it to. In the Church it is the Holy Tradition, based on Church records and mindset that was much closer to the original Christianity.
In the Protestant world it is whatever they "feel" inside, a perusal tradition of sorts, how they were raised, how healthy and wealthy they are, the language they speak, the culture they embrace, etc.
If the Biblical Greek and the Holy tradition are not sued as standards, then anything goes.
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