Posted on 05/31/2011 11:53:33 AM PDT by marshmallow
It seems to me that the Church wanted him to recant that you are saved by grace through faith. It wasn't Luther's pride that kept him from doing so.
Didn't you read what I wrote? God tells us to repent to only shows us that we cannot.
Now do you believe that the wicked can turn away from their wickedness without God's help? -- My answer is No.
Then to what point does God stop helping the wicked come to Him? And if God helped EVERYONE come to Him, then wouldn't they come to Him?
God's grace is needed for us to turn to him, yes, but there is no proof for God pre-condeming pre-programmed people to hell
The facts are that 1) God made man, 2) God knew man would fall, 3) God created the conditions by putting the tree in the garden, 4) God allowed the serpent to tempt Eve, 5) God allowed Eve to give Adam the fruit fully knowing what would happen, 6) God did nothing to intervene, 7) God already knew what punishment would be dished out.
Those are the facts. The reason God created this situation is because we would never know paradise gain without paradise lost.
God does not do that.
I wouldn't presume to know the mind of God.
This is why I tried to present it as a language/terms issue.
I look at the Psalms. I see the Psalmist praising, whining, rebuking complaining, even asking God to get out of his face and leave him alone! But recently somebody on"your side" told me the Psalms aren't prayers! Okay (Wha'?)
(BTW, stay at home dads may know a little something about interactions with kids.)
If I may generalize, a lot on your side seem to have a very binary way of looking at things. No shades. So our distinction between worship and reverence (or whatever terms one wants to use) just doesn't fit into the bi-pole universe.
It's a pretty old distinction. I've FINALLY begun reading John of Damascus and it's in the first couple of (8th century) pages.
So if we come onto the field saying, "Prayer is what you should do only to God," why then of course it's wrong of me to pray to Michael, Gabriel, Dymphna, Anthony, Thomas, Albert, Terese, Cecilia, Polycarp, Dominic, Jordan, Blessed JPII, and a huge supporting cast. It can't help but be wrong.
But I think it's an arbitrary definition which answers not to the history of the use of the term but only to a specific theological intention.
Further... How we communicate with the Lord is at another level of love and understanding than how we communicate with one another...sometimes raw and bare before Him because it is He whom we trust with our deepest self.
No disagreement there.
The POINT being...He is our ONLY intercessor.....just as He says that He is.....
OR the point is that IF, as John and Paul say a lot, we are united with him, we in him and he in us, in a spiritual (that is, more real than physical) union, then we pray in His Spirit, and in His Spirit we pray with each other and for each other, because, being united in him, we share in his intercessory work. I think all those angels and saints I mentioned above pray for me because, after their order, they are "in Him".
The difference you mention has its analog in our (a) asking a saint, notably Mary, to pray for us AND asking God to hear her prayers. We do not ask Mary to hear God's prayers! So there IS an asymmetry in our thinking, just not the one you present.
Even supposing you are correct, I am not aware of stretching anything. This is the way I use the word and I hear it used. I may sit on my couch or kneel or sit in the chapel and just "be with" God. I may internally verbalize some stuff, or I may not. I may "focus like a laser" on the Blessed Sacrament, or I may even allow myself to doze. (I figure once you're over 60 it's okay.) Yesterday after I nagged the Lord about some stuff I read John of Damascus in chapel -- as if to say, "There's no way I'm going to understand this stuff without your help."
In common parlance (I think) Before I do these things, I end my conversation with someone who wants to become catholic by saying, I'm going to go pray now."
You know I find words interesting and edumicational. And I've read a book. So I hear Jesus in Bach's Matthew Passion telling Peter and the sons of Zebedee to "stay here and pray" and I notice the German word is kin to 'bid' and remember that the word "beads" derives from the same root. And there's that petitionery sense. But we have bids in auctions and "heaven forBID!"
But discourses on old words that have grown and expanded HAVE to be long. To claim that their necessary length indicates falsehood makes no sense. The simplest things always take the most words to explain. E.g. Explain a quark. Then explain an automobile. Which was easier?
Where is the mental disconnect that RC's REFUSE to take the Biblical hint?
You will, no doubt, be astonished to find I look at it a different way! :-)
As Pentecostalists 'claim' certain gifts and act on them, we also claim and act on (or think we do) what we read in the Bible. We claim, as Peter says, that we are kings and priests in Christ. In Christ we make intercession for the world and for one another. And in Christ we not only interceded but ask for intercession, as even our Lord seemed somehow to want the prayers of Peter and James and John, and was grieved not to get them.
Whatever depth of history 'your side' claims, the more one gets into Catholicism one finds, as I did yesterday with John Damascene, that one is in a conversation of more than a millennium in duration, in fact, as we view it, a conversation that began with the ipsissima verba of the Lord and continued as the bumbling disciples said, "What do you think He meant by that?" And the quality of the conversation, we think, was elevated by the promised gift of the Spirit so that even oafish Peter could suddenly preach the archetypal Evangelical sermon with great power.
Claiming the cross and resurrection and the gifts which follow, we pray to one another and for one another. Claiming the word that those who believe in Christ will never die, we pray to those who have gone before. That is uniting those who are far off and those who are near in Spades, doubled, vulnerable! But we think and claim and live in the confidence that in the Spirit that union is more than real, not less.
So, it's not that we don't read Scripture, though many of us don't read it enough. It's that we read it with what Chesterton calls "the democracy of the dead", i.s. "tradition" and take advice and help from Justin, Damascene, and Charles Lwanga and the other martyrs of Uganda (Anglican as well as Catholic) who died as on this day, tortured and burned alive by the King of Uganda.
We BELIEVE, and act on that belief, that we are in the Body, united with Christ in the Holy Spirit,and that's why we have confidence to pray as we do.
One more, at the end of the long prayer of consecration, which is full of pleading and praise, thanks and intercession, and during which (in my parish, anyway) 'the people' are on their knees, we stand to pray the Lord's prayer. We call God "Father" and we stand in his presence because Jesus gave such assurances to us that, though humble, we are also bold.
Busy day. I will de-colorize and de-fontify your, if time allows, and give a less cursory response mo' later.
Have a beautiful New Mexico day! I love that state!
You wrote:
“There were no denominational labels, Catholic, Prebyterian, Baptist, .... that I know of in the first century.”
Jews will tell you otherwise. The Way and Christians would both be considered labels - even sectarian labels - by Jews in the first century. Also, the Catholic Church has never been, and will never be, a denomination.
“As for the other questions of doctrine - etc. In the first century, we did have the Old Testament, and the New Testament in the form of Gospels, the letters, the history by Luke, and the Revelation of John. From that, Christians derive our doctrine.”
False. Christians derived their doctrine from Christ and the Apostles’ teaching. That’s how Christianity could exist BEFORE a single verse of the NT was ever written.
“And I thank the Catholics for putting the New Testament together and preserving it.”
Okay, so you trust them with putting together and preserving the NT but not preserving the OT? Does that make any sense? You probably trust the Catholic Church with its Trinitarian doctrine, but not its doctrine on the Eucharist or priesthood?
“The crux is to believe Jesus is the Son of God and trust Him as our Savior. Why do we make it so complicated?”
I never thought it was complicated. Are Calvin’s Institutes really less complicated than the Catechism?
“That is totally universal - totally catholic.”
And that’s all that is? You’re essentially creating an anachronism for your definition of “catholic”.
“And believing God for salvation goes way, way, back before the first century to the Garden of Eden - the seed of the woman (Jesus born of a virgin) will crush the head of the serpent (the devil). Abraham believed God and it counted to him as righteousness. The nasty Ninevites that Jonah preached to - all believed God and He showed them mercy. (That’s all God has asked any sinner to do - believe Him.)”
And yet none of them were Christian. If someone could so easily be saved without believing or knowing Christ, why was Christ needed? Again, your essentially creating an anachronism.
“You are absolutely right that the Church is Christ-made.”
But is Presbyterianism?
Oh good grief, MD! We are a modern American English diverse group here. I find it an EXTREMELY GROSS GROPE to try and stretch those uses of "prayer" from an archaic form of English into this issue and context.
But it's not a stretch at all Quix...that's where the usage came from.
Mad Dawg is absolutely right. "Pray" for bid or ask was an extremely common usage in English and can be found all over English literature if you care to look. It's in the Bible as well. The only reason that you find it a "gross grope" is that the *language* changed from then till now. The faith didn't.
Also, we must remember Christianity wasn't born in England. In Italian we say "pregare", which means to pray AND to ask, bid. In Latin orare means to beg, pray or beseech. In Greek deesis means to ask or entreat of God or man.
Christianity does not rise or fall on the language preferences of 21st century America.
So, posturing it is....
Anyone else out there amused by the "humility" of those who stand on the street corners to loudly lament their faults "in principle," but always manage to avoid admitting said faults "in practice?"
Of course, where would the fun and visceral thrill of "righteous indignation" be if one had to admit to an actual error in judgment?
Bah! Why taint the heady intoxication of conspicuous gallantry with meddlesome details?
Excellent
You write what I have pondered.
Thanks
Jesus communicated with Mary. That, to me, is equivalent to prayer except that neither party has died yet.
By that logic then any time someone communicates with someone else, they are praying to them. That would mean that posting on this board, you are praying to caww.
And any time someone asked me a question, they are praying to me. Gee, I've never been prayed to by so many Catholics before. Since all NT believers are called *saints* and Catholics pray to saints, I guess I should be called Saint Metmom.
Learning occurring...right here before our very eyes!
Metmom - that's the problem; there is NO logic that could come close to validating their claim that "prayer is communicating."
Praying is praying, no matter how they try to explain it. Praying to anyone other than God Almighty is idolatry. And blasphemy.
Hoss
Now remember that we're just going to venerate you, not worship you! Don't let it go to your head.
Hm. Seems to me that Jesus showed us how the Gospel is to be lived. What’s the matter, isn’t that good enough?
“Joseph’s former marriage”
Since when does Scripture indicate Joseph had been married previously?
(Answer: [insert long sequence of other tenuous presumptions here])
If one must follow convoluted reasoning to achieve an absurd conclusion, then the conclusion is probably wrong.
And speaking of logic, are you familiar with the term “gratuitous assertion?”
You should be, because by definition a gratuitous assertion like “there is no logic that could come close to validating their claim...” may be just as gratuitously denied. And should be, when the ersatz logician is claiming something as asinine as the immutability of word usages.
Since when does Scripture claim to be exhaustive?
BTW Quix has beautiful fruit also.
When one collects together
a COMMITTEE of self-serving, self-righteous, political power-mongers . . .
PRIDE HAS to be one of the first things that takes a huge jump in embellished self-aggrandizement.
And, it never lets up . . . but goes from pseudo-lofty height to ever higher heights [actually lower depths] of one-upsmanship. The next top dog has to surpass the last top dog in power-mongering as well as flashy accoutraments of the ‘lofty’ position.
The pride of hell is never satisfied.
The only solution is daily—TO THE CROSS.
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