I dunno, 2nd amendment mama. Is this the kind of honor you give Grandma?????
I don't remember doing that for her....
Posted on 11/23/2011 11:11:08 AM PST by marshmallow
Maybe they should become Amish. They aren’t strict enough Christians.
Thank you. You are a treasure for all Free Republic Bible-believing Christians. Praise the Lord.
Maybe they shouldn’t celebrate Christmas period like their Puritan forebears.
Why don’t you join the Amish? You aren’t rigorist enough in your arbitrary reading of the Bible.
I like the photo. I think that would be a very peaceful place to pray. It’s simple but beautiful. The image of the Incarnation is especially beautiful. Reflecting on the Incarnation is, I think, a very good think. Particular before prayer, silent or verbalized.
If you could bring yourself to admit that what you keep referring to as the "Catholic Church" was, in reality, all the local assemblies of believers in Jesus Christ who followed the orthodox teachings they received either directly from Jesus Christ or his hand-selected Apostles and disciples, then we may agree on this point. As the article from Warfield expressed:
The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98. Whether the church of Ephesus, however, had a completed Canon when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would depend on whether there was any epistle, say that of Jude, which had not yet reached it with authenticating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for historical investigation here. Certainly the whole Canon was not universally received by the churches till somewhat later. The Latin church of the second and third centuries did not quite know what to do with the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Syrian churches for some centuries may have lacked the lesser of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But from the time of Irenæus down, the church at large had the whole Canon as we now possess it. And though a section of the church may not yet have been satisfied of the apostolicity of a certain book or of certain books; and though afterwards doubts may have arisen in sections of the church as to the apostolicity of certain books (as e. g. of Revelation): yet in no case was it more than a respectable minority of the church which was slow in receiving, or which came afterward to doubt, the credentials of any of the books that then as now constituted the Canon of the New Testament accepted by the church at large. And in every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or doubts against it laid aside, was the historical tradition of apostolicity.
Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was not exactly apostolic authorship which in the estimation of the earliest churches, constituted a book a portion of the “canon.” Apostolic authorship was, indeed, early confounded with canonicity. It was doubt as to the apostolic authorship of Hebrews, in the West, and of James and Jude, apparently, which underlay the slowness of the inclusion of these books in the “canon” of certain churches. But from the beginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity was not apostolic authorship, but imposition by the apostles as “law.” Hence Tertullian’s name for the “canon” is “instrumentum”; and he speaks of the Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and New Testament. That the apostles so imposed the Old Testament on the churches which they founded — as their “Instrument,” or “Law,” or “Canon” — can be denied by none. And in imposing new books on the same churches, by the same apostolical authority, they did not confine themselves to books of their own composition. It is the Gospel according to Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul parallels in I Tim. v. 18 with Deuteronomy as equally “Scripture” with it in the first extant quotation of a New Testament book of as Scripture. The Gospels which constituted the first division of the New Books, — of “The Gospel and the Apostles,” — Justin tells us, were “written by the apostles and their companions.” The authority of the apostles, as by divine appointment founders of the church, was embodied in whatever books they imposed on the church as law, not merely in those they themselves had written.
The early churches, in short, received, as we receive, into their New Testament all the books historically evinced to them as given by the apostles to the churches as their code of law; and we must not mistake the historical evidences of the slow circulation and authentication of these books over the widely-extended church, for evidence of slowness of “canonization” of books by the authority or the taste of the church itself. (http://www.the-highway.com/ntcanon_Warfield.html
The trouble with your analysis of the Church fathers is that you start with your sectarian bias first in judging their interpretation of the Bible.
Isn’t your interpretation of the meaning of the Bible any less conjectural?
There isn’t a single verse in scripture that explicitly says that Jesus was speaking figuratively when he said: “This is my body” “This is my blood.”
Or 1 Peter 3:21, which pronounces that “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you— not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience— through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” NASB
There isn’t exactly a single verse in scripture that explicitly says that baptism is symbolic either.
It comes down to TRADITION of what verses you choose to stitch together to create your catechetical position.
Then you choose to ignore or dismiss verses like 2 Thessalonians 2:14 and 3:6, which challenge your interpretation of the Traditions of Men.
Which refer to the 600+ Mitzvot that the Pharisees and their contemporary successors expect the Jews to observe.
http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm
St. Paul says we are to live by the spirit of the law, not by the letter of the law.
The Christian Bible references the letter and the spirit of the law in Romans 2:29 NASB. Though it is not quoted directly, the principle is applied using the words “spirit” and “letter” in context with the legalistic view of the Hebrew Bible. This may be the first recorded use of the phrase.
In the New Testament, Pharisees are seen as people who place the letter of the law above the spirit (Mark 2:3–28, 3:1–6). Thus, “Pharisee” has entered the language as a pejorative for one who does so; the Oxford English Dictionary defines Pharisee with one of the meanings as A person of the spirit or character commonly attributed to the Pharisees in the New Testament; a legalist or formalist. Pharisees are also depicted as being lawless or corrupt (Matthew 23:38); the Greek word used in the verse means lawlessness, and the corresponding Hebrew word means fraud or injustice.
In the Gospels Jesus is often shown as being critical of Pharisees, precisely because of his position that the “Spirit of the Law” is the better way. He is more like the Essenes than the other Jewish groups of the time (Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots), however, The Pharisees, like Jesus, believed in the resurrection of the dead, and in divine judgment. They advocated prayer, almsgiving and fasting as spiritual practices. The Pharisees were those who were trying to be faithful to the law given to them by God. Not all Pharisees, nor all Jews of that time, were legalistic. Though modern language has used the word Pharisee in the pejorative to describe someone who is legalistic and rigid, it is not an accurate description of all Pharisees. The argument over the “Spirit of the Law” vs. the “Letter of the Law” was part of early Jewish dialogue as well.
Some[who?] might connect 2 Corinthians 3:6 with such an idea, but that passage talks about “the letter” versus “the Spirit”, where “the letter” refers to the Old Covenant and its rules, while “the Spirit” refers to the Holy Spirit (and the New Covenant). The new covenant described in Jeremiah 31:31-33 is a common theme of the prophets, beginning with Hosea.[1] According to Jeremiah, “the qualities of the new covenant expounded upon the old are : a) It will not be broken; b) Its law will be written in the heart, not merely on tablets of stone; c) The knowledge of God will deem it no longer necessary to put it into written words of instruction.”[1] According to Luke (Lk 22, 20), and Paul, in the first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11, 25), this prophecy was fulfilled only through the work of Jesus Christ,[1] who said “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.” Christ did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. His purpose was to encourage people to look beyond the “letter of the law” to the “spirit of the law”...the principles behind the commandments and the law’s intention. The law was never intended as a moral slide-rule, but as evidence of transgression. Mankind turned this declaration into a moral code book. Jesus quotes the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “All the Law can be summed up in this: to love Yahweh with all your heart, all your mind and all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself” (paraphrased).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law#The_Bible
It says nothing about Catholic or Orthodox practices apart from the reader’s anti-Catholic biases that precede their reading of the sacred texts.
She’s a Docetist.
Warfield is a bit dated. Don’t you think? Consider the source.
Evidence now shows that the Old Testament canon was not closed even among the Jews at the time the New Testament was written and that the Deuterocanonical books had influences on numerous passages.
And if you look at the Bible that was brought to Ethiopia in the 4th century, it shows a remarkably different canon. http://ethiopianorthodox.org/english/canonical/books.html
And as far as the Epistles of St. Ignatius are concerned, the ones I’ve cited are regarded by scholars as having been authentic.
The differences between the longer and shorter recensions are not unlike the different manuscript recensions we find among the early Biblical manuscripts.
That is they use different words to say just about the same thing. You can’t avoid copyist error.
Take the ending of Mark’s gospel for example, it doesn’t exist in some early manuscripts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
Not really. We give the Virgin Mary and the saints the same sort of reverence that you give Grandma.
Divinely handed down legislation, eh??? Sure...God in the scriptures says DON'T DO IT buy you guys have some secret legislation from God that says, eh, don't worry about what I wrote in the scriptures...Just ignore it...
NOT...
Anathema to those who spurn the teachings of the holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church, taking as a pretext and making their own the arguments of Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Dioscorus, that unless we were evidently taught by the Old and New Testaments, we should not follow the teachings of the holy Fathers and of the holy Ecumenical Synods, and the tradition of the Catholic Church.
HUH??? Why would someone not expect you to be taught by the Old and New Testaments, but your religious fathers only???
Depends if she’s bowing TO them and praying TO them or not.
Same for the families.
Bowing in a church at an altar rail even though there might be statues in the vicinity doesn’t equate to bowing before them or TO them.
What about this concept of bowing TO something or before it (as in front of facing it) and praying to it as opposed to simply having pictures or statues around that is so hard for Catholics to understand?
so many words, trying to make up for content by quantity.
Look who's talking. The height of irony.......
Have you learned to format your spam yet?
As dated as St. Ignatius?
You can't be serious in that criticism......
LOL I saw that and thought it was so preposterous I didn’t even comment.
I dunno, 2nd amendment mama. Is this the kind of honor you give Grandma?????
I don't remember doing that for her....
This was more than 150 years after the founding of the Church. Even the various canons at this time contain books that would be declared apocryphal by St. Athanaius in 367, including the Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of Paul, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache. The council of Rome fixated Athanaius' canon in 382.
Why to Protestants accept the canonical authority of the Alexandrian Bishop Athanaius and the 382 council of Rome?
I haven't followed this conversation but this is typical in this post-modern society. If you're Catholics then the Church has declared which scriptures are infallible. If you don't believe them then you are simply stating that you don't believe in what the Church has declared to be true.
If you're Protestants, they hold to those books that were put together by the early Jewish fathers and the early church. And the reason why those books were chosen to be part of scripture was because they had been handed down from generation to generation knowing they were inspired. Thus there really wasn't much to question.
But we like very much to question everything. I remember two weeks after I became a Christian my Sunday School teacher stated that the Virgin Mary wasn't true. After all, how could a virgin become pregnant? That's a fair questions if you don't believe in God's miracle or His word. That set off a very candid discussion between me and her. If you can't believe one part of scripture then you might as well toss the whole thing out because who are we to say which is right and which is wrong?
If you want to definitely know who has the authority to know what is scripture and what isn't, I would point you to 2 Kings 22 where after about 400 years they found the word of God. And King Josiah read to the people from it and there was never any question that this was the actual word of God.
LOL That’s just veneration doncha know.
It would be anathema for any protestant to defend a Catholic so don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
This is nothing new and neither is this charge which is made on every thread in which Catholicism is the subject.
Same old, same old, as they say.
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