Ecumenical threads are closed to antagonism.
To antagonize is to incur or to provoke hostility in others.
Unlike the “caucus” threads, the article and reply posts of an “ecumenical” thread may discuss more than one belief, but antagonism is not tolerable.
More leeway is granted to what is acceptable in the text of the article than to the reply posts. For example, the term “gross error” in an article will not prevent an ecumenical discussion, but a poster should not use that term in his reply because it is antagonistic. As another example, the article might be a passage from the Bible which would be antagonistic to Jews. The passage should be considered historical information and a legitimate subject for an ecumenical discussion. The reply posts however must not be antagonistic.
Contrasting of beliefs or even criticisms can be made without provoking hostilities. But when in doubt, only post what you are “for” and not what you are “against.” Or ask questions.
Ecumenical threads will be moderated on a “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” basis. When hostility has broken out on an “ecumenical” thread, I’ll be looking for the source.
Therefore “anti” posters must not try to finesse the guidelines by asking loaded questions, using inflammatory taglines, gratuitous quote mining or trying to slip in an “anti” or “ex” article under the color of the “ecumenical” tag.
And here is the source of those rules -- check it yourselves -- Religion Moderator's Guidelines to Caucus/Prayer/Ecumenical threads
But God’s Law is personal. When it comes to God’s Law we are dealing with something quite different, something very personal (if we have faith). For God’s law is not given by someone we do not know, love, or trust. If we have faith, God is someone we do in fact know, someone we love and trust. Further, we believe that He loves us and wants what is best for us. God’s law is not the equivalent of a no-parking sign hung by some nameless, faceless government. Rather, it is a personal exhortation, an instruction and command given by someone we know and who knows and loves us.
Is God's Law composed of written scripture, or a mix of written scripture and oral tradition?
Salvation,
Thank you so much for this thread, this topic. Msgr. Pope has a gift of explaining aspects of our Christian faith so well. This topic is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately: the law of the Lord. We often pray with the Psalmist, expressing our love for His law: Psalm 19
7 The Law of Yahweh is perfect, refreshment to the soul; the decree of Yahweh is trustworthy, wisdom for the simple.
8 The precepts of Yahweh are honest, joy for the heart; the commandment of Yahweh is pure, light for the eyes.
9 The fear of Yahweh is pure, lasting for ever; the judgements of Yahweh are true, upright, every one,
10 more desirable than gold, even than the finest gold; his words are sweeter than honey, that drips from the comb.
11 Thus your servant is formed by them; observing them brings great reward. (New Jerusalem Bible)
In Mark 12:28–31, we see Jesus being asked, “‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’”
And yet all the LAW that comes from God is Good, particularly His Son, Jesus who is the fulfillment of the law. Jesus came to us out of the love and mercy that God has for us to save us and redeem us from sin. We know a lot of this...but I think Msgr. Pope has touched on something wonderful in that the law (natural law and all the law revealed by God) is all connected to His desire to help us and it all works together FOR us. And YES to Msgr. Pope’s point that the law is also personal. I have been thinking that all His law, even the natural law, laws of physics, math...all of it is so designed by our God that it all works FOR our GOOD when we accept, love, and follow HIM. I also think that heaven will most definitely NOT be boring and we will spend eternity discovering more and more about how this all works...the law, natural, physical, spiritual law to enhance the the workings of good in all of us as we become more and more united with this great Trinity, the Supreme Unity. We have much to continue to discover because God is infinite and there is much more to learn about our God. We will learn forever...difficult for our tiny little finite minds to take in ...but pretty amazing and very personal for all of us.
For the Psalmist it had begun to become personal...which explains why the Psalmist so loved the law of the Lord.
I'm going to try to follow this, and if I happen to fall short, I hope my intentions will nevertheless be clear.
I think the Msgr. is on to something, that God gave the Law out of love rather than spite or authoritarianism.
But then there is John 1:17: "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (ESV)
Law is opposed to grace, as Luther put it:
“For God speaks through the law, saying, “Do this, avoid that, this is what I expect of you.” The gospel, however, does not preach what we are to do or to avoid. It sets up no requirements but reverses the approach of the law, does the very opposite, and says, “This is what God has done for you; he has let his Son be made flesh for you, has let him be put to death for your sake.”(LW 35:162)
There is nothing in that passage with which the Msgr. would disagree, I think.
But that isn't all that the verse says. It says that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. It is not simply that the law and grace come from separate mouthpieces, but that the law and truth come from separate mouthpieces. Except that Jesus Himself said that His teachings were, not an abolishment of the Law, but the fulfillment of the Law: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." (Matt. 5:17 ESV)
If the Law is not truth, then the Law would be abolished by the advent of the truth, who is Jesus (John 14:6); but if the Law is truth and only needs fulfillment in Jesus, then the function of the Law would be what Paul asserts, a schoolteacher pointing us to the truth (Gal. 3:24), which is the Gospel of grace from God by faith from God in the cross of Christ and His resurrection (Eph. 2:8).
So the Law is a gift from a loving God, but it is a gift He wishes us to outgrow, the way a schoolchild outgrows the basic lessons--not by abolishing them, but by no longer having to return to them, because they are implanted (Jer. 31:33, Heb. 10:16), the way I no longer have to, e.g., recite arithmetic tables, because the truth of 1+1=2 is implanted in me.
It is to our shame that we can never fully reach this condition in this life. Peter points this out in a roundabout way in II Peter 1:5-7, where he replaces Aristotle's ladder of enkrateia leading to sophrosyne, the ability to do what is right without thinking, with a ladder of enkrateia (translated "temperance" or "self-control") leading to eusebeia, translated "Godliness" but literally "good worship"--or to put it another way, to step forward from trying to fix it ourselves ("self control"), which is how one responds to a law, into laying ourselves at the feet of Christ and worshipping Him, wherein He continuously transforms us into a reflection of Him that the world can see--the end result of which is, going back to Peter's ladder, Philadelphia or kindness towards each other, and agape, where we fully reflect God, who is agape.
And that is a lot more than I intended to type :-) except that it brings us to the essential difference between the Catholic and the Lutheran approaches to the Law. The Msgr. would at some point assert that there is something, some work that we must do in order to fulfill the Law in us--and in this, oddly enough, he would be joined by the Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals, who differ only on what that work must be, whether it be the work of sanctification for the Wesleyans, or the work of faith for the Baptists, or the work of receiving the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues for the Pentecostals. Luther would say that only God can do for us what man has demonstrated through the Law that we cannot do for ourselves, and that our only effective response is to recognize that our attempts at fulfilling the Law through our own self-control lead us inevitably to the eu-sebeia, the good worship, that lays us before Christ and lets Him transform us--which, ironically enough, includes our sanctification, and our obtaining faith, and receiving the Holy Spirit--perhaps even (and don't tell my fellow Lutherans I said this) speaking in tongues as a gift of the Spirit.
OK, one more thing. If I read the Msgr.'s writings correctly, along with those of Pope Benedict and Mother Teresa, Catholic practice comes close to this idea of transformation through worship rather than works, in the adoration of the Eucharist. My concern relating to this would be that to adore Christ's Body and Blood is to distort Christ, to make an idol of a part of Him rather than worshipping the whole of Him; His Body and Blood is a gift to me, for which I am eternally grateful, but one is thankful for a gift and adores the giver, not thankful for the giver and adoring the gift. (I learned this, oddly enough, in my years of practice of the Japanese tea ceremony, but I've already written too much to go down that road here.)
That may be pilpul, but it was your own Chesterton who wrote in Orthodoxy about "the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquake of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing." And balancing Law and Gospel is the most difficult balancing that the church must perpetually maintain.