Re: catholic saints
- From: William McHale <mchale@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 21:59:14 GMT
parakaleo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
William McHale <mchale@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, posted this little bit of
stuff:
you posted in alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic :
parakaleo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Your so-called "saints" were perfect just as I am perfect; ALL
CHRISTIANS ARE CLEANSED AND MADE PERFECT BY _CHRIST'S_ perfect
sin-offering for us, not by anything WE do ourselves.
We have to accept that offering.
Christ draws us to RECEIVE (not accept) Himself. It is therefore not
OUR doing, but his.
I sometimes demonstrate this in conversations (either with someone
else, or observing two others speaking about this in the Student
Union) by reaching in my pocket, withdrawing a dollar, and without
explanation . . sticking it into the other person's pocket.
He didn't earn it. He didn't choose it. He didn't do anything. But
he DID receive it.
Faith is like that.
This is one of the areas I have serious problems with the ideas that some
Protestants have about Grace. Essentially if taken the way you define it
here, there is little need for anything other than Grace. If God simply
pumps us filled with grace and faith then why would we need to Bible?
Why would we need to preach the word?
The funny thing is, the Bible is often filled with people making choices.
The Rich Man decided not to sell his possessions, Judas chose to betray
Jesus, and the other apostles chose to follow Jesus. Now there is no
doubt that the decision to follow Christ comes from grace instilled
within us by God. But we ultimately must make the decision to accept
the Grace. All men receive the most basic level of Grace that will
allow them to progress further, but not all men accept the invitation to
actually grow in Grace and Faith. We must actively cultivate the seed
of grace and faith within ourselves through prayer and (if you are
Catholic or Orthodox anyway) through participation in the Sacrements.
God provides the grace, but God being just allows us to decide what
we are going to do with it.
The Catholic Church produced the Bible,
and the Catholic Church says that praying to the saints is good. It's our
Bible - keep away from it - get your own religion - stop trying to mess up
ours.
Your religion is already messed up. Your religion, which didn't come
into existance until Constantine did not produce the Bible. There was
no rcc in existance when the Bible was penned. Your church tells the
same kind of lies the mormon church does and islam does, that ITS
leader wrote the scriptures people should follow. The claims of all
three groups are false, of course.
Actually, we never claimed that our leader wrote the Bible. Instead we
more or less agree on the same authorship that the Protestants do.
Good.
That being said, it is also true that in the first several centuries of
the church that there were many works claiming to be scripture and claiming
to be written by the Apostles and others close to Jesus. Over the course
of several centuries the Church was able to sort out the books that
ultimately made the canon from those that were deemed to be non-scriptural.
Agreed. But the CHURCH that did that was NOT the roman catholic
church, but simply Christ's church. The rcc didn't become the rcc
until constantine made it his state church and himself the head of it.
THEN in later centuries, your religion rewrote its history to include
others back to Peter, even though they never claimed allegience to
rome or to anything "catholic."
The term Roman Catholic was certainly not used; calling the Church Roman
Catholic post-dates the Protestant reformation. It essentially was a
way of denying the Universality of the Church. But Christ's Church must,
by definition be catholic. Christ did not establish a bunch of little
Churches, but rather one Church, one body of believers. It is man's
weakness that has resulted in division.
As for the history of the Pope; it is certainly true that there have
been Bishops of Rome since the earliest days of the Church. I will grant
that the level of authority granted that Bishop has not always been
agreed upon. But prior to the East West Schism no major group in the
church denied the primacy of the Pope, only the actual level of authority
that that primacy should grant him; nor did they question the apostolic
succession in Rome being traced back to St. Peter.
In a very real sense, the Church (which in time included both the precursors
of the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches)
was responsible for editing
the body of writings into the Bible we have today.
You are getting closer. Some were "precursors" in that they "fell in
line" when Constantine made it sate religion, others did not (like the
Copts, for instance).
If you are going to claim that some didn't fall in line (and you are right
not all did) you can at least get the groups right. The Copts were
in Union with the rest of the Church until the middle of the 5th Century.
They split from the rest of the Church (along with the other Oriental
Orthodox) over the specific nature of Christ. They claimed that Christ
had one Nature fully human and fully divine; the rest of the Church
claimed that Christ had two natures in one person, one human nature and
one divine nature. In any case, the specific group you want to use, which
didn't fall into line with the Church after Constantine were the Arians
who claimed that Christ was a created being not equal to God.
So in other words the group that didn't fall in line with Constantine
was a group that denied Jesus's divinity.
In this effort, the
Church relied on Tradition (i.e. the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles
that had been passed to them orally over the centuries) and the guidance
of the Holy Spirit.
The "Tradition" they relied on was mainly the writings of the leaders
of the congregations of Christ's church over the first couple of
centuries, and the lists they had made early on.
Have you actually read these writings? A large number of these writings
makes reference to many of the things that the Catholic and Orthodox
church actually teaches.
But the idea of "Tradition" as the rcc teaches it today was not there
as far as I can find in any writing. Oh yes, there will be catholics
who jump on every word "tradition" and claim, "see? there it is!"
even though the "traditions" spoken about are taken FROM scripture
rather than INSTEAD OF scripture.
The Tradition that the church talks about is not writings but rather the
oral teachings that it had always had. Certainly, between the Ascension
and the ultimate consensus that was agreed upon about what was and what
was not scripture there was oral teachings that were used to edify the
faithful and to bring more people to faith. In other words, people
believed in the message of the Gospels before the Gospels were written
and long before they were universally accepted as bring true Gospels.
Ultimately to reject the Church's role in shaping the
book we now call the Bible is to reject the Bible as an authoritative
document.
No, it is to reject the rcc of today as EXISTING back then,
recognizing that what did exist before Constantine was neither a roman
"headship" nor a "universal church" in the first century. Christ's
church is NOT universal. . .non Christians are not part of it.
Well, personally I am going to let Christ decide who can and cannot be
a member of his Church. But Universal in this sense does not necessarily
mean Universal in the sense that all men are members. Rather it means
a single Church over all the Faithful.
It is simply a logical fallicy to accept the Bible on claims
that are made within the Bible to its own authority.
Why is that? The Bible is not a "single unit." It is a COLLECTION OF
WITNESSES for Jesus Christ. It was penned by some 39 or so different
penmen over a known 3500+ years. EACH OF THOSE FOLKS is a witness of
Jesus Christ's.
Well, to play Devil's advocate here, yes we know that it had many different
authors, but many of the scripture references in the Old Testament to
Jesus are hardly authoritative (Certainly there are millions of Jews who
do not agree that their scripture refers to Jesus Christ).
Peter referred to Paul's writings as "scripture." Paul chewed Peter
out at least once. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all saw and knew
Jesus.
An how do we know which of Paul's writings Peter was referring to? How
do we know which of the writings in the New Testament are actually written
by Paul? Alot of the books that were rejected by the Church claimed to
be written by apostles and others who were close to Jesus. The highlights
of the list include Gospels by Thomas, Peter and Mary Magdeline. An
infancy narrative about Mary by James. Numerous epistles by various
people claiming to be apostles. When taken in context of this history,
there is very little reason to trust the writings in the Bible as being
authoritative. I have no particularly good reason, inside the Bible alone
that any of the books were written by who claimed to write them.
There is no logical fallacy to accept those writings as having been
valid witnesses of Jesus Christ. And other writings of the time
(Polycarp, Hermas, etc. etc. etc.) all testify to these folks too.
Ah but now we are talking about Tradition. Polycarp, Hermas, and the others
are testifying based on second hand knowledge. What they had been taught
through Tradition. In fact their external testimony is worthless without
it being based on Tradition.
No, the rcc became the rcc with Constantine, 400 years after Jesus
established HIS church, not a "catholic" church. Christ's church is
NOT CATHOLIC; it does NOT INCLUDE NON-BELIEVERS or heretics.
So are we saying that Christ's true Church is the Orthodox? After all
Christ promised that not even the powers of hell could over come the
Chruch he founded.
There were many other congregations which were never part of the roman
state church. The Copts, Waldenesses, and others are examples. Some
went astray (as the rcc has done), others started other congregations
under still other names. The church of God at. . . The church of
Christ at. . . The Corinthian church. The . . .
The Waldensians were in the 12th century, so they hardly qualify as
continuing the Church from ancient times. The Copts also split off from
the rest of the Church more than 100 years after Constantine.
The simple fact of the matter is that for Christ's prophecy about the Church
to be true, there must be evidence of an unbroken chain of believers.
All the groups you mention have a definite date of origion that post dates
Christianity's rise as the religion of the Empire. Also these groups
tended to have a rather diverse set of beliefs. I think most religious
scholars would find the idea that the Coptic church is some sort of
proto-protestant church to be amusing (does that include the Coptic
Pope by the way?).
ALL were parts of Christ's church, just as ALL Christians are parts of
Christ's church today. Some attend apostate organizations such as the
rcc and the orthodox. Some attend Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran,
Bible churches, etc. EVERY CHRISTIAN is a member of Christ's church.
Some are members of different local congregations, such as the
Corinthian congregation or the Ephesian congregation. But ALL
Christians are parts of Christ's body.
LOL.. so wait, the Orthdox and the Catholics are Apostates, but the
Baptists, Presbyterians and Lutherans all are not? (despite the fact that
they represent quite a range of beliefs).
I do agree that all Christians are members of Christ's Church in some sense
but I also think that it is very likely that there are people out there who
claim to be Christian who really aren't. I also believe that ultimately
there is far too much disunity in Protestant Churches, both in terms of
belief and in terms of orginization for them to have a strong claim to be
the true Church on Earth. Now mind you, I believe that God will forgive
most of our differences in belief being that we are fallible humans, but
the fact remains, that at most only one of the Churches out there that
claim to represent the true Church that Christ established can actually
be right. My personal bet is on the churches that have essentially existed
since the Earliest days of the Church.
Yet for more than 1000 years there was only the
Church later splitting into the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (and also
the Oriental Orthodox Churches). There is simply no evidence of
anything resembling the modern Protestant Churches in the historical
record prior to at least the 12th century and even then the theological
ties to Protestantism are strained prior to say the Hussites of the
15th century. Claims of an underground church simply are not supported
in the historical record.
Copts, Montanists, Waldinesses, Novations, etc. And those are only
groups that history RECORDS. Christ's church does not require that
records be kept of which congregations meet where. It never has.
Do you actually read what these groups actually believe or do you just
look at any group that breaks with the mainstream prior to the Reformation
as being proto-protestants? The Copts we already covered. The Montanists
believed that personal prohecy could supersede the teachings of the
Apostles (i.e. what we would come to regard as Tradition and Scripture).
The Waldensians as we already discussed came far too late to be considered
any real connection to this mythical proto-protestant church. As for
Novation, yes, he is the closest you can get to a Protestant idea of
keeping many Christian essentials but rejecting Papal authority, but
there is no evidence that Novation's movement outlasted him.
The key argument you have is that these are the only groups that
History Records... the problem is that the groups that History does
record bear little resemblence to Protestant ideas until only a century
or so prior to the Reformation. Further, the Catholic Church never
had control over most of the Eastern Christians, particularly the Oriental
Orthodox (Such as the Copts). The thing is that the Copts and the other
Oriental Orthodox Churches bear little resemblence to anything in the
Protestant world. If the hypothesis you have put forward was correct,
then there should have been similar movements in the Oriental Orthodox
and Eastern Orthodox Churches; unfortunately there is no real record of
such movements. Protestism, and their particular take on Christianity is
an out growth of the Western European emergence from the Middle Ages.
Which prophet was it who hid in a cave and said, "I am the last one
who hasn't bowed his knee to Baal, and they are coming to get
me!!!???" And how many THOUSANDS OF MEN did God tell him to pick up
here and there to meet, fight, and defeat the enemy?
In China, Christians met for YEARS under communist persecution. WHAT
WAS THE NAME OF EACH CONGREGATION? WHO KNOWS? WHO CARES? Were they
any LESS parts of Christ's church because they couldn't be readily
identified from useless geneologies? From rolls? From government
records? NO!
Well the Catholic Church has had priests in China, many of them in prison,
others existing in secret. I can assure you that the Catholic Church knows
who those priests are. And those priests can identify the people in their
parishes. Further you are talking about one country. I am talking about
the whole of humanity and human history. If the church was exterminated
for a time in China, that doesn't mean the Church as a whole has been
defeated. The best you can do is point to movements, many which bear
little or no resemblence to anything any self respecting Protestant,
Catholic or Orthodox would identify themselves with.
Will the underground church be "supported by historical record?"
Likely not! But that does not reduce in the least, the fact that they
DID EXIST, and that God was Glorified in them.
At this point there is little point arguing further. Luther and Calvin
certainly did not believe in an underground church, they felt they were
restoring error in the exiting church. The idea of an underground church
really is an idea that seems to have originated with the anabaptists, but
even they can't really point to any evidence that this idea was not simply
made up.
Making claims about stuff that you have no evidence for is great... but
don't expect to win any arguments that way. Its impossible for me to
prove a negative; I can't prove that an underground church that left no
historical trace did not exist because it is impossible to prove a negative.
I can show that there is no evidence for the existence of such a church
and that there is good reason to believe that no such church actually
did exist (since the groups that popped up between 312AD and 1517AD bear
little resemblence to each other they can't have had a common origin.).
Your religion tells you that to make you believe your religon came
from God. Of course you cannot find "catholic church" anywhere IN
that Bible, nor can you find THE RCC anywhere in that Bible. You find
Christians, but NOT ROMAN CATHOLICS there.
The term Catholic simply means Universal. In that sense, there is cetainly
a catholic church in the sense that is the body of all believers.
But in the first centuries it was not "universally in the world," and
it has NEVER had as members most of the world. To be truly
"universal" would require "universal membership" of all sorts of
unbelievers.
What a twisted argument. I define what the Catholic Church means
when it claims to be Catholic and then you claim that it doesn't
mean that at all. There are all sorts of universals. The Catholic
Church uses the term Catholic as it was used in the Apostles Creed.
Certainly when the Creed was written the writers did not intend the
word Catholic to include non-believers.
And it is never REFERRED TO in the Bible OR in the first century
writings as "catholic." And CERTAINLY NOT "roman catholic."
Well, most names of modern churches do not appear in the original text
of scripture. It doesn't make them any less Christian. Catholic
is a description of the Church, only over time did it also become its
name.
further the Roman Catholic is an name given to the Catholic Church by
those who want to undermine its universality. Most English speakers
including Catholics have adopted the use of the term, but in reality it
is not one that the Church really accepts for itself.
When I was a kid, Father Pep referred to the Holy Roman Catholic
Church in virtually every catechism class he taught, from the pulpit,
and during conversation at meals we often shared with him. The rcc
doesn't have any visible aversion to that term in any rcc congregation
I ever attended.
Thats because over time even Catholics have been corrupted by its use.
It doesn't mean its the term that the Church recognizes, or even one that
is used in other languages besides English.
It simply
believes itself to be the Church that Christ established and as such
it is Catholic (or Universal).
I suppose you could say the mormons believe the same thing about
themselves, as do the jw's.
True, but since both churches can identifibly be shown to be created in
the last centuries is does cause problems with their claim of an
unbroken chain of apostolic succession.
And the Bible was penned about 400 years before the rcc began.
The New Testament was penned between 260-220 years before Constantine.
The New Testament was not collected and recognized as a body of scriptures
until at least the 4th century.
According to a Public Radio news report I heard some time ago they
have found a copy of Mark and a copy of John that have been
definitively dated as existing in the year 59 AD. There are various
estimates of when each book of the NT was written, based upon valid
scholarly assumptions. It was not collected by Constantine until the
4th century, but there are earlier lists predating him by about 200
years, although those lists are not complete lists.
Constantine issued the edict of Milan in 313, in other words 254 years
after the date you gave. Actually I will extend it to 270 years or so
to allow for early dates of Paul's letters. But in any case, the
New Testament was probably not considered fully canonical until sometime
after that. It certainly was not collected by Constantine (and if it
was, it would seriously undermine its authority in my mind).
But since you believe in no earthly authority,
Who says? When did YOU get to decide what I beleive or don't believe?
I certainly DO believe in "earthly authority." Scripture teaches our
Elders (bishops) Pastors, and teachers that THEY have authority over
the rest of us, and I certainly beleive that.
Actually the Bible makes a distinction between Elders (presbyters) and
Bishops (episcopi).
Yet they are interchanged, sometimes even in the same sentence. It is
late and I have been working for about 14 hours so I won't look up the
verses right now for you. Do I need to, or are you alread acquainted
with that fact?
If they use them in the same verse, that would certainly suggest a
distinction between them. Certainly a bishop is also a priest, but
if you want to prove the Bible used the term episcopi for presbyter,
I really will need to see a citation.
Further more, the Bishops and presbyters (a
word which evolved into the English word priest) never assumed authority
but were granted authority by the laying on of hands. Even Paul did
not preach until he had hands laid upon him. The Apostles created bishops
and priests by laying on of hands and then the bishops did likewise in
turn. So who laid hands on your bishops? And who on the men who laid
hands on them? Sooner or later you are going to find that some of your
'bishops' claimed that authority for themselves. Are you sure they had
the right to claim that authority?
The Bible has people laying hands on people to SEND THEM OUT from
amongst themselves, often to preach. It does NOT HOWEVER say anywhere
that the laying on of hands was required for "passing on any
authority." Jesus said all authority was HIS (Matthew 28:18) and sent
them out. They chose people who chose people who chose people. No
scripture EVER said a roll had to be kept to determine who was sent.
They chose people.. a rather interesting term. In fact one that plays
more to my point than yours. The question is, why did they lay hands
on them to send them out if it was not as a sign that they had been
granted authority. Certainly laying hands on someone is used as a
sign in other sacrements besides ordination, but it certainly appears
to be used for ordination as well. When the apostles chose the deacons,
men to serve the existing community, they laid hands on them (Acts 6:6).
These men were not to be sent out, they were to serve the community.
Why lay hands on them except to pass some measure of Christ's authority
to them.
The authority is not in the man. It is in God's Word. Even in the
hands of ungodly men, God is glorified.
The Authority is in God, but God grants some men authority to preach it
and not all are granted that authority. Remember Simon Magus.
Hmmm. 2/3rds of the Bible was published before Jesus walked the
earth. Your religion had nothing to do with that, yet Jesus quoted it
over and over, just as the Apostles did.
Yes, but curiously enough, even the Old Testament was not a settled work
in the time of Jesus.
Hmm. The Septuagint existed for some time before that, and Jesus
quoted it frequently, calling it "the word of God."
Better be careful, because as a Protestant there are a number of differences
between the books in the Septuagint and those in the Protestant version of
the Old Testament. Even the Catholic and Orthodox Churches don't accept
every book in the Septuagint as being scripture (All reject Maccabees 4
I believe).
Yes it had all been written but the Jews did not
all agree on which parts (other than the Torah) were necessarily part of
scripture. The best evidence suggests that such a decision was not made
until well after Jesus was dead. The Church therefore had to decide which
books to accept and which to reject.
Whether the Jews agreed upon its content or not doesn't matter. . .God
doesn't require their consent.
True, but it does mean that even the Old Testament was an accepted Canon
to the Early Church.
--
Bill
.
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