(The Pope,)

[Guest bumpas100]

Moved to Doctrinal Questions Forum....carry on.....

Your's in Christ,

Bob

And yet we know that faith is a guarante of nothing to no one,akin to hope and wishful thinking.

[Guest bumpas100]

dont matter what the pope says......

the fact that the Bible tells us about it is enough for me....

The Bible does speak about it, and is specific enough that I believe that both exist and that we are heading for one or the other.... which one is our choice, and we have to make that choice while on earth..... not after we have passed on, it has to be a conscience decission we make on our own, we can not be prayed into heaven, and we can not petition the Lord after we die either.... it has to be done now.....

mike

Life is a never ending learning experience,are yo thrue learning???

[Guest Berkana]

And yet we know that the Vatacan has the most extensive library on the life and times of jesus the Christ and the bible in the world.

No it doesn't. The only reliable documentation we have on Jesus' life are the four Gospels, and to a lesser degree of reliablility, the writings of the earliest church fathers. The Vatican Archives have the most extensive library of much of the history of europe as it relates to the activities of the church, but not on the life and times of Jesus.

lest we forget that the people of that time still believed that the earth was flat and if thay were to venture to far into the sea thay would fall of of a mythical waterfall into infinity.

Not so: the people may have been fools, but God inspired the following texts which suggests that even though the People were unaware, God was hinting that the world was round:

Isaiah 40:21-22

Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood since the earth was founded?

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,

and its people are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,

and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

If I'm not mistaken, "circle" and "sphere" were synonymous in the Hebrew of that time.

The following verse also suggests that the earth was supported on nothing, which implies that it is round for various reasons (like, where would the ocean water go at the edge? There are no mountains at the ocean's horizon).

Job 26:7

He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;

he suspends the earth over nothing.

At the same time, the Bible does have verses talking about the "corners of the earth" and talks about God shaking earth by the edges to shake the wicked out of it (Job 38:12-13), so I'm not entirely sure people understood the above verses literally.

Edited August 25, 2004 by Berkana

[Guest Berkana]

The Trinity, and the Bible; both are addressed by the Bible itself

Who says the Bible says nothing about itself? Perhaps someone who is unfamiliar with it.

The bible also says that much too about the TRINITY, AND about the BIBLE ITSELF!

Edited August 25, 2004 by Berkana

[Guest Berkana]

Did the Church give us the Bible?

Short answer: No. The Church didn't give us the word of God; God gave us the word of God.

And now, for the long answer:

The church did not give us the Bible nor does it have the authority to make holy what is not; we're talking about the direct inspired words of God here. The books of the Bible are authoritative because they are God-breathed, not just because the Church decided to say they are. If the church declares a false document to be God breathed, that doesn't make it so, and if an apostolic text is lost (for example, Paul's epistle to the Laodiceans), the church can't bring it back. The church merely recognized the Bible as it was passed down to it by God through the Apostles and Prophets. It's the authentic apostolicity and divine inspiration that makes it authoritative, not the church aproval; to trust church aproval before trusting the scripture is to put your trust in men before putting your trust in God's own Word.

Look, what I'm saying is that the church can't make God say what it wants God to say; God's direct communications have intrinsic authority whether a person recognizes it or not; it is authoritative even apart from the church. If the King's courier sends you a letter from the king, you may deem it to be fake and refuse to recognize it, but you have to answer to the King for doing so, because his communication's authority is independent of your recognition. If the church gave us the Bible, the authority comes from the church rather than from God; God merely becomes the church's puppet. If this were so, the church would have the authority to ignor or to change the Bible, but this is not so; God gave us the Bible, and the church is bound to follow God's Word.

Granted, this is an ontological statement; the natural epistemological follow up is "how do I know what God's word is"? (Which is basically what this issue is about. See definitions below if you're not familiar with the difference between ontology and epistemology.) I addressed the Old Testament aspect in my article "How we know Jesus is the Messiah, Part 2" (do take a look; this is one thing Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants can agree on), but as for the NT, what I specifically mean is the apostolicity of all of the NT. The church cannot just accept as cannon a book which it finds to be non-apostolic. If, for example 2, 3 John and 2 Peter are honestly believed not to be apostolic, the church has no authority to deem them canonical, because the church would be calling authoritative something that it knowingly believes to fail the criterion of authority. All the epistles of Paul, Peter, and John are known to be Apostolic (This can be supported through seeing how the early church fathers quoted them and debated apostolicity. Eusebius in particular writes a good deal of history that documents who wrote what where, though he errs in his attribution of 2 and 3 John to John the Presbyter, rather than to the Apostle John.) James and Jude were also considered apostolic; they were widely distributed, of great antiquity, and are consistent with prior scripture.

Digression: the Epistle to the Hebrews

Hebrews has no author attribution in the text itself, but it is known to be Apostolic even though the introduction seems to be missing. (If you take a look at Hebrews, it starts extremely abrubtly in the middle of a topic, suggesting that the original introduction was lost. All the other epistles have introductions, whether short or long.) The big clue in Hebrews is the following:

Hebrews 13:20-25

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Edited August 25, 2004 by Berkana

[Guest Berkana]

Purgatory is even more nonexistant than I thought. . .

The Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is allegedly based on 2 Maccabees 12:38-46.

Let's take a look.

The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is not only one of the major points of disagreement between Catholicism and Evangelicalism, but between Catholicism and the rest of the ancient apostolic churches (the Eastern Orthodoxy, the non-Chalcedonian Orthodoxies of Armenia, Syria, Ethiopia, and the Coptics, and the Assyrian Church of the East).

According to the doctrine, Purgatory is a Hell-like place of purging where people who believe in Christ who died with no unconfessed and un-pennanced "mortal sins" go to suffer until they are purged of their "venial sins" before they are pure enough to enter Heaven. (Those who die with unabsolved mortal sins--such as knowingly missing Sunday Mass or lusting after someone--are condemned to Hell according to Catholic doctrine.)

If you wondered about what the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is based on, it is primarily based on 2 Maccabees 12:38-45, from the Apocrypha.

Let's take a look at 2 Maccabees 12:38-46, taking special notice of the highlighted areas. . .

[1 and 2 Maccabees records events from the intertestimental period, surrounding the heroism of Judas the Maccabee (a.k.a. Judas Maccabeus) in resisting Antiochus Epiphanes, who had desecrated the Temple.]

2 Maccabees 12:38-46

Judas rallied his army and went to the city of Adullam. As the week was ending, they purified themselves according to custom and kept the sabbath there. On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain. They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden. Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.

There is a problem with this passage being used to buttress the idea that prayer-labors (such as praying the Rosary) for the dead are useful in shortening their suffering in Purgatory. As you can see from the passage, it is clear that the soldiers' deaths were a result of God's judgment on their idolatry. According to Catholic doctrine, idolatry is a mortal sin, and anyone who dies in mortal sin is condemned Hell, not Purgatory, the place where only believers who die with only venial sins go. Therefore, the dead soldiers mentioned in this passage could not have gone to Purgatory.

Secondly, Judas the Maccabee's praying and making sacrifices for the dead is completely unsanctioned by and in violation of Jewish Law. Take a look at Leviticus, and the rest of the legal passages of the Pentateuch: all of the allowed and prescribed sacrifices are described in great detail, but prayers and sacrifices for the dead are not authorized anywhere in the Law! To give you an idea of how seriously God takes violations of the Laws regarding sacrifices, remember that God killed Aaron's sons because they made unauthorized offerings contrary to what God had commanded and allowed.

Besides the fact that this is from the Apocrypha, the prooftext of 2 Maccabees 12:38-46 itself does not actually suggest that Purgatory exists; it merely shows Judas the Maccabee acting in violation of Jewish law thinking that his sacrifices would be beneficial to the dead soldiers God judged for idolatry. No prophet of God ever delivered a word from God about Purgatory or the post-death purging of sins by hell-fire. On top of all that, the doctrine of Purgatory insults the sufficiency of Christ's death for atoning for sins, since it teaches that the sinner must atone for his own venial sins, suffering by burning in Purgatory until he is pure enough to enter Heaven.

If even the prooftext for Purgatory is inconsistent with Catholic doctrine, how can anyone claim that there is any reasonably sound basis for the belief in this doctrine that insults the sufficiency of Christ's atonement for our sins? Purgatory turns out to be even more nonexistant than I thought!

Okay, I will make this concession: 2 Maccabees 12:38-46 might work as the prooftext for Purgatory, but only if idolatry and the wearing of amulets are not considered sins by the Catholic church.

Richard McBrien (Catholic Theologian)

"There is, for all practical purposes, no biblical basis for the doctrine of purgatory. This is not to say that there is no basis at all for the doctrine, but only that there is no clear biblical basis for it." [1]

________________________________________

Source

[1] Richard McBrien, Catholicism, vol. 2, (Minneapolis: Winston, 1980), p. 1143

Edited August 25, 2004 by Berkana