Defender of the Faith?

[AllTheGoodNamesAreTaken]

I have no argument to offer you simplejeff. I simply posted what came to my heart after reading the comments. Take it or leave it. 

[MorningGlory]

 

The RCC has a history of being a murderous cult.  Despite some Catholics who have done humanitarian services, the RCC has a long history of persecuting and murdering Jews and anyone else who wasn't Catholic.  Even some of the Popes murdered their way into the Papacy (so much for apostolic succession).

 

 

Please don't spread lies and calumny against believers in Christ like this.

 

Therese, you say you have done an exhaustive study of Christianity?  Does that include historical research?  The RCC has a long history of persecutions and genocides of those considered nonbelievers.  If you are unaware of these things, I will post a history of the RCC, the Popes, and the church's affiliation with Hitler about 75 years ago.  Also the socialist/progressive platforms of Popes in the past fifty years or so, including the current one.  No lies or calumny....just history.

[MorningGlory]

The Pope seems to know more about the world than about the Christian faith and the Bible.  When he comments on the latter, for which he is supposed to be infallible, he gets it wrong and is corrected by the authorities in church doctrine.  After all, he told us that good atheists will go to heaven.  He does seem to be making poor choices.  The blind leading the blind, yet, as stated above, he thinks he can see.  How sad a state for so many people to be led into deeper darkness.  He seems to be leaning toward liberation theology, which the Catholic church has already condemned as a Marxist cult.

 

Yes.  Socialist/Progressive.  It's a shame that someone with a global platform has such unchristian biews. 

[Willa]

Therese, I simply disagree with your conclusions.  Since a young woman found to be not be a virgin on her wedding day would have been stoned according to Jewish law, it is a forgone conclusion that the word should be translated virgin.  There was no subterfuge.  It is my understanding the the Hebrew version was begun nearly 200 BC but had not yet been concluded until after the death of Christ.  It was as literal as they could make it, since they did regard these to be the holy Words of God.  

 

There are truly inspired passages within the Apocrypha, but many of the books are also filled with errors and nonsense.  So it is a mixture.  That is why they are good to read but are not considered as pure, inspired and reliable as the Canon.  It is like reading the Book of Mormon.  There are passages from the King James Version interspersed with fiction.

 

You are not the only one who has studied these things in depth; but others have come to opposite conclusions.  So we should agree to disagree.  

You have a distinct hatred for Luther, but his reformations were for good and just causes.  The pope at that time was very corrupt.  Selling tickets to get people out of purgatory is an abomination, and the doctrine of purgatory is in itself not biblical.  Bringing doctrine to align with Scripture was a good thing.  Luther was not perfect, but he did bring us back to salvation by grace through faith, a gift from God, and back to the Bible.  Without that foundation the cults grow like weeds.  

 

I am thankful for the church fathers that refuted many of the early heresies by using Scripture.  It is sad that this did not continue to be the practice into modern times.

Today the catholic traditions were made doctrine without first comparing them to Scriptural truth.  The first century Christians did not always have many written books and had to rely on the words of the apostles, so their traditions were considered reliable.  

It was decided to add that Mary did not have a natural birth in the years after the reformation, or there might have been 96 thesis instead of 95.  Then they made her ascend into heaven as well, didn't they?  The beauty of the true Biblical story is that Mary was a humble, godly young woman who was blessed by God to carry our Redeemer.  She was not mentioned after the first few chapters of Acts so she was either not important or died near that time.  We should never bow down before a statue of her or pray to her according to the 10 commandments.

 

The present pope would also benefit from reading the Bible more.  

[thereselittleflower]

 

 

The RCC has a history of being a murderous cult.  Despite some Catholics who have done humanitarian services, the RCC has a long history of persecuting and murdering Jews and anyone else who wasn't Catholic.  Even some of the Popes murdered their way into the Papacy (so much for apostolic succession).

 

 

Please don't spread lies and calumny against believers in Christ like this.

 

Therese, you say you have done an exhaustive study of Christianity?  Does that include historical research?  The RCC has a long history of persecutions and genocides of those considered nonbelievers.  If you are unaware of these things, I will post a history of the RCC, the Popes, and the church's affiliation with Hitler about 75 years ago.  Also the socialist/progressive platforms of Popes in the past fifty years or so, including the current one.  No lies or calumny....just history.

 

 

Yes on both counts.    I can assure you, what I see here are the common myths that are found both inside Protestantism and outside.     Whether we like to admit it or not, we use filters  to interpret information presented to us, and if those filters are heavily biased, we will only see what they filters allow us to see, until we remove those filters.      

 

 

 

 

The Pope seems to know more about the world than about the Christian faith and the Bible.  When he comments on the latter, for which he is supposed to be infallible, he gets it wrong and is corrected by the authorities in church doctrine.  After all, he told us that good atheists will go to heaven.  He does seem to be making poor choices.  The blind leading the blind, yet, as stated above, he thinks he can see.  How sad a state for so many people to be led into deeper darkness.  He seems to be leaning toward liberation theology, which the Catholic church has already condemned as a Marxist cult.

 

 

And here is one of those myths -  that of the infallibility of the pope - that everything the pope says is supposed to be infallible.    This is simply myth which is perpetuated by those filters I was referring to above.

 

 

[MorningGlory]

 

 

Therese, you say you have done an exhaustive study of Christianity?  Does that include historical research?  The RCC has a long history of persecutions and genocides of those considered nonbelievers.  If you are unaware of these things, I will post a history of the RCC, the Popes, and the church's affiliation with Hitler about 75 years ago.  Also the socialist/progressive platforms of Popes in the past fifty years or so, including the current one.  No lies or calumny....just history.

 

 

Yes on both counts.    I can assure you, what I see here are the common myths that are found both inside Protestantism and outside.     Whether we like to admit it or not, we use filters  to interpret information presented to us, and if those filters are heavily biased, we will only see what they filters allow us to see, until we remove those filters.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bloody history of the RCC is a fact, an historical fact and the collusion with the Nazis is as well.  The information about the last five or six Popes is public record.  I, as a clear eyed realist, don't give credence to myths or CTs.  If you can deny the last thousand years or so of RCC history then you are absolutely not dealing with reality.  I'm not talking Scripture here; I'm talking straight up history. 

[thereselittleflower]

Therese, I simply disagree with your conclusions.  Since a young woman found to be not be a virgin on her wedding day would have been stoned according to Jewish law, it is a forgone conclusion that the word should be translated virgin.  There was no subterfuge.  It is my understanding the the Hebrew version was begun nearly 200 BC but had not yet been concluded until after the death of Christ.  It was as literal as they could make it, since they did regard these to be the holy Words of God.  

 

There are truly inspired passages within the Apocrypha, but many of the books are also filled with errors and nonsense.  So it is a mixture.  That is why they are good to read but are not considered as pure, inspired and reliable as the Canon.  It is like reading the Book of Mormon.  There are passages from the King James Version interspersed with fiction.

 

You are not the only one who has studied these things in depth; but others have come to opposite conclusions.  So we should agree to disagree.  

You have a distinct hatred for Luther, but his reformations were for good and just causes.  The pope at that time was very corrupt.  Selling tickets to get people out of purgatory is an abomination, and the doctrine of purgatory is in itself not biblical.  Bringing doctrine to align with Scripture was a good thing.  Luther was not perfect, but he did bring us back to salvation by grace through faith, a gift from God, and back to the Bible.  Without that foundation the cults grow like weeds.  

 

I am thankful for the church fathers that refuted many of the early heresies by using Scripture.  It is sad that this did not continue to be the practice into modern times.

Today the catholic traditions were made doctrine without first comparing them to Scriptural truth.  The first century Christians did not always have many written books and had to rely on the words of the apostles, so their traditions were considered reliable.  

It was decided to add that Mary did not have a natural birth in the years after the reformation, or there might have been 40 thesis instead of 39.  Then they made her ascend into heaven as well, didn't they?  The beauty of the true Biblical story is that Mary was a humble, godly young woman who was blessed by God to carry our Redeemer.  She was not mentioned after the first few chapters of Acts so she was either not important or died near that time.  We should never bow down before a statue of her or pray to her according to the 10 commandments.

 

The present pope would also benefit from reading the Bible more.  

 

I was going to make one post in response, but it would be long, for I see several misunderstandings, some of which I would like to address, and are not easily addressed with a short post.   So I will make three posts instead.

 

 

I think you're misunderstanding me.   Of course we would see the words in Isaiah in the way you describe.

 

But historically, the Jews used the Hebrew version of Isaiah to argue against the christian claim of the virgin birth fulfilling this prophecy, which uses a less explicit word than the Greek did for virign.  And so, they would argue that Isaiah did not require the woman to be an actual virgin, but a young maiden.   This then opened the door for them to attack the christian claim of a virgin birth divinely caused, that this was not God's doing,  and attack Mary's character; that she had sexual relations outside of marriage and so Jesus was a bastard.  This was how they argued against the christian claim.    They found  they could not so easily do so with the Septuagint version because it was explicit.  The Hebrew words was less explicit and so they could use it, or abuse it, to contradict the christian claim of a virgin birth fulfilling this scripture.

[thereselittleflower]

As far a the deuterocanonicals, and I prefer that word to separate them from the rest of what is called apocrypha, they were indeed included in the canon of scripture right along with the New Testament books we use today.  If the councils deciding the canon of scripture got it wrong regarding these 7 books of the deuterocanonicals, how can we have any confidence they got the New Testament right?   It makes no logical sense to say that the men, who in the same breath gave us the canon of the New Testament and the canon of the Old Testament, were somehow protected from error regarding declaring the New Testament but not the Old.  To say that requires all sorts of mental gymnastics that make no sense.

 

People talk about the "canon" of scripture without ever understanding what the word "canon" here refers to.     It refers to a decision - one of many decisions - made by a Church council

 

Here is the Canon of the Council of Carthage, one of the councils that gave us our "canon" of scripture:

 

Canon 24. (Greek xxvii.)

That nothing be read in church besides the Canonical Scripture

Item, that besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in church under the name of divine Scripture.

But the Canonical Scriptures are as follows:

• Genesis.

• Exodus.

• Leviticus.

• Numbers.

• Deuteronomy.

• Joshua the Son of Nun.

• The Judges.

• Ruth.

• The Kings, iv. books.

• The Chronicles, ij. books.

• Job.

• The Psalter.

• The Five books of Solomon.

• The Twelve Books of the Prophets.

• Isaiah.

• Jeremiah.

• Ezechiel.

• Daniel.

• Tobit.

• Judith.

• Esther.

• Ezra, ij. books.

• Macchabees, ij. books.

  • The New Testament.

    • The Gospels, iv. books.

    • The Acts of the Apostles, j. book.

    • The Epistles of Paul, xiv.

    • The Epistles of Peter, the Apostle, ij.

    • The Epistles of John the Apostle, iij.

    • The Epistles of James the Apostle, j.

    • The Epistle of Jude the Apostle, j.

    • The Revelation of John, j. book.

Let this be sent to our brother and fellow bishop, Boniface, and to the other bishops of those parts, that they may confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church.

 

 

They did not invent it, they affirmed it to defend it against spurious works being presented as scripture.  And from it was excluded spurious works that were sowing confusion, thus the need for the councils to decide what is and is not scripture  -  and for a purpose - what would be allowed to be read in Church as divine scripture.   There were several writings that were of great value to the early church, such as the Dideche, and the Shepherd of Hermes, the Book of Enoch, but could not be used as scripture in Church.  When they say "in the Church" they are referring to the readings of scirpture during the Liturgies.  

 

This canon was only one of  85 canons  - decisions - by this council.

[thereselittleflower]

I am glad to hear you also are thankful for the Church Fathers and how they refuted early heresies.        You and I agree on this point.    

 

You brought up purgatory.  

 

Since they ECF's refuted heresies , why did the Early Church fathers never condemn the idea of purgatory?  Of course it was not given the name purgatory in the very early church, but the belief in a state after death in which those in that state could be affected for good after death by the prayers of the living on their behalf, most definitely existed and was universal throughout the church as testified to in the ancient liturgies where prayers for the dead were offered every Sunday.    Also prayers for the dead are seen inscribed in the catacombs - thousands of them.   

 

This is part of the ancient christian faith.    If this is error, if this is heresy, where are the Early Church Fathers' outcry denouncing it?  They never once denounce it.   In fact, they teach on it -  Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origin, Cyprian - all before Constantine.

 

 

 

Clement of Alexandria

The believer through discipline divests himself of his passions and passes to the mansion which is better than the former one, passes to the greatest torment, taking with him the characteristic of repentance for the faults he may have committed after baptism. He is tortured then still more, not yet attaining what he sees others have acquired. The greatest torments are assigned to the believer, for God's righteousness is good, and His goodness righteous, and though these punishments cease in the course of the expiation and purification of each one, "yet" etc. (Stromata 6:14 )

 

 

Origen

If a man departs this life with lighter faults, he is condemned to fire which burns away the lighter materials, and prepares the soul for the kingdom of God, where nothing defiled may enter. For if on the foundation of Christ you have built not only gold and silver and precious stones (I Cor., 3); but also wood and hay and stubble, what do you expect when the soul shall be separated from the body? Would you enter into heaven with your wood and hay and stubble and thus defile the kingdom of God; or on account of these hindrances would you remain without and receive no reward for your gold and silver and precious stones? Neither is this just. It remains then that you be committed to the fire which will burn the light materials; for our God to those who can comprehend heavenly things is called a cleansing fire. But this fire consumes not the creature, but what the creature has himself built, wood, and hay and stubble. It is manifest that the fire destroys the wood of our transgressions and then returns to us the reward of our great works. (Homilies on Jeremias 13: 445, 448)

 

 

Tertullian

 

The faithful widow prays for the soul of her husband, and begs for him in the interim repose, and participation in the first resurrection, and offers prayers on the anniversary of his death (Monogamy 10 )

 

Cyprian

 

It is one thing to stand for pardon, another thing to attain to glory; it is one thing, when cast into prison, not to go out thence until one has paid the uttermost farthing; another thing at once to receive the wages of faith and courage. It is one thing, tortured by long suffering for sins, to be cleansed and long purged by fire; another to have purged all sins by suffering. It is one thing, in fine, to be in suspense till the sentence of God at the Day of Judgment; another to be at once crowned by the Lord (Letters 51[55]:20)

 

 

 And they base their teachings and support of this doctrine on scripture.

 

In scripture we see prayer for the dead implicitly demonstrated in Paul's own words to Timothy:

 

 2 Timothy 1:15-18

You know that everyone in Asia deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the family of Onesiphorus because he often 

gave 

me new heart and 

was 

not ashamed of my chains. But when he came to Rome, he promptly searched for me and found me. 

May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day.

 And you know very well the services he rendered in Ephesus.Willa, on 01 Aug 2015 - 12:18 PM, said:

 

2 Timothy 4:19

 

“Greet Prisca and Aquila and the family of Onesiphorus” )

 

 

It is understood Onesiphorus is dead.  Paul spoke of him in the past tense only, and did not have Timothy greet him, but only his household.  And here is Paul asking God to grant him mercy on the "that" day -  the day of judgement.

 

 

Clement of Alexandria and Origen make reference to this scripture:

 

1 Corinthians 3 

 

 11For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. 14If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. 15If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

 

 

And in the books Luther removed from the bible, books that are in the canon of scripture - the same canon the New Testament books delineated, are found explicit scriptural examples of prayers for the dead :

 

2 Maccabees 12

38 So Judas having gathered together his army, came into the city Odollam: and when the seventh day came, they purified themselves according to the custom, and kept the sabbath in the place.

39 And the day following Judas came with his company, to take away the bodies of them that were slain, and to bury them with their kinsmen, in the sepulchres of their fathers.

40 And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews: so that all plainly saw, that for this cause they were slain.

41 Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.

42 And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain.

43 And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection,

44 (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,)

45 And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them.

46 It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

 

 

 

and this is why Luther sought to remove Maccabees from the canon of scripture. He rejected this long held belief in prayers for the dead from the earliest times of christianity, and as along as Maccabees was scripture, he could not claim it was wasn't scriptural against John Eck's holding up what had always been scripture in christianity to show Luther was wrong.  So Luther did the same thing the"council" of Jamnia rabbis did in rejecting the Septuagint to reject Maccabees so the zealots would have no scriptural basis for their revolt against the Romans.   They justified its removal by creating rules that limited scripture to what was originally written in Hebrew.   Luther used the same strategy.  And so not only removed Maccabees, but all 7 books, one of which is the book of Wisdom with one of the most explict prophecies of the passion and death of Christ.

 

The question that must be asked is if there is no chance of affecting one's state after death, then what would be the purpose of Paul's prayer, or the prayers of Judas in Maccabees, or the prayers of the early chrristians contained in the catacombs for the dead and to the saints, or the prayers for the dead in the liturgies?  There would be none, and so their existence,  in the ordinary lives of christians and in the liturgies of the Church, would have no significance and actually be heresy; and instead of being universally embraced throughout  christianity, would have been condemned by the ECF's.

 

Yet the ECF's did not do so.  What they do, is affirm it:  Prayers for the dead were universal - which is what the word "catholic" means.

 

 

 

 

So where is the heresy?

 

 

Additionally, I want to say please don't ascribe the emotion "hate" to me in the way you have done.  You know very little about me and next to nothing about my heart or my inner thoughts to make such a judgment.   I do not hate Luther.  I pity him.  And while I absolutely agree the Catholic Church needed reforming in his time, he did some very terrible things which I will not condone and which remove him, in my eyes, from being a legitimate reformer.

[thereselittleflower]

 

 

 

Therese, you say you have done an exhaustive study of Christianity?  Does that include historical research?  The RCC has a long history of persecutions and genocides of those considered nonbelievers.  If you are unaware of these things, I will post a history of the RCC, the Popes, and the church's affiliation with Hitler about 75 years ago.  Also the socialist/progressive platforms of Popes in the past fifty years or so, including the current one.  No lies or calumny....just history.

 

 

Yes on both counts.    I can assure you, what I see here are the common myths that are found both inside Protestantism and outside.     Whether we like to admit it or not, we use filters  to interpret information presented to us, and if those filters are heavily biased, we will only see what they filters allow us to see, until we remove those filters.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bloody history of the RCC is a fact, an historical fact and the collusion with the Nazis is as well.  The information about the last five or six Popes is public record.  I, as a clear eyed realist, don't give credence to myths or CTs.  If you can deny the last thousand years or so of RCC history then you are absolutely not dealing with reality.  I'm not talking Scripture here; I'm talking straight up history. 

 

 

 

I would like to keep the tone of our discussion from becoming adversarial, but rather this be a simple sharing of information to bring clarity. 

 

I have found pointing fingers usually means there are three point right back at me  (just old up your hand and point a finger at something. .  three of your fingers are pointing at you.)

 

And I found this was true when I pointed fingers at the Catholic Church for the same things you are - when I actually started to investigate history in earnest, I found I as a protestant had no leg to stand on, for the history of the reformation and protestantism is just as bloody, if not more so, than that of the Catholic Church.    So unless you are prepared to toss the whole lot out, it is simply hypocrisy to point the finger at the Catholic Church and disqualifying it for real or perceived wrongs while not also disqualifying the protestant reformation, and protestantism.   

 

To me what qualifies a church is their teaching and the origins of that teaching.  All churches are led by human, frail, fallible men, and their actions do not determine the legitimacy of the churches' teachings.   Their actions merely reveal their own tendencies to sin.     

 

I found in my search through history, much of what is promoted as history regarding the Catholic Church is greatly exaggerated or in error.   And you should know I started this search as a very, very anti catholic - rabidly anti-catholic,  absolutely convinced I was right, that it was pagan, wrong, demonic even.   So if I was looking for anything it would have been support for my views.  But I am also a realist, and I approach things logically, and what I was finding was not adding up to what I thought was true.  As a realist and as a logically thinking person, I found I had to adjust my view and understanding of history.  This was no easy task.  I fought it tooth and nail.  But truth is what is important to me above all else.

 

And so, in response to your comments about the Catholic Church and the Nazis,  I found the "history" of the Catholic Church's collusion with Nazism is in fact a myth.  I found that the history of this time is very complicated, and if one wants to take a superficial view of it one can easily come away with the idea there was collusion.   But in fact there was not.   An anti-catholic play "The Deputy" made the rounds and was so popular that what was fiction became real in people's minds, and so the saying was proven true - If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

 

Ten years ago, Rabbi David Dalin, wanting to set the record straight, came out with his book   

 

The Myth of Hitler's Pope: Pope Pius XII And His Secret War Against Nazi Germany

 

Was Pope Pius XII secretly in league with Adolf Hitler? No, says Rabbi David G. Dalin—but there was a cleric in league with Hitler: the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. As Pope Pius XII worked to save Jews from the Nazis, the grand mufti became Hitler’s staunch ally and a promoter of the Holocaust, with a legacy that feeds radical Islam today. In this shocking and thoroughly documented book, Rabbi Dalin explodes the myth of Hitler’s pope and condemns the myth-makers for not only rewriting history, but for denying the testimony of Holocaust survivors, hijacking the Holocaust for unseemly political ends, and ignoring the real threat to the Jewish people. In The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, you’ll learn: · The true history of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust—how the Catholic Church did more than any other religious body to save Jewish lives · The real history of the Church and the Nazis—including the Nazi plan to kidnap the pope · The real agenda of the myth-makers: hijacking the Holocaust to attack the very idea of the papacy—especially the papacy of the late Pope John Paul II—as well as Christianity and traditional religion as a whole · Hitler’s cleric—Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who advised and assisted the Nazis in carrying out Hitler’s Final Solution · How Pope Pius XII rescued Jews—and deserves to be called a "righteous gentile"—while the grand mufti of Jerusalem called for their extermination Full of shocking and irrefutable detail, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope is sure to generate controversy, and more important, to set the record straight. If you want the truth about Pope Pius XII, about the Catholic Church, the Jews, and the Holocaust, and about how the myth of Hitler’s pope plays into the culture wars of our own time—and how the fact of Hitler’s mufti is a vital source of radical Islam today—you must begin here.

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Hitlers-Pope-Against/dp/0895260344

 

This is written from the Jewish perspective, presenting facts which I think most people here are quite unaware of, even if they believe themselves to be well informed.