Bishops, Elders & Deacons

[Guest]

I checked out scott hahn's site; his site linked to some other RC apologetics site-- i checked this one out:

http://www.catholic.com/

it is interesting how they support/explain things. i just generally disagree with a lot of it; however the discussions re salvation and "easy believism" taught by many/most protestant denominations is something i definitely agree with.

TK

[Guest]

Dear TK & Emmet,

Protestants worship Martin Luther and John Calvin and everything they stood for until they decided what they interpreted as a greater truth, ie, themselves. Protestants believe in being Born-Again but there is no standard for this new conviction to Christ, because when they fail by the simplest of tasks we are told that we are to love the sinner but hate the sin. Yet, when they kill or rape or molest someone then I hear "Well, they never accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord & Savior" ....wait a moment....sin is sin, big or small.

Now, did you see what I did? I made an enormous amount of ad hominem generalities about Protestants that is "based on personal conviction" (your logic) yet based on nothing close to what scripture commands us to do in explaining with reason. Are we a bunch of Mormons that "feel" this in our "bosom" to be true?! You need to give "reason".

You make blanket statements like "...or that I think all RCs are going to hell-- hardly. some (most?) of them are, but so are some (most?) Protestants." This is a huge problem. You have no idea whatsoever who or when someone is going to hell .... Catholic or Protestant. You have this big judgmental bone that is palpable in your statements regarding your self-perceived Catholic Christian mantras ("idolatry of Mary"... what Mass have you been attending, ‘cause that don't happen in the Catholic Church?) but never wish to explore your basic of questions. I see a lot of thread questions going away from the first thread but nothing much more.

You ask me to address the Mass in the NT now here in the posts? How can I do it better than a former Protestant Minister that had a big disdain for Catholics thinking they also were going to hell, who later became Catholic?! The guy is talking your talk, coming from your side of the fence. He knows the scripture from Gen to Rev. OK, let me water down my generous proposal to you and rather than send you two CD's on the Mass in the NT and let me send you his conversion story. It is interesting and one small section he talks about what you ask. Then as you hear his experience you can get just one little ittsy bitsy CD on the Mass in the NT.


Dear Emmet

Are you re-writing the Protestant OT or are you simply making an "Emmet Observation"?

You state "In the end, the original articulation rests (in most cases, at least) in a Semitic language.". Where the heck did you get that observation? In "most" cases? Hey, guys the basic question still stands and everyone is throwing up puffy clouds to mask the question .... does your Protestant Bible(s) have the God Breathed, 100% truth? Is that truth in the Hebrew Text as Protestants state as the truth and not the Greek Text, or maybe they BOTH are God breathed, 100% truth. Is that what you are saying?

I doubt it because the Hebrew Text is in direct contradiction to Christian Dogma because last time I heard Jesus was born of a Virgin Birth and my friendly Jewish OT does not say or believe that? What gives? Do Protestants want a hybridized OT Bible because it serves their Christian Dogma and also their anti-Catholic position? You guys are looking more and more like Martin Luther with every post.

"A knowledgeable scholar (Protestant or otherwise) will be sensitive to the textual issues involved in OT study, and will not cling naively to a single text tradition"....ouch. A knowledgeable scholar? Now we're going out on a limb again and a thread! When I brought up some of the very earliest (75-400 AD) Christian scholars (Barnabus, Clement, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome...etc) who scholarly back up, support and use the Catholic OT in defense of Christianity (Catholic Christianity) I got lambasted for going beyond Peter & Paul.

Are you going to use modern day scholars that never met any of the original disciples/apostles? Like I mentioned before, how about some like the NIV Study Bible/Zondervan, pg 1432 (Time Between the Testaments) 1984 Inter.Bible Society "The Septuagint quickly became the Bible of the Jews outside Palestine...It later became the Bible of the early church...The Hebrew canon was not accepted by the early church, which used the Septuagint...most Protestants decided to follow the original Hebrew canon..." or how about FF Bruce, Canon of Scripture, pg 50 "So thoroughly did the Christians appropriate the Septuagint as their version of the scriptures that the Jews became increasingly disenchanted with it". If that is not enough scholarly enough for you then how about Mr. Reformation himself, Martin Luther, when he said " "We are obliged to yield many things to the Papists [Catholics] - that they possess the Word of God which we [Protestants] received from them [Catholics], otherwise we should have nothing at all about it [Biblical Scripture].

Now if that is too modern for you then how about going to the Jews of the Scriptural Diaspora. Here we have Ethiopian (Falasha, Beta Israel tribe) Jews which are scholarly accepted by the Jewish State of Israel in 1975 to be the lost tribe. The Jews believed this so much that they evacuated everyone of them from Ethiopia. But, there was a small problem. We know these Jews did not have a NT, but only an OT, right? Well, guess what they have been studying as Scripture since the diaspora?..... oh my gosh, the Greek OT! Here were Jews kicked out of their country thousands of years ago, isolated from the politics of the Romans and the Council at Jamnia (Jewish codification of the OT) and they are using the Greek OT. Wowweeeee.

So tell me, what Bible do you use as a God Breathed, 100% truth .... a Protestant Bible or a Catholic Bible. You state you are not a Protestant or a "biblicist". It sounds like you are more like (no malice intended) a vacuum. Take a stand for Pete's sake. Stand for something or you'll fall for anything (maybe you have). As God says in Scripture [you are neither hot nor cold and I spit you out]. You need to quit dancing around with this political verbiage and pick a corner to defend.

But, I digress. Let's all take a deep breath and see what kind of OT you study from as 100% truth and God Breathed. Since it is the Jewish/Hebrew OT then why do you believe in a virgin birth when it is not taught or believed in the Hebrew Text.

Christ's Peace, Catholic Steve

[Guest]

CS-

in regard to the "salvation" issue, Jesus himself said that narrow is the path that leads to life, and FEW find it (which implies that most will not). I wasnt making that up. and no, at the masses i have attended, mary isnt worshiped explicitly. but you dont have to look very far outside of the mass to see it; even a casual observer recognizes this.

the reason i am not taking you up on your offer is that i generally dont give out personal info on forums or the internet. that is why i asked you to summarize what you were talking about. but it is also true that i really dont have a lot of interest in RC apologetics.

P.S. you previously noted that i looked to be around 30- i guess i'll take that as a complement since i will be 43 in june. gag.

TK

[Guest]

Hi CatholicSteve,

Mary is not the focus in the Catholic Mass but Jesus Christ.

The only thing is that the extra curricular activities of the catholic believers involves worshipping Mary although not everybody worship Mary.

I used to be a catholic I graduated from a catholic school in the Philippines. You know when I was in the Philippines and even now here in Canada we have a tradition which was approved and recognized by our parish priest and the tradition is to bring the statue of Mary to different houses and the family who lives in that house where the statue currently reside will pray to the statue with rosary in their hands. We also kiss the statue of Mary as a sign of respect or reverence to Mary.

But as a former catholic I always knew the argument of the protestants that is why I always tell myself before when I was a catholic that I don't worship the statue but I only used that statue to help me focus in my prayer, I used the statue of Jesus Christ to help me remember that Jesus Christ is true and alive. When I kneel in front of the statue before I always add in my prayers that I don't worship the statue but only the one true living God who is Jesus Christ. I hardly pray the "Hail Mary" because as a former catholic I always knew that the focus is in Christ and not to Mary.

[Guest]

Hello, Steve,

Thank you for your response.

You state "In the end, the original articulation rests (in most cases, at least) in a Semitic language.". Where the heck did you get that observation? In "most" cases?

For some materials in the OT, the original articulation might not have been in a Semitic language. The book of Job, for example, may not have been a Hebrew/Israelite document in its earlier form(s). Other anthologized texts (like Psalms or Proverbs) may have assimilated materials from other languages.

Hey, guys the basic question still stands and everyone is throwing up puffy clouds to mask the question .... does your Protestant Bible(s) have the God Breathed, 100% truth? Is that truth in the Hebrew Text as Protestants state as the truth and not the Greek Text, or maybe they BOTH are God breathed, 100% truth. Is that what you are saying?

I doubt it because the Hebrew Text is in direct contradiction to Christian Dogma because last time I heard Jesus was born of a Virgin Birth and my friendly Jewish OT does not say or believe that?

I mentioned in my posting that I am neither Protestant nor biblicist - so naturally I am not inclined to defend a Protestant bible as "God-breathed, 100% truth."

Concerning the different "virgin birth" texts in Isaiah - what we have here is an issue of textual criticism, which should be explored responsibly. Upon consideration, the context of the passage quite naturally favors the sense of the Hebrew text. And it's not really my problem if that muddles up Christian dogma.

You guys are looking more and more like Martin Luther with every post.

I won't speak about TK, but when it comes to Emmet, I expect that Dr. Luther would not appreciate the comparison . He didn't like it when Jews disagreed with Christian dogma, either.

"A knowledgeable scholar (Protestant or otherwise) will be sensitive to the textual issues involved in OT study, and will not cling naively to a single text tradition"....ouch. A knowledgeable scholar? Now we're going out on a limb again and a thread!

And you follow with a bunch of arguments which I will address individually below:

When I brought up some of the very earliest (75-400 AD) Christian scholars (Barnabus, Clement, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome...etc) who scholarly back up, support and use the Catholic OT in defense of Christianity (Catholic Christianity) I got lambasted for going beyond Peter & Paul.

I don't mind if you go beyond Peter and Paul. But of your list of "scholars" here, only one knew a Semitic language (so far as I am aware), so their basis for comparing the various textual traditions seems quite hampered in that department. Anf the exception, Jerome, is not so much known for favoring an exclusive dependence upon the Septuagint.

Are you going to use modern day scholars that never met any of the original disciples/apostles?

You mean like "Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Augustine, [and] Jerome"? But how is this relevant, anyhow? Where have we established "the original disciples/apostles" as reliable textual scholars?

Like I mentioned before, how about some like the NIV Study Bible/Zondervan, pg 1432 (Time Between the Testaments) 1984 Inter.Bible Society "The Septuagint quickly became the Bible of the Jews outside Palestine...It later became the Bible of the early church...The Hebrew canon was not accepted by the early church, which used the Septuagint...most Protestants decided to follow the original Hebrew canon..." or how about FF Bruce, Canon of Scripture, pg 50 "So thoroughly did the Christians appropriate the Septuagint as their version of the scriptures that the Jews became increasingly disenchanted with it".

So? Greek-speaking people favored a bible they could read over a bible they couldn't, and early Christians favored a bible that propped up their dogmas. Those are very practical concerns, but neither one serves terribly well as a rationale for textual criticism.

If that is not enough scholarly enough for you then how about Mr. Reformation himself, Martin Luther, when he said " "We are obliged to yield many things to the Papists [Catholics] - that they possess the Word of God which we [Protestants] received from them [Catholics], otherwise we should have nothing at all about it [Biblical Scripture].

I am not so much a student of the Reformation, but I expect that Dr. Luther suffered under a number of scholastic disadvantages (like all sixteenth-century scholastics). He would very rarely be cited by modern biblical scholarship.

Now if that is too modern for you then how about going to the Jews of the Scriptural Diaspora. Here we have Ethiopian (Falasha, Beta Israel tribe) Jews which are scholarly accepted by the Jewish State of Israel in 1975 to be the lost tribe. The Jews believed this so much that they evacuated everyone of them from Ethiopia. But, there was a small problem. We know these Jews did not have a NT, but only an OT, right? Well, guess what they have been studying as Scripture since the diaspora?..... oh my gosh, the Greek OT! Here were Jews kicked out of their country thousands of years ago, isolated from the politics of the Romans and the Council at Jamnia (Jewish codification of the OT) and they are using the Greek OT. Wowweeeee.

The history of the Ethiopian Jews is exceedingly murky, and there are numerous possible explanations for the state of their scriptural tradition. Amongst them: they may have brought their textual-form with them as immigrants from the Greek-speaking diaspora; or, they may have received their textual-form as converts from Greek-speaking missionaries; or, they may have lost access to the Hebrew text (whether through neglect or under persecution) and resorted to the text used by the Ethiopian Orthodox church. One can hardly demonstrate that "they have been studying [the Greek OT] as Scripture since the diaspora." And to cavil, their text is in Ge'ez, though it appears to bear similarity in textual form to the Septuagint.

So tell me, what Bible do you use as a God Breathed, 100% truth .... a Protestant Bible or a Catholic Bible. You state you are not a Protestant or a "biblicist". It sounds like you are more like (no malice intended) a vacuum. Take a stand for Pete's sake. Stand for something or you'll fall for anything (maybe you have). As God says in Scripture [you are neither hot nor cold and I spit you out]. You need to quit dancing around with this political verbiage and pick a corner to defend.

How's about an Eastern Orthodox bible? Or maybe a Jewish bible? Or perhaps a Samaritan Pentateuch? Shall we try the Peshitta? How many corners you got?

I do not use any bible as "God-breathed, 100% truth."

But, I digress. Let's all take a deep breath and see what kind of OT you study from as 100% truth and God Breathed. Since it is the Jewish/Hebrew OT then why do you believe in a virgin birth when it is not taught or believed in the Hebrew Text.

(1) Deep breath... see previous comment.

(2) It isn't, and I don't.


Shlamaa,
Emmet

[Guest]

Sean you state "The NT writers quote from the LXX, so it must be the best!" Well, if the NT writers find it the best why aren't you using it as your "best" truth? Would I be correct, Sean, that you know very little about the Protestant and Catholic OT differences? There is no malice meant, but your statement blows me away (others, especially Protestants?) because it is soooo un-Protestant, yet you cite sources as it being the "best"


Peace out, Catholic Steve

First, I was kidding on the emphasis used "!" in my reply. 8)

Second, I don't know if you can pit the Hebrew and Greek against one another as if one is the "absolute best", even though I do favor the Greek for the reason mentioned. Besides, what was the Greek based on? What text came first?

Third, I never claimed to be an expert on the differences between the ways the Catholic and Protestants view the OT. One thing you have done and keep doing is assuming that if someone is Protestant, then they must hold to most or all the things you read about historic Protestant beliefs. I'm afraid that we are all individuals here that can't be so easily placed in a single category. There are certainly Protestant beliefs I disagree with. Just because someone is non-Catholic, doesn't mean they adhere to the views of other Protestants. IMO if I were to just accept what other Protestants believe on a subject without validating it, I would be making "them" my leader. Jesus Christ is my head.

[Guest]

OK Sean. Jesus Christ is the head. We all agree on that. What do you use as a Bible to substantiate the basis for your religious study, doctrine and framework for Christian belief? Unless you are a prophet all your teachings must come scripture unless you have Catholic Christian leanings, then Tradition would mean something to you.

Do you base your beliefs on a Protestant type Bible (39 OT books, 27 NT) or a Catholic type Bible (46 OT books, 27 NT)? You don't need to be an expert, just read Christian history.

Heck, who would you believe has the correct OT...some Pharasee's who codified their Hebrew OT around 100AD or some Jewish tribe prior to the diaspora? It appears you prefer the pharasees, no?

Peace, Catholic Steve

[Guest]

CatholicSteve,
What's the big deal if we both bave the same NT? Did Jesus seem concerned with the number of books in the NT or obeying His commands?

[Guest]

Dear Sean,

Your questions are deflective by rationalizing only the 27 NT books. If the whole Bible is the 100% truth you MUST include all the books of the OT, too. Is God concerned with the 27 NT books, and not 26 or 28? You bet, it was 27 that were codified by the earliest Christian councils! That being said do you think that God is concerned whether the OT books are 39 or 46? That is self-evident .... YES! Now, you must tell (convince?) yourself that a hybridized Protestant Bible, that is contrary to history and fact, is 100% God Breathed.

Case in point (not another thread), but I assume you do not believe in Purgatory, right? What if I can prove it through the 46 Books in the Catholic OT .... that is a pretty important point. Remember, not everything Protestants believe in the NT is there, but can be found in the OT. What the NT is silent about, then the OT still has validity.

What Bible do you read and study to support your beliefs in Christianity and ultimately evangelize per God's command? With your logic, then a JW is correct because only one word is off in John 1:1 .... but, unfortuantely it makes a HUGE difference in Christian belief. Therefore, your adherance to a hybrid Hebrew / Greek Bible which is off in several areas causes you (and many others) to believe and evangelize other than what God taught.

You would rather trust a man from the 1500's than a all the history PRIOR to the 1500's. That is kind of odd. What Bible do you study and preach from. I will be at Camp Pendleton again this weekend so I will answer you (others?) later.

Christ's Peace, Catholic Steve

[Guest]

Dear Sean,

Your questions are deflective by rationalizing only the 27 NT books. If the whole Bible is the 100% truth you MUST include all the books of the OT, too. Is God concerned with the 27 NT books, and not 26 or 28? You bet, it was 27 that were codified by the earliest Christian councils! That being said do you think that God is concerned whether the OT books are 39 or 46? That is self-evident .... YES! Now, you must tell (convince?) yourself that a hybridized Protestant Bible, that is contrary to history and fact, is 100% God Breathed.

Case in point (not another thread), but I assume you do not believe in Purgatory, right? What if I can prove it through the 46 Books in the Catholic OT .... that is a pretty important point. Remember, not everything Protestants believe in the NT is there, but can be found in the OT. What the NT is silent about, then the OT still has validity.

And who decides what books go in the OT? Which "man" has that authority? That is the point. Are you saying that the OT contains 46 books because someone told you they go there? Prove they go there.

If you would, could you post where in the Catholic Bible Purgatory is taught? It was my understanding (from what I've been told) that the Catholic encyclopedia admits that the concept of Purgatory is not explicitly taught in any bible.

What Bible do you read and study to support your beliefs in Christianity and ultimately evangelize per God's command?

Where is it God's command to include either 37 or 46 OT books? How do Christ's commands help us determine this? How many books did the early Church have (before later councils determined this for them/us)?

You can assert the importance of the additional OT books, however if this is not a matter of salvation then why argue about it? Jesus never commanded the commissioning the creation of bibles, did He? Jesus did command that disciples be taught all things "He" commanded.