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Mother Mary??

Discussion in 'Free-For-All Archives' started by David.Mathews, Mar 14, 2004.

  1. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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    It's funny how you keep missing the good points. Just another point to make that her assumption was not at all like Christ's. She was dead. Interesting to also note this as a difference between hers and Moses' and Elijah's, too.
    </font>[/QUOTE]#1. You are not paying attention to your own RC authorities here.

    #2. Elijah did not die - that is a big "difference" in the death of Elijah and Mary. Mary did die.

    #3. The part of the article you quote is "the common point with all humans" -- all die and all will be raised some day in the future.

    #4. You fail to admit that the article DOES NOT rely upon that point to prove that of all people in the NT - MARY has been assumed into heaven - since that point alone could never make such an argument.

    Why not admit to the points made by your own RC source and move on?

    #1. Scads and scads of Baptist churches in the 1950's. Claiming that they did not exist then does not help your case.

    #2. You are right to say that "we are right because we always say we are right" is not a "kind of proof" of anything at all.

    #3. If the NT first century church was "chatting up" the assumption of Mary with all the "flying apostles" as described in the RC document above - why no mention of it?

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  2. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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  3. DHK

    DHK <b>Moderator</b>

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    You said: "I am not stupid enough to believe..." And yet you do.
    Any religion that requires baptism for salvation is working their way to heaven--a works salvation.
    Any religion that believes in a doctrine like purgatory, where you have to be once more cleansed from your sins believes in a works salvation--the work of Christ was insufficient.
    Any religion that depends on the seven sacraments as salvic is a works salvation--they are not fully trusting in the blood of Christ.
    "Catholics DO work their way to Heaven, or at least try. It is impossible to do so.

    As concerning the matters of your heart, I said nothing. What pertains to you as a Catholic, pertains to every Catholic. As I said, you can't be a true Catholic and a true Christian at the same time. It is a matter of theology.
    I just did. Read the above. The gospel is a belief in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and accepting that sacrifice by faith and faith alone. There are not works involved. The Catholics don't believe in the gospel; they have a religion of works.

    No, actually he didn't. The church did not start until Pentecost, after Christ ascended back into Heaven. He gave His disciples power to cast out demons and heal the sick way back in Matthew 10:1 before there was ever any mention of any church in the Bible. That is non sequitor. It has nothing to do with the church. And he never appointed them overseers over the church. The first church was formed in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, and not a day before.

    It isn't Catholic. The Catholic church started in the fourth century. It wasn't around then. I said it was Baptistic in doctrine. It may not have had the name Baptist, but its doctrine was Baptist. It had to be. A Baptist is simply one who believes the Bible. A Catholic doesn't do that. He has all this extra garbage added on that he calls Oral Tradition--things that are totally indefensible by the Bible.
    Not true. According to the definition of worship you do indeed worship Mary. You bow down in front of her statue. You pray to her. That is worship. I urge you to read the Ten Commandments. They are very plain in this respect. You can hardly miss it. Don't you believe in the Ten Commandments?
    According to the Catholic Church, but not according the Bible. When Gideon set up an ephod, the whole of Israel went an "whoring" after it. They worshiped it. It became a snare and an idol to them. They adored it. It was a material thing producing reverential attitude and causing idolatry. That is exactly what happens in the RCC.

    I agree. Read the above.

    Are you making this up as you go along? Mary was a sinner just like me. No better; no worse. We are equal in God's sight. Now she is dead. So now you have a reverential attitude for a dead person--give me a break. Or, now you have a reverential attitude for a dead person's statue whom you adore and worship. Give me another break! Mary does not symbolize the presence of God. That is heresy. Do I symbolize the presence of God to you? Then why would Mary. Mary is no better than I. Am I a legitimate aid to devotion? Than why should Mary be? She was a sinner saved by grace--as I am. The major difference between her and I--She is dead; I am alive.

    You haven't successfully done anything yet. It is the usual term for worshiping God. We will use the term as it is usually used.

    No, using the Catholic definition of tradition, we don't have any tradition that have developed in less than 24 years. It is an impossibility. Catholic encyclopedias require tradition to develop over centuries of time. So this is an impossibility. You had better find yourself a good dictionary--even a Catholic one, which you want to contradict to make your case. This really is pitiful on your part. Tradition doesn't form over a 24 year period. You are inexusably changing the definintion to fit your own purposes.

    Here is some interesting reading on the definition of the word "traditions" in 2Thes.2:15, taken from Jamieson, Faucett, and Brown's commentary:
    DHK
     
  4. neal4christ

    neal4christ New Member

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    You sorely misunderstand their belief concerning baptism.

    In Christ,
    Neal
     
  5. frozencell

    frozencell Guest

    You keep saying this, but do not explain which authorities.

    Which is exactly what I said. Please read carefully.

    I apologize. I misread the date.

    A thought for you. ALL the miracles that Jesus performed would definitely have been talked about by everyone, also, but even Scriptures says that they were not all written in the Bible.

    What does this have to do with anything?

    Your readiness to label everything that doesn't have a Bible chapter and verse after it is scary. I hope you are not normally this rash and narrow-minded. You cannot say that all Catholic historical documents are heretical because it doesn't say it in the Bible. You paint with a very big brush of which I'm not sure you are qualified to handle. If I was as blind as you I could paint you with that brush, too. Anybody can label, but it takes talent and support to make a point.

    Please explain John 3:5 then.

    The Christian belief that baptism is necessary for salvation is so unshakable that even the Protestant Martin Luther affirmed the necessity of baptism. He wrote: "Baptism is no human plaything but is instituted by God himself. Moreover, it is solemnly and strictly commanded that we must be baptized or we shall not be saved. We are not to regard it as an indifferent matter, then, like putting on a new red coat. It is of the greatest importance that we regard baptism as excellent, glorious, and exalted" (Large Catechism 4:6).

    Yet Christians have also always realized that the necessity of water baptism is a normative rather than an absolute necessity. There are exceptions to water baptism: It is possible to be saved through "baptism of blood," martyrdom for Christ, or through "baptism of desire", that is, a conscious or even unconscious desire for baptism.

    Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Those who die for the faith, those who are catechumens, and all those who, without knowing of the Church but acting under the inspiration of grace, seek God sincerely and strive to fulfill his will, are saved even if they have not been baptized" (CCC 1281; the salvation of unbaptized infants is also possible under this system; cf. CCC 1260–1, 1283).

    And if baptism isn't necessary and inportant I would like to know why you baptize nd why your church is named after John the Baptist.

    Fundamentalists may be fond of saying the Catholic Church "invented" the doctrine of purgatory to make money, but they have difficulty saying just when. Most professional anti-Catholics—the ones who make their living attacking "Romanism"—seem to place the blame on Pope Gregory the Great, who reigned from A.D. 590–604.

    But that hardly accounts for the request of Monica, mother of Augustine, who asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember her soul in his Masses. This would make no sense if she thought her soul would not benefit from prayers, as would be the case if she were in hell or in the full glory of heaven.

    Nor does ascribing the doctrine to Gregory explain the graffiti in the catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions of the first three centuries recorded prayers for the dead. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (both written during the second century), refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it. (See Catholic Answers’ Fathers Know Best tract The Existence of Purgatory for quotations from these and other early Christian sources.)

    And since you are so big on "why wasn't it written down?"...

    A study of the history of doctrines indicates that Christians in the first centuries were up in arms (sometimes quite literally) if anyone suggested the least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative people who tested a doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our ancestors? Was it handed on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory would be considered a great change, if it had not been believed from the first—so where are the records of protests?

    They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the oldest writings available to us (or in later ones, for that matter), that "true believers" in the immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory as a novel doctrine. They must have understood that the oral teaching of the apostles, what Catholics call tradition, and the Bible not only failed to contradict the doctrine, but, in fact, confirmed it.

    It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the belief. They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell.

    Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture. Look at it this way. If the limbo of the Fathers was purgatory, then this one verse directly teaches the existence of purgatory. If the limbo of the Fathers was a different temporary state, then the Bible at least says such a state can exist. It proves there can be more than just heaven and hell.

    Sometimes Protestants object that Jesus told the thief on the cross that, on the very day the two of them died, they would be together in paradise (Luke 23:43), which they read as a denial of purgatory. However, the argument backfires and actually supports purgatory by proving the existence of a state other than heaven and hell, since Jesus did not go to heaven on the day he died. Peter tells us that he "went and preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:19), and, after his resurrection, Christ himself declared: "I have not yet ascended to the Father" (John 20:17). Thus at that time paradise was located in some third state besides heaven and besides hell.

    Fundamentalists claim, as an article in Jimmy Swaggart’s magazine, The Evangelist, put it, that "Scripture clearly reveals that all the demands of divine justice on the sinner have been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It also reveals that Christ has totally redeemed, or purchased back, that which was lost. The advocates of a purgatory (and the necessity of prayer for the dead) say, in effect, that the redemption of Christ was incomplete. . . . It has all been done for us by Jesus Christ, there is nothing to be added or done by man."

    It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.

    The Fundamentalist resistance to the biblical doctrine of purgatory presumes there is a contradiction between Christ’s redeeming us on the cross and the process by which we are sanctified. There isn’t. And a Fundamentalist cannot say that suffering in the final stage of sanctification conflicts with the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement without saying that suffering in the early stages of sanctification also presents a similar conflict. The Fundamentalist has it backward: Our suffering in sanctification does not take away from the cross. Rather, the cross produces our sanctification, which results in our suffering, because "[f]or the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness" (Heb. 12:11).

    Actually, contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church does preach the death burial and resurrection of Jesus. And we accept this on faith, but if you read your history, Martin Luther is the culprit who "coined" the phrase 'faith alone'. It has been proved he inserted that himself during his Protestant butchering of the Bible, th the extent that a lot of translations today have removed it.

    I think I would enjoy seeing you try to pull this off the other way around. Grab a scientist and try to prove the Bible without using science. It can't be done. Faith is required to enter heaven from belief in Christ, but God was not so dumb as to leave a book for us to follow without anything else to back it up.

    So you're saying that, back in the day, when someone kneeled before the king they were WORSHIPPING him? No, I don't think so.

    Actually, my quote was not taken from anything remotely Catholic, but the very book you tried to use against me just a page ago. Please knock off the inept attitude of using something in your favor and then bashing me in the knees with it when I do. It's demeaning to both of us.

    Acstually the differences between you and Mary are very stark. Mary bore Jesus Christ in a sinless state. You have not. Mary did her best to immulate Christ. You do not. Mary had a Christ-like attitude. You do not.

    And to to take the "all men are equal in God's eyes" arguement so far out of context is laughable. By your definition, God favored Charles Manson the same He did John the Baptist.

    And please quit telling me what I believe. You can't understand it yourself when I put it in the simplest terms for you, so please don't try to read your Baptist-tainted version of it back to me. Catholics do not worship Mary. I proved that already, WITH YOUR SOURCE!

    Thsi si flat-out ignorance. Why would you ALWAYS use a word ONE way when it has TWO OR MORE meanings? No matter how often one of them is used?? That's like saying we are only going to use the would "lie" to mean a falsehood and never as someone laying down. GOOD GRIEF!!!! I'll tell you why you want to only use it one way! Because the other meanings don't suit your purposes and completely nullify any argument you could possibly make on this subject. I will continue to use every word in all of it's meanings until hell freezes over and pigs fly through the air.

    PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY. I MADE IT BIG FOR YOU.

    TIME IS NOT A FACTOR IN TRADITION IF THE TRADITION NEVER CHANGES, WHICH IS THE CASE SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
     
  6. DHK

    DHK <b>Moderator</b>

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    You sorely misunderstand their belief concerning baptism.

    In Christ,
    Neal
    </font>[/QUOTE]No I don't. Theologically it is called Baptismal Regeneration. It is one of the earliest heresies known to the early church. And indeed, it is a damnable heresy.
    DHK
     
  7. frozencell

    frozencell Guest

    Someone didn't bother to read my post about baptism.
     
  8. Meercat

    Meercat New Member

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    DHK-

    Can you cite historical reference....that is before the sixteenth century where Baptismal Regeneration was taught to have been a "damnable heresy"? Or are you going to give me your own private interpretation of Scripture on this? Whichever, I respectfully await your response. - Meercat
     
  9. DHK

    DHK <b>Moderator</b>

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    Originally posted by frozencell:

    In the third chapter of John the word baptism is not mentioned, no, not even once. Jesus never discusses baptism. There is no context of baptism. There is nothing in all of this chapter to indicate that anything is being said about baptism. So, why read something into the Scripture that is not there?

    Nicodemus came to Jesus by night with questions. He wanted to know how to have eternal life. Three times Jesus answered him that he needed to be born again. That was the one requirement that Jesus gave: "Except a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).

    If a man is born once, he will die twice.
    If a man is born twice, he will die once.

    You must be born again!

    So what did this mean. Nicodemus didn't know. He was confused. He said: how can a man be born when he is old? Shall he enter into his mother's womb a second time and be born?
    Perhaps Nicodemus was thinking of the Hindu concept of reincarnation. He was puzzled at Jesus' statement that he must be born again. Nicodemus was a Jewish Rabbi, a teacher. Jesus is talking about birth, not about baptism--keep that in mind.

    What he really is talking about is two types of birth, and two types of life.

    John 3:5-6 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
    6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

    Verse six says that there are two types of birth: one of the flesh, and the other of the Spirit. We all know what it means to be born of the flesh--that is how we came into this world. We were born of the flesh. That is our first birth. But Jesus said you need to be born again. You need a spirtual rebirth. You need to be born of the Spirit. There is a birth of the flesh, and a birth of the Spirit. These are the only two births that there are. And if you are going to enter the Kingdom of God, Nicodemus, you need them both. You must be born again.

    In verse five Jesus enters another agent into the equation. He says: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God."
    Now, no matter what this may mean, we know that it is absolutely necessary to be born again in order to obtain eternal life. You need to born of the flesh, and also of the Spirit. You need to be born again.

    So then what does it mean to be born of "water and of the Spirit." Almost everyone agrees that water is symbolic. The question is what does it symbolize? Does it symbolize baptism? No, there is no mention of baptism in this passage, and no cause for either Nicodemus or Christ to be thinking of baptism. Baptism doesn't fit into the conversation or the context of this chapter. One is not born again by baptism.
    Since it says that we are born of water and of the Spirit, we know that one is born again of only two agents, and two agents only. One agent is the Holy Spirit, as it says here in Scripture. What then is the other?

    Water is a cleansing agent. It is used to clean with. Let's consider Scripture:

    John 15:3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
    --We are clean through the word which Jesus spoke. It is the Word of God that cleanses. It is through the Word of God that one is born again.

    James 1:18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
    --He begat us with the Word of truth. In other words we were born again through the Word of God. There are only two agents by which one is born again: the Holy Spirit, and...the Word of God.

    1 Peter 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
    --Being born again--by the Word of God! Here is a clear statement in the Word of God that one is born again by the Word of God. There are only two agents by which one is born again--the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.
    Thus, when Christ said: "You must be born of 'water' and of the Spirit," we conclude from the other Scriptures made available to us that "water" is symbolic of the Word of God. There are only two agents by which one is born again--the Word of God (symbolized by water), and the Holy Spirit (which Jesus later compares to the wind).

    There are two kinds of birth: that of the flesh, and that of the Spirit. Have you been born again? Have you been born of the Holy Spirit, by trusting Jesus Christ as your Saviour? Consider once again:

    John 1:11-13 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
    12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
    13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

    One needs to receive Christ as their Saviour, by believing on his name (vs.12). This is trusting Christ by faith. It is being born of God (vs.13), or being born again. It cannot include being baptized (not by the will of man). Baptism is by your own will; you do it. Salvation is all of God. It is accepted as a free gift from God by faith, and faith alone. You need to be born again--born into God's family, becoming one of his children. Being baptized will only get you wet. It has no power to either forgive sins, to save, or has anything to do with being born again.
    But yet the truth remains: You must be born again.
    DHK
     
  10. DHK

    DHK <b>Moderator</b>

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    A History of The Baptists
    DHK
     
  11. frozencell

    frozencell Guest

    Thank you for your personal interpretation once again. I agree you must be born again, but let us look at objective, rather than subjective, evidence.

    I have spent the last twenty minutes in a Greek dictionary, a KJV Bible, and Strong's concordance.

    Strong's definition of the original Greek word is this:

    1) water

    a) of water in rivers, in fountains, in pools

    b) of the water of the deluge

    c) of water in any of the earth's repositories

    d) of water as the primary element, out of and through which the world that was before the deluge, arose and was compacted

    e) of the waves of the sea

    f) fig. used of many peoples


    I don't see how you can misconstrue this as the "Word of God".
     
  12. frozencell

    frozencell Guest

    Exactly where does your "Shephard" reference directly mention baptismal regeneration? Anyone can quote that and brand it on the side of almost anything.

    And by the way, you never answered my earlier question. Why do you baptize and why is your church named after John the Baptist?
     
  13. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

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    Bob quotes from
    The Transitus Mariæ
    The Account of St. John the Theologian
    of the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God


    and from Fr. Ken Ryan in Catholic Digest showing that the tale about Mary being assumed was made up - (flying apostles and all) - out of the heresy that Mary was sinless like Christ and the Acts 2 reasoning applied to Christs "body not suffering decay" should apply to Mary since she is sinless like Christ.

    Yet Frozencell views these RC sources and says

    You keep saying this, but do not explain which authorities.

    Is it really that hard?

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  14. Living4Him

    Living4Him New Member

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  15. trying2understand

    trying2understand New Member

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    Looks like a Bob Ryan type of quote. Mixed voices being represented for something that it is not.

    I am certain that the Shepard of Hermas never once uttered the words "evangelical Christians" or "the office and authority of a pope was not yet known".

    What you claim to cite as historical evidence (ie:" The Shepherd says") is nothing more than a commentary by someone else.
     
  16. Living4Him

    Living4Him New Member

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  17. Doubting Thomas

    Doubting Thomas Active Member

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    For what it's worth, here's what the Shepherd of Hermas had to say regarding Baptism:

    'And I said to him, "I should like to continue my questions." "Speak on," said he. And I said, "I heard, sir, some teachers maintain that there is no other repentance than that which takes place, when we descended into the water and received remission of our former sins." He said to me, "That was sound doctrine which you heard; for that is really the case.' Shepherd of Hermas 4:3:1-2
     
  18. trying2understand

    trying2understand New Member

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    "So the water is the seal. Therefore they go down into the water dead and they come up alive."

    The Shepherd of Hermas Chapter 93:4
     
  19. Doubting Thomas

    Doubting Thomas Active Member

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    T2U,

    That passage you cited can be verified (by whoever may be interested) in the Ninth Similtude Chapter XVI of The Shepherd of Hermas at www.ccel.org/fathers2. (In the one I cited above, which can also be found at the same webiste, the "4" refers to the "Commandments" and the "3" is the chapter.)

    I guess this just goes to show that one should always consult primary sources. [​IMG]

    DT
     
  20. dawna

    dawna New Member

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    In the begining God Created the Heavens and the Earth Gen. 1:1
     
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