A few religious question for catholics.

[Toad]

Originally posted by NUKE
What if they have sinned, but followed these two commandments?

This is why I suspect you need to get professional guidance for your bible study.

40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments"

Do you see the message there?

[Toad]

Originally posted by NUKE
So, someone who has never heard of the word can sin all they want, as long as they love god and their neighbor?
 

They can't do both, it's mutually exclusive.

[Toad]

Originally posted by WMLute
always an excellent point there nuke.  I posed a similar question to my preacher not THAT long ago.

His answer was (roughly) that if one loved God with all their heart, they wouldn't want to sin.  It's that simple.  If you sin, then your heart isn't truely given to the Lord God, and you have not given Him your heart, soul and mind.

Nuke, we're trying to help you here.

Examine Lute's statement. Note that he posed it to his preacher. Note he got an answer that makes sense to everyone who does not willingly blind themselves to the truth.

I suggest you consider finding a good preacher to help you in your study.

[Toad]

Originally posted by NUKE
Yeah, but every man sins no matter how much they try not to.

Which would mean they are breaking one of those two commandments cited by your Lord and Savior in that text.

Are you getting it now?

[beet1e]

LOL - Toad and NUKE going at it.

NUKE - you're an idiot, but I still like you.

And now I'm off to Austria, to check out some masonry.  



Toodle Pip.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Steve
This implies that your interpretation of things is somehow more right than nuke's.

[/b]

No, not at all.

Now all I see is a bunch of name calling in your argument.

[/b]

There's a lot more there than name calling. However, he's either continually trolling or he's really that stupid. Either way he's an idiot. Just callin' it like I see it.

Clue in:  It doesn't matter how much you think you  "Know" about religion.  People are entitled to interpret things as the see it.

[/b]

Clue for you: Nuke started this thread by casting aspersions on Catholics and calling them cult members.

Now, find I quote where I said Nuke wasn't entitled to interpret things as he sees it.  Be careful here.... I admit I don't agree with many of his interpretations but that is not the issue. Show me where I told him he's not entitled to whatever beliefs he chooses to hold.  Again, I'm not the one saying Muslims are going to hell.. that would be Nuke.

You simply are not the supreme authority on this.  Who died and made you right?  Simply because you disagree w/ Nuke doesn't mean he's wrong.  You have no way of knowing if he's wrong.

[/b]


Best you address this to Nuke, I think, I again issue you this challenge:

Now, find I quote where I said Nuke wasn't entitled to interpret things as he sees it.  Be careful here.... I admit I don't agree with many of his interpretations but that is not the issue. Show me where I told him he's not entitled to whatever beliefs he chooses to hold.  Again, I'm not the one saying Muslims are going to hell.. that would be Nuke.
 

Hypocrite.

Poopy-head!  

[Toad]

Originally posted by lazs2
A good person is a good person regardless of if he ever heard of ol heyzoos or not.   A bad person is still a bad person no matter how many people he harasses in the name of the cross hanger.

lazs

Two to one Nuke now thinks you're going to hell, Laz.

[Toad]

Originally posted by NUKE
I never claimed to be pure and innocent Grun. But, can you take a look at Toad's attitude towards me and honestly say that his attitude and demeanor in this thread have been civil?

I'd like to think that I have been civil.

My attitude towards you after this exchange is that you are either:

1. One of, if not the most, badgering troll on this board.

or

2. A gen-u-ine idiot surpassing even Zulu7. In the last 6 months I can't recall a single topic here to which you have lucidly contributed and advanced the cause of civil debate. You seem unable to frame a cogent argument and unable to understand one.

Now I don't know which of those you are but either one makes you a prime candidate for the ignore list.

You like to think that you've been civil but you never really are. You are careful to couch your barbs and insults so they you have deniability, at least in your own mind.

Good Day, Sir. I think I'll give you a temporary test Ignore and see if I feel I'm missing anything.

I think I already know the answer.

[Jackal1]

Originally posted by Toad

2. A gen-u-ine idiot surpassing even Zulu7.  

Windex/paper towel time again.
Dammit, this coffee is too expensive to be wasting it.

A good person is a good person regardless of if he ever heard of ol heyzoos or not. A bad person is still a bad person no matter how many people he harasses in the name of the cross hanger.

Gonna have to agree with Lazs on this.

[lazs2]

toad... if there is such a thing as karma or justice or whatever.... I could save a baby and an old person every day from now till I die and all it would get me was maybe  a little shade in hell every other eternity or so.

You don't do it for salvation in the hereafter.  you do it for your salvation in the here and now.

lazs

[Wotan]

Nuke you are completely in error.

Once again the Bible didn't spontaneously generate itself. For years there was no 'Bible' and there were 'Christians'.

There were faithful Christians who didn't base their 'theology' on any written book. The sacred traditions and teachings that were practiced by the early Church come from many different sources both written and oral.

There are many other 'Gospels' that exist and are not included in what we call the "New Testament". The 'Bible' was compiled from many sources to provide a basic 'Theological' guide book to compliment the Sacred traditions not the other way around. 'Christianity' came before the Bible.

The Bible can not be correctly understood if you fail to comprehend the context in which it was intended

Of course it's the inspired word of God but its obviously been re-interpreted many times. That's why you see the hundreds of various sects. Each 'want to be Pope' re-interpreted the Bible on his own. All claim to be the 'true teachings of Christ'. All claim that their 'interpretation' is supported by the 'Bible'. You make some nonsensical claim that 'Catholicism' has changed. You can't even point out how, where or when. OTOH I can fill another thread with Protestant adaptations and re-interpretations. The Orthodox Churches trace their lineage right back through Peter to Jesus Christ. All others get no further then Luther at best.

With out understanding the context you can't just pick up the Bible and find truth.  

If each man can 'interpret' the Bible any way he sees fit then that destroys the whole idea of 'universal truth' and as such truth becomes as subjective as each individual.

So what guidance, education or study have you made of the Bible? Who is your teacher? What Church do you attend?

'Bible' worship won't get you any closer to Heaven then 'Idol Worship'.

That's not to say honest men can't disagree. But when some one like yourself makes absolute claims with out understanding 'context' and by making insulting judgments it's clear you haven't got a clue.

You can believe whatever you want to believe but there are 'facts' and there are 'lies'. The original questions in this thread and based on lies and false premises. Your accusations against 'Catholics' are lies and false premises. Your 'interpretation' of the Bible are lies and false premises.

If you are insulted when folks call you on it then good you should be.

Again what domination and or Chruch do you belong to? I only ask this question because I suspect much like your claim about going to Catholic school you don't attend any.

If you get a chance read through the below link:

Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, by V.Potapov

[Wotan]

I meant to include this link:

Sola Scripture (Scripture Alone)

The other link is a good one as well so instead of editing I will just include the one above in a new post.

False Assumption # 1:

The Bible was intended to be the last word on faith, piety, and worship.

a). Does the Scripture teach that it is "all sufficient?"

The most obvious assumption that underlies the doctrine of "Scripture alone" is that the Bible has within it all that is needed for everything that concerns the Christian’s life — all that would be needed for true faith, practice, piety, and worship. The Scripture that is most usually cited to support this notion is:

    ...from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (II Timothy 3:15-17).    

Those who would use this passage to advocate Sola Scriptura argue that this passage teaches the "all sufficiency" of Scripture — because, "If, indeed, the Holy Scriptures are able to make the pious man perfect... then, indeed to attain completeness and perfection, there is no need of tradition." [1]

 

The Holy Scriptures are perhaps the summit of the Holy Tradition of the Church, but the greatness of the heights to which the Scriptures ascend is due to the great mountain upon which it rests. Taken from its context, within the Holy Tradition, the solid rock of Scripture becomes a mere ball of clay, to be molded into whatever shape its handlers wish to mold it. It is no honor to the Scriptures to misuse and twist them, even if this is done in the name of exalting their authority. We must read the Bible; it is God’s Holy Word. But to understand its message let us humbly sit at the feet of the saints who have shown themselves "doers of the Word and not hearers only" (James 1:22), and have been proven by their lives worthy interpreters of the Scriptures. Let us go to those who knew the Apostles, such as Saints Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp, if we have a question about the writings of the Apostles. Let us inquire of the Church, and not fall into self-deluded arrogance.

[Wotan]

FALSE ASSUMPTION # 2:

The Scriptures were the basis of the early Church, whereas Tradition is simply a "human corruption" that came much later.

 

Especially among Evangelicals and so-called Charismatics you will find that the word "tradition" is a derogatory term, and to label something as a "tradition" is roughly equivalent to saying that it is "fleshly," "spiritually dead," "destructive," and/or "legalistic." As Protestants read the New Testament, it seems clear to them that the Bible roundly condemns tradition as being opposed to Scripture. The image of early Christians that they generally have is essentially that the early Christians were pretty much like 20th Century Evangelicals or Charismatics! That the First Century Christians would have had liturgical worship, or would have adhered to any tradition is inconceivable — only later, "when the Church became corrupted," is it imagined that such things entered the Church. It comes as quite a blow to such Protestants (as it did to me) when they actually study the early Church and the writings of the early Fathers and begin to see a distinctly different picture than that which they were always led to envision. One finds that, for example, the early Christians did not tote their Bibles with them to Church each Sunday for a Bible study — in fact it was so difficult to acquire a copy of even portions of Scripture, due to the time and resources involved in making a copy, that very few individuals owned their own copies. Instead, the copies of the Scriptures were kept by designated persons in the Church, or kept at the place where the Church gathered for worship. Furthermore, most Churches did not have complete copies of all the books of the Old Testament, much less the New Testament (which was not finished until almost the end of the First Century, and not in its final canonical form until the Fourth Century). This is not to say that the early Christians did not study the Scriptures — they did in earnest, but as a group, not as individuals. And for most of the First Century, Christians were limited in study to the Old Testament. So how did they know the Gospel, the life and teachings of Christ, how to worship, what to believe about the nature of Christ, etc? They had only the Oral Tradition handed down from the Apostles. Sure, many in the early Church heard these things directly from the Apostles themselves, but many more did not, especially with the passing of the First Century and the Apostles with it. Later generations had access to the writings of the Apostles through the New Testament, but the early Church depended on Oral Tradition almost entirely for its knowledge of the Christian faith.

This dependence upon tradition is evident in the New Testament writings themselves. For example, Saint Paul exhorts the Thessalonians:

Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word [i.e. oral tradition] or our epistle (II Thessalonians 2:15).

The word here translated "traditions" is the Greek word paradosis — which, though translated differently in some Protestant versions, is the same word that the Greek Orthodox use when speaking of Tradition, and few competent Bible scholars would dispute this meaning. The word itself literally means "what is transmitted." It is the same word used when referring negatively to the false teachings of the Pharisees (Mark 7:3-8), and also when referring to authoritative Christian teaching (I Corinthians 11:2, Second Thessalonians 2:15). So what makes the tradition of the Pharisees false and that of the Church true? The source! Christ made clear what was the source of the traditions of the Pharisees when He called them "the traditions of men" (Mark 7:8). Saint Paul on the other hand, in reference to Christian Tradition states, "I praise you brethren, that you remember me in all things and hold fast to the traditions [paradoseis] just as I delivered [paredoka, a verbal form of paradosis] them to you" (First Corinthians 11:2), but where did he get these traditions in the first place? "I received from the Lord that which I delivered [paredoka] to you" (first Corinthians 11:23). This is what the Orthodox Church refers to when it speaks of the Apostolic Tradition — "the Faith once delivered [paradotheise] unto the saints" (Jude 3). Its source is Christ, it was delivered personally by Him to the Apostles through all that He said and did, which if it all were all written down, "the world itself could not contain the books that should be written" (John 21:25). The Apostles delivered this knowledge to the entire Church, and the Church, being the repository of this treasure thus became "the pillar and ground of the Truth" (I Timothy 3:15).

The testimony of the New Testament is clear on this point: the early Christians had both oral and written traditions which they received from Christ through the Apostles. For written tradition they at first had only fragments — one local church had an Epistle, another perhaps a Gospel. Gradually these writings were gathered together into collections and ultimately they became the New Testament. And how did these early Christians know which books were authentic and which were not — for (as already noted) there were numerous spurious epistles and gospels claimed by heretics to have been written by Apostles? It was the oral Apostolic Tradition that aided the Church in making this determination.

Protestants react violently to the idea of Holy Tradition simply because the only form of it that they have generally encountered is the concept of Tradition found in Roman Catholicism. Contrary to the Roman view of Tradition, which is personified by the Papacy, and develops new dogmas previously unknown to the Church (such as Papal Infallibility, to cite just one of the more odious examples) —the Orthodox do not believe that Tradition grows or changes. Certainly when the Church is faced with a heresy, it is forced to define more precisely the difference between truth and error, but the Truth does not change. It may be said that Tradition expands in the sense that as the Church moves through history it does not forget its experiences along the way, it remembers the saints that arise in it, and it preserves the writings of those who have accurately stated its faith; but the Faith itself was "once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3).

But how can we know that the Church has preserved the Apostolic Tradition in its purity? The short answer is that God has preserved it in the Church because He has promised to do so. Christ said that He would build His Church and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). Christ Himself is the head of the Church (Ephesians 4:16), and the Church is His Body (Ephesians 1:22-23). If the Church lost the pure Apostolic Tradition, then the Truth would have to cease being the Truth — for the Church is the pillar and foundation of the Truth (I Timothy 3:15). The common Protestant conception of Church history, that the Church fell into apostasy from the time of Constantine until the Reformation certainly makes these and many other Scriptures meaningless. If the Church ceased to be, for even one day, then the gates of Hell prevailed against it on that day. If this were the case, when Christ described the growth of the Church in His parable of the mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32), He should have spoken of a plant that started to grow but was squashed, and in its place a new seed sprouted later on — but instead He used the imagery of a mustard seed that begins small but steadily grows into the largest of garden plants.

As to those who would posit that there was some group of true-believing Protestants living in caves somewhere for a thousand years, where is the evidence? The Waldensians [7] that are claimed as forebearers by every sect from the Pentecostals to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, did not exist prior to the 12th Century. It is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch to believe that these true-believers suffered courageously under the fierce persecutions of the Romans, and yet would have headed for the hills as soon as Christianity became a legal religion. And yet even this seems possible when compared with the notion that such a group could have survived for a thousand years without leaving a trace of historical evidence to substantiate that it had ever existed.

At this point one might object that there were in fact examples of people in Church history who taught things contrary to what others taught, so who is to say what the Apostolic Tradition is? And further more, what if a corrupt practice arose, how could it later be distinguished from Apostolic Tradition? Protestants ask these questions because, in the Roman Catholic Church there did arise new and corrupt "traditions," but this is because the Latin West first corrupted its understanding of the nature of Tradition. The Orthodox understanding which earlier prevailed in the West and was preserved in the Orthodox Church, is basically that Tradition is in essence unchanging and is known by its universality or catholicity. True Apostolic Tradition is found in the historic consensus of Church teaching. Find that which the Church has believed always, throughout history, and everywhere in the Church, and then you will have found the Truth. If any belief can be shown to have not been received by the Church in its history, then this is heresy. Mind you, however, we are speaking of the Church, not schismatic groups. There were schismatics and heretics who broke away from the Church during the New Testament period, and there has been a continual supply of them since, for as the Apostle says, "there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest" (I Corinthians 11:19).

[Wotan]

False Assumption # 3:

Anyone can interpret the Scriptures for himself or herself without the aid of the Church.

 

Though many Protestants would take issue with the way this assumption is worded, this is essentially the assumption that prevailed when the Reformers first advocated the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. The line of reasoning was essentially that the meaning of Scripture is clear enough that anyone could understand it by simply reading it for oneself, and thus they rejected the idea that one needed the Church’s help in the process. This position is clearly stated by the Tubingen Lutheran Scholars who exchanged letters with Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople about thirty years after Luther’s death:

Perhaps, someone will say that on the one hand, the Scriptures are absolutely free from error; but on the other hand, they have been concealed by much obscurity, so that without the interpretations of the Spirit-bearing Fathers they could not be clearly understood.... But meanwhile this, too, is very true that what has been said in a scarcely perceptible manner in some places in the Scriptures, has been stated in another place in them explicitly and most clearly so that even the most simple person can understand them. [8]

Though these Lutheran scholars claimed to use the writings of the Holy Fathers, they argued that they were unnecessary, and that, where they believed the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers conflicted, the Fathers were to be disregarded. What they were actually arguing, however, was that when the teachings of the Holy fathers conflict with their private opinions on the Scriptures, their private opinions were to be considered more authoritative than the Fathers of the Church. Rather than listening to the Fathers, who had shown themselves righteous and saintly, priority should be given to the human reasonings of the individual. The same human reason that has led the majority of modern Lutheran scholars to reject almost every teaching of Scripture (including the deity of Christ, the Resurrection, etc.), and even to reject the inspiration of the Scriptures themselves — on which the early Lutherans claimed to base their entire faith. In reply, Patriarch Jeremias II clearly exposed the true character of the Lutheran teachings:

Let us accept, then, the traditions of the Church with a sincere heart and not a multitude of rationalizations. For God created man to be upright; instead they sought after diverse ways of rationalizing (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Let us not allow ourselves to learn a new kind of faith which is condemned by the tradition of the Holy Fathers. For the Divine apostle says, "if anyone is preaching to you a Gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:9). [9]

[NUKE]

Originally posted by Toad

You like to think that you've been civil but you never really are. You are careful to couch your barbs and insults so they you have deniability, at least in your own mind.

Yeah Toad, I have been civil. You are the one who has been mocking my beliefs and calling me names. You are the one with the attitude and superiority complex.