I am a young girl striving to separate herself from the allure of the world in the hopes of attaining a peaceful & God-fearing life. I would love to share my experiences as a testimony to my faith. May God keep you all. Pax Vobiscum.
I am a young girl striving to separate herself from the allure of the world in the hopes of attaining a peaceful & God-fearing life. I would love to share my experiences as a testimony to my faith. May God keep you all. Pax Vobiscum.
13 comments:
Excellent! Also, as to your advent post, I highly suggest you get an advent wreath of some sort and just make yourself sit down and pray for 10 minutes in front of it every day. You can use reflections, read scripture, whatever floats your boat, but just MAKE yourself do it. If you honestly don't have 10, do it 5.
Peace be upon you.
Sister in humanity,I invite you to rediscover the true faith and the true Lord.
Who seeks,finds.
Cool site. I stumbled upon it through Joseph the worker's site.
This is all very nice, except that the Catholic Church advocates doctrines that are contrary to the Bible. Baptism with water is not necessary for salvation (as no human work can save us - we are saved only by the hand of God, who is the only Savior, apart from whom there is no other - and we must admit that dunking someone in water or sprinkling them with water is a human work); if water baptism is to be practiced at all, it is meant only for people who have made a personal confession of faith in Jesus (which excludes infants - persons too young to make a personal confession of faith). Jesus' sacrifice really was *once* for all, and no unbloody sacrifice has any efficacy, the rock the Church is founded on is not Peter, but rather Jesus Himself and the confession of Him as Messiah. The doctrine of purgatory is founded on one verse from a book of the Old Testament that is not even in the Hebrew Scriptures (only the Septuagint). Etc. If there is true tradition at all, on the basis of what I cite above, as well as other considerations, I don't believe I will find it in the Roman Catholic Church.
Caraboska presents us with her interpretation of scripture, which is sadly worth about as much as everyone else's personal interpretation of scripture. She shows an obvious ignorance of Catholic teaching on sacraments - that they are the grace of God and not "works to lead to salvation" as well as 1 Pet 3:21 "Baptism now saves us". She also ignores that the Church has practiced infant baptism since the earliest of times, testified by both its replacement of circumcision and by "entire households" being baptized, a Greek term that includes infants. How about the book of Malachi which prophesied that priests would always be making sacrifices all around the world, or Hebrews which tells us that there cannot be a priest without continual sacrifice (which would make it pretty hard for Christ to be our High Priest unless he retired). Jesus clearly founded the Church on the apostle Peter - it takes quite a bit of twisting to get around that verse, and even later verses tell us that the apostles and prophets were the foundation of the Church. Luckily, every Christian from the time the canon was set in 400 A.D. and the reformation knew the Holy Scriptures included all the books, but the doctrine of purgatory is also found in other books of the Bible, including Christ's own teaching (you won't get our until you have paid the last penny, as he would say). We also have sacred tradition to guide us (not only did Christ promise his spirit to guide the Church into all truth, St. Paul make numerous references to oral teaching, but he also taught the Church was the "Pillar and Foundation of the Truth", not the Bible. All history and scripture shows clearly that the Church of the New Testament was the Catholic Church.
Not to mention I'd love how she could twist out of believing Christ's own words in John 6 "Unless you eat my body and drink my blood you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven", from the Last Supper "This is my body..." from St. Paul "unless you discern the Lord's Body and Blood you eat and drink damnation unto yourself", or Christ's teaching to the apostles "Whoever's sins you forgive will be forgiven them".
@Godfanboy: thanks! I hope you stop by more :)
& nice response Joseph, you made many of the points I was going to raise and then some. Caraboska the RCC is much deeper than we realize from the outside. It is so easy for us* (as I used to make the same points you do) to twist their teachings and make them sound like the whore of babylon...when really this is how believers have been doing things & interpreting scripture for thousands of years. We can't interpret outselves...look at how many protestant denominations there are. thousands!
Joseph, How about you come and talk to me about the value of my 'personal opinion' when you are reading the New Testament only in the original language? The word 'Petros' and the word translated 'rock' in English are in fact two different words. From the respective meanings of the two, it is evident that only the second of the two words can be a 'foundation'. The word 'Petros' can at most be a stone used to build on top of the foundation. The only way to make it say otherwise is if you REALLY WANT it to mean that, which you no doubt do because of the priority you place on tradition.
R, I realize you are sensitive about Protestant views of the Roman Catholic Church and have heard some unedifying comments. I was not even thinking the words that you cite, much less trying to imply them.
The fact remains that the Bible says that we bear sole ultimately responsibility before God to assess all teaching that comes into our ears - even from the apostle Paul himself (he says that if (God forbid) he were to at some point in the future come with some other teaching besides what he had been preaching from the beginning, we should not give even him heed) - and that the only and sufficient qualification for making that assessment is possession of the Holy Spirit. Read I John. I won't point out specific verses because I don't want to engage in proof-texting.
Since it is obviously going to be fruitless to argue against your personal interpretation of passages, let me ask you one question then. How did you come to the conclusion that there were 27 books in the New Testament and that those are the 27 books? Is there a list somewhere?
PS: In the "original" language Jesus spoke, Aramaic, there is no male or female versions of words. They were both Kepha. In Greek, the difference between Petra and Petros is non-existent in Koine Greek, only in later forms of Greek long after the Old Testament was written. It was simply a grammatical form that is found in many other writings as well.
Joseph, this has nothing to do with any gender except grammatical. And like all Semitic languages, Aramaic has two genders, masculine and feminine. What I've been taught by people who know Greek better than I do is as I stated before. But very well. I have access to a native speaker of Greek with a degree in classical studies obtained in Greece. At my next opportunity I will inquire further.
In the meantime, I am quite aware that there are different lists of the books of the New Testament. I've even read at least some material from items on those lists which didn't 'make it' onto the list that is in common use today. The only reason that I or anyone in the circles I travel accept that particular set of books as opposed to another is that these books are viewed as being consistent with the rest of Scripture and with each other, while the others are in some way inconsistent.
The biggest thing I've seen that differentiates the set commonly accepted today from others is the former set's denial of gnosticism - which is of course absolutely correct, in that acceptance of gnosticism means basically turning away from the idea that we need redemption. It involves 'obtaining salvation' by one's own acquisition of wisdom - an error into which many of the non-canonical books from Jesus' time and after fall.
So, I accept the books of the New Testament on their own merits, without any reference to the historical manner in which the list was drawn up.
So you have read all the hundreds of books that were used by the early Church and decided on their merits which to accept and which to reject? Very scientific, you should publish your findings.
PS The usage of 'Petros' and 'petra' in the verse in question (Matthew 16:18) does not at all suggest that either is a grammatical form of the other. 'Petros' is in the nominative, and the forms of 'petra' clearly assume that the nominative is 'petra' - not 'petros'. And the declensions of these two nouns do not coincide in any way. So I think it would be hard to argue that these are anything but two separate nouns.
Again, grammatical gender (at least in inflected languages such as Greek) has nothing to do with maleness or femaleness, so I don't really see what the point is of bringing in the idea that Kepha in Aramaic would be the same form for both a male and a female.
I hope that one day you will be able to honestly assess that the books you accept or reject (as well as your interpretation of those books) is a product of your own Church tradition (whatever that might be, but notably something on the fundamentalist side). As usual, a discussion proves fruitless because your mind is already made up and because you trust someone else to inform your conscience, such as to why you have 27 books in your New Testament, even though that was never a part of Christian teaching until 400 A.D. and the only reason we can know it is absolutely true (without of course reading and examining every book ourselves, which even then only lends to our own interpretation) is because the Holy Spirit guided the Church. Your history and your argumentation will continue to fail because you set up a straw man. Someday, maybe you will take the same journey I took and realize some of the things you have been thinking for so long don't really add up. If not, I hope you have a spiritually fulfilling life that draws you closer to God in all ways.
Joseph, I am beholden to no one except God. I was brought up without religion, converted to Christianity as an adult and presently hold no formal membership in any religious organization. Over my lifetime as a Christian, I have attended Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran and Quaker congregations for worship. The vast majority of the churches I have attended have made a point of having no tradition at all. But I have never fit in with any of them, in the end. And I am in good company. Jesus didn't fit into the neat little religious boxes of His time either. And He calls me to be as much like Him as possible. God willing, that is how I will occupy the remaining time He provides for me on this planet, and I pray that you and everyone else reading this will likewise spend their lives knowing and loving God and being conformed to His image.
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