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StrawberryJam
Guest
I am guessing they rejected the very idea of Jesus and his followers from the start, before anything in the NT was penned.
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Vince1022
Guest
Oh…you mean the Jews, right? Ok, thanks, now I understand.
But the formal split (mutually recognized) between Christians and Jews likely happened after the letters of Paul (at least) were written, so this took time. As the New Testament was not codified in the first century, while most of it was written in the first century, there’s a lot of grey areas here.
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TMC
Guest
Why are you striving so hard to separate the beginnings of the Church from Judaism? I don’t know whether the apostles considered themselves to be still Jewish or not, but if I had to guess I would guess that they did. They were all Jews at least until the Resurrections, and Acts suggests that they continued to worship in Temple for some time after the Resurrection. Nothing that Paul wrote condemns Judaism - just the opposite.
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StrawberryJam
Guest
Vince,
You have not really helped clarify this issue before us. Will you answer the question as it is stated in the Original Post?
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Vince1022
Guest
Sorry if my posts have not been helpful. I apologize.
Regarding the original post, my answer is: yes.
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Vince1022
Guest
They had a Jewish background, but in the end they were Christians.
Unless you’re suggesting that Cardinals in the Catholic Church can be Jews, who are de facto not Christians?
Or that the Catholic Church canonizes non-Christians?
Really?
Come on, let’s be serious.
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sidbrown
Guest
Professor Liviu Librescu was obviously a great hero and a great man. I don’t see how he would not reach a very high position in heaven. He gave his life to save the lives of his students. Why would he not be up there with the great ones? Yes, he must be honored and deeply respected.This is one of my favorite recurring threads.
I am always reminded of Professor Liviu Librescu of blessed memory, a Jew an Israeli and a holocaust survivor, who in April 2007, gave his life by barricading his classroom doors at Virginia Tech and allowed his students to flee to safety from a rampaging gunman on a wild killing spree. One can only hope that among the students saved that day by this heroic action, there was at least one religious Christian, who took the time to visit the professor’s family to explain that because professor Librescu was Jewish, he is barred from the world to come.
Remarkably when God appeared to the entire nation of Israel, when the Jewish scriptures were written, it turned out that there is only one God and He is the God of all and all are equally precious in His eyes. It turned out that the world to come was just as open to the Gentile as it was for the Jew, in fact it was easier for the Gentile than for the Jew to get to the world to come as they had only to follow the seven Noahide commandments. Well over a thousand years later, two large groups of former pagans searching their way to their own brand of ethical monotheism, one in the west and one in the east, were to change that teaching to one that declared that only those who believe what and as they believed, could find redemption.
So can Jews get to heaven? Yes, but only if they promise not to try and join the country club
For the other things, yeah, well, it is true that some Jews don;t like what some Catholics say about their religion, and what was promulgated in the past, but wait, I heard that there are terrible gutter type slanders against Jesus and His Most Holy Mother Mary in the Talmud. So I guess this thing goes both ways.
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Thyme
Guest
I’ve only had a quick skim through this thread, so sorry if this has already been answered.
So, Jews can enter Heaven if they are ignorant of the Gospel, but what about those Jews who have read them at school and learned about Christianity but remain Jews? Wouldn’t they still be considered ignorant of the Gospel?
One time to St. Faustina, Christ said that we will be surprised when we find out who is in Heaven and who isn’t. He said that when people appear to be dead, many conversions take place and many people who we expect to see in Heaven or hell, will not be there.
So, Jews can enter Heaven if they are ignorant of the Gospel, but what about those Jews who have read them at school and learned about Christianity but remain Jews? Wouldn’t they still be considered ignorant of the Gospel?
One time to St. Faustina, Christ said that we will be surprised when we find out who is in Heaven and who isn’t. He said that when people appear to be dead, many conversions take place and many people who we expect to see in Heaven or hell, will not be there.
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chosen_people
Guest
I simply don’t understand how there could be any question that Catholic theology posits that Jews can not get into heaven.
The idea of all people being equally precious in the eyes of the one God, of redemption being truly universal, Jew and Gentile alike, without a person, Jew or Gentile, being required to adopt any other belief ( for the Gentile, simply to be righteous by following the seven Noahide commandments) is a concept in Judaism and in the eternal covenant with God. How if there is One God and He is the God of all, could it be otherwise? In the book of Yonah (Jonah) we see Yonah, a Jewish prophet, being sent concerning the redemption of a pagan city. The city is granted redemption by God. God’s mercy is not limited to a particular people or a particular religion or a particular geographical place.
The basis of Christianity is the rejection of the eternal covenant with the claim that now there is a “new” and antithetical covenant. It should therefore come as no surprise that this “new” covenant rejects, among other things, this message of true universal redemption and replaces it with the requirement that to be granted redemption and to get to the world to come a person must adopt the religion of this “new” covenant.
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TMC
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The Catholic Church teaches that “invincibly ignorant” non-Christians can be saved, but that does not mean that a non-Christian can only get into heaven if he has never heard the Gospel message and never heard of Christ. The “ignorance” refers the the person’s ignorance of the importance of being baptised into the Church. Ignorance can be “invincible” because that person has a good faith belief that his or her religion is the correct religiion. If the requirement were total ignorance, we would call it “total ignorance,”
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Thyme
Guest
Thank you, this is how I thought it was, but when it is described as ‘ignorance’, I was never sure what type of ignorance.
Another thing I’ve wondered. If a Jew eats non-kosher meat, will God see it as sinful, seeing as Jews believe we should only eat kosher meat and they would be going away from what they believe God wants? (I hope this makes sense).
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Thyme
Guest
Don’t worry I didn’t understand either, which was why I asked.
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chosen_people
Guest
Remember the Catholic Church lost temporal power with the end of the Papal state only in 1871. So we know exactly how Jews were treated under the Catholic Church.
Some of the things the Catholic Church can take full credit for originating with the Jews in Europe are:
a) making Jews live in overcrowded filthy unsanitary ghettos
b) making Jews wear distinctive (and humiliating) clothing marking them as Jews
c) book burnings of Jewish works
d) making Jews attend on pain of severe punishment lectures on Catholicism
e) denial of basic civil and human rights including the right to attend institutions of learning, to earn a livelihood, to employ and be employed, equality under law
and in the courts.
f) “racial purity” rules concerning people with Jewish ancestry
Catholic mobs often led by Church officials or under the understanding that they were acting in the name of the Church have a long history of mass murder of Jews, forced conversions and expulsions.
So I guess a Catholic might somehow feel better believing that " that there are terrible gutter type slanders against Jesus and His Most Holy Mother Mary in the Talmud.".
However, the truth is that these things aren’t written in the Talmud and the people who said that, were just making their personal contribution to the usual anti-Semitic rhetoric.
see:
talmud.faithweb.com/
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sidbrown
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And I suppose that this spitting on Catholic priests in Israel never happens either?
Some Jews are anti-Catholic and some Catholics are anti-semites. That unfortunately is the fact and I think it goes both ways.
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Koheleth
Guest
Of course they can. See the Catechism:
Hell is for mortal sinners. If you die fulfilling the tenets of the Jewish faith, in which, according to the “dictates of your conscience”, you sincerely believe, then you will attain heaven. I will say kaddish for my mother when the time comes (in 60 or more years!); I will sit shiva and observe her yahrzeit, and I firmly believe that it will not be in vain.
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sidbrown
Guest
No.
Much of what is on this webpage which you have referred to here is true, and there have been distortions. However, I don;t think that what is said there about the Talmud and Jesus is accepted by either all scholars or even by all rabbis. For example, take the book by Professor Peter Schäfer, who is Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies and Director of the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University.: Jesus in the Talmud by
Peter Schäfer ISBN: 978-1-4008-2761-9. :
“The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus’ resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell–and that a similar fate awaits his followers.”
“In [this] book Schäfer has proven himself not only a formidable scholar of ancient and medieval Jewish texts . . . but also a talented author from whose hands the text flows like the water to which the rabbis likened the Torah.”–Galit Hasan-Rokem, Jewish Quarterly Review
press.princeton.edu/titles/8383.html
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