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Mannyfit75
Guest
Sure. It would please the Lord himself.
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Nella
Guest
great. Be with me in spirit now brother.
Almighty God:
We come before you now as sinners in need of your grace and direction. Grant us your wisdom to seek and find your truth Lord. Bring all of us, your followers closer together focusing on our likenesses rather than on what divides us. Make your spirit known to us God. Make your son know to us in the Holy Eucharist. Protect us on this night from all that would harm us Lord. We ask these things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the begining, is now and will be forever. Amen.
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sandusky
Guest
Arianism and perpetual virginity are two different issues.
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TheLutheran1
Guest
I am new to this forum and just jumping to the end of this topic.
The more important question, I think, with a question like this is this: Does it matter to our salvation if she was a virgin or not? I understand that the Roman Catholic Church stakes a doctrinal claim on the matter. If she was or wasn’t a virgin, however, does it affect us as believers and our faith?
Matt
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Mannyfit75
Guest
The Bishops at the time of Arianism believed that Mary remain a perpetual virgin all her life, and there was no condemnation of that Mary remain a Virgin compared to Arianism.
The Council of Nicea strongly condemned Arianism. As far as Christianity as whole is concerning, only the Protestant Christians reject that Mary remain a virgin.
The two major Apostolic Churches Catholic Church and Orthodox Church affirms it.
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Mannyfit75
Guest
It does because her virginity is connected to the divinity of Jesus Christ. Connected in a sense that Mary accepted the Will of God by becoming the Mother of the Lord by her proclamation, “Be it Done Onto Me according to your word.”
Second, Scripture ought to be interpreted in the time, culture, and the language at the time it was written. There is no Hebrew or Aramaic Word for brother or sister, so the Gospel writers use brother and sister in the place of their cousins.
Protestants here have the tendency to interpret Scripture in modern terms. They are totally lost by not being sure of themselves what the truth is. The Protestant Reformers like Martin Luther himself believed that Mary remain a Virgin. Today, Lutherans deny it, though some may still believe it in.
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sandusky
Guest
Only that she was a virgin when Messiah was born.
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Mannyfit75
Guest
That’s based only in modern Protestant belief. That belief isn’t part of ancient Christian tradition founded in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church.
From the Orthodox Website:
QUESTION:
The Bible refers to Jesus as having “brothers” – e.g., “He was still addressing the crowds when His mother and His brothers appeared outside to speak with Him.”
Saint Jerome (the translator of the Bible into the latin vulgate) was a champion of the defense of Mary’s prepetual virginity in the fifth century. The Roman Catholic church subscribes to this belief stating that Jesus’ brothers are not Mary’s children. They might have been Joseph’s from a previous marriage, adopted, or actually cousins who lived in the same household.
Many protestant churches teach that Jesus’ brothers are Mary’s other male children.
What is the Orthodox Church’s thinking concerning the prepetual virginity of Mary?
**ANSWER:
**
Concerning Mary’s perpetual virginity, the Orthodox Church also holds firmly to this doctrine. We firmly believe that Mary remained a virgin after she gave birth to Christ, while we reject the notion that she had other children after Him.
In the case of the word “brother,” it is clear that it has meanings other than biological, as you note.
oca.org/QA.asp?ID=204&SID=3
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Zooey
Guest
We **are **reading our Bibles. That’s how we know that you are, simply, wrong.
Nella, you have picked up a button on the street corner,and you are taking the button & sewing your vest to it, just because it supports what you all ready believe. It won’t do. It just won’t do.
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Nella
Guest
I respect your opinion but I do not agree with it.We **are **reading our Bibles. That’s how we know that you are, simply, wrong.
Nella, you have picked up a button on the street corner,and you are taking the button & sewing your vest to it, just because it supports what you all ready believe. It won’t do. It just won’t do.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
The ‘opinion’ of the Catholic Church is not opinion. It is, and was, the definitive Christian teaching until it was questioned, not even by the ‘original’ reformers, but by their followers.
IOW, the original teaching, which of course is based on Scripture and Sacred tradition, and was taught and upheld by the Christian church until at least 1054 (with the split of the Orthodox, and I do believe they also believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity, don’t they) if not the mid 16th century (again, Luther and Calvin and Henry VIII believed in the perpetual virginity although later followers, twisting Scripture, did not), has consistently taught Mary’s perpetual virginity.
The ‘new’ teaching (from the “New Learning”) deviates from that teaching, and in other areas as well.
Why? I have a theory. I believe these deviations came about because the followers of the reformers, reading their ‘vernacular Bibles’ at a time when those vernacular languages were in a period of great change, consciously and unconsciously were influenced to perceive words in their Bibles as somehow expressing what their ‘new’ definitions meant instead of what the ‘old’ definitions did.
Take “prayer”, for example. Even in Shakespeare’s time this word was still understood to mean simply to ‘ask’ but it was beginning to undergo a ‘shift’ in meaning such that by Cromwellian times the majority of the (Protestant) people thought of ‘prayer’ as meaning only ‘communication with God’.
That of course is NOT the original meaning of the word ‘prayer’ as the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and later English, French etc. of the early Middle Ages knew it.
To attempt to claim that because Protestants “NOW” define ‘prayer’ as ‘communication with God’ means that the original Bible’s use of ‘prayer’ meant exactly that ‘THEN’ is the fallacy.
Ditto with ‘until’, with ‘worship’, etc. etc. Instead of relying on scholarship, tradition, context, etc., one rushes full speed into REDEFINITION and REVISION, back-pedaling to make the new definition ‘fit’ into the ‘old’ writing.
And this is why ‘Bible only’ Christians have such difficulty. They treat the Bible as the ‘be-all and end-all’ but they don’t realize that by constantly changing the definitions of words to reflect on ‘contemporary’ changes, they are in effect rewriting the inerrant word of God and thus making it error filled. And as they continue to ‘revise’, they change practices even further. “Brethren” is too gender specific? CHANGE IT to “brothers and sisters”. Then once you have that change throughout, you can ‘claim’ that of COURSE ‘sisters’ had EXACTLY the same ‘roles’ that ‘brothers’ did, meaning opening the door to female ministers, etc. That is if you want to change something the Catholic Church teaches into what YOU teach.
If, OTOH, you want to defend your church teaching ‘against’ the Catholics, you can claim that Catholics do not follow ‘the letter of the law’ and that the CATHOLICS have CHANGED things. Like Sabbath worship to Sunday.
IOW, the original teaching, which of course is based on Scripture and Sacred tradition, and was taught and upheld by the Christian church until at least 1054 (with the split of the Orthodox, and I do believe they also believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity, don’t they) if not the mid 16th century (again, Luther and Calvin and Henry VIII believed in the perpetual virginity although later followers, twisting Scripture, did not), has consistently taught Mary’s perpetual virginity.
The ‘new’ teaching (from the “New Learning”) deviates from that teaching, and in other areas as well.
Why? I have a theory. I believe these deviations came about because the followers of the reformers, reading their ‘vernacular Bibles’ at a time when those vernacular languages were in a period of great change, consciously and unconsciously were influenced to perceive words in their Bibles as somehow expressing what their ‘new’ definitions meant instead of what the ‘old’ definitions did.
Take “prayer”, for example. Even in Shakespeare’s time this word was still understood to mean simply to ‘ask’ but it was beginning to undergo a ‘shift’ in meaning such that by Cromwellian times the majority of the (Protestant) people thought of ‘prayer’ as meaning only ‘communication with God’.
That of course is NOT the original meaning of the word ‘prayer’ as the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and later English, French etc. of the early Middle Ages knew it.
To attempt to claim that because Protestants “NOW” define ‘prayer’ as ‘communication with God’ means that the original Bible’s use of ‘prayer’ meant exactly that ‘THEN’ is the fallacy.
Ditto with ‘until’, with ‘worship’, etc. etc. Instead of relying on scholarship, tradition, context, etc., one rushes full speed into REDEFINITION and REVISION, back-pedaling to make the new definition ‘fit’ into the ‘old’ writing.
And this is why ‘Bible only’ Christians have such difficulty. They treat the Bible as the ‘be-all and end-all’ but they don’t realize that by constantly changing the definitions of words to reflect on ‘contemporary’ changes, they are in effect rewriting the inerrant word of God and thus making it error filled. And as they continue to ‘revise’, they change practices even further. “Brethren” is too gender specific? CHANGE IT to “brothers and sisters”. Then once you have that change throughout, you can ‘claim’ that of COURSE ‘sisters’ had EXACTLY the same ‘roles’ that ‘brothers’ did, meaning opening the door to female ministers, etc. That is if you want to change something the Catholic Church teaches into what YOU teach.
If, OTOH, you want to defend your church teaching ‘against’ the Catholics, you can claim that Catholics do not follow ‘the letter of the law’ and that the CATHOLICS have CHANGED things. Like Sabbath worship to Sunday.
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Nella
Guest
This is the dilema. I don’t believe that we can have a meaningful dialogue on anything that your Magisterium has made a matter of faith, dogma or doctrine. It is my understanding that if anyone makes a statement that is any way contrary to what the Magisterium teaches, then that statement is automatically considered error. All we have then is an argument between what Catholicism says and what others may believe. There can be no dialogue. This is a shame.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
I believe you are confused and think that the Catholic Church can ‘make’ dogma. She cannot. God does that.
Doctrine can be further interpreted but does not ‘change’ in that one cannot, for example, understand that lying is ‘a sin’, but that in some cases (the relativity factor) it becomes ‘not a sin’. It can be argued that a lie has lesser culpability due to factors which we can understand better due to the Holy Spirit’s teachings etc., but we can never have a lie (sin) become a lie (not sin).
Discipline can be changed. Disciplines include things like priestly celibacy (but not ‘women priests’). The first was instituted under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, and has direct precedent in the Bible and exemplification by Jesus and St. Paul (and possibly others), but the Holy Spirit at any given point may guide the church to ‘married male clergy’ as the discipline, and this is not a change in the Church’s teaching (as both ‘married’ and ‘celibate’ have both existed throughout the Church); it is rather a particular ‘discipline’ which the Holy Spirit gives for a given time and place, for HIS own reason and to better help US to understand and follow God. Heaven knows that with the sexual perversions that exist today, and with the unprecented statistics of abuse, fornication, adultery, and divorce, the ‘unmarried celibate’ person is less likely to sin than the unmarried noncelibate or even the married person, sexually speaking! (Of course, those who disobey their vows of celibacy can --and did–sin–but if they had OBEYED THE VOWS they would NOT have done so.
As far as dialogue–well, there is plenty that can be discussed. But to take a non religious example, if I, as your physician, told you categorically speaking that your smoking, eating fatty foods, and lack of exercise was going to most probably lead to your becoming ill or even dying earlier than you would have if you did NOT do so (note, I am not a doctor, do not play one on TV, and I’m not saying YOU are guilty of the above behaviors either!), you can dialogue ALL YOU WANT about how 1 cigarette won’t mean anything, that 1 cheeseburger won’t kill you, and that you get plenty of exercise leaping to conclusions–but none of that dialogue will miraculously change the NEGATIVE EFFECT into a POSITIVE EFFECT on your body, no matter how righteous you may feel, how ‘rational’, how moderate, how cooperative, etc.
IOW, if a dogma/teaching we Catholics espouse is true (say, the teaching of the Assumption), no amount of ‘dialogue’ in an effort to get us to compromise that truth will ever, or can ever, be made by us. We can’t say, “It’s true–but it isn’t true for YOU”. Or "it’s probably true but since it isn’t ‘written down’ by Christ it is PERFECTLY OKAY for you not to ‘have’ to believe it’.
Either it is true for all, or it is true for NONE.
I love compromise in its proper place and will cheerfully compromise on matters of ‘taste’ or non essentials. . .but I will not, I cannot compromise, on TRUTH.
Doctrine can be further interpreted but does not ‘change’ in that one cannot, for example, understand that lying is ‘a sin’, but that in some cases (the relativity factor) it becomes ‘not a sin’. It can be argued that a lie has lesser culpability due to factors which we can understand better due to the Holy Spirit’s teachings etc., but we can never have a lie (sin) become a lie (not sin).
Discipline can be changed. Disciplines include things like priestly celibacy (but not ‘women priests’). The first was instituted under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, and has direct precedent in the Bible and exemplification by Jesus and St. Paul (and possibly others), but the Holy Spirit at any given point may guide the church to ‘married male clergy’ as the discipline, and this is not a change in the Church’s teaching (as both ‘married’ and ‘celibate’ have both existed throughout the Church); it is rather a particular ‘discipline’ which the Holy Spirit gives for a given time and place, for HIS own reason and to better help US to understand and follow God. Heaven knows that with the sexual perversions that exist today, and with the unprecented statistics of abuse, fornication, adultery, and divorce, the ‘unmarried celibate’ person is less likely to sin than the unmarried noncelibate or even the married person, sexually speaking! (Of course, those who disobey their vows of celibacy can --and did–sin–but if they had OBEYED THE VOWS they would NOT have done so.
As far as dialogue–well, there is plenty that can be discussed. But to take a non religious example, if I, as your physician, told you categorically speaking that your smoking, eating fatty foods, and lack of exercise was going to most probably lead to your becoming ill or even dying earlier than you would have if you did NOT do so (note, I am not a doctor, do not play one on TV, and I’m not saying YOU are guilty of the above behaviors either!), you can dialogue ALL YOU WANT about how 1 cigarette won’t mean anything, that 1 cheeseburger won’t kill you, and that you get plenty of exercise leaping to conclusions–but none of that dialogue will miraculously change the NEGATIVE EFFECT into a POSITIVE EFFECT on your body, no matter how righteous you may feel, how ‘rational’, how moderate, how cooperative, etc.
IOW, if a dogma/teaching we Catholics espouse is true (say, the teaching of the Assumption), no amount of ‘dialogue’ in an effort to get us to compromise that truth will ever, or can ever, be made by us. We can’t say, “It’s true–but it isn’t true for YOU”. Or "it’s probably true but since it isn’t ‘written down’ by Christ it is PERFECTLY OKAY for you not to ‘have’ to believe it’.
Either it is true for all, or it is true for NONE.
I love compromise in its proper place and will cheerfully compromise on matters of ‘taste’ or non essentials. . .but I will not, I cannot compromise, on TRUTH.
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holy_wood
Guest
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nella forum.catholic.com/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
Did you not read post # 172 it explains the whole “UNTIL” speech that your so hung up on. I’ll repost it again.
Nella if for some reason these versus do not at least shed some light on why Catholics don’t believe the “until Jesus was born” verse in the Bible means Mary had other children then I don’t know what will.
Luke 1:80
John was in the desert “up to the point of his manifestation to Israel.” Not John “was in the desert until after” his manifestation.
Luke 2:37
Anna was a widow “up to the point that” she was eighty-four years old. She did not stop being widow after she was eighty-four years old.
Luke 20:41-43
Jesus is not going to require the apostles to sit at His left hand after their enemies are their footstool.
1 Tim. 4:13
**
"up to the point that I come," attend to teaching and preaching. It does not mean do nothing “until after” I come.
**
Gen 8:7
the raven flew back and forth “up to the point that” [until] the waters dried from the earth. The raven did not start flying after the waters dried.
Deut 34:6
This does not mean that “they did not know place until today.”
2 Sam 6 :23
Saul’s daughter Micah was childless "up to the point" [until] her death. She was not with child after her death.
If these versus don’t shed doubt on the meaning of the word “until” in scripture please tell us why.
Sex in marriage is not bad but why do you think we Catholics are so down on Christ having children if it were not false. We give honor to Joseph and a whole lot to Mary. If she had other children it would be dishonorable not to revere the blood siblings of Christ our Lord. We even honor Jofn the Baptist
Why is it in your mind that not one peace of christian writing exist (the New Testamen does not count) which speaks of Christ blood brothers and sisters. Do you honestly believe that the Catholic Church has led a world conspiracy to cover up any mention of it.
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Singinbeauty
Guest
You know, I have heard this argument SO many times. I want to state again that I have no real pull one way or another. But if it could be the way you state above with the word ‘until’ you have to agree that it could be the other way to. Just because ‘until’ can have your definition it also has the definition and use that Nella uses. So it is moot to use this argument.
Yes, I agree that ‘until’ could be the way you state but I have to agree that it could be the way that Nella takes it too… You can’t have one but ignore the other just because it doesn’t fit what you have been taught to believe. This argument just doesn’t work…Genesis 8:5:
Meaning that after the tenth month the waters receded…
Genesis 24:33:
He didn’t eat until he had told him what he had to say…
Joshua 8:29:
That king stayed up on the tree UNTIL evening when they took him down at sunset…
Acts 3:21:
I think we can all agree to what this means…
So you see, I can use verses to support the other side too…
Again, your tactic doesn’t stand…
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Nella
Guest
Again, I do not agree.
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bpbasilphx
Guest
<<Again, I do not agree.>>
That’s OK, Nella. You just go ahead and believe what you want to believe. You will anyway, not because of the evidence, but despite it.
I’ll believe the Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Word.
That’s OK, Nella. You just go ahead and believe what you want to believe. You will anyway, not because of the evidence, but despite it.
I’ll believe the Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Word.
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Nella
Guest
You don’t believe his Holy Word and that is your problem as sad as it is.
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St_Violet
Guest
Nella, I have been watching you posts in these forums quite alot now, there are times when I think your just here messing around, but then there are times I think your serious. I have seen people in these forums giving you evidence of what your oppose of, most of the time you either ignore the evidence or you spew your opinion as if they were facts.for example I proved to you that the Church Church existed before the 6th century . I hate to tell you but facts and opinions are two different things. I hope that if you feel you cannot argue against what someone else layed down on the table then just accept that you can’t and continue to research and learn instead of being hostile when you feel you have lost.
You will be in my prayers.
You will be in my prayers.
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bpbasilphx
Guest
<<You don’t believe his Holy Word and that is your problem as sad as it is. >>
Don’t you just hate it when you’re not allowed to claim the moral high ground, Nella?
Your problem, Nella, is that you refuse to receive sound doctrine.
Don’t you just hate it when you’re not allowed to claim the moral high ground, Nella?
Your problem, Nella, is that you refuse to receive sound doctrine.
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