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PRmerger
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I merely was giving an example of someone having authority without being superior. Don’t read too much into it.
But now you can see it’s possible for something to have authority without being superior, yes?
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But now you can see it’s possible for something to have authority without being superior, yes?
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PRmerger
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Contarini
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Then why is it a weird question? You give the impression that you care a great deal.That’s truly a weird question.
I don’t *really *care, to be quite honest.
Edwin
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PRmerger
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And, just so you know…this “fatal problem” (kind of dramatic, aren’t you?
) is easily resolved: subtract and add 1. See my example of the pastor and his parish to be able to understand it in a simpler way.
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PRmerger
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No. I never said the Church has authority over Scripture. The Church is the final arbiter between 2 Christians who say, “I believe Scripture says A” and “I believe Scripture says B”. When the Church says, “Scripture says A” then that’s it. It says A.
Otherwise, without this final arbiter, you get “a really, really big number of Christian denominations”, each claiming that that Scripture says A, B, C, D vs X, Y and Z.
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Contarini
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Depends on what you mean by “superior.” I meant “superior in authority,” not necessarily “superior in nature,” though you are right that I failed to distinguish clearly between the two things.
Edwin
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Contarini
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I’m not sure why you are failing to grasp the obvious fact that the Catholic Church is not the only Christian body that exists in more than one country. So obviously if the Catholic Church is counted as 238 denominations, then a Protestant group would also be counted as X number of denominations, where X is the number of countries in which that group exists. “X” will vary widely, so we don’t know what number to divide by. But clearly some division is necessary, unless you have some undisclosed reason to believe that Barrett only used the “one denomination in each country” approach with regard to Catholics.And, just so you know…this “fatal problem” (kind of dramatic, aren’t you?
See my example of the pastor and his parish to be able to understand it in a simpler way.
That points to the broader problem that Catholics confuse “denominations” with “churches” (understandably given sloppy Protestant terminology) and mistakenly think that each “denomination” is a separate church which in some way claims to be the true church over against the others. That’s the real problem with this whole approach.
OK, I have spent way too much time on this. If you still don’t get it, I will just give up and recognize that you are so wedded to cheap polemics that you can’t think logically.
Edwin
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PRmerger
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I like to answer posts that refer to my posts.
(I really dislike “hit and run” posters, BTW. Irksome.)
You can be assured that if no one responded to my 40,000 Christian denominations statistic I would not be on here crying, “Hey! I really, really care about this statistic! Why doesn’t anyone respond?”
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PRmerger
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The Baptist Church in Armenia is not “governed” by the Baptist Church in Guatemala.
That’s why they count as 2 separate denominations. They have their own doctrines, their own “liturgies”, their own rituals.
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Contarini
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Well, I think it could be reasonably implied from what you said, but I will accept your claim that that’s not what you meant.
At this point we need to start asking “what is the Church”? I would agree entirely with your statement *if *we mean the Church as a whole. So, for instance, I don’t get to read Scripture as an individual and decide that it means something contrary to the historic consensus of the Church. But obviously that doesn’t solve the problem of how the Church determines its own mind.
That, however, isn’t the point at issue, on which we seem to be agreed. The Church has the authority to interpret Scripture, but Scripture has authority over the Church in the sense that the Church cannot simply ignore Scripture. (I don’t, by the way, suppose that you thought it could–I’ve been engaging in this argument partly to try to show you that you are scandalizing Protestants, and partly because I think your Communion does put the Magisterium too high and the Tradition itself too low.)
Edwin
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PRmerger
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Ad hominems are the mark of a desperate (and despairing) man.
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Contarini
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And this is a fatal problem with your entire approach. (Call it dramatic if you like–you are causing scandal by your arguments and I care about the unity of the Church, so I’m going to be dramatic.) You assume from the start that unity must mean that there is a central authority. Obviously you cannot then make an argument showing the need for a central authority. That’s a classic logical fallacy. To make an effective argument, you must start with a definition of unity that could theoretically be achieved without a central authority such as the Papacy.
If two Baptist churches have different doctrines–that is to say, different public teachings such that a pastor adhering to the public teachings of one might be unorthodox by the standard of the public teachings of another–then those two churches are different in a manner relevant to the discussion–that is to say, they are divided from each other in a way that two Catholic or Orthodox particular churches are not. (And many Baptist churches are indeed divided in this way.) That’s a much more helpful approach than counting “denominations” as defined by a secular source with no clear idea of anybody’s ecclesiology.
Certainly the jurisdictional decentralization of Protestantism makes it much harder to count who is or is not united. For instance, sticking with the Baptists–after the fall of Communism Baptists from Britain and the U.S., who tend to be Calvinists, came to Eastern Europe and began teaching Calvinism. The Eastern European Baptists are not Calvinists. I don’t know how that plays out today–when I was in Romania in the 90s the Baptists tended to accept any evangelical Protestants at all as being functionally one with them.
Edwin
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Gabriel_of_12
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Contarini
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Well, clearly we are both desperate in that caseAd hominems are the mark of a desperate (and despairing) man.
Edwin
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Amy1966
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Do you really want to know or is this just a standard question you like to see what kind of answers you get? You say you have no religion, but everyone has a system of beliefs, a religion, by which they adhere to. Whereas Christianity is different in that it is more of personal relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ rather than a set of rituals and routines attached to a set of “moral” beliefs.
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Amy1966
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Since when is a lack of evidence now become evidence in acheology? You implied that acheology has presented problems; such as?But the claim that the Bible is in “complete harmony” makes no sense except to the eyes of faith, and even many believers have trouble agreeing with your statement entirely. There are plenty of ways in which the Bible can be seen to be in less than perfect harmony. You may choose to ignore these–but they are there anyway.
This sounds good, but when you go through these one by one you find that most of them fall into one of two categories:
I don’t dismiss the argument from prophecy altogether. I think that passages such as Isaiah 53 do make even more sense when you think of them as pointing to Jesus (as well as to the people of Israel collectively). But the purely statistical argument on which you rely has no validity whatever. It’s a dishonest argument and Christians should stop using it.
- They are so vague and ambiguous that they could apply to a lot of things, and Christians have chosen to apply them to Jesus (see Matt. 1:23, Matt. 2:15, and Matt. 2:23).
- It is quite possible that Christian writers made up the fulfillment (or in some cases that Jesus deliberately set out to fulfill the prophecy–riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, for instance). Since there is almost no external confirmation of the events described in the NT, this could cover pretty much all the fulfilled prophecies. For instance, how do we know (except on the basis of faith in the truth of Scripture and the teaching of the Church) that Jesus’ bones were really unbroken? How do we know that He was actually born in Bethlehem? How do we know that He really rode into Jerusalem on a donkey? How do we know that He fled to Egypt with His parents and later returned, making Hosea’s words about calling Israel out of Egypt apply to Him personally? Only on the testimony of the Gospel writers themselves.
That’s certainly a valid argument, but of course it’s a subjective one. People whose lives have not been changed in this way, or who think they see reason to believe that the Bible has made people’s lives worse, are not going to be affected by it!
And in places Christians have struggled to reconcile it with what we now think we know on that subject.
Not something that can yet be directly verified
This is an extremely far-fetched interpretation. You appear to be thinking of Job 38:14, which most translations render as “change,” not “turn” in the sense of “rotate.” We had better leave these kinds of arguments to the Muslims–they only discredit us.
What are these?
Says who?
Sure, and these are rather obvious, aren’t they?
And there we see that your opinions are not just harmless error but are downright evil. You would teach us to abandon care for God’s creation on the basis of your apocalyptic delusions.
Again, I think this is one that has weight. But it’s not a conclusive proof, just something that should make people think a little. (For one thing, Israel *didn’t *remain in existence continuously–it just keeps coming back, most recently after a lapse of nearly 1900 years!)
If this happens “continually,” why is it that the HIttites are the one example one hears cited over and over? Yes, there are cases of this–but there are many other examples where archeology either creates problems for the Biblical narrative or just fails to turn up any evidence. For instance, Jericho was destroyed several times, but none of the destructions seem to fit the Biblical chronology. There is no archeological evidence of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness, and not much evidence for a conquest of Canaan as described in Joshua. There is no undisputed contemporaneous evidence for the kingdoms of David and Solomon, even though the Bible describes them as glorious little empires.
This is a convenient argument for you, because if anyone points out that your arguments don’t hold up, you can dismiss them as not being real Christians. Well, that’s the risk I’ll have to take, because you discredit the Faith by these poor arguments.
Edwin
You should look at this prophecy in detail concerning the city of Tyre; you might understand just how precise God is. The odds of such a prophechy coming to pass is astonomical and it is one of many. But you are unable to see or believe anything concerning the Scripture until you have received the Spirit of God. How could a man understand the nature and character of God unless God reveals it to him/her? You can get a taste or glimpse through creation and the moral law written one the hearts of people, but unless one comes to God with a heart of true repentance and ask with sincerity for forgiveness for violating God’s perfect and holy moral standard and believe in the Name of Jesus Christ that He dies on the cross, was sinless and bore your sin, then was raised on the third day, then you will not receive the Holy Spirit of God and therefore cannot know God as all true Christians do.
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Amy1966
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To All
If I missed anyone’s posts, then I apologize…I got the blue screen of death and have gotten things up and running again. Don’t you just love spending all those hours of pure joy!!
If I missed anyone’s posts, then I apologize…I got the blue screen of death and have gotten things up and running again. Don’t you just love spending all those hours of pure joy!!
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simspt
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Hi Amy,
I believe as you do JESUS IS LORD. For me it boils down to faith. I agree with Edwin’s response to your post however because I dont think the things you mentioned in your earlier post to justify or rationalize your faith are necessary or correct. Sorry the NONE is misleading. Im not Catholic yet but my wife and I are going to start the RCIA catechumen process this year.
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PRmerger
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Really? What ad hominem have I made?Well, clearly we are both desperate in that case
Edwin
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