Maybe I wasn’t clear? I was asking how do you define Love of neighbor?
What?
Well, all of us have knowledge of natural moral laws, ie. stealing, cheating, murder, adultery, etc… Were would this knowledege come from? There are some people who have never even known God that acknowledge these basic things.
Edwin,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
Greetings Contarini; Forgive my delayed response sometimes time for pleasure on the computer is limited for me; Enjoy your commentaries here
Right, and your dogma leads you to claim that they are not Christians. That makes your initial statement empty. You have never “met a Christian” who didn’t believe in inerrancy because you define those who don’t believe in inerrancy as not really being Christian.
Funny, but not really, God predestined who would be called “sons of God” before the foundation of the world. From my understanding that was about 4000 plus years before the day of Pentecost. Also, the Scripture says the entire fallen creation, including men and Angels are waiting for the revealing of the “sons of God”, the only church Jesus is building. Funny, but not really funny is that in Israel, the message was to forget the external ways of reconciling with God and because of Israels failure to listen, there was only a remnant that believed by faith alone in God and counted on His grace. Funny, but not really, the New Testament says the exact same thing and said that Israel’s trouble is for our benefit so as to not repeat the same religion of externals but to come to Him with a true heart, the inside, of repentance. For John the Baptist, Jesus and others stated “repent for the Kingdom is at hand”; for it is the gospel of repentance where one dies to self, in favor of Christ and by faith alone by his grace He will save those who die to “self” and live for Christ. Jesus said Himself that few find the way, which is Jesus, and even those that do find Him are unable to yet strive to enter, again only a remnant of those who claim God as their savior by their obedience to him as Lord are able to enter into God’s rest.
According to Jesus only a few find the Way and even those that do find it; many are unable to enter through Him. So the statement highlighted above is a fallacy to begin with. Everyone better examine themselves and see whether they are in Christ Jesus because just in the OT, the NT says the same that only a remnant who claim to be Christians will actually and really enter into God’s rest. If one learns and understands and applies the errors of Israel, then they may very well find entrance into His Kingdom and it would be because of your religion.
But not as inspired from the Holy Spirit; affirmed in that it was used for moral teachings and devotional studies, but not divine revelation. If it were truly divine, then the author the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of error and all of the Bible should be counted as untrustworthy in all it contents.
Ditto on the 33k & 280
Then you do not understand Scritpure nor the nature and purpose of God. God purposed all of creation and this includes both you and I. It is God’s creation, not yours and not mine and not the Catholic Church’s or the Luthern Church or any other church. The “sons of God” are going to be revealed sometime in the near future, that will be the church that Jesus, not Peter built and you can take that to the bank. Religion is the most damning tool of the devil in my opinion, he uses religion to try to thwart the predestined purposes of God, which he can never do, but he has been very sucessful at using religion to damn many souls, just look at Israel as our example.
all bestow the prudent advice that understanding the Bible comes from “Hearing the Word of God” [NOT READING and self interpertation]. Why? Lk.24:45 Luke.24
There is always room for learning!
Yep–and it’s called “Protestantism”. If Catholics disagree with the CC on abortion or their Sunday obligation etc etc, they are becoming their own pope, just like Protestants do.
Your challenge to me about ‘The HS will lead me to the correct understanding of Scripture’ only has meaning if I’ve made the statement. I’m getting older and may have forgotten I’ve said it, but to my present knowledge I don’t know I’m said this on CAF. If I have, it would surely NOT be with the understanding you’re portraying.
Well, dear Dokimas, you are coming late into this discussion (which you are, of course, welcome to do!) so you are responding to an on-going discussion about this paradigm of “The HS will lead me to the correct understanding of Scripture”.
I try never to slam Protestants. Just Protestantism.
Absolutely not!
That may be quite true indeed.
I give a hearty “Amen!” to Jesus’ words!
Then you should agree that believing that some of the teachings of the CC are incorrect is NOT being necessarily anti-catholic, correct? Not a minor distinction.Well, dear Dokimas, you are coming late into this discussion (which you are, of course, welcome to do!) so you are responding to an on-going discussion about this paradigm of “The HS will lead me to the correct understanding of Scripture”.
I try never to slam Protestants. Just Protestantism.
And if you think this is a minor distinction, it’s not.
Look at the difference between these statements:
“The CC is at war with poverty”
vs
“The CC is at war with the poor.”
The first is correct. The second is false. Just a minor change in spelling and we get 2 totally different ideas.
