Mainly For Those Not Roman Catholic: Whom Must You Obey?

[PRmerger]

A covenant of a perpetual priesthood. Judaism does not profess this? No?
.

What on earth does that mean?

Do you not recognize it? It is from your Scriptures.

See the book of Numbers, chapter 25.

Do Jews not consider the book of Numbers to be part of God’s sacred revelation?

 

[Kaninchen]

Do you not recognize it? It is from your Scriptures.

See the book of Numbers, chapter 25.

Do Jews not consider the book of Numbers to be part of God’s sacred revelation?

Um, why is the sequence changing?

Aren’t you supposed to make some gnomic reference to something that is supposed to be a reason why Christianity and Judaism are similar in some way, then I ask you what on earth you mean (are you and I both physically descended from Aaron? Do all religions with priests - including Hinduism, for example - work like ancient Judaism?), then you come up with something new - until you decide to tell me what on earth you mean by what you’re saying or I get to 6000 posts, whichever comes first?

You seem to have missed out the new gnomic reference in this post.

 

[dzheremi]

I am confused by the focus on Judaism in this thread.

Anyway, as a non-Catholic, who must I obey…it’s an interesting question, with a few possible answers. While in Orthodoxy (by which I mean Orthodox Christianity, to clarify in light of all the Judaism talk that is going on in here) there is not the centralized, top-down model of authority and organization that is found in Catholicism, I still feel like it would be appropriate to say “the Pope”, in light of the fact that the Coptic Orthodox have a Pope, too. His role is not exactly conceived of as the Catholics might conceive of their Pope’s, but anyway…certainly what HH Pope Shenouda III says is not to be discarded or treated trivially. As the bishop of Alexandria, a stalwart defender of the Orthodox faith, there can be no doubt as to the weight and wisdom of theological insights, opinions, and rulings. That said, I don’t doubt either that the ultimate allegiance is to the faith itself as passed on by his predecessors, and their predecessors, going back to the days of St. Mark the Evangelist and the other apostles and disciples of Christ. I can be confident without knowing anyone’s mind that this is the answer that would be given by HH himself, if maybe not in those exact words, since his words would be in Arabic.

Anyway, the ultimate point is as always in the command of the Savior: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”. So from a certain view the answer is a “who”, but more broadly it is a “what”, too. And the commandments as distilled by the monks into bare essentials of what is necessary for salvation have on occasion been so simple as to almost seem like a trick, but are really enough to answer the OP’s question in two sentences. spoken some ~1700 years ago by St. Anthony the Great, the Father of Christian monasticism: “This is the great work of a man: always to take blame for his own sins before God and to expect temptation to his last breath”, and “Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”

If there’s a better way to put it, I haven’t heard it.

 

[PRmerger]

Um, why is the sequence changing?

Aren’t you supposed to make some gnomic reference to something that is supposed to be a reason why Christianity and Judaism are similar in some way, then I ask you what on earth you mean (are you and I both physically descended from Aaron? Do all religions with priests - including Hinduism, for example - work like ancient Judaism?), then you come up with something new - until you decide to tell me what on earth you mean by what you’re saying or I get to 6000 posts, whichever comes first?

You seem to have missed out the new gnomic reference in this post.

So from your lack of response to my question I assume (or, to use your synonym: make a “conjecture”) that you *didn’t *know that the covenant of a perpetual priesthood is part of Judaism, no?

See the similarity between Christianity and Judaism? :coffeeread:

NOTE: To all lurkers in this thread who may not be familiar with Judaism I will answer for Kaninchen, who identifies herself as a Jewess but did not know about the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, which is found in the book of Numbers: yes, Jews do consider the book of Numbers to be part of God’s revelation.

 

[Kaninchen]

So from your lack of response to my question I assume (or, to use your synonym: make a “conjecture”) that you *didn’t *know that the covenant of a perpetual priesthood is part of Judaism, no?

See the similarity between Christianity and Judaism? :coffeeread:

NOTE: To all lurkers in this thread who may not be familiar with Judaism I will answer for Kaninchen, who identifies herself as a Jewess but did not know about the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, which is found in the book of Numbers: yes, Jews do consider the book of Numbers to be part of God’s revelation.

Still no sign of any kind of explanation.

 

[PRmerger]

I am confused by the focus on Judaism in this thread.

Anyway, as a non-Catholic, who must I obey…it’s an interesting question, with a few possible answers. While in Orthodoxy (by which I mean Orthodox Christianity, to clarify in light of all the Judaism talk that is going on in here) there is not the centralized, top-down model of authority and organization that is found in Catholicism, I still feel like it would be appropriate to say “the Pope”, in light of the fact that the Coptic Orthodox have a Pope, too. His role is not exactly conceived of as the Catholics might conceive of their Pope’s, but anyway…certainly what HH Pope Shenouda III says is not to be discarded or treated trivially. As the bishop of Alexandria, a stalwart defender of the Orthodox faith, there can be no doubt as to the weight and wisdom of theological insights, opinions, and rulings. That said, I don’t doubt either that the ultimate allegiance is to the faith itself as passed on by his predecessors, and their predecessors, going back to the days of St. Mark the Evangelist and the other apostles and disciples of Christ. I can be confident without knowing anyone’s mind that this is the answer that would be given by HH himself, if maybe not in those exact words, since his words would be in Arabic.

Anyway, the ultimate point is as always in the command of the Savior: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”. So from a certain view the answer is a “who”, but more broadly it is a “what”, too. And the commandments as distilled by the monks into bare essentials of what is necessary for salvation have on occasion been so simple as to almost seem like a trick, but are really enough to answer the OP’s question in two sentences. spoken some ~1700 years ago by St. Anthony the Great, the Father of Christian monasticism: “This is the great work of a man: always to take blame for his own sins before God and to expect temptation to his last breath”, and** “Do not trust in your own righteousness, **do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”

If there’s a better way to put it, I haven’t heard it.

Great insights, dzheremi!

One question your post prompts is this: is your pope the ultimate authority on matters of faith and morals? That is, if he proposes something, and you disagree, given that you are to not “trust in your own righteousness”, would you then defer to his teachings?