Protestant Questions About Purgatory

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Protestant101 said:
When someone “takes it to the Church;” it is precisely the Bible that the Church uses as it’s “authority.” its not the other way around. "The “pillar and ground of truth” only means that Jesus has entrusted already established truth to the Church; it has nothing to do with the Church supposedly exercising some sort of “authority” over that which only God has authority.
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Typical misinterpretation of Scripture…🤷
 
Protestant101 said:
Originally Posted by JRKH
And here in lies the rub.
Protestant101 is in the unfortunate postition of being unable to obey Jesus command to “Take it to the Church”. He must disobey Jesus because He cannot submit to The Church Christ Himself established.
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You are partially correct my friend. It is indeed scripture (The Bible) which is the core document of the Faith. The Books of the Bible were gathered and canonized by the Church precisely because of their reliability. However, since The Church Predates the Canon of NT Scripture, it is obvious that Christ’s admonishment to “Take it to The Church” is not synonymous with “Take it to The Bible”.
The Reason Our Lord, in His infinite Wisdom and Care for us, told us to “take it to The Church”, is precisely because scripture can be misinterpreted, misunderstood, misrepresented and misused. Many times in the New Testament we see Jesus admonish someone for misinterpreting, or not understanding scripture.
Therefore He left us, not a book, but an authoritative Church, built upon the firm foundations of His teachings, both recorded and oral, passed on diligently and firmly through the Apostles down through the centuries to today. That Church, who recorded, canonized, copied, published, protected and defended the Holy Bible is The Catholic Church.

Because you cannot accept this, you must disobey Jesus. You must refuse to Take it to the Church, and submit yourself to her for love of Christ.

Peace
James
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JRKH said:
And here in lies the rub.
Protestant101 is in the unfortunate postition of being unable to obey Jesus command to “Take it to the Church”. He must disobey Jesus because He cannot submit to The Church Christ Himself established.

Search your heart P101, and come home.

Peace
James
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Hi James,

Can you please be kind enough to show me where in scripture Jesus says to ‘Take it to the Church’ (or something that implies that command?)

Much appreciated.
 
auss1e_guy said:
Hi James,

Can you please be kind enough to show me where in scripture Jesus says to ‘Take it to the Church’ (or something that implies that command?)

Much appreciated.
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Matthew 18; 15-17
15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
 
Protestant101 said:
When someone “takes it to the Church;” it is precisely the Bible that the Church uses as it’s “authority.” its not the other way around. "The “pillar and ground of truth” only means that Jesus has entrusted already established truth to the Church; it has nothing to do with the Church supposedly exercising some sort of “authority” over that which only God has authority.
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Protestant,

Is if fair to say that this a pattern. You start dialogues, perhaps with the simple motive of starting an argument. There is some exchange and you don’t read all the posters who respond. There is a flurry of fairly well reasoned dialogue and first and then it degrades into senseless statements like the one above. You run out of cogent argument and begin to make nonsensical illogical statements simply to have something to respond with and to avoid admitting the truth you have been presented.

One of the six sins against the Holy Spirit is resistance to the known truth.
 
Protestant101 said:
When someone “takes it to the Church;” it is precisely the Bible that the Church uses as it’s “authority.” its not the other way around. "The “pillar and ground of truth” only means that Jesus has entrusted already established truth to the Church; it has nothing to do with the Church supposedly exercising some sort of “authority” over that which only God has authority.
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Protestant,
Let’s look at this again. The motive is to find unity.

It is the Bible that tells us we should take disputes to the Church as a final authority to get them settled. You said the Church must use the Bible. Fine.

Say there is a Bible believing Baptist who goes to the First Baptist Church in his town and it has a man in charge ordained as its pastor by that denomination. There is a Bible believing Evangelical who goes to the local non-denominational Church in the same town with a minister who ordained himself and started up his own denomination. There are also a couple of Lutheran churches in town who belong to different synods, Methodists and Free Methodists, American Baptists and Southern Baptists, Jehovahs Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, several kinds of Presbyterians, a Bible Reformed, a Church of the Firstborn, and some dozen more. All of these groups claim to hold sola scriptura, all authority is in the Bible. They claim it as their right to exist. They claim to believe the Bible and that their conflicting doctines are based solely on the Bible.

Say a couple of guys, one from one of these groups and one from another get into some dispute they can not settle. To which Church should they go to seek resolution? Should they draw straws, flip a coin? How do they know where to find THE Church, not A church?

I have a friend who is a Baptist minister in a nearby town of several thousand people. There are four Baptist Churches there. His is the latest. They operate out of a storefront and have about seven families. I asked him why he came to this town to start a Baptist Church when there are already severa doing welll. He told me those other ones “do not go by the Bible”. I said “what do you mean, they all say they do?”. He said it is clear that they do not “go by the Bible”. He does and they do not. I asked him how he knows his read of the Bible is right and theirs is wrong. It was very plain to him theirs was wrong. Anyone could see that. I said, “but how do you know you are the one who is right”. They say they are right. Who decides. He said it was clear to him he is right. I guess simply insisting you are right and the Bible proves you right makes you right.

I am not sure that you read the posts that respond to you, so I ask that you acknowledge that you read this even if you don’t answer the question. When the Bible says to take disputes to the Church, to which Church or whose, should two Chtistians in dispute go?

Realize that you have no authority to answer this question, so show us in the Bible how the Bible says which one is the one to go to for resolution.
 
MarcoPolo said:
I’m sorry, that is a myth. Sirach, Judith, 1 Maccabees at the least were in Hebrew as discovered at Qumran.

But regardless…as I’ve researched, the language had moved to Greek under the rule of Alexander, hence also the move to the Greek Septuagint. The human language of the written Word is not the factor to determine divine inspiration. Why would such a rule even come to mind when part of Jewish history included a large duration of Greek speech.
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When you say a book of the bible was in Hebrew or Greek, does that mean every copy or the master copy?
 
summasix said:
When you say a book of the bible was in Hebrew or Greek, does that mean every copy or the master copy?
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There was no master copy. What testifies to the faithfulness of the ancient scribes to accuracy is not comparison to a master copy, but the agreement found between texts that have been recopied many times over centuries, but that were separated, kept apart by long distances in different regions.

The various translations into English that give different sense of meaning testify to the difficulty of translation. So it is said that the most accurate version is the original in Greek. The Jews accepted both Hebrew and Greek even though it is very challenging to always convey the same meaning in both languages of certain passages, as it also is between Latin and Greek.

So if we read in some English version, whichever one is most accurate, we are getting at best a reasonably close understanding. We hear arguments among some Protestants that the KJV is the only English version that is acceptable. It is the best English translation for a number of reasons, they argue. The original KJV had all the Catholic books.
 
grandfather said:
Protestant,
Let’s look at this again. The motive is to find unity.

I am not sure that you read the posts that respond to you, so I ask that you acknowledge that you read this even if you don’t answer the question. When the Bible says to take disputes to the Church, to which Church or whose, should two Chtistians in dispute go?

Realize that you have no authority to answer this question, so show us in the Bible how the Bible says which one is the one to go to for resolution.
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First, it all depends upon what you mean by “unity.” Different people have different ideas on that one.

Second; you state that I “have no authority to answer” your question, so I will not answer it. 😃 😃
 
grandfather said:
When Lazarus goes to the busom of Abraham and the rich man dies he goes to a place of torment. Where is this place? In hell there is no love and there is no hope. The dead rich man calls to heaven and makes two requests. He asks that Lazarus come put a rop of water on his tongue. He has hope for relief of his suffering. Then he asks that someone go warn his brothers so they will not also fall into this place. He wills the good of his brothers. He loves them. Those in hell do not hope you go to heaven and avoid hell. They hate you and want you to suffer as they do. They do not try to comfort one another in their suffering in hell. There is no comfort or relief there in the unquenchable lake of fire and those souls who are there know they will never have any comfort or relief. So where was the rich man?
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A. It’s just a parable.
B. The rich man was in hell.
 
Protestant101 said:
Originally Posted by grandfather
Protestant,
Let’s look at this again. The motive is to find unity.
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(Picture an announcer calling a sporting event (wrestling))
And another nice dodge. 😃
Folks, that Protestant101 is a slick one.
Nobody seems to be able to pin him down. No sirrreee!😃
Simple and Straightforward:
Define your understanding of these terms as Jesus uses them in the Bible.
Unity:
Church:

Peace
James
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Protestant101 said:
To see a reference point for this thread; please see Post #532: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=238010&page=36

I would like to discuss more specifics regarding this claim about “purgatory” and how the generally accepted Protestant Canon falls “short” with this doctrine. I am interested in this separate topic, as my major questions will be with the doctrine of Purgatory itself, and how this doctrine is related to the Bible.

By saying: "“You, due to your “incomplete” Bible, reject the concept of purgatory and praying for the dead,” are Catholics here telling me that “Purgatory” is found only in the Apocrypha? Why are you saying: “because of your incomplete Bible?”
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101, there you go again! The authority that canonized what you have left of the bible also canonized a longer version. To reject the deuterocanon is to reject the first canon, since they both were provided to you by the same authority. Must you cherry-pick the Word of God until you locate an agreeable version?

Oh, and what “generally accepted Protestant” anything? There is virtually nothing that is generally accepted in the Protestant world, except division, dispute, discord and certain translations of the bible which are then uniformly mis-interpreted by thousands of Christ-customizers.

It is a hallucination to propose such a nebulous concept as “a Protestant canon”, since virtually no one can agree on what scripture actually means! The “Adventist canon” I can see, but not Protestant.

Purgatory. What happens to your personal sin upon your death? Answer that and maybe, just maybe, we can begin to understand where you are coming from.
 
Hi Grandfather,
Thanks for your response, and I honor your dedication to your faith. Here is what Luther really thought of polygamy.
Luther said polygamy is ok. Do you?
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Luther, to Philip of Hesse, in 1526:
“As regards the other matter, my faithful warning and advice is that no man, Christians in particular, should have more than one wife, not only for the reason that offense would be given, and Christians must not needlessly give, but most diligently avoid giving, offense, but also for the reason that we have no word of God regarding this matter on which we might base a belief that such action would be well-pleasing to God and to Christians. Let heathen and Turks do what they please. Some of the ancient fathers had many wives, but they were urged to this by necessity, as Abraham and Jacob, and later many kings, who according to the law of Moses obtained the wives of their friends, on the death of the latter, as an inheritance. The example of the fathers is not a sufficient argument to convince a Christian: he must have, in addition, a divine word that makes him sure, just as they had a word of that kind from God. For where there was no need or cause, the ancient fathers did not have more than one wife, as Isaac, Joseph, Moses, and many others. For this reason I cannot advise for, but must advise against, your intention, particularly since you are a Christian, unless there were an extreme necessity, as, for instance, if the wife were leprous or the husband were deprived of her for some other reason. On what grounds to forbid other people such marriages I know not”
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I’ll respond to the rest of your posts later, due to time.

Blessings,
Jon
 
Protestant101 said:
First, it all depends upon what you mean by “unity.” Different people have different ideas on that one.

Second; you state that I “have no authority to answer” your question, so I will not answer it. 😃 😃
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You sound like Bill Clinton. It depends on the defintion of what is is. What do you mean by sex?

If different people have different definitions of unity what does that matter? How does the Bible define it? Paul says to be of one mind and agree on all things.

I asked you to show in the Bible how a person could find the Church to take a dispute to. Your non-answer is an answer. It is not findable in the Bible. What do you do when there is a moral or theolgical question and the Bible is silent about it? Is it moral to clone humans? Where is the Church the Bible says we are to go to for answers?

You are being disingenuous. You have no answers so you are being a wiseguy. Anyone reading the thread can see that. Now you will go start another argument and repeat the process. That is the pattern. Denying the truth which you are preasented is serious matter.
 
Protestant101 said:
Conversely; the question is actually in context though. It is based on the Catholic presumption of an “incomplete” Bible which is inherent in the doctrine of “Purgatory.” Therefore, atleast in your post, my question is partially answered: Catholics do teach that the Protestant Canon is “incomplete” and they give “Purgatory” as an example of one of their teachings which would be a good example of a doctrine which cannot be substantiated by the protestant Canon, and needs other materials to qualify it.

My future posts will build on exploration of this and related aspects of this topic.
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Protestant 101 I look forward to hearing from you

Blessings and peace
 
JRKH said:
(Picture an announcer calling a sporting event (wrestling))
And another nice dodge. 😃
Folks, that Protestant101 is a slick one.
Nobody seems to be able to pin him down. No sirrreee!😃 ***************************
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The very fact of your admission that you are trying to “pin me down” says it all. :eek:
 
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