Sure, there are lots of disobedient protestants too. What does that prove?I haven’t yet quoted any Catholic sources, most of my stuff have actually been from protestant websites, much to your dismay I might add now. A fine thing to do, throw in the towel and tell the other person to pray about it, I might as well make the same suggestion to you.
Since you can’t continue the dialogue, you might as well be on your way
Take care
Jesus was, which was my point. Please don’t waste my time or yours with empty rhetoric.
Being an instrument of a government authority whose job it is to “carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” sometimes does mean exactly that.
That doesn’t make sense. If it’s a good thing for the government to do it, then it’s a good thing for Christians in government to do it. It cannot simultaneously be a good thing when non-Christians do it and a bad thing when Christians do it.
Here you’re again assuming your own infallibility by holding that your understanding of Christ’s teachings to involve unlimited non-resistance is correct. It isn’t, but I can’t convince you of that since you’ve assumed it’s true.
There went the useless rhetoric. Seriously, I put effort into my posts: if all you can say in response to certain claims of mine is empty rhetoric, just say nothing at all and save us both some time.
Except I clearly showed where it doesn’t, and yet you still refuse to understand.
Where did He say this?
The parable of the sower and the seed says nothing of numbers.
Are you now a KJV-only advocate as well?
Can you refer me to the post in which you answered this? I must have missed it.
No; rather strikingly, you put it in yourself.
Please offer quotations of the ECFs that support your viewpoint. If you already have offered such quotations, please refer me to the post in which you offered them.
This doesn’t answer my claim, which is that it takes more faith to believe in oneself against 2,000 years of Christian history than it takes to accept the 2,000 years of Christian history at face value.
The devil certainly might, I’m sure you’d agree. What do you do when two sincere seekers are led in very different directions? I used to believe as you do, but after sincerely seeking an answer (years before my entrance into the Church) I found that Scripture clearly teaches a right and responsibility of a man to protect (by force, if necessary) people from aggressors. You have an decision to make at this point: you can either question my sincerity, or you can recognize that you at least might have been led astray despite your own sincerity.
But they didn’t go astray after they were instrumental in preserving His written word, they “went astray” long before God used them. God used their “astray” theology by which to judge which works were Scripture and which weren’t. It just doesn’t make sense to accept the canonized Scriptures and reject the criteria by which they were canonized.
You’re right, He doesn’t. There are two ways that it could be the case that He doesn’t contradict Himself: either your interpretation of the New Testament is right, and the Catholic Church and the vast majority of Christians throughout history are wrong, or your interpretation of the New Testament is wrong, and the Catholic Church and the vast majority of Christians throughout history are right. The former case takes far more faith to believe than the latter.
You’d have to be a fool to think it’s impossible that you’re making a glaring error in your interpretation of Scripture!
I’ve shooed my pets out with a broom too and never hurt one of them yet. I’ll bet Jesus was a better aim than me with that whip too
It doesn’t matter. The threat of hitting someone is violence in itself. These days, He would have gone to jail for assault even if He hit no one.
Willingness is very different than desire. Those who desire to injure or kill other people, even in the context of a just war, are unreasonable.
That looks like a concession to me.
Not bad, so it’s just ultimately (me vs everyone else), my interpretation vs everyone else. Since you don’t seem to be the greatest greek scholar, good luck with your study of the Bible. I’m sure you’ll have many dialectical stalemates in the years to come.
Yes, it can.
You have no problem using it. You just did…Mine was not empty. I was pointing out FACTS.
No, I REFUSE to bend my understanding to suite some twisted and anti-Christ doctrine like this one.
Luke 12:32Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Matt 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it
It answered your question. Please re-read it.
It’s a good translation. I often find it agrees with teh Douay.
Hence the similarities…
I already answered this. You don’t want to waste your time with my supposed “empty rhetoric” but you ignore my answers and pose the same questions over and over. If it’s not okay to shake someone then it clearly is not okay to kill them.
I honestly don’t have time. You need to read my posts more carefully.
You know very well that there are differences of opinions by the ECF on ALL SORTS of issues!
If you mean specifically pertaining to non-resistance, no, i didn’t post any. My only point is that the ECFs are not authoritative b/c they contradict one another in many beliefs. You may believe you can judge which of their beliefs were correct and which incorrect according to the developement of Catholic doctrine. I’ve got serious reservations about doing that.
I trust God answers my prayers.
I can’t judge your sincerity or any other issues that may or may not contribute to you making a fallible judgement about the church. We are all fallible. Unless God will appear to both of us right now and give us the answer, we are both in the same boat. I’ve no anxiety about this.
You don’t know that any other church could not have produced the same results. And it isn’t a guarantee they will stay faithful in other things.
It takes a lot of mental-gymnastics for this to be a “logically coherent interpretation”. I don’t even want to discuss it anymore b/c it is so blatantly perverse and anti-Christ.
I didn’t know the truth that God revealed in His Word was hidden in the Greek
I don’t believe any of the meaning is lost. Looking at even your translation in light of the whole NT reveals the meaning. I know the KJV and Douay are close to the originals. You don’t seem to have much faith that God can preserve something.
It is w/drawing from an argument. You have Scripture to learn this from. If you’d look at that before consulting your Catechism you’d see it fine.
Well I’m not. I’ve never had to discuss non-resistance to anyone that didn’t agree with it. I didn’t know how widespread this belief was, nor that it was Catholic doctrine. It’s really disturbing to say the least. And my life does not accomodate me sitting on a message board all afternoon. It is downright sinful for me to do so.
Wowee… Even a non-Christian gets it!
There is much more in the article. I hope this will help to open a few eyes and hearts.
I don’t see how. Provide another example of acts that are good for non-Christians to do but bad for Christians to do.
No, you weren’t, but for the sake of saving our time and annoyance at each other, I’ll simply ignore your rhetoric from now on.
You have no basis on which to call this doctrine “twisted and anti-Christ” except your own understanding, which (as I’ve noted before) you first must assume to be infallible before you can say that doctrines which contradict it are “twisted and anti-Christ.”
Sounds like a endearing diminutive to me, not a reference to the actual size of the flock. Furthermore, he was referring to the group to whom He was speaking: He was not making a pronouncement that His flock would forever remain “little” even if He were talking about numbers.
The narrowness of the way can refer to the difficulty in walking it, not necessarily to the numbers of people who successfully do so. With respect to “few there be that find it,” Christians still represent a minority among people who have been on earth, so “few” is satisfied, I think, by any or all Christian groups. Or do you require a stricter meaning of “few,” one which means “fewer than all the groups bigger than my preferred one, but large enough to contain mine”?
No, it didn’t answer my question. It answered why some fail to understand. It did not answer why so many fail to understand. If you want to claim that God’s written word is not “complicated” to understand, then you need to have an explanation for why so few sincere seekers have succeeded in understanding it in the way you “simply” understand it.
At the time I was composing my reply, you most definitely had not.
No, you answered someone else’s reply while I posted my reply (which required actual research, which takes time to do).
No one is saying “You can’t shake, but you can kill.” The use of the word “shake” at all is an idiomatic usage meaning “to extort money,” as I noted in my reply. He’s saying you can’t extort money. He did not say they should lay down their swords and quit being soldiers.
It’s hard to believe that you’re really concerned about proclaiming the truth if you’re unwilling to go through a couple pages and search for a relevant term (which you know, but I do not) to refer me to a post you made earlier. You’ve made a lot of posts here: I try to keep track of all your arguments, but I may not be able to. Won’t you help me discover the truth (if your intent truly is to proclaim what you believe to be the truth amongst those like me who haven’t yet accepted it)?
That doesn’t answer my question about this particular issue.
Then you have no right to make the claim that they were inconsistent on this point.
My argument was not based on the authoritativeness of the ECFs. It was simply that the vast majority of the Apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors, and evangelists throughout history have not taught what you are now teaching. Either they secretly believed what you believe, or they disagreed with what you believe. In either case, I claim that it takes more faith to believe that this vast array of Church leaders were all either silent or wrong than it takes to believe that you could be wrong in your interpretation.
This is further down the rabbit hole of a non-response to my original claim, so I’m ignoring it.
And you must also implicitly trust that God does not answer the prayers of those sincere seekers who have arrived at different conclusions than you have.
My judgment about the Church is irrelevant in this argument. I’m talking about my judgment about pacifism. I was raised as a non-pacifist. I sincerely sought the truth and became a pacifist. I sincerely sought further and rejected pacifism. You must deny my sincerity at one of these junctions, or else reject your idea that sincerity ensures rectitude.
Except, apparently, when we understand Scripture to teach non-violence. Then we may assume that we’re infallible, and reject the opinions of all Christians who oppose us.
There you stand, it seems.
I don’t see the relevance of this statement.
Do you think that the same God who clearly teaches “We cannot do evil so that good may result” used evil means (bad theology) to achieve a good end (the canonization of Scripture)?
You’re holding the viewpoint, opposed to all common sense and intuitive morality, that a person should not defend innocents against an aggressor, and you have the audacity to accuse me of mental gymnastics?
I could say likewise. The difference between us is that I recognize my own fallibility in interpreting Scripture, and you do not.
I quoted a few ECFs who held a non-resistant position a few posts ago in case you didn’t see it. But regardless, popularity of opinion is no indication of truth.
About the best I can do (and all you can do either in your own circumstances) is pray that I am properly disposed to have “eyes to see” or “ears to hear”. Not everyone understood Jesus’ own words as they fell from his own lips either. Yet some did believe and followed Him. It did not require an infallible magisterium to step in there and explain things either. To the best of my knowledge, I do my best to receive the truth and obey it - even a hard teaching like non-resistance. Trusting that you do too to the best of your ability and the grace of God, I rely on the mercy of God in both of our conclusions. Again, I’ve no anxiety about this b/c I know I am willing to do anything at all to conform to the will of God.
I thought this was a side-issue about authority, which wasn’t totally irrelevant…
Not at all. You are where you are in your understanding. I am where I am. Am I being given more? I have no idea. God can judge that. But I’ve no doubt about my sincerity. I don’t doubt yours either. I’ve flip-flopped in my convictions many, many times the past several years. God meets us where we are.
Again, I don’t form my conscience according to popular opinion. I appologize for the arrogant way I’ve presented my convictions. I mean that. I just think it is so obviously against the nature of Christ that it seems quite sinful to even entertain the possibility that any killing is permissible for a Christian. I sincerely appologize for coming accross so arrogantly. It just seemed like a given to me.
In reference to “you don’t know that any other church could have produced the same results” (the Bible canon)…
How is the canonization of scripture “evil means”? I am merely pointing out that it does not take an infallible magisterium to be used to canonize scripture. God has used infallible mediums to bring about his will many, MANY times. The fact that God uses someone or something in no way ensures faithfulness.
There are many paradoxes in Christianity. B/c something is hard to do does not mean it is untrue. What you call “opposed to all common sense and intuitive morallity” is equivilent to saying "against the carnal nature. But many of Christ’s teachings are against our nature: “deny yourself” “take up your cross” “unless you hate mother, brother, sister…” “be perfect” …There are many hard teachings of Christ. You are not exempt from any of them. Non-resistance is no different, and there are SEVERAL instances where Christ teaches and exemplifies it.
I already admitted my fallibility. That doesn’t mean I accept the claim that the CC is infallible.
Not hidden in Greek? Unless you are a Greek speaker, of course the Bible is hidden in Greek to you as that’s what all translations are done from. If you read the history of Bible translations even the modern ones are translated from the ‘original Greek’.
But we all know that the Jews never actually believed the parents or that man, infact they chased the man away:
So did the Bible get it wrong? No, there was just confusion in translations on what the best word was to be used, and in English perhaps 500 - 600 years ago ‘until’ bore several meanings, that I’m not aware of, but it’s possible since English has changed too, I’m doing all this to demonstrate the major point, yes things are hidden away in Greek which is why Bible Scholars and even revisionists of KJV that you are using is done in Greek or even Aramaic.
I never said he can’t? The Bible is preserved, thanks to Catholics, Protestants and other Christians a-like, there is no issue in regards to that. The meaning however has changed through time in various denominations, this is obvious because Lutherans believe one thing whilst the others believe other things. Catholics and Orthodox have been rather static in their beliefs for the last 2000 years, so if anything it’s you who seems to believe that God is forever changing the meaning of the words.
We all recognize you don’t have to sit a message board all day, there is no need to repeatedly say it many times, answer what you can, when you can. Redundant statements such as “you have scripture to learn” from is as void as “you have air to breath from” - I was quoting scripture as much as possible before, just as much as I was breathing in air.
There is not all that much ‘anger’ here, if there is any kind of anger it would be solely that you would not defend your family from attack, that’s pretty much all, no one is angry that you have a different point of view though I guess some of us, including myself get into heated debates quite easilyThe more I think on this, the more I realize how I’ve come accross on here.
I have expressed a lot of anger on here, for which I’m sorry. I am not angry at any of you. I am angry with myself for having returned to the CC and abandoned all of my convictions on one little (and most likely erroneous) fact (the canonization of Scripture through - possibly - the CC). And I realize that my having done a 360 right here in this thread has thrown people off and caused a lot of confusion…
