"Upon These Thousands of Pebbles I Will Build My Churches"

[exoflare]

First of all, there is no consensus on this point. It’s true that many early Christians said that the original Gospel of Matthew was in “Hebrew” (i.e., Aramaic), and this may well be true. But we can’t be sure just what this Gospel entailed. It may simply have been one of the documents on which the Greek author drew.

True. It’s not as relevant anyway, the question of which language the Gospel was written in. The important thing is to remember that those mentioned in that passage would have been speaking in Aramaic.

 

[colliric]

First of all, there is no consensus on this point. It’s true that many early Christians said that the original Gospel of Matthew was in “Hebrew” (i.e., Aramaic), and this may well be true. But we can’t be sure just what this Gospel entailed. It may simply have been one of the documents on which the Greek author drew.

More to the point, the Holy Spirit chose to give us the Greek Gospel, not the Aramaic version (if such a thing ever existed). Your argument is an oddly Protestant–even liberal Protestant–one. You are going back behind the version inspired by the Holy Spirit and behind the version the Church approved to a hypothetical Aramaic original. This is a very shaky kind of argument.

The irony is that the Petros/Petra point doesn’t blunt the Catholic argument that much. Clearly the point of the play on words is the similarity between petros and petra, not the difference. The whole linguistic argument is pointless IMHO.

Edwin

The point being?

The same church which sanctioned these books, is the same church which believes Peter was the rock and that the conclusive evidence point to Jesus talking to him in Aramaic, not Greek… which makes complete sense.

The real point is, whatever language Matthew was written in, the Church under the guidance of the Holy spirit sanctioned it to be included in the bible. The church which the spirit used to allow us to have access to a complete teaching of holy scripture is the Catholic.

Logic follows that if the Holy Spirit originally choose the Catholic Church to create the structure of the bible, surely this is the church which is therefore the church Christ setup on earth with it’s unbroken line of Bishops of Rome.

We would not have had the bible(even in it’s current “edited” Protestant form) without the Catholic Church deciding which books went into the “Old testament” and which books went into the “new”, and how the books were to be structured.

If the catholic church got it’s interpretations of Matthew 16:18 wrong, then surely the entire structure or at least a big chuck of it is flawed, Because the early Catholic church crafted the original holy bible as a complete teaching tool(I.E a textbook of sorts, Oral teaching is different) to be understood from the whole.

Why do protestants accept an old testament which is structured as the Catholic Church set it? yes they took out some books, but the setting out of the other books was the same… Why didn’t protestants go more back to the Hebrew structure?

Why do protestants accept that the catholic church was essentially right when it decided what books were to go into the new testament? If this church was/is not guided by god, why do they accept that this church made the right decisions on the structure of the NT and the OT? If this church was/is not guided by god, for that matter why do protestants, specifically Sola Scriptua protestants(with the exception of SDAs and SDBs), accept the Catholic tradition of Sunday worship when there is no basis for it, and Jesus celebrated Sabbath in the bible?

Why would god in the 1500s suddenly decide to make edits to his already complete masterpiece?

 

[Curious]

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http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon1.gif "Upon These Thousands of Pebbles I Will Build My Churches"
Protestants:

Do you think it matters whether or not you go to church, or is it okay to just accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior in private?

If it is important to be involved in a church, does it matter which one you go to?

If it does matter, how do you know you are going to the right one?

If it doesn’t matter, how do you explain why so many Protestant churches teach so many different doctrines that contradict one another when God cannot contradict Himself? Yet they all claim to be teaching what Christ really intended.

1. I don’t think church is the end all/be all of a person’s salvation, but there is the bible passage that wants us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. So I guess assemply is required in some form or another.
2. Probably
3. It’s impossible to know. Mostly you have to be “led by the Holy Spirit” or something when dealing with picking out a Protestant church to go to. Or blindfold yourself, turn around a bunch of times, and pick the one you’re pointing to when you stop. Who knows.

 

[O.S.Luke]

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I do not agree with your line of reasoning here. Peter exemplified the faith that Christ wished to birng to our attention. I absolutely do not believe that the Catholic Church is the one true church. The Body of Christ, made up of all Christians, as the Scriptures say, is.

As of today, I have dropped out of RCIA. Mainly due to the words of Catholics on this forum. I don’t know where that leaves me, but as always, when God shows me Truth, I have to make the right decision instead of the easy one.

The message I heard in church was vastly different from the message I heard here. In church, we learned about our Lord and Savior, Christ…here, we learn about somewhat else. The focus is almost entirely off of Christ and on men, on their rules, and on things superficial to the salvational message of God.

No matter what church I attend, I belong to the one true church–Christ. Of which all Christians are members.

Ladybug:

I went through this same struggle in college - very drawn to the Catholic Church, but upon becoming a musician for masses and RCIA classes, I became very turned off by many who called themselves Catholic. A found a lot of majoring in the minors, a lot of arrogance, superiority, and outright bigotry of other Christians. While I was aware of a lot of ignorant Protestants who could be bigoted and prejudiced regarding Catholics, I had no idea that this was true among some Catholics regarding Protestants. Very distasteful.

I found peace, and that peace has continued to be confirmed by spiritual discernment and validation in my present vocation.

CAF has a reputation for being a bit extremist. While I’m not Catholic, I think it only fair to say that just because some Catholics here are a bit over the top, that in no way should pigeonhole ALL Catholics this way.

So I will pray for you, Ladybug, that you find peace. And I too know that the True Church is Christ.

O+