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Cat_Herder
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You didn’t ask for that.
You asked if avoiding contraception and communism were necessary for salvation. The encyclicals explain that both are mortal sins, so there.
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stewstew03
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We believe, Cachonga, that the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth - not Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Russel, James White, Mary Eddy, Ellen White, Charles Parham, William Miller, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn, Bishop TD Jakes, Joel Osteen, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, John Hagee, Jeremiah Wright, or whoever your "church leader’ happens to be.
[BIBLEDRB]1 Tim 3:15[/BIBLEDRB]
So, yes, if the Body of Christ teaches that “when the course of her earthly life was finished Mary was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory” - I happen to believe it.
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Boywonder23k
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Protestants believe the same thing my good sir. The Church is the pillar of truth absolutely in so far as it holds up Gods word. That doesn’t make the Church infallible and certainly doesn’t make Tradition (whatever in the world that means) authoritative. The Protestant rule of faith is the bible not individual church leaders. We can prove (or at least try to) doctrines and dogmas with chapter and verse. Catholics prove “Tradition” by… Well… Saying because the Church says so.
I don’t want to be in that world. Not a healthy way for humans to think (or not think).At least you finally admitted that you believe in the assumption just because the Church says so. That’s the honest thing to do and you should be applauded for it.
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stewstew03
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Sure. And you believe the Trinity because the Church said so. You believe the Bible is inspired because the Church said so. I appreciate the applause, Boywonder. If you decide to be honest, I will applaud you for it as well.Protestants believe the same thing my good sir. The Church is the pillar of truth absolutely in so far as it holds up Gods word. That doesn’t make the Church infallible and certainly doesn’t make Tradition (whatever in the world that means) authoritative. The Protestant rule of faith is the bible not individual church leaders. We can prove (or at least try to) doctrines and dogmas with chapter and verse. Catholics prove “Tradition” by… Well… Saying because the Church says so.
At least you finally admitted that you believe in the assumption just because the Church says so. That’s the honest thing to do and you should be applauded for it.
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Boywonder23k
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Wrong on both counts! I don’t believe in either just because the Church says so I can think for myself. Alas, we are off topic. The thread is about the assumption of Mary and we shouldn’t hijack the topic.
Robert Sungenis and James White had a VERY interesting debate on this. Sungenis always represents the Catholic viewpoint well and he had some interesting points.
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Trebor135
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And you believe that circumcision is not required for entry into the New Covenant “just because the Church” during the time of the twelve apostles “[said] so”, as recorded in Acts chapter fifteen.
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Cat_Herder
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Then why can’t you answer any of my questions about who the Woman of Revelation 12 is and who remains alive from the generation who heard the Olivet Discourse?
What this is really about is that you want to deny the authority of the Catholic Church to teach Sacred Tradition for your own personal reasons. So then, in your world, the Church has no authority to condemn contraception and abortion becuause “everyone can think for themselves.”
If you aren’t going to fight with us for the lives of the innocent, then get out of the way.
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White_Peony
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Jesus acsended by His Own power.
Mary was assumed into heaven by her Son’s power.
Mary was assumed into heaven by her Son’s power.
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ricks1948
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Read. " Munificentissimus Deus" 
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Trebor135
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Your message is very short and its meaning unclear–was there something else you wished to say but it got lost in the posting process?Read. " Munificentissimus Deus"
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Joe_Kelley
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See MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS Pope Pius XII Apostolic Constitution defining “ex cathedra” (from the chair of Peter) the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin)
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De_Montfort
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“What I say in an absoloute sense of our Lord, I say in relative sense of our Blessed Lady. Jesus, in choosing her as his inseparable associate in his life, death, glory and power in heaven and on earth, has given her by grace in his kingdom all the same rights and privileges that he possesses by nature. All that belongs to God by nature belongs to Mary by grace, say the saints, and according to them, just as Jesus and Mary have the same will and the same power, they have also the same subjects, servants and slaves.”
(74 TD) St. Louis de Montfort
(74 TD) St. Louis de Montfort
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ricks1948
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Thank you Joe Kelley, I have a tendency to be brief , will try to work on that. I just read it myself completey, I am Catholic so I believe there is no question that the Blessed Virgin Mary was Assumed body and soul into Heaven.
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Linda_Marie
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Invented Tradition???
No, Tradition came first.
Why should things have biblical support? The Church is not founded on the bible. Jesus founded the Church on Peter. The Bible did not even exist at the time. The Church is founded on the teachings of Christ, not all of which ended up being written down (see the end of John’s Gospel).
The Bible came later, much later, and was determined by the Church. Indeed, there was no bible for the first 300 or so years of Christianity. It was canonised for liturgical use, for use during the Mass, not as a basis for doctrine or dogma. These came from Jesus, not from the Bible.
The bible is part of Tradition and while it contains support for many dogmas and doctrines, it does not contain everything that Jesus said and taught.
It was never meant to be the foundation of the Church, with everything included. It is the supplementary text to go along with the Teachings.
As you said, it is a matter of Authority.
If you accept the Bible at all, you have accepted the Authority of the Church.
It doesn’t stand to reason that one would accept the authority of the bible while rejecting the Authority of the Church who canonised it.
The Church declared that certain writings were divinely inspired and set them apart for use in our liturgies. The Church declared that Mary was Assumed into Heaven.
Why accept the Church’s Authority to determine divinely inspired writings but not to declare that the Mother of God was taken up to Heaven, body and soul?
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ricks1948
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Well said Linda Marie.
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Boywonder23k
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@ Linda Marie-
- Why must things have biblical support? Our lord Jesus Christ constantly found the need to base his actions and teachings from scripture. Your argument is with him not with me. You will also have to explain this question to the majority of the Church fathers whom you hold in such high esteem as they too found the need to justify theology with scriptural support.
- The Bible came later, much later, and was determined by the Church? The Bible was Canonized much later… But the Church always had the apostles writings and viewed them as scripture. It’s not like all of a sudden in 400 AD the bible flew from the sky and was “discovered”. Peter (the “Rock”) referred to Paul’s writings as scripture while he was still alive. Do Catholics not agree with this fact of history? Furthermore, materially, scripture covers all truths necessary for salvation. Scripture contains the very Gospel that The Church holds up. How then does it make since to say that Scripture is subject to the Church and not vice versa? What exactly ARE these teachings that were passed around orally by Jesus and the Apostles that weren’t written down? Was the bodily assumption one of them? If so, why doesnt anyone seem to know about it for the first 4-5 hundred years of Church history?
- Why accept the Church’s Authority to determine divinely inspired writings but not to declare that the Mother of God was taken up to Heaven, body and soul? To put it simply I do not believe that the Church determined scripture. Am I to believe that the Catholic position is that Mathew wasn’t actually inspired authoritative God breathed scripture until some council said so? Werent the words inspired the moment they touched paper? Also it should be noted that scripture has apostolic pedigree. This is something we know as a historical fact not just something we know “because mother church says so”. The same cannot be said of the Assumption.
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patrick457
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Alright, I need to clear this up.
The first generation of Christianity was a Jewish movement, in one sense just another form of Jewish diversity (Second Temple Judaism was highly diverse that some scholars even prefer to use the term ‘Judaisms’, considering each and every group a ‘Judaism’ in its own right): in its externals it would not have looked much different from other Diaspora Jewish communities. For one, the Apostles themselves still worshiped in the Temple and identified themselves as Jews (St. Paul himself, while he is credited with starting the chain which led to the eventual official divorcing of Christianity from Judaism, was keen to assert his Jewish identity when pressed). Believing in Jesus as the Messiah did not mean converting from one faith to another, i.e. rejecting Judaism in favor of something else: rather, this belief is seen to complete and fulfill the lives they have within Judaism. One can say that the first members of the Jesus movement or “the Way” saw themselves as ‘perfected’, ‘true’ Jews. Hence, when the word ‘Scripture’ is used by them, it meant what it means in Judaism: the books of the Old Testament.
As in Jewish synagogues, scrolls of OT books would have formed the core of collections of Scripture in local Christian churches: the Torah, some Prophets, a few Writings, or perhaps even a collection of quotes and snippets from various OT books sharing (or being perceived to share) a similar theme, known as a testimonia. Given how expensive scrolls were in those days, most Jewish and Christian communities would not have had all the Scriptural books within access but would have just had the more popular and frequently-used ones like the Torah, the Psalms or Isaiah handy. Indeed, the idea of having each and every Scriptural book under one cover (as our modern Bibles are) is a later development which came hand-in-hand with the closing of the canon: it was after the canon of Scripture was fixed that we begin to see the prototypes of our Bibles circulating.
Eventually this collection would have been supplemented by early Christian texts that were gaining importance and authority as interpretations of the church’s faith in the light of Jewish Scripture. They would have likely had copies of letters attributed to authoritative figures like Paul or Peter or even Clement or Barnabas or Ignatius of Antioch, or again, another handy collections of ‘excerpts’ from such epistles. They might have apocalyptic texts, like that of John (which is canonical) or of Peter (which is not) or of any other NT figure, or none at all. They would have had one gospel or two, attributed to authors like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Peter, James, Mary or, again, whatever heavyweight Christian figure one could name. Some might even prefer a harmonization of different gospels (like Tatian’s Diatessaron). Then there is also the matter of language: by the 2nd and 3rd century churches in the western half of the Empire preferred Latin translations, while those in the East used different languages like Greek, Syriac, or Coptic.
In short, different Christian communities would not have even agreed on which books to own and read (by ‘reading’ we do not mean “picking a book from the shelf and reading quietly,” but “picking a book from the shelf and reading it aloud in public before everyone”): it all depended on practical matters, such as what texts in what languages were available for copying or which texts get to be read more often in this particular community, as well as the theological orientations of the churches in question (be it orthodox, gnostic, Docetic, Adoptionist, Judaizer, or any other ‘form’ of Christianity from all sides of the spectrum one could name) and their particular needs (which Scriptures best spoke to the interests and practices of which communities?) Given how in one sense, there was a huge diversity of ‘Christianities’ before the Church’s teaching was defined in the great councils (under the traditional way to put it: there were a lot of heresies coexisting with orthodoxy), it is no surprise that there would also be a huge variety in the form of Scripture - which was also the case with the Judaism/s of the Second Temple period.
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patrick457
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(Continued)
Imagine different small local churches made up of very different populations scattered throughout the Empire from Palestine to Greece, from Egypt to Africa and Rome; communities composed of both Jew and gentile, some literate, most not; various groups translating, copying and circulating scrolls and codices of Jewish Scriptures and early Christian writings, sharing with each other through loose networks and informal patterns of exchange; communities that were more or less marginal to state power and regulation. Inevitably, different communities would have had different collections, different libraries of Scripture. These collections were never closed or fixed, but were interconnected with the libraries of other churches, that texts flowed and morphed within larger, non-centralized social networks. And it continued to be that way until the religious and social climate of the 4th-5th centuries led to the eventual crystallization of the canon of Scripture (the NT in particular): coincidentally, it was also around that time that the technology of the codex became sufficiently advanced enough to be able to hold anything close to an entire canon of Jewish and Christian writings (as mentioned before), something that was impossible in earlier times.
Imagine different small local churches made up of very different populations scattered throughout the Empire from Palestine to Greece, from Egypt to Africa and Rome; communities composed of both Jew and gentile, some literate, most not; various groups translating, copying and circulating scrolls and codices of Jewish Scriptures and early Christian writings, sharing with each other through loose networks and informal patterns of exchange; communities that were more or less marginal to state power and regulation. Inevitably, different communities would have had different collections, different libraries of Scripture. These collections were never closed or fixed, but were interconnected with the libraries of other churches, that texts flowed and morphed within larger, non-centralized social networks. And it continued to be that way until the religious and social climate of the 4th-5th centuries led to the eventual crystallization of the canon of Scripture (the NT in particular): coincidentally, it was also around that time that the technology of the codex became sufficiently advanced enough to be able to hold anything close to an entire canon of Jewish and Christian writings (as mentioned before), something that was impossible in earlier times.
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patrick457
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No contest here, but Catholics (and the Orthodox) believe that the truths required for our salvation is contained, not just in Scripture, but also in Tradition, with the two going hand-in-hand.
I might add here a slightly unrelated comment. There is that popular iconic idea of the Bible as “God’s book of answers,” a sort of divine manual, complete in itself and spoke for itself, which contains each and every thing you need to find happiness in this world and salvation in the next. News flash: it’s a relatively modern idea, at best spanning only more or less a couple of centuries. This idea of ‘Bible as book of answers’ is a product of the Protestant idea of sola scriptura mixed with popular 18th-19th century Evangelicalism (which in turn is rooted in a romanticized image of 16th-17th century Puritan piety), which upheld the Bible as a panacea for all of industrial America’s social, familial, and individual ills. The modern Bible publishing business is in many ways the child of this mentality: under the idea that since the Bible is the solution for all questions and problems in this life and the next, groups like the American Bible Society and the Gideons were founded to get the Word out in public and help save society. The fundamentalist movement, and neo-evangelicalism are, meanwhile, the theological heirs of this Puritanic Biblicism: fundamentalism was a reaction to two intellectual revolutions of the late 19th century - Darwinism and Biblical higher criticism - both of which challenged the view that the Bible is an empirical account of human history or the literal Word of God, while the media-savvy neo-evangelicalism is in turn a reaction against the separatist stance fundamentalism has taken.
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Boywonder23k
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Thank you for your posts Patrick they were both very interesting.
However, I do think that you overstated your position in the first post. Of course the
Books did circulate in this way, but on your view one would expect the councils of Carthage to have been arguing over tumultuous volume of randomly collected and circulated authoritative books. However, we know that just wasn’t the case and that council canonized more or less the same books we have today. In either case, one can not deny that the Church did have authoritative writings to guide them which was to my previous point.
I would like very much to challenge your “book of answers” comment and see if we can tie it into this threads topic. First of all I do not agree that the Bible being treated as a book of answers is new. As I have already said Jesus treated scripture in this way. Also, for an easy example, see Athanasius writings and see that his view of scripture was very protestant in nature. The Christian Church has always held up scripture as the standard for which dogmas and beliefs should be based.
But for now let us assume that it IS a totally new development. The presupposition in your “news flash” is that anything new can not be true because If it was someone else would have discovered it already. This is obviously a fallacious line of reasoning. The idea that no new hermeneutics can be applied and nothing new can be discovered is simply silly. We must all face together the reality that every opinion and tradition must be tested and tried on its own merits. Yes, that does mean it isn’t easy. Yes, that does mean we have to struggle and work and do hermeneutics. That doesn’t throw us into relativism or anarchy. It throws us into the world of academia.
Further, I do not understand how Catholics can constantly complain about “new” ideas and then hold to the bodily assumption of Mary! Or papal infallibility! If “new” is bad than your own principle is used against you. There simply IS NO EVIDENCE of any early patristic father making a case for Mary’s assumption.
However, I do think that you overstated your position in the first post. Of course the
Books did circulate in this way, but on your view one would expect the councils of Carthage to have been arguing over tumultuous volume of randomly collected and circulated authoritative books. However, we know that just wasn’t the case and that council canonized more or less the same books we have today. In either case, one can not deny that the Church did have authoritative writings to guide them which was to my previous point.
I would like very much to challenge your “book of answers” comment and see if we can tie it into this threads topic. First of all I do not agree that the Bible being treated as a book of answers is new. As I have already said Jesus treated scripture in this way. Also, for an easy example, see Athanasius writings and see that his view of scripture was very protestant in nature. The Christian Church has always held up scripture as the standard for which dogmas and beliefs should be based.
But for now let us assume that it IS a totally new development. The presupposition in your “news flash” is that anything new can not be true because If it was someone else would have discovered it already. This is obviously a fallacious line of reasoning. The idea that no new hermeneutics can be applied and nothing new can be discovered is simply silly. We must all face together the reality that every opinion and tradition must be tested and tried on its own merits. Yes, that does mean it isn’t easy. Yes, that does mean we have to struggle and work and do hermeneutics. That doesn’t throw us into relativism or anarchy. It throws us into the world of academia.
Further, I do not understand how Catholics can constantly complain about “new” ideas and then hold to the bodily assumption of Mary! Or papal infallibility! If “new” is bad than your own principle is used against you. There simply IS NO EVIDENCE of any early patristic father making a case for Mary’s assumption.
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