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ChosenOne7
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DelsonJacobs
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As Catholics I think it would be best to give guests from other faiths assurance that we are not attacking them. There are more of “us” than them. Give them a chance to breathe, catch up, and the freedom to “choose their battles,” so to speak.
And unless the question doesn’t require direct Scriptural quotations (for example the one I just posted covering the difference in Christmas customs), Jehovah’s Witnesses are looking for us as Catholics to explain the Scriptural reasons for our beliefs. Where we can offer this (and this is most of the time), I think this a wonderful chance for Catholics to do so. The Pope wants us to know our faith and the Scriptures better than we do the technology which runs our computers, the Internet, and smart phones. Here is our chance to expand in this direction.
Also, I hope the JWs visitors don’t get the impression that we are demanding you to accept our views. Things might get heated between some, but I think when we at least have a chance to explain our reasoning behind our beliefs then it is enough to move on. We may not have anything to say or add once a subject has been settled, on either side, but we shouldn’t demand or expect one another to claim “defeat” or “converted” because of this. Open discussion and mutual respect is the goal, I hope. In a world that is becoming less and less religious and more and more disrespectful of Scripture, we as Catholics should find those who wish to respectfully discuss religion refreshing instead of threatening.
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ChosenOne7
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Now that’s where I take my hat off and give you Respect!
but that’s why I say most people have the wrong views about JW’s just like most people have the wrong views about Catholics… It’s sucks how religion and beliefs has become the barrier between people… As Christians regardless of what faith we from each of us should be displaying love, especially to neighbor… That is how Christ’s true followers would be identified anyway hey
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minkymurph
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DelsonJacobs;13054469:
I was always taught the Shepherds brought a lamb. I have never seen any need to question it. Am I wrong about the Angels celebrating Jesus birth as well?
I can’t point you to a verse in the Bible as I would have to go up to the attic and look for a Bible, but let’s say for the sake of argument it does not. Is it rationale to conclude it is wrong to buy children presents at Christmas on the premise the Bible doesn’t specifically say the Shepherd’s brought a lamb when he was born? Did the Israelites/Jews ever buy each other presents? If so, when and why?
The fact specific statements are not found in the Bible is not in itself conclusive proof it did not happen. The fact we are not commanded By Scripture to engage in a certain act is not conclusive proof we should not do so. To my knowledge, and correct me if I am wrong, it is not specifically and irrevocably stated in Scripture we should not give our children presents on their birthday, nor on a day the Church designated for celebrating the birth Christ. We believe many things that are not specifically stated in the Bible, and engage in many practices we are not commanded as Christians to engage in. To be quite honest, to me this line of argument is futile nitpicking.
As I said in a previous post, I don’t believe God is looking down disapprovingly on people who buy their children presents at Christmas on the premise He did neither commanded them nor give them permission to engage in such a practice.
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pacloc
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Delson,
I would like to know where you are getting you understanding of God’s selective omniscience. I only assumed JWs believed this, are you sure you have read this from a reliable Church source? Most Church Fathers believe that the Son of God does in fact know the hour, that this is not a literal statement, but meant that He would not reveal the exact date to them but just the signs of the time, for their own good.
I would like to know where you are getting you understanding of God’s selective omniscience. I only assumed JWs believed this, are you sure you have read this from a reliable Church source? Most Church Fathers believe that the Son of God does in fact know the hour, that this is not a literal statement, but meant that He would not reveal the exact date to them but just the signs of the time, for their own good.
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ChosenOne7
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ChosenOne7;13054501:
I think that’s the thing with most people… Preaching to people makes you learn alot from them… People in general just believe what they are told they don’t actually check if it’s in the Bible… But those people will be held accountable by God for not teaching truth… We don’t judge… As Jehovah’s Witnesses we don’t celebrate birthdays so I can’t answer you on that you should do some research and read up about birthdays if you get timeDelsonJacobs;13054469:
I was always taught the Shepherds brought a lamb. I have never seen any need to question it. Am I wrong about the Angels celebrating Jesus birth as well?
I can’t point you to a verse in the Bible as I would have to up to attic and look for a Bible, but let’s say for the sake of argument it does not. Is it rationale to conclude it is wrong to buy children presents at Christmas on the premise the Bible doesn’t specifically say the Shepherd’s brought a lamb?
The fact specific statements are not found in the Bible does not conclusive proof it did not happen, and the fact we were not commanded in Scripture to engage in a certain act us not conclusive proof we should not do so. To my knowledge, and correct me if I am wrong, it is not specifically and irrevocably stated in Scripture we should not give our children presents on their birthday nor on a day the Church designated for celebrating the birth Christ. We believe many things that are not specifically stated in the Bible, and engage in many practices we are not commanded as Christians to engage in. To be quite honest, to me this line of argument is futile nitpicking.
As I said in a previous post, I don’t believe God is looking down disapprovingly on people who buy their children presents at Christmas as He did neither command them nor give them permission to engage in such a practice.
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pacloc
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This is not true. JWs are afraid to go against the men in New York, so they obey their ban on celebrating the anniversary of people’s birth. But they in fact celebrate birthdays, I have never heard of JWs being banned from throwing baby showers, pamper parties, or getting gifts for a new born. This is pure nonsensical. They celebrate the birth of humans like any human should. After this is where they lose their way. Parents are forced to view the anniversary of that most wonderful day as nothing special. It doesn’t matter that X many years ago on this day, an Icon of God came into the world. But hey let’s celebrate the anniversary of the day we were married, forget the kids. No JW would ever read into the Bible that celebrating the anniversary of their children’s birth was evil, only because of the blind obedience to the men in New York does this sick practice continue. Almost all JW parents hint toward their children their happiness on their birthday, but know they are not to show it with any kind of celebration, truly sad and pathetic.
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DelsonJacobs
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The Christmas feast we know now originated with the Catholic Church itself about the same time that the Bible canon was being formed. Just as the Church used the authority it believes it had from Christ to develop a Christian Scripture canon, it also used this authority to develop a form of worship.
The form of worship is actually the same in Jewish synagogues of the first century era. The only difference is that it observed Holy Communion at the end of each gathering as well as added some readings from letters of the apostles and Church Fathers to the cycle of readings of the Hebrew texts that the synagogue employed.
The reading of the Scriptures in the synagogues followed a prescribed cycle, known as a liturgy, that covered most of the Hebrew Scriptures over a year to three years, reading pre-selected and scheduled portions on the Sabbath. There is an example of this when Jesus gets up to read and “the scroll of Isaiah is handed to him.” (Luke 4.17) This was not selected on a whim, it just happened to be the Sabbath eve on which that portion of Isaiah was read during the liturgical cycle of the Jews.
The Christians did the same thing, except they started reading from the Gospel accounts and some of the apostolic letters as well. Eventually the Church developed its own liturgical cycle, and the days on which certain readings were to be covered became the Liturgical Calendar.
The most important of days on this calendar was originally the Passover Season, Nisan 14-16. On these days the Church would break the liturgical cycle to read those accounts from Scripture which described the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. This later became the first feast on the Christian Liturgical Calendar, which in English is known as the Triduum of the Lord’s Supper, Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter. It may sound confusing that this is a Triduum when four days are mentioned, but these are sundown to sundown observances with Easter beginning on the sundown that ends Holy Saturday, thus covering three sundowns: that of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Because of this the Church began to set aside other days during the Liturgical Calendar in which the readings from Scripture and the Apostles would cover events important to Christians. When the birth of Christ was considered, the Church chose the winter to counter the lively spring of “resurrection” experienced in the Northern hemisphere. By this time the Church began to officially recognize as canon the books and letters they read from during the Liturgy, and these became the New Testament or Christian Scriptures.
There is no mention of the development of the liturgy and its observed dates in the Bible because this came after the texts were written and while the canonization was occurring. Just like the Bible makes no mention of the process and history of how the various books of Scripture became the Bible, it also doesn’t mention the process behind the Mass and the liturgy that came to accompany it for the same reasons. Canonization came after Liturgy. Liturgy came after the New Testament texts were completed. The New Testament texts are only what they are because they were chosen to be used in Liturgy.
Today the Liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church has been adjusted to be adopted and used by most Protestant faiths. On the same Sunday in any given Christian denomination that observes the same Liturgical calendar you will hear virtually the three same readings from Scripture upon which the sermon or homily will be based. In three years time practically all the important events of Scripture will be publicly read this way before the cycle starts again.
Thus Christmas grew from the Liturgy. The choice readings from the ancient Liturgy helped shape Scripture. There are no commands in Scripture on how to hold a Christian worship service because at the time Christians didn’t see the Bible as the basis for the religion they already belonged to. To them their religion was based on Jesus and the teachings of the Apostles. Only later was the Bible added to this foundation. By the time the canon was settled in the fourth century C.E., the Liturgy which helped create it was basically set up beside it. They complement one another. But the religion that started both didn’t begin with a liturgy or a canonized New Testament. That true religion was already there. Scripture and liturgy are products of Christianity, not the basis for it, or so Catholics and the early Christians believed.
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minkymurph
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ChosenOne7
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I don’t agree with you… But okay that’s your viewpoint on the matter… It’s birthdays that are mentioned in a bad light in the Bible… You should do some research tell an check up on birthdays… Google that
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pacloc
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What do you not agree to? Please explain how birthdays are evil. Maybe the days that C. T. Russel and Rutherford were born, much like Judas’ day of birth.I don’t agree with you… But okay that’s your viewpoint on the matter… It’s birthdays that are mentioned in a bad light in the Bible… You should do some research tell an check up on birthdays… Google that
And you want me to do research on birthdays. I’m pretty sure it simply the day on which one is born. I have done plenty of research on what this means, and this is why to ignore this day is preposterous. This is the day that an Icon of God enters the Earth from the womb. This is the day that before which, the person born was not known by his brothers is now known and they have filled a void in the Body of Christ. The world will never be the same once this happens. If you really treasured life, which is God, you would celebrate new life. Instead, the watchtower loves darkness and death, and wants to snuff out life, and make up strange and irrational reasons to confuse the confused.
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DelsonJacobs
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In all honesty, both what you are saying and I am saying are correct. In Catholic theology it is not one or the other, but both.
Because that is confusing to someone from another faith on how Catholicism sees things I didn’t go into the greater details of it. But here it is since you asked.
Catholicism recognizes that God transcends time and space. Because of that what occurred during the earthly life of the Son of God was both not as limited to the actual time and space in which it occurred from a human vantage point and just as limited. What Jesus said was correct from a temporal standpoint, but the complexity of how it played out in the actual person of the Trinity transcends our ability to fully comprehend.
You see from God’s viewpoint all of history, it’s beginning and ending, including the Incarnation, came into being instantly all at once before God from the Trinity’s viewpoint. But on the temporal level where existence is experienced through time and change, all these events had yet unfolded. God knows the beginning and the middle and the end much as you can see all the letters in a sentence, but from our vantage point we have to read through the sentence to experience things.
From eternity God knows all. But when the Son left the company of the Trinity to engage mankind on the temporal plane, God began experiencing the limits of time and space on the continuum we take for granted. As such Jesus could say that certain things escaped his knowledge for various reasons, either because it did not aid the unfolding of time or because from his current temporal standpoint certain things were now so (or both), making the exercise of omniscient selective due to the Son freely choosing to experience the limitation of time and space.
Outside of the temporal line and in eternity the same limits are transcended. It is not that they don’t exist, but they are not binding. But the opposite was true for the Son when he entered the temporal plane. This free choice is the limiting of omniscience, freely chosen, but mysteriously part of the plan of salvation nonetheless.
I can gather all the details you need on this and send them to you in a private message as they don’t add to the discussion of this thread. Some of these sources are old, and it was years ago during my first introduction into advanced theology that I came across them, but I know the sources are there. But in the end its neither one way or the other but both and, as some explain it, probably even more than that.
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ChosenOne7
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minkymurph
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ChosenOne7
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The Bible Only makes mention of 2 birthdays and both of them were held by pagans and at both birthday parties something bad happened… There’s no evidence In scripture that shows any of God’s people before or after Christ celebrating there birthday, neither Christ or his diciples… If this day was so important like u say God would of put it in the Bible but he didn’t he only put 2 records of pagans celebrating birthdays. On that bases we don’t celebrate birthdays. Being Christians means one should become Christ like… Jesus said he left a model for us to follow… As Jehovah’s Witnesses we follow Jesus by what the Bible make ls mention of him because that’s what God felt is important for us to know about him… Hence why we go preaching too because Jesus done it
Oh and we love life… I thank God everyday for giving me the strength to stand up and for giving me another day to live… We treasure life… We can’t wait to live forever on earth… I don’t even have a desire to go to heaven that’s how much I love and treasure life lol… I want to be a fleshly human not a spirit creature
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jlhargus
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I looked at the post you mentioned. I found no answers I found only questions. I have no problem sticking to a topic however I do have a problem being lead around with a ring in my nose. You asking all the questions and I responding to them. No thanks. You can pick one of the following, “The bible never mentions anywhere”, and post your scriptural evidence for that teaching. Its as simple as that. I’m not interested in answering 101 questions. I already answered your, the bible never mentions anywhere. We both know you wont answer with scriptural evidence because those teachings are no where found in the bible.
For instance, **the bible never mentions anywhere **Christ invisibly returning in 1914? In fact the bible teaches every eye will see him when he returns. Yet the WT has constantly tried to justify that doctrine with many reasonings. Claiming the generation of 1914 would not pass away before armageddon. Using the phrase, Millions now living will never die.
[Rv1:7 Behold, **he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. 8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. ]
Rv1:8 also tells us, he, which is to come is the Almighty. Who was pierced? Who is to come? Who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending? Who is the Almighty? Answer, Jesus our Lord and God as Thomas rightly names him.
[Jn20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. 28 And **Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.]
Also **the bible never mentions anywhere **the Man Jesus Christ went out of existence when he died on the cross and was raised a spirit being Michael. In fact its just the opposite, scripture clearly teaches, the man Jesus Christ was bodily raised and is in heaven.
[Jn2:19 **Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21 But he spake of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. ]
[Lk24:38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? 39 **Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. 40 And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.]
Once again the bible never mentions anywhere that Christ’s body was dissolved. Again the WT contradicts scripture with a tradition of men not found anywhere in the bible.
[1Tm2:5 For there is one God, and **one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;]
In 1Tm2:5 the word used for men and man in Greek is anthropos=human being, whether male or female. Strong’s Greek definition #444. According to the bible Christ our mediator is a human being in heaven. According to the WT a human being is a body only. If the man Jesus was not bodily raised from the dead, after dying, then what was raised after dying? What else could be raised from the dead, if a human being is body only as the WT teaches? How could scripture call Christ in heaven a human being if he doesn’t have a human beings body now glorified?
[Acts17:31 Because **he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.]
In Acts17:31 Iman=aner in Greek is man=individual male. Again we see Jesus, raised from the dead, is a man in heaven who is appointed to judge the world. Once more the WT is contradicting the bible with a tradition of men not found in the bible.
**The bible never mentions anywhere **only 144 thousand, the only ones to be born again according to the WT, will be in heaven and the rest of JWs, the great crowd, who aren’t saved (born again) but considered dead by the WT, can only hope they will be saved by their works and being found good enough to live on earth forever.
Yet again The bible never mentions anywhere heaven was closed in 1935 to anyone born after that year. The bible never mentions only 144 thousand could take communion. All this was simply made up by Rutherford.
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DelsonJacobs
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Unless ChosenOne7 stated that directly, I think you are exaggerating a little. The official stand of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that birthday celebrations are of pagan origin and, according to their practice, they believe that Jehovah disapproves of them. They don’t technically view them as “evil,” just holding the same connections in God’s eyes as they once held thousands of years ago.
While their theology can definitely be accused of being incomplete in its reasoning, they are not wrong in describing their origin or the way birthdays are portrayed in Scripture, which is negatively.
Not all Catholics celebrate their birthday. Birthday celebrations are tied to ethnicity and culture. It is not a universal practice, and as such not all Roman Catholics hold birthday celebrations. It is not required that Catholics celebrate their birthdays or judge others for doing so or not. Therefore one cannot argue the point theologically. At best a Catholic can only speak for how their conscience bears on the subject and defend this stand.
It is not forbidden by the Church because the celebration no longer has ties to pagan ritual. All customs of the nations are of pagan origin, but as long as they are not observed as connected to their heathen roots the Church holds them allowable. They become much as Christmas when observed in a secular fashion by non-religious people.
The theology of Witnesses can be said to be built upon an incomplete reasoning as other pagan rituals are still followed by their members (such as men being clean-shaven, couples wearing wedding rings, etc.) without a means to justify why some are approved over others, but it is not morally or theologically unsound to choose to avoid birthday celebrations. Many Jews do not observe their birthdays for the same reasons.
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Tomdstone
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Not true according to Catholic teaching.
God knows all things; not only things actual but also things possible to Him and creature; and since some of these are future contingent to us, it follows that God knows future contingent things.
God knows all things whatsoever that in any way are.
newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#13
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Tomdstone
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Catholic teaching is that Jesus is God and God knows all things, even future contingent things.
newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#13
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