"Pope Same As Hitler"
Now THAT got your attention. A lot of Catholics I know are already cranky with me, but this is a significant story. Here it is as it appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
September 16, 2006 - 1:23PM
Muslims on Friday deplored remarks made by Pope Benedict on Islam and many of them said the Catholic leader should apologise in person to dispel the impression he had joined a campaign against their religion.
Influential Turkish legislator Salih Kapusuz fired back today, saying the Pope would go down in history ``in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.''
``He has the dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages,'' Kapusuz said.
Pakistan's legislature condemned Benedict, as did Lebanon's top Shi'ite cleric. "We demand that he apologises personally, and not through (Vatican) sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation," said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.
In Gaza, angry Palestinians marched through the streets. "This is another Crusader war against the Arab and Muslim world," said Hamas official Ismail Radwan as he addressed some 5,000 chanting demonstrators.
And in Cairo, Egyptian demonstrators chanted, ``Down with the Pope!''
In Britain, the head of the Muslim Council urged Benedict to ``speak with responsibility and repudiate the Byzantine emperor's views.''
And in Iraq, warring Shi'ites and Sunnis paused from slaughtering each other to condemn the Pope. "This is the second time such an offence has been give before Ramadan," said Sheikh Salah al-Ubeidi, one of the aides to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, referring to last year's publication of cartoons in a Danish paper sparking violent Muslim protests around the world.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's largest group of political Islamists, demanded an apology from the Pope and called on the governments of Islamic countries to break relations with the Vatican if he does not make one.
The Sheikh of al-Azhar, one of the Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious seats of religious studies, said: "The Azhar asserts that these statements indicate clear ignorance of Islam.
"They attribute to Islam what it does not contain," the sheikh, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, said in a statement on MENA.
Muslim leaders in New York demanded the Pope apologise.
``He is declaring war by his words,'' said Imam Kadhim Mohamad at the Ahlul Bayt Mosque on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. ``He should either apologise or at least prove to the people that what he says is true. Otherwise, he should say nothing.''
Worshiper Ibrahim Abdul Rahman was especially incensed that Benedict quoted a line that spoke of Muhammed ordering that his faith be ``spread by the sword.''
``No sword was held to my neck,'' Rahman said. ``If the Pope really analyses who conquered by the sword, he needs to look back on his own religion. It would be nice of him to apologise.''
In a speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.
The 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Muslim body, said quotations used by the Pope represented a "character assassination of the Prophet Mohammad" and a "smear campaign".
"The OIC hopes that this campaign is not the prelude of a new Vatican policy towards Islam ... The OIC also hopes that the Vatican will issue statements that reflect its true position and views on Islam and Islamic teachings," it said.
The Pope on Tuesday repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
The Pope, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, added "violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi defended the Pope's lecture and said he did not mean to offend Muslims.
"It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to undertake a comprehensive study of the jihad and of Muslim ideas on the subject, still less to offend the sensibilities of Muslim faithful," Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
A high-ranking Church source expressed fears for the Pope's safety, saying: "While I think the controversy will go away, it has done damage and if I were a security expert I'd be worried."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Bild newspaper the aim of the Pope's speech had been misunderstood.
"It was an invitation to dialogue between religions ... What Benedict XVI emphasised was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion," she was quoted as saying in an article to appear on Saturday.
The Koran endorses the concept of jihad, often translated as holy war, but Muslims differ on conditions for it, with some saying it applies only for self-defence against external attack.
posted by Steve @ Saturday, September 16, 2006
13 Comments:
From an article in "The Age" by Melanie McDonagh, September 17, 2006
THERE is such a thing as being too clever by half. Pope Benedict is a case in point. He is a former academic and last week he addressed a university gathering in Germany.
In this congenial environment, he delivered a nuanced address on the subject of faith and reason, snappily titled Three Stages in the Program of De-Hellenisation. The gist is that belief in God is entirely consistent with human reason and the Greek spirit of philosophical inquiry. By using the reason God gave us, we become, in a way, more like him. If the Pope had stuck to quoting Plato to illustrate his point, he wouldn't now be in the position of, as the British Muslim News put it, alienating a billion Muslims.
His mistake was to cite a series of dialogues between a learned 14th-century Byzantine emperor and a scholarly Persian Muslim about the truth of their respective religions, probably written while Constantinople was being besieged by the Turks.
Emperor Manuel II Paleologus referred during the dialogues to the Koran's teachings about spreading the faith by the sword. And this, said the emperor, could not come from God because violence was the opposite of reason, and God cannot act contrary to reason.
What interested the Pope was the emperor's insistence that God's nature meant that he cannot act irrationally. Pope Benedict quoted verbatim from the emperor's words: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
And this remark, which the Pope described as "rather marginal to the dialogue itself", was what almost every prominent Muslim has seized on. It wasn't so much that the remarks were lost in translation from the German — it was the quotation marks.
The fact that the Pope cited the adjectives "evil and inhuman" was taken as evidence that he agreed with them.
As a British Muslim youth organisation, the Ramadhan Foundation, said crossly: "If the Pope wanted to attack Islam he should have been brave enough to say it personally without quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor."
In fact, the Pope was out to attack something different — the contemporary, secular idea that faith is simply a matter of personal opinion. If he's having a go at anything, it's not Islam, it's the notion that religion is incompatible with independent thought.
The reaction from the Islamic world hasn't been what you might call measured. Admittedly, it was easy to take the Pope's remarks out of context, given that it takes a bit of effort to track down his address in full, or indeed to understand it. But not impossible — yet few have made the effort.
The speech itself suggested that the Pope understood that there are nuances to the Islamic idea of jihad. He cites an early verse in the Koran that "there is no compulsion in religion". And in respect of the verses that exhort Muslims to take up arms for the faith he notes that there are differences between Muhammad's treatment of Christians and Jews, and of pagans.
If you're looking for a real critique of Islam in the speech, there is one in the text. The Pope suggests that the Islamic idea of God is so transcendent that he cannot be seen in terms of human reason. He cites one medieval Islamic scholar who says that God is entirely remote from our rational categories.
This may not sound like much to get worked up about, but Benedict sees this as the opposite of the Christian way of looking at faith and reason.
As for the Pope's notional Islamophobia, he's had rather a good record until now in terms of the issues that agitate Muslims. He was sympathetic to their reaction to the Danish cartoons, and he opposed the conflict in Lebanon and the war in Iraq.
The irony of this row is that it is the opposite of what the Pope was trying to achieve. Benedict ended his speech by hoping for a new dialogue between the sciences, religions and cultures "which is so urgently needed today".
It looks, from this miserable episode, as if you can only have a conversation that deals — however remotely — with Islam on Muslim terms. Not much of a dialogue, then.
Hey, if there's only one of you anonymous folks out there, you really have nothing to fear. Again I'm impressed by the research done here. I've been a bit too busy to keep the story updated, but it turns out most of those upset really had no idea what's going on. I suppose you can't expect rationality from a group who endorse suicide bombing.
I have just had an e-mail from my son, which, for me has thrown some light on the Pope's lecture, the contents of the email are below.
This is how I see the whole thing, I probably should be marking work but this is important for me to understand, let me know if I am wrong:
The Pope says he was reading a book which records some conversations between two blokes on their observations of Islam and Christianity. He goes on to quote from one of the conversations:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
Then the Pope says:
"The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable."
He is talking about reason here and using this ancient emperor as a source instead of modern writers to show that this is not new and because as he goes on to say later society today has neglected reason:
"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature."
The Pope is now saying that Faith is not something of the body but of the soul and therefore reason must come into the convincing of others about our Faith, violence does not appeal to the soul:
"Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
Towards the end of the speech the Pope mentions that he is not being negative but progressive and that he sees new possibilities:
"The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them"
He also mentions that science should take into account the place of reason in things which are not quantifiable:
"We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons."
The Pope closes by saying that Logos (Faith and Reason) are in conformity with God's plans and that it is to this that Catholics and Christians should be looking to spread the Faith. He also makes an invitation to all cultures to see the importance of Logos and to "dialogue". Hardly the words of someone trying to condemn another faith, don't you think. In fact the Pope spends most of the lecture speaking of Faith and reason and only two paragraphs on the controversial bit.
""Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God"", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university."
Sorry to be so long winded.
The dialogue he quoted from was between then Byzantine Emperor and a Persian Qu'ran scholar. As Soloman wrote "there is nothig new under the sun" and this is true of arguments about theology also. 1 Peter 3:15 encourages us to have a reasonable defence (apologesis) for our faith and the hope it gives us. And Galileo once said that he thought it was absurd that God would make us inquisitive and smart and then not look at the universe He created.
In his book "The Case For A Creator" Lee Stroebel interviews many scientists, theologians and noted Christians. One of them talks about how Earth is in a remarkable position in relation to the rest of the universe. Apparently you can't find a better vantage point for observing what surrounds us.
now the danger here of saying that violence is contrary to reason and not in the nature of God is that this statement contradicts the Bible. Many of God's ways are unknown to us, but what we do know is shown is Scripture. God is vengeful, He gets Angry, He has poured out His wrath on the Earth and it's people from time to time. We also know He is caring and gracious. At times a Warrior, at times a Counselor. King David recognized these aspects of God and the Psalms help us understand Him.
Some people will cite old covenant/ new covenant etc, but the truth is that God must be constant. In fact, if He exists outside of time in eternity (a place without time) He can be nothing but constant. John Eldredge wrote a great book called "Wild At Heart" which deals with the topic of God, man, and masculinity.
We must be careful when discussing Islam that we do not fall into stereotypical views. The Catholic Church has spilled as much blood as Islam, if not more. And the crusader occupation of Palestine was incredibly violent. And we can't attack them on grounds of killing their countrymen, because Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" details many Protestants who were murdered by the Catholic regimes.
This isn't directed as an attack on Catholicism, because we are not responsible for the sins of our fathers. However, it would be foolish to attack Islam on the grounds of violence under a Catholic banner.
Again, Anon, I appreciate the insight. Now who are you?
While there is no doubt that the Bible contains the inspired word of God, it has to be understood through the person of Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, Son of God, God made man. By Jesus’ revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation. So therefore we need to take the whole of the Bible and look at it through the life of Jesus, through His recorded words, through his actions, particularly His directions to us and His example of how we should live.
For example, how are we to reconcile (Exodus 21:23-25) “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe,” with (Matthew 5:39) “But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Obviously Jesus carries the day as He is the Authority. Again in (Deuteronomy 24:1) “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house,” but Jesus says (Matthew 5:31-32) "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
When Jesus was asked about this again because everyone was so taken aback by it, even his Apostles, (Matthew 19:3-9) “Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?" He said to them, "It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery."” So we have to admit that Jesus told us that what Moses said, was to be superseded by what He said.
The inspired writers were all people of their times and wrote both as they understood, and as they felt people of their time would best be able to understand the message they were handing on. I wonder if the terminology God is a vengeful God fits with Jesus’ concept of a loving Father, one who we should refer to as Abba, (Daddy). That is not to deny the existence of hell, but I believe that it is our natures, damaged by selfishness and greed and lust and a failure to acknowledge our loving Father, that will not allow us to co-exist with God and so condemn ourselves to an eternity without the beatific vision. It is the gift of free will which God gave to us which eventually condemns those who put false God’s before the one true God. Certainly God is constant, but are we?
Let’s be careful not to mix politics with religion and realise that every report of the crusades has an agenda of its own, but also keep in mind that Palestine was largely Christian before the Muslim takeover, and consequently who was the invader?? As far as your mention of Protestant martyrs is concerned, I believe that there was certainly many Protestants killed by Catholics, but it is an historical fact that there was approximately 10 times the number of Catholics killed for their faith in Protestant England as there were victims of the Spanish Inquisition. So none of us can be particularly proud of that time, we need to work in the time in which we live for a better understanding of God’s message to us and I believe that that is what the Pope was trying to promote.
As far as who I am, well I’m just an old fart who’s daughter in law gave me the URL for your interesting blog.
the problem with wanting to seperate politics and religion is that both are the domain of people. one cannot hold religion only and live in the world, nor can one hold politics and not run across religion. the Catholic Church is a terribly effective political power. this story is proof positive that a careless religious word can spark real world conflict. religion drives the middle east conflict, it started the great war, and it divides populations in democracies.
so is religion the problem? YES, for the most part. if we cannot live without politics, we must live without religion. lucky for we Christians then that Jesus had little regard for religion. an objective reading of the New Testament reveals His message of love; for God, for others, for ourselves. Love becomes the one word summation that shares it's meaning with who He is. No weapon was ever lifted in true love for an enemy. Faith is the rule God created for man to fellowship with him, religion is the counterfeit we have built. Religion tries to contain God within carefully ordered parameters, whereas faith runs like a great water. And in His grace He lets us. one of the things that frustrates me about Christians from the 'traditional' institutions is that they seem to miss out on the everyday relationship with Jesus that we are meant to enjoy. any old person could read Paul's epistles and see this is the case.
as for His nature, I must reiterate: He can be at once loving, vengeful, compassionate, gracious, and angry. He crushes His enemies beneath His feet, their blood stains His robes. And yet He died for them.
as for Catholic persecution in England, it pales next to the Huguenots and the St Bartholemews Day Massacre in France. I repeat, a true Christian will never take up the sword against anyone; the actions of the flesh reflect the nature of the heart.
What you state here, is the problem which we face when people decide that God is not reasonable, and it is what Pope Benedict was stating in his controversial address. At the risk of being too lengthy, I am going to post some of this article which I read this morning.
“A God without reason? Who could that be? Is this Allah? The Pope's allusion to the teachings of 11th century Islamic philosopher Ibn Hazn - "God is not bound even by his own word" - suggests that possibility. However, the Pope was also addressing the attempts in the history of the Church to strip God of reason. The interesting term the Pope uses to describe this process is dehellenizing - extirpating the great gift of Greek philosophy from Christianity.
As Benedict XVI pointed out, there were strong tendencies within the Church to move in this direction in the teachings of 13th century theologian Duns Scotus and others. The anti-rational view was violently manifested in the millenarian movements of the Middle Ages, and within the movement that was known as fideism - faith alone, sola scriptura. In its most radical form, this school held that the scriptures are enough. Forget reason, Greek philosophy, and Thomas Aquinas. However, the anti-rationalist view in its more extreme forms has never predominated in Christianity, because it was protected by the magisterial pronouncement in the Gospel of St. John that Christ is Logos. If Christ is Logos, if God introduces himself as ratio, then God is not only all-powerful, he is reason. On the basis of this revelation and Greek philosophy, particularly that of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas achieved the defining synthesis of reason and revelation in Christianity.
That makes it all the more ironic that an irate Pakistani political leader chose to denounce Benedict XVI in these terms: "He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages." It is curious the Pakistani should have described this period as one of "darkness" for it was during it that Islam, not Christianity, took a decisive step away from rationality and chose to dehellenize itself.
This took place over an argument, already begun in the seventh and eighth centuries, about the status of reason in relationship to God's omnipotence. The outcome of this struggle decisively affected the character of the Islamic world. This struggle had its roots in a profound disagreement over who God is. There was a side in this debate that would seem very familiar to Westerners because it was as deeply influenced by Greek philosophy as was Christianity. The Mu'tazilite school, composed of the Muslim rationalist philosophers, fought for the primacy of reason in Islam. The Mu'tazilites held that God is not only power, he is reason. Man's reason is a gift from God, who expects man to use it to come to know him. God, being reason, would not expect man to accept anything contrary to it. Through reason, man is also able to understand God as manifested in his creation. God's laws are the laws of nature, which are also manifested in the Sharia (the divine path). Therefore, the Mu'tazilites held that the statements in the Qur'an must be in accord with reason. Unfortunately, the Mu'tazilites were suppressed during the reign of Caliph Ja'afar al-Mutawakkil (847-861), who made holding the Mu'tazilite doctrine a crime punishable by death, and the long process of dehellenization and its resulting ossification began.
It was in the "darkness" of the Middle Ages that the coup de grace was delivered by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), perhaps the single most influential Muslim thinker after Mohammed. Al Ghazali vehemently rejected Greek thought: "The source of their infidelity was their hearing terrible names such as Socrates and Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle." In The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Al-Ghazali insisted that God is not bound by any order and that there is, therefore, no "natural" sequence of cause and effect, as in fire burning cotton or, more colourfully, as in "the purging of the bowels and the using of a purgative." Things do not act according to their own natures but only according to God's will at the moment. There are only juxtapositions of discrete events that make it appear that the fire is burning the cotton, but God could just as well do otherwise. In other words, there is no rational order invested in the universe upon which one can rely, no continuous narrative of cause and effect tying these moments together in a comprehensible way.
Although all monotheistic religions hold that, in order to be one, God must be omnipotent, this argument reduced God to his omnipotence by concentrating exclusively on his unlimited power, as against his reason. God's "reasons" are unknowable by man. God is not shackled by reason. He rules as he pleases. He is pure will. In his attack on philosophy, entitled Kuzari, Judah ha-Levi, a Jewish follower of al-Ghazali, reached the logical conclusion as to how man ought to approach the revelations of such a deity: "I consider him to have attained the highest degree of perfection who is convinced of religious truths without having scrutinized them and reasoned over them." (How, one wonders, does one become "convinced" of something without having thought about it?) There could hardly be a more radical rejection of what Benedict XVI calls "the reasonableness of faith."
Equally as damaging to the status of reason, al-Ghazali wrote that reason is so infected by man's self-interest that it cannot know moral principles; they can only be known through revelation. Since reason is not a source of moral truth, concludes al-Ghazali, "No obligations flow from reason but from the Sharia (the divinely ordained path)." With this, he despatches Aristotle's The Ethics and all other moral philosophy.
Today's radical Muslims embrace the "unreasonableness" of faith in an unreasoning God and translate it into a politics of unlimited power. As God's instruments, they are channels for his omnipotence. Once the primacy of force is posited, terrorism becomes the next logical step to power, as it did in the 20th-century secular ideologies of power, Nazism and Marxism-Leninism. This is what led Osama bin Laden to embrace the astonishing statement of his spiritual godfather, Abdullah Azzam, which Osama quoted in the November 2001 video, released after 9/11: "Terrorism is an obligation in Allah's religion." This can only be true - that violence in spreading faith is an obligation - if, as Benedict XVI said in Regensburg, God is without reason.
How, then, do we reason together? Can neo-Mu'tazilites in the Muslim world, of which there are more than a few, elaborate a theology that allows for the restoration of reason, a rehellenization of Islam with Allah as ratio? It is idle to pretend that it would take less than a sea change for this to happen. If it does not, it is hard to envisage upon what basis meaningful interfaith dialogue with Islam could take place. That is the unfortunate meaning of the violent reaction to the Pope's Regensburg speech.”
Robert R. Reilly writes from Washington DC. He is a contributing editor to Crisis Magazine.
The full article can be seen at http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=371
we actually have a lot to thank Muslims for, particularly in the dark ages. it was they who preserved a lot of classical manuscripts (including bibles) while Europe was busy trying to destroy them.
that being said, I agree for the most part. I would, however, be careful to shackle God to His own reason. A review of the latter parts of Job reveal a God who is in absolute control at all times. It is due to His sense of justice that our free wil is allowed. Again, we're talking about dualism. And it's great that we can discuss it without yelling 'jihad' and throwing bricks at each other.
'Islam' in arabic, means 'peace'. Yet the Islamic world wages war on infidels. The very contradiction in terms should lead someone to question Allah's sanity.
It is the lack of contradiction in the Christian Bible (sans apocrypha) that lends a great deal of support to the claims of an all-seeing all-powerful God.
I must point out though that Marxism should be kept seperate and apart from all forms of Communism, in the same way that we disregard the Gnostic gospels and Gnosticism in general. "The Communist Manifesto" is actually rather racist but doesn't go so far as to condone the practices of Lennin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, et al.
Possibly my greatest concern is the willingness of 'religious' people to follow blindly rather than reason for themselves. Whether they be Muslim, Catholic, Anglican, Hindu, or even Baptist. And it is in independent thought and inquiry i find my disagreements with a lot of 'Christian-Religious' doctrine. I could go for hours, but will instead point you at Martin Luther's 95 Theses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/95_Theses#The_English_Translation_of_the_95_Theses
This is what Wikipedia had to say about Luther: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
Here's a biography of Luther from an online Catholic encyclopaedia (much of it is propaganda and is not supported by history):
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09438b.htm
(in particular, we must note that the Roman Church DID indeed seek to keep the Bible in Latin and out of the understanding of the plebs)
Here's another Luther biography:
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/~dee/REFORM/LUTHER.HTM
I welcome comments. Feel free to also look into John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathon Edwards, John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, and John Calvin
Hmm, many people today deny the existence of purgatory Martin Luther obviously didn’t. Martin Luther, it is agreed had some genuine grumbles and the selling of indulgences was not at all helpful, and it is, most certainly, not a practise today.
However, Martin Luther did not stop there did he? He went on to re-translate the Bible’ and that is where he got into trouble with the Bishops, the successors of the Apostles. “Just a few decades before Luther launched the Reformation, do you realize apart from Gutenberg, there would have not been Protestantism? The first thing that Gutenberg printed was what? The Bible. Even before the printing press, there were vernacular translations of the Bible long before Wycliff, in the fourteenth century, in Norwegian, in French, in German, in Polish, and other languages as well. There were fourteen different authorized German translations the century prior to Luther. The only reason Luther got into trouble was because he wouldn’t submit his translations to the Bishops because he knew he had been tinkering with the Greek, adding words that weren’t there in the original: Romans chapter 3, verse 28, where he says, “A man is justified by faith alone.” And he makes that the battle cry of the Reformation although the word alone is not in the Greek, and he knew it. Yet he insisted on a mistranslation to further his own cause.” (Dr Scott Hahn)
You see the Catholic Church has always held that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that we should always be familiar with what it teaches us. In fact I’m sure you understand that it was the Catholic Church which compiled the Bible, as Catholics know it today, over the centuries following the death and resurrection of Christ. It was the source of heated discussion between many theologians as to what should be included and what was not genuine inspired writing. It was here that the Gnostic Gospels were dispensed with. The successors to the apostles at the Council of Hippo and the Council of Carthage are the ones who compiled the New Testament. Then the Biblia Sacra Vulgata originated about the year 382 A.D. Pope Damasus commissioned St Jerome to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. Latin was the predominate language of the time, just as English and Spanish are today. St. Jerome declared, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” That is not to say that all Catholics know their Bible, or even study it occasionally, but then, do all Protestants? St. Theresa of Avila, declared a Doctor of the Church in the 20th century says, “All troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source: that men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture.” Does it sound as though the Catholic Church takes the Bible lightly? I don’t think so.
“You see, when you study the Bible, when you study Church history, what you discover is that the Church precedes the New Testament. Jesus never wrote a single word. Odd, isn’t it? If He wanted the Scripture to be the exclusive source for our doctrine, why didn’t He write down a page or a word? Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus command any of His apostles to write a single word. He says, “Go out and preach the Gospel.” It’s an oral communication. I am in no way down- playing Scripture as the written communication of God’s Word. If you think so, you’ve missed the whole first half hour. I’m not downplaying Scripture at all. I am just showing that Scripture exalts Jesus’ intention to build a Church, to send out Apostles who are to preach, that is, communicate God’s Word person to person through living oracles, in an oral way which is far more dynamic and interpersonal than simply what’s on a page.” (Dr Scott Hahn)
As well during the Reformation, the seven Deutero-Canonical books, went missing from Protestant Bibles. These are in the Old Testament, but “If Bible Christians hold up the New Testament and say “These 27 books are the only authority.” You ask them, “Where did you get those 27 books, why those and not others? Why do you take the decision of Catholic bishops, meeting in Catholic Councils back in the 4th century? Why do you take that at face value? Why do you assume that the Holy Spirit led them to declare what books are inspired, when those same Bishops teach the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the veneration of Saints, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Purgatory, seven sacraments and so on?” --- “The Spirit can preserve fallible men from teaching error as truth. The Bible Christian believes that fallible sinners like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John could communicate infallible truth through the Holy Spirit. Can’t that same Spirit guide the Church to infallibly proclaim that same truth in all generations? And if the Spirit doesn’t, then wouldn’t you expect chaos and anarchy? Isn’t that what we have now with thousands upon thousands of denominations and sects, so that in every generation Bible Christians have to reinvent the wheels of the Faith? The Trinity is being questioned now by some Bible evangelicals. The Divinity of Christ, the eternality of Hell, and many other doctrines that have always been part of the historic Christian faith are up for grabs in every generation in the teachings of Bible Christians. Because they have the Bible without the Church, they are going to lose both as well. (Dr. Scott Hahn)
Dr Hahn was an anti Catholic Evangelical Protestant, (his description) who studied himself out of Protestantism and into the Catholic Church. (My assumption.)
mate, the burden of proof lies on the Catholic Church as far as the following doctrines go: immaculate conception (of mary), purgatory, indulgences, infallibility, and transubstantiation. i mean, COME ON! some bloke decides it's true, therefore it is? and the Holy Spirit is somehow a tool of the church? that earns an A+ for blasphemy.
If you can read the New Testament and tell me Jesus wasn't anti-religious, you belong in a mad house.
There is no point in discussing anything when one of the parties falls back on prejudice and throws back unsubstantiated insults.
I have already gone to some length to explain the authority given to Peter and his successors by Jesus in my posting on the 6th of September and it is not some bloke saying something, but the Church, given Jesus authority speaking through the Bishop of Rome, Peter’s successor, that proclaims truth in matters of faith and morals.
Purgatory; read your hero Martin Luther.
Transubstantiation; (John 6:51-66) "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."
He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father."(John 6:66) Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him."
(Luke 22:19) “Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."” Also Matt 26:26, Mark 14:22
When you can explain to me what is meant by these Gospel passages other than we should eat the flesh of Jesus, and drink His blood, I will consider other serious discussions you may wish to have.
it's only insulting if that's what you believe. I reject the concept of man choosing someone to replace Peter, because God does as He wills, and has shown He has little regard for what we think. That's what we mean by "Your will be done".
we see the Holy Spirit working in someone by the fruits of their lives, and some Popes have authorized wholesale murder. As did Israel's kings. God will tolerate evil only so long.
As for only having life if you eat the literal fleash and blood of Christ, what about the thief crucified next to Him? He didn't say "afer a small stint in purgatory, you will be with me" and he didn't say "grab a knife and fork and get over here quick!" Jesus said "surely I tell you, this day you will be with Me in Paradise." That's open and shut.
it's clear that neither of us will budge on this issue, so how about we call truce and agree that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord and Saviour, Son of God who died for our sins that we may have life.
Jesus Christ is the risen Lord and Saviour, Son of God who died for our sins that we may have life.
I can agree with that, your final statement, but I fear that anyone who professes to follow the Holy Bible and yet refuses to assimilate what it says, is not really seeking the truth, but only feeding their own prejudices and so causing their own and others eventual unhappiness. Thanks for the discussion.
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