Have you yet come to the realization that you’ve led a very insular life?
EhhMon, what meaning is lost in Jesus’ crucifixion on a cross vs. a pole? And the Apocrypha, unless I am VERY much mistaken, is not an actual part of the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) canon but a list of books that didn’t make it, so to speak (Gospel of Thomas, for example, is in there IIRC).
You seem to be operating under factual error in determining that Catholics (and whoever else) deserve to be labeled as a cult.
Hey, Friar Ted! Haven’t seen you around lately!
You’ve never actually read any of the “Apocrypha”, have you? Lilith is not mentioned therein. A “lilith” is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah (34:14), but this is usually translated as “night owl” or “screech owl”. The whole Lilith story cycle is actually part of Jewish folklore, not part of the “Apocrypha”.
And I must ask you this: Can you give a brief timeline of the assembly of the “Old Testament”? How do the ages of the Septuagint and the Masoretic texts compare, for example? From the history of Scripture within Christianity, a case can be made that these “Apocrypha” were included from the earliest days of the Church and then only illegitimately excluded almost a millenium and a half later.
Here is a perspective to consider:
Well, to be fair to EhhMon (who seems to have most of his “facts” messed up), the Protestants do refer to the books included in the Catholic canon of the OT but removed from the Protestant canon as the Apocrypha. Catholics call them Deutero-canonical and they are different from the New Testament Apocrypha that pretty much everyone rejects, but the same word is used.
On the other hand, EhhMon, you should probably note this cross in the Baptist Church of the Covenant, this cross in the Norton Summit Baptist Church, the logo of the First baptist Church of Belleville, this use of a cross by a Pentecostal minister, this use of crosses by the Evangel Pentecostal church and this cross used by a non-denominational retreat center.
To clear up a bit of terminology here:
Outside the English-speaking world, Roman Catholics ordinarily never use the term Apocrypha, unless they’re historical Biblical scholars discussing books never regarded as Scripture by any significant part of the (total worldwide pan-denominational) church.
The custom in the English-speaking world is to use the term in the sense placed on it by the Church of England and the King James Bible.
Quickly, then:
Books included in the Septuagint Old Testament but not in the Tanakh or Protestant O.T. = deuterocanonical books for Roman Catholics = Anglican/Methodist Apocrypha. (Two points: I don’t know if the Orthodox have any special name for these books, though I have heard Orthodox in interdenominational discussions use “deuterocanonical” – perhaps for clarity’s sake. Also, Roman Catholics do not accept the Prayer of Manasseh and I and II Esdras, included in this group, as Scriptural.)
Books never accepted as Scripture in any canonical list = pseudopigrapha for everybody = Apocrypha for Roman Catholic scholars. When Protestants and Anglicans speak of the Apocrypha, they mean that collection appended between the testaments in complete King James Version Bibles, and not the pseudopigrapha. (Again an exception: some Copts consider Enoch scriptural, or at least did at one time. One short passage of it, and one from the Assumption of Moses, unquestionably is Scriptural, being quoted in Jude. “Hey, Jude, don’t be afraid: take a bad book, and make it better”? ;))
As for Ehh Mon, he seems content to be repeating the same lines about how erroneously his selected target cults believe, with no thought to dialogue with people who may know what they’re talking about. Can you think of a castigated woman who seems better by comparison? :))
And I’d ask a lurker or two to come forward if the information thus far presented in this thread has been of any value to them in understanding the beliefs of others. Because, quite frankly, I see little of value to be gained in continuing to reply to someone who is not interested in listening.
And while yer at it, how about the logos ofthe United Methodist Church, the the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA . . .
Now, that’s only unbrella organizations. I realize that many denominations do not incorporate a cross into their logos, and I also realize that many individual churches don’t use or display crosses at all. But golly. The cross has been an integral and recurring symbol in protestant worship since there were protestants. Get out and go to more churches, man!
Eeesh, sorry, Poly, your post war’nt in my cache.
You know, EhhMon, I just don’t buy that you’ve never seen crosses on top of churches anywhere in the Western world.
And to elucidate something for you: EJsGirl’s current posting stats are approx. 2.2 per day and your current posting stats are approx. 0.4 per day. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take her an entire 12 hours to compose and submit one post.
The Orthodox have a typically messy approach to the books. There are those in Scripture, but we assign different value to the various books in Scripture. Gospel is first in esteem, followed by the Acts and Epistles, followed by the Prophecy of the OT, and then it gets fuzzy. We do have a longer canon of Scripture than the Reformed groups do. But to make matters even more complicated, there is a category called “readable books” (a bad translation from a Greek term I don’t know). These are works that are not considered to be Scripture but can still be edifying. We also have important theological works that are likewise considered edifying. The Orthodox model is far less one of a solid division and more of a gradual progression. At one end we can say “Gospel, definitely.” At the other we can say “Lady Chatterly’s Lover, definitely not”. It’s that vast middle ground that one can trip over.
I was discussing this thread (as part of a whole … a current trend he and I had both noticed of people coming forward believing themselves to be higher authorities on religion and sometimes law) with someone else and we were unable to remember if that castigaged woman had ever referenced where she lives.
What might be more beneficial in the future, rather than assuming that someone who storms in as the OP did is going to debate in earnest and not misrepresent people at whim (which is nobody’s fault, really), is to link to a site such as www.religioustolerance.org and see if the person in question choses to read the information there or continues to assault those who are innocent. I think it would be most telling … it would also avoid the wasting of an hour or two typing up a perfectly lovely post only to have it receive the human equivalent of a snort and cloven hoofprint kick.
Dogface, I am unaware of the Greek involved in “readable books”, but is it possible that an equally acceptable translation (gleaned only from my interpretation fo your post) is something like “books worth reading”?
Well Poly, between your replies for the RCC and some others, and Dogface’s for the Orthodox Church I’ve been edified. This is why I do enjoy these types of threads that my skimpy United Church and Anglican choir boy background don’t really help with. Even when the OP fails to engage in the debate, some of us benefit tremendously.
I myself am Episcopalian (American Anglican) but have had to ground myself quite thoroughly in RCC doctrine to discuss intelligently where we differ from RCC and where we agree with them vis-à-vis evangelical Protestantism.
What Catholic doctrines do Idiffer with? Certainly the Treasury of Merit (I’m not sure how “official” that is or whether the post-Vatican-II shift of emphases has played it down), the mandating of Mariological doctrines as articles of faith, the insistence on transubstantiation as the explanation of the Mystery of the Real Presence, for starters. But I can grok how a devout Catholic can believe them and be well within my understanding of what a Christian is supposed to be – they’re issues, not dividing lines, in my estimation.
It might interest you to know, Poly, though I mean this purely as a matter of intrigue and not in any way to defame you, that my mother, who converted to the RCC church from the Protestant Church, did not believe the Marian doctrines (both ex cathedra statements, and IIRC the only two ever made) when she was confirmed as a member of the RCC back in, I think, 1997. As of about a month ago this was still the case. I believe her reasoning was that the rest of it (it=RCC) makes sense, so God will either show her why it is so or her knowledge of the arguments for them will just get better as she re-examines them.
I am not aware of the meaning of “Treasury of Merit”, though it sounds a bit (upon first hearing it after leaving the RCC, interestingly enough) like the whole good works/faith idea, either side of which I was never fully convinced of, though I tend to side with the good works crowd more, since there are any number of poor examples of Christians who fervently believe in God and are not examples, in my estimation, of how to lead a life devoted to God.
Treasury of merit sounds like a basis for indulgences. What is it exactly?
If nobody minds, I’ll let tomndebb, Beagledave, or another Catholic define “treasury of merit” – since I’m agi’n’ it, I won’t do justice to their belief. Loosely, though, it’s the idea that the saints’ good deeds have produced a “positive balance in God’s spiritual bank account” which can be applied to our misdeeds at their discretion on our request. I’m confident, though, that this misrepresents how they understand it to be applied.
This website, though it looks to be any wacko’s job, appears to be valid: cite. It is strange that this is the first I can recall hearing about this either in name or in concept as it is applied to the RCC (or really anywhere).
Brief word of advice: it seems that the word “indulgence”, as on that page, does not refer to what could be described as “buying one’s way out of hell”, and which practice Martin Luther railed against.
I hope someone will be along soon to expound on this more thoroughly. On the face it does not seem to be all that contradictory to anything, but it does make me wonder why anyone would apply for one (or whatever the correct terminology was); penance, I thought, was supposed to (among other things) make you not want to do whatever bad thing again. This seems to circumvent that. I would bet that this is supposed to show (in extreme cases, I would bet) God’s mercy for His children.
All it means is that the church isn’t part of a larger organization of churches.
::: sigh ::: A basis for indulgences.
The concept is explained (sorta) in the Catechism of the Catholic Church Sections 1471 - 1479
A few minor points:
- I have never heard the exact phrase “Treasury of Merit,” although I guess that is as good a name as any.
- While the actions of the saints and all the faithful are “reckoned” in the Treasury, it should be noted that those actions are not the basis of the concept, but are considered to be additions. The basis is the outpouring of grace through the salvific action of Jesus as made present to the world in the Body of Christ–the Church. (In other words, it is not a finite “bank” of good works in which nice people are making deposits and sinners are making withdrawals. It is the notion that through the Church, (the Body of Christ, not the organization), all people are able to call upon the Grace of Jesus for aid.) The concept behind indulgences is to encourage charity that we can ask be reckoned against “tempoaral punishment.”
- The “temporal punishment” that is mentioned is the big sticking point. The language that developed to discuss it in earlier times was that of physical punishment, however, I would characterize it as the recognition by a person of the degree to which they have failed to accept and return the love of God. Just as when one offends a friend or parent or spouse, their forgiveness does not automatically erase the pain that one recognizes for having offended, so God’s forgiveness does not erase our pain in recognizing how far we have fallen short. That pain is the “temporal punishment” that we incur for sin, even after we have been forgiven. The notion of the Treasury, and the indulgences that flow from it, is that the Body of Christ can aid in the healing of that pain–reducing the temporal punishment.
Note, this has nothing to do with forgiveness and is not a “step” toward salvation, which is freely given by God. - Indulgences were never a “get out of Hell, free” card. For one thing, the indulgences are only applied to the “temporal punishment” of sins that have been forgiven. Of course, that did not stop some people as treating them that way. I suspect that Luther would have opposed indulgences regardless of the corruption that surrounded them, but it should be noted that the “selling” of indulgences was against church law, anyway. Selling anything “of God” is the sin of Simony. (I suspect that the practice started as a genuine call to donate to charity, then got twisted around by some sharpers to be a call for “so much money equals so much time off,” and was then just a short step to “…and I’ll keep the surplus.”)
- While I can accept (not embrace) the teaching in the manner that I have outlined it, I am not prepared to defend any other versions you may encounter from other speakers on the subject.
Addendum: I suspect that the notion of “adding” to the Treasury through Good Works has led to some of the Protestant misunderstandings that Catholics believe they are “saved by works.” The RCC does not teach that, but we’ll never get past that with some folks. Note that the whole issue of the “Treasury” has only to do with punishment for sin for people who are already saved (by the Grace of Jesus).