-- So the Bible is simply "man made doctrine" Uh huh....
-- So, since something is a "tradition" that automatically means it is not only a good thing but based on truth....
-- Care to ponder just how many characters in the New Test. never had a burial place recorded or identified?
THIS is the threshold for basing a belief that Mary never died?
Catholics do set the bar high, don't they?
Foreigner if you think that is a strange, did you know John the Baptist had two heads?
Here is an excerpt:
This ‘second head’ captured the public’s imagination and appears to have supplanted the ‘first head’. The Church of Constantinople came to commemorate the finding of this head at Emesa, not the earlier one, holding services and a procession in its honour every 24th of February. Perhaps the older head was seen as an embarrassment -as the Benedictine abbot, Guibert of Nogent (†1125) would later declare, to admit that there be two heads would suggest that there were either two John the Baptists or one John who had two heads – both equally impossible assertions!
It is possible that the relics brought by Theodosius fell from favour, were lost, or simply ran out. However, the choice of preferring this ‘second head’ of the first is bizarre. The ‘second head’ was authenticated only by the Emesa church, whereas the earlier head had been recorded by Sozomen and recognised by the Emperor himself. Secondly the details of the story appear blatantly fabulous – how could details of the monks, the potter, his sister or Eustochius have been known to the monk who simply found it buried in the floor of his cave? Thirdly the story features repeated dream visions of the Baptist without a clear purpose – as a result, the head ends up in the possession of various minor characters and a heretical priest, presumably for many years, before eventually again falling into the hands of monks. Finally the palace where the relic is said to have been found belonged to the wrong Herod- Herod the Great, rather than Herod Antipas.
Read the whole article. It is quite interesting to say the least. From St. John's College in Oxford.
http://www.sjc.ox.ac...st.pdf.download
Axehead
Foreigner said:
-- So the Bible is simply "man made doctrine" Uh huh....
So you are saying that you only believe in private interpretation of scripture? Dangerous ground......
Aspen,
I know you don't realize it but whenever any church says that it's interpretation of scripture is the only correct one, that is the definition of a private interpretation of scripture.
It doesn't matter if there are 1 billion followers or 1 trillion followers, when any church on earth says that we alone have the RIGHT INTERPRETATION and no other church does, that is PRIVATE INTERPRETATION.
Axehead
Care to ponder how many Protestant teachings can be found in the Early Church? This is the threshold for basing a belief on Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, and Sola Gratia? Protestants sure have a fanciful recollection of church history.....
Aspen,
You don't compare Protestant versus Catholicism, you compare Protestant, Presbyterian, Catholicism, Methodism, Lutheranism, Greek Orthodix, etc, etc, against the WORD OF GOD.
Protestantism is not the Word of God.
I have said before, they have their man-made doctrines and traditions that nullify the Word of God, just like Catholicism.
God is calling everyone to come out of anything that dishonors and nullifies His Word and many are coming out of Protestant churches back to Simple Church in the home, in a field, in a coffee shop, or whatever, just like in the NT. There are now about 20-30 million in house churches in America because many cannot take the traditions and doctrines of men anymore and the form of godliness which denies the true power of God.
To be sure, there are true believers in most of men's "Christian" institutions. They are scattered and not everyone who attends a church is a Christian. The RCC doesn't really have to engage in the Counter-Reformation any more. The Reformation itself did not go far enough as they broke away from the RCC spiritually but retained many of the structural man-made traditions. Nevertheless, God used Luther (who did not have all the truth) to bring back to life some valuable truths. God has progressively been illuminating the Scriptures to His wilderness church (remnant church) in the world and that is why many eyes are opening up to the doctrines and traditions of men in the Protestant organizations and leaving them. The Catholic Institution is not an option for them, either, although you will see testimonies once in awhile of people leaving Protestantism for Catholicism and these are highly trumpeted as if millions are doing it.
Axehead