Questions For A Catholic

[Anastacia]

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Romans 1:25

 

[aspen]

Strangely enough, it was one of the concepts I didnt struggle with understanding or accepting when younger!

I simply see it as God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit - succinct and elegantly poised phrase I feel.

3 in one. There is so much that we dont understand about the ways of existence/God...
we are here in our simple
dimension, with the restraints of time and material things, so the trinity concept is somewhat out of our full cognitive scope, perhaps?

Mike

It is so true that we have a limited knowledge of the nature of God - I really like your phrase "succinct and elegantly poised"


I have been thinking a great deal about the Trinity lately. I have been thinking of God as a complete form composed of intimate and complete parts - as if God the Father was mind, Christ was heart, and the Holy Spirit action - all completely God and inseparable. I like thinking about Christ as the heart of the Trinity because it was God's heart that was broken for us on the Cross and His heart that baffled the cognitively / doctrine focused Pharisees.

 

[mcorba]

Of the 3 aspects, its the Holy Spirit that often confounds or amazes me, I think its the hardest element for us to get our minds around - with God you can visualise/feel or personify, Jesus we relate to personally as God in human form, but the Holy Spirit....trickier!

 

[Selene]

But when any people from these areas become a Christian, they will read in their Bibles about not bowing to the works of their hands. For those who love the Word of God, they will not bow to statues, nor will they venerate relics.

There is a difference between bowing and worship. WhiteKnuckle did an excellent job in explaining that difference. The Bible is not there to change my culture.

Reading how you and the other Catholics talk about the Catholic religion....it reminds me of all the pride that one gets when they become a Catholic. After leaving the Catholic church, and after one grows in the Lord, the pride once felt will leave a believer, and one will be only disgusted at the blatant disregard for the Truth the Catholics have.

It is not pride. It is our love for our faith. And we are not all of the same religion. Templar is Angelican. I'm Catholic. Aspen is a Catholic convert, and De Profundis is not even Catholic. But we discuss our faith in a civil manner without putting the other person down. It is called "love."

 

[Anastacia]

Leviticus 20:4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.


Leviticus 26:1 "'Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God.


Exodus 34:17 "Do not make cast idols.


Deuteronomy 4:15 You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully,


Deuteronomy 4:16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman,


1 John 5:21 Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.


1 Corinthians 10:7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry."


1 Corinthians 10:14 Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.

 

[mcorba]

God in three persons
According to the Trinity doctrine, God exists as three persons, or hypostases, but is one being, that is, has but a single divine nature.[sup][82][/sup] Chalcedonians—Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants—hold that, in addition, the second person of the Trinity—God the Son, Jesus—assumed human nature, so that he has two natures (and hence two wills), and is really and fully both true God and true human.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity

 

[aspen]

There is a difference between bowing and worship. WhiteKnuckle did an excellent job in explaining that difference. The Bible is not there to change my culture.



It is not pride. It is our love for our faith. And we are not all of the same religion. Templar is Angelican. I'm Catholic. Aspen is a Catholic convert, and De Profundis is not even Catholic. But we discuss our faith in a civil manner without putting the other person down. It is called "love."

Selene - it is a lost cause - only God can soften her hard heart - pray for her


Starve the Troll

 

[Selene]

Found this on Wiki - thought it might be helpful? :)

That is an interesting design. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is God. They are one and the same. But they is also a distinction between all three. They are different, but not separate.

This reminds me of the Body of Christ. The members of the body of Christ are one, not separate. But all the members of the body of Christ are different because we all have different roles.

 

[Anastacia]

There is a difference between bowing and worship. WhiteKnuckle did an excellent job in explaining that difference. The Bible is not there to change my culture.



It is not pride. It is our love for our faith. And we are not all of the same religion. Templar is Angelican. I'm Catholic. Aspen is a Catholic convert, and De Profundis is not even Catholic. But we discuss our faith in a civil manner without putting the other person down. It is called "love."

We see you love the Catholic religion. But I love God and His Word.

 

[Selene]

Of the 3 aspects, its the Holy Spirit that often confounds or amazes me, I think its the hardest element for us to get our minds around - with God you can visualise/feel or personify, Jesus we relate to personally as God in human form, but the Holy Spirit....trickier!

I understand what you are saying here. A lot of times, I usually end up using God the Father or Jesus, the Son of God. Even in my prayers, it is always God the Father or Jesus whom I pray to. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever prayed to the Holy Spirit, who is also a person. :blink:

 

[mcorba]

I understand what you are saying here. A lot of times, I usually end up using God the Father or Jesus, the Son of God. Even in my prayers, it is always God the Father or Jesus whom I pray to. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever prayed to the Holy Spirit, who is also a person. :blink:

I think that is why it is our natural inclination to pray to God or to Jesus, because as Aspen commented, the Spirit is the action/force, and is therefore harder for us to grasp or visualise when we pray or consider the Trinity - yet, the
Holy Spirit is the force of feeling we get when our hearts are full of God and we feel stronger and more at one with God...as I said, its a difficult one! We need the Holy Spirit working through us if we are going to be closer to God and be more like Jesus and what Jesus taught us!

 

[marksman]

I am sorry to say, but you were never raised Roman Catholic. You were in a church that was already excommunicated by the Vatican. Your church did not separate from us. Your church was excommunicated by the Vatican because your church went against Catholic doctrines.

Despite that the church has the Holy Spirit according to you so all is not lost.

 

[Selene]

I think that is why it is our natural inclination to pray to God or to Jesus, because as Aspen commented, the Spirit is the action/force, and is therefore harder for us to grasp or visualise when we pray or consider the Trinity - yet, the
Holy Spirit is the force of feeling we get when our hearts are full of God and we feel stronger and more at one with God...as I said, its a difficult one! We need the Holy Spirit working through us if we are going to be closer to God and be more like Jesus and what Jesus taught us!

I was looking up prayers to the Holy Spirit on the Internet, and there are actually a lot of them! Imagine that! We even have a novena to the Holy Spirit that I found on CatholicOnline. Imagine that! :blink: I think I should start praying one of those prayers.

 

[marksman]

All you guys are confirming is that you do not respect roman catholics as equal followers of Christ - and until you do, there will be no chance of respectful dialog no matter how hard we try not to react to all the name calling and accusations - it really is too bad

In other words, you can't answer our questions.

 

[deprofundis]

You're not asking questions, you're just attacking their faith. There is a difference between asking "Why do you believe what you believe about X" and "How were you tricked into buying in to the heretical cult of Satan of which you are an ignorant and/or evil member." While the latter is an exaggeration, a lot of the "questions" in this thread aren't too far from it. I don't belong to any denomination, but this thread has turned towards people just bullying Catholics for thinking differently than they do. The subtitle is "be nice," and I don't see anything nice about calling people liars, heretics, or implying that they aren't Christians because they don't believe exactly what you do. I'm sure a few Catholics have done the same thing back, but, honestly, the attacks have been pretty one sided in everything from this thread I've read.

If you don't understand something, and want to understand it, ask a question. If you just want to argue and attack, this isn't the place for it. I keep hoping this thread will have some nice, open dialogues in it, but I keep coming back to arguments that border on abuse.

 

[marksman]

Aspen, it is a simple question. Are you forbidden from you religion to speak the truth? God has no creator, so we know that God, the Father, has no mother.

Anastacia, didn't you know that they are only allowed to say what the pope says and as they believe everything every pope says, who knows what we are going to end up with. If the pope says it, then it must be right even if it is complete heresy like indulgences.

P.S. The truth is what the pope says, so if the bible says something different, then the bible is wrong.

I really think the secret fear of all Protestant is not Hell or Atheists - it's "Oh no! What if we did not reject enough of the Romanist doctrine! I may still be Catholic!"

As I take the bible as my guide, I do not suffer the emotion of fear as it says that perfect love casts out all fear. I know that the Father's love for me is perfect, hence no fear.

Just know that your attempts to hijack this thread - because that is exactly what you are trying to do - will fail. Starve the Troll, everyone.

I have noticed in a lot of forums that when someone doesn't like it when they don't get things all their own way they bring out the troll rubbish.

Aspen, I will give you 1 out of 10 at your attempt to be serious in post 488

Since this post appears to have nothing to offer, I thought I would describe the comments.

Still no answer to my questions on page 16. You will have to forgive us if we don't believe that you are here to answer questions. More like to impose catholic dogma.

 

[Selene]

You're not asking questions, you're just attacking their faith. There is a difference between asking "Why do you believe what you believe about X" and "How were you tricked into buying in to the heretical cult of Satan of which you are an ignorant and/or evil member." While the latter is an exaggeration, a lot of the "questions" in this thread aren't too far from it. I don't belong to any denomination, but this thread has turned towards people just bullying Catholics for thinking differently than they do. The subtitle is "be nice," and I don't see anything nice about calling people liars, heretics, or implying that they aren't Christians because they don't believe exactly what you do. I'm sure a few Catholics have done the same thing back, but, honestly, the attacks have been pretty one sided in everything from this thread I've read.

If you don't understand something, and want to understand it, ask a question. If you just want to argue and attack, this isn't the place for it. I keep hoping this thread will have some nice, open dialogues in it, but I keep coming back to arguments that border on abuse.

Everything you said here is very true. There are some people who do not wish to have an honest dialogue and only wish to attack others. Attacking people has nothing to do with truth or love. Christianity is about love. It is useless to know everything in Scripture if one does not practice what is in Scripture.

 

[Anastacia]

Despite that the church has the Holy Spirit according to you so all is not lost.

hehehe

 

[marksman]

Since when is "majority rule" a determiner of truth? If this were the case a billion Catholics would certainly trump 500,000 Protestants, not to mention the division within Protestant denominations.

What 500,000 protestants are you talking about?

Everything you said here is very true. There are some people who do not wish to have an honest dialogue and only wish to attack others. Attacking people has nothing to do with truth or love. Christianity is about love. It is useless to know everything in Scripture if one does not practice what is in Scripture.

Matt 23:23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and you have left undone the weightier matters of the Law, judgment, mercy, and faith. You ought to have done these and not to leave the other undone.

I judge from this verse that you deem Jesus to be lacking in truth and love.

 

[Selene]

I judge from this verse that you deem Jesus to be lacking in truth and love.

And I was the one who told you twice that I prayed for your recovery and that I love you, my brother.