What is the one true Church?

[BreadOfLife]

You so funny! You think you are smart enough to antagonize me? Think again! With both hands!

Hey – just an honest observation . . .

 

[BreadOfLife]

Nor does it mean that the concept is represented in the scriptures.
I did not say that theological words that are not in the scriptures are always false.
I said, theological words that are not in the Bible are red flags...which means we need to take a close look at them and their definitions.....because that is the way people have introduce false beliefs into Christianity. Why not use the words that are in the scriptures if your intent is to be accurate and honest?

People have been doing this for centuries. The art of making people believe a lie! It does not matter if it is religion or society. Unleaded gas....Back in the day they said unleaded gas cost more because they had to remove the lead....lol...They did not unlead the gas....they had to add lead to regular gas.

Your entire argument that the Bible endorses sex outside of wedlock is nothing more than deflection. You have posted paragraph after paragraph of gobbledygook that is nothing more than a non-existent rabbit-hole of your OWN imagination.

“Fornication” is a word that describes a very REAL Biblical concept for which I have provided AMPLE Scriptural evidence.
Everybody here knows it but YOU . . .

 

[Grailhunter]

Each one teach one​

Perpetua was not the last of the Church’s literary women. Proba, a noblewoman and a believer, emerged as one of the leading poets in the following century. She took one of the received verse forms of the Roman tradition, the cento, and bent it to Christian purposes.

The cento was a quirky form. It required the poet to take lines or half-lines from Vergil’s Aeneid and rearrange them to tell an entirely different story. As far as we know, Proba was the first to use such fragments to tell the story of Jesus Christ—a sublimely symbolic activity, accomplished at the time Christianity was emerging as the dominant cultural force in the empire.

With the end of persecution came freedom for the Church, and soon women came to the fore in academic research and teaching. St. Jerome of Stridon was one of the leading lights of the fourth century, but all of his most prominent students were female. He taught Hebrew and Scripture to a group of well-educated consecrated women in Rome.

They drove his research by raising textual questions he could not answer. He commented that they surpassed him in language skills as well, speaking and singing in unaccented Hebrew. It was his students Paula and Eustochium who accompanied him to the Holy Land, where they made possible his prodigious work in biblical scholarship and in their “spare” time founded communities of religious women.

Christian women upset the expectations of Rome. And it was not only Christians who noticed this. Ardent pagans—thinking pagans, such as Galen and Libanius—were astonished by what was happening. Galen, the greatest physician of antiquity, was usually disdainful when he spoke of Christianity, but he had to acknowledge that Christian women often “attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophers.”

Christian intellectuals were even more appreciative. St. Augustine of Hippo may be one of the ten most influential thinkers in human history, but he said that in philosophy he was no more than the disciple of his mother, St. Monica. St. Gregory of Nyssa, the intellectual heir of Plato and Philo, said the same about his sister, St. Macrina, who had homeschooled him.

Brick, mortar, and women​

Freedom of religion also enabled the emergence of distinctively Christian institutions. There had never before, in all of history, been anything resembling a hospital. But in the third century, Christians began organizing communities for medical care, and in the fourth century these flourished. Within fifty years of the legalization of Christianity, no self-respecting city was without a hospital, and some cities had as many as a half-dozen.

Again, they were Christian institutions, and many of them were founded by women: St. Fabiola in Rome, for example, and St. Olympias in Constantinople. So, women emerged as leaders in the rising field of medicine. They had the courage to deal with infectious disease, the organizational skills to assemble teams for effective care, and the religious zeal to energize them through times of epidemic.

Women also were experimenting with new forms of religious community — monastic enclosures, hermitages, and urban residences for consecrated singles. Whereas once it was considered shameful for women to live apart from men, it was now a mark of a special divine calling. As there were Desert Fathers, so there were Desert Mothers. As there were abbots, so there were abbesses. The liturgy came to praise Gregory and Benedict as “Fathers” and Macrina and Scholastica as “Mothers.”

St. Paul sparked a revolution not only in women’s rights but in their practical experience of marriage. He did this when he said: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).

What he prescribed had never been the norm in the pagan world. Greek and Roman girls were married off in childhood to men much older. Love probably did not rank high among their expectations for spousal life. The descriptions of married sex from antiquity seem predatory by today’s standards.

But all evidence indicates that the Church encouraged Christians to live by St. Paul’s standard. This made a better life for most of the women in the Christian world, especially as compared to their pagan neighbors, who were physically abused, forced to abort their babies, and often abandoned to poverty through divorce.

We may allow for a certain degree of idealism in Tertullian’s description of Christian marriage, but it’s likely that he was writing what his co-religionists (and his wife!) could recognize as true:

How can I come up with words to tell the happiness of that marriage which the Church cements, and the sacrifice confirms, and the benediction signs and seals—of which angels carry the news, and which the Father ratifies? . . . What a union! Two believers, sharing one hope, one desire, one discipline, one and the same service! Both are brethren, both fellow-servants, no difference of spirit or of flesh; they really are two in one flesh. Where the flesh is one, the spirit is one, too. . . . When he sees things like these, Christ rejoices. He sends his own peace to these two. Where two are together, he is with them himself. And where he is, the evil one cannot be.​

(Tertullian, To His Wife, 2.8).​

Women in the Early Church: A Radical Equality

In all of history, there has been no force as successful as Catholic Christianity in making positive change for women. Click here to read more.

www.catholic.com

There were definitely female saints and martyrs in the first 300 years of Christianity. Paul definitely used females and married couples in his ministry.
Roman vs Christian marital arrangements....
1. Romans married a legal wife....she may have little to do with his sex life....heterosexual or homosexual.
2. Romans consider polygamy as heathenistic. Jewish-Christians never stopped practicing polygamy and concubinage. Gentile-Christians probably did not practice polygamy or concubinage much because strangely enough it was considered heathenistic. But it was practiced enough that Paul had to stipulate that to be a leader in the church a man had to be married and the husband of one wife. Martin Luther did not forbid polygamy and some Catholics practiced polygamy and concubinage....there is a story to that. Around the time that the Protestants and Catholics made wedding ceremonies a requirement to be married....The Council of Trent ruled against polygamy.
3. Celibacy has always been very rare and Eunuchs by definition are castrated and look down upon by Christianity??? debatable? The Catholic Church did not cannon Origen as a saint because he castrated himself. You are not going to find any Priest, Cardinals, Bishops, or Popes that were castrated.

 

[Grailhunter]

Your entire argument that the Bible endorses sex outside of wedlock is nothing more than deflection. You have posted paragraph after paragraph of gobbledygook that is nothing more than a non-existent rabbit-hole of your OWN imagination.

“Fornication” is a word that describes a very REAL Biblical concept for which I have provided AMPLE Scriptural evidence.
Everybody here knows it but YOU . . .

You are entirely wrong and I encourage people to look it up

 

[BreadOfLife]

Well you are right languages are man-made....but not all words are designed to deceive. Not all words are designed to promote lies.

And there is nothing “deceptive” about the word “Fornication”.
We ALL know what it means . . .

 

[Grailhunter]

And there is nothing “deceptive” about the word “Fornication”.
We ALL know what it means . . .

It is a scam....a lie....and a false belief. People can look it up. I gave detailed information why it is a scan...a lie....and a false belief. post #1284

 

[BreadOfLife]

You are entirely wrong and I encourage people to look it up

A THOUSAND angry denials doesn't amount to ONE fact . . .

 

[Illuminator]

Once again, you are blind to the difference between EXPLICIT Biblical teaching and IMPLICIT Biblical teaching.
ALL THREEE of the verses I gave you are implicit in their condemnation of sex outside of wedlock.

The following are also implicit, almost explicit teachings on fornication:
1 Cor. 7:2
But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

1 Cor. 7:8
Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

If sex OUTSIDE of marriage is so “pure and pleading” to God – WHY did the Holy Spirit inspire Paul to tell his readers to get married if they can’t control their sexual urges??

This is NOT complicated – for MOST of us, that is.
YOU, on the other hand, are plagued by moral relativism . . .

Moral relativism goes hand in hand with MODERNISM, the synthesis of all heresies. Grailhunter demonstrates Modernism in most of his posts.
The Church has officially condemned Modernism in the following documents:

1. Lamentabili Sane, Pope St. Pius X (1907)
2. Paschendi Dominici Gregis, Pope St. Pius X (1907)

By its very nature, Modernism — the sythesis of all heresies, according to Pope St. Pius X — is hard to define because it doesn’t have an official creed. For this reason, it is like nailing jelly to a wall.

 

[Grailhunter]

It is a scam....a lie....and a false belief. People can look it up. I gave detailed information why it is a scan...a lie....and a false belief. post #1284

I keep telling people to look all this up....I want them to look it up. A person that is not telling the truth is not going to do that.
You still need to find where the Bible requires a wedding ceremony.
You still need to find where the Catholic Church required wedding ceremonies before the 1500's.
Two unmarried people having sex is not a sin if they stay together. That is how the Jews and Christians did it for centuries.
As they say....prove me wrong!

 

[Illuminator]

3. Celibacy has always been very rare

But not unheard of. Jesus and Paul were celibates.

and Eunuchs by definition are castrated and look down upon by Christianity??? debatable?

Self castrated men were not permitted to study for the priesthood, that does not mean they were excluded from the community. The same applies today. In fact, men with homosexual tendencies are no longer permitted to enter the seminary. The Church learned a painful lesson. 80% of sex scandals involve homosexuality, not pedophilia. Perverts snuck into the seminary in the '60's with the help of liberal administrators which led to the worst crisis in the history of the CC. Those who decry 20% pedophilia cases try to over-ride the bulk of the problem by covering up for 80% of homosexual cases. Homosexuality is not pedophilia.

The Catholic Church did not cannon Origen as a saint because he castrated himself. You are not going to find any Priest, Cardinals, Bishops, or Popes that were castrated.

Because they were never candidates for the priesthood in the first place. Origen was a great teacher, but he also had some non-Orthodox positions on Scripture and the faith in general. Some of his teachings were specifically anathemitized by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.

 

[Jim B]

In other words, Jesus and the original apostles messed up and forgot to include a whole bunch of stuff in the original scriptures but, thankfully, the Catholic Church came along and filled in all of the missing information that Jesus and the apostles forgot to include, right?

It seems that Paul was obviously wrong when he said that the original scriptures were sufficient to make a man of God "complete".

2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Great post!!!

 

[Illuminator]

I keep telling people to look all this up....I want them to look it up. A person that is not telling the truth is not going to do that.
You still need to find where the Bible requires a wedding ceremony.
You still need to find where the Catholic Church required wedding ceremonies before the 1500's.
Two unmarried people having sex is not a sin if they stay together. That is how the Jews and Christians did it for centuries.
As they say....prove me wrong!

Your legalism not important because we reject the man made, unworkable, self-defeating, illogical premise of sola scriptura.

The argument from silence is a fallacy of weak induction that treats the absence of evidence as evidence itself. This logical fallacy essentially takes an appeal to authority and flips it around.

By many uncivilized races, and by most civilized ones, the marriage ceremony is regarded as a religious rite or includes religious features, although the religious element is not always regarded as necessary to the validity of the union.​

​

Under the Christian dispensation marriage is a religious act of the very highest kind, namely, one of the seven sacraments. Although Luther declared that marriage was not a sacrament but “a worldly thing”, all the Protestant sects have continued to regard it as religious in the sense that it ought normally to be contracted in the presence of a clergyman. Owing to the influence of the Lutheran view and of the French Revolution, civil marriage has been instituted in almost all the countries of Europe and North America, as well as in some of the states of South America. In some countries it is essential to the validity of the union before the civil law, while in others, e.g., in the United States, it is merely one of the ways in which marriage may be contracted. Civil marriage is not, however, a post-Reformation institution, for it existed among the ancient Peruvians, and among the Aborigines of North America.​

​

Whether as a state or as a contract, whether from the viewpoint of religion and morals or from that of social welfare, marriage appears in its highest form in the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church. The fact that the contract is a sacrament impresses the popular mind with the importance and sacredness of the relation thus begun. The fact that the union is indissoluble and monogamous promotes in the highest degree the welfare of parents and children, and stimulates in the whole community the practice of those qualities of self-restraint and altruism which are essential to social well-being, physical, mental, and moral (see Family; Divorce; Celibacy of the Clergy).​

source
Marriage is a sacrament. Your demand to proof text wedding ceremonies from the Bible is stupid and absurd.
Couples who never had a wedding ceremony or even a civil marriage and live together are always welcomed by the Church to have their marriage convalidated.
We don't shoot our wounded.

 

[Grailhunter]

Because they were never candidates for the priesthood in the first place. Origen was a great teacher, but he also had some non-Orthodox positions on Scripture and the faith in general. His teachings were specifically anathemitized by the Second Council of Constantinople in 1553.

Correct.

The argument from silence is a fallacy of weak induction that treats the absence of evidence as evidence itself. This logical fallacy essentially takes an appeal to authority and flips it around.

When you study history you cannot say....Ya it happened and here are the details.....if there are no details.
You can say you suspect or you believe....but no proof.
I do not treat the absence of evidence as evidence.....I have no problem saying we do not know or I do not know or I suspect or I believe. Or I say there is no documented proof. There are times I say I suspect or believe but there is no documented proof. I have made this clear all along because I know history and know how to study it.

 

[BreadOfLife]

I keep telling people to look all this up....I want them to look it up. A person that is not telling the truth is not going to do that.
You still need to find where the Bible requires a wedding ceremony.
You still need to find where the Catholic Church required wedding ceremonies before the 1500's.
Two unmarried people having sex is not a sin if they stay together. That is how the Jews and Christians did it for centuries.
As they say....prove me wrong!

I ALREADY have . . .

 

[Grailhunter]

By many uncivilized races, and by most civilized ones, the marriage ceremony is regarded as a religious rite or includes religious features, although the religious element is not always regarded as necessary to the validity of the union.

Again, wedding ceremonies were not required by Christianity until the mid 1500's...that is an absolute fact.
I will tell you the same thing I told BOL....
You still need to find where the Bible requires a wedding ceremony.
You still need to find where the Catholic Church required wedding ceremonies before the 1500's.

On the other hand all wedding ceremonies come from Pagan cultures. That is why we have so many Pagan customs in modern Christian weddings. And yes Pagans have had marriages and wedding for thousands of years.

 

[Grailhunter]

I ALREADY have . . .

You have not even began to!
You still need to find where the Bible requires a wedding ceremony.
You still need to find where the Catholic Church required wedding ceremonies before the 1500's.

 

[BreadOfLife]

You have not even began to!
You still need to find where the Bible requires a wedding ceremony.
You still need to find where the Catholic Church required wedding ceremonies before the 1500's.

I SUNK your argument in post #1320.
Just like I destroyed your argument that people cannot be holy - when the Bible says we absolutely CAN (1 Pet. 2:9, 1 Peter 1:16, 1 Peter 1:15, Heb. 12:14).

 

[Grailhunter]

marriage appears in its highest form in the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church.

The Pope did not make statements on marriage along the way....
And "marriage appears in it highest form in the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church! Oh my gosh! It was one of many reasons for the Protestant reform. I wish it was true. But please....please have at it! Produce some official statements from the Catholic Church praising marriage before the 1500's

 

[Grailhunter]

I SUNK your argument in post #1320.
Just like I destroyed your argument that people cannot be holy - when the Bible says we absolutely CAN (1 Pet. 2:9, 1 Peter 1:16, 1 Peter 1:15, Heb. 12:14)

Not even close.
These scriptures are not talking about celibacy or weddings. What topic are you on?

 

[BreadOfLife]

Not even close.
These scriptures are not talking about celibacy or weddings. What topic are you on?

Those verses condemn sex outside of marriage.
Only a moral relativist like yourself would try to wiggle out of that truth.