The scripture message, that men are cursed to trust man, would be a comparison to the commandment of having no other gods. To permit flesh/man to be the arm they reach to and follow, would be entering temptation.
Our Lord has promised to search the hearts of man. And in that search, Our Lord would see who man loves, what man treasures in life enough to make it the way of his life. What has man worked to achieve in his life.
I reference the scripture as truth of The Word, Prophecies Addressed to Jews
Jeremiah 17:5 Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.
Jeremiah 17:10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
How would you follow Christ Jesus? Why would you follow Christ? This thread could bring attention to the amazing truth of who Christ is in our daily life.
JoeT,
You have made an excellent point.
And it is why I am an orthodox Catholic.
But politically I am somewhat of a liberal but mostly a moderate.
My Christianity insists that a laborer is worth his wages, that a hungry person needs to eat, that a homeless person need shelter and those are called liberal politiacally.
But to me they are of Christian roots.
As an orthodox Catholic I believe what The Church Jesus founded on the rock called Peter is the true Church and as the bible says the source and foundation of the truth.
So therefore what it officially teaches is the truth and all of that is based on Holy Scripture.
Peace and kindness,
Fred
When you say,'Language is far from the cause, but rather the presence of a convoluted language....."
Wittgenstein is saying that all language is convoluted. English is a piecemeal language made up of many different languages that evolved over time. Like all languages it contains anomalies and for some of the time is inconsistent . There is no such thing as a 'pure language'.
I am not denying that God knows what he wants to say. But even if God revealed to someone exactly what he wanted all it takes is someone like , 'an errant monk' , to misinterpret the message. Why? (A) because he deliberately set about to do so. (B) because that's what language is all about.
Lets look at (A) and (B) in light of the core question."How is it that two people, who read the Bible and do not just depending upon others to read for them, can come to completely opposite understandings of what a passage means?"
In this case I think we can eliminate (A). I am happy to blame language for the problem. From your point of view who has the correct interpretation?..... Elscarta or his friend?.Assuming they have good intentions which I am sure they have.
Sndbay, you have skirted the main point in my post and instead have narrowed your answer to a minor detail.
So I will rephrase my question to make it abundantly clear what I am asking.
How is it that two people, who read the Bible and do not just depend upon others to read for them, can come to completely opposite understandings of what a passage means if as you believe
This is not a hypothetical situation but one that I find myself in with a good friend of mine.
God is Truth and yet according to you it is His Will that either my friend or me believes in a falsehood!
No the promise is if you abide in HIM and HIS word, He will abide in you.
I am positive Christ knows what is in your heart and what is in your friend's heart.
As scripture says what a man soweth, that shall he also reap. You can see results of that on this forum. Mankind have their hearts set to follow who they have chosen. No one knowns that individual heart better then Christ. I believe Christ knowns the heart of each, better then man himself .
As for me, I am willing to sow with the Word of God, and I do pray to be all He created me to be. My heart trust and believes in Christ Jesus. That He is the shepherd and bishop of my soul. I pray that God will give me the courage and strength to always remain true to HIS WIll. And I believe that is HIS Will for me as well. In the name of Jesus, in which I believe is the conquering name in power over all evil, and is the two edged sword of truth, evil can and will bow down and flee from us. So Our Father's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Christ searches the hearts of those that call upon HIM. The spiritual truth is that each are given according to the measure of HIS will.
John 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
God has a message for us but he can only give it to us through language. Because language is far from perfect and because we are far from perfect when we wish to interpret language we often come up with different answers to the same question.
There is alot of truth to what you have said. and I am sure we could take one verse of scripture and find each individual can come to a different conclusion. And others will just give what they have been told or taught it was to mean.
What I trust as being true, is that you can not conclude by one verse of words what is being said. You have to go outside the box of that one verse and obtain all that is being spoken. Plus there is so much more knowledge to be found by the entire volume of the book, and it would be difficult not to include that knowledge in the conclusion.
I offer a verse in the King James Version from the book of Matthew. .
Let's ask everyone their own understanding of this verse?
Matthew 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Plus this remain important to the thread question.
No the promise is if you abide in HIM and HIS word, He will abide in you.
I am positive Christ knows what is in your heart and what is in your friend's heart.
As scripture says what a man soweth, that shall he also reap. You can see results of that on this forum. Mankind have their hearts set to follow who they have chosen. No one knowns that individual heart better then Christ. I believe Christ knowns the heart of each, better then man himself .
As for me, I am willing to sow with the Word of God, and I do pray to be all He created me to be. My heart trust and believes in Christ Jesus. That He is the shepherd and bishop of my soul. I pray that God will give me the courage and strength to always remain true to HIS WIll. And I believe that is HIS Will for me as well. In the name of Jesus, in which I believe is the conquering name in power over all evil, and is the two edged sword of truth, evil can and will bow down and flee from us. So Our Father's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Christ searches the hearts of those that call upon HIM. The spiritual truth is that each are given according to the measure of HIS will.
John 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Sndbay once again you skirt around the question. None of what you wrote answers my question at all. Are you deliberately trying to avoid answering the question?
Since you appear to be unable to give a question a simple straight forward answer, I will break down my question into a series of statements. For each statement I would like you to simply indicate whether you agree or disagree with it. As in one of my previous posts I will use transubstantiation solely as an example of a concept in the Bible that has been understood in two opposing ways. I am not interested, in this post, in which of the two opposing views is true.
1. God is Truth.
2. Satan is the father of all falsehood.
3. Transubstantiation is either true or it is not.
4. If transubstantiation is true then those who believe it is not true believe in a falsehood.
5. If transubstantiation is false then those who believe it is true believe in a falsehood.
6. Those who believe in the falsehood regarding transubstantiation, do so because of Satan, not because God wills them to believe in this falsehood.
Once I have your responses to the above statements I will continue with the remainder of my statements.
Satan is of sin from the beginning, those who sin are of satan
Quote:
Originally Posted by elscarta
3. Transubstantiation is either true or it is not.
The conversion of one substance into another, yet their appearances remain the same. Would be a form of trickery, that would be performed as magic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elscarta
4. If transubstantiation is true then those who believe it is not true believe in a falsehood.
Or can not be decreased by what is not showing in appearance
Quote:
Originally Posted by elscarta
5. If transubstantiation is false then those who believe it is true believe in a falsehood.
They are decreased and believe what they have been told and not in what appears the same
Quote:
Originally Posted by elscarta
6. Those who believe in the falsehood regarding transubstantiation, do so because of Satan, not because God wills them to believe in this falsehood.
Individual election of choice, to disagree or agree (Free will raises the question whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions, decisions, choices.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by elscarta
Once I have your responses to the above statements I will continue with the remainder of my statements.
Your question was:
Quote:
Originally Posted by elscarta
How is it that two people, who read the Bible and do not just depend upon others to read for them, can come to completely opposite understandings of what a passage means if as you believe
Free will choice with this choice referred by ONE Faith.
Everyone won't always have the same exact understanding, although the source is in this case the volume of one Book, the Bible. Not one verse but all verses. The free will choice will vary because of the differences in surrounding influences. However we can rest in knowing Christ understands, give mercy, and we have HIS love. And Christ will aid each individual in accordance to HIS will, and the heart of each individual.
Scripture tells us some are dull of hearing, and some just are not yet of full age having reason of use in their senses that exercise discernment of right and wrong.
JoeT,
You have made an excellent point.
And it is why I am an orthodox Catholic.
But politically I am somewhat of a liberal but mostly a moderate.
My Christianity insists that a laborer is worth his wages, that a hungry person needs to eat, that a homeless person need shelter and those are called liberal politiacally.
But to me they are of Christian roots.
As an orthodox Catholic I believe what The Church Jesus founded on the rock called Peter is the true Church and as the bible says the source and foundation of the truth.
So therefore what it officially teaches is the truth and all of that is based on Holy Scripture.
Peace and kindness,
Fred
We probably agree on many more things than we disagree on. I would characterize my political views as conservative. And, you couldn’t guess? You must admit this is somewhat rare among Catholics. Of course labor should be paid all the market can bear, the hungry feed and the homeless sheltered. These concerns for our follow countrymen are not exclusively liberal; rather they’ve been hijacked by the political left as tools to move towards socialism.
You know I’m orthodox Catholic; in fact I’m sure many here would say rabidly orthodox (if there could be such a thing). And as such I can only agree that reasoning within the discipline of the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit who found our faith in the harmonious agreement between Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition.
And, I’ve been meaning to say for some time that I do value your opinions. I think we see things much alike.
When you say,'Language is far from the cause, but rather the presence of a convoluted language....."
Wittgenstein is saying that all language is convoluted. English is a piecemeal language made up of many different languages that evolved over time. Like all languages it contains anomalies and for some of the time is inconsistent . There is no such thing as a 'pure language'.
I am not denying that God knows what he wants to say. But even if God revealed to someone exactly what he wanted all it takes is someone like , 'an errant monk' , to misinterpret the message. Why? (A) because he deliberately set about to do so. (B) because that's what language is all about.
Lets look at (A) and (B) in light of the core question."How is it that two people, who read the Bible and do not just depending upon others to read for them, can come to completely opposite understandings of what a passage means?"
In this case I think we can eliminate (A). I am happy to blame language for the problem. From your point of view who has the correct interpretation?..... Elscarta or his friend?.Assuming they have good intentions which I am sure they have.
I can’t agree with you, Tut. What I was trying to say is that many use convoluted language to hide their true motives, and their true meaning. They rationalize True and faith for their own reasons and in doing so will use misleading or inconstant language as cover. Thus, in your ‘A or B’ scenario I would pick A in the case of differing beliefs. I do think Catholic theology was deliberately misinterpreted by the ‘errant monk’ – and likely for political reasons as opposed to theological reasons.
I don’t disagree that language is imperfect and often cumbersome (especially in the written form). But, I don’t find it to be the cause for two different opinions of the same verse. This is the false argument that holds that all Christians, no matter what denomination, believe the same thing, only its expressed differently. This isn’t true. There are many fundamental differences.
Sndbay, you appear to lack the ability to understand a simple request and to give simple answers. In my previous post I specifically asked you to state whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements.
I expected below each statement a single word. Agree or Disagree.
1. God is Truth.
Quote:
God is Righteousness, the Spirit of truth
I'll assume this means that you agree.
2. Satan is the father of all falsehood.
Quote:
Satan is of sin from the beginning, those who sin are of satan
Again I'll assume that this means you agree.
As for the rest of the statements your responses give no indication as to whether you agree or disagree with them.
3. Transubstantiation is either true or it is not.
Quote:
The conversion of one substance into another, yet their appearances remain the same. Would be a form of trickery, that would be performed as magic.
4. If transubstantiation is true then those who believe it is not true believe in a falsehood.
Quote:
Or can not be decreased by what is not showing in appearance
5. If transubstantiation is false then those who believe it is true believe in a falsehood.
Quote:
They are decreased and believe what they have been told and not in what appears the same
6. Those who believe in the falsehood regarding transubstantiation, do so because of Satan, not because God wills them to believe in this falsehood.
Quote:
Individual election of choice, to disagree or agree (Free will raises the question whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions, decisions, choices.)
Here is a simple passage from the Bible for you to think about in light of the fact that my previous post asked you for a simple agree or disagree, that is a simple yes or no answer to each of the statements.
Matthew 5:37 (King James Version)
37But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
When it comes down to it we generally agree on many points.
I may have created some confusion because I didn't put forward Wittgenstein's position very well. I suggested that language was the problem. While language is a problem Wittgenstein would say the way we use language is a bigger problem.
I think it comes down to what is know as ,'private language' versus 'public language'. By private language he means a language which is only understood by the person using it. An example might be the small child who has made up words to represent certain objects or things. As an adult we can make an educated guess as to what they are getting at.
Private language and public language is still the subject of much debate even today.
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