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Yet, here we are in 2024 and there are STILL people that believe I am unable to read the Bible and discern for myself what it means.

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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Thats a humongous document. I'll look through this later to see if maybe I find anything that changes my mind. As for the way you presented it, I'm not convinced.

1. You ignored Ambrose
2. He just removed her from conversation out of respect for Jesus? So he doesn't have the same respect for the apostles? He notes that she must have had some abundance of grace for the overcoming of sin that no one else had. Why not give a bit more of a nod to the men that Jesus founded the Church on. Why were they not noted for being so abundantly blessed in grace to help the world know about how sin was defeated? In my opinion, this is really reading what you want to into a fairly clear line.
3. You quote from chapter 47 conveniently leaves out Eve in the story of how sin came into the world. "By one man" sin entered the world. And now, when considering humans since, never could it be "said that he had no sin at all" it appears to me this is obviously a generalization, and likely proof texting on your part, but I may be wrong and I will read it in context.
4. The last paragraph will also be one I will search for context on. I could clip "one alone is there who was born without sin" or I can read all of the other qualifiers listed to describe Jesus that Mary would not have.


I'm not just tossing out your post as a whole, but those are my initial qualms. I'll read more when I have time.

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Yeah...maybe instead of hunting out websites that cherry pick quotes you should actually read the Church Fathers....You might be surprised by what you find.

I do find it ironic, you accuse me of "quote clipping" when all you seemingly do is hunt websites.

But go ahead, what I pasted is the start of Chapter 57.

In fact, Here's the whole chapter...

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Chapter 57 [XXXV.]Turn to Neither Hand. Let us hold fast, then, the confession of this faith, without faltering or failure. One alone is there who was born without sin, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who lived without sin amid the sins of others, and who died without sin on account of our sins. "Let us turn neither to the right hand nor to the left."640 For to turn to the right hand is to deceive oneself, by saying that we are without sin; and to turn to the left is to surrender oneself to one's sins with a sort of impunity, in I know not how perverse and depraved a recklessness. "God indeed knoweth the ways on the right hand,"641 even He who alone is without sin, and is able to blot out our sins; "but the ways on the left hand are perverse,"642 in friendship with sins. Of such inflexibility were those youths of twenty years,643 who foretokened in figure God's new people; they entered the land of promise; they, it is said, turned neither to the right hand nor to the left.644 Now this age of twenty is not to be compared with the age of children's innocence, but if I mistake not, this number is the shadow and echo of a mystery. For the Old Testament has its excellence in the five books of Moses, while the New Testament is most refulgent in the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers, when multiplied together, reach to the number twenty: four times five, or five times four, are twenty. Such a people (as I have already said), instructed in the kingdom of heaven by the two Testamentsthe Old and the Newturning neither to the right hand, in a proud assumption of righteousness, nor to the left hand, in a reckless delight in sin, shall enter into the land of promise, where we shall have no longer either to pray that sins may be forgiven to us, or to fear that they may be punished in us, having been freed from them all by that Redeemer, who, not being "sold under sin,"645 "hath redeemed Israel out of all his iniquities,"646 whether committed in the actual life, or derived from the original transgression.

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Your comment on Eve shows how much you're stretching. Eve was formed before the fall in the garden. That does not mean she didn't sin (as we know she did). So while she may have been formed before sin entered teh world, she fell. Nobody is excluded.

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I've read the fathers. I'll always read it in context, with a page or two before and after what line i think are most powerful. If you want to say that i am only qualified to comment if ive read every page of every church father, I hope you hold yourself to the same standard.

It's abundantly clear to me that chapter 57 is exhorting all of us to belief in Jesus and to both avoid sin, and not be overly scrupulous, lest we believe we can earn our way to Heaven. None of this (and I mean none of it) has to do with Mary. I can not see how one could possibly elevate this to some sort of equal standing to what he
Specifically wrote about Mary. "Mary is ……." =\= "all men are….."

Brush away the Eve point all you want. He gives specific deference to Mary. If you want to use a passage where he can't even acknowledge there was a woman beside Adam as an equivalent, be my guest. But you're going to have to show me how a specific deference can be somehow negated by such a vague reference that the actual originator of sin is not named.

And you still have not shown me where Luther disavowed his belief that Mary was sinless at least 12 years prior to his death. I would love to see how he changed his views on this topic while the Bible didn't change at all. I

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Giving deference to Eve does not equate to a claim she was sinless.

Everyone should give deference to Eve. She is clearly set aside in the Scriptures and should be honored for what she did.

But Augustine does not make an affirmative statement about her that I've seen, and he only equates Jesus or really God as being sinless. Your sources do not change that.

Btw...on Ambrose...most of the quotes you tried to use only talk of her virginity. Ambrose rights a whole book documenting the virginity of different women and what we can take away from that. It has nothing to do with sinlessness, and she's not the only woman used as an example. So again, a strikeout on your part.

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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AgPrognosticator said:

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Faithful Ag said:

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AgPrognosticator said:

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If, however, used in the traditional Protestant context to describe perfection, "Holy Mary" would be incorrect because obviously Mary was far from perfect being a fallen sinner like the rest of us in need a His saving grace.

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The bold is definitely a point of disagreement between Catholics and Protestants. We do believe Mary, through a special grace from God, was preserved and kept from any personal sin from her conception. Mary is the most Holy and most Blessed person ever created. Mary was not like the rest of us wicked and sinful people but her will was perfectly conformed to God's will through her son.

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Whoa…

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I think that's rather clear.

Not trying to argue…just very different than my personal beliefs.

That is very helpful in explaining the elevation of Mary in Catholic teachings.

ETA further commentary: Protestants overwhelmingly condemned the promulgation of the immaculate conception and a sinless Mary as an exercise in papal power, and the doctrine itself as unscriptural, for it denied that all had sinned and rested on the Latin translation of Luke 1:28 (the "full of grace" passage) that the original Greek did not support. Protestants, therefore, teach that Mary was a sinner saved through grace, like all believers.

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Don't have time to do a deep dive. Couple points:

- Luther believed in sinless Mary. As father of all Protestants, I don't know you can say Protestants overwhelmingly deny this teaching. Modern denominations, sure. But that's not a historical stance.

- Mary being sinless was not due to her work, but God's. Jesus, being sinless and perfect, would be best suited by a perfect, sinless "vessel" (feels terrible using that word for the Mother of God, but it the easiest to convey the message) so Mary should be sinless. How when all humans sin? The answer: God saved her from sin prior to her birth (we are saved after our birth) but He still did the saving. She still needed God as much as we do. He just acted in a different manner/timeline than He usually does.

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A few house keeping items:

First, Luther is not a Pope. His beliefs aren't infallible. To be Lutheran, we don't have to agree with everything he said.

Second, I'm not sure why it would be surprising that a young Luther held views in alignment with Roman Catholics. He was Roman Catholic.

Third, most indications are his views changed as he grew older and, while he held to Mary's perpetual virginity, he did not hold to her sinlessness since that would be contradictory to Scripture.

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Did he hold to Christ's sinlessness? Because that would be against scripture for the same reason that Mary's would be against scripture.

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What? You're arguing the Scriptures don't show Christ was sinless?

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I'm arguing that the scripture that says Mary is sinful includes Christ under the umbrella of "all" meaning it doesn't actually mean "all"

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So you're contention is that Scripture is contradictory?

2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Paul clearly excludes Jesus, and only Jesus from claims that everyone has sinned.

Or said differently, Paul sees that God cannot sin, but all else have...Mary included.

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Of course scripture is contradictory. As I said at the beginning of this thread, a literalist read through will have you thinking that salvation is a one time instantaneous sealing that cannot be undone, and another that is a process that can be derailed.

This is why the proper hermeneutic is needed to understand scripture, and why an authority is needed to provide such hermeneutic.

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Wait...So your position is that God gave us His Word, but made it sufficiently confusing such that we mere mortals can't understand it?

That's a bold claim

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10,000+ Protestant denominations are screaming evidence of the "unperspicacity " of scripture.

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Nobody and I mean nobody takes serious the claims of "10,000 Protestant denominations."

Going to need to make a better argument than that.

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Yeah, you're wrong. But let's reduce that to 100. The point is no less significant.

Here's the truth that you won't accept:

You have no way to define dogma or doctrine without resorting to your or someone else's personal opinion.

My personal opinion is most of what you believe is heretical. Prove me wrong without relying on someone's personal opinion.

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Lets not overlook the fact you just dropped your number by 99%, which is absolutely significant.

Your "truth" like your estimation of denominations is also wrong and nonsensical.

Of course my doctrine is built on others. No Protestant, who is honest, doesn't. That's not problematic in the least. The difference is that I have scriptural support for my arguments and as that is the only place we find God's Word, I find quite a bit of comfort in that.

But here's another truth. Your arguments and Quo Vadis? are no different than an atheists. That "should" concern you. Arguing that Scripture contradicts itself is simply an atheists argument. It's also hugely problematic for you, and why Rome in the end is "Sola Ecclesia." Because if the Scriptures are fallible and contradict themselves, then how can you trust anything it says? You can no longer make arguments for Peter because that could simply be wrong.

What you argue is the best way to create atheists and that "should" scare you and supports of this. I hope you are open enough to see that.

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You can't resort to a scripture that didn't come with a table of contents and doesn't interpret itself without resorting to your personal opinion. There's no way around it.

My arguments are nothing like what an atheist would argue. My argument is that Jesus established an apostolic church and promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against it and he gave Peter the keys and the authority to bind and loose and he gave all the apostles and their successors the great commission and gave them the divine authority to forgive or retain sins. That divinely protected and guided church gave us the same canon of the Bible that you base your entire religion upon, although some fallible person decided to remove 7 of the books because they didn't like them. By what authority was that done?

I know you don't believe or agree with any of that and that's your right. The difference between what you believe and what I believe is that your system has no way to infallibly determine anything beyond each person's subjective opinion. By what authority can any Protestant judge the validity of any other Christian's beliefs, dogmatic/doctrinal or otherwise? Other than resorting to their personal opinion, which is all you can do, they can't. Sola Scriptura can't get you there because it ultimately comes down to each person and their Bible and how that person interprets what he reads or is told.

That's fine. You do you . I'm not really interested in trying to persuade you.

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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The Banned said:

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Thats a humongous document. I'll look through this later to see if maybe I find anything that changes my mind. As for the way you presented it, I'm not convinced.

1. You ignored Ambrose
2. He just removed her from conversation out of respect for Jesus? So he doesn't have the same respect for the apostles? He notes that she must have had some abundance of grace for the overcoming of sin that no one else had. Why not give a bit more of a nod to the men that Jesus founded the Church on. Why were they not noted for being so abundantly blessed in grace to help the world know about how sin was defeated? In my opinion, this is really reading what you want to into a fairly clear line.
3. You quote from chapter 47 conveniently leaves out Eve in the story of how sin came into the world. "By one man" sin entered the world. And now, when considering humans since, never could it be "said that he had no sin at all" it appears to me this is obviously a generalization, and likely proof texting on your part, but I may be wrong and I will read it in context.
4. The last paragraph will also be one I will search for context on. I could clip "one alone is there who was born without sin" or I can read all of the other qualifiers listed to describe Jesus that Mary would not have.


I'm not just tossing out your post as a whole, but those are my initial qualms. I'll read more when I have time.

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Yeah...maybe instead of hunting out websites that cherry pick quotes you should actually read the Church Fathers....You might be surprised by what you find.

I do find it ironic, you accuse me of "quote clipping" when all you seemingly do is hunt websites.

But go ahead, what I pasted is the start of Chapter 57.

In fact, Here's the whole chapter...

Quote:

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Chapter 57 [XXXV.]Turn to Neither Hand. Let us hold fast, then, the confession of this faith, without faltering or failure. One alone is there who was born without sin, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who lived without sin amid the sins of others, and who died without sin on account of our sins. "Let us turn neither to the right hand nor to the left."640 For to turn to the right hand is to deceive oneself, by saying that we are without sin; and to turn to the left is to surrender oneself to one's sins with a sort of impunity, in I know not how perverse and depraved a recklessness. "God indeed knoweth the ways on the right hand,"641 even He who alone is without sin, and is able to blot out our sins; "but the ways on the left hand are perverse,"642 in friendship with sins. Of such inflexibility were those youths of twenty years,643 who foretokened in figure God's new people; they entered the land of promise; they, it is said, turned neither to the right hand nor to the left.644 Now this age of twenty is not to be compared with the age of children's innocence, but if I mistake not, this number is the shadow and echo of a mystery. For the Old Testament has its excellence in the five books of Moses, while the New Testament is most refulgent in the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers, when multiplied together, reach to the number twenty: four times five, or five times four, are twenty. Such a people (as I have already said), instructed in the kingdom of heaven by the two Testamentsthe Old and the Newturning neither to the right hand, in a proud assumption of righteousness, nor to the left hand, in a reckless delight in sin, shall enter into the land of promise, where we shall have no longer either to pray that sins may be forgiven to us, or to fear that they may be punished in us, having been freed from them all by that Redeemer, who, not being "sold under sin,"645 "hath redeemed Israel out of all his iniquities,"646 whether committed in the actual life, or derived from the original transgression.

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Your comment on Eve shows how much you're stretching. Eve was formed before the fall in the garden. That does not mean she didn't sin (as we know she did). So while she may have been formed before sin entered teh world, she fell. Nobody is excluded.

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I've read the fathers. I'll always read it in context, with a page or two before and after what line i think are most powerful. If you want to say that i am only qualified to comment if ive read every page of every church father, I hope you hold yourself to the same standard.

It's abundantly clear to me that chapter 57 is exhorting all of us to belief in Jesus and to both avoid sin, and not be overly scrupulous, lest we believe we can earn our way to Heaven. None of this (and I mean none of it) has to do with Mary. I can not see how one could possibly elevate this to some sort of equal standing to what he
Specifically wrote about Mary. "Mary is ……." =\= "all men are….."

Brush away the Eve point all you want. He gives specific deference to Mary. If you want to use a passage where he can't even acknowledge there was a woman beside Adam as an equivalent, be my guest. But you're going to have to show me how a specific deference can be somehow negated by such a vague reference that the actual originator of sin is not named.

And you still have not shown me where Luther disavowed his belief that Mary was sinless at least 12 years prior to his death. I would love to see how he changed his views on this topic while the Bible didn't change at all. I

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Giving deference to Eve does not equate to a claim she was sinless.

Everyone should give deference to Eve. She is clearly set aside in the Scriptures and should be honored for what she did.

But Augustine does not make an affirmative statement about her that I've seen, and he only equates Jesus or really God as being sinless. Your sources do not change that.

Btw...on Ambrose...most of the quotes you tried to use only talk of her virginity. Ambrose rights a whole book documenting the virginity of different women and what we can take away from that. It has nothing to do with sinlessness, and she's not the only woman used as an example. So again, a strikeout on your part.

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I assume you mean deference to Mary and that was a typo? I show no deference towards Eve lol

It's clear we arent going to come to any sort of agreement. I don't see any of your points as holding any weight and you clearly see mine the same way. I'm going to drop it. I'll pray for you, you do the same for me and we'll all be on the same page one day.

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Yes, I meant Mary. Sorry. Was typing fast and mistyped.

The challenge is you've made claims. You've appealed to Church Fathers, specifically Augustine and Ambrose, as proof your claim is historical. Neither claim has held up and certainly Augustine makes more claims (as I've shown) that limit sinlessness to only Jesus (or God).

This ends up being the fundamental issue I have with Rome. Your claims are overstated. Where there is disagreement, it can almost always be traced to a lack of support in the ancient fathers, let alone Scripture.

So you will end up having to appeal to Rome as its own authority.

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lobopride said:

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Zobel said:

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They make the exact same type of claim except instead of apostle they claim prophets with direct experience of divine revelation, just as the authors of the NT claim.

I mean basically half of the NT is written by a person whose claim to Apostleship is literally that of a prophetic vision and calling, and he intentionally evokes that imagery from the OT in his writings.

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Yes, that is Paul's claim. But it was backed by Apostolic authority. An authority that ended when John died. It really is apples and oranges.

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10andBOUNCE said:

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Matthias was an apostle, but the NT doesn't ever mention him again.

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Quo Vadis? said:

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10andBOUNCE said:

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Matthias was an apostle, but the NT doesn't ever mention him again.

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How are we to know apostolic authority ended with St John?

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10andBOUNCE said:

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It is believed that he was the last one alive. He also penned the last book on the NT.

Regardless, there were no others after those 13 men.

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Apostleship (capital A) is an office that ended with John who explicitly closes the canon in Revelation. All New Testament scripture is tied to Apostolic authority.

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