xjwsforChrist

I don't think that "proof texting" is a good idea.
I mean, if there is one thing we do know is that for any passage that says (A) we can find one that says (B)

You passage implies that God can be known and He can, in a very limited way.
I think we can KNOW God yes, but we can never fully UNDERSTAND God in His Infinite way of being.


Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end

Job 38
New International Version (NIV)
The Lord Speaks

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
19 “What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
23 which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
26 to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
30 when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
31 “Can you bind the chains[b] of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons[c]
or lead out the Bear[d] with its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth?
34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
36 Who gives the ibis wisdom[f]
or gives the rooster understanding?[g]
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
38 when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?
39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
40 when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
41 Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?

Good morning Char....

I realize you feel Sab is on board with you, and you seem to be in unity with much of what he has shared, but please do not be fooled.
If he were to voice how he truly feels ( and he has already) about the RCC, I think you would be having the same major issues with him as you ARE with US. And the voice he is listening to you will condemn as well.

Just wanted to see if you realized you weren't on the same page.

Love
Justmom

He has given us His own son PSac so that we can know His father. Just as Proverbs 2 says. He didn't want to be thought of as an unfathomable mystery, He wanted us to have a relationship with Him personally, we can't have one with a mystery. John 17:3, That concept makes someone unreachable for contact, it's a fallacy, promoted by religion to oppress people. Just as they kept the bible away from people or out of the common language. Same rhetoric, same goal. That Jah's thoughts are higher than ours doesn't make Him a mystery, it simply makes Him superior.

Loz x

_________________
"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

There is NO way the FINITE can fully comprehend the infinite.
Yes, ONE day we will, but not in our current state.

I know that it is fanciable to promote that the church kept bibles from bible to keep them ignorant ( and under control) and while there is SOME element of truth to that (look at the divisions that happened when the bible became mainstream, JW's case in point) the logistics was that very few people had ANY books and it was only when the printing press was created that it was even feasible to contemplate producing bibles.

Christ gives us a living example of Our Father, True God from True God, all that Christ is, the Father is and all The father is, Christ is.
We are blessed to have Christ as our mediator and the ONLY true example of God.
That doesn't mean God is NOT beyond our understanding, it means that God has shown us, in and through Christ, all we NEED to know about God.

It also means he is NOT an unfathomable mystery, quite the contrary, and it is contradicting scripture to misrepresent Him this way. So we will have to agree to disagree. Religion did oppress the people in terrible ways, and even in the 1950s in Britain there were people, Catholics actually, that I knew personally, who were forbidden to possess a bible in anything but Latin. Now, acknowledging Proverbs 2, what possible benefit to them could that be?

Loz x

_________________
"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

We're both trinitarians and understand why that particular theological framework is superior. We were not told this by others, but did our own personal research and had our own personal experiences. My negative opinion of the RCC organization doesn't invalidate the theological unity we display. The RCC deserve credit for propagating the trinity because it's the most correct way to currently describe the nature of God.

That said, I wish the RCC would have been more honest with their members. Clearly, their theology borrows from it's neighboring nations and I wish they would have found a way to teach that to their members outright. I don't call it plagiarizing, I call it esoteric collaboration. I believe in universalism and so does the RCC, the difference between me and them is that I am open about my universalism. I openly claim that all religions are connected and I don't hide from that idea despite opposition. Religions are like the earth's continents in that long ago they were a single structure. I think God loves blowing things up.



So you are saying that God is fathomable? That's not what I am saying at all. I am saying that there IS a best way to describe God with our current information. I don't make the claim that I can fathom the divine, just what has been revealed by the divine, which is the Trinity which can be corroborated with the religions of the world. Many merely write it off as evil pagan influence on the church. They couldn't be further from the truth.

-Sab

I agree that it is quite incorrect to deny anyone the written word of God.
There is no excuse for that and people NEED to smarten up.
It should be noted that when bible became available to people, the RCC was the one that put the most out there.
The RSV, the NRSV and the Jerusalem Bible are/were approved by the Vatican.
There is NO prohibition to owing a bible and there never was.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 936AAxJr6G

http://www.biblica.com/bibles/faq/18/

That said, it was true that the church did ban the possession of "non-approved" bibles:



The problem with the above is this:
The Council of Toulouse was a regional council, not an ecumenical council. Regional councils have do not have authority on the Church as a whole.

This council was called to deal with the Albigensian/Manichean heresy that was running amok in souther France. The texts it was referring to were doctored versions of the Bible which the Albigensian/Manichean created in order to support their heretical teachings. So no, this council did no forbid the reading and study of authentic copies of the Bible.

There was no Council of Tarragona in 1234. There was a provincial council in 1242 to deal with the details of the Inquisition. Presuming the author simply got the year wrong, I do know the history of this area and time in a general way. Muslim Moors, who had recently been ejected from this region, had produced doctored versions of the Bible, much like the Albgensians had done in France. This was done to support the view that it was Ishmael, not Issac, who Abraham blessed, that Jesus was not crucified and that another even greater prophet would follow Jesus. Many many copies of these false scriptures had been spread throughout the land during the Moorish occupation of Spain.

SO, in short, SOME kings and some regionals DID ban "non-approved" (hereitcal - think NWT) bibles.


As for our agree to disagree, that is fine of course.
I just don't think we are disagreeing per say.
I am simply stating that while we may know ALL we NEED to know about God through Christ, as human we can NOT fully comprehend ALL that God is.

There certainly was a prohibition to owning a bible in English in this country PSac. The Catholics I spoke of were only allowed to own one in Latin, just as the church mass was in Latin, a dead language. No benefit to anyone who couldn't translate it.

Perhaps what is troubling is that people were still, for many decades advised not to try and understand the bible without the help of a priest or vicar. It was deemed to be beyond the reach or ordinary people! Hogwash! And I know this because I was one of them, who asked questions about scriptures that weren't dealt with in sermons.

It seems, most sad of all, that people still don't actually read their bibles, but rather listen to their church's interpretations.

Loz x

_________________
"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

And that was 100% wrong on the part of the Church of England.
No if's and's or but's about it.

That said, one can at times see the reasoning behind it.

That wasn't the CofE. That was the RCC.

Loz x

_________________
"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

Can you tell me when ?

As I said I knew families whe weren't allowed to own bibles in English even up to the late 1950s here in the UK.

Loz x

_________________
"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

Paul said,

That said, it was true that the church did ban the possession of "non-approved" bibles:

Quote:
"Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should not be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books."- The Church Council of Toulouse 1229 ADSource: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe,Scolar Press, London, Englandcopyright 1980 by Edward Peters,ISBN 0-85967-621-8, pp. 194-195

The Council of Tarragona of 1234, in its second canon, ruled that:

"No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days, so that they may be burned..."- The Church Council of Tarragona 1234 AD; 2nd Cannon - Source : D. Lortsch, Historie de la Bible en France, 1910, p.14.



So, non- approved Bibles. Why might that be?

See, I am hearing that as the approved Bibles were tampered and changed to promote the Catholic doctrines and traditions of man, thereby enslaving them to " the church", and never knowing the real truth...by teaching THAT it is through them as mediator between the individual and God that their salvation stems.

And this is exactly as the quote mentions what the WTBS does. You cannot use any non- approved bibles other than the NWT. They have twisted it as well to interpret it the way they feel calling it the truth and that through them their salvation stems.


So on this one I must disagree
Love to you all
Justmom

Hmmm was all this mentioned by the thief on the cross who was next to Jesus? *blink blink*

_________________
To fear me is to love me....

Which is weird because there is NO prohibition against than in the RCC catechism or "rule book".