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Quote (CatholicApologist @ Sep. 10 2009,08:19) Every Tom, Dick or Harry heretic has claimed to hear the voice of God leading them into all truth. But NONE of them can even try to claim to be speaking from the fountain of the apostles.
As you know, the JW's have a similiar campaign going in their efforts to convince the world that they are the ONLY church. Where you have the passing of the torch, they have the fruits in action. Which to choose?I fear anything that says they have the ONLY answer. Because like I said earlier, there can be no ONE answer to something as lofty as God. His ways are beyond finding out….
Hi CA,
The fountain of the apostles was of the Spirit of Christ.
Such is not the spirit of tradition you cling to.CA said:
Quote Besides if the Church is not organized, then why in the world did St. Paul ordain bishops and deacons and command the believers to obey those who had the rule over them and say that they had watch over their souls? (Heb. 13:17) The ordination of bishops and deacons was necessary in the interim period between the old and the new covenants. But ordination was being phased out by the time the book of Hebrews was being written. The people of God were told to leave the “elementary doctrines” of Christ and to move on to perfection. The laying on of hands was coming to an end which means that the ordination of leaders was coming to an end (Hebrews 6:1-3).
In the new covenant age no man needs to be taught by another:
Hebrews 8:10-13 (New King James Version)
Quote 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds[a] I will remember no more.”
13 In that He says, “A new covenant, ” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.It clearly says that “NONE of them shall teach his neighbor.” Why? Because the law of God is now written upon their minds and in their hearts. This was the ministry of leaders in the transition period to write the law in their hearts (2 Corinthians 3:1-6). Now that we are fully in the new covenant age and the law is written in our hearts, we do not need ordained leaders any longer.
I have made some of these points to CA on another thread and to my knowledge he has not dealt with them.
thinker
Quote (Not3in1 @ Sep. 10 2009,08:28) Quote (CatholicApologist @ Sep. 10 2009,08:19) Every Tom, Dick or Harry heretic has claimed to hear the voice of God leading them into all truth. But NONE of them can even try to claim to be speaking from the fountain of the apostles.
As you know, the JW's have a similiar campaign going in their efforts to convince the world that they are the ONLY church. Where you have the passing of the torch, they have the fruits in action. Which to choose?I fear anything that says they have the ONLY answer. Because like I said earlier, there can be no ONE answer to something as lofty as God. His ways are beyond finding out….
The one true ChurchAll Catholics believe that there is only one true Church—namely their own. At first glance this view appears bigoted. In reality it is no more bigoted than the widespread view that there is only one God. If belief in one God is reasonable, why should belief in one Church be bigoted? But since all churches and religious institutions differ from one another, they can hardly all be equally true.
To Catholics it is evident that the confusion of belief among non-Catholics is due largely to a faulty use of the reasoning faculty—applying private judgment where it cannot successfully operate.
While the existence of God and the oneness of God can be attained by reason alone, the bulk of the Christian faith reaches men as a thing or things revealed: a thing we could have never known unless it were revealed; a thing we could never hold unless we received the gift of faith; a thing that could never be preserved in its entirety for any length of time unless the revelation were anchored to and protected by an institution markedly differing from all other institutions, inviting belief in its government and mission as divinely established and ratified. Such in fact Catholics believe their Church to be.
Non-Catholic Christians also believe that Christianity is revealed truth. In theory, the Bible constitutes the source of authority; in practice, this means Scripture as privately judged by themselves or others. This principle was the actuating motive behind a hundred founders of churches and sects, the emergence of which has created and increased confusion and doubt.
From all this the Catholic, where loyal to the Church, has been protected. Receiving his faith upon the authority of God’s revelation, he finds the anchorage for this faith in the Roman pontiff. For twenty centuries the popes with their authority and jurisdiction have held the Church in continuous worldwide unity.
The Catholic Church proclaims her distinctive character by four marks of unity, sanctity, universality, and continuity. Each of these marks separately and all collectively exhibit a prodigious or miraculous quality furnishing to the world outside the motives or grounds for belief.
For Catholics, the true line of advance is not the exercise of private judgment upon the Bible. This kind of approach only invites confusion, the emergence of innumerable sects. The history of Protestantism proves it.
To exercise private judgment to form an estimate of the significance of the four marks of the Catholic Church is well within the competence of private judgment. The marks are visible, tangible facts. Like all other facts of a prodigious or miraculous quality, they would seem to defy any natural or naturalistic explanation. Each mark in its own way is as marvelous as the Resurrection of Christ itself, with this difference: We were not alive to witness the Resurrection but are alive to witness the four marks. Either we must judge them to be fortuitous or see the finger of God in them. If their existence has been brought about by chance, it is equivalent to saying that a bagful of alphabetical letters poured out by haphazard would furnish in their disorder a formulated treatise.
The other alternative is to believe (with conviction) that God has preserved the Catholic Church in unity, sanctity, catholicity, and continuity for twenty centuries.
—J. Seymour JonasHi KJ,
You say about the added verse in another thread“I believe that the words “on earth” were added. All else is not disputed.”
Verse 7 not disputed: There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit”
A little more research may help you.
Quote (Lightenup @ Oct. 14 2010,09:53) Bump for Irene and Keith…have at it!
I had my say, and He did niot respond if He would want to debate the trinity.,.,…IreneQuote (t8 @ Dec. 28 2003,15:41) Taken from
http://www.tegart.com This is for reference only, and I am not endorsing the conclusion found at the end of this article.========
A Simple Outline regarding I John 5:7
by Doug Kutilek
I John 5: 7
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, The Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.It is generally agreed that v. 7 has no real authority, and has been inserted.
Two questions: 1. What does this note mean? and, 2. Is Scofield right?
- Scofield is stating that this verse was not an original part of I John, that the Apostle did not write these words and the Holy Spirit did not inspire them, but that they were inserted into the text of I John at a later date. This opinion is the view of the vast majority of experts on the subject of the original text of the New Testament.
- Is Scofield right? To answer this, we must ask, what is the evidence?
First, some essential background information
- I John and all of the NT was originally written in the Greek language.
- from the 1st century until the printing of the NT in the early 16th century (more than 1,400 years), all copies of the NT were hand-written manuscripts.
- Scribes, subject to human limitations, made various mistakes in producing copies, most being accidental changes, though some were intentional.
- While God did not preserve the copists from making any mistakes, He did providentially limit the degree of variation so that the doctrinal content of the NT was not affected by the variations introduced. The doctrinal teaching of all 1,500 printed editions of the Greek NT is identical.
- Most scribal errors are immediately recognizable, and the text of the NT can be established with 99.5% certainty, and the remaining .5% does not affect doctrine.
We have a much higher degree of certainty of the exact original wording of the NT than any other writing from the ancient world. More than 5,000 Greek manuscripts have been preserved (one less than 50 years later than the original writing of John), plus translations into nearly a dozen ancient languages, plus more than 85,000 quotations in Christian writers from the 1st to the 10th centuries.
The evidence regarding I John 5:7
- Greek manuscripts-about 300 existing Greek manuscripts contain the book of I John. Of these manuscripts, only 4 (manuscript numbers 61, 629, 918,
2318) contain the disputed words of v.7. All four are very late manuscripts (16th, 14th or 15th, 16th, and 18th centuries A.D. respectively); none gives the Greek text exactly as it appears in printed Greek NTs, and all 4 manuscripts give clear evidence that these words were
translated into Greek from Latin.
Four additional manuscripts (88, 12th century; 221, 10th; 429, 16th; 636, 15th) have the disputed words copied in the margin by much later writers. - Ancient writers: no Greek-speaking Christian writer before the year 1215 A.D. shows any knowledge of the disputed words. Not once are these words quoted in the great controversy with the Arians (over the Deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity) in the 3rd and 4th centuries; they certainly would have been quoted if they had existed in any Greek manuscript of that period. The disputed words are quoted as Scripture only by Latin-speaking writers, and only after the middle of the 5th century A.D.
- Ancient translations: the disputed words are not found in any of the ancient translations of the NT made in the 2nd-10th centuries A.D.–Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavic–except in Latin.
The words are found in some manuscripts (but not the earliest) of the Old Latin version, and in many manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate (but not the earliest).
Conclusion:
the evidence of every kind is consistent and clear: the disputed words of I John 5:7 have no claim as an original part of John's letter, but were introduced into Greek from Latin in the very late Middle Ages.
How did the disputed words arise in Latin?
Some Latin-speaking scribe or preacher in North Africa in the 3rd or 4th century probably drew an analogy between the three witnesses of I Jn. 5:8 (the Spirit, and the water, and the blood), and the three persons of the Trinity, and wrote out his idea in the margin of his manuscript. A later scribe inserted the words from the margin into the text, and from there the insertion gradually spread to other manuscripts until they were included in a majority of medieval Latin manuscripts of I John.
How did the disputed words find there way into printed copies of the Greek NT?
The first published Greek NT was edited in 1516 by Catholic priest, scholar, and humanist Erasmus in 1516. This edition did not include the disputed words. A
revised edition in 1519 also did not include these words. Erasmus was severely criticised by other Catholic priests for not including in Greek these words which were well-known to them from the Latin. Erasmus said that the words were left out simply because he did not find them in any of the Greek manuscripts he had examined, and promised to insert them if they were found in even one Greek manuscript.An Irish monk deliberately fabricated such a manuscript to meet Erasmus' requirement. This manuscript (no. 61) was copied from an early manuscript which did not contain the words. The page in this manuscript containing the disputed words is on a special paper and has a glossy finish, unlike any other page in the manuscript. On the basis of this one 16th century deliberately falsified manuscript, Erasmus inserted the disputed words in his 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of the Greek NT, though he protested that he did not believe the words were genuine.
Nearly all printed Greek NTs from Erasmus until the 19th century were simply reprints of Erasmus' 4th or 5th edition, and so the words continued to be printed in Greek as part of I John even though there is no sufficient evidence for their inclusion. Recent editions of the Greek NT follow the manuscript evidence and therefore do not insert the words.
How did the disputed words find their way into English Bibles?
- The earliest English New Testament, the translation of Wycliffe in the 1380s, was made from medieval Latin manuscripts, and so it includes the disputed words, though it reads “son” instead of “word.”
- Tyndale's translation of 1525 was based on Erasmus' 3rd edition and so it included the words. In the 2nd and 3rd editions of his translation, Tyndale placed the disputed words in parentheses to show that their genuineness was doubtful.
- Several editions of the NT edited by Tyndale's assistant Miles Coverdale also placed the disputed words in parentheses or smaller type or both to show that they were disputed.
- Jugge's 1552 edition of Tyndale's NT omitted the parentheses and printed the words in standard type, a practice followed in later English Bibles, including the KJV (based on Beza's 1598 Greek NT, a virtual reprint of Erasmus' 4th edition).
- Recent conservative translations of the NT (ASV, NASB, NIV) delete the disputed words entirely or put them in a footnote because the evidence is conclusive that they were not an original part of John's letter. [Verse numbers were not added until 1551 in a Greek NT based on Erasmus' 4th edition]
Conclusion:
Yes, Scofield is right.
Question: If the words are not genuine, does this affect the doctrine of the Trinity?
Answer: not in the least. Those Christian writers of the 2nd-4th centuries who compiled from Scripture the true orthodox doctr
ine of the Trinity (namely, that the one true God exists in three equal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) did so without any reference to the disputed words. If their biblical proofs were correct and sufficient and based on undisputed passages, and they certainly were, then the doctrine stands unmoved.========
Note: I am not necessarily endorsing all that is contained in this writing, I offer it as a reference only. In particular I do not agree with the last paragraph.
T 8,Nice job, very thorough.
oatmeal
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