Christian view of near death experiences

[RBPerry]

I do understand the Jewish objections, but let's face it the Jewish people rejected Christ so why concern ourselves with what troubled them. I think the fact they were never written in Hebrew shouldn't be of great concern, and I think that argument is a very weak one; personally I believe they should have been included. My contention is the bible was put together by humans, and face it there were many people had their fingers in the pot when it came to deciding on the original cannon.
As for the various pope's, they were all human, not divine. To be honest I haven't read much about most of them, I do think pope Bergoglio, or pope Francis is a breath of fresh air, and will probably prove to be a wonderful asset to the Catholic church.
Won't you agree that Luther and the beginning of the reformation played a big part in the Catholic church finally ratifying their bible. Speaking of Luther, the one major problem I have with him is his bigotry towards the Jews, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians. He also had no love loss for the Catholic church. I think it was pope Leo that excommunicated him.
I was once a fundamentalist protestant, today I'm not sure, but I am a Christian, and to me that means attempting to model my life after what Jesus taught. I don't believe any of us have all the answers, and I do believe in looking outside the box, that is why I have both Catholic, Protestant bibles, have studied most of the scrolls that have been uncovered, as well as near death research that is fascinating.
The fact that most Christian won't consider the other writings is troubling to me. I'm not a theologian as you have probably already gathered. Most theologians can't think outside of the bible be it protestant or Catholic.

 

[Valletta]

I do understand the Jewish objections, but let's face it the Jewish people rejected Christ so why concern ourselves with what troubled them. I think the fact they were never written in Hebrew shouldn't be of great concern, and I think that argument is a very weak one; personally I believe they should have been included. My contention is the bible was put together by humans, and face it there were many people had their fingers in the pot when it came to deciding on the original cannon.
As for the various pope's, they were all human, not divine. To be honest I haven't read much about most of them, I do think pope Bergoglio, or pope Francis is a breath of fresh air, and will probably prove to be a wonderful asset to the Catholic church.
Won't you agree that Luther and the beginning of the reformation played a big part in the Catholic church finally ratifying their bible. Speaking of Luther, the one major problem I have with him is his bigotry towards the Jews, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians. He also had no love loss for the Catholic church. I think it was pope Leo that excommunicated him.
I was once a fundamentalist protestant, today I'm not sure, but I am a Christian, and to me that means attempting to model my life after what Jesus taught. I don't believe any of us have all the answers, and I do believe in looking outside the box, that is why I have both Catholic, Protestant bibles, have studied most of the scrolls that have been uncovered, as well as near death research that is fascinating.
The fact that most Christian won't consider the other writings is troubling to me. I'm not a theologian as you have probably already gathered. Most theologians can't think outside of the bible be it protestant or Catholic.

Understand that in the early centuries, while the Gospels became widely accepted as readings for mass, there were debates about other text and not everyone had exactly the same texts. Also by reading the books of the NT it seems clear that the authors of some of the texts were addressing specific situations and/or audiences with no indication of intent the books would be made part of a "Bible" that would contain only God-breathed text. NT text was chosen in a Catholic PROCESS that spanned centuries. You are right that many humans were involved. People wrote texts. some texts were quite beautiful, that contained no errors and were in compliance with Catholic teaching, yet the Catholic Church ultimately found that only some of those texts were God-breathed. Such a Church selection process could not be done without the Holy Spirit. The Council of Carthage approved the canon in the late 300s, sending the list off to the pope for approval and the 73 books were established as Holy Scripture forever. Protestants eventually accepted the same NT books in the exact same order over a thousand years later. Luther tried to get NT books such as Revelation dropped but he was not successful. I guess you, like Luther, do not accept the Catholic list of NT books that Protestants eventually accepted more than a thousand years later. There are many worthy Christian texts, but I doubt that an individual today would persuade many people that he or she knows that such texts are God-breathed and should be included in today's Bible.
Let me add that the Council of Florence did also add an anathema when re-affirming the Bible canon:
"It [the Church] professes that one and the same God is the author of the old and the new Testament — that is, the law and the prophets, and the gospel — since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, whose titles are as follows.
Five books of Moses, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two of Paralipomenon, Esdras, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalms of David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel; the twelve minor prophets, namely Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; two books of the Maccabees; the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; fourteen letters of Paul, to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians, two to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews; two letters of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; Acts of the Apostles; Apocalypse of John.
Hence it anathematizes the madness of the Manichees who posited two first principles, one of visible things, the other of invisible things, and said that one was the God of the new Testament, the other of the old Testament."

 

[RBPerry]

Hence it anathematizes the madness of the Manichees who posited two first principles, one of visible things, the other of invisible things, and said that one was the God of the new Testament, the other of the old Testament."

If I'm not mistaken they got some of their beliefs from the Gnostic believers that felt the god of the old testament was a different god than the new. I also think the Gnostic believed the old testament god was female, go figure. I took a course on Gnosticism many years ago, forgot most of it.
What is so problematic with that is the prophesies of the old testament tell of the coming messiah so to me it is foolishness to separate them. Some including myself have had difficulty understanding how God dealt with Israel in the old testament and how Jesus portrayed God in the New Testament. Understanding the prophesies helped me work through that many years ago.
One thing I think the Gnostic believers had right was they felt the knowledge of God helped us draw closer to God, and that I do believe can be true.
Just because I'm lean towards that protestant views, and they are many and diversified. I have enjoyed reading the omitted books, as I stated previously; I don't believe they should have been omitted, if we are to believe the entire cannon was God inspired, then we need to accept it in entirety.