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Is there salvation without Mary?

bbbbbbb

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Of course, the underlying assumptions are that a) the fullness of truth is contained within some form of religious bureaucracy and not in any other arena such as, say, something like the Bible and b) there must be not more nor less than one religious bureaucracy that God has given the task of administering His truth. I respectfully disagree with both assumptions.
 
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Presbyterian Continuist

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You're just assuming that based on the theology that you believe. It is just that you don't want to believe that Mary had other children after Jesus and therefore did not become a perpetual virgin. The Word of God is quite clear that Jesus did have brothers and sisters and nowhere in the Gospels does it say that Joseph was ever married before he married Mary. To say that Joseph was a widower is total fantasy, but then if you decide to believe it, there is nothing more to say here.
 
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Presbyterian Continuist

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By the 4th Century, the church had largely departed from a total reliance on God's Word, and many started believing nonsense that is not found in the Scriptures. As I said to our other friend, if you wish to believe in fantasy doctrines, there is nothing more I can add here.
 
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Valletta

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You were there? Actually the Catholic Church was finishing up choosing the 73 books of the Bible, God's Word, giving the Bible to the world in the late 300s.
 
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bbbbbbb

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I don't see why it could not be the opposite then.

Actually, if Mary was the mother of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and Joseph was not the physical father of Jesus, and Joseph was the father of other children but not with Mary, then Jesus would not have had any half-brothers or half-sisters at all because they would not have shared at least one physical parent.
 
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Abaxvahl

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Indeed, but I mean legally and as St. Luke says (since the discussion is what people in Nazareth though) "as was supposed." For St. Joseph counted as his father for inheritance of the Davidic promise, and Mary also a descendent of David according to God counted. But if people supposed Him to be half-brothers with these people through St. Joseph (and I personally do not even favor half-brother theory but I am just saying for the argument as it is popular) then their statement would mean the same thing.

In essence the best position for someone who does not acknowledge Sacred Tradition or the Magisterium would be to say Scripture is silent on the matter, that is my whole point. For it does not definitively prove by these words people contend over one thing or another.
 
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bbbbbbb

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Would that scripture were silent on this matter as it is concerning many of the suppositions about Mary that have become dogma in the RCC. With these, a case from silence in scripture has been created even as other cases from scriptural silence have been refuted and rejected.

Scripture is far from silent concerning the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. The challenge comes in attempting to conform them to dogmas developed from scriptural silence, particularly the perpetual virginity of Mary dogma.
 
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Abaxvahl

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Scripture is far from silent concerning the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. The challenge comes in attempting to conform them to dogmas developed from scriptural silence, particularly the perpetual virginity of Mary dogma.

Not silent that He had brothers and sisters, silent as to which definition of brothers and sisters is being used. Unless you think there is a proof of definition in it? And I personally do not think there is silence ("all in Tradition, all in Scripture" is the model I follow) and none of the dogmas argue from silence either, it is just for someone as Rob, if I were him, I'd think Scripture was silent.
 
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bbbbbbb

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You are on a very slippery slope my friend. Using such a speculative hermeneutic could easily redefine what "son" means as in the "son" of God or the "son" of Adam. It is exactly what got Mohammed and his ilk quite off kilter.
 
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Abaxvahl

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You are on a very slippery slope my friend. Using such a speculative hermeneutic could easily redefine what "son" means as in the "son" of God or the "son" of Adam. It is exactly what got Mohammed and his ilk quite off kilter.

That's just a fault of language. Which is why we have an intellect which can pick up meaning from things such as this, and as I believe the necessity of a Living Tradition with authority that guides through the times what this or that means, and a life of God to be received into to gain immediate knowledge (1 Corinthians as a whole is about this latter thing and I am studying it currently).
 
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Valletta

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I wonder why the RCC adopted that false doctrine.
The question is, why are you insistent at establishing a belief that is not proven by the Bible even though you appear to be one who believes in sola scriptura? 2 Kings 10:13-14
 
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bbbbbbb

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The problems with any "Living" Tradition are that in order for it to be "living" it cannot be a tradition and in order for it to be a tradition it cannot be "living". The moment a tradition is changed it is no longer a tradition.

It is similar to the conundrum faced by the United States Supreme Court. Some "progressive" justices view the United States Constitution as a "living" document which it is, at least in its ability to be amended. Other "conservative" justices view it as immutable and unchangeable except when amended formally. The net result is that the cases which are heard by the Supreme Court are virtually all directly related to the Constitution in one form or another. The Supreme Court lacks the legal jurisdiction to pass judgement on other countries and their laws or even on non-constitutional issues such as motorcycle helmets.
 
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Abaxvahl

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I am not sure how you define Tradition, but in the context of the idea of Sacred Tradition it is not some passively received thing which is just "old stuff people used to do." It is the handing-down (what the word literally means) of the life of the Church, which ultimately is the Holy Spirit. We receive actively and expound on it in our context while being faithful to it and then teach it to the next generation. This is not changing it as much as the Holy Spirit doesn't change. St. Vincent explains this in his Commonitorium (which explains really this whole concept and how the faith is to be recognized and many other things):

"But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church [due to us being forbidden from making novelties]? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged n itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

"The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant's limbs are small, a young man's large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

"In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits."

The most practical example of this is considering the explanation of the Trinity in St. John's Gospel for instance vs. this more developed explanation (which is a perfect explanation) by Fr. Staniloae in our era (use subtitles):
He has not altered it at all but expounded upon it, and everything he says can in fact be found in Scripture concerning the Trinity, but it is an explanation that is developed out of what came before, yet has the same sense as what was handed-down to us from Jesus and the Apostles. This is how Tradition is Living.
 
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robycop3

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Is there evidence for what you think here? The passage you cite doesn't specify which person He has half-siblings from (if it even specifies this at all).
Just an excuse. His Nazarene neighbors said they were siblings. Remember, they were wondering why Jesus was so different from the rest of His family. Had His siblings had a different mom, that would've been mentioned. The context of the Scriptures showed they believed they were all one family & all the kids were of the same two parents.
 
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