Larry:
1. Acts 2:26-27 indicates Jesus was dead, both body and soul. The original Greek says "the soul of me."
Acts 2:27a: "For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades" (speaking of the soul).
Acts 2:27b: "Nor let thy Holy One see corruption" (speaking of the body).
One passage, two seperate but related subjects. There is no dichotomy here. Nor is there any mention of the "death" of Jesus' soul. The Catholic Church has always taught that the soul is immortal---it cannot die. (Refer to Tatian,
To the Greeks, 165 AD; Athenagoras,
Resurrection of the Dead, 177 AD; Irenaeus,
Against Heresies, 180 AD; Tertullian,
The Soul, 208 AD; Epiphanius of Salamis,
Against All Heresies, 374 AD; John Damascene,
Source of Knowledge, 743 AD----and that's just a few random sources from the Patristic Fathers. There are hundreds more in the various councils and from various pontiffs, which I'm not going to bother to look up for lack of space, inclination, and time.
In case you were unaware, Hades is the realm of the dead.
AKA as Tartarus, Sheol, and the Limbo of the Fathers, as opposed to hell or Gehenna, and not to be confused with Purgatory or with the Limbo of Infants....just in case you were unaware.
2. Secondly, I did not say Jesus' angel was preaching to any spirits in prison in 1 Peter. You missed the point again. I was referring to your misguided interpretation of the Transfiguration.
Well, that's a matter of perception, methinks; I admit that I'm having difficulty trying to fathom your reasoning behind your concept in both cases. If you can clarify, it might be greatly helpful. Just consider me extremely dense, and explain it in slow, clear, exacting detail, the way you'd explain it to an idiot, so I can understand it.
Moreover, there are too many ways to read 1 Peter 3:19 for you to claim that Jesus headed off to proclaim the gospel for three days between the cross and the resurrection. One has to pretty well imagine this into the text.
Not necessarily. There are about five major ways to interpret the passage, and probably more. A) Christ went to the Limbo of the Fathers to preach to the sinners killed in the Flood before His Advent (Augustine); B) Christ went to the Limbo of the Fathers to preach salvation to the sinners who repented before being drowned in the Flood (Bellarmine); C) Christ went to the Limbo of the Fathers to
convert the sinners killed in the Flood (Clement of Alexandria and Origen); D) Christ went to the Limbo of the Fathers to proclaim the final defeat of Satan (Selwyn); E) Christ went to the Limbo of the Fathers to proclaim victory over Satan and to free the imprisioned Fathers (O'Brien). You can choose to accept or reject any or all these interpretations, but that doesn't negate the viability of the interpretation I posted earlier.
3. I started this thread and I have not discussed the "worship" of Mary.
That is correct. However, there was a website link to "maryworship.com" that someone posted, and that's why I mentioned the fact that Catholics do not worship Mary, for the benefit of any confused parties out there who may be reading this thread.
4. I figured you would go there about academic training. It doesn't matter where I attended. You, and the others here, seem to have the idea that college and university is more about indoctrination than education.
Also not necessarily; I was merely trying to ascertain whether some of the concepts in the education you got square with the Magesterium of the Church.
5. You also seem to have some strange idea that if I have an idea about angels I must have learned it from Catholicism or I must not be a Catholic or something. This is quite an odd way of thinking. Catholics think too. We are not simply cultists who just pander to the Catholic belief system as if it were some kind of god or idol.
If you want to be a Catholic, then you should at least try to adhere to the teachings of the Holy Father, the Magesterium, and the Apostolic Deposit of the Faith. If you don't want to do this, then you really become a Protestant by default,
n'est-ce pas?
6. You say you have not divided Christ but I perceive some dishonesty on your part. You say Christ's spirit (divine AND human) went to heaven, but Christ's body (not divine) died. Notice that you want to say Christ's spirit is divine and human but you also imply that his body was only human. Was the human body which died on the cross divine or not? If not, then neither is Mary the Mother of God. If it is, then God died on the cross.
All right, perhaps I was being too obtuse. Let's clarify: Christ, by nature of His hypostatic union, was true God and true man. So when He died on the Cross, we can be correct in saying that yes, God died on the Cross. The teaching of the Church is that he "was crucified, died, and was buried (according to the body), and descended into Hell (according to the soul). Christ's death dissolved the connection between body and soul---Christ therefore during the three days was not "man"--that is, a compositum of body and soul--but His death did not dissolve the attatchment of Godhead and humanity, or of their parts. Even after their separation the body and the soul separately remained hypostatically united with the Divine Logos". (Ludwig Ott,
Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 3.1.1.14). The Lateran Council of 649 AD declared that since the Word became flesh in assuming a true humanity, Christ's body was finite. Likewise, Pope Pius VI declared that "The humanity and the vivifying flesh of Christ Itself is adored not because of itself and as mere flesh but inasmuch as it is united with the Divinity". So Christ's body was divine, in that it was united with God hypostatically; it was, however, also human, in that it was mortal, suffered pain, and died.
7. God bless Afghanistan. And God bless the government of Afghanistan too. Jesus taught us to bless both our neighbours and our enemies. If you love only your friends you are not better than the pagans.
Being as I am an official member of the "Them What Has Actually Been Shot At" club, I will have to say that in a time of war, you're right: I am no better than the pagans.
8. Now, was the body which died on the cross divine or not?
See above.
Kirk:
If you are so stupid that you blindly regurgitate what Pastor Billy Joe Bob Smith tells you about other faiths, then you're really not bright enough to be participating in public conversation to begin with.
Not sure if this is referring to Fundamentalists or to me, old boy, but in either instance it's terribly uncharitable.
Tracy:
Peter was never a pope in his lifetime. Maybe that is a title Catholics gave him after the fact. The Apostles where just that APOSTLES. They weren't bishops, and during the time of there lives "The Church" was all believers, not a select few. Paul even preached against the division of believers.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church consists of bishops (the Pope is the Bishop of Rome), who oversee priests, who serve the laypeople. (Cardinal is an honorary title, and most cardinals are bishops; monsignor is also an honorary title, and all monsignors are priests.) So, how does the bishop/priest/layperson breakdown stack up with Holy Scripture? We need look no further than the Epistle of Paul to Titus, 1:5----"This is why I left you in Crete, that you might amend what was defective, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you". Paul, being the Apostle, has appointed Titus the bishop of Crete; it is now Titus' job to appoint priests in every town on Crete. So: Apostle/bishop/priest/layperson. The breakdown is the same.
Furthermore, the word "bishop" in various forms is used several times in the New Testament, in Acts, Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, and 1 Peter; in all cases it is derived from the Greek word
episkopoi, meaning a superintendant or an overseer. If you're going to have a superintendant or an overseer, they have to superintend and oversee
something; the context of thes passages in question makes it clear that that something is the various churches. This is where the concept of a head clergyman, or bishop, in a given town or area, comes from---the same concept the Catholic Church uses today. "Pope" is merely an Italian derivation of the word "papa", meaning of course, "father". Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and so we refer to him as the first Pope.
Blessings,
---Wols.
