Questions

Seven Virtues

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 20:55:42 -0500

Augustine - Chapter IV. 11.

Hence also the sevenfold operation of the Holy Ghost, of which Isaiah speaks, seems to me to correspond to these stages and sentences. But there is a difference of order: for there the enumeration begins with the more excellent, but here with the inferior. For there it begins with wisdom, and closes with the fear of God: but “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Blessed Peacemakers

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 21:17:09 -0500

Augustine
(2) “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
It is the perfection of peace, where nothing offers opposition; and the children of God are peacemakers, because nothing resists God, and surely children ought to have the likeness of their father. Now, they are peacemakers in themselves who, by bringing in order all the motions of their soul, and subjecting them to reason — i.e. to the mind and spirit — and by having their carnal lusts thoroughly subdued, become a kingdom of God: in which ... mind and reason, is brought under subjection to something better still, which is the truth itself, the only-begotten Son of God.

Talking To God

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:49:20 -0400

Here is an illustration that may help you understand how God may communicate with us. This is an allegory - what really happens is a mystery.

Imagine you are a sitting in a crowded room where people are chatting and children are playing, and you are dreaming of your own childhood., and remembering something your Mother once said to you, but you can’t quite recall exactly what she said, or even be sure that it was your Mother that said it. Try as you might the noise around you distracts you and the memory slips away. And you can’t bring it back, and suddenly you realize that it was an important thought, and you are afraid you will never remember it again, and you become frustrated with all the noise and with all those people you loved only a few minutes ago.

Dropsy

Sun, 5 Oct 2008 12:17:28 -0400

This lesson from Jesus has eternal value. It is not an historical event that no longer has any meaning for us. Within this story are important messages from God that we can understand through communion between our soul and the spirit of Christ that is within us. So long as the story affects only our brain, we will not be able to understand the message. Beneath the text is a moral. Beneath the moral is understanding, and from this comes insight that will direct each person’s behavior. We can get to this insight through our own study of the text, by meditation on the words with the help of the Holy Spirit, and by studying the Church Fathers' commentaries.

The Good Samaritan

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:50:26 -0400

After two years of study on this parable, I think I have come to a better understanding. It was by intuition that I knew that the standard interpretation missed the point of the story. This interpretation is in line with the Church Fathers’ thinking - St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose. Even Pope Benedict has written something similar in a recent book Jesus of Nazareth.

The Kingdom Of God

Sun, 4 May 2008 12:22:43 -0400

The Kingdom of God is eternal. It existed before the Universe was created, it will be in the future, and it is now. It is spiritual. Though it has always existed, it was only manifested to all men on earth through Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God is Christ.
“Man” as spirit
If you think that the Kingdom of God is a place, as do the Mormons who teach that their Church is the Kingdom of God, it may help to distance yourself from this idea if you understand that “man” in the text often means the soul/spirit which is neither male nor female, and which resides temporarily in a human body. Think of the body only as the house in which “man” lives. (Of course the word man also refers sometimes to a particular male).

Knowing_God

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 14:47:42 -0400

We have been talking about how Jesus introduced the idea of the Kingdom of God to His disciples through the parables - the first two that we discussed were the Good Samaritan and the Workers in the Vineyard.

Our journey is begun and you see that our aim is more ABOUT KNOWING GOD, than it is knowing about God.

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father;. . .” John 14:6-11, KJV.

So let us listen to Jesus as He teaches the disciples about seeing God, and let us read how St. Augustine understood Jesus, specifically his commentary on Matthew’s recollection of the sayings of Jesus (Mt 5:1 -7:29 ) which begin with the beatitudes. We are fortunate to have St. Augustine’s commentary, as it has been preserved in Latin since the 5th c. and has also been translated into English. There are eight sentences in the beatitudes. There is a progression here in Matthew’s listing of Jesus’s sayings, and I would like us to first understand the sixth beatitude because it is one of the most difficult to explain.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Aramaic

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:23:09 -0400

Aramaic Idiom in the AV
The roots of the King James Authorized Version are 4th. century Greek translations of the very earliest writings which themselves were compiled from the oral traditions of the apostles. Their language was Aramaic which for more than 800 years had been the common language throughoutthe Babylonian and Persian Empires.
Aramaic was the source of all of the languages of monotheistic religions - Arabic, Hebrew, English, Italian, French, etc.
The oldest Bible is a 4th. cent. Aramaic codex in the British Museum.
When Tyndale translated the NT from Greek, he used texts that had been passed down from earliest times, and they reflected the Aramaic idiom used by the apostles. And Tyndale made sure that in his translation into English that the Aramaic idioms and the Aramaic sentence structure were not violated. That’s one of the reasons that the King James Bible reads as it does. Now Tyndale couldn’t translate the Aramaic, because by then no-one in the world spoke Aramaic (or so scholars in England and Europe thought), so he either left it as it was, in Aramaic, or he included a translation that the Church Fathers had given a as the traditional meaning. Sometimes they were mistaken, but we didn’t find this out until 1933, when the first Aramaic/English lexicon was produced. By then it was too late to amend the King James Bible which has stayed unchanged since 1792 by an Act of Parliament.
To read about Aramaic Idion in the NT click on “Get the PDF file”, above.

VineyardWorkers

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 09:27:54 -0400

The “Vineyard Workers” story
In the parable of the Good Samaritan the answer to the lawyers question “How shall I inherit eternal life?” was hidden within the parable. This parable is also is about inheriting eternal life, and again is an example of compassion in the Kingdom of God.

Bibles

Sun, 13 May 2007 14:18:34 -0400

King James Bible - New Editions
Several Bibles have been recently published that use the actual King James Text with improvements in readability, and hardly anyone I have talked to, is aware of this.

The Sword Bible - KJVER printed 2007
All the words of the King James (but no Apocrypha) and only the archaic word endings made modern. Easier to read as there are no “eth” endings. Good and comprehensive concordance.
ISBN1-60374-010-4

The Cambridge Paragraph Bible using King James text (2005) has now the most accurate rendering of the original Authorized Version text.

The 21st. cent King James Bible (1994) is easy to read and shows lectionary readings.

At St. Luke and St. Paul we were discussing the Greek text by Westcott and Hort (1890), and the differences between Bibles. These changes (the Revised Version) have permeated into some popular Bibles since then. It is clear from our analysis of the NIV that this new text no longer reflects the traditions of the Anglican Church, having eliminated almost all references to Anglican ecclesiology, and liturgy. And to salvation as a continuing process. And of course this was intentional, for the translators wanted a Protestant evangelical Bible.
During our discussion we talked about the 4th. cent. MSS used for the W&H translation, the people involved with the revisions and the manner in which the changes were introduced into the text. But we never did get to talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in the preservation of the Word of God.

Christ said to the Apostles:
John 14:26
“But the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
and the Church confirmed:
Hebrews 10:15, 16
“15 Of this the Holy Spirit also is a witness to us; for after he had said before,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;”

So the intent of Christ was that there should be a permanent source for instruction within each Apostle, and that this “comforter” would be given also to every believer whom God declares righteous. It is clear that Jesus Christ ordered the Apostles to disseminate His teaching to all corners of the World.
We know that tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of MSS were created for this purpose, for we have already found more than 10,000 remnants of them, some of them fragments but many almost complete gospels. So I would say that the Holy Spirit had indeed been at work with holy men to preserve Jesus Christ’s teachings as He intended.
For more than 1700 years, holy men in all parts of the world have believed in those writings and have taught more than one and a half billion people, from essentially identical texts. The Latin Vulgate Bible and the Greek Textus Receptus were created in the 4th. cent, and English translations still in print today as the Duoay Rheims Bible and the Holy Bible King James Version. The text reads very similarly.

The Revised Version introduced 1890 approx. was a new translation from only one or two MSS found in the 1800’s which were hidden from man for more than 1600 years. Surely you can see the Holy Spirit at work here, putting out of the reach of man texts that are in error.
And during the 100 years since the printing of the Revised Version, the Holy Spirit has been hard at work getting rid of it, while continuing to preserve the King James Bible, for you can find the King James Bible in every bookstore sometimes by the hundreds on the shelves, but you will never find a Revised Version.
The American Standard Bible that slithered in on the coat tails of the RV, was also abandoned by believers.

The Revised Standard Version in use by the Episcopal Church is based partly on the W&H revised Greek text, and is to be phased out this year to be replaced by the “English Standard Version”.

That leaves the NIV Bible as the only popular Protestant Bible based on the revised Greek text by W&H, (which is the basis of the Nestle-Aland critical Greek text quoted as the source for the NIV). In the USA NIV has a 44% market share.

Even in the USA, the hot bed for evangelists, the KJV still holds a 23% market share.
So thanks be to God the Holy Spirit for keeping alive the words and teaching of Jesus Christ on which our Church Fathers founded the Anglican Church.
And thanks be to God that the writings of the Church Fathers, and the commentaries of ordained theologians, are still as useful today - for their texts are based on the Bibles that have been preserved by the Holy Spirit, that we can still buy today.