Questions

Children Of God

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:44:25 -0500

It is important to understand that Paul always believed that the covenant between God and Abraham remained in force, and that the Hebrews (apart from a remnant) were blinded by the grace of God so that they would not see the divine nature of Jesus. But as this is part of God’s plan, God must have a plan for the Jews to eventually see the truth. Paul believed that after the gentiles are converted, the Hebrews would follow by the grace of God, and not by anything they did. Man is saved by both grace and works. It does not matter which comes first. For Christians grace comes before works whereas for Hebrews works (obedience to God’s law) come before grace through Jesus Christ.

Talking To God

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:34:01 -0500

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Jesus of Nazareth

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:19:28 -0500

Did the early Christians in Jerusalem understand Jesus Christ to be a God-man as described much later by the Church catholic? If you assume that they did, some of the New Testament will be a mystery to you.

Homily On Salvation

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:13:01 -0500

Since the 16th. cent this Homily has been considered a proper interpretation of the meaning of salvation and justification as contained within the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion

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.