Serious stuff about God

Dual Covenant?

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:16:12 -0500

Dual Covenant theory

When Jesus said "no-one comes to the Father but by me." “Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:5, 6, KJV.
The Greek is dia, and has been translated as through 88 times in the KJV. Through means “on account of”, by reason of, by the means of etc. The Greek denotes the channel of an act. So this sentence can be “no man cometh to the Father but through me.”
The emphasis then, is on the believer who by the grace of God “uses” Jesus to “see” the Father - not on Jesus as the gatekeeper who can prevent a believer from reaching the Father.I think that He was not implying that people can only be saved by joining a Western catholic Church. He was telling us that every believer in God the Creator, regardless of Religious belief must go through him to see the Father."
Anyone who does not believe in God, “ is condemned already” and will not be judged, and will never see God.
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:17, 18, KJV.
The Church Fathers are agreed that those unbelievers will not be judged by Christ, but are already condemned to outer darkness..
Paul said to his flock who did not yet understand:
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12, KJV.
when we were a child we lived by faith of things unseen, but when we become mature (in the faith of Jesus), we see God clearly through Jesus Christ.
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8, KJV.
It was Marcion in AD 140 who introduced the dual Covenant Idea to the Church (that is: the Jews will be saved under one Covenant, the Gentiles under the New Covenant). The Church didn't like it. They said that Marcion had misunderstood Paul, and had warped his writings to make them reflect this anti-semitic theology.
The Roman Church quoted Paul’s statement that the Hebrews would be saved by the Grace of God, through Jesus Christ
“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:” Romans 11:25, 26, KJV.
I think that the fullness of the Gentiles is not an event, but rather a condition of man. Like the phrase "in the beginning" in John 1. It refers to a particular situation unrelated to time, and not related to the Creation event. Paul said: The "blindness" of the majority of Hebrews would be lifted in the "fullness of the Gentiles", and they would "see" God.
No-one in the first century Church in Jerusalem said anything about the New Covenant replacing existing Covenants. The behavior of the Apostles during the years following the introduction of the New Covenant show that the Mosaic Covenant still applied. Remember, the first 15 Bishops ordained in Jerusalem were all circumcised Hebrews. In fact some Christian-Hebrews still celebrated Judaism into the fifth century.
Now, some people in the Western Church want to proclaim that the Jews have been excluded from God's plan of salvation - that unless a Jew gives up Judaism and embraces Western Christianity, he will not be saved.
But the promise of Ro. 11-12 is that at some point the blindness of the Jews will be healed by God and they will be saved “when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.”. This was God’s plan from the the beginning.
If the Jews are not saved then there is no hope for the Gentiles, for the salvation of the Gentiles is guaranteed through God’s Covenant with Abraham. We have been adopted into Abraham’s family through Jesus Christ, according to Paul’s theology.
“For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” Romans 2:28, 29, KJV.
“For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.” Galatians 4:22, 23, KJV.
“Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.” Galatians 4:28, KJV.

The Vatican seems to understand this, for there is no plan to convert Jews to Christianity.
God has a plan to bring Jews to believe in Christ, and it is not by denying His eternal covenants.
Here, St. Augustine says It is not the Law which has passed away, but that the veil has been lifted by Christ, and now the law can be seen through Christ and can be lived from the heart, rather than the intellect.
"Here these wicked men [Manichaens], while they try to make the Law of none effect, at the same time compel us to approve of these Scriptures. They pay attention where it is said that those are in servitude who are under the Law, and above other passages brandish this decisive one: You who are justified by the Law are banished from Christ. You have fallen from grace. 4 Now we admit that all this is true.
We do not say the Law is necessary save for those for whom servitude is profitable. It was profitably laid down because men, who could not be won from their sins by reason, had to be coerced by threats and terrors of penalties which even fools can understand.
When the grace of Christ sets men free from such threats and penalties it does not condemn the Law but invites us now to submit to His love and not to be slaves to fear.
Grace is a benefaction conferred by God, which those do not understand who desire to continue under the bondage of the Law. Paul rightly calls them unbelievers, reproachfully, who do not believe that they are now set free by our Lord Jesus from a servitude to which they had been subjected by the just judgement of God.
Hence this other saying of the same apostle: The Law was our pedagogue in Christ. 5 God, thus, gave men a pedagogue whom they might fear, and later gave them a master whom they might love.
But in these precepts and mandates of the Law which Christians may not now lawfully obey, such as the Sabbath, circumcision, sacrifice and the like, there are contained such mysteries that every pious man may understand there is nothing more pernicious than to take whatever is there literally, and nothing more wholesome than to let the truth be revealed by the spirit.
For this reason: The Letter killeth but the Spirit quickeneth. 6 And again: The same vail remains in the reading of the Old Testament and there is no revelation, for in Christ the vail is done away.
4. Gal. 5.4.
5. Gal. 3.24.
6. II Cor. 3.6.
1 It is not the Old Testament that is done away in Christ but the concealing vail, so that it may be understood through Christ. That is, as it were, laid bare, which without Christ is obscure and hidden. The same apostle adds immediately: When thou shalt turn to Christ the vail will be taken away. 2 He does not say: The Law or the Old Testament will be taken away.
It is not the case, therefore, that by the grace of the Lord that which was covered has been abolished as useless; rather, the covering has been removed which concealed useful truth. This is what happens to those who earnestly and piously, not proudly and wickedly, seek the sense of the Scriptures. To them is carefully demonstrated the order of events, the reasons for deeds and words, and the agreement of the Old Testament with the New, so that not a point remains where there is not complete harmony; and such secret truths are conveyed in figures that when they are brought to light by interpretation they compel those who wished to condemn rather than to learn, to confess their discomfiture." 3
1. II Cor. 3.14.
2. II Cor. 3.16.
3. De Util. Cred., iii, 9. Tr. by Burleigh, pp. 297-8.

"This chapter summarizes Augustine's case against the Manichaean condemnation of the Old Testament. The ceremonial requirements of the Law were, in their day, of value in that they applied profitable coercion to sinners who could not be persuaded by reason. They are not, however, any longer binding for those who have been set free from sin by the Grace of Christ. Nevertheless, the Scripture is not thereby abolished, because these ceremonial requirements were types and shadows of greater mysteries which were revealed in Christ, by whose coming the vail has been taken away, so that the faithful may understand the 'secret truths which are conveyed in figures', and accept them as part of the Christian revelation. There is no doubt of Augustine's conviction on this matter. 'I call my conscience to witness, Honoratus,' he declares, 'I call God who dwells in pure souls to witness, that I am convinced there is nothing more wise, more chaste, more religious than those Scriptures which the Catholic Church accepts under the name of the Old Testament', 4 and he later suggests that some of the less apparently edifying passages may have been introduced to exercise the intellect of the reader in seeking another and more suitable interpretation, referring--not very happily, from the point of view of a modern critic--to the less decent passages in the classical authors, which generations of scholars had sought to understand in an edifying and improving sense." 5
4. Ibid., iv, 13. Burleigh, p. 301.
5. Ibid., vii, 17 :
Publication Information: Book Title: St Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies. Contributors: Gerald Bonner - author. Publisher: Canterbury Press. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1986. Page Number: 218.

In other passages St. Augustine goes on to say that only those laws and prophesies in the OT which were precursors to Christ, which foretold his coming, have been fulfilled in Christ. The moral laws of the OT are still effective.
See also
http://www.waeshael.com/SIte/JAM/Entries/2008/11/24_Jews%2C_Gentiles_and_Covenants.html
click on the "next' button to follow the arguments.

Augustine on Eternal Life

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 21:13:20 -0500

St. Augustine: (1) Beloved brethren, let us join in recalling that the
Apostle has said: 'As long as we are in the body we are exiles from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight.' For, the Lord Jesus Christ has said: 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life'; He has, therefore, willed that we walk through Him and to Him. Where, indeed, can we walk except on a way? And what is our destination except truth and life? But that life is the eternal life, for it alone deserves the name of life. In comparison with that life, the mortal life in which we now live is convincingly shown to be death; it is exceedingly variable and inconstant, weak and unstable, and it ends after a very brief course. Consequently, when that rich man had asked: 'Good Master, what good
work should I do to attain eternal life?' the Lord replied: 'If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.'

GalatiansFinal

Sat, 2 Aug 2008 12:53:11 -0400

If you read the letter to the Galatians without first reading this understanding, you will be confused by the apparent disagreements in the theology of Galatians with that of other letters.
Paul’s mystical knowledge of the relationship between Christ and God the Father was unique amongst the Apostles.
Yet in the letters Paul did not clearly describe what he knew of the mystery of the Messiah. The Bishops disagreed as to what Paul meant by his various statements about Christ. The Church in Jerusalem under James were shocked by some of his teachings.

Early Church

Thu, 24 May 2007 09:27:29 -0400

“The Way” of Jesus and the Bishops of the Church

Jesus told Thomas (Jo 14:6): “I am the way, the truth and the life.” This is what is “the Gospel of Jesus” (capitalized), or life in “the Kingdom of Heaven”. “The Way” was the name given to Jesus’s sect of Judaism, by the other Judeans. “The Way” was the road that must be travelled to reach the Father, and this is what Jesus taught to his apostles. Jesus told them to teach others ( Mt 28:19-20). He did not tell them to write anything down.No writings, from the apostles hands, have yet been discovered.

The Way is a method of living and thinking, and it is not easy to describe since it is a way of life. It was meant to be passed on by example. Nevertheless, c. 70 A.D., the apostles described some of the methods of the Way in a “book” which contained Church procedures that had to be followed in order to admit gentiles into the Church, and this book also included a brief statement on how they should conduct their lives. Details of baptism, the Lord’s supper, and conduct between brethren were described in this book called “Didache” which means “teaching”. This is the oldest Christian document discovered. It is the forerunner of the Catholic Missal, and the “Book of Common Prayer”. It was written a hundred years before any gospel. Nevertheless it did not describe how to accomplish what Jesus had asked people to do in “The Way”.

The Way was memorialized through the behavior of the disciples. By watching what the disciples did, one could learn about The Way. Education centers were established in the towns that the Apostles visited, and disciples were shown The Way, by living with the apostles.
Bishops, became the new leaders as the apostles moved on. They were responsible also for teaching the pupils “the truth” which meant to understand what was reality and what illusion. “The truth” is also called “Wisdom” for Christ is not only “The Way, the truth and the life”, but is also “the power of God and the wisdom of God” 1 Corinthians 1:24, KJV.

During the great missionary period A.D. 33 -66, the Apostles travelled far and wide to teach what Jesus had taught them. Each Apostle had a different presentation of Jesus’s teaching, according to his own understanding of the spiritual truththat he had received from God, but all understood how to live “The Way”.

Independently of the Apostles, Paul developed his own oral gospel A.D. 40-65, which he called “my gospel”. He did not consult with the Apostles in Jerusalem.

Paul established his own churches outside Judea, and taught a gospel that was sometimes at odds with the Gospel as taught by the Church in Jerusalem. Now the gospel that Paul taught was not the same as “The Gospel” of Jesus, for Paul had not been taught The Way by the apostles. You can see this in the early Epistles. The Way of the Judean sect was different from the instruction given to the heathens - and this is understandable.
Paul was an Apostle, but he was not an elected apostle and Paul was not recognized by the Jerusalem Church as an Apostle. And, in fact, the Jerusalem apostles put Paul into prison for teaching “without a license”.

Paul died c. A.D. 65, and his churches were taken over by various Bishops, who brought their own understanding to these congregations.
Paul’s supporters joined other churches, many of which were considered to be gnostic (Bishop Iranaeus describes more than 60 of these churches which had adopted ideas that were at variance with the “orthodox” views - he called them “churches which had other opinions” in his two volume work. “Against the Heresies” was the name given to the work by the RC Church much later. The Roman Church, embarrassed by the use of Paul’s teaching in support of the unorthodox beliefs of their own gnostic churches, apparently referred to none of Paul’s writings in their own Traditions, for there is no mention of them by any Catholic writer until Bp. Marcion brought them to the Roman Church c. 140 (see below).

After the siege of Jerusalem A.D. 66 -70, the Apostles and disciples in Judea scattered, most going eastwards to Syria or towards Egypt where they were outside the reach of the Romans. Each of the Apostles started their own Church, using a gospel of Jesus that was based on the teachings of “The Way” in the Jerusalem Church. Centers of learning were established to teach Priests and Bishops in Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea on the Coast, Caesarea inland, Edessa, Ephesus etc. The Bishops started churches across the East, and the Priests became missionaries as far East as India, and even China. The apostle Thomas was buried in Madras, India.

There was another war in A.D. 135 between Judeans and Romans in Judea and Galilee. Judeans were expelled from Jerusalem permanently. The dispersed members of the Church had great difficulties communicating with one another, and this resulted in a great divergence in what was taught. Up to this point in time no Bishop taught that Jesus was also God.

The First written statement that Jesus was God
The very first statement that Jesus was also God appeared when ten Epistles and a gospel, purportedly from Paul the Apostle, were delivered to the Church in Rome by the Priest Marcion, the son of a Bishop c. 140. Marcion said that Paul wrote them. Marcion wanted to be the Pope, and gave money to the Roman Church. Marcion believed that the Jewish Laws were obsolete, did not apply to Christians, and that the God Yahweh had nothing to do with Jesus nor God the Father. The Roman Church disagreed and asked Marcion to take his doctrine somewhere else. He did and took his money with him. The Church nonetheless kept a copy of his “Pauline” epistles and Marcion’s “gospel” of “Paul”.

By A.D. 150, a few Bishops began to understand the divine nature of Jesus from these “Pauline” writings. Jesus had been called Christ-Jesus in the “Pauline” epistles, and the Bishops began to use the term God-Man in their discussions, that is: Jesus had some characteristics of both God and Man. The earliest non-scriptural document now extant in which there is an implication that Jesus was divine came from St. Polycarp (69-155) in his letter to the Philippians c. 140 where he stated that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Strange that this was the same year that the Church received the “Pauline” epistles from Bp. Marcion.

There was no definite doctrinal authority in the Church until the 4th. century. It was only when Bishops travelled to another Church that difference in doctrine was noticed. Differences such as: Thomas the doubter’s churches were teaching that Jesus Christ was a Divine person in a body that only looked human. Another Bishop taught that Jesus was an ordinary man up until the moment that He was baptized by John, and then the spirit of God descended upon him and He became Divine.
Another Bishop taught that Jesus did not die on the cross, someone else took His place at the last moment. Many of the Churches thought that Jesus was somehow Divine, but did not understand Him to be God.

By the year A.D. 180 a Bishop named Iranaeus had reported on the beliefs of some sixty Bishops who somehow had gone astray from the main Alexandrian Church’s understanding (Alexandria was the center of the Church at that time - not Rome which was then a missionary outpost).
The Church in Rome decided it was time to standardize the teachings by the Bishops, so they published an official position statement on the nature of Jesus Christ. They gathered together documents which they classified as scripture to support what the Roman Church had been teaching since the end of the 1st. century.
By c. 180 two of the Bishops of the Church had approved some of these documents as “canon” to be used by all Bishops, and this was the beginning of a Bible consisting of the Old Testament (Greek Septuagint) and a New Testament - ( Revelations was not included, nor some Epistles, but the Shepherd of Hermas was included). The Church in Rome formally stated that Jesus was God.

It was not until the council of Nicea in 325, that all the Bishops agreed on the nature of Jesus Christ. The statement called the Nicene Creed was adopted by all Bishops (this was the original Nicene Creed not the Nicene-Constantinople modification which was not accepted by all the Bishops).

The New Testament did not describe how to live “The Way”, as it was assumed that all who read the gospels would be trained in “The Way” by the Church.
And this the Catholic Church has been doing. The Protestant churches, abandoned “The Way” when they abandoned the Bishops in the 16th. cent.

Justification

Thu, 5 Apr 2007 20:31:09 -0400

This is a PDF file on Justification with excepts from St. Paul’s letters, Thomas Cranmer’s Homily on Salvation from the 16th. c., John Henry Newman, who was an Anglican theologian, and the founder of the Oxford Movement, later a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, and N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, a a popular Anglican writer today.

JustificationNewmanCranmer.pdf