Servus said:

I already posted that in this thread, which is only 4 pages long.

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No, you did not.

Servus said:

I never stated any of that. I just reiterated their position as an observer.

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Do you recall making this claim?

Servus said:

Local government and law enforcement are refusing to protect. So it's time to bring in the national guard to do the job. That's not going to infringe upon local authorities exercising their right to do nothing.

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A new Congressional Budget Office report finds the Trump administration’s latest corporate tax cuts, enacted earlier this summer, are already worsening the already-challenging federal budget deficit. Corporate income taxes for the fiscal year that ended in September are $77 billion lower than in the previous year, a 15 percent drop.

Around 22 states are either in a recession or on the verge of a downturn, according to a new analysis from Moody’s Analytics.

Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Kansas, Massachusetts, Washington, Georgia, New Hampshire, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Delaware, Virginia, Oregon, Connecticut, South Dakota, New Jersey, Maine, Iowa, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

boughtwithaprice said:

Your second statement is where we differ. It is a theological debate that we need not have unless you are willing.

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Forgive me, but according to my understanding of Roman Catholic Christology and the EO-RC Joint Theological Declarations, I believe it would be an error to assert your church believes that the Blessed Virgin Mary is of a different nature, substance or essence from other humans, since Ephesus and Chalcedon declare our Lord is in a hypostatic union of two natures, His uncreated divine nature and the human nature He assumed in the incarnation, which are united hypostatically without change, confusion, separation or division. If the Theotokos actually has a different nature, which every Roman Catholic theologian I’ve met denies was the intention of the Immaculate Conception, then our Lord would not share our human nature.

Indeed a primary reason why the Orthodox object to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is because of concerns it would lead people to deny the full humanity of Christ our True God and His consubstantiality with us, that is to say that God became one of us, a man, in order to redeem our fallen nature, restoring and glorifying it through His Passion and Resurrection.

Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man without change, confusion, separation or division. Indeed St. Athanasius, who your church very strongly venerates, said God became man so that man could become god, becoming by grace what Christ is by nature.

I can indeed quote numerous Catholic liturgical texts that prove Christ is of the same essence as the rest of humanity.

Rather, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, if understood correctly, means that Theotokos was conceived without original sin, but with our human nature, but in objecting to the saying that she had the same nature as the rest of us, and by implication objecting, by accident, to the full humanity of her son, you illustrated the main concern the Orthodox have about the idea of the Immaculate Conception.

+

I would also note that most concerns you might have about the Orthodox rejection of the doctrine are likely predicated on the basis of St. Augustine’s model of original sin, but we use the model of St. John Cassian’s Ancestral Sin, in which original sin is less about inherited forensic guilt and more of a hereditary disease that predisposes us to the sinful passions and causes us to be mortal. This model does an equally good job at precluding Pelagianism since no one afflicted with this disease could save themselves. However one can, through faith in Christ, who defeated death on on the Cross and remade humanity in his image, becoming the firstfruits of the resurrection, we can be saved, as the Blessed Virgin Mary was, and so close to God was she, closer physically than any other human by virtue of carrying Him in her immaculate and voluntarily sinless womb, that in response to her faith, which she affirmed in agreeing to carry Christ our God at the Annunciation, that when she reposed, she was taken up into Heaven bodily, which the Orthodox church has always celebrated, since the first century, on the Feast of the Dormition, celebrated by the Armenians at the end of July and by everyone else on August 15th, called the Assumption by the Oriental Orthodox, but which your church apparently did not formally dogmatize until Pope Pius XII declared it ex cathedra in the 1950s, which has the unfortunate effect of causing some anti-Orthodox polemicists to falsely accuse us of having followed the Roman church in adopting a recent doctrinal innovation (ignoring the fact that the Eastern Catholic churches had celebrated the feast since antiquity, and the Roman church historically was liturgically minimalist, particularly in August, probably due to the notorious heat in Rome in that month, and thus the Transfiguration was also never a prominent part of the Roman calendar).

At any rate the assumption of the Theotokos at the time of he repose is one of many indicators of her obedience, this being an honor previously granted only to a few, notably St. Moses and St. Elias, who as prophesied were present at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. Orthodox hymns describe her as Immaculate. But we do not say, nor do we need to say, that there was anything supernatural about her conception, because our hamartiology, while perfectly refuting Pelagius, does not require this. It should also be noted that historically the hamartiology of St. John Cassian was preferred in the West as well, until St. Augustine overtook him and all other Church Fathers during the early Scholastic period.

CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN said:

I'm not against prisoners doing the harvest. For the price of their upkeep.

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Not a terrible idea, but media outlets would portray it as racism if minority prisoners were photographed working side by side in fields.

Adon

Renata

Aaron112 said:

Ephesians continued "2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. "

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Thank you.

Aaron112 said:

Bible Hub
https://biblehub.com › commentaries › ephesians › 2-2

(5) Men are therefore slaves to Satan, because they are willingly rebellious against God. (c) They are called the children of disobedience

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They are actually dead, according to Ephesians 2:2. To believe that a dead person is willingly rebellious against God requires a great effort to read into the verse.

Xeno.of.athens said:

here we are in Christian Forums in 2025, centuries have gone by, Christianity has been The major religion of The West for two thousand years and I wonder if we're living in The best of all possible worlds?

if we're not then why? if we are how do we explain all the messy and terrible stuff that goes on in the world?

the reason that I wonder if it's The best of all possible worlds is that it doesn't seem likely that God would have made a sub optimal world and even with sin being present, and demons being present, an all manner of natural disaster being present, could The world be anything but the best of all possible worlds since it is the work of God's hands? Or is God a slip shod workman producing substandard products?

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Evil is very very very present. God is patient ..... Judgement is soon.

Asher

Ephesians continued "2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. "

Bible Hub
https://biblehub.com › commentaries › ephesians › 2-2

(5) Men are therefore slaves to Satan, because they are willingly rebellious against God. (c) They are called the children of disobedience

jamiec said:

This is a typically ignorant USA superstition, and typical Fundy thinking (which has deeply contaminated & defiled US Catholicism, sad to say).

Rights come partly from God, and partly from the State. Sometimes they agree or overlap, and sometimes they do not.

The stuff in the US constitution is of no legal force outside the US, and it certainly has no force in the Catholic Church. I’m not from the USA, and I do not care what the jokers responsible for the US Constitution said. We have our own legal traditions in the UK, and they do not include what the poxy US of A says.

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A non-American is likely unaware that it's from the Declaration of Independence, which lists causes of secession from the British Empire. It goes "We hold these Truths to be self evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Now, if something is granted at the pleasure of the state, then it is a privilege, not a right. What is left unsaid is the assumption that the natural condition of a subject of the state is one with no privileges at all, for how can the state grant what a subject already has? And if all such things are privileges granted by the state, then how can a subject be aggrieved if the state withholds it? If a privilege belongs to the state, then the state can do with it as it sees fit. If, however, each person as rights, something inherent in them by simply being, then it's not a thing that is granted by the state. If it is a right granted by God, then a state that acts to remove them is acting against God Himself. Which was the point of bringing that up in the Declaration of Independence.

All of which Western Europeans apparently consider a pernicious superstition inherent in ignorant Americans, at least when they don't want Americans to come over and help with some war (and sometimes even then). And yet the roots of such is found is found in Western Europeans such as the Englishman John Locke.

Nora

Bible Gateway
https://www.biblegateway.com › passage

3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and [a] behaving like mere men?

1 Corinthians 3:3-9 KJV - For ye are yet carnal: for whereas​

Bible Gateway
https://www.biblegateway.com › passage

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith,

Aaron112 said:

Still, for consideration of most of mankind's rejecting Jesus, remember Scripture, it is written, that soon (or already perhaps?), at least two-thirds of mankind on earth alive refuses to repent , they refuse to stop, worshiping (serving) demons. Every day they serve demons, and refuse to pray to God or turn to God or ask God for help or forgiveness.

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In my own experience in a nation such as China, the vast majority of people have virtually no significant religious orientation. They are very focused on surviving day to day and, if possible, bettering their economic and social circumstances. They are simply guilty of not believing in Jesus Christ. Their sin is not idolatry or paganism of any significant degree, but that of human nature, which is completely selfish with no desire to renounce self and serve anything other than self.

SabbathBlessings said:

Nah, God’s Testimony Exo 31:18 is not faulty,

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Just that it was given to Israel not to the New Testament church. The law, included the 10 commandments, was never given to the gentiles.

SabbathBlessings said:

just the people who refuse to subject themselves to it. Rom 8:7-8

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“because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭7‬-‭8‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

The Christian church are the body of Christ comprised of believers not those that walk in the flesh.

This is right after Paul said:

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

Do you really think your interpretation of these verses is correct? Is Paul defending the law in these verses?

FaithT said:

Do you have a Kindle?

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Better than that, I have three iPad Pros and one lightweight iPad air all with Retina displays, and with Kindle, Google Play Books, iBooks, Scribd/Everand, O’Reilly Books Online (for computer science related books), a vast PDF library and access to Archive.org’s digital lending library as a print-disabled reader.

Aaron

camille70 said:

To quote Mr Spock, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, or the few.

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I was not following the thread.... just saw this post....
Scripturally it is best to never listen to that voice - 'Mr Spock' , in fiction or in reality. He is not an authority in the Kingdom of God.

World-wise, the needs of a few always seek to control and direct the many, regardless of lives lost or money cost.
That is the one world governmen (religious and politic and economic and scientific and entertainment , et al)
serves itself or the devil, selfishly, not caring for the widows or orphans or neighbors or family ..... the way of the flesh , the ways of the world, are carnal and destructive and death dealing.

The Liturgist said:

My printed liturgical library consists of about 100 books. Fortunately most of them I have access to via PDFs, but a few I do not.

The trouble is, with my hands feeling like they’re on fire much of the time due to arthritis and tendonitis, even with medication, reading a physical book is painful.

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Do you have a Kindle?