My goodness will you please calm down. Ratramnus (9th c.) did not believe in transubstantiation and also had a sacrificial mass. Berengar of Tours (11th c.) the same. Chill, man. It's not fun talking to folks who seem to be yelling at me.
I'm sorry. You so really well stoked up my duracells and set me off at full battery speed with the very idea of that idolatrous 'in persona Christi' stuff, with visions of sacrificed dead lambs, covered in blood, on our communion table every Sunday, week after week. Have Roman Catholics forgotten what 'sacrifices' used to entail until Jesus Christ finally put an END to them all, making 'sacrifices' no longer necessary to gain God's forgivness for our sins? Lots of enthusiastically pious people did stupid unbiblical things out of ignorace back then. Some still do today. What do you think we had a Reformation for? .
I'm calm but shocked, after this revelation of what goes on 'sacerdotally' in a Roman Catholic orientated mind while 're-enacting' the brutal crucification of Christ, upon a community dining table. The priest that I married 26 years ago, was previously 'offered' by the priest here at St Andrews, the opportunity to Deacon for him, (at the time the church here had never allowed a woman to officiate at the Mass, and some of our congregation still call it the Mass rather than the Eucharist and refer to the priest as 'Father . . . . .'). He it was who was concerned about women's ministry in the priesthood and episcopate possibly hindering full communion with Rome, which he obviously desired in spite of it's somewhat weird theology of the Mass as a renactment of the crucifixion rather than a Memorial of His Death until his coming again. She respectfully declined his invitation, and I can now appreciate why. To him, it now seems, from what you have just suggested, it was a concession, within the Roman Catholic understanding of what a Deaconing Deconess is allowed to do at a crucifixion. i.e. quote "Women were deacons in the early Church and the difference between a priest and a deacon is that deacons don't bless the sacrifice etc." In view of the fact that she had been an ordained and priested priest in the Church of England for 25 years already, (Calling to the people's remembrance Christ's death resurrection and promise of return), it might seem that the invitation, in his estimation, may have been less of a compliment than at first it would have appeared, if that was what he was thinking her role was to be restricted to. Incidentally I was also on another occasion offered the opportunity to Deacon for him, as a Licenced Lay Minister, but declined on the ground of being an avowed layman. .
Metaphors depict a 'likeness' not a description. Jesus being the Lion of Juda or a Gate or a Vine or the Morning Star, does not depict 'realities'. He is not a Lion, he is not a Gate, he is not a vine, he is not a star. He is God. .
I'm shocked at how you can believe almost all Mediaeval Christians were wrong. You really believe God would do this? You don't seem to know what I'm saying with Ratramnus or Berengar, either. The fact that you dismiss them is absurd, because it was Protestants who used them as ancient authorities for their beliefs about the Eucharist and other things. So having an emotional reaction, as you seem to, to anyone prior to the 16th c. is not good. Claudius of Turin is another figure to whom Protestants turn; he's from the 9th c. also. These were the men who inspired Wyclif, Hus, Zwingli and so on. To dismiss the need for knowing about these men is fairly bizarre. 'Claudius in his writings, maintained that faith is the only requirement for salvation, denies the supremacy of Peter, sees praying for the dead to be useless, attacked practices of the church and held the church to be fallible.' Claudius found that Italian churches were full of images and "picture worshippers", though being told that people did not venerate the images themselves, but the saints they represent, Claudius still saw it as a heathenish practice and claimed that Pagans used similar arguments for image veneration. He saw the veneration of saints and claimed images as Pelagian, he argued that people need to only worship the creator and not the creation. Claudius also opposed the veneration of the cross, Claudius claimed that we need to "bear our own cross (Matt 16:24)" instead of adoring the cross.' Claudius of Turin - Wikipedia We had a Reformation for many reasons, but attacking those who came before us isn't it. Th Reformation is still being debated by scholars today as to its exact causes and desired outcomes. It was also different for every country. Our country had a Settlement that wasn't as enthusiastically Protestant as, say, Germany. We sent the Puritans off packing to America; we threw them out of our churches. Before ranting at me, please at least try grasping what I'm saying and stop dismissing Mediaeval theologians. I am so damn tired of folks dismissing all the Fathers and Mediaeval Theologians, as though they mean nothing to Protestants.
God didn't make them wrong. They did it themselves, through ignorance and not understanding what metaphors are in the scriptures. Just like some people do today. Not all of them were wrong, and I haven't suggested that anyway. You could include John Wycliffe among the worthy names you have mentioned, as having spotted some of the idiocies of some Roman Catholic doctrines. Such as on transubstantiation: He said : "If they can get you to believe that they can get you to believe anything." In fact it was Wycliffe who heralded the dawn of the English Reformation. The Cathlics were so cross at him that years after his death, they dug up his dead body, burned it and scattered his ashes and ground up bones in a river. Actually the Puritans were just as inclined to persecute those who didn't think the way they did, in those days, as anyone else. They went to America because they disagreed with Anglicans. When they got there they started persecuting the natives and the Quakers. Just because some people wrote things a long time ago doesn't necessarily make what they wrote right or in some cases even sensible. They were all just as capable of being wrong about anything as people are today. Some wrote wise things, others not. Some even wrote both wise and foolish things during their lifetime. No one on earth, except perhaps Jesus Christ, has cornered the market in wisdom. .
Sorry. I noticed that later, but thought it must be a different someone called Wyclif instead of Wycliffe.
That's an easy one to answer. Modern societal pressure. Certainly they aren't allowing female priests because of Scripture or 1900+ years of how the church understood things.
Well, DUH. Of course it does! That question goes to the definition of "Scripture," which is "the things written in the Holy Bible." See now, your second question is totally different! But you piggybacked the two questions so as to obtain mental assent for your position on the first one by confusing the issue. (I am a law school grad too, so I pick up on stuff like that.) Invalid example. The truth and concept behind Trinitarianism is fully written down in, and is fully drawn from, the Bible. Just because the word "Trinity" is not spelled out explicitly does not make the doctrine extra-Biblical (i.e., not contained in Scripture). That's another invalid example. The fact that church leadership changed their teaching on sacraments is demonstrative of the fact that the details concerning sacraments are a matter of church governance, not a question of what the written word of God tells us; indeed, Scripture is silent on the question of "sacraments" and the word is never used. We can say that the church's teaching on sacraments is not unscriptural, but that is a far cry from saying that sacraments are taught by scripture; wherever scripture teaches us something, the church has no right to modify (deviate from) what scripture teaches, but where scripture is silent the church may extrapolate (and subject the extrapolation to subsequent modifications). Very true. That is the "argument from silence." Better to look at what they did do as 'best evidence' of Christian belief, rather than what they did not do, especially since it appears from what we know that the very idea of a "female candidate for Holy orders" would have been absurd and laughable to the Apostles. Yes, but clearly, female presbyters was not one of those changes.
Men are always wrong, while women are always right. Just kidding! But look at how God created men and women. Men provide the input, and women receive the input. There might be some spiritual significance...
Claudius sounds like a fine Christian! When I get to heaven, I want to look him up and have a beer with him.
Bless your heart, Rexlion. Somehow you managed to both entirely miss my point and make my point at the same time. Well done. If you have read somewhere Jesus' teachings and example recorded in scripture that He would not only condone but command discrimination on the basis of sex in His Church, I can't help you.
Everything you mention here is a reality, they are all valid ways of depicting what God is. I said "depict" not describe. When you say "God is God" you have gone meaningless (remember "Brexit mean Brexit"?).
I was going to let this go through to the keeper, however there is a point that needs to be made. The institution narratives include words along the lines of 'do this in remembrance of me'. The point here is about the Greek, and the term used in Greek is anamnesis. Remembrance is not an overly good translation of this as it suggests let us cast our minds back to the earlier event, whereas the real impetus is about bringing the past event into the present. One place where the word was used was in discussing the Passover, for at the end of the meal, the oldest male would conclude with the words 'tonight we have come out of Egypt'. So when we talk in terms of sacrifice when it comes to the Eucharist, we are not talking about a new sacrifice, but the living presence of the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice made once for all upon the cross. Jesus does not say, this is a metaphor, he says take and eat, this is my body.
Dictionary definintion: depict / di-pikt / vt to paint or draw; to make a likeness of; to describe, esp minutely. [l. depingere, depictum, from de-(intensive) and pingere to paint.] And I didn't write 'God is God'. I wote "HE is God" and the HE I was referring to was Jesus Christ. That is not a tautology. Neither is it a metaphor. .
HE also said "“I am the bread which came down from heaven.” and stupid people complained and misunderstood his meaning, because they chose to take his words only literally. He never told people when he was speaking in figures of speech. He just DID, most of the time. His body was actually saying that at the time he said it. .
The point I am making is in response to this statement of yours. "Jesus does not say, this is a metaphor, he says take and eat, this is my body." My respose to that suggestion was. "His body was actually saying that at the time he said it." So the bread and the cup that he was offering couldn't possibly have literally been his body and blood, before his death, could they". So why should we be required to believe cannabalism is OK, (this would be literally human flesh and human blood we would be consuming), AFTER his execution and after his body has been transformed at the resurrection into a 'spiritual body'. How can human beings 'consume' a 'spiritual body' by chewing it with their teeth and ingesting it into their digestive system, finally excreeting the remains of it out of their nether regions into the public drains. I think taking Christ's words as being metaphorically, his body, and blood, are the only acceptable way of taking them, unless Christ was actually enticing his disciples to flagrantly flout the most fundamentally strictest statute of The Law, goading them all into mortal sin. .