Ken Starr and his homophobic agenda.

[Straybow]

Because he's a convert to Roman Catholicism, which makes the stakes a little higher in his eyes than the average RC.

[Straybow]

Then there is no higher authority then yourself.

Nothing matters but your own interpretation. I don't believe that's a very firm base on which to rest your faith.

In truth, yes; and the same is true for you. You have accepted their interpretation, but they will not stand before God when you are judged.

You are responsible for hearing God and obeying God, not for listening to a priesthood and doing what they say.

For example, the Catholics who massacred thousands of Protestants on St. Bartholemew's Day can't say to God, "But the Pope told us to, so we're OK." The Pope and lesser priests who arranged it will be responsible before God, but so will the individuals who did the killing.

There have always been a teaching authority, scripture and tradition of the church, such that the interpretation is not restricted to our own beliefs, our own blind spots and our own desires. You talk about 'purging' medieval superstition, as if the Christian faith itself were superstition. You elevate the rabbis who themselves rejected Christ.

I have no problem with their interpretation of the Old testament, but they are not an authority for the New. They have rejected Christ, and you would rely on them to tell you of Christ himself?

Well, if the majority of RC doctrine is ancient and medieval superstition, then your faith itself is superstition. If mine is purged of such tripe, then mine is not.

I said, "The rabbinic writings are a context, not an authority." So how does that "elevate the rabbis who themselves rejected Christ?"

When Jesus addresses them, specifically, then their teachings are the context of Christ's teachings. What is so difficult that neither you nor Agathon can comprehend?

[Ben Kenobi]

Why do you care about what people think of Catholicism?

Why do I care when a Protestant goes out of his way to attack Catholics? Because I was once one, and it revolted me even then.

Probably also because of the treatment I received from some former friends when I left. My pastor was a kind man but not everyone was as understanding. They tore a strip off me, saw it as a betrayal, etc, etc, even though I had invited a friend of mine (who was protestant), to their church.

I just told them, if I did not respect you, why would I invite him?

[Ben Kenobi]

In truth, yes; and the same is true for you. You have accepted their interpretation, but they will not stand before God when you are judged.

That is true for accepting the authority and the teachings of Christ. But as for the interpretation of scripture, there has always been a teaching authority. Remember, Christ reads hearts, and if someone is sincerely devoted to him, even if they don't properly understand everything, Christ will still save them.

You are responsible for hearing God and obeying God, not for listening to a priesthood and doing what they say.

God himself has invested authority in them, "go and make disciples of all nations." I was not brought to him alone, and nor will I remain alone throughout my life in him. While it is true that I stand and fall for myself, I still have both a privilege and an obligation to my brothers and sisters both inside and out.

For example, the Catholics who massacred thousands of Protestants on St. Bartholemew's Day can't say to God, "But the Pope told us to, so we're OK." The Pope and lesser priests who arranged it will be responsible before God, but so will the individuals who did the killing.

That is true, but if those who have sincerely repented of their sins they will be forgiven. The problem is if you are your own highest authority, then how can you sin?

Well, if the majority of RC doctrine is ancient and medieval superstition, then your faith itself is superstition. If mine is purged of such tripe, then mine is not.

Do you accept the ecumenical councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon? Just because the church is ancient doesn't make it subject to medieval superstition. Quite the opposite actually. If the church is ancient, then that is a rejection of the fact that it is based on medieval superstition.

I said, "The rabbinic writings are a context, not an authority." So how does that "elevate the rabbis who themselves rejected Christ?"

Then why are you citing their interpretation as authoritative? You consider it a context, but then you are simply saying again, that I should trust your interpretation. Why, according to your own beliefs should I trust your interpretation over my own?

When Jesus addresses them, specifically, then their teachings are the context of Christ's teachings. What is so difficult that neither you nor Agathon can comprehend?

You've missed the point that Christ addressed them because they were in error, and have instead perpetuated the same error that Christ addressed.

Look, logic is pretty simple. If Aggie and I can come to agreement on this topic coming from two different directions, that should serve as a real question for you that your interpretation is incorrect.

[Straybow]

I believe in truth and that there is a law written on our hearts. I believe that Aggie speaks the truth of what Christ is speaking, and that I am rather ashamed to find myself defending Agathon, who isn't a believer, who is more open to the truth of Christ then someone who claims to follow his teachings.

I've read Plato and the Greeks myself. I realise Paul's truth when he teaches that there is a law written on the hearts of men, such that all are aware of the Law and the truth, as he teaches in Romans. For how could we come to him, were we not connected to him in some way? How could we recognise the truth when we hear it if we all did not have immortal souls.

Ah, so the truth is written on the unbeliever's heart, when his mocking of ancient ignorance conveniently agrees with your doctrine, but the truth isn't written in the believer's heart??? I don't think your RC betters would agree with your interpretation that it means that doctrine is written on their hearts.

The fruits come from the same tree, Christ himself. For as Paul says, good fruit is not the same as bad fruit.

Then why is it that Christ doesn't say what you say? If it does not in fact come from Christ but from supposition, then it is bad fruit.

Rom 3:9-12
What then? Are we better [than they]? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one."

So when Paul talks about the law being written on the heart, he is talking about the conscience, not about doctrine nor truth beyond the existence and righteousness of God.

No, they are violations of both, for as the two are united in one. Why is beating your wife wrong, moreso then beating your brother and your sister? Do you believe them to be no different from each other? As Paul says, again in Ephesians that you are to love your wife as if she was your own body. "In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." This only makes sense under consubstantiality, where the two bodies literally become one flesh. You do not hurt your wife because hurting her is like tearing at your own flesh.

Why does this bond have no power to reform the wifebeater? Why does the husband have to be exhorted to love his wife, unless that mystical bond has no real power to make the husband love her? It is protean, having no shape or form in the real world, existing only in the abstraction of doctrine.

I guess turning aside one of the greatest conquerers, ever in the history of man doesn't count?

I really don't know what you're refering to here, or how it is relevant. I was addressing Aggie's contention that these things in the gospels were equivalent to pagan superstitions of consubstantiality. They aren't. If you can't tell the difference either, then you are at a loss.

Exactly so; Christ never speaks of consubstantiality. It is not a difficult concept. It is a fraudulent one. The RC church says that one can't divorce because marrige is a sacrament joining the neoplatonic substance of the man and wife, but then plays both sides and claims that sometimes the sacrament didn't take.

That is not what we claim. We claim that the sacrament was never done in the first place. It would be no different then if you were baptised in the name of satan, or if you were confirmed without a priest, or if you ordained yourself and started your own church. Annulments occur where and only where the sacrament has not been validly conferred.

But it was done, with a RC priest, in a RC church, with the RC liturgy. They simply assert that something wasn't right, even though nobody could tell at the time.

Again, if the couple chooses never to consummate their marriage, are they considered to be married? If information arises later on that would have affected it, (ie a prior marriage), then yes an annulment will be granted. There are many such situations which crop up where the sacrament was not validly confirmed.

Yet none of this confirms that consubstantiation is real. It is no different than secular divorce law that does not recognize consubstantiation. If there is no external consubstantiation detector, then it is no different from fiction or fraud.

I do! What are the other options? You have a church founded entirely on divorce, and a movement that rests itself on sand. On what authority does a marriage rest, if the priest or the deacons or the pastors themselves do not have the authority to marry you? You cannot ordain yourself, and you cannot marry yourself, yet you would have me believe that I ought to trust a man who is himself self-ordained with my soul and my care in marriage!

Henry was just the "last straw." The Protestant movement is based on centuries of movements against the errors of the clergy and heirarchy of Rome which were viciously and murderously persecuted by secular powers under the orders of Rome. Thus when secular power finally broke from Rome the movements were free to grow as God allowed.

I agree that annulments are falsely granted and that is a problem. No different from people who abuse the eucharist by taking it without the proper preparation, or pretend to be catholic. Or the folks that lie to their priests in confession. Or the priests that themselves are great sinners and still prepare the holy Eucharist by which Christ himself is brought before his church. That is the human aspect of the church. That says nothing about the doctrine of annulments in and of themselves. To cry for reform is to cry for the restoration of the Catholic doctrine, not the condemnation and the rejection. All the other alternatives have their own issues.

But each of these errors in inseparable from the philosophical foundation of sacramentalism.

I don't know of any Christian who would question that there is a spiritual bond in marriage.

Only if you bait-and-switch by claiming "spiritual bond" automatically equals consubstantiation. If you actually explain the neoplatonic BS of accident and substance, and then pose the question, you'd find they recognize it as false doctrine. If you actually explain covenant as a human instrument, and the gravity of a covenant made before God, they would point to that as true doctrine.

You certainly don't see anything wrong with divorce after divorce and yet you whine about annulments? Take the plank out of your own eye!

Did I say that? No. I use annulment as a foil to show how the fiction of sacramentalism becomes fraudulent and robs the believer of the power of obedience to God.

Could yes, but that is a valid clause for granting annulments. I'm not saying that is a necessary clause, but that is a sufficient clause. Do you concede that annulments are granted for the sole reason of lack of consummation?

Consummation or not, the problem of annulment defies any actuality to consubstantiation.

It is my own reasoned and impassioned opinion. On top of that, I'm technically stretching the word "midrash" which wasn't used that way in Jesus' day. It means "exposition" or "commentary."

Then why are you appealing to it as an authority? Why should I consider your own opinion over mine and the tradition of the church?

I'm not. Again, because Jesus is addressing the Jews, then Jewish beliefs and philosophies are the context for understanding Jesus' words properly.

Because Jesus didn't say, "Don't you know about consubstantiation?" He said the issue was "hardness of heart," not indissolubility of some hypothetical spiritual bond.

He also says what God has brought together, let man not tear asunder, but did you leave out that quote? [/q] Because it isn't even remotely equivalent to indissolubility of some hypothetical spiritual bond. It says, "let not man tear assunder," not "man cannot tear asunder."

I don't care what Jewish people teach about Christ, straybow. They don't believe in him, so why should I expect them to get his teachings right on marriage? Are you a Christian or are you a Jew? You seem to believe more in the rabbis, then in Christ, himself.

It isn't what they teach about Christ, it is the context of what Christ was teaching them, and the absence of any mention of "consubstantiation." If that was what he meant, why didn't he just say so? As Aggie confirms, the concept and the term was ancient already.

The issue of divorce is not an issue on which Jews and Christians agree, as they have different concepts of marriage. The two are not equivalent, which is what Christ discusses. Why would you bind yourself to the Mosaic law and reject Christ?

No, there weren't any "Christians" present when Christ was dinging the Jews on their hypocrisy. The first "Christians" were Jews, and we don't see Paul mentioning consubstantiation either. Again, if that was what he meant, he'd have used the word.

No, I don't, not on this issue. He has set aside his own prejudices in offering his best understanding of the text. You, on the other hand, have laced your entire rebuttal with attacks on Catholicism, and are hampered by your own interpretation. Your eyes are completely blind to the truth of Christ.

Well, if that's how Aggie "sets aside his own prejudices" then I'd hate to see his prejudices unrestrained.

For me, my attacks have been directed at the neoplatonic philosophy undergirding both ancient Greek consubstantiation and the RC doctrines that derived from it. If the doctrines were not in error, my "attacks" would not be directed against them. I'm not hampered by my own interpretation, I'm interpreting what the text says instead of what Aggie or the RC church wishes the text said, if only Jesus has said it right.

Why don't you drop your hatred of the pope, and just look at the passages in the way that Aggie has translated them? Open your eyes for just a second and read what he is trying to say, and teach to you successfully.

I don't hate the Pope, I hate the deception and error that binds him and the billions of church members he leads.

I did look at the passage the way Aggie translated them, and I showed how his translation is by no means authoritative as a Greek "expert," nor in agreement with the contemporary Jewish interpretation of the Greek language Jewish texts to which Aggie refers. It is you, and Aggie, who should be opening your eyes instead of blindly following ancient church revisionism, and modern intellectual revisionism, repsectively.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ah, so the truth is written on the unbeliever's heart, when his mocking of ancient ignorance conveniently agrees with your doctrine, but the truth isn't written in the believer's heart???

I didn't say that. I said that it's written on everyone's heart, believer or unbeliever. That an unbeliever responds to a teaching of Christ in the appropriate manner is to their credit.

I don't think your RC betters would agree with your interpretation that it means that doctrine is written on their hearts.

They go so far as to proclaim that salvation is available outside the church. I think you've been grossly misinformed as to the teachings of the Catholic church.

Then why is it that Christ doesn't say what you say? If it does not in fact come from Christ but from supposition, then it is bad fruit.

Christ himself says, by the fruits you shall know them. I don't see why we should deviate from his principle. It's precisely the opposite. If the tree does not bear good fruit then it is not from Christ. If the tree bears good fruit then it is from Christ.

So when Paul talks about the law being written on the heart, he is talking about the conscience, not about doctrine nor truth beyond the existence and righteousness of God.

You quoted the wrong passage.

Romans 2:13-6

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)

No, he is talking about righteousness in general. He says that obedience to the law is enough to be declared righteouse, even in the lack of understanding of the nature of Christ.

Why does this bond have no power to reform the wifebeater?

The wifebeater rejects the concept of the bond first.

Why does the husband have to be exhorted to love his wife, unless that mystical bond has no real power to make the husband love her? It is protean, having no shape or form in the real world, existing only in the abstraction of doctrine.

You might well ask why does Paul exhort us to avoid our sins? Does that mean that Christ's death on the cross has no power over us?

We have free will. We can choose, even under Christ, to reject him. It doesn't mean that we are not still purified in him, it means we are fallen sinners.

I really don't know what you're refering to here, or how it is relevant.

You were handwaving and saying that they aren't true priests because they don't perform miracles. Yet at the same time you deny the eucharist. I was tempted to cite the 'Sign of Jonah'.

I was referring to Pope Leo who turned aside Attila.

I was addressing Aggie's contention that these things in the gospels were equivalent to pagan superstitions of consubstantiality. They aren't. If you can't tell the difference either, then you are at a loss.

Consubstantiality isn't a pagan superstitution. It's a Christian teaching on marriage, always has been.

But it was done, with a RC priest, in a RC church, with the RC liturgy. They simply assert that something wasn't right, even though nobody could tell at the time.

In the case of marriage, it can be simply one partner lying to the other about having been married previously.

Yet none of this confirms that consubstantiation is real. It is no different than secular divorce law that does not recognize consubstantiation. If there is no external consubstantiation detector, then it is no different from fiction or fraud.

You would turn to the secular law to confirm Christian doctrine? Secular law is hostile to Christian doctrine, which is why they do not see divorce in the same way. There is a marital bond between husband and wife which is severed in divorce. We see that in the pathologies that stem from divorce in both partners.

Henry was just the "last straw."

He was denied an annulment. If you would stand by Henry, then you have no cause to cry for the reform of the Catholic church on this issue.

The Protestant movement is based on centuries of movements against the errors of the clergy and heirarchy of Rome which were viciously and murderously persecuted by secular powers under the orders of Rome. Thus when secular power finally broke from Rome the movements were free to grow as God allowed.

You forget the fact that Luther, Calvin, Simons, all of them were Catholic priests who broke away from Rome. Luther broke away and was quite fond of persecuting the Anabaptists who disagreed with him on infant baptism, and on the authority of the priests and episcopy. He burned them too.

If he were sincerely motivated by God, why was he burning heretics? By your own reasoning you have no cause to take up with Luther.

But each of these errors in inseparable from the philosophical foundation of sacramentalism.

What is the error of sacramentalism? To state that the bread and the wine of the Eucharist becomes Christ's true body and blood, is hardly error, it's in scripture. Word for word quote.

Only if you bait-and-switch by claiming "spiritual bond" automatically equals consubstantiation. If you actually explain the neoplatonic BS of accident and substance, and then pose the question, you'd find they recognize it as false doctrine. If you actually explain covenant as a human instrument, and the gravity of a covenant made before God, they would point to that as true doctrine.

I meant in terms of permitting divorce denies the spiritual connection in marriage, and reduces marriage to a mere contract to be broken whenever one party sees fit. Now if I've misrepresented your views on this issue, I apologise, but this is the impression you've given to me.

Consummation or not, the problem of annulment defies any actuality to consubstantiation.

Thanks for conceding the point.

It's clear your issue isn't with anything more then sacramentalism. That means 7 sacraments which you reject. I can understand that viewpoint.

The way I was taught about the sacraments is that they are an indelible sign. Do you believe in rebaptism? What do you believe about the eucharist?

It isn't what they teach about Christ, it is the context of what Christ was teaching them, and the absence of any mention of "consubstantiation." If that was what he meant, why didn't he just say so? As Aggie confirms, the concept and the term was ancient already.

Your critique would work better if you never mentioned 'medievalism', because the issue is with the greek, not with the latin.

You might as well complain that homoiusis is not explicitly mentioned in scripture. The term is ancient, and the term is used by the church to explain marriage in one word rather then a phrase. The term itself is not necessary, but is simply a convenience.

Your issue isn't with the term, but the concept. You don't see marriage as an indelible sign, which means that divorce is permissible. The problem is that view doesn't square up with Christ's teachings here or elsewhere.

No, there weren't any "Christians" present when Christ was dinging the Jews on their hypocrisy. The first "Christians" were Jews, and we don't see Paul mentioning consubstantiation either. Again, if that was what he meant, he'd have used the word.

He never mentions the trinity, yet the doctrine is laid out based on Christ's statements about I and the father are one. This is a very poor argument and a smokescreen.

For me, my attacks have been directed at the neoplatonic philosophy undergirding both ancient Greek consubstantiation and the RC doctrines that derived from it.

Which is obvious. The problem is that this philosophy is the way that the church uses to describe the doctrine of marriage from the beginning. Secondly, your issue is with the tradition of the church not the 'neoplatonic philosophy', a term which didn't appear until Aquinas in the 13th century. The doctrine is much older then that, and is also present at Nicaea, at Chalcedon, at Constantinople. The concept of the trinity, and other staples of Christian belief are rooted in the same philosophy, a blend of both the Hebrew and the Greek ways of life, of the Jew and the Gentile. So long as the philosophy does not contradict with the teachings of Christ, what is the issue?

I don't hate the Pope, I hate the deception and error that binds him and the billions of church members he leads.

So what is your answer to my question about the ecumenical councils?

[Straybow]

Remember, Christ reads hearts, and if someone is sincerely devoted to him, even if they don't properly understand everything, Christ will still save them.

That does not make false doctrine true.

God himself has invested authority in them, "go and make disciples of all nations." I was not brought to him alone, and nor will I remain alone throughout my life in him. While it is true that I stand and fall for myself, I still have both a privilege and an obligation to my brothers and sisters both inside and out.

No, God invested that authority in Jesus' Jewish disciples. The Apostolic claims of the RC church do not automatically confer Apostolic authority on every doctrine added over the centuries. Where they revised the interpretation of scripture to conform to faddish Greek philosophy, that is error.

That is true, but if those who have sincerely repented of their sins they will be forgiven. The problem is if you are your own highest authority, then how can you sin?

Hard for them to repent when they are daily told they are doing God's will, by those they believe are God's authority. That is worse than being "my own highest authority" when I submit to God, and to my local pastor, and to those he is submitted to in oversight. I am responsible for doing what God wants me to do, and I am open to receive scriptural correction from my pastor or from my peers.

Do you accept the ecumenical councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon? Just because the church is ancient doesn't make it subject to medieval superstition. Quite the opposite actually. If the church is ancient, then that is a rejection of the fact that it is based on medieval superstition.

First, I distinguished between ancient philosophy and medieval supertition but pointed to both as primary sources (plural) of error in RC doctrine. The conflict of homoousious vs. homoiousious was an artificial philosophical distinction that arose because of their various philosophies on formalism (which I loosely call "neoplatonism," whether that is rigorously correct or not).

A blind big finds an acorn every once in a while, but a sighted pig finds them rather more easily. Inasmuch as those councils were using the terminology and philosophy in error, I do not. Inasmuch as the simple meaning of the words as we use them today conforms to scripture, I do. Since we don't treat those councils as the Word of God, we can teach the words without the baggage of the ancient misconceptions and find they fit well.

I said, "The rabbinic writings are a context, not an authority." So how does that "elevate the rabbis who themselves rejected Christ?"

Then why are you citing their interpretation as authoritative? You consider it a context, but then you are simply saying again, that I should trust your interpretation. Why, according to your own beliefs should I trust your interpretation over my own?

I'm not. I'm saying that Jesus was talking to them, therefore their beliefs are the context. Not Greek philosophy they didn't believe in. Now, if the Greek philosophy were correct Jesus could have used words that said so. Since Jesus didn't redirect their understanding, we can conclude that the context directs the interpretation of Jesus' correction properly.

You've missed the point that Christ addressed them because they were in error, and have instead perpetuated the same error that Christ addressed.

Again, Jesus did not use language that points directly to consubstantiation. Rather, he says that their use of the doctrine on divorce was hard-hearted. It would seem you have missed His point, and the meaning of the concept of "context."

Look, logic is pretty simple. If Aggie and I can come to agreement on this topic coming from two different directions, that should serve as a real question for you that your interpretation is incorrect.

But both "directions" are actually one direction: Greek philosophy and polytheistic beliefs stemming from pagan spiritualism. Aggie says that the Jews would have been influenced by pagan beliefs around them. I agree, and point out that the fact the Jews refuted consubstantiation shows that his interpretation is in error.

That Jesus does not unequivocally say that the Jewish denial of consubstantiation was wrong actually confirms that consubstantiation was wrong. Or else Jesus was an incompetent teacher. Now Aggie would have no problem saying that Jesus and whoever wrote the scriptures could have been lousy teachers.

Would you disagree? If not, then you are at an impass. Jesus cannot both be unquestionably correct (as you most certainly must believe, or perish) and yet incompetent to convey the truth to us. Therefore you find yourself agreeing with those who deny Christ and the Gospels, agreeing with them in their false interpretation of Christ and the Gospels, and your doctrine is bankrupt.

[Straybow]

Ah, so the truth is written on the unbeliever's heart, when his mocking of ancient ignorance conveniently agrees with your doctrine, but the truth isn't written in the believer's heart???

I didn't say that. I said that it's written on everyone's heart, believer or unbeliever. That an unbeliever responds to a teaching of Christ in the appropriate manner is to their credit.

So, Agathon's mocking of the teachings of Christ as ancient ignorance is the "appropriate manner" to respond?

You quoted the wrong passage. [Romans 2:13-6] No, he is talking about righteousness in general. He says that obedience to the law is enough to be declared righteouse, even in the lack of understanding of the nature of Christ.

Paul first explains that only doers of the law are justified (Rom 2:12) and finally shows that nobody actually keeps the law in Rom 3:19-20 - Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law [is] the knowledge of sin. What is written on the heart of man is the knowledge that he falls short of God's righteousness. Some react by rejecting God's righteousness as described in Rom 1.

You might well ask why does Paul exhort us to avoid our sins? Does that mean that Christ's death on the cross has no power over us?

...We have free will. We can choose, even under Christ, to reject him. It doesn't mean that we are not still purified in him, it means we are fallen sinners.

You answered your own question. We have free will. Not free will except where we're bound by super-spiritual marriage bonds that if we wrongfully will to break them, they mysteriously don't break.

You were handwaving and saying that they aren't true priests because they don't perform miracles. Yet at the same time you deny the eucharist. I was tempted to cite the 'Sign of Jonah'.

The Eucharist is another "invisible miracle," the mystical essence becoming Christ's body. The change of the neoplatonic "substance" of the wafer is proposed to be a miracle, yet it does nothing miraculous. It does not heal, as Jesus healed all who were brought to him except in Capernaum where they had no faith. It is powerless, and thus it is not the "body of Christ" transformed. Or there is no faith in the RC church and the "body of Christ" can't do miracles. Either case doesn't look good for your side of the aisle.

Consubstantiality isn't a pagan superstitution. It's a Christian teaching on marriage, always has been.

So you say Aggie agrees with you, but then you deny what Aggie was saying? According to Aggie (and he was correct on this point), consubstantiation was a common pagan belief long before Christ. However, as I showed from excerpts of the Talmud, consub was not a contemporary Jewish belief about marriage. Consub was not what Jesus actually said to the Jews about marriage.

Yet none of this confirms that consubstantiation is real. It is no different than secular divorce law that does not recognize consubstantiation. If there is no external consubstantiation detector, then it is no different from fiction or fraud.

You would turn to the secular law to confirm Christian doctrine? Secular law is hostile to Christian doctrine, which is why they do not see divorce in the same way. There is a marital bond between husband and wife which is severed in divorce. We see that in the pathologies that stem from divorce in both partners.

I am pointing out that consub is not required for marriage as a concept, and is in fact absent from legal definitions used to uphold marriage and divorce laws. Emotional and psycho-chemical effects are sufficient to explain both the bonds of marriage and the "pathologies" of divorce without mythical, undetectible essences.

He was denied an annulment. If you would stand by Henry, then you have no cause to cry for the reform of the Catholic church on this issue.

The same way God used Pharaoh to glorify himself in delivering the Israelites, God used the King of England when the church leadership would not reform.

You forget the fact that Luther, Calvin, Simons, all of them were Catholic priests ... persecuting the Anabaptists ...

I do not defend or excuse their errors, only agree with their obedience. Just as I do with David, who murdered a man to take his wife.

What is the error of sacramentalism? To state that the bread and the wine of the Eucharist becomes Christ's true body and blood, is hardly error, it's in scripture. Word for word quote.

Actually it isn't. Again, that pesky Jewish context arises. The cup Jesus gave them to drink was the "messiah cup" that was traditionally filled and left untouched as a testimony of faith that the messiah would come to redeem Israel. The bread was the yachatz, the middle piece of the unleavened bread that was broken. Many Jews believed that the three pieces of bread were symbolic of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob although there was no consensus on why Isaac was broken. The prophetic ritual components are no more the physical body and blood of Christ than the words of prophecies uttered centuries before Christ. They speak of Christ, and were fulfilled in that evening. "Do this, in remembrance of me" means celebrating Jesus as the Messiah.

I meant in terms of permitting divorce denies the spiritual connection in marriage, and reduces marriage to a mere contract to be broken whenever one party sees fit. Now if I've misrepresented your views on this issue, I apologise, but this is the impression you've given to me.

That is the context of Jewish belief that Jesus was teaching against. To be against the concept of marriages of convenience is not at all the same as confirming consub. Especially when no terminology even vaguely hinting at consub appears in Jesus' words.

Thanks for conceding the point.

I concede nothing, rather I contend that the RC church's own actions are in conflict with consub. Did you not know that the Pope would have granted Henry's annulment if Catherine's brother Charles V HRE hadn't besieged the Vatican with his armies and demanded rejection of Henry's request? It was not much different from Henry II getting the Pope to annul Louis VII's marriage to Eleanor of Acquitaine so Henry could marry Eleanor. The more powerful ruler won, not the doctrine of consubstantiation.

The way I was taught about the sacraments is that they are an indelible sign. Do you believe in rebaptism? What do you believe about the eucharist?

What does Christ teach about them? Does he tell the Jews that marriage is "an indelible sign?" Does He tell the disciples to "go into all the world, baptizing and confirming and marrying and eucharizing and confessing and shriving and ordaining priests as an indelible sign?" No.

Your critique would work better if you never mentioned 'medievalism', because the issue is with the greek, not with the latin.

Medievalism comes in because after laying the foundation of Greek philosophy in the early centuries, the church (Latin branch somewhat moreso than Greek) isolated the believers from the scriptures by ending and eventually persecuting the practice of translating into the vernacular. From then on, doctrine was a "black box" dictated from afar, and faith in God was supplanted by pagan superstition couched in Christian terms. To this day in the RC and Orthodox communions it remains largely so, with hundreds of millions openly worshipping their ancestral gods in the form of patron saints. In one of the Baltic states it is even part of their tourism advertizing!

Your issue isn't with the term, but the concept. You don't see marriage as an indelible sign, which means that divorce is permissible. The problem is that view doesn't square up with Christ's teachings here or elsewhere.

Except Christ does say that divorce is legal in the case of adultery, so it is hardly "indelible." Then Jesus tells us that to look at another in lust is the same as adultery, which brings us right back to the hardness of heart. Consub doesn't alter either of those points. It is therefore unnecessary to believe consub to understand or to live in concordance with Christ's teaching against casual divorce.

No, there weren't any "Christians" present when Christ was dinging the Jews on their hypocrisy. The first "Christians" were Jews, and we don't see Paul mentioning consubstantiation either. Again, if that was what he meant, he'd have used the word.

He never mentions the trinity, yet the doctrine is laid out based on Christ's statements about I and the father are one. This is a very poor argument and a smokescreen.

So the actual words of Christ are a smokescreen, and the eisegetic doctrines are more important than Christ's words? Let me explain: Jesus and the Father are one in a totally different way than Adam and Eve were "one flesh." Jesus and the Father were eternally constituted together the way the roots and trunk of a tree are one structure. Adam and Eve were one flesh the same way two boards become one structure when they're nailed or glued together. Not fundamentally constituted one, but indivuals functionally made one entity and functionally separable. "Let not man separate," not "man cannot separate because of the conjoining of their mystical substance until death."

For me, my attacks have been directed at the neoplatonic philosophy undergirding both ancient Greek consubstantiation and the RC doctrines that derived from it.

Which is obvious. The problem is that this philosophy is the way that the church uses to describe the doctrine of marriage from the beginning.

Perhaps from the beginning of the gentile-dominated church but even that can't be attributed any earlier than the turn of the 2nd century. That was three full generations after the first gentile church in Antioch, from which Paul was sent out as an Apostle. Somehow he never bothers to instruct anyone about sacramentalism.

Consub was a pagan Greek concept loosely applied to marriage, and when the Gentiles outnumbered the Jews in the church they brought their baggage with them. It is not in the scriptures, nor in anything attributed to the Apostles themselves or other first generation church leaders. It was not a blending the Jewish and Greek, it was a substitution of pagan error in place of the truth.

Secondly, your issue is with the tradition of the church not the 'neoplatonic philosophy', a term which didn't appear until Aquinas in the 13th century. The doctrine is much older then that, and is also present at Nicaea, at Chalcedon, at Constantinople. The concept of the trinity, and other staples of Christian belief are rooted in the same philosophy, a blend of both the Hebrew and the Greek ways of life, of the Jew and the Gentile. So long as the philosophy does not contradict with the teachings of Christ, what is the issue?

The issue is that they do contradict the teachings of Christ. He never teaches anything like the sacraments in gospels, and where He does teach about spiritual transformation (John 3) the sacraments mangle it into contrary teachings.

While the term "neoplatonic" may date to Aquinas, he was refering to the philosophies of the early Greek fathers. At least he was honest enough to recognize their philosophic roots. Those philosphies were not the origin of the trinitarian concept within Christianity, rather the origin of particular teachings about the concept that are alien to scripture.