Wow – that is astoundingly shallow!
What’s the point? Easy: inclusion.
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That’s a translation with an agenda, and it reverses the flow: “hunger and thirst for justice” sounds like trying to punish others, and then “they shall be satisfied” sounds like getting to see others get punished. The concept in the verse is that people hunger for righteousness, i.e. for change in themselves, not action against others, and that they will get filled with the righteousness they desire.
This translation obscures the Gospel at best.
That’s really just slander – no one at the time of the Reformation except possibly some of the “swarmers” made such a claim. Luther, Calvin, and the other major figures quoted the Fathers and even councils.
Interesting, though, that none of the Deuterocanon is cited in the NT.
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Sure but the underlying concept was that councils were, in principle, fallible, even ecumenical ones. Which is a major alteration of the Christian belief system (the concept that a Christian could judge the Church and the Councils and not the other way around is nowhere to be found in the Church of the first millenium).
But then there is also the passage from the letter of Romans where God says “vengeance is mine”. In other words, I see no basis to state that forgiveness wipes away every consequences. Still less to state that forgiveness can be obtained without repentance.
I think a big part of what is happening comes from turning forgiveness into a legal matter. It’s more common in the Fathers to regard it as a sort of medical matter, where a person is admitted despite being ill, but then “cured” (thus the medieval concept of “the cure of souls”) – and recognizing that a cure can be painful.
He’s also a child of the binary approach where a book was either in or out, a view hardly universal among the Fathers – they had no problem with gradations among the books, that some were “more” canonical. There was a tradition that got killed by the binary view, one that some Reformers tried to revive, that said that some books had stronger authority than others. “Deuterocanon” is a label that reflects that, that these are books to be read in church (what the canon was about) but which stood in second place to the prime canon. This was the situation for a full five centuries, which suggests that it was regarded as just fine.
That’s reflective of the attitude that the boundaries of the canon were not regarded as a matter of the faith – and in fact theologians right down to Trent continued to give their assessments of various books; that council solidified the binary view.
Yep. C.S. Lewis even makes an argument for purgatory and prayers for the dead without reference to the Deuterocanon.
I won’t go into it here, but a good Christological argument can be made in favor of Purgatory, that it is part of what Paul says about “filling up the sufferings of Christ”.
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Your appeal to Jerome overlooks an important distinction: knowing the Hebrew canon and considering it authoritative for Christians are not necessarily the same thing.
Jerome certainly knew that the Jews excluded Tobit and Judith. But his own prefaces show that he did not regard Jewish objections as automatically overriding Christian ecclesiastical authority.
In his preface to Tobit, Jerome explicitly says that he considered it preferable to displease the judgment of the Pharisees and obey the instructions of Christian bishops. He consequently translated a book that he knew was excluded from the Jewish canon.
In his preface to Judith, he likewise appeals to the book’s reported recognition by the Council of Nicaea, despite acknowledging the objections raised against it in the Jewish tradition.
And in his Apology Against Rufinus (2.33), Jerome explicitly defends following the judgment of the Christian churches concerning the text of Daniel.
Imm not claiming that these passages prove Jerome ultimately regarded every deuterocanonical book as fully canonical. His personal canonical theory remained complex, and scholars continue to discuss it, my point is another : Jerome’s knowledge of Hebrew did not make the Jewish canon automatically binding on the Church, nor did Jerome consider himself independent of ecclesiastical authority (which is the biggest difference between him -or any of the fathers- and Luther).
If your argument is that Jerome’s Hebrew scholarship should outweigh the Church’s judgment, you still need to demonstrate why his individual scholarly preference should be normative for Christianity.
That is what your argument has not established yet.
Not a good passage for your position; it implies that if one settles issues with an adversary then there is no punishment.
Nope – Luther just thought that the Hebrew canon should prevail.
There’s no such thing. Politics split the church at Chalcedon. Only a parochial view that the Roman empire constituted the whole world makes it possible to claim an “undivided Christianity”.
Only if you think that surgery and medications have no love.
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I can more than agree with this, but this is a far cry from stating that Christ simply covers your sins and you can get away with being an horrible subhuman just because you believe in Him, without even needing to repent and really change.
I think we need to distinguish two very different claims:
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The Catholic Church solemnly defined the biblical canon at Trent in 1546.
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Before Trent, the deuterocanonical books had never been authoritatively recognized as inspired Scripture or regarded as matters of faith.
The first statement is substantially correct. The second is historically false.
As early as 397, the Council of Carthage explicitly identified the books of Maccabees among the canonical Scriptures, distinguishing them from writings that could not be read publicly as divine Scripture.
In 405, Pope Innocent I likewise provided an explicit list of the books received into the canon of Sacred Scripture, including Tobit, Judith, and both books of Maccabees.
But the most important proof comes from the Ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442, more than a century before Trent.
In its Decree for the Jacobites, Florence professed that the same God inspired the authors of both Testaments and explicitly listed the books received and venerated by the Church. That list included Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, and both books of Maccabees.
This wasn‘T merely a recommendation to read those books for spiritual encouragement. It was an authoritative conciliar statement identifying them among the sacred writings associated with divine inspiration.
So what exactly did Trent do?
In 1546, Trent solemnly reaffirmed the traditional Catholic canon and attached an explicit anathema to its deliberate rejection. That does not mean Trent invented the canon or that the books suddenly became inspired in 1546.
And this distinction is not merely Catholic apologetics.
In The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2017), Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade explicitly acknowledge that Florence had already issued a biblical canon list in 1442. They explain that Trent was distinguished by being the first ecumenical council to attach an anathema to rejection of its canonical ruling.
You can verify this directly in their book preview, page 1.
I readily acknowledge that there were disagreements among individual Christian scholars before Trent, including Jerome. But the existence of scholarly disagreement does not establish the absence of authoritative ecclesiastical teaching.
Indeed, Augustine explicitly recognized that the Jewish and Christian judgments differed regarding Maccabees, and nevertheless affirmed the Church’s reception of those books as canonical (City of God 18.36).
I point out that Jesus may have referenced Tobit and Sirach (without going into the scholarly swamp on the matter).
You mean the Roman council of Florence – it was not ecumenical. That is a Roman pretense, that whatever it does is ecumenical despite excluding other catholic Christians.
False analogy.
Those things are designed to ease suffering not inflict it.
Inflicting suffering is against all that is Christian.
Paying for sin is over ruling the Passion.
Falling back on human justice is to try and over rule God.
Ouch.
Inclusion in what? God’s judgement?
How vane can you get!
Richard
I don’t think your objection works, because you’re confusing the possibility of avoiding punishment with the impossibility of punishment.
Of course, Jesus teaches that reconciliation before judgment can prevent punishment, but Catholic theology has never claimed that everyone must undergo purgatorial purification, or that purification cannot be completed during earthly life.
In fact, your observation fits perfectly well with the Catholic position: if someone fully reconciles and is purified before death, there is no need for further purification afterward.
The real question concerns those whose reconciliation or purification remains incomplete.
Notice what Jesus says happens when the matter is not settled: the debtor is imprisoned, and his release is associated with the payment of his outstanding debt.
That distinction is what makes the passage relevant to the discussion, because it presents an image of judgment involving a debt, punishment, and the possibility of release.
Moreover, there is an important scholarly point here.
Nathan Eubank, in his peer-reviewed article “Prison, Penance or Purgatory: The Interpretation of Matthew 5.25–6 and Parallels” (New Testament Studies, 2018), argues that interpreting this passage exclusively as eternal damnation goes beyond what the text necessarily establishes. His analysis allows for a period of suffering followed by possible release.
You’re presenting a false dichotomy. Luther’s appeal to the Hebrew canon and his rejection of the biblical evidence for purgatory are not mutually exclusive explanations. The former was precisely the argument he used to accomplish the latter.
Let’s look at the actual history.
1. The canonical controversy arose directly in the context of purgatory.
At the Leipzig Disputation in 1519, Johann Eck appealed to 2 Maccabees 12 in defense of purgatory and prayers for the dead. Luther responded by challenging the book’s canonical authority, arguing that it could not serve as binding scriptural evidence.
This is not merely a Catholic interpretation. The Lutheran–Roman Catholic Commission on Unity explicitly acknowledges that the dispute over the biblical canon emerged in the controversy concerning the scriptural basis of purgatory.
Source: The Apostolicity of the Church (2006), §361, p. 157.
2. Even Lutheran scholarship confirms the connection.
Lutheran theologian Roland F. Ziegler, in The Leipzig Debate and Theological Method (2019), p. 217, explains that Luther challenged Maccabees’ canonical status in response to Eck’s argument for purgatory.
Ziegler observes: “Luther here for the first time opts for the Masoretic canon against the canon of the Vulgate.”
Notice the historical context: this choice occurred precisely during the controversy over the biblical evidence for purgatory.
Read the article — pp. 216–217
3. Secular historians explicitly connect Luther’s treatment of Maccabees with his opposition to purgatory.
Historian Theodor Dunkelgrün writes: “Luther’s Widerruf vom Fegefeuer (Disavowal of Purgatory, 1530) consequently argued from the non-canonicity of I and II Maccabees.”
Source: The Testimonium Flavianum Canonicum, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 23 (2016), p. 257.
Even more explicitly, historian Ariel Hessayon describes Luther as: “circumventing in his disputation with Eck a proof-text for the doctrine of purgatory … by excising the inconvenient book from his canon.”
Source: The Apocrypha in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press (2015), p. 135.
4. Appealing to the Hebrew canon does not settle the question of Christian canonicity.
The Council of Florence had already listed Maccabees among the canonical Scriptures in 1442, decades before Luther’s birth.
Therefore, simply saying that Luther preferred the Hebrew canon does not explain why the Jewish canonical tradition should override the canon recognized by the Christian Church, so your answer doesn’t refute my argument.
I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that Luther appealed to the Hebrew canon and that this approach had precedents, especially in Jerome. Nor am I claiming that opposition to purgatory was demonstrably his sole motivation.
But the historical evidence establishes something undeniable: Luther invoked the disputed canonical status of Maccabees to deprive a traditional proof-text for purgatory of its scriptural authority, and he continued using that argument when explicitly rejecting purgatory.
Saying “he just thought the Hebrew canon should prevail” describes his stated canonical criterion. It does not erase how, when, and why that criterion became central to his dispute with Eck.
And it certainly doesn’t establish that Luther’s preferred canon was more authoritative for Christianity than the canon already recognized by the Church.
Exactly – and that’s Purgatory. We aren’t capable of fixing what is bent or lacking in ourselves; Purgatory (or, better, purgation) is where God does that.
I’ve had some pretty darned painful medical treatments, and I took the pain as a gift leading to health.
I think you have a very narrow view of things here. Try reading some of what some of the mystics wrote about purgatory, and tie it into James “count it all joy”.
You’re stuck in a legal model. The NT offers other views. Yes, the medieval mind tended to see purgation as payment, but that was not really the view of the ancient church.
How is judgement the same as inclusion? It’s the opposite!
My vane points with the text.
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I submit for consideration:
As far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
And I note that it does not say that He removes all consequences.
You are conflating two different claims: that every Christian community in the world remained in communion for a thousand years, and that there was a historically identifiable communion between the major churches of East and West during the first millennium.
I was defending the latter, not the former.
Of course, the Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Churches experienced separations long before 1054. I have no reason to deny that historical fact.
But your suggestion that the concept of the “undivided Church” is merely a parochial Roman invention is contradicted by the historical understanding of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians themselves.
1. Catholic and Orthodox scholars explicitly recognize the first millennium as an era of ecclesiastical communion.
Consider the Chieti Document (2016), produced by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
Paragraph 7 states “Despite certain temporary ruptures, Christians from East and West lived in communion during that time"
This is a joint Catholic–Orthodox statement, not a unilateral Roman Catholic claim.
2. The same Catholic–Orthodox dialogue explicitly uses the expression “undivided Church.”
The Ravenna Document (2007), §41, refers to: “the era of the undivided Church”
It also acknowledges that Rome occupied the first place in the ancient order of major episcopal sees.
Read the Ravenna Document, §41
Are you suggesting that Orthodox theologians who jointly approved these formulations are simply displaying a parochial view of the Roman Empire?
3. Your claim that politics split the Church at Chalcedon is also an oversimplification.
Politics certainly played an important role, but the controversy also concerned profound questions of Christology.
In fact, Pope Paul VI and Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III jointly acknowledged in 1973 that the divisions following Chalcedon involved: “theological differences, nourished and widened by non-theological factors”
Read their Joint Declaration (1973)
Notice that even the Coptic Orthodox patriarch, representing a Church that rejected Chalcedon, didn’t describe the division as simply political.
4. Historical divisions don’t erase historical communion.
The existence of Christian communities outside the Roman Empire doesn’t make the communion of Rome, Constantinople, and the other Chalcedonian patriarchates imaginary, nor does the existence of earlier schisms mean that their common councils, sacramental life, apostolic succession, and ecclesiastical relationships were historically insignificant.
The phrase “undivided Church” is a conventional description of a particular historical communion, it doesn’t require believing that Christianity was geographically limited to the Roman Empire or that no schisms occurred before 1054.
So yes, I readily acknowledge the divisions of the fifth century, but acknowledging those divisions doesn’t refute the historical reality of the communion between Rome and the Byzantine East throughout much of the first millennium. And even today what unites us is far greater than what separates us.
Indeed, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox scholars jointly recognize exactly that reality.
I’ve read much of the material (in the original Greek) from the Council and agree with scholars who say there was no disagreement on Christology, only on emphasis – the two groups, after all, were facing different heresies as the big concern, and wanted wording to stand firm against the one they had to deal with. Had the Council been allowed to proceed with prayer and discussion, there could have been agreement; the division was solely because of an intemperate emperor.
Your dismissal of Florence overlooks a much earlier historical record: the recognition of Maccabees as Scripture didn’t originate at Florence or Trent. It can be documented in conciliar decisions from the first millennium.
Let me give you the actual sources.
1. The Council of Carthage (397) explicitly identified Maccabees as canonical Scripture.
Canon 36/47 states: “That nothing except the Canonical Scriptures should be read in the church under the name of the Divine Scriptures.”
It then enumerates the biblical books, expressly including: “two books of the Machabees.”
Notice the terminology: these books are included in the council’s list of canonical Scriptures, not merely recommended historical literature.
The same list appears in the Latin collection of the African canons associated with Carthage in 419.
Read the Council of Carthage (419), Canon 24
Now, Carthage was a regional council, not an ecumenical council, but that doesn’t diminish the historical significance of its explicit recognition of Maccabees centuries before the Reformation.
2. An ancient Eastern Christian collection also recognized Maccabees as sacred writings.
Consider Apostolic Canon 85, part of an ancient collection of ecclesiastical canons transmitted in the East.
It instructs Christians concerning the books regarded as sacred and includes “of the Maccabees, three”
The inclusion of three books is particularly interesting. It demonstrates that this Eastern collection recognized Maccabean writings beyond the narrower Hebrew canon.
You can verify the text through Apostoliki Diakonia, the publishing organization of the Church of Greece:
The Apostolic Canons — Canon 85
3. The Council in Trullo (692) formally confirmed the Apostolic Canons.
Canon 2 of the Council in Trullo expressly confirmed the collection of 85 Apostolic Canons, along with canonical collections from earlier councils, including Carthage.
This matters because the Apostolic Canons included the Maccabean books among sacred writings.
Read Canon 2 of the Council in Trullo
Moreover, Trullo was understood in Eastern Christianity as completing the canonical legislation of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils.
Even the Orthodox Church in America explains that its rulings possess the same canonical authority in the Orthodox tradition as those of the earlier ecumenical councils.
Orthodox Church in America — The Council of Trullo
4. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II (787), reaffirmed the inherited ecclesiastical canons.
In Canon 1, Nicaea II affirmed the canonical regulations transmitted by earlier ecumenical councils, regional councils, and the Fathers.
This included the canonical tradition received through Trullo.
An important distinction: I’m not claiming that Nicaea II explicitly listed 1 and 2 Maccabees in a new definition of the biblical canon, nor am I claiming that all ancient canonical lists were identical.
My claim is that first-millennium conciliar and canonical sources explicitly recognized Maccabean writings as sacred, and that the Eastern Church’s canonical tradition cannot simply be reduced to the Hebrew canon.
5. This brings us back to Florence.
In 1442, Florence included the two books of Maccabees in its list of inspired biblical writings. That was over a century before Trent.
You may reject Florence’s ecumenical authority from an Orthodox or Protestant perspective, but that doesn’t make its decree historically nonexistent, nor does it erase the much earlier testimony of Carthage and the Eastern canonical tradition.
And calling Florence an exclusively Roman council is historically inaccurate: Byzantine bishops and representatives of the Eastern patriarchates participated in its proceedings in 1439, even though the subsequent union was not received by the Orthodox Church.
The central question remains: why should the Hebrew canon automatically override the books that Christian churches had recognized and transmitted as sacred Scripture a millenium before Luther was even born?
Simply asserting that the Jewish canon should prevail doesn’t establish that conclusion, and dismissing every contrary Christian council as illegitimate merely because it disagrees with one’s prefereed canon would be circular reasoning.
Genesis seems to be a pourquoi story and is typical for the time period - science was virtually nonexistent - and it would be a grave error to take it literally as many fundamentalist Christians will tell you. It’s not easy to find scientifically valid matches to statements therein. For example A&E were there right from the start but the fossil records show that dinosaurs were before us.
A primitive cell experiencing a metabolic slowdown because its solar energy is dropping isn’t reading a sign (otot). It is not “reacting to the light level” but simply experiencing an automatic chemical reaction to an internal energy deficit. A scriptural sign implies a distinct external visual beacon used for mapping out cycles. On Day 4, the atmosphere cleared, and those lights finally became functional visual markers.
When you grow plants indoors under artificial lights, your timer clicks the lights sharply on and off. That creates a razor-sharp, high-fidelity data edge.
A thick primordial methane and volcanic sulfur fog doesn’t have an on/off switch. Because of Mie scattering, the light is completely diffused into a uniform lightbox. The twilight transitions at dawn and dusk become incredibly drawn out, muddy, and erratic. Advanced eukaryotes tracking seasons don’t just look for a room getting brighter; they use phytochromes to read the sharp shift in the ratio of Red to Far-Red light that only happens when a direct, unscattered beam cuts through the horizon.
You are completely right that the Earth was initially a hard ball of rock, and your paper matches early planetary history perfectly.
This fits the sequence of Genesis 1:2 flawlessly. Before Day 1, the early Earth’s surface cooled rapidly, forming a dark, hardened skin that shrouded the glowing magma core and mantle deep inside. The planet literally became formless and void, cloaked in deep darkness. But as Genesis 1:2 notes, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters—meaning a primitive layer of water from early mantle outgassing was already there, covering that dark, hardened surface of the deep.
Then we enter Day 1 (~4.4 billion years ago), where God brings light to the surface. Part of what happens on Day 1 physically is the proto-planet Theia striking the Earth. That unimaginable collision superheated the planet, lighting it up and generating the debris field that formed the Moon.
Furthermore, recent research from the University of Münster and the University of Bern shows that while the early proto-Earth itself was initially a volatile-depleted, dry planet, Theia delivered the first massive supply of water to Earth. Because Theia originated from the wet, outer solar system, it was packed with carbonaceous, water-rich material. The light on Day 1 wasn’t a magical, disembodied glow; it was the physical reality of that cataclysmic, water-delivering impact combined with the early sun trying to pierce through a chaotic, post-collision atmosphere.
It is after this Day 1 impact event that the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) occurs (4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago). A massive wave of water-rich asteroids pummeled the planet, delivering the overwhelming abundance of water that fully turned Earth into the global water world of Day 2.
If we look at the actual Hebrew mechanics of the word for heavens, shamayim (שָׁמַיִם). That -ayim suffix is a dual form—meaning it explicitly denotes a pair of something. The text is revealing two heavens: the shamayim aloft and the raqia below.
In ancient Hebrew thought, mayim represents anything in a fluid or semi-fluid state. The raqia is the solid structural platform—comprising both the ocean floor and the dry ground—that acts as the ultimate boundary line. It separates the “waters below” (the subterranean fluids and the roaring, molten interior of the Earth) from the “waters above” (the surface ocean waters and the cosmic waters of space, like the stars, which are also in a fluid, molten state).
The open cosmos and atmosphere where those waters above reside is the shamayim (the sky). The solid surface of the earth beneath our feet is the raqia, acting as the solid, heavy-duty floor that carries the entire atmospheric and oceanic water system. So yes, we are walking right on top of the hard, hammered-out floor of heaven!
The literal Hebrew phrase is al-pene raqia, which translates directly to “across the face of the ground” or “above the surface of the earth.”
Furthermore, the Hebrew word used here isn’t strictly restricted to feathered birds—it is 'oph, which means any winged, flying creature. If we look at the actual biological succession, Day 5 lines up with the massive explosion of early winged life, which means these “birds” are actually flying insects!
They obviously don’t fly inside a solid sky-vault, and they don’t fly inside the solid dirt. They soar in the open air, buzzing right across the face of the ground, silhouetted beautifully against the backdrop of the open sky.
The Hebrew roots aren’t describing a magical sky-dome, Bill. They are describing the solid surface of the earth and the clearing of a planetary atmosphere!
If organic substances were just floating around dissolved in an open, infinite ocean, they would instantly drift apart and never react. They needed a physical structure to trap, concentrate, and organize them before cell membranes ever existed.
That is exactly where the actual geology of the ocean floor comes in. Alkaline hydrothermal vents create massive, towering mineral chimneys that are a literal honeycomb of tiny, interconnected microscopic pores.
These microscopic rock cavities are the exact existing, lifeless architecture I am talking about. They functioned as natures ready-made cell walls, acting as physical molds that concentrated those dissolved substances, sparked the first reactions, and eventually allowed the first true living cells to form.
No word redefinitions required. The inanimate rock provided the physical structure, the water provided the chemical ingredients, and the Spirit of God brought it to life!
oth: a signal (literally or figuratively), as a flag, beacon, monument, omen, prodigy, evidence, etc
But no change in the ratio of different wavelengths of light, which you seem to think is important.
Well it wasn’t formless. It was roughly a sphere, and the initial surface was way too hot to allow for liquid water. The water came later.
But Genesis says the water was here first. Hint: the water just represents the initial chaos to which God brought order.
The Hebrew roots are describing a solid dome that can support water (why the sky is blue), has windows, doors etc. If you want to actually know what the Hebrew says check this out.
The Biblical Cosmos is Three-Tiered—No Question
Moving the goal posts, it was supposed to be “particles”. A massive vent isn’t a particle. A pore isn’t a particle. As usual you keep evolving to support your model. And I am sure you are aware that there is no consensus yet on the origin of life.
I wasn’t talking about your actual worldview - or anyone else’s worldview - but the process by which you reached it.
When your worldview is constructed in what you want to be true rather than on what you have found to be true, it is a pleasing fantasy, even if it matches reality.
(the rest of your post is thus irrelevant)