Orthodoxy – ReverendLinc

January 17, 2021January 17, 2021

Here it comes!

Now is the time to get in on the fun or bring new people to the site!

New year and many topics planned. Here is just a short list and if you have any comments or suggestions, now would be the time @ Linc at ReverendLinc dot com!

What do they believe?

Major religions of the world and what thir core tenets are.

Which version of the Bible is the right one?

There are so many versions of the Bible, how do you know which one to use and what are the differences.

Thou Shaly Not Judge.

Clarification of the single most mis-quoted verse of the Bible.

December 17, 2020

Which Demomination is the right one?

In order to understand the real answer on this we need to have a bit of a history lesson:

Christianity really started around 20AD. From that time until 1053AD what evolved was a centralized church. This centralized church developed some political doctrines and some “bosses” or church heads, and depending on where you lived, there were different bosses. The boss in the eastern portion of the church was the patriarch Michael Cerularius and the boss in the west (controlled by Rome) was Pope Leo IX.

The big disagreement here was over who was the real boss, what kind of bread to use for communion, a small change in the wording of the Nicene creed, celebacy of religious leaders and purgatory, among other political views. There was a great split that occurred, or what we call “The great schism” where 2 giant religious factions were created, the Eastern Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church. The head of each faction excommunicated one another just for spite.

Later on, in 1517, a Saxony (now Germany) priest named Martin Luther was fed up with some of the corruption and political involvements of the Roman Catholic church (selling absolutions, etc) and came up with 95 theses which he nailed to the church doors in protest. This was really the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. The people who followed Martin Luther were called “Lutherans”.

As the reformation spread across countries other reformers ideas cropped up and their followers, of course, broke off into further factions or “denominations”. These denominations were originally largely regional but today are almost all world wide. While the differences between all those denominations are interesting and sometimes heated, by and large, they all teach salvation through Christ by faith and the Bible as God’s word.

And that leaves us at today where there are many many Protestant “denominations” a person can belong to and 2 “Catholic” churches. So that brings us back to our original question, which one is the right one? Which denomination?

Given that your denomination teaches salvation through Jesus Christ through faith (which the Bible, God’s word, spells out for us explicitly in Ephesians 2:8) the rest is not as significant. You might visit some congregations and see which makes you feel welcome. See which speaks to you. You might take some time and dig into the differences between some denominations – some are fascinating, and see what speaks to you. You can spend some time talking to God about it, but the real answer is all of them and none of them at the same time. They all have something to offer and none of them are exactly right as they are all based in some way on the ideas of people and we must strive to base our Christianity on the ideas of Jesus.

November 24, 2020November 25, 2020

Virgin Mary?

Well, let’s jump right into the thick of it shall we?
The other day I went to breakfast at my local diner and started some conversation with another patron who just happened to be a Greek Orthodox. He mentioned something to me in his stories that I took some objection to, although I didn’t press the topic since I didn’t have my Bible resources there to back me up. He mentioned that, of course, Mary (the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ earthly mother) was a perpetual virgin and Jesus’ brothers (as mentioned several places in the Bible) were only half brothers from Joseph.

Before we jump on this I want to mention that my intention here is to stay completely Biblical. If it’s not in there, as far as I am concerned, God didn’t want it there. It’s either not true or not pertinant to the ultimate goal of salvation through Jesus Christ.

An intertesting take for sure, and I am positive this comes from the oral traditions that Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism rely upon, however, it doesn’t seem Biblical, or logical for that matter. Let’s examine:

Firstly and logically there is no evidence anywhere I can find to suggest that Joseph was ever married either previous to or after marrying Mary. The best I can find is this is another story carried on by the Catholics – the History of Joseph the Carpenter (Historia Josephi Fabri Lignari) which wasn’t written until between 600 and 700 AD, many hundreds of years AFTER the Bible. Secondly there are passages which explicitly mention that Jesus has brothers.

Matthew 1 “24When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and embraced Mary as his wife. 25But he had no union with her UNTIL she gave birth to a Son. And he gave Him the name Jesus.“

The key word there is UNTIL. He had no union with her UNTIL she gave birth to a son, meaning he did afterward. I mean, of course he did, she was his wife and in those days they tended to have big families. Indeed, the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus (Mat 13:55-56). The Bible text also uses wording specific to siblings (suggenes) when referring to Jesus’ siblings and not (anepsios), which is cousins or more distant relatives. Clearly they are flesh and blood brothers and sisters of Joseph and Mary. Of course that would be HALF brother and sisters as Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit , but for the purposes of this discussion they were certainly children of Mary.

Logically speaking , Joseph would not have outlived Mary as she was a much younger woman and even if Mary had “ascended” into heaven as the Orthodox believe, that wouldn’t have happened by the time frame these passages are referring to, so the brothers and sisters must have been biological children of Joseph and Mary.