Final Jewish Conversion: a Hypothesis

[spauline]

I think the mystery of this may be really quite simple: the way of the saint in Catholic spirituality is an intrinsicly necessary spiritual process that must occur in any primary Revelatory and Salvific Covenant. In other words, the three stages of the saint:

I. The Purgative
II. The Illuminative
III. The Unitive

are just a micro-cosmic model of what, spiritually, the respective People of God must go through in the BOTH the Old and New Covenants.

In other words, the proto-type Christological Declaration of the apocalyptic mysteries is NOT Augustine's "Wheat and Tare parable", but rather, Christ's statement: "Amen, amen, I say to you, it will all be fulfilled!" That is, the solution to the great mysteries may be in fact simply to recognize that three great spiritual ages that the Jews passed through are in fact a foreshadowing of what the Gentiles will go through with the New Covenant, and only in the third stage of the Gentiles' journey will the eyes of the Jews be opened, that is, to recognize that everything that they went through, in a major spiritual way, was actually traversed in the New Covenant by the Gentiles.

I'll explain later, when I get a chance, but consider the Gospel three's. Jesus speaks to Mary Magdelene at the Resurrection three times, and only in the third time does she recognize him. Joseph and Mary spend three days and nights looking for Jesus, and only in the third do they finally find him. And what do they say? "Jesus, we have been looking for you in sorrow these three days. Why have you done this to us?" And Jesus responded, "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's Business."

That is, for three ages the Jews will search for the Messiah, and only in the third time do they find Him. Hence, they will say to Jesus (in the great apostasy of the end), "For three great ages of Gentile/Catholic history, we have been searching for you. How could you do this to us?" And Jesus will respond, "Well, duh? what did you think? Did you think that the God who brought out of Egypt and betrothed you as His People would take a vacation for several thousand years? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? [Namely, Redeeming the Gentiles for three great ages, just as I prefiguritavely walked with you for three great ages]?"

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Here's some more elaboration on what the ages are:

The Covenant is made (the tongues divided at Babel, God calls ONE nation from many, Abraham | the tongues are reunited at Pentecost, calling ALL nations into ONE Universal Kingdom),

Then begins the Purgation (Egypt, pagan Rome), and they are delivered from bondage (The Exodus to Israel, Christianity's triumph over paganism in Catholic Christendom)

Then there is the great Illuminative Phase (the prophets elaborate on the Law, the Magesterium develops the Deposit of Faith), the illumination is progressively resisted and gives way to the dark night of the soul (the general apostate condition of the Jews just prior to the Exile, the associated Minor Apostasy of today).’

But the chastisement comes and vindicates the Revelation developed in the Illuminative phase (the Exile shocks the Jews into reversion, as will the Minor Chastisement the Gentiles), and the Covenants are restored (after the Exile, the Jews are restored to the Holy Land, after the Minor Chastisement, Christians are reunited and Catholicism is restored throughout most of the world), and this great vindication of the Illumination is the Unitive Phase.

Finally, at the conclusion of the Unitive ,the saint is martyred and passes into the “next age”, heaven. (at the end of the Jewish restoration, they likewise pass through the martyrdom of the OT Antichrist, Antiochus, after which a new age dawns, the FIRST Coming of Christ, just as the Gentiles will fall away a second and final time at the end of the age of peace in the Great Apostasy and NT Antichrist, in which the Church truly passes through the ultimate martyrdom [persecution], which, of course, is followed by the SECOND Coming of Christ).

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St. Augustine himself seems to imply that the three ages of the Jews have this relationship to the New. See below in emphasis:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1303.htm (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1303.htm)

St. Augustine, On the Catechising of the Uninstructed



CHAP. 22.--OF THE SIX AGES OF THE WORLD.

39. "Five ages of the world, accordingly, having been now completed (there has entered the sixth). Of these ages the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood. Then the second extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations which should follow the example of his faith, but who at the same time in the way of natural descent from his own flesh was the father of the destined people of the Jews; which people, previous to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Christian faith, was the one people among all the nations of all lands that worshipped the one true God: from which people also Christ the Saviour was decreed to come according to the flesh. For these turning-points of those two ages occupy an eminent place in the ancient books. On the other hand, those of the other three ages are also declared in the Gospel, where the descent of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh is likewise mentioned. For the third age extends from Abraham on to David the king; the fourth from David on to that captivity whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia; and the fifth from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. With His coming the sixth age has entered on its process; so that now the spiritual grace, which in previous times was known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations; to the intent that no man should worship God but freely, fondly desiring of Him not the visible rewards of His services and the happiness of this present life, but that eternal life alone in which he is to enjoy God Himself: in order that in this sixth age the mind of man may be renewed after the image of God, even as on the sixth day man was made after the image of God.

[Ted]

Spauline,

I think you need to spend more time in scripture and less in fruitless speculation. You proposed a first step: "The Covenant is made (the tongues divided at Babel, God calls ONE nation from many, Abraham | the tongues are reunited at Pentecost, calling ALL nations into ONE Universal Kingdom)"

This is simply nonsense. The original covenant is found in Genesis 3. When Adam and Eve fell, god pronounced judgment on them, but at the same time, guaranteed their redemption. All covenants that follow are simply restatements based on this original covenant, amplified to answer local situations. Ecah covenant does the same based on its predecessors.

If you can't get that basic fact right, why should anyone read the nonsense that follows? God never tells us about your three phases. Therefore, they aren't biblical and should be rejected. Paul makes it clear that anyone who is in Christ IS a new person (2 Cor 5:17). There's no purgative phase. And in the end, we will be transformed into our immortal forms "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" 1 Cor 15:51-52.

Let's listen to the gospel.

Ted

[spauline]

Hi, Ted,

well, wait a minute. I was not denying that God had covenants before. For, in a sense, there was there was, I agree, an intiial state of total gift and love between God and man. Also, the flood and subsequent sparing of Noah, and the Rainbow, was a indeed a Covenant. Amen. What I was rather drawing was that the two BIG, BIG Covenants was the one with Abraham and the Law of Moses, and the New Covenant in Christ.

And, well, of course, whereas Scripture nowhere explicitly delineates the stages of the Jews and the saint, it seems rather appropriate that we have the Gospel threes and that the Apoc itself has a threefold division, the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Bowls, all three of which rather appropriately align with the three stages of the saint.

Why do have an attitude of spiritual contraception, Ted? Don't you want to FULLY understand God? I think this is really the essence of heresy: a person chooses to reject some of God's sources of truth because the messengers weren't always holy. It's really what has been going on for 1000 years:

Pope sends crusaders, and they massacre and lay Constantinople to waste, so the East says, you think you're the boss of us? You can take a hike.

Later, alot of bishops become morally lax. So Protestants say, you hypocrites just invented Oral Tradition. We only need Scripture.

Then Protestants confound the living hell out of the pursuit of doctrine, dividing into as many sects as there are Protestants. So then the deists and rationalists say, you hypocrites! You kill one another and mutually excommunicate all the other of your myriads of factions to hell. Your problem is Scripture. I mean, OK, there must some God up there, but it is clear that from all this confusion, there is no Divine Revelation or Redemption. We must find the truth with only our intellects and keep the moral law on our own power.

Finally, as the deists and rationalists confound the truth even more, the world rejects even reason and religion altogether.

Again, it's blame the message because of the bad messengers!

[Ted]

And, well, of course, whereas Scripture nowhere explicitly delineates the stages of the Jews and the saint, it seems rather appropriate that we have the Gospel threes and that the Apoc itself has a threefold division, the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Bowls, all three of which rather appropriately align with the three stages of the saint.
This is where you depart from scripture. If there is an important issue, scripture either states it plainly or it is a good and necessary consequence of combining scriptures. The cross is a great example of the first, in that Paul declares it to be of first importance (1 Cor. 15:1ff). The Trinity is a good example of the second, in that the divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all clear. Further, the unity of God is clear, and the personhood of all three is clear. Thus we have the Trinity: Three persons, three relationships, three roles, one being.

Your approach is simply confabulation. There is no scripture to support your position, only your overactive imagination.

As for the Apocalypse, it is not divided into three parts. Its primary division is into two parts, the epistle in chapters 1-3 and the apocalypse in chapters 4-22. The epistle then divides into seven major portions while the division of the apocalypse is hotly debated. There are threes, sevens, twelves, and a bunch of other possibilities proposed by scholars.

Why do have an attitude of spiritual contraception, Ted? Don't you want to FULLY understand God? I think this is really the essence of heresy: a person chooses to reject some of God's sources of truth because the messengers weren't always holy.
Let’s examine the hubris of your assertion. By claiming to be a source of God’s truth, you are claiming the prophetic office. That’s a serious claim.

I don’t think you can legitimately say I have a contrary spirit. Rather, I strongly object to rash misguided speculation that is completely uncontrolled by any proper understanding of God’s word. The Bible is the standard of interpretation of the Bible. It truly provides enough information for us to understand its teachings. If you can present scripture that tells me that a particular statement matches God’s revealed truth in the Bible, then I am prepared to accept it. If you can’t then you need to learn how to read scripture to discover what it says.

I’m now going to tackle a major error in your concept. You propose that a step is “purgation.” That idea is completely absent from scripture. Rather, God repeatedly says that he will in one form or another “chastise” the apostate to make him repent and return to Him. This is not purgation, but a nudge in the ribs that says real trouble is coming if you don’t repent.

Once the apostate repents, he is a full child of God. He is justified. God will then teach him more, but no purgation is ever described. Rather, as this process of sanctification proceeds, the saint either dies or is translated at the parousia. The dead saint rises at the parousia (1 Thes. 4:13-17) with the living saints. All are glorified in an instant (1 Cor 15:51-52) and are now forever pure and immortal. No purgation ever happens. It’s a miraculous transformation.

I truly wish to know God. But I will do it through His revealed word in the Bible, not through misguided random speculation. Any other source is full of potential error.

Ted

[spauline]

Dear Ted,

Look, I am not saying you have to believe ME as a source of Divine Truth. Admittedly, my stuff is speculative within Catholicism itself. What I'm saying is, to accept only Scripture and Reason, and not believe in the Sacred Oral Tradition and the special mediated Fatherhood of the St. Peter's successor is at least OBJECTIVELY spiritually contraceptive, not that you are necessarily SUBJECTIVELY culpable for your objective blocking of some of the sources of God's truth.

But if you were Catholic, I think you would find it less ludicrous.

BTW, about the purgation, it is not chastisement but simply the fact that although there are no deficiencies in what Christ merited and did (for they are limitless), they must nevertheless be APPLIED both to the saint and to the respective people of God. That is, the sanctification of an individual as well as a covenant people is PROCESS that is painful because we are sinners. In a certain sense, feminine sexuality, which is the fullest revelation of what it means to be a creature (we are weaker and can only receive the gift of life, we do not initiate the gift), so then relations are at first painful for the woman because there is a barrier to the initial reception of the bridegroom. And for a while it is painful. For although Baptism removes the stain of original sin, there is a residue that God permits in order that it might be a struggle to attain salvation, namely, concupiscence. So then, because we are still fallen, in the beginning stages of our walk with God, we still have some set of primary sinful dispositions that are the "flesh at war with the spirit", hence, Christ does not say, "IF you fast and do alms", He says "WHEN you fast and give alms". It is essentially impossible to enter heaven without some pain. To say, "Christ has saved me, and I have absolutely no NEED to suffer in any sense" is a denial of an intrinsic truth of Christ: "Except ye do penance, ye shall all perish." There is no way to defeat our initial primary particular weaknesses of sin except to "beat our body into subjection." Hence, the conversion of the Roman Empire to Catholicism could not have occurred except that the Church go through the Purgation, that is, the great persecution. For just as the flesh is at war with the Spirit immediately after Baptism, so the pagan's of Rome necessarily resist the opening of the Spirit to them. Their pride does not wish to accept that man's kingdom shall collapse, and its place shall rise up a spiritual kingdom, God's Kingdom. They also do not like that they are called sinners. So then persecution of the Church was necessary. But it backfires, for just as the penances of the saint gradually beat down the flesh and cause the saint to become stronger in resistance to his flesh, so the Church grows ever stronger as the persecutions procede, and, eventually, as the saint finally conquers his primary sinful tendencies (not that he becomes completely perfect, but at least "proficient"), so eventually the Church wins the victory, and paganism defeated. So then, the initial major obstacle overcome, the Church can now begin to ILLUMINE the world, just as the prophets elaborated on the Law after the victory of the Exodus.

[Ted]

Look, I am not saying you have to believe ME as a source of Divine Truth. Admittedly, my stuff is speculative within Catholicism itself. What I'm saying is, to accept only Scripture and Reason, and not believe in the Sacred Oral Tradition and the special mediated Fatherhood of the St. Peter's successor is at least OBJECTIVELY spiritually contraceptive, not that you are necessarily SUBJECTIVELY culpable for your objective blocking of some of the sources of God's truth.
And this is the real key. You are asking us to accept "the Fatherhood of the St. Peter's successor." Unfortunately for your hypothesis, that premise is completely false. It lacks both historical and scriptural basis.

On the historical side, the ancient evidence leans toward a bi-episcopate, not a mono-episcopate in the earliest years in Rome. Further, for at least twelve bishops of Rome, regardless of which of the three "official" lists you choose, the concept of apostolic succession is completely absent. Let me put that in plain English. Not one of the first twelve bishops of Rome thought that he was a successor to Peter in the sense that the dogma of apostolic succession requires. All of them were guardians "of the faith entrusted to the saints" (Jude 3). But at the same time, every other bishop was also such a guardian.

Put simply, apostolic succession is a fraud perpetrated on a population that is uninformed as to the facts of history. You are welcome to believe it, but I don't.

Next, your "speculative ideas" stand in contradiction to scripture. That alone should tell you that it's time to reconsider them. By holding to them, you are placing man above God, which is the original error at the Tree. Do you really wish to place yourself there?

Ted

[spauline]

Next, your "speculative ideas" stand in contradiction to scripture. That alone should tell you that it's time to reconsider them. By holding to them, you are placing man above God, which is the original error at the Tree. Do you really wish to place yourself there?

Ted

But, Ted,

what you should really say is, my ideas are contrary to Scripture according to your personal and private interpretation of Scripture. Case in point: A friend of mine who used to be Baptist went to a Baptist school and there were two deans of the theology dept, and one believed you COULD lose your salvation, and the other DIDN'T.


Both of them would say, "your views are contradictory to Scripture". With only Scripture as my guide, now what do I do?

[spauline]

A person on another board asked a Q about an infamous Catholic document that seemed to suggest that we need not evangelize Jews, I responded as follows:

Quote:

I think, for one, that liberal bishops influence language so as to phrase things in the most non-offensve light. And I think this is partly understandable, seeing as many Christians throughout history have done terrible, unjustifiable things to the Jews. In effect, the argument goes like this: many people who "professed" faith in Christ complied with, or in some cases, helped exercise the Holocaust. Some Jews, then, admittedly horrified and scandalized say, "So then you expect us to 'believe in Jesus?' You hypocrites!" Not saying this isn't understandable, but in the end, no matter how many atrocities against Jews by Christians that have occurred, it does not diminish the objective reality that we are saved by sanctifying grace. Hence, all Jews who have ever been saved or will ever be saved, whether before or after the First Coming of Christ, will be saved or were saved by the infusion of sanctifying grace by the Triune God, Father Son and Holy Spirit.

The proper Catholic response cannot ultimately deny the objective truth of the Gospel, nor that Christ's sanctifying grace is what truly saves anyone now, be he Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or other. But I think that herein is the mercy of God: the Jews are really, at least somewhat, innocent of their continuance in the Old Covenant until the Great Apostasy, because, it is the inevitable consequence of normal human nature. That is, in ANY Salvation history, there would always HAVE to be the Two Covenants, the Old and the New.

Why? Because in the intial stages of the fall, humanity is necessarily weighed down by the Creation and the worship thereof, such that, given this intrinsically necessary attachment to the material world, it would be ontologically impossible for God to give Catholicism all at once in the beginning. It can't be fully processed. ("You can't HAAANDLE the truth!", Jeff Cavins pulled that one! ) I mean, when man already is driven by the force of an infant and strong original sin, intellecutally and religiously primitive, and, therefore, prone to polytheism, worshipping the creation, and deifying himself, how can God tell humanity, "There is only ONE all poweful, all good God, but He is THREE Distinct Persons in One Nature, and one of the Persons has BECOME man!" Given this data all at once in the beginning, it is likely humanity would never be anything greater than a Mormon.

Hence, behold, God must give a PREFIGURING Covenant, that gives an INITIAL Revelation, but not the fullness, and that uses things in the material Creation that POINT to spiritual realities and what will later be FULFILLED in the New.

But behold, human nature takes things for granted! Is it not therefore inevitable that the People to whom is given the first, PREFIGURING Covenant will take it as end in and of itself? Will they not fail to realize that what they were given was not the REAL thing, but only a foreshadowing? And will not the Revelation of the Trinity and the Incarnation simply be too much, overload, the final straw? Hence, from all eternity, it would always happen this way: the High Priest shall tear his garment and cry "Blasphemy!".

Therefore, in a sense, God does not utterly condemn the Jews because it is human nature. It couldn't be any other way. But behold, how will they eventually convert?

I have a theory. And it is a simple theory, and I base it on one of the perennial proclamations by Christ: "Amen, Amen, I say to you, it will all be FULFILLED!"

So then, my theory is this, the three spiritual ages that the Jews passed through in their history, leading up to Christ, are just a macro example of the Catholic three-stage way of the saint, which is in turn what the People of the New Covenant must also walk, hence, "it will all be fulfilled". And it fits. If we take the mystics' prophesies in the most likely scenario, Church history is surprisingly a big fulfillment of the stages of the Jews. Hence, just as the OT Antichrist Antiochus was the final darnkess of Jewish history prior to Christ's FIRST Coming, so the NT Antichrist is the final age of darkness in the Church before the SECOND Coming of Christ, at which time , as the Jews see their history completed by the Gentiles, their eyes are opened.

[Ted]

what you should really say is, my ideas are contrary to Scripture according to your personal and private interpretation of Scripture. Case in point: A friend of mine who used to be Baptist went to a Baptist school and there were two deans of the theology dept, and one believed you COULD lose your salvation, and the other DIDN'T.


Both of them would say, "your views are contradictory to Scripture". With only Scripture as my guide, now what do I do?

Ah. Calvinism vs. Arminianism. There are contested doctrines. But all in those camps study from the Bible. Your position is radically opposed to even that foundation. You throw the Bible away to listen to the speculations of those who make no attempt to conform to the Bible.

You need to start, work, and finish in the Bible. If I believe Calvinism and Arminianism is correct, it won’t affect my salvation. Or vice versa. As long as I keep my faith in Christ, I am saved. Your faith isn’t in Christ. It’s in human traditions, taught by those who make no attempt to be controlled by the Bible. Will that affect your salvation? Quite possibly. Some might even say definitely.

Let us consider 2 Tim 3:15-16. There Paul explicitly declares that the Old Testament has enough for salvation. That explicitly denies the need of anything the Roman Church says.

Ted

[spauline]

Ah. Calvinism vs. Arminianism. There are contested doctrines. But all in those camps study from the Bible. Your position is radically opposed to even that foundation. You throw the Bible away to listen to the speculations of those who make no attempt to conform to the Bible.

You need to start, work, and finish in the Bible. If I believe Calvinism and Arminianism is correct, it won’t affect my salvation. Or vice versa. As long as I keep my faith in Christ, I am saved. Your faith isn’t in Christ. It’s in human traditions, taught by those who make no attempt to be controlled by the Bible. Will that affect your salvation? Quite possibly. Some might even say definitely.

Let us consider 2 Tim 3:15-16. There Paul explicitly declares that the Old Testament has enough for salvation. That explicitly denies the need of anything the Roman Church says.

Ted

Well, now, Ted, let's start a split thread, shall we. I need to begin this precise discussion in my Ecclesiology in the Apocalypse thread. Ted, are you saying that errors in doctrine can have no affect on your salvation? have you lost your mind? Do you understand the Gospel?

Why did Christ come? To REDEEM us! How does He redeem us? By redeeming our intellects and wills. What is needed to redeem our intellects? TRUTH. For behold, there were many in the ages prior to Christ who longed to hear the Messiah, but did not hear him, and see what the Apostles saw, but did not see it. Behold, we are in need of Revelation! We are TERRIBLY in need of understanding the deep treasures of the Divine Mysteries of the God who made us, who formed us, who calls us, who loves us. For the more we know of and understand Him, the deeper can our love of Him be, the better we can serve him.

And our wills need redemption. But how are they redeemed? Behold, GRACE. And grace is of two forms: sanctifying and actual graces. Actual graces are instaneous pushes from God that enlighten our intellect and strengthen our wills for a particular action. And sanctifying grace is a finite created participation in the Divine LIfe and Love of the Trinity. It indwells in the depths of our soul and places a supernatural mark of beauty on the soul, making it truly able to love God and other creatures in some sense in which the Trinity loves them. But how do we get grace? Admittedly, God can and does give and increase sanctifying grace outside of the formal sacraments, to the pure soul that seeks more. But, behold, the greater of these IS in the Sacraments.

Hence, the hope of humanity is precisely tied to how much truth and grace that humanity both seeks out and accepts, as well as that, given their ecclesiological distinction, they have available to them.

So then, how can you say, whether I am Calvinist or Arminian or any other thing, it affects not my salvation? For behold, the contrary of what I said is also true: to the degree that one is in error, their chances of being saved are diminished. Consider for example that there could be a person who is innocently ignorant of the fact that eating nothing but fast food is not good for your health. But if they are not culpable for their ignorance, they are not in sin. But are they not still harming their health progressively. If I don't know a bottle has poison and I drink it, I have not committed suicide, but it will still harm me.

So then most Protestants are not culpable for their errors, but they still serve as objective PARTIAL obstacles to their salvation. Hence, "and if any man will harm them, in this manner must he be harmed." Again, nothing truer than this with regards to the truths of God. For the person who thinks that if he really gets "saved", he'll never again commit a serious sin, he could stil be saved if he is not culpable. But the word here is "could". For, behold, there are docmented cases of individuals who have a powerful conversion to Christ, according to their very testimony, they go overload, Bible Studies, praying, fasting, fellowship, church, you name it. They fall head over heels for Jesus. But, behold, they gradually back slide, ever so gradually. Finally, the commit a serious sin, like, say, fornication. Then they are hit with a crisis. They think, "I was NEVER REALLY saved. But if what I was before was not genuine conversion, then what is?" So then they abandon the faith altogether and go back to debauchery and secularism.

So, yes, they "could" be saved, but their chances are diminished. So the more errors a person has, the less truth they have, the less graces they have (or even seek out), the less chance they have of attaining to the eternity of life with God.