Set It Off » Something for August

August 30, 2007

Something for August

Times have been slow on SIO, and if I don’t make a post some time in the next 36 hours I’m in danger of not having anything in the archives for August 2007. That would probably be some sign of decay in other webrogs, but not SIO. As many of you know by now, SIO rides the waves of the webrogging life cycle like the Ark once road the waves of divinely-decreed global devastation.

Today I’m going to make a quick point about the Pope for the benefit of some new readers. Not Herr Ratzinger himself, but rather his job. Roman Catholics use many devices by which to support their idea of a pope, one of which is Matthew 16, where Jesus passes church authority to Peter. Without even going into the whole direct-descendant-from-Peter quagmire, the problem with this is that the authority of the church (the “keys of the kingdom”) was not passed exclusively to Peter, it was passed to all the apostles. Read Matthew 18, especially verse 18, where it’s clear that not just Peter but all the apostles have the same authority.

“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

It is interesting how little but very important scriptural details like plural pronouns get overlooked many times. That’s what’s great about the King James Version of the Bible with its Elizabethan English. In the KJV, the second-person singular pronoun is “thee”, and the second-person plural pronoun is “you”. In modern English this distinction is reflected in the south as “you” and “y’all”, but since only rubes put “y’all” into serious print, the distinction would be lost entirely but for the sake of context.

This is just one reason why I don’t accept the idea of the Pope. The early church was established under the Jesus Christ-appointed authority of all the apostles, not just Peter. The errors associated with the Roman Catholic teachings about the pope go beyond this particular point, but it’s one that I’ve been reflecting on lately.

Comments

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Bonnie

Comment on September 5, 2007 @ 9:27 pm

1. I think the Thees and Thous included in the KJV, differentiating between plurals and singulars, is really interesting and cool, even though I don’t read the KJV much.

2. “Y’all is singular.” “All y’all” is plural.

3. Are you going to blog about the results of your test on the 7th? (I think that’s when you said it was.)

4. Why am I numbering these? I don’t know :p

James

Comment on September 5, 2007 @ 9:39 pm

Y’all is supposed to be plural but it’s a slang term that gets misused frequently. “All y’all” is merely a superlative, in a sense; it refers to a group that is appreciably larger than one you might refer to as just y’all. And I will indeed be blogging about the test results, albeit in a clandestine fashion. Much like a parable.

Irving Bryant

Comment on November 12, 2008 @ 7:20 pm

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