Misapplying Acts 9:31's Greek to Prove Roman Catholicism's "Legitimacy"
Catholic faith defenders who are aware of how fundamental Christians (especially Baptist Christians) are using the Greek in Apologetics (available from scripture4all.org) one can see the Greek as:
Kindly click to enlarge |
Kindly open the image in a separate window to get a clearer view. One can see the words "kath" and "holEs" which can be easily read as Catholic. So what does the word "Catholic" mean in the first place? Catholic means universal. The word "ekkelasia" (assembly or church) also appears before "kath holEs". Does this justify the origins of the ROMAN Catholic Church? Absolutely not. Now to get a clearer glimpse-kath holEs here means "down whole" which is all of JUDEA not Rome. Again, the argument falls down flat. Sadly Roman Catholic faith defenders who are blindly loyal to their Pharisaical system and its Pharisees will continue to misuse even the Greek to get a point even when the Greek does not do any good. Even Roman Catholic apologist Thomas Aquinas had greater logic. There is no analysis in context.
So now what does it mean that born again Christians say "I believe in the holy catholic church" it means "I believe in the holy UNIVERSAL church". The Church despite organizational division (ex. Baptists, Presbyterians, Evangelicals) are still spiritually universal. The Evangelical Christian embraces the Baptist Christian as part of God's family because they believe in basically Bible doctrine NO MORE NO LESS. Now that's far more universally agreed than all the squabbles the Council of Trent had for centuries. There has been more agreement between different Christian denominations than the so-called mother church of Rome. It' should be the prayer of this ministry that more people will come to know the truth, be freed from a works-based system to a faith that results to works system.