(October 23, 2016 at 9:10 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: One might argue that the church has a custodial duty toward the body of Christ as His vicar on earth. With duty come responsibilities. Moreover the word here represented as 'perfect' is teleios, which means fully developed. This saying applies to individuals who wish to be complete. What it means for the church to be fully developed is not clear from this passage. You're taking Jesus' advice to individual's and applying it to something that is not an individual. What would it mean for the church to have "treasure in heaven?" You've taken Jesus' advice to one thing and applied it to another. It doesn't work that way.
Not just that, but Mark 12:41-44 would give the impression that donating all to the church is highly commendable:
Quote:41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
Thus it can be inferred that it was the individual's obligation to give as much as possible. He didn't criticize the keepers of the temple for accepting the offering.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould