Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
67
You are projecting your denial, your refusal to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence. As in climate.
I deny nothing rational and faithful. Do I. As I said. My position, the position of rational faith, faith that denies nothing rational, is perfectly, explicitly clear.
(And yeah man, I DO appreciate and do not reject your friendly gestures, but when I fence I give no quarter, take no prisoners. You’re more sophisticated. I need to semaphore back in brackets or something whilst wielding my sabre.)
It is not irrational to see Jesus in Isaiah 53, many (if not all?) Messianic Jews do. I can see how you would vehemently object to it and deny that fact, because it speaks to penal substitution and the Agnus Dei, concepts that are abhorrent to you.
You appear to be thinking that what we have faith in, what we are being faithful towards, is scientifically, rationally, demonstrable.
Is it rational to conflate climate change and Christianity?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
74
I don’t deny that Jesus believed in PSA according to the NT and that He therefore saw Himself, validly, as the Lamb of God. I’m that intellectually honest. Not your typical liberal. PSA just isn’t so. Love does not require it. Nobody has to die for God to be good. That is irrational. Calling evil good out of fear and ignorance is irrational. Ignorant. Fearful. Irrational like saying that Jesus is prophesied in Isaiah or anywhere else. He isn’t. Is not. That isn’t denying Him at all. I don’t deny Jesus, I yearn for Him, as a hart pants in the desert. I want Him to be true. Which is rational: I don’t want to cease to exist as if I’d never been. Who would? Well all of us in enough grief, loss, pain, fear to be honest. Nothing in Isaiah 53 makes Him so, makes Him true. He is anyway if He is. As I consistently, rationally, faithfully say. I couldn’t care less what Messianic Jews irrationally believe. I used to too. That has nothing to do with the truth. The truth that Jesus is not prophesied in the OT. Yet saw Himself there. Validly. He - humanly - believed the wrong thing for the right - divine, transcendent - reason. Because, I hope, He is God. Without Him there is none. No hope. With Him there certainly isn’t damnation. No matter what He faithfully ignorantly believed and said when clay bound.
You say you yern for Jesus but you deny who He revealed Himself to be. Your potential belief is in a false Jesus, a false savior. You are without hope for you have not put your confidence in the Jesus who died for our sins and raised from the dead for our justification. You have more faith in yourself than you do Jesus. Without true faith it is impossible to please God
Here is the problem, mankind esteems his own wisdom and knowledge above God’s and because of that they reject Him and the salvation from sin that He offers in Christ. Mankind would rather hold fast to their own knowledge and wisdom rather than humble themselves and accept the knowledge and wisdom of God.
1 Cor 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
80
I’m sorry? You’re far too clever for me.
I’m just rational in faith, faithful in rationality. Rationally faithful, faithfully rational. Unflinching. I sympathize as it is hard. Very hard indeed. But it’s the only way I can be with God. As He is with me.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
81
Uh huh. I deny that Jesus is God the Son incarnate? No. That He had to die to prove that by resurrection? No. That He lived to that point in divinely perfect faith in ignorant human flesh? No. That He saves us? No. So what don’t I believe? In your formulary? No. No I don’t.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
82
That’s your Biblicist problem, not mine. As the inappropriate Pauline proof text shows. God is bigger than that. Than our narrow, bitter, twisted, fearful, ignorant takes.
I would be more than happy to know that Paul encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. It has the sublime audacious power of authenticity. I want it to be true. I want almighty God dying helplessly in empty, screaming humanity to be true. Christ crucified. Risen. For that means we are saved. From the meaningless suffering of this scintilla of existence.
Because of your misapplication of Paul to my and everyone else’s situation I started out dismissive of him here, but realised that I have no problem with where he was coming from at the time. I should be more sympathetic to where you are. Not agreeing with it at all, just empathetic. Putting myself in your place. Which I can try.
God, Love, in Christ is so much bigger, efficacious than even He imagined.
The entire Torah speaks repeatedly of a coming seed and messiah. It starts in the very first chapters. The apostles argued Jesus through the Torah.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
84
What, you’ve demonstrated that I deny, refuse to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence? Where?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
85
Where? Not in the Written Torah. You mean in its extension in the TaNaKh. Where is it in the first chapters of Genesis? Apart from the Christian interpolation of the Protevangelium. And what does that have to do with Jesus? Please join up the dots. Then every reasonable non-Messianic Jew will convert.
).