Keep on accusing. That is what I expect from the adversary, but he has been defeated. Keep on denigrating and name calling, too. It just reflects back on you.
I can believe that if you cannot point to anything, any evidence in your life, be it ‘only’ in your heart (actually, that’s a big deal), that demonstrates the miraculous reality of God’s activity.
You’re denying that’s what you believe? That Love is hate?
This is what your love is like:
It sounds nasty and hateful to me. No wonder you espouse universalism.
Sorry? Can you join up the dots there? What has my lack of grace got to do with God’s overflowing with it? If God truly was Love then all his followers would be? Like us? Hmmm. There is no coercion in Love. Just as there is no condemnation. But it will have its way, with us all, in the resurrection. So yes, you’re right, due to the want of grace in the physical, I know that He will make up for that in the transcendent. For all. How could He not? For He is Love.
Because we’re graceless, God must be too? He must be a self-righteous sadistic megalomaniac who nonetheless microlollipops His scattering of chosen in the blizzard of human chaff?
Sure. Right now. Why would he wait to give us lollipops in the sky? If it’s not coercion later, it needn’t be now. Immediately would be more loving, and his love is perfect.
.
Maggie was in dire straits (she was not your ‘rich American’) and she was helped. Helping someone is micromanagement? By your vitriolic rant and according to your infallible rationality, opening the door for someone would be micromanaging their life!
Again, why her and not the at least three and a half billion in dire straights? On your border, and ours?
There will never be coercion. Ever. Let alone torture or murder if you’re lucky. Love doesn’t do any of that. Does it.
You failed to answer.
Why not her? Is everyone deserving of pardon? None of us are. It’s interesting that you eschew Paul except when it suits you, ‘the faithfulness of Christ.’
Answer what? He’ll love us all better in Heaven.
Why not all those other desperate people on your border? Which she with Mark Knoppfler there? Pardon for what? Being human?
You are a man for this season, a man of this age. No one wants to hear that there is a judgement coming and that sin is punished. Your rationality leads to comfortable rationalizations. Scratch, scratch.
What, a belatedly rational man? A belatedly liberal man? A belatedly hopeful man? A belatedly enlightened man? A by the grace of God man? A Love Wins man? A man with a hard won epistemology even to this day, to the book I’m reading now, a precious chapter a day, the most important book in 500 years and then in 2,000 as it redeems the Bible as never before. A man wanting in grace but knowing that will be made up man?
You are a man trapped in the primitive nightmare wilderness of horribly distorted words who’s been told it’s paradise. You have to tell yourself It’s a Good Life, that the arbitrary self righteous psychopath megalomaniac behind it all since and coterminous to this day with Ma’at really does like you regardless of how He hates everyone else. You have to. It’s too late for you to believe, to know otherwise in this life.
But all will be well, despite the four thousand year nightmare that has you in its Satanic grip, that strangled the faithfulness of Christ before it could be born, yet has always lived despite the institutionalization of terrified ignorance.
Sin is its own punishment and I look forward to the Judgement in which, as Jesus said twice, the symbolic worst of us is therapied, comforted, rational. Loved.
My God is that powerful.
Oh dear…what brought all this on?
It would be tempting to close this thread, but if we can quarantine your bickering to this one thread, maybe it is worth keeping.
The heresy of salvation by faith alone and damnation for everyone else being unopposed, not surprisingly on a Lutheran site. Also the empty claim of having God personally micromanage the lives of the tiny minority of the elect, which is actually related to the larger issue which created the cult of individualism. That.
“For by grace are you saved, and not by works…” this sounds like an interesting conversation. But the idea of salvation by faith alone is hardly heretical. “There is none who does good, no not one…” I don’t know about God “micromanaging,” but He certainly is aware of what is going on with us. And He IS capable of making His Presence known at times. I have had that experience and perhaps so have you…Well…So OK…thanks for letting me know what brought all this on. You’ll be at it for awhile no doubt…
@bluebird1 - Robin
‘Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.’ - Sir John Harington
This is the entire point, that sola fide, salvation by faith alone, is heresy. The core of Protestantism, Evangelicalism, Lutheranism. Of over a third of Christianity. It is the reverse of everything Jesus stands for and that Paul elaborated. Contrary to orthodox doctrine. Heresy.
Just substitute it in Sir John: ‘Heresy doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it heresy.’
Well, I dare. As I have nothing to lose, we have nothing to lose but loss itself, to paraphrase FDR, and we all have everything to gain.
We have nothing to lose but this pathetic graceless bickering that I sustain with Dale. Poor Dale is a victim of the heresy and that is a splinter in my mind I can’t leave alone, an itch I am compelled to scratch, with him and others here, bluntly. But that has to change. And I’m sorry for it. For the stalemates inflammation. I’m reading the most important book in 500 years and for the 1400 before that. As absurd a claim as my claim of heresy to everyone here and elsewhere. A 2019 book that is part of a movement in Protestantism that has been there in print since 1977 with the subterranean war flaring from 2003 to this day. A movement that dates from WWII. A movement that dates from the works of Jürgen Moltmann, Karl Barth - when understood, George MacDonald (beloved by brother @Randy here), Friedrich Schleiermacher, Frederic Farrar, Henry Bristow Wilson, George Whitfield, George de Benneville, Murray, White, until it is almost lost in the Reformation cult of personal salvation, having been already swamped by Augustine all the way back to Ancient Egypt. A movement that has always been there since its suppression in the West since the C7th. A movement that undergirds the rest of Catholicism; partially reformed Roman, and Orthodox, despite their patriarchy amongst other errors. A movement that the Pope himself espouses against the folk Christianity of his denomination. A movement started by Jesus, elaborated clearly, consistently, unequivocally by the personally, directly Christ enlightened Second Temple Jew Paul. A movement that redeems the Bible, that makes Christ central, meaningful, authoritative. For all. Whether they know it or not. Saviour. Of all.
I am sure that it is a great book, Klax…and the greatest in 1900 years is quite a find. But I am not discussing a 2019 book that has been around for 1900 years. I am just asserting that the concept of salvation-by-faith-alone is hardly heresy. It’s not even a product of Martin Luther’s epiphany a few centuries back. Jesus paid much too high a price if salvation could just come from being a Goody Goody and donating to charity a couple times a year (or the like). "“All your righteousnesses are as filthy rags…” and that comes from the Old Testament.
If you don’t believe the OT, just look around you…and maybe some day look in the mirror. (Oops!)
You and Dale can have a great discussion, Klax. You will exhaust yourselves, if no one else.
It will, at some level, be like the man I heard at a singles group last July. He corralled the group and told us how he had just visited the Ark Encounter where he learned how a Turkish-Chinese expedition in 2008-2009 had found Noah’s Ark on the sides of Mt Ararat – in situ, complete with cages for all the animals etc. He said all this while some of us occasionally butt in and said that Noah’s Ark has not been found. Ignored all other assertions and kept on talking…And he kept on going because he knew he was right.
I later contacted the Ark Encounter and asked how they can claim such a thing. They told me they do not assert that Noah’s ark has ever been found and they denounced the Turkish-Chinese expedition – as everyone else did…except, I suppose, for the Turks and the Chinese.
They told me to tell that to this man…but I am confident that, if I ever cross paths with him again, that telling him will not do much good.
So I think that is the situation with you and Dale. Salvation by faith alone is not heretical. It’s in the Old Testament where Abraham by faith, etc…
Jesus would not have had to do what He did if we could achieve salvation by good works, lighting candles, and many other wonderful things which —per biblical measurements – are not enough.
Have fun…
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.