Paul’s view on sanctification starts with the “inside”, what he calls the “inner man”, which can reasonably be identified as the soul. His imagery points to a battle of the inner man to control and constrain the desires of “the flesh” or the “old man” (which is more a reference to the inner man prior to Christ).
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I don’t.
I believe God created a universe of natural law as the condition for life to arise. It is life which creates spirit by the choices it makes. It is not that God cannot create spirits. He can. He did. The angels are the result. But the product of design is more like a machine, made to be and do what they are made to, even when they are spiritual creations. And when you are creating for a personal relationship, this just isn’t enough. So God chose love and freedom over power and control to create life and free will.
I think Paul merely tries to understand what Jesus was teaching. And don’t think either of them were talking about what most today mean by the word perfection. When Jesus said we must be perfect even as the Father is perfect, I think He simply mean there was no room for sin in the kingdom of heaven because it ruins and spoils everything it touches. For Paul, perfection was simply to become more like Jesus… “being conformed to the image of the Son.”
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If I’m reading you correctly, you’re saying that God made angels, but angels are “more like a machine, made to be and do what they are made to, even when they are spiritual creations.”
You’re stretching pretty far in saying you can know what God can and cannot create. You’re also implying that God is incapable of creating life and free will in a preexistent soul, as if the very act of creating a soul must somehow take away the free will of that soul to create an obedient “machine.”
Your description of angels sounds a lot like the angelogy of the 6th century Neo-Platonic Christian author known sometimes as Pseudo-Dionysius. This author has heavily influenced Christian thought on angels.
You’ve said that you’ve gone through all the claims about God and Christianity and made your decisions. Fair enough. I’m wondering, though, what evidence you’ve used to make such definitive claims about what God can and cannot do with regard to life, souls, and free will.
The God I know would not EVER create a being who is “more like a machine.” The very idea of this claim is in direct opposition to God’s love and freedom and wisdom and generosity and ability to bring life into the universe in ways that our human brains cannot understand no matter how hard we try.
And how God brings life into the universe is also never your judgment to make.
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Exactly – transformed in the inner man.
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Incorrect. It is just the opposite. That for life to create spirit by its own choices is the whole point of life in the first place. What I am saying is that a relationship with something which is no more than what you made it to be is a very limited and even pathetic sort of relationship. I think God is greater than that.
No. I am saying that sort of “free will” is a very limited and pathetic sort of free will, just like the free will that we give to an artificial intelligence. It can look a great deal like free will, but in the end, it is still no more than what you made it to be.
Yes I think God wanted more than that. A relationship with those who are completely themselves and a product of their own choices. Because that is where you will find the most meaningful personal relationship. To make God aim for less than this is to make God less than this – one whom I cannot have any interest in.
God can do anything. PERIOD. But consistency is the difference between reality and a dream. And to reduce God to nothing more than a dreamer is to make Him no greater than any child who is also omnipotent in his own dreams.
Not the same thing at all. God gave us perception and reason to see the universe which He has made and thus to see, hear, and listen to the all the data he has sent to us, so that we can use the mind He gave us to see and understand its functionality, which logically connects quite consistently to the His purpose in creating it.
This is not at all how I understand God. The very reason God gives the gift of free will to all consciousnesses in the universe is so that all beings have all their own choices and all their own relationships with God and with each other – and can be completely themselves.
I’m completely myself, as I’m sure you believe you’re completely yourself. I’m a human being, but I believe I’m also a preexistent soul who is living temporarily as a human being. I see no evidence that the free will I exhibit as a human being is any different than the free will I know I possess as a child of God. It’s the same free will both above and below. It’s the same free will, the same gift from God, that is so precious to me that I try with all my might every day to keep my soul free will and my human free will acting in a seamless blend of being myself and being in full relationship with God. (I’m not saying I always succeed in my efforts – but I am saying I’m consciously trying to be myself – a child of God – in my daily human choices.)
God doesn’t do “very limited and pathetic sort[s] of free will.” Free will is a complete and permanent gift, just as Divine Love and Forgiveness are complete and permanent gifts.
Please explain why a loving and forgiving God would demand that creatures living a 3D life (i.e. bodies that answer to the laws of baryonic matter) would have to somehow figure out how free will works all on their own when most human beings have absolutely no one to mentor them in the realities of free will. Does this sound like love to you?
Following your argument to its logical conclusion, God must step back and helplessly watch while 3D creatures may or may not figure it out. When they fail miserably at learning how to use their free will as a human, what does God do then? Throw all the beings who lacked the right tools (safe upbringing, adequate nutrition, good education, freedom from violence, loving friends and families) into some sort of free-will-reject-pile?
And how exactly do these human choices (and perhaps choices made by other sentient beings) create a spirit in the absence of a soul? Is there a recipe for turning the dross of biology into the gold of spirit? If so, who gets to tell us poor, struggling humans what that recipe might be?
Oh wait . . . it’s other human beings! Or maybe some machine-like angels who’ve been sent by a God who loves us but doesn’t want us to think of ourselves as children of God?
It is the same thing. You’re right in saying that doctrines of salvation are Gnostic and that we shouldn’t be deciding about salvation because that’s God’s job. But trusting in God also calls us to stop pretending we have any right to decide why God made the universe, what God’s purposes are, and how God relates to everything in the universe that isn’t God (like other consciousnesses).
We don’t know the answers because we’re not God.
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I do not. I see no evidence of any such thing and have no reason to believe any such thing. Furthermore it sound very ad-hoc to me, explaining nothing. Why create the universe at all? If we already exist then what need is there of the physical universe? Frankly such a “soul” sounds like an empty device of rhetoric – an empty place holder serving no real purpose except to prop up unsupportable claims. There is certainly no evidence whatsoever of this magical addition which makes us alive or a person. All the evidence tells us we are alive and a person because of our material composition and organization.
Yes. The God described in the Bible is corrective in exactly such a manner. It is the very meaning of free will. The teacher does not do the homework of the students for them. Doing and learning for themselves is the essence of life.
Trusting in God is opening our eyes, ears and mind to see, listen, and understand everything He shows us in the universe. Shutting your eyes, ears, and mind to insist things must be something else is not trusting in God.
The same way God created the universe to support the beginnings of life. So… just as He creates the conditions for phenomenon of self-organization seen all over the physical universe, He also creates the condition for the spiritual energy He supplies to takes its form from the choices of living organisms.
The point is that God can have a relationship with beings who create themselves by their own choices and this makes for a much more of a relationship than just designing them Himself as He did with the angels.
Oh wait… if God didn’t provide semen and egg for our birth then we are the creation of the animals who did and God doesn’t want us to think of ourselves as children of God?
(sarcasm font)
What makes us children is not to be manufactured by some intelligent designer!!! What makes us children is an inheritance from the parent. In this case the inheritance are the ideas of love, justice, and personhood He taught us in all those He has spoken to (like all those in the Bible from Adam and Eve onward). Why is Jesus called the Second Adam? Because He provided some new DNA or other kind of magical material? NO! It is because He brought a renewal of those ideas of love, justice, and personhood from God.
You sound to me like the people who said if man was meant to fly then God would have given us wings. If God meant for us to remain in ignorance, then God would not have given us the power to see and understand the universe.
you know, when i read the opening paragraph of this post, my thoughts clouded over in dissagreement. However, once i got the entire context of your post by reading through the rest, i agree with this Mitchell. My thought it that there is a tendency to use the term Christian like its some kind of weapon, probably as a result of taking the bible text “put on the armour of God” (Ephesians 6:10-18) and using it a bit too legalistically. It becomes a means of discrimination and exclusivity which is exactly what the Pharisees did in Christs day.
the problem that i see theologically with this belief is that it does not explain sin and the wages of sin. A creator intentionally creating a machine in order to then punish that machine “for learning” isn’t biblical. The bible quite specifically illustrates that mankind was well warned about the dangers of disobedience…so the rules were very much in place long before Eve ventured away from Adams side. We also know this because Lucifer could not have been cast out of heaven if there wasn’t an already existing standard by which he could be arrested and charged at the time.
What we experience here on earth today is the defense of those charges…it is not Gods original plan that we are living right now.
Finally, the idea that a perfect being is illustrated as having created a world and universe free from sin (and very specifically free from death, suffering, weeds and tares etc), how does your belief even fit with the idea that God Himself came and physically (literally not figuratively) died for the sins of His own Creation? The Bible very clearly illustrates a future where sickness, suffering, sadness, death, weeds and tares…none of these things will exist in the new heavens and new earth. Salvation is a restoration process…not an evolutionary one! We don’t evolve into individuals that have the brain capacity to understand and accept the notion of God.
The bible says man was made in Gods image…that includes the capacity to know! There is a big literary difference between making in one’s own image and evolving.
The above are major dilemmas for your belief there. Your very first sentence infers God stuffed it and then had to fix his own screwup…which is very different from the notion of freewill. We are not machines…predestination plays no part in this saga beyond the fact that God is perfect and has the capacity to know the future intimately but that he allows it to happen (within reason). He does not allow the Devil to control to the extent that the Devil could simply corrupt everything in a heartbeat if given the chance. God does limit the amount of corruption so that the still small voice may still be heard by those who listen for it.
Scripture says
Thou shalt not steal
@St.Roymond says
Unless it is a business.
So who is rewriting scripture now?
Richard
In other words… my conclusions are not compatible with the premises of your theology which I do not accept. How is that a surprise?
Let me remind you of when I explained what I believe in response to your query: What are your basic fundamentals of belief - #3 by mitchellmckain particularly the narrative starting with “An infinite God having everything…”
There was no such warning about dangers of disobedience. You made that up. And this is a fabrication very convenient for those using religion for power over others.
There is no punishing a machine. There is only using a machine and discarding it when it does not fulfill any useful function.
There was no casting out of Lucifer from heaven before the birth of Jesus.
The only thing which is not according to God’s plan are the self-destructive habits of human beings (called sin) misusing the gifts which God gave us.
Jesus did not die for our sins. Jesus died for our salvation from sin and the restoration of our relationship with God. What Jesus said repeatedly was, “your sins are forgiven so go and sin no more.” No magic or miracle was needed for God to forgive, the miracle is for us to change and shed these bad habits which are destroying us.
The dilemmas you see are all in your theology not mine. And I have no idea what so called screwup you are concocting from that. We are not machines because we are not a product of design but of our own choices. You give an amazing amount of power to the devil in your thinking which is frankly the same abdication of responsibility we see in Adam and Eve.
In the statistics, those identified as not believers are those who themselves tell that they do not believe in the God of Christianity, or any god. Telling that ‘I believe in God’ is a minimum criteria of a believer. Those telling that they believe are not all believers in the sense that they would count themselves as some sort of follower of Jesus. God knows who are truly believers, I cannot judge the status of people.
The statistics are from Finland that is a relatively secular western country. There are European countries where the proportion of believers is probably lower than in Finland. In USA, the proportion of people believing in God is probably larger, partly because of a different church history - no state churches, many small churches that stress the importance of personal decision in the relationship with God.
I agree that ‘Christian’ is a problematic term. My own criteria for a true Christian are probably more strict than those used in most old churches but I have used the term in ecumenical contexts because it is a relatively neutral term and I do not want to be the judge of the faith of Christians belonging to other denominations.
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I can see why the gap between stated affiliation and belief is the predominant concern for you in Finland. But it changes nothing in what I said. If anything this makes people even more preoccupied with dogma and belief which does not equal salvation. I frankly see a lot of good in atheism which I think is largely a moral/ethical reaction to abuse in Christianity – so much so, I have even wondered if atheism might be God’s chosen people in the modern era (big irony, eh?). But I think this is far from the end of the story of Christianity in Finland. You have to remember my own background, raised with criticism of the Christian establishment in the U.S… So from my personal perspective, atheism can be a stepping stone to a better Christianity.
Bull, read Genesis 2:16
16And the LORD God commanded him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
Im not sure, but obviously your bible is missing that verse.
Reading from codex sinaticus by any chance? (Which is missing the first 20 chapters of Genesis if memory serves)
Bull. Genesis 2:16 is not a warning about the dangers of disobedience. It says NOTHING about disobedience at all. There is a warning and it speaks of danger. This is true. But it only speaks about the danger of eating from this tree.
Treating any warning of something as a warning of the dangers of disobedience is preposterous.
If I warn you not to move your queen at a point in a game of chess and tell you the consequences that you will lose the game. That is not a warning of dangers of disobedience. Calling it that is just nonsense.
And if I warned you of the consequences of obeying the orders of the Nazis in WWII, calling that a warning of the dangers of disobedience is the silliest thing imaginable.
So NO, Genesis 2:16 is NOT a warning about the dangers of disobedience. That is a BIG lie, and something you have made up yourself.
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Christs death is not the beginning of the war, its the fulfillment of the promise made in tue garden of Eden when the ancient serpent who was cast out of heaven, sort to corrupt and ruin creation…thats tue entire point of the entire bible narrative. To not understand this single encompassing theology is to not understand Christianity at all. Christ came to right the wrong and vindicate our Creator of the charges made against Him by Lucifer before he was cast out of heaven prior to Adam and Eve.
The book of Revelation is not written in chronological order, so you cant read it that way…verses 4 and 7 are switched and theres nothing unusual about that.
Even plain logic should tell one, if Lucifer had not already rebelled and been cast out of heaven, how then does the deciever of all the world even appear on this stage? Clearly the answer is, he rebelled and was cast out of heaven to this earth before Adam and Eve were tempted.
The bible tells us, sin came into this world through 1 man (adam was deceived and transgressed the law), but the sanctuary service also tells us that ultimate responsibility for sin is placed on the head of the scapegoat (azazeels goat). Thats Lucifer/Satan.
Genesis 3
15And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.c”
Revelation 12:
4.His tail swept a third of the stars from the sky, tossing them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, ready to devour her child as soon as she gave birth.
7.Then a war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But the dragon was not strong enough, and no longer was any place found in heaven for him and his angels. 9And the great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him
Read Elliots commentry if you really want to understand this. If not, no matter. Others will see this post and they can at least learn from it.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/expositors/revelation/12.htm
Correct. The only war involving angels spoken of in the Bible, Revelation 12, is after the birth of a child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Many understand this to be the birth of Jesus to mother Mary. But another possible understanding is a reference to the second coming. According to the first understanding verses 7-12 say the devil (dragon) is defeated by the blood of the lamb and thus the death of Christ is the end of the war. But the other interpretation sees the end of the war happening in the future.
Regardless these ideas of yours, the book of Enoch, and Milton come from the religion of Zoroastrianism which sees life in the context of a great war between light and darkness. This Gnostic Zoroastrian syncretistic version of Christianity does not interest me. It makes for great stories and movies but does not give us any great understanding of reality. A story of fantasy and science fiction is all this is good for.
Revelation with all its strange stories is bad enough without rearranging it all to fit some made up theology. It is beloved by cults and pseudo-Christian groups, so I am willing to ignore it for the most part, but I will not support rearranging the story to make up a complete fantasy in place of reality.
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“Christ” the firstborn of the Father, “is the firstborn of all creation”.
The passage below clearly tells us, he pr-existed creation because all things were made by Him and for Him.
The Supremacy of Christ
Col 1.14. in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 15. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him
Note verse 15…
Bit of a problem for theistic evolutionists that Christs existence was from the getgo in the image of the father.
Clearly He didnt evolve and there is no room in Col 1.15 for allegorical reading of in the image of the Father.
What makes you think you are teaching here? is that your purpose? If so, I fear it is a fool’s errand. Ad-hominem reigns. If you are not of the same belief system you will not be listened to.
As for whether your views can teach? Yes, they can, but not necessarily the message intended.
Then again, my voice does not seem to fit here either.
Richard
I think people attach many different concepts to the label “become a Christian.” For some people it means a specific decision point or conversion experience. For other people it means an ongoing process of discipleship that makes a person Christ-like. So, can a person have a conversion experience or make a decision at a single point and “become a Christian?” Sure. Does that mean they are now perfectly Christ-like? No of course not, they need to grow into their identity and make it a reality through their lifestyle and choices.
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