New creations in Christ

That is not what I said. Perhaps you need to read what I said again.

Agreed. And since we cannot see the heart and motivation, then it is very foolish for us to take it upon ourselves to judge others.

Okay, you said,

It hasnā€™t with me over multiple decades. :slightly_smiling_face: Please elaborate.

No controversy there, unless we are talking about obvious sin.

I wasnā€™t talking about you.

There is nothing obvious about heart and motivation, apparently you donā€™t believe heart and motivation are as integral to meaning of actions as I do. Orā€¦ perhaps you only think that is applicable to good works and not to sinā€¦ interesting. OHHHHā€¦ I get itā€¦ when you want to say people (like those you disagree with you about something) are just bad and evil regardless of what good works they do then you can just dismiss the works as not having the right heart and motivationā€¦ that way you can make it all about following some weird set of rules you claim to be from God.

I still want to know how "it will (and does) effectively become" for anyone, and why are you excluding me?


Why the sarcasm? Sarcasm involves mockery, and thatā€™s not a seat you want to be sitting in.

If the usher is pocketing cash out of the offering plate or the church treasurer is embezzling, they are exempt from human judgement? Talk about a weird set of rules.

You absolutely donā€™t get it. I said nothing of the sort and you are inferring in error. Again.

I explained thisā€¦ because of the answer you gave to my question.

I asked you,

And like I said, I could find no fault in your reply. But nevertheless, it very much looks to me that a lot of people who hold to the same dogma you are pushing are acting like they are entitled and have indulgences for the sins they commit. That is precisely why I asked the question I did in order to see how you would reply.

Nevertheless this is how what you have said can and has been used. It has even been made into dogma with the Articles of Remonstrance.

On the contrary, Jesus used sarcasm and mockery in defense of what is good against those using using religion for their own benefit. I am not an unbeliever using sarcasm to mock a belief in Jesus and what is good. I am a believer, a Christian, using sarcasm to mock the misuse of religion just as Jesus did.

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You are not Jesus, you are misreading what I have said and you are making false accusations. I am your brother.

Back up and come at this graciously, one step at a time.

(Misdirected replyā€¦ deleted.)

You appear to be taking someone elseā€™s misunderstanding of scripture and blaming me for it.

Am I correct in inferring that you endorse the Articles of Remonstrance?

No. I am very much opposed to the Articles of Remonstrance. Wellā€¦ at least some parts of it anyway.

But you also reject TULIP in toto?

Yes. So I agree with the Articles in the sense that it rejects TULIP Calvinism but that doesnā€™t mean I agree with everything else it says. In particular I do not agree that people are not capable of doing any good unless they are Christians.

I think both Calvinism and Arminianism as commonly construed do not adequately portray the mystery of Fatherā€™s timelessness. Neither am I a fan of Molinism, for which there is negligible scriptural support ā€“ I think it is an academic exercise that turns God into an epistemological calculator.

Yes I have disagreements with both Calvinism and Arminianism also.

Butā€¦ I think believing the Father is timeless is much the same as not believing in a personal God. I believe in a God that is more not less. To be sure God is not confined to the space-time continuum of the physical universe (no more than God is confined to a singularity of personhood) for, of course, He created the space-time continuum. But that does not mean that God is without time. On the contrary, God can employ a temporal ordering whenever and however He chooses. Thus God can make decisions and do all the things that a person can do and more.

I also disagree with Molinism.

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I think ā€˜goodā€™ needs qualification. People cannot do enough good to offset their unrighteousness, obviously (or at least I hope it is :slightly_smiling_face:). But I think that there are degrees of reward and degrees of punishment. May I presume that you have read The Great Divorce?

I am happy to substitute the adjective ā€˜timefulā€™ for timeless. :slightly_smiling_face:

Wasnā€™t he ā€˜withoutā€™, meaning outside of our sequential time, though, ā€˜beforeā€™ it began? (Or do you not accept big bang cosmology?)

People cannot save themselves.

I donā€™t think heaven and hell is about reward and punishment at all.

I think this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of sin as bad deeds which makes them think it is all about comparing the number of bad deeds with the number of good deeds. This is all wrong. The problem is that sin, any sin, is like a disease that will grow and consume us, destroying everything that is good (including free will) within us like a cancer. Part of the problem comes from the identification of sin with disobedience which is convenient for those who seek to use religion as a tool of power and control. But what sin really consists of is self-destructive habits. The sin has to be cut out of us and only God can do this.

Thus instead of heaven and hell being places of reward and punishment, they are simply the two ultimate destinies for human beings under these two fundamental forces of creation and destruction, with sin being the ultimate force of destruction. And the only hope is to let God in with a surgeonā€™s knife.

The Big Bang theory is just a description of the how the physical universe began 13.8 billion years ago, as both time and space came into existence. So one of the things we learn in physics is that the whole idea of absolute time is wrong. Time is simply an ordering of events. And just because God is not confined to the ordering of events in the physical universe doesnā€™t mean that He cannot order other events which have nothing to do with the physical universe.

I think of it as being in Fatherā€™s family or out of it. The ransom was paid for us as delinquents so that we could be adopted, otherwise we would still in prison for an eternal sentance. Scripture speaks children of promise and children of wrath. Punishment is very definitely a factor** ā€“ Jesus taught more about hell in the gospels then there is in the rest of scripture. And donā€™t forget about Dives and Lazarus.