new topic to continue conversation from another thread…
A cell’s life is very much like our own, characterized by moments of excitement, action and waiting. But cells may have the upper hand on us when it comes to waiting well.
I dont mean to completely trash what should appear to be a great topic of discussion…I’m sorry but until anyone at Biologos understands the theology of the gospel, why it is fundamental to ALL Christianity, selling a book on anything related to “the gospel according the TEism” can only come from an author who has no concept of 1. why “the wages of sin is death” and 2. how this demand of the law must result in the LITERAL and PHYSICAL torture and death of the Messiah!
it is irrefutably clear, because of the death of Christ, this is not, nor was it ever, merely a spiritual consequence. there are not two plans of salvation in Christianity…as the apostle clearly stated, the lamb of God cannot be slain twice…there is but one atonement for sin.
It is theologically impossible to reconcile death existing before sin Biblically. That position is unsupported with ANY bible reference…so this author is clearly starting from an deeply errant position and people wishing to lend their ears and eyes to such an author are seeking to be further misled!
apologies for the blunt response, however, show me consistent and non conflicting biblical proof that Exodus 20:8-11 is false and then I will give up Christianity and redact my statement…because to deny Exodus 20:8-11 is to deny the gospel and finally to deny salvation…one may as well become an atheist! Exodus 20 8-11 is the joining of the golden rule “love God” (commands 1-3) and “Love thy neighbour” (commands 5-10).
So can you loose salvation by this?100% you can. God cannot forgive what that which has not been repented of! There is no hiding from this fact. In order to be saved we have to seek forgiveness for all of our sins even theological ones. Essentially those who do not agree that Exodus 20:8-11 is to be believed and also adhered to, they are praying to a different god. These are people who dispute that the 4th commandment is the glue between the two elements of the golden rule. To dispute that the glue between the golden rule elements is Christ…do you see the importance of the 4th commandment now and its relationship to the old and new testament, sin and salvation…Jesus is our ticket to heaven. To deny his fourth commandment “In six days the lord created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them…” to ignore the reality that sin came before death…to refuse to believe the importance of why this doctrine must be adhered to vigilantly is to throw away any chance at salvation according the Christian bible (I’m sorry but that is a theological fact known for 2 thousand years…is has not been something that has developed over that time…we have known this fundamental truth since the time of Christ)
- To be clear, this is a response to your claim, not a challenge to debate your claim.
- I do not doubt that you believe your claim, but … I am not and never have been–in this world–ever been a Jew, by blood or calling; nor have I ever been called to take up the yoke of the Law given to Israel at Sinai.
- And I am confident that you and I agree: Exodus 20:8-11 is a scriptural element of the yoke of the Law given to Israel at Sinai.
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Nope, I do not hold that view at all. The Bible doesn’t offer such an interpretation. It does the opposite actually, in numerous places the Bible speaks of Gods eternal law, God’s omnipotence, God’s unfailing Love, and Gods covenant to redeem us…these are not limited to merely Sinai or the Children of Israel.
The Bible talks of us (the then future Christian church) as being “Spiritual Israel”. This means that the laws and expectations held of the Israelites by God are now upon us…it is expected that we follow those guidelines and live by them as well!
It is at this point that the normal objection raised is the NEw Covenant…please don’t go down this pathway…there is no difference between the two covenants…it is the person doing the work to uphold the covenant that changes:
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the Old Covenant, it was the people “all this we will do”
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In the New Covenant, God will “write his laws on our hearts and in our minds”
You see the problem is this…if you read Exodus 20, you will notice that passage is written as a historical statement. We are looking back historically on a “statement of history” being given to the Israelites by God (through Moses) about their own past thousands of years earlier. (See vs 8-11 for reference)
Put simply, Exodus 20 is not a futuristic statement given to the then Israelites its an historical one given to them reminding them of their distant past.
The presence of the law has nothing to do with sin. How do I know this you ask? Well, the answer to that is quite simple, let me transpose for you with an illustration-type question:
Did science exist before mankind actually figured out its principles? Irrespective of any worldview, I think it is universally accepted that the laws of science clearly predate the discovery of said laws by mankind.
Now that I have illustrated the origin of the “Moral Law” (10 commandments) using a “science-based analogy”, are you sure you wish to maintain your position that God’s law never existed before mount Sinai indeed even before sin entered this world?
If you doggedly say yes, it is at this point my automatic next questions are as follows…
If there is no law before mount Sinai, how could Cain have been accused of breaking one and driven off? Why the need for a flood, no one even had any law stating thou shalt have no other gods before me, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not… thou shalt not what exactly, by what standard was evil gauged/judged before Sinai?
Also, if all of the above relate only an allegory…the allegory has no basis, no point of learning. It is devoid of any guiding principle by which individuals could have been raised to follow…such inclusions in the bible are therefore pointless. This also means that God’s act of punishment to all those in the Bible prior to the 10 commandments was in fact evil! I would suggest that to make any claim that God, prior to Exodus 20, punished people for the wrongdoing of which they had no guiding principles, is a theological impossibility!
Ok, so now that I believe I have reasonably established God had laws for people prior to Exodus 20…may I ask you to provide me evidence of what those laws may have been given that, according to your statement quoted, apparently they are not the ones of Exodus 20?
I am half expecting “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself” (um, this is the 10 commandments in a nutshell…hope you already knew that?)
Well I’m pretty sure many here understand the gospel , and theology in general fairly well in the forums. Many who are part of the actual Biologos organization also understands theology and the gospels pretty well.
So your argument is that the gospel is to save us physically…. Not spiritually… and therefore it’s impossible for physical death to have occurred prior to “ the fall “ meaning evolution just can’t be true because that involves a natural history of death? Is that correct?
- For the record, responding to your wasted rant is a tedious task, but since I’m between napping and eating and haven’t found a more interesting arm-wrestling “opponent”, I’ll give you a few moments of my time.
- What you don’t know about me would fill a large library, but attempting to inform and enlighten you would shed no light in the dark closet where you sit. So I won’t trouble you with an account of who I am, where I’ve been, or the saints through whom God our Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit have blessed, corrected, and guided me to where I am today, … and will bring home sooner or later.
- Is this where I’m supposed to tremble?
- So do you deny that God gave his Law to Israel at Sinai?
- Do you deny that Israel was commanded to remember the Sabbath Day?
- Surprise me: tell me “Yes” and I’ll put you on my “Ignore” list now.
- Ahhh! So you’re a “Judaizer”, … “a Pharisee without sidelocks”. perchance?
- You want “law”. Here:
- [Jeremiah 17] 5 This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
- [Jeremiah 17] 5 This is what the Lord says:
- Show me your works. Can you walk on water in a tempest? Feed a multitude, heal the sick?
- Customarily, when replying to someone’s post, one addresses the person whose post they are replying to, not someone else. Apparently, you think the quantity of your words will impress your audience; I, however, am not impressed.
- Aha! There’s your problem: you’ve forgotten where you started and have lost your way from the beginning. Must have been that rehearsed lecture you’ve been needing to give someone else. Here, let me remind you where Memory Lane started.
- You wrote this:
- I responded with this:
- You wrote this:
- You seem to have the odd notion that the command to remember the Sabbath preceded Yahweh’s delivery of the Law to Israel at Sinai. presumably–I suppose–when it was given to Adam and Eve.
- Neat trick! but you’ve got the wrong audience.
- First, anybody who has a clue knows I believe that the Cosmos has always existed. “Remembering the Sabbath” in a Cosmos that has always existed, IMO, is a bit of a conundrum.
- Second, for all your dancing, you’ve run roughshod over my earlier statement: In this world, I am not and never have been a Jew.
- Third, as for “guidelines”, I get mine in
- Acts 15:22 Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas—Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren, 23 and they sent this letter by them,
“The apostles and the brethren who are elders, to the brethren in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles, greetings.
24 “Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls, 25 it seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 “Therefore we have sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will also report the same things by word of mouth. 28 “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.”
- Acts 15:22 Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas—Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren, 23 and they sent this letter by them,
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I don’t mean to trash this topic by responding to your off-topic diversion… but just because we understand the gospel of the Gnostics, the teaching of blood magic witches, human sacrifice religions, and such, doesn’t mean we have to accept them just because you do. We can understand that the self destructive habits of sin are opposed to life and will destroy us without thinking these are about the arbitrary dictates of a God obsessed with control and self-absorbed demands for worship. Nor do we have to accept your understanding of the atonement and the reasons you have concocted for Jesus’ death on the cross. Just because you believe torture and murder are a good thing demanded by God contrary to the Biblical text, doesn’t mean we have to believe anything of the kind.
It is irrefutably clear in the Bible that those bringing about the death of Jesus were doing the will of the devil and not the will of God. I don’t know what you mean by “spiritual consequence,” but your implication that this is something of little importance is non-Christian and offensive. God is spirit and to say that this makes God less than physical things is clearly nonsensical. There is nothing “merely” about things which are spiritual. Paul makes it crystal clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that the physical is weak and temporary (perishable) and the spiritual is powerful and eternal (imperishable).
It is impossible to have a theology consistent with the Bible based on the idea that physical death is a consequence of sin, without calling God a liar. Adam and Eve did not die physically on they day they ate of the fruit. It is impossible to have a theology consistent with reality based on the idea that physical death is a consequence of sin. All evidence is contrary to the claim that the longevity of people is related to the quantity of their sins (though particular sins may have such a consequence).
This is as nonsensical as demanding that we show the prohibitions against personal grooming in Leviticus are false. Both Jesus and Paul made it clear that the OT law was not absolute. As for the 10 commandments Jesus speaks of them directly in Matthew 19. His summary of these is interesting.
And Jesus said, “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, 19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
So the laws of: having no other gods before me, making no graven images, not taking the name of the Lord in vain, keeping the Sabbath, and thou shalt not covet… – these are replaced by Jesus with love your neighbor as yourself.
I deny in the first place that salvation is something that you can accomplish, have, or in any other way be entitled to. So, it is never about losing something. The gospel of Jesus and Paul is about having faith in God and putting yourself entirely in His hands while doing everything you can according to their teachings. But I categorically deny that adhering to any dogma or understanding of yours is either necessary or sufficient for salvation.
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And NOW… let’s read the article and make a comment on the actual topic!
(moved back to the thread from which most of this was removed)
hmmm…clearly a person who reads a different bible to the Christian one because there is no one who understands the Christian bible who would make such a poorly thought out statement regarding the atonement for sin.
May I ask, in all of the 536 word response you made to my post…is there a set of supporting bible texts you refer to that supports your believe that deny’s mine? (because when I read what you have written I read a persons opinion without any referencing at all…that is rather surprising coming from a science based forum and world view)
ah but there absolutely is…can I refer you to the story of Naaman in 2kings chapter 5
1 Now Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man in his master’s sight and highly regarded, for through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. And he was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.
many who don’t deeply study theology don’t realise this, but leprosy was considered by the Jews a curse of sin. It was believed that those individuals who got leprosy suffered the disease because of unconfessed sin.
So by the prophet Elisha telling Naahman to go and wash in the Jordan river 7 times and he would be cleansed that was a form of spiritual healing and also physical baptism (both a requirement for the forgiveness of sin)
The point is, the reason for leprosy being used so often in the bible in this way is because it perfectly illustrates exactly what God spoke about to Adam when he said to him in Genesis “do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. In the day you eat of it you will surely die”.
Leprosy does not kill immediately, it is a slow death, and people with it are cut off from their families, friends and they begin to die a very slow death. That is exactly what sin does to us…we are cut off from God, our heavenly family, our perfect home and we begin to die. (Adam and Eve experienced this when they were cast out of the garden of eden after the fall). We now suffer the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin…that is what the Christian Bible teaches…the wages of sin is death!
Remember the story of Naaman and his leprosy when you next think about the wages of sin is death. That is the exact illustration of what God meant in Genesis Chapter 2:16
16 And the LORD God commanded him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, 17 but 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.”
Genesis 2:16 is I think the very first direct commandment ever given by God to man in the bible btw
so why is this important to the topic…because one must first have their theology sorted before they go bafooning off down a pathway studying references from a poorly thought out world view! the study of DNA and the human genome does not support evolution as well as what secular science claims. It actually raise serious problems with the theory that consistently result in the same answer to those problems…we don’t know yet.
We don’t know yet is not good enough when its also based on a world view that refuses to accept very self evident bible statements and theology.
You mean you ignore any references that a person makes to the Bible when you want to lie about the fact that the person has indeed referenced the Bible.
People have believed all sorts of things which are simply incorrect. This is one of many superstitions by which people mistreat and victimize other people. And does the Bible support these superstitions? Have you read the book of Job? No the Bible does not support this superstition.
So leprosy is your excuse for calling God a liar. God did not say "on the day you eat of the fruit you will begin to die. Apparently you do have the same Bible which says they will die on the day they eat of the fruit, but somewhere inside yourself you are altering the text to a different Bible than the one Christians read.
But of course these are alterations of the Bible you must make, as well as alterations of other facts, in order to construct this fantasy world you live in.
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