That’s the issue of the Two Natures, not the Trinity.
Yes, because without that text anyone can claim anything they want about God. The Bible is an objective source to which the subjective must conform.
One of the big reasons that both Aristotelianism and MSWV as measures of the scriptures are errors! After all, many in medieval times were certain that the scriptures affirmed that everything was made of just four elements.
Agreed!
It seems to imply a Triune God which I do not believe in. I think this overestimates Christian knowledge of God – that these three persons of God we know from scripture is all there is of God. On the other hand, it is problematic to leave the door open for religious groups to add more to the three when there is no basis for doing so in the scripture which Christianity has accepted as authoritative.
It is not that complicated really. All it says is that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons but only one God. Weird? Yes. This is not a God made in our own image.
Indeed. Common metaphors are typically modalistic or some other heresy.
The correct doctrine is three persons PERIOD! …not three modes, or three parts, or three functions, or three aspects, or three manifestations, … etc…
I know that.
I agree with this also. That is the essence of both the first creed and the doctrine of the Trinity. These follow from that one assertion: Jesus is God. And this is what other religions do not believe. They believe that Jesus is something else, a prophet (messenger) and a savior (messiah), but not God. In this they would say Christians have it wrong – that we are confused. In this the Hindus are actually closer and would not object.
I do think the Christian religion also requires some recognition of the Bible as authoritative, but I don’t agree this means you have to believe that some book of some other religion is false.
Same here. And I am particularly resistant to the tendency of many Christians to overestimate their knowledge of God.
However, there is very pragmatic reasons for restricting authoritative knowledge to the Bible. Too many groups would enthusiastically add all kinds of things which I don’t think is helpful.
The concept of the Trinity may seem weird to some. How could three persons be one God, But it seems to me that a personal God would need to be triune, as the diagram illustrates. Some might say God is too great to become man and too great to be present in each believer’s soul. But I would say that this is a belief in a lessor god.
Hi Lucas,
If “fundamentalist” means to be conservative about changing opinions, one might be a fundamentalist about science in the sense that you might choose to reject wildly speculative claims about multiverses because there is no evidence to support the proposition other than maybe some flimsy equation. So it would depend on what you mean by fundamentalist, but I assume that you mean the 6 24-hour day young earth creationism, Noah’s ark, Eve created (literally) from Adam’s rib 6000 years ago, and such.
Why do I believe as a professional scientist working in biotechnology? Well, science tells you how things work, it can tell you why things work, and it can tell you something of what happened as far as the fossil record goes, or the expanding universe, etc.
However, suppose some country with a predominant ethnic group comes up with a bioweapon that wipes out the human race on the entire planet except that select group.
[Note: Because viruses adapt, they will eventually come around looking for you, even if you think you can target some unique features. ]
What can science say? Can science say “That’s wrong!”. We can complain that it wipes out the genome diversity, and we can point out that it renders those surviving people vulnerable in their adaptability to disease and circumstances. Does gravity say “Hey, what are you doing?” There are plenty of examples in evolution where whole species have died out, and even man has been responsible for some of those extinctions. However, all science can say is the facts of what happened and what might follow from that, but there is no physical law that says it is wrong. It happened, and that is a fact.
We have to have faith and look to a higher authority to answer that. There is plenty of literature both religious and secular that tells us that the above is wrong. However, appealing to a principle, such as humility, only works if people believe that humility is a good thing. As Amos 6:12 says
12 Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness—
We somehow know that it is wrong to pervert justice and to twist righteousness, but why? Sure, you can say that it is a mere principle, but where does that come from and where are the teeth? If you have the power, as many in Amos’ day did, you could ignore what Amos said (as many did with many of the prophets). Who will hold you to account then? Maybe you can feel bad if you want. However, you would only restrain yourself if you believe that you might be held accountable before an Almighty Judge who will not let you hide behind lawyers and cheap procedural rules. … and you know that Judge will be fair.
So we don’t have the proof that it is so when we come out of a fundamentalist bubble. It remains possible that the rotten people (say people like Stalin) go to the grave and there is nothing. It just is.
However, we are given this life and given this chance, and so we have a choice on whether to follow Jesus and seek His Kingdom and His righteousness, or do what we want, when we want, where we want, etc. It is good that God permits us to choose. That is what seeking is all about. Because this is not a fair world, faith and trust in God alone is what we have to turn to.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see what else would compel us to restrain ourselves unless this is real. If Jesus was just a good guy, well, good for him, but what is there to compel me to change? Why should I forgive?
by Grace we proceed
Wayne
God might, but it would appear that Christian hardline doctrine does not. A choice is onlly vaild if there is no bias, or coercion, or dire consequence. We cannot on one side claim that god gives a choice and then on the flip side claim that only those who choose Christianity are “saved” or whatever consequence we declare for not doing do…
Because it is the right thing to do.rather than as an insurance aganst Hell or a ticket to Heaven.
If your only reason to beleive is to save your skin or reap a reward, then it is not genuine, it is self interest.
Richard
In what manner does it invalidate a choice not to aim a can of room freshener at a lit candle if I know that burning the propellant will form several unpleasant Flourine-containing gases? or a choice not to eat match heads in light of knowing the symptoms of phossy jaw?
Can you supply evidence of that from the writings of the belief itself?
I only ask because im pretty sure that since the apostle John wrote an entire book about end times, we can be confident that given the events prophesied remain unfulfilled, we are still here because the Second Coming has not happened yet!
Given that the last act of the day of Atonement was the laying of hands onto the scapegoat, and that goat being cast out into the wilderness to die amd there was a feaat 5 days later…we know the tabernacle service timeline is not yet finished. The unnecessary part after the cross was the spilling of the blood of sheep and goats.
Feast of Tabeenacles - 5 days after Day of Atonement.
On the seventh day of the festival, called Hoshana Rabba (“Great Hosanna”), practitioners make a sevenfold circuit around the bimah (the main raised platform in the synagogue) with the four plants. A bundle of five willow branches are then struck on the ground, a ritual meant to eliminate any remaining sins. Jews view Hoshana Rabba as the final chance to earn atonement during the high holiday season that begins with Rosh Hashana,
I suspect there is the inference in your statement of an underlying and unspoken belief that humanity wil evolve its way into heaven?
That’s assuming they are unfulfilled – numerous generations of Christians have seen them being fulfilled around them, including the first couple of generations. It’s also assuming a rather restricted model of prophecy in apocalyptic literature.
That was fulfilled on the Cross: the sins of all were laid on Jesus and He was sent to die.
There is no “tabernacle service timeline” – that notion is the invention of a false teacher. Jesus is the true Tabernacle; that’s right in the first chapter of John’s Gospel when he wrote “and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us”.
You have evolution on the brain. Why you insist that science must guide biblical interpretation baffles me.
You ca make those choices if you like, they would be stupid, but then again…
If you choose self harm or something you no to be dangersous then that only goes to prove tht the choice is genuine. What I argue against is the gun to your head choice. Do this or die There are very few martyrs or people who will stand up to such coercion.
Claiming that if you do not accept God’s forgiveness you will gt to Hell is that doer tof impossible choice.
Claiming that if you accept God’s forgivenss you must become a Christian, is the same as conscription. You have forced the first decision with Hell and then reinforced it with conscription. That is not freedom,.
It also makes this life a test or right of passage. It devalues this life to the nth degree and makes all the socical aspects of Christianity meaningless. Who care is you love your neighbour as long a you accpet God’s forgiveness and vow allegience to Him! And what are allegent to? Self preservation and eternal bliss! Let alone what you are condemning the rest or humanity to. Who cares? as long as you go to Heaven!
That is a selfish Gospel and an even more selfish view of God.
(You is not used as a personal pronoun, but signifies the people who beleive such rubbish)
Richard
This is only true if Hell is an arbitrary threat rather than a natural consequence. If the reality is as the scriptures portray, being similar to a ship’s officers who know the ship is sinking informing the passengers they should get to the lifeboats or they will go down with the ship, your claim is bogus: those officers are not being coercive, they are being helpful.
Your claim requires the assumption that there is some neutral ground where a person’s status neither improves nor degrades if forgiveness is rejected. The problem here is that such a situation is contrary to experience; when disasters occur there is no neutral ground, there is either escape or doom. Your claim is thus an attempt to assert that in life there are no consequnces.
Is claiming that if you jump into a pool you must become wet “conscription”? Or is it a description of status? If the Gospel has come to someone and they accept forgiveness, then “Christian” is just a statement of who they are now, just as if someone is invited to join the Elks Club and they accept they are then an Elk.
To call the result of accepting an invitation “conscription” makes God petty.
“Right of passage” is a legal status of being able to travel somewhere – I think you mean “rite of passage”.
But no, it doesn’t, unless you want to call heeding a ship’s officer’s warning that the ship is sinking so get to the lifeboats a rite of passage. That requires such a broad definition of “rite of passage” as to render the term essentially meaningless.
And a rite of passage doesn’t devalue life, it declares it highly important! The Sioux boys who went through the torturous manhood rituals didn’t do so because life was valueless but because it was of supreme value. Likewise life as a test doesn’t devalue life at all, it makes life of the utmost value. All life is a test, anyway; every action one chooses is in effect a test for how one’s future will go.
Your God is small and warped if you really believe this, or at the least your understanding is deficient: vowing allegiance to God and accepting His forgiveness cannot happen apart from loving one’s neighbor – it is a contradiction in terms. Allegiance to God has nothing to do with “self preservation”, it has to do with self-death if the scriptures are to be trusted.
That’s why we’re supposed to share the invitation to surrender and be saved – we only condemn the rest of humanity if we try to make sure they don’t hear the invitation.
This is contrary to the instruction to not bear false witness. For elucidation I provide Martin Luther’s explanation of that:
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God, so that we do not lie about, betray or slander our neighbor, but excuse him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.
It may be the case that some people are in fact selfish in their desire to “go to Heaven”, but declaring that everyone who believes in accepting God’s forgiveness has “a selfish Gospel” is unfounded.
The problem with preaching “hellfire and damnation” is not that that is false but that it is only a piece of the story. To use the illustration of a sinking ship, it is as though there is nothing beyond getting into the lifeboats – no getting taken aboard another ship, no getting warm and dry, no reaching shore, no life after reaching shore, just getting out of the sinking ship. If that was all there was to the Gospel it would be a rather shallow and pointless thing!
Paul tells us that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance; nowhere I can think of does an apostle write that terror of Hell leads to repentance . . . and yet how often do we hear a call to repentance based on what God’s kindness provides (usually when I hear such they’re based on a Gospel with no cost and a God who is more like a vending machine than a Person). That Hell awaits those who will not turn is true, but so is that pleasures forevermore await at God’s side – noting that “forevermore” begins the moment one takes a stand at God’s side; it doesn’t wait until we die – yet all too many prefer to harp on the Hell side of the matter (a sign, as Luther taught, that we humans just love law, especially when we can thump others with it) rather than the “wedding feast”.
Indeed one of the best evangelistic sermons I’ve ever heard was based on the image of a feast, from Isaiah:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
Contrary to the hellfire fans, this is one of my go-to Gospel songs:
“Come to the feast” – a good reason to be a theist, and Christian.
There is nothng natural about ell. Your analogies, as usual are way off the maek and prove that you have no idea what I am describimg.
You are basically claiming that God intended them to go to Hell.
IOW you have the wrong precept, and the wrong analogy. We are not taliking about some arbitary sailing trip or a shipwreck. e are talking about the meaning of life. And it is clear that you do not think that there is one other than to be saved (Rite of passage, although the other spelling throws up some interesting concep
What has jumping in a pool got to do with anything? You know what the king’s shilling was? You accepted it you were drqfted.
That is how you are treting forgiveness. You accept it , yiou are a christian. The converse being, if you do not accet it you can’t be a chritsian.
You said it. i ddn’t claim that was how I saw it.;
Forgiveness is not an invitation. It is grace.
And there you go. Decalring the whole world a ship wreck!
You need to get out more.
You crease me up.
You justt have no idea. You are just fixated on the fall of humanity… but you fail to see what that makes God into.
Again, who said that was what I beleive? It is the consequence of your beliefs.
You are more concerned with sin than you are about the general welfare of humanity.
Sin, sin, sin, That is all you think about, care about, and base your ffaith on. You completely ignore the rest.
Again. You are limiting God to the efforts of a provebial handful of people.
Why should people listen? Why should someone whose family has had a set of beleifs for millenia change them? (And why would God make them!)
\There are many who do not knw God at all, and God is quite content. He does not force Himslef onto them. And He does not ignore them. And He does not conden them out of hand, He forgives them!
Why are you being so selfish about God’s grace? What makes you think thqt you little voice is enough? Yiou cannot argue people into faith. And you cannot cajole them with threats of Hell. if they fdonlt beleive in God they wont beleive iinHell.
And by saying that is their bad choice or bad kuck is callous to the nth degree and does not reflect the Love of God for all of His creation.
I suggest you re read the last chapter of Jonah, and see what the Plant stands for.And why God cares , and you dont.
I have born no such thing. it is the consequence of the beliefs I have laid out and criticised. If you think that God only saves" the faithfull few and that the whole point of lif istto get to heaven then it does apply to you. Your priority is Sin, not with physical wlefare. And you are blingd to the good in others because of it.
Look at the OT prophets. Look at what israel / Judah was criticised for.
it was their mindless religion that ignored the neoghbour and the widdow. It was their futil sacrifices when their actual intent was not changed. It was their beleif that being a child of Abraham was all that mattered
Once you have been forgiven you are home free! You have your ticket to Heaven. Your actions do not matter! (Justification by faith alone)
But James is right. Faith without works is dead.because the works reveal your true understanding and faith. The only reason they do not count in terms of salvation s because they are xpected. “We are only humblle servants and have only done our duty.”
Richard
Nope.
The Bible’s view is that life is a shipwreck and we need saving – that’s why the word “salvation” is used. And salvation is the “meaning of life”: the whole point is that we were made for fellowship with Yahweh and need Jesus to be restored to that.
You see it as a financial transaction? Weird.
It’s a definition: if you accept God’s forgiveness, which is in Christ, you are a Christian, just as if you jump into a pool you are wet.
It makes Him into a Savior.
You reduce God to human terms.
No, it is your warped view that comes from setting yourself up as judge of everything but especially of scripture.
That’s like saying that a doctor is more concerned with a disease than with the welfare of the patient: being concerned with the disease is being concerned about the patient.
Only when viewed through your personal standards of judging everyone.
Nope – that’s your inability to see what is actually written due to your preference for judging others.
I don’t know – why should someone want to believe the truth?
You don’t understand forgiveness.
Thank you for highlighting this St Roymond…
I should have been more careful in ensuring that i made the argument that it is my denominations belief that we have not yet witnessed those things historically, however, i accept that it is a matter of opinion based on the study of evidences…many of these evidences do have alternative explanations.
i accept this point and I 100% agree with your correction there. Thank you.
The feast of Tabernacles my friend…it was 5 days AFTER the crucifixion!
this point…it was in response to Richards statement. having said that, you have added another layer to it. Your statement there begs the question…
How do you know that the bible genealogies do not give us a reasonably accurate age of the earth at 6500 years?
Is it not because science says that the dinosaur fossils, through a parallel study of the geological record, tell us its millions of years old?
If the above is close enough to being the view there, then who is it making the claim science guides biblical interpretation…me or your scientific demand that the earth is millions of years old?
(That is a rhetorical question btw…the answer is obvious)
Was fulfilled in the Incarnation and especially on the Cross.
Because Genesis 1 -11 aren’t that kind of literature.
No – I refuse to follow the example of YEC and others and interpret the scripture using science.
And I lean towards what the scholars I refer to frequently concluded from Genesis 1: that the universe started out as the smallest thing possible then grew rapidly; that the universe is incomprehensibly old, and the Earth uncountably old. Since they grew up reading Hebrew and spent many times the hours studying the text than I have I give respect to their understanding of the text.
You know that’s a lie – there are no scientific demands that affect the scriptures, yours or anyone else’s.
Interesting.
You reinterpret Genesis 1 because it does not fit ino your understanding of science, but you accet Geb 2-4 as some sort of reality? Then you dismiss a global flood because it contradicts your view of science.
At least @adamjedgar is consistant.
But the Garden story must be literal to back up your seflcentred view of Salvation and your loathing of humanity.
A speaking serpent, trees with magical powers and God walking in full view like some sort of Gardener or pet owner., Yes very real.
Richard
Now you’re joining Adam in lying?
And another lie you share with him.
No, it probably isn’t. But it doesn’t bother me either way.
@St.Roymond I say what I see. and hear.
If it is not the science of Genesis 1 or the science of a global flood what itis it that you object to?
How can you say that and then draw your main doctrine from it? if there was no Adam there was no Original Sin or original sinner. Therefore hmanity cannot have fallen.
I wonder who you are trying to fool?
Richard
Reading it as though it is some sort of modern science reporter’s account of things. It has to be read as the type of literature it is, not as it appears to be to us.
Because of the type of literature it is. It is not meant literally as teaching the details but the details are to be taken literally for understanding the point(s) of the story. It’s a distinction that is one of the major failures of YEC: what is said is not the same as what is taught.
Only if you insist on imposing a modern scientific worldview on an ancient text. That’s what one of my literature professors called “worldview imperialism” and is guaranteed to misunderstand literature not written in one’s preferred worldview; in fact it is generally an indication that the one doing it has no actual clue what a worldview is (YEC is a superb example of this) because they can’t grasp that there is more than one way to view the world.
That said, humanity being fallen does not depend on the Garden story; the theme that none is righteous, that all have gone astray, that all have sinned and fallen short, is what the idea of the Fall rests on, and the Garden story is just part of that. It is inherent in the term “Redeemer”!
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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