Posted on 12/25/2015 2:41:05 PM PST by Arthur McGowan
Well, since you are talking about some church other than the one I belong to, this isn't very interesting to me.
Well if you do, from whence is your straw man?
To ass-u-me you can dumb down a mystical event, that displays mystical behavior, into what we call science today, is pretty doggone presumptuous. It’s putting the thumb of flesh on the scale.
The attempt is understandable, humans will always quest wherever they can, but the dogmatic treatment of one version of the results isn’t.
Huh?
What “mystical event”? The Incarnation? The video isn’t about the Incarnation.
The video is about the mechanical motions of the planets. I.e., the VIDEO IS NOT ABOUT A MYSTICAL EVENT OR A MIRACLE.
That’s the whole point: Because the “star” described in the gospel is NOT a miracle, it can be verified by modern science.
The planets move according to mechanical forces. Given that fact, we now can know where the planets were at the time the Magi were looking at the sky.
I, too, am a fundie. I do not explain away things Jesus said.
I interpret the words of Jesus (”You must eat my flesh, and drink my blood...”) to mean “You must eat my flesh, and drink my blood...”
I interpret the words of Jesus (”The man who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, will have eternal life...”) to mean “The man who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, will have eternal life...”
I interpret the words of Jesus (”My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink...”) to mean “My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink...”
I interpret the words of Jesus (”This is my body...This is the chalice of my blood...”) to mean “This is my body...This is the chalice of my blood...”)
This is a later development, of which the church became proud. They missed that the trueness in these things is spiritual, which as C. S. Lewis pointed out if we wanted something to symbolize it, you would need something heavier than matter.
You act so proudly clueless!
Mere mechanical forces “hung the world on nothing”?
And because we true fundamentalists know that these things point beyond themselves to spiritual entities that are more, not less, solid than matter, we know this forces a metaphor. It has to.
Or if you must factor it in such a fashion, it forces us to understand that our Lord used a metaphor here. There was no other way to say what he was saying and connect it with the bread and the cup.
It should surprise nobody either, because it is virtually word for word parallel to what the Jewish Passover Hagaddah (the service liturgy) — which dates back almost to gospel times — says. Don’t take my word for it, get one and look. The meal is metaphor city for the deliverance from Egypt and they make no secret of it. Jesus was to complete deliverance upon the Cross. We have two more metaphors now, to complete the picture, no more sacrifice required. Jesus may forgive what you are doing but He never ever will excuse it.
Love God and love each other. THAT is the essence of Jesus' message that all humans can follow regardless of faith or culture.
Now, subsequent to that you have countered the fact tat you have a quandary with:
Those who go to remorseful torment and agony CHOSE Satan's company over God's.
Don't you think that statement is a little judgmental? Maybe you ought to take the Scripture citations into account instead of balking when your situation is exposed, eh?
Elsie: "No; but it appears you ARE reading something INTO what I just posted."
Ah, I hope I didn't get us confused. I'm the Methodist PK reading your line that seems to say that you are of the Wealeyan (Methodist) convincement. Is that reading something into what you had posted?
If not, maybe you could enlighten me into what it is that you think I misread from your post. I'm not much good at making or reading innuendos, so maybe I've made a mistake. Correcting my assumption here is OK.
(And, another question is . . . are you a PK or MK, also?)(Privately, if you wish.)
I can do that all by myself.
We think much more that we type, and little hints can be lost in the trip from brain to keyboard to 'net to screen to brain.
Is there anything in my typing that infers a PK?
I was a typical mutt; growing up with no church background other than a few times at church while visiting relatives and a stint in a Presbyterian SS in fifth grade.
I was in the AF when a fellow asked a bunch of us guys if we'd like to go to church with him (Baptist). Why not, says I, and off we went.
Actually heard the Gospel for the first time, and, after a few Sundays of trying NOT to answer the altar call; finally pried my white knuckles from the pew in front of me and went down.
There WAS a precursor to this, but I will hold that for later.
What I have narrowed the debate between Lacob Arminius and Jean Calvin is the understanding of the process of progressive sanctification.
That is, they both think that paedobaptism puts a human into the Kingdom of God, when it does not and cannot, Even immersionists (baptizers of responsible adults) often suggest that baptism of the "believer" is a sure sign of tegeneration, and that failure to progress in justification is consistent with "backsliding." Personally, I reject those insecure theological propositions. I reject "backsliding" as a term applying to true regeneration. What I accept is the use of the Greek present tense in the description of true salvation, justification, regeneration, and progressive sanctification,And that means that John 3:16 needs to be interpreted as saying:
". . . that whosoever continually without failure exercises complete irreversible trust in and faithfulness to Him shall never perish, but have eternal absolute life (in Him)(a never-ending spiritual union with God for ever).
Some, maybe many, are not going to like this, but there it is, the correct and precise definition of what true salvation means. It means no going back from the Christ of the Bible.
And it means that those who appear to do so must be viewed as and treated as those who began by professing, but never possessing, the new-born inner spiritual man.
I think that ought to clear up how one regards Catholicism, Armininanism, Calvinism, or whatever ism that tolerates habitual sinfulness without discipline in its membership.
Jacob, not Lacob
rgeneration, not tegeneration
So, the mystery is still there, eh?
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.â€
1 John 3:21-24
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
Which one?
The Calvinists recognize a salvation is arranged from the God end. The Arminians recognize that choice occurs and that this is valid choice. Only an explanation that melds the two can approach viability. A Free Methodist pastor I know calls this “Calminian.” An explanation of choice that is rooted in eternity, not in moments’ whim, is the only explanation that will do here. C. S. Lewis used the illustration of figures standing around a chessboard of time upon which the actual action took place to illustrate this in “The Great Divorce.”
I don’t get all uptight about it. People ask, I say I am Calminian. Simple explanations are the best.
Don't you think that statement is a little judgmental? Maybe you ought to take the Scripture citations into account instead of balking when your situation is exposed, eh?
1. How did I "counter the fact that I had a quandary," eh?? That makes NO sense. I had NO "quandary" with my own statements.
2. To WHAT "situation" are you referring, eh?
3. How did I "balk," eh? I thought I got right into it. I don't stay online all day. I have a lot to do and am away from the FR for many hours, sometimes for a day or so. That doesn't mean that I am "balking" at anything I write.
4. Which statement is judgmental, the first or second, eh? I can't really figure out what you are trying to say. I think both of my statements are fine and not at all contradictory.
I guess I'm just not clear on anything from you except the feeling that you don't like what I said. I don't think that you are very linear in your logic so forgive me if I don't follow as you would like.
God bless you and yours and happy 2016.
First of all, there is no text in which literally Jesus says what you claim. These words are not His words. They are your words, and they are not present in the Holy Writings or in any faithful precise translation. You have given us your rendering of what you think He said, which is clearly an uninspired fallible rendering. You say you are not explaining away what Jesus said, but that is exactly what you are doing when you try to take away from His repertoire the ability to speak truths figuratively, and forbid Him to express Himself as the spiritual Lamb of God. Shame on you.
You have a misinformed interpreter. As He instituted the prototype model of the Remembrance Supper, Jesus demonstrated again to them, as in John 6:35, the use of figurative language.
He with the twelve disciples were eating the Passover, which is (1) a memorial feast in remembrance of the Hebrews' slaying of their unflawed lambs, (2) a recollection of the act of Hebrews painting their lambs' blood on their doorways, (3) of hastily dining on roasted lamb meat and unleavened bread, (4( a calling to mind of their freedom from slavery and haste in leaving Egypt behind, as well as (5) keeping in mind God's commandment to do it and (6) to observe it with the yearly Passover ceremony.
But Jesus and His disciples were not themselves leaving Egypt. In this supper they were only rehearsing figuratively what their forefathers actually did literally.
In this figurative context, where they did inherently as well as explicitly understand the context, Jesus, handing them fragments of bread, said (according to Matthew who was there, and Mark informed by Peter), "This of me it is the body." He said "Take, eat." He said (according to Luke and Paul), "In remembrance of me, do this" (the "this" being eating a piece of bread). Then the same was repeated regarding the fruit of the vine, the wine. Jesus was laying out for them the form of a memorial ceremony for them, to be later handed down to their future disciples
Literally, from Jesus' pre-Cross hand, bread was bread and grape juice was grape juice, nothing but and nothing else. But within the context of recollecting how the disciples ate the last Passover with Him, taking these tokens ceremonially then to remind them in later times of the occasion on which the tokens were given. The observance was also to bring into recollection what happened to His own Body and Blood, until the promise of His return would be carried out.
That is all, and that is enough. But the Eucharist has both literal and figurative literal language, from which we are, as the spiritual descendants of the disciples, to infer a literal meaning: "In bringing to mind Myself and My Passion, perform this ceremonial partaking of literal bread and literal grape juice, in a communal gathering."
No artifice of transubstantiation was intended or desired, and no transmission of spirituality by a literal consumption takes place. In the true Remembrance Memorial, bread is still bread, and grape juice is still grape juice, and a pretense of any change of these materials is absolutely unnecessary to transmit the knowledge of His once-for-all-and-for-all-time sacrifice, reminded by the tokens of His love for us.
Have you EVER read John 6???????
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