Philosophy versus True Religion

Originally posted by no1marauder
If you had bothered to simply answer the question, you might have avoided the ridicule. None of the Fundies here have ever showed the slightest bit of "mutual respect" for anyone else's beliefs on this forum; that is epitomized by the first post by you on this page (indeed by the idea behind the entire thread).

If you want to answer the qu ...[text shortened]... sn't interested in hearing one of the Fundies here try to answer it, I wouldn't have asked.

I want to hear about the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

I want to hear about the Invisble Pink Unicorn.

Any atheist worth his salt would tell me all about the IPU.

Originally posted by jaywill
I want to hear about the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

I want to hear about the Invisble Pink Unicorn.

Any atheist worth his salt would tell me all about the IPU.

Who said I was an atheist?

Are you going to answer the question or not? Your ramblings are a bit childish.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Christ said definitively that whoever seeks shall find (Matt 7:7). Therefore, to always seek but never find indicates an ulterior motive for the seeking.

I assume you realise this is circular. A rational person might question whether Jesus was, in fact, divine; if not, there is no associated Christian truth to "find". And so the journey continues.

For you, perhaps, the divinity of Jesus is somehow self-evident. For a huge number of rational people, it is not. And there is nothing arrogant about this; there is no ulterior motive. They are simply seeking a sound, rational footing for their beliefs.

On your view (I assume), these people's immortal souls are in jeopardy. And that shoudl strike any reasonably-minded person as simply ridiculous.

Originally posted by bbarr
Good, so sincerely asking for salvation is not a necessary condition for being saved. God employs norms of justice and mercy when determining who gets saved. If so, then it is an open question whether sincere and virtuous people with the conceptual repertoire required to conceive of God can be saved despite failing to sincerely ask. It is an open question, for example, whether Socrates was saved.

"IN THE beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. He was present originally with God. All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it [put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and is unreceptive to it]... There it was--the true Light [was then] coming into the world [the genuine, perfect, steadfast Light] that illumines every person. He came into the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him [did not know Him]" (John 1:1-5, 9-10, AMP).

________________________________

A Christian really has no basis for declaring that Socrates is not saved. Only God can know who is saved. We do not know who is saved because we have not been told this, but we do know how to be saved. We also know that God is just. He may be obscure, but he is just. His justice is bound to appear obscure to us because we are in time and see "through a glass, darkly." Only the view from eternity is total and clear.

Socrates, like Abraham and Moses, never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel of the incarnate Logos of God, Jesus Christ. Yet we know that Abraham and Moses were saved, and therefore it is not absolutely necessary to believe in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. What is essential is whether one lives according to the Logos, the divine Reason of God. There is enough light and enough opportunity, enough knowledge and enough free choice, to make everyone responsible before God. God is just. And a just God judges justly, not unjustly; that is, he judges according to the knowledge each individual has, not according to a knowledge they do not have (James 3:1).

The answer to "Who is saved?" is clear: "Anyone who desires" (Rev 22:17). Heaven's door is always open (Rev 21:25; 3:7-8; 4:1), and hell's doors are locked from the inside. It stands to reason that if God is pure love, salvation is pure gift. If salvation is pure gift, than all get it except those who refuse it. God refuses no one but those who refuse him.

________________________________

"Before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety. It is a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith through demonstration... Perhaps, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, until the Lord would call the Greeks. For this was a pedagogue to bring "the Hellenic mind" to Christ, as the Law did the Hebrews." ~ Clement of Alexandria (c. 195)

Originally posted by no1marauder
Who said I was an atheist?

Are you going to answer the question or not? Your ramblings are a bit childish.

This was the first post on this thread written by me which you say "epitomized" [disrespect]. If you found that offensive that's rather perculiar.

Exactly what was so epitomizing of disrespect in this post ?

==========================================
John's gospel says that the ones who received Him (the Son) were given authority to become children of God:

"But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name." (John 1:12)

Immediately after this sentence He draws up distinctions qualifying just how this new birth has come upon the future children of God. John says that such a birth is not of three things and of one thing:

"Who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (v.13)

1. "not of blood" - one cannot become one of the children of God simply because one's parents were born of God. The new birth cannot be transmitted by any natural blood relationship. No one is simply born naturally and therefore is ALSO born spiritually because of who his or her parents were.

2.) "nor of the will of the flesh" - In this case "the flesh" denotes the fallen man. The man who has been corrupted since the fall of Adam. In the days of Noah's flood God said that the end of all flesh had come before Him. The flesh here is the fallen and sin currupted man who cannot will himself to become one of the children of God. He cannot make himself be born of God.

3.) "nor of the will of man" Whereas "the flesh" in this passage refers to fallen and corrupted man, "nor of man" refers to that residual good part of man. Remember God created man and declared that His creation was very good. Even though we are sinners there is nonetheless something left over in us by God's creation which is good.

The good part of man cannot will the second birth to become one of the children of God.

4.) "but of God" refers to the will of God. The Begetting Father alone can cause the new birth to occur. Thankfully He will do so if we come to Him asking Him. Even if we come to Him RECEIVING the resurrection Lord and Savior Jesus. In our act of receiving Jesus into our spirit - the Begetting Father will cause us to enter into a realm which we cannot bring upon ourselves. God causes us to be born again. And with the birth the "genes" as it were of God come into us. Our future must be to develop into sons of God. We are granted the authority to become children of God. And children matured become sons of God.

Whatever Justin Martyr had in mind, the birth of children of God with the divine life of God is not cause by natural birth, natural descent, natural willing of the fallen man, or natural willing of the good aspect of the created man.

It is of the Father alone upon those who received His Son.

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Originally posted by jaywill
This was the first post on this thread written by me which you say [b]"epitomized" [disrespect]. If you found that offensive that's rather perculiar.

Exactly what was so epitomizing of disrespect in this post ?

==========================================
John's gospel says that the ones who received Him (the Son) were given authority to be lone upon those who received His Son.

============================[/b]

Learn how to read:

no1marauder: that is epitomized by the first post by you on this page [page 3].

That was the one where you accused of vistesd of "hiding behind Logos" or some such nonsense.

Still no answer to the question I see. Are you still looking to find a cut and paste from Witness Lee that you use without attribution?

Originally posted by dottewell
I assume you realise this is circular. A rational person might question whether Jesus was, in fact, divine; if not, there is no associated Christian truth to "find". And so the journey continues.

For you, perhaps, the divinity of Jesus is somehow self-evident. For a huge number of rational people, it is not. And there is nothing arrogant about this; the ...[text shortened]... s are in jeopardy. And that shoudl strike any reasonably-minded person as simply ridiculous.

I wouldn't say that Christ's statement is circular. Those who seek, find. What is circular is the alternative, seeking but not finding, and I think many would like to keep it that way. A great deal of honesty with oneself is required to truly seek the truth about something, in order to counteract any personal bias or prejudice. A predisposition against the truth of Christ's divinity, for instance, might prevent one from sincerely seeking the truth of the matter. Or perhaps the consequences of Christ's divinity being true would upset the delicate balance of one's dearest prejudices about the world to such a degree that receptivity to the truth is made all but impossible. Anyone sufficiently desirous of knowing the Truth is prepared to part with his or her prejudices, though not indiscriminately.

In my particular case, my receptivity to the truth arose from what Thomas Carlyle called, "natural supernaturalism," i.e. finding the miraculous in nature. The writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson are a prime example of this.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Learn how to read:

no1marauder: that is epitomized by the first post by you on [b]this page [page 3].

That was the one where you accused of vistesd of "hiding behind Logos" or some such nonsense.

Still no answer to the question I see. Are you still looking to find a cut and paste from Witness Lee that you use without attribution?[/b]

That post was not meant to be disrepectful. It was meant to be frank and honest. The poster is frank and honest with me.

However, I did notice that after having asked you to forgive me a comment made about a year ago, you showed not a whole lot of willingness to accept my humble apology.

Rather I see more vicious innuendos designed to make me look like a mindless follower of Witness Lee.

I also question your name No1Marauder. That sounds like something out of Marvel Comics. Maybe that is why you're so suspicious that the New Testament is a flight of someone's imagination. Possibly because you've spent too much time embibbing Marvel Comics that you suspect the New Testament is just another comic book.

I feel quite honored that you would associate me with Witness Lee.

As for your question about the "eternal" Sonship. Its a good one for a serious dialogue. I'm not so sure you're interested in my thoughts on it.

Maybe you'll catch my answer when discussing it with Visted or one of the other posters. I don't like to throw things out there "cheap" with people like you who like to label disciples of Jesus as "Fundies".


Right now I think you should go and believe whatever you want. If you want to call the New Testament a fairy tale go ahead. You go ahead and believe that if you want to.

You can just put your Bible over there with your pile of X-Men comics.

Originally posted by jaywill
Oooo!! I believe in a fairy tale.

Heavy !

You didn't mention the "Invisible Pink Unicorn" yet. How come ? That's a nice little piece of ridicule.

If you want to be serious and show a bit of mutual respect for each other's beliefs, I will give you something of an answer to your question about an "eternal" Son of God.


That is if you really want to know what I would say about that tough question.

Does mutual respect allow attributing ulterior motives to the person you're debating? Suppose I claimed that you believed in God because you secretly were ashamed of your own body, hated your mother, and never had a father to speak of. Of course, I have no evidence for any of this, just as you have no evidence that Vistesd is hiding from Jesus by talking about the Logos. So, does attributing psychological traits to your opponent during a debate, in order to explain why they disagree with you, constitute showing "mutual respect"?

Barr writes:

Does mutual respect allow attributing ulterior motives to the person you're debating? Suppose I claimed that you believed in God because you secretly were ashamed of your own body, hated your mother, and never had a father to speak of. Of course, I have no evidence for any of this, just as you have no evidence that Vistesd is hiding from Jesus by talking about the Logos. So, does attributing psychological traits to your opponent during a debate, in order to explain why they disagree with you, constitute showing "mutual respect"?


Mr. Visted,

Perhaps, "hiding behind" was not an appropriate way for me to express my thought. You have sent me one or two cordial private notes which were very well presented.

I was making a point that it is possible to miss the simplicity of accepting the Lordship of the Man Who resurrected in favor of a philosophical concept, though biblical, still is not a living Person as Jesus is and cannot be our Lord.

It is a fact that we all go through a lot of things to avoid the Lord. Essentially, we want to be on the throne. Essentially we all want to retain our egos as the center of the universe.

Sorry if this sounded offensive.

Originally posted by jaywill
Barr writes:

[b]Does mutual respect allow attributing ulterior motives to the person you're debating? Suppose I claimed that you believed in God because you secretly were ashamed of your own body, hated your mother, and never had a father to speak of. Of course, I have no evidence for any of this, just as you have no evidence that Vistesd is hiding from J retain our egos as the center of the universe.

Sorry if this sounded offensive.

[/b]I understand your position. I take no offense. I do not think that your position accords with some very ancient and still extant (most predominantly in the Eastern Orthodox churches) theological views. The Christianity of the period from 100-600/800 C.E. seems to me to be, for the most part, vastly different from Protestantism.

Luther’s Reformation was vis-à-vis the Roman Church (which separated from the East in 1054), and modern Protestantism derives from the reformation of what was already a “westernized” theological paradigm. Augustine’s particular notion of original sin, for example, was never accepted in the Greek east (there is in the Orthodox churches no notion of “original guilt” ). Luther’s sola scriptura was a thoroughly new principle, east or west.

This certainly does mean that you cannot believe that your understanding—or that of evangelical Protestantism generally—is the correct one. Nor that you cannot or ought not to argue for it.

I don’t mind if someone suggests that I might have some subconscious ulterior motivations—I may have, and I take it as a point of personal integrity to exercise continual self-examination in that regard. If someone makes it as a bald assertion, that would be another story.

I am a student of comparative religion (just a student, not an expert). One of my interests in that regard is ancient, and particularly Eastern, Christianity. There are aspects of that that challenge many modern Protestant (as well as Roman Catholic) views. The approach to scriptural exegesis seems quite different from many modern approaches, whether one is talking about some kind of Biblical literalism on the one hand, or, say historical or form criticism on the other (although most Orthodox theologians seem now to incorporate the modern text-critical approaches in their work).

So. We disagree on some fundamental issues; we have in the past and undoubtedly will in the future (we have occasionally agreed). No problem.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Hold your horses, vistesd. 🙂

Jesus Christ, the six-foot-tall Jewish carpenter from Bethlehem, is inseparable from the divine Logos of God. "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). As the Chalcedonian creed puts it, Jesus Christ is "inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably" both God and a man. Nowhere else in ...[text shortened]... ssible to become an intimate friend of God by any other means except via Jesus.

Hold your horses, vistesd. 🙂

I love it when you write like that. 🙂

The Logos/Son pre-existed the incarnation as the man Jesus, even under a more strict understanding of incarnation than I have given. And even under a more strict (albeit still orthodox) understanding, while it might be said that Jesus is inseparable from the Logos/Son (e.g., under the Chalcedonian formula for the two natures), it is not possible to say that the logos/Son is inseparable from the man Jesus—else the Logos/Son would only have come into being at Jesus’ birth. That would not be, on my reading, orthodox (small “o” or capital “O” ) Trinitarian theology.

The importance of Jesus is as an exemplar-incarnate of the divine Logos/Son. That, it seems to me, is the case even if one takes that incarnation in the sense of being exclusive, rather than unique—either way. In other words, whether or not Justin was correct. Most of the great debates between then Nicene/Chalcedonians, on the one hand, and the Arians, monophysites, Sabellians, etc., on the other hand went to the meaning of the incarnation. Nicene/Chalcedonian Trinitarianism is what became the orthodoxy.

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]Hold your horses, vistesd. 🙂

I love it when you write like that. 🙂

The Logos/Son pre-existed the incarnation as the man Jesus, even under a more strict understanding of incarnation than I have given. And even under a more strict (albeit still orthodox) understanding, while it might be said that Jesus is inseparable from the Logos/Son (e.g ...[text shortened]... he meaning of the incarnation. Nicene/Chalcedonian Trinitarianism is what became the orthodoxy.[/b]

I don't think the incarnation could possibly be separate from the Logos, despite the Logos being eternal and the incarnation being within history. Simply because the incarnation of the Logos was and is the perfect expression of the Logos. As such, it would be impossible to differentiate between the two except semantically. Jesus has always been the Logos, and the Logos has always been Jesus; "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8). Perhaps it would help to consider the Logos as He is, outside the bounds of the time dimension, wherein the incarnation is neither future nor past but eternally present.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
I don't think the incarnation could possibly be separate from the Logos, despite the Logos being eternal and the incarnation being within history. Simply because the incarnation of the Logos was and is the perfect expression of the Logos. As such, it would be impossible to differentiate between the two except semantically. Jesus has always been ...[text shortened]... the time dimension, wherein the incarnation is neither future nor past but eternally present.

I think we're going past one another.

Was Jesus the Logos before his birth?

Originally posted by vistesd
I think we're going past one another.

Was Jesus the Logos before his birth?

I would say, yes. How could the Logos not be Jesus, if Jesus was the perfect expression of the Logos? I understand how the Orthodox view must strive not to confuse the Logos with the flesh, semantically. What I'm suggesting is that we cannot know the Logos other than phenomenologically, which is why Christ says, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). If in Christ we see the Father, then Christ must also be eternal. God the Father is immutable and does not evolve or change; the Logos, equally God, also did not have a beginning and did not evolve or change. If the Logos has not changed, then it holds that He has always been Jesus Christ since Jesus Christ is His exact expression (indeed Jesus is the Logos Himself).