Salvation Trilemma

Originally posted by checkbaiter
How is salvation a collective effort? God offers, the individual accepts or rejects. Sounds like an individual effort to me.
I don't understand your train of thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiential_eschatology

Originally posted by rwingett
Build the kingdom. As a certain group of 42,000 people who start with an 'H' are doing. Salvation will come in this world, not in the next.

Can you answer this? What Bible do these people use? (I guess I could look it up.)

I wonder where they think they get their authority. Man building the Kingdom of God? Not likely. By the time it comes around, there's going to have to be some environmental changes too. All will have to be swept away and made clean in the eyes of God.

Originally posted by rwingett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiential_eschatology

Ok, I'm as liberal as the next treehugger, but I do not think I can buy into this idea.

Originally posted by rwingett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiential_eschatology

I agree we should be in the process of becoming like Christ. We Christians owe our very lives to him.
But I will have to agree to disagree with your theology. If I read it correctly, Liberal Christianity does not hold the bible as inerrant.

" most liberal Christians do not regard the Bible as inerrant, but believe Scripture to be "inspired" in the same way a poem is said to be "inspired" and passed down by humans"

I believe the scriptures are God inspired, or "God breathed"

Originally posted by rwingett
Build the kingdom. As a certain group of 42,000 people who start with an 'H' are doing. Salvation will come in this world, not in the next.

Yes, of course, the Hutterites. While I respect their devotion and their strong as a steel cable Faith, I have a whole laundry list of things I can't agree with in most of the Anabaptist faiths.

I still wonder what Bible they use, since early in their history they were persecuted by the Catholics as well as the early Protestant movement. I haven't had much luck sussing that out.

Originally posted by checkbaiter

I agree we should be in the process of becoming like Christ. We Christians owe our very lives to him.
But I will have to agree to disagree with your theology. If I read it correctly, Liberal Christianity does not hold the bible as inerrant.

" most liberal Christians do not regard the Bible as inerrant, but believe Scripture to be "inspired" in the ...[text shortened]... d passed down by humans"

I believe the scriptures are God inspired, or "God breathed"

Well said, CB.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Yes, of course, the Hutterites. While I respect their devotion and their strong as a steel cable Faith, I have a whole laundry list of things I can't agree with in most of the Anabaptist faiths.

I still wonder what Bible they use, since early in their history they were persecuted by the Catholics as well as the early Protestant movement. I haven't had much luck sussing that out.

They use the same bible as you. Plus some writings of their early leaders, such as Jacob Hutter. It is my opinion that if anyone is living as Jesus intended, it is the Hutterites who come the closest. The rest of Christendom is actively aiding and abetting mammon on a daily basis while they mouth empty prayers.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
I agree we should be in the process of becoming like Christ. We Christians owe our very lives to him.
But I will have to agree to disagree with your theology. If I read it correctly, Liberal Christianity does not hold the bible as inerrant.

" most liberal Christians do not regard the Bible as inerrant, but believe Scripture to be "inspired" in the sa ...[text shortened]... d passed down by humans"

I believe the scriptures are God inspired, or "God breathed"

Of course the bible is not inerrant. Only a retard could possibly hold that view. I would roughly estimate that Jesus actually said only about one third of the stuff attributed to him in the bible.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Can you answer this? What Bible do these people use? (I guess I could look it up.)

I wonder where they think they get their authority. Man building the Kingdom of God? Not likely. By the time it comes around, there's going to have to be some environmental changes too. All will have to be swept away and made clean in the eyes of God.

It is clear from several passages in the bible that people expected the kingdom to come within their lifetime, that it was close at hand. But 2,000 years later, it still isn't here. Why do you suppose that is? It's because you lazy slobs are sitting around on your rear ends, aiding and abetting mammon on a daily basis, while you wait for Jesus to come back and deliver the kingdom to you on a silver platter. Well guess what? It doesn't work that way.

God* is waiting for you to act. The kingdom is always at hand, but only on the condition that you get up and actually do something besides mouth empty prayers. Quit aiding and abetting mammon. Build a righteous world. A kingdom without murder, crime, inequality or poverty. Jesus gave you the template. The Hutterites actually do it, so it's proof positive that it can be done. In the real world.

When you do that, then the spirit of god will flow into that kingdom and you will know what salvation is. He will provide the inspiration, but he's not going to do all the work for you. He requires you to get off your behinds and DO something.

Of course no one can do it on their own, though. Changing the world is a community effort. Which is why salvation is (largely) not an individual affair. That conception only came about when people began to notice that the kingdom was not coming as soon as they expected (because they weren't doing the necessary work to bring it about). It was then that the concept of salvation began to shift from a collective, worldly concern to an individual, otherworldly one.


*I use the term 'god' metaphorically here, as I don't believe in an actual deity (as you know).

Originally posted by Suzianne
Yes, of course, the Hutterites. While I respect their devotion and their strong as a steel cable Faith, I have a whole laundry list of things I can't agree with in most of the Anabaptist faiths.

I still wonder what Bible they use, since early in their history they were persecuted by the Catholics as well as the early Protestant movement. I haven't had much luck sussing that out.

My father's family were Anabaptists and my mother could not agree with it either. They became divorced when I was 18 months old.

The Instructor

Here's something I wrote a while ago. As I thought it would be relevant tot he discussion, I thought I'd reprint it:

Realized Eschatology is the theory that the eschatological passages in the bible do not refer to the future, but instead refer to the ministry of Jesus in the present world and its transformative effects. Eschatology does not refer to the end of the world, but rather to its rebirth as instituted by Jesus’ revolutionary program of social activism. For Jesus the coming of the ‘Kingdom of God’ was a historical event brought about by the actions of his followers in the here and now. But in the decades following his death, Pauline theology had completely altered that dynamic by changing it to one of transcendental apocalypticism. It went from being a program of an engaged self-actualization to one of passively waiting for an external agent to deliver the Kingdom to them. John Dominic Crossan, of the Jesus Seminar, uses the term ‘sapiential eschatology.’ He makes the distinction as follows:

Apocalyptic eschatology is world-negation stressing imminent divine intervention: we wait for God to act; sapiential eschatology is world-negation emphasizing immediate divine imitation: God waits for us to act.

Jesus preached a message of collective social, economic, and political deliverance from the oppression of both the Romans and of the Temple State that exploited the people and showed little concern for their daily troubles. It is clear that Jesus thought the people could bring this kingdom into being within their own lifetimes through the practice of social justice. After Jesus’ death, Paul upended this by thinking it would be Jesus himself who would usher in the Kingdom upon his return. So for Paul, since Jesus’ return was expected imminently, there was little point in reforming the present world. The believers needed only to be patient and wait for his return. A profound shift occurred within Christianity whereby the emphasis went from being one of concern for social justice to one of personal piety. Jesus’ concern for the poor and oppressed of the world was changed into Paul’s concern about personal sin. Christianity went from being about carrying on Jesus’ reformative social activism to being a cult about the personhood of Jesus himself. In other words, they worshipped the man, but ignored his message.

This complete corruption of Jesus’ message was brought full circle when Constantine adopted Christianity himself and it was later made the official religion of the Roman State. Christianity had gone from being the radical faith of the oppressed to the official religion of the oppressor. Christianity began serving the needs of the state and institutionalizing its own power while completely dropping all of the political activism preached by Jesus himself. Throughout history there have been people who have seen through this corruption of Jesus’ message and who have tried to get back to the original Christianity, but far too many people continue to put their faith in the badly skewed Pauline theology as brought to its ultimate depths by the Great Constantinian Shift. It is on rare occasions like this when I ask myself: WWJD?

Originally posted by rwingett
Of course the bible is not inerrant. Only a retard could possibly hold that view. I would roughly estimate that Jesus actually said only about one third of the stuff attributed to him in the bible.

The quote in my reply was from Wiki's definition of a liberal Christian. It is not my view. As I stated, I believe the scriptures are God breathed and inerrant, so by your definition I am a retard.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
so by your definition I am a retard.

Apparently so.

Originally posted by rwingett
Apparently so.

I would roughly estimate that Jesus actually said only about one third of the stuff attributed to him in the bible.

How do you pick and choose what is authentic and what is not?

Originally posted by checkbaiter
[b]I would roughly estimate that Jesus actually said only about one third of the stuff attributed to him in the bible.

How do you pick and choose what is authentic and what is not?[/b]

Well, it isn't that easy. There isn't a wide agreement on the topic. But generally, the sayings about how to live in this world are more likely to be authentic, while those dealing with the next are less so.