Responding to “Spiritual but Not Religious” Christians

http://www.jonsorensen.net ^ | July 22, 2014 | Jon Sorensen

[CynicalBear]

>>No one knows who will inherit the King of Heaven. No one knows who’s in heaven.<<

What a preposterous and unscriptural statement.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life." (John 5:24)

1 John 5:13 - These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

1 John 5:13 - These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

Romans 8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

[CynicalBear]

Besides, that wasn’t my question. How about answering the question?

[Springfield Reformer]

There are a fair number of issues here in which we substantially agree.  For one example, no one can dispute that accurate interpretation of Scripture is critical to the spiritual well-being of Christians, whether considered individually or corporately. The reason for this is simple.  Anyone who truly loves God both wants and needs to know His mind, "Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee."

But here we have a problem:

I think Peter gets to the heart of the matter immediately when he lays out the great gift and promises to us from God, and explains how to make sure we are not led astray by those who personally interpret the scriptures incorrectly

The problem is, the set of all believers who have ever personally interpreted a Scripture is 100% of all believers who ever read the Bible, which I hope would be most of us.  Of all those, I'm willing to bet well over 99% have been incorrect on occasion, simply as part of the learning process. Therefore virtually all believers have been "heretics" at one time or another IF "personal interpretation" is the offense you say it is.

But the above analysis is of course absurd, and intentionally so.  You can't even think without doing some sort of interpretation, of words, sounds, whatever the media, and if it is you doing it, it is by definition personal. You are doing it.  Not someone else.  You are a unique individual.  All of your experiences condition and color how you interpret anything that comes to you. There is no way to interact with the world at all without that personal lens affecting it.

So the problem is not with personal interpretation per se, but with subjective interpretation.  The word of God is objective truth. If by rejecting "personal/private interpretation" all you meant was that Scripture is not theological putty that I can reshape at a whim to conform to my personal preferences and defects of mind and soul, then I would gladly agree with you.  But as I understand it, the typical Catholic meaning assigned here goes well beyond that, to imply a monopoly on comprehending the word of God held by an elite within a single human ("visible") organization.  It is the latter view to which I object, for reasons which I hope to show are consistent with Peter's own argument concerning the origin of Scripture.

For one thing, a great deal of interpretation has already occurred by the time the phrase "personal interpretation" shows up in these discussions. The original text never even uses a word that directly translates as "personal" or "private."

(Greek sidebar: The Greek word thus translated is ιδιας ("idais"). Here it means "of one's own," being in the genitive, though really it is in the feminine, not the neuter.  This is an odd property of the Greek, in that words are often grouped to show relationship by conforming the gender to the main term, but with no necessary implication of actual gender in the other words of the group. This idea is awkward to represent in English, so we default to using the neuter "of one's own.")

The main term in this gender-group phrase is epiluseis, what we might see as "interpretation," or here more likely "disclosure." Compare for example Acts 20:3, where the critical text (though not the Byzantine) contains the expression εγενετο γνωμης.  This is speaking of Paul's resolve to go to Macedonia. Like 2Peter 1:20, the base verb is ginomai ("to come into being"), not estin ("to be"). And like 2Peter1:20, the noun gnomes ("opinion/resolution") is in the genitive, which in this scenario depicts source or origin, thus the genitive points us back to ginomai to describe the origin of the opinion/resolution. The simple translation would then be "[he] came to be of the opinion ..." or more loosely "[he] arrived at the resolution to ..." In other words, we now know something about the origin of Paul's resolution to go through Macedonia. There was a time when it was not, and then it came into being.

This is exactly the structure of 2Peter 1:20. For any given prophecy, there was a point in time when it did not exist.  Then it came to be. That's why the verb is ginetai, not estin. Peter is addressing how it came to be, because he wishes to assert that the prophetic text is NOT fable, but comes to us directly from God.

BTW, I have noted your argument that if the KJV's "private interpretation" is ambiguous as to whether he speaks of the reader or the prophet, you contend that ambiguity can be resolved by determining who is Peter's audience, such that if the audience is primarily Jewish they have no need to be reminded of the divine origin of Scripture, and therefore the focus must be the reader, not the prophet. Then you proceed to marshal evidence that the audience in other places is presumed aware of Jewish biblical traditions, and this diminishes the probability Peter was addressing Gentiles, despite the potentially conflicting evidence of the addressees listed.

That is certainly a creative argument, but I do not think it holds water, for the simple reason that both Jew and Gentile are human, and by definition in need of constant reminding of important divine truths. Consider the Lord's Supper. Why did Jesus say, in plain terms, we should do this? To remember Him. You would ask, how could it be forgotten? Not only were the apostles Jewish, but they lived with Messiah in person.  Yet here is Jesus telling them to do this in remembrance of Him. Indeed, the passover itself was given as a celebration of the exodus, to remember the deliverance Israel received from God, liberation from bondage in Egypt, yet Israel would forget time and time again, as a nation, and fall into idolatry and need to be delivered yet again, after being reminded by God to whom they belonged.

So I do not think the Jewish audience factor has any bearing on the question of what is being said in verses 20-21.  The structure and grammar and purpose within the flow is all about setting up the contrast between a true message of divine origin versus a false message of human origin. I do not see how to evade that, least of all with the question of who the audience was, and remains to this day. It is all believers who wish to keep in mind the authenticity of God's promises, and especially the promise of Christ's return in glory, despite a discouraging torrent of unbelief, so that we may remain faithful to Him until that happy reunion.

So let's get back to Peter's game plan for this book. We agree he wanted to protect his flock from false teaching and the harmful divisions it brings. His method is where we disagree. Of course he is concerned about wrong interpretation of Scripture, and he expresses that elsewhere, warning against those who "are unlearned and unstable" twisting the Scriptures (2Peter 3:16).

But his focus is establishing the truth claims of Christian faith by eyewitness testimony of the glory of Christ, and the even better testimony of the Spirit-driven Scriptures. This is like preparing someone to recognize counterfeit money. The method is NOT to catalog all possible variations of error.  Nor is it to deny someone the ability to objectively review the authenticity of the currency for themselves.  To the contrary, the technique is to firmly establish the true pattern in the minds of everyone who will have contact with the false patterns, so that they may spot the false by noting it's disagreement with the true. And that is exactly what Peter is doing here. He's making all of them "truth detectors," by confirming to their hearts and minds the authenticity of the apostolic and Scriptural witness, which is the single best defense against heresy in any form.

As for your commentary on the definition of heresy, I note you are using Strong's definition. Nothing wrong with that, except it is overstating the case to speak of "self-choice" as the raw etymology.  αἵρεσις ("hairesis") is more purely just "a choice." Then it moved beyond it's etymology (as most words do) and came to mean sect or school.  The Louw-Nida lexicon uses semantic categories that account for these shifts away from etymological roots and get at the sense of a word in its contextual usage, and it describes two usage categories for the term:

33.241 αἵρεσιςb, εως f: the content of teaching which is not true—‘false teaching, untrue doctrine, heresy.’ οἵτινες παρεισάξουσιν αἱρέσεις ἀπωλείας ‘they will bring in false teachings which are destructive’ 2 Pe 2:1.

63.27 αἵρεσιςc, εως f: a division of people into different and opposing sets—‘division, separate group.’ δεῖ γὰρ καὶ αἱρέσεις ἐν ὑμῖν εἶναι ‘for it is necessary that divisions exist among you’ or ‘the existence of divisions among you is inevitable’ 1 Cor 11:19.

See also Liddell and Scott: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=ai(/resis

So while one can certainly infer that one must make an individual choice to follow false teaching, one must also make an individual choice to follow true teaching.  Therefore "self-choice" factors out.  It's not the complaint Peter has. On the contrary, Peter wants each of his readers to choose, personally, to follow the apostolic witness, confirmed as true by eye-witness testimony, but verified by an even more certain testimony, the word of God given to the prophets, not by some secret, personal mediation of the message, but as mere mail-carriers for the Holy Spirit.

Now I have no doubt these false teachers tried to bolster their position among the gullible by claiming such secret revelations, alleging for themselves some "edge" in getting in with God.  If so, this would almost seem to suggest they were the precursors of the coming gnostic syncretism, which tried to infiltrate Christianity in the First and Second Century. They seem given over to lust, whether for money or for sex or for souls.  They appear to be some group that was expert at justifying their carnality while at the same time convincing the gullible they were spiritually superior to the apostles themselves, which evidently is one of the dignities against which they railed.

All of this is consistent with the gnostic incursion, because one of the principles of their dualism was they imagined they could be spiritually enlightened through their secret knowledge (which apparently had something to do with pagan temple prostitutes), yet carry on in wild, libertine excess, because deeds done in the material self were irrelevant to the spiritual self. So they found a way to make a living by telling people they could have their cake and eat it too.  And I agree with Peter.  Their condemnation is just, and they will pay a horrible price for their wickedness and how they inflicted it on the tender sheep of Christ's flock.

But in none of this does Peter discourage his readers to defer all theological thinking to an elite. Exactly the opposite. The false teachers he excoriates were the very ones trying to become that elite. His solution? Simply telling his readers they can trust his eyewitness testimony, and even more so they can trust the Scriptures, to tell them the truth, so that they may, as you have rightly said, remain steadfast in the faith until the day our Lord returns.

2Pe 3:17-18  Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.  (18)  But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.

May it be so.

Peace,

SR

[Springfield Reformer]

In the last paragraph, “discourage his readers” should be “encourage his readers.” Typo, and no droid auto-correct to blame. :(

[NKP_Vet]

The truth of the matter is who will make it to heaven is a lot like trying out for a sports team. Except with a football team you go to training camp and hopefully you make the cut, you make the team.

The life of a Christian is constantly living your life according to the Will of God, knowing that if you live it according to his Commandments, you have a chance at making the final cut, and making the team, i.e., heaven.

No one knows who is in heaven. No one, but if you want to get there, you know what training and commitment it takes. Get busy. Only God knows whether a person has made it to heaven or not. And we absolutely do not know who has gone to hell. God judges your soul and no one else.

[CynicalBear]

>> Only God knows whether a person has made it to heaven or not.<<

And still Catholics pray to so called “saints in heaven”. Now you tell me you don’t even know if they are in heaven or not? And you claim you don’t even know if Mary is in heaven or not yet rely on her to advocate for you? What utter hypocrisy! If Catholics could only see how ridiculous their words and actions make them out to be.

[delchiante]

Yes, Yahshua/Joshua is perfect and sinless..and that counts too if one only knows Him as Jesus (as we all start out there)- but what the church teaches and how they worship Jesus veers off from what can be proved scripturally- and that is my whole point..

And the very big events in His life- His birth, circumcision, dedication in temple, baptism, death burial and resurrect in happened in perfect timing to appointed times and set times Our Father gave Israel in Torah..

The Messiah did come and lives forever more as our Savior and King. HalleluYah!

But the church’s version has more greco roman latin traits than Torah.. If we expect to boldly state The Word (Torah) became flesh and dwelt among us, we should see Torah in some places when testing and proving..

Many even see christmas and easter being ‘hijacked’ with santa and the bunny and believers get upset that those sacred days have lost meaning.

Maybe those with that opinion could then understand how every new moon, sabbath and feast in scripture He created to point to His Son, also has been ignored or conterfeited and have lost their True meaning.

church has taught us a story that has been handed down- practically the whole world closes down december 25 in worship of the Savior of the world.. now, after studying and proving these things, that is more Tammuz worship than Torah.. tammuz isn’t truth.

The spiritual Israel is not much different than the physical Israel..
It took physical Israel only 40 days with no Moses to make and worship the golden calf.. how soon they forgot all their Elohim did for them...

Spiritual Israel,christendom, has its own golden calves and it has taken longer than 40 days to build them..

When Messiah comes back and down off His mountain, I don’t want to be holding or worshipping those ‘sacred’ golden calves..

May He bless your journey more than He has mine..

[delchiante]

Cynical ,
His grace is awesome.. and I agree on those gentile duties.. we truly are free..

But what if christendom is just one big ‘idol’ where the enemy has copied the Word and created his own savior at the same time? And all of our lives, our food, are consecrated and dedicated to a look alik idol that looks and feels like the real thing? A truly ‘in place of messiah’ or an anti Messiah or a pseudo messiah as scripture says will come..sounds crazy and nonsensical but I didnt expect to have Him draw me away from church either.

Thankfully, I was able to reject december 25 and easter as lies, of which christendom holds as sacred golden calves.
The church can’t reject december 25 or easter as lies.. and why would they? The world is run on its calendar. No reason to repent from lies..

We need His grace but we don’t have to accept lies to keep having that grace abound.
enough lies and we may actually be led to follow what scripture calls pseudo christos, pseudo prophets, and anti(in place of) messiah that holds tradition as equal with scripture.

You and I dont accept the same premise..
I see enough counterfeits of scripture to make me very uncomfortable with christendom that I didnt see just two years ago...not the words..
but the worship life..

And satan versus our Heavenly Father is all about worship..

[CynicalBear]

>>But what if christendom is just one big ‘idol’<<

Let’s just stop right there. God saw fit to preserve enough of the Greek manuscripts to give us His word. Along with the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament we can be assured by faith that God has preserved for us what we need. If we don’t have that faith in God we have nothing anyway.

What you call “Christendom” has many sects that have added to or taken away from the words of those texts. You and I both realize that “christmans” and “easter” are pagan and not condoned by scripture. We determined that by the words found in those preserved scriptures. We rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit not the words of man. He will lead those who God is calling to be His. As far as the calendar is concerned we still have to live in this world. We are not under the laws of the old calendar. Yes we can understand it and understand God’s timing but as long as we are in this world we will be constrained in some ways to use that calendar. It’s not something that affects our service or dedication to God.

>> I see enough counterfeits of scripture to make me very uncomfortable with christendom that I didnt see just two years ago<<

I have enough trust in God’s promise to preserve His word for “all generations” to believe that the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament texts we have are indeed His infallible word. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit as He promised we can be assured that if we diligently seek Him with faith in Christ alone for our salvation God will not abandon or forsake us.

Don’t think for a minute that God didn’t realize how muddied things would get after the apostles passed from this world. His gift of this dispensation of grace was for a reason. Faith alone in Christ alone.

[boatbums]

Well done! I think this is a great example of the true value to be realized in the Free Republic Religion Forum. Others may get sidetracked by the sniping and insults often deployed by some who only view these threads as anonymous outlets for their own temper tantrums, but there continues to be jewels of knowledge and understanding put forth by folks like you who sincerely seek to make Christ known and to edify and encourage believers. Thank you for your patient input!

[caww]

WoW!.....Cynical, for any who pray to anyone they don't believe/know are in heaven is dangerous...not just hypocrisy. It reveals their lost condition or at least a shattered faith.

Jesus promised us a place with him at death.....so not believing that promise for individuals who have claimed his name is also calling him a liar.

More could be said about this...but I think those who pray to anyone other then Jesus are on very unstable ground in the first place. ...He alone is sovereign....the departed have nothing to do with us once they are gone.

[af_vet_1981]

There are a fair number of issues here in which we substantially agree.

I think so too. As to personal interpretation, it is when it does not conform to the interpretation of the LORD himself that it can become the poison that infects and enables the wolf packs to scatter and take the sheep. The problem is determining that interpretation, and as to whether the LORD left a holy catholic apostolic church founded upon the apostles and prophets, Jesus the Messiah being the chief cornerstone, as an ever present visible fellowship of churches in every century since, against whom the gates of hades did not prevail, as a witness and teaching authority to differentiate between truth and error rather than thousands of denominations and sects, not to mention cults, where it is everyone for himself. Jesus prayed his church into unity, and the adversary came with heresies to scatter and destroy.

[CynicalBear]

>> WoW!.....Cynical, for any who pray to anyone they don't believe/know are in heaven is dangerous...not just hypocrisy.<<

It’s sad isn’t it? I wonder if they even realize what they say. I’m inclined to think not. They simply repeat what they have been taught with little or no thought.

[caww]

....”They simply repeat what they have been taught with little or no thought”.....

If they find themselves doing just that...then they need to search themselves to see just what 'relationship' they have with the Lord....for he frowns basically on repetition. I often think perhaps why they have so many rituals and idols....if one thing isn't working for them they move to the next or vary it from one day to the next.

I rather enjoy just speaking with the Lord anytime, and often do. Having to pick through which departed soul to go to seems silly at best and dangerous at it's worst... demons love to impersonate the departed...and do.

[delchiante]

Daniel 7:25
He shall speak pompous words against the Most High,
Shall persecute[a] the saints of the Most High,
And shall intend to change times and law

Rev 12:9
 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Isaiah 14:12-14
 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Satan since the beginning desired to be ‘like’ the Most High..

Satan has counterfeited ‘time’ He has made for himself, with man as his vessel, a counterfeit world system that has ignored scripture, but has kept the ‘seven’ day principle to not be so far off that people who read His Word can call it fake..

We can just look at some words we all know and we can see just how much we accept from the world versus His Word..
Day, week, month, year.

Day- the world says a day begins at midnight- that is nowhere in His Holy Word- we can find evidence to the contrary.. we do even find some days are indefinite, some 12 hours long and some 24 hours long in His Word.

Week- the world says it consists of days with gods, goddesses, and creation given their own day- that is nowhere in His Holy Word and we can find evidence of Him numbering days and not giving them names..

Month-the world says a poem to tell us which god/goddess/numbered months have how many days- that is nowhere in His Holy Word- the word ‘month’’in Hebrew is the same word for ‘new moon’, hodesh,- His Creation tells us when a month begins but the world ignores it.

Year- the world says a year begins on January 1st- that is nowhere in His Holy Word- their is evidence that a year could mean a growing season or a circuit of the sun that will bring in the beginning of the months in the spring, not winter.

I don’t know what the pope gregory calendar fully represents in scripture except that it has done the job of counterfeiting our Heavenly Father’s calendar, has hidden His Sabbath and has allowed counterfeit holy days to take the place of His Holy days in His Word, all the while giving an appearance of being ‘’biblical’..

That seems more like an adversarial tool to me than one that will point to our Heavenly Father’s creative and redemptive works.

And praise Yah, I can reject the world and its ruler, satan,as counterfeit and a liar and celebrate and commemorate His awesome creative and redemptive works that He gives us in His sky, His Calendar, His Word and His Son.

HalleluYah!

Or I can be part of the world and commemorate in ignorance Moon, Tiw, Woden, Thor Friya, Saturn, or the Sun with their pope gregory days each week.

[CynicalBear]

And you sign legal documents with what dates on them? Listen, I understand what you are saying but we live in this world. I don’t think you understood my last post when I said God knew what He was doing with this “dispensation of grace”. If you want to feel guilty not following the laws go right ahead but don’t try to force that guilt on others.

[delchiante]

Grace does not get dispensated to those who have been ‘marked’.

The seal of Yah is counterfeited with a mark of the enemy.His seal and the enemy’s mark will denote ownership.

We can see today we do not have a physical sealing on our hands and foreheads so we can expect the enemy to also have an invisible mark.

I see counterfeits of what God has given us today.. you don’t.. most don’t..

But a question- if satan has counterfeited time, has counterfeit His calendar, counterfeit His sabbath day and holy days, and man teaches those and accepts the counterfeits as their truth-
could following or observing those counterfeits be proof of being obedient to the one who gave us the counterfeits? Could that denote ownership in a spiritual sense?
I think that is a fair question..

I mean, that is an awful lot of unscriptural stuff that runs and rules one’s entire life.
Is the world to be our guide or is it the bible?

that certainly was a punch in the gut to me...

Kind of like His words, ‘they honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me’..
Just living out our work and worship lives, accepting the counterfeits taught, that are really underwritten by our enemy.

Today is Thor’s Day on the enemy’s timekeeping..

It is the third day of His work week on our Heavenly Father’s calendar.
Genesis tells us what He did on the Third day.

What did Thor do for us to get his own day every week?

This isn’t about following laws..it is about worship and the enemy stealing worship.
And the thought that maybe he has set up his very own counterfeits and boxed them into the world of religion today and have billions on a trip to the lake of fire..well, that seems far more pertinent than women clergy or gay marriage or other topics in the religion forum..
If the church follows, teaches and worships counterfeit lies, that is not a guilt trip. That is making an eternally significant wrong choice between our Heavenly Father and the enemy forever.

I dont know if enough people understand playing for keeps.. and the path is narrow that leads to Him.. and few find it scripture says.
Will I get there? I am less like Rahab today than I was two years ago.. two years ago I said grace, grace, grace, grace, too...

And by that amazing Grace, He didn’t let me become a member of the church I was attending (or any other) when I was on that path of membership, which is why I commented on the forum post.
I didn’t learn what I now today because of church. I learned it in spite of it..and He was my teacher and still is..
And now, I know part of the ‘why’. because it didn’t make sense at all then.

But today, it makes a lot of sense why He said no to my church membership. I mean, I never have been a member of any church even though I associated with a particular denomination during my life. And the one time, I was ‘ready’, He said No.

It wouldn’t make sense to a lifer in any church or to those whenever they moved to a new city, who search dilligently for a new church home-it all
certainly wouldnt make sense to a pastor, preacher, minister, evangelist, priest, rabbi, etc, either.

But His calendar and timekeeping doesnt make sense to them, either.
I can live with being off the beaten path if the world of business,
politics and religion can see to live and let live..

But I doubt my old corporate company job would allow me take four Tuesdays off in a row when that is His Sabbath day. I could use PTO and vacation pay but that would require lots of paid time off in my bucket for the year just to obey His Sabbath Day- man, I wouldnt be able to use those for any fancy vacations.

The five day work week, I probably would be told, is for work. Saturday and Sunday are for the Sabbaths.choose one as ‘we are closed on those two days.
Well, Praise be to Yah, we have another choice! And it certainly is a narrow path that business, governments and religions would find opposite to the way the world’s business(business, government and religion) is done..

I am okay with that. I proudly say the world doesn’t own me anymore..

HalleluYah!