Posted on 08/21/2005 1:18:04 AM PDT by MRMEAN
Yes.
No. John 9 and Ezekiel 18 that claim. In John 9, God points out where that idea comes from.
refutes...
God points out where that idea comes from.
I don't understand this statement. Could you expand on it?
In the very primitive societies that mostly existed pre the written word the opportunities to make such demonstrations would be rare.
a. The power-base of the existing controllers of knowledge is threatened by innovation. They would typically be tribal shamans who might or might not believe in the religion that was their power-source. But any threat to the status quo is a potential threat to their tribal standing. These guys would tell interesting campfire history stories about global floods that killed everyone who wasn't Godly enough. Godliness and orthodoxy would be central to tribal acceptability.
b. When almost everyone except the shaman is engaged in a daily hand-to-mouth struggle for existence no-one has any surplus to invest in innovation.
c. Scientific enquiry in such societies would be virtually non-existent. When almost any failed experiment could spell death the pressure on the behalf of orthodoxy would be large.
d. The contact between neighbouring tribes would necessarily be very limited, and usually conflicted. Knowledge and innovation, when it came, would not travel fast. Most people (except for nomads) would live and die within 10 miles of their birthplace, and would rarely talk to anyone outside their immediate circle.
So for 100,000+ years for all these reasons progress was extremely slow (probably exponential, just like it is today, but in the flat far-left portion of the exponential curve)
Why is repentance required for acting as our created nature inevitably makes us act. We have been made so that we cannot avoid sin. Why therefore blame us for an unavoidable failure?
It is up to each of us to choose to repent & experience the reward of eternal life with Him. If we had no choice in it, what would justify giving us that reward?
Let me invert that question. The amount that a human can sin is necessarily finite. Yet the punishment for the sin of failure to repent is (at least) the witholding of an infinite reward; an infinite punishment. How can any finite sin be deserving of an infinite punishment? Only a being of infinite sadism and evil would tolerate such an equation. How can one justify witholding an infinite reward for a finite offence?
Now I think I see where you were going. No, that is not what I was talking about, not at all. I'll have to do some work to explain what I meant to you, so please be patient.
Return to Genesis and reread the Garden of Eden account. God didn't create the evil in man. God created man with a dominion and volition. Man chose to disobey God's will and rebelled when Adam submitted to temptation instead of obeying the mandate of God.
In his dying he would surely die. Man died spiritually from a fellowship with God, although still retaining a body and soul. All mankind since Adam, except for our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, were born with body and soul, but dead to God in our spirit from sin. Jesus Christ, was born the second Adam, complete in body, soul and spirit, and as God Incarnate is the Word of God.
God, being perfect holiness, which is perfect righteousness and perfect justice, demands justice whenever unrighteousness occurs in His presence. With respect to sin and the consequences of Adam's sin in the Garden, our Lord Christ Jesus provided a sacrifice on the Cross for Adam and the sin of all mankind, thereby satisfying God's perfect justice.
Once paid, there is no righteous impediment to God providing us with a regenerated spirit by His grace. We are told that just as the faith of Christ was righteous, so to our faith in Him is counted for righteousness.
The question of sin has been dealt with accordingly. The issues of good and evil must still be resolved in time.
Our susceptibility to sin isn't evil, it is a freedom. If we choose to exercise our volition knowlingly or unknowingly in that freedom and sin, our unrighteousness demands justice in order to return into fellowship with Him.
When we disobey Him and fail to return on our own, He disciplines those He loves and from our perspective as sinners, that discipline is punishment, but from a righteous perspective, that same discipline is love. That isn't evil, that is good and righteous and love.
*** So human rights are not granted by the gods, but secured by the security by which you hold your property.***
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."
Is this not self-evident to you?
We are not born with sin period. That includes the sin of Adam. Canon 1 of the Council of Orange is wrong and so was Augustine.
The Canons of the Council of Orange (529 AD)
CANON 1. "If anyone denies that it is the whole man, that is, both body and soul, that was "changed for the worse" through the offense of Adam's sin, but believes that the freedom of the soul remains unimpaired and that only the body is subject to corruption, he is deceived by the error of Pelagius and contradicts the scripture which says, "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezek. 18:20); and, "Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey?" (Rom. 6:16); and, "For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved" (2 Pet. 2:19)."
See John 9 the blind man and his parents were w/o sin. God never says they had any sin at all and the man healed refused to bad mouth Jesus. Then at the end out of pure frustration, this happened: John 9:30-34
The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."
To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out. Spiritual Blindness
Take note! The Jews didn't believe in original sin. The concept was foreign to them. See Enoch in Gen 5 and Noah in Gen 6:9. The doctrine of original sin was created by man.
Then God says the following to the man and the Pharisees: John 9:39-41
Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."
Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?"
Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
Notice God's last words here indicate unequivocally, that sin and the guilt of sin require a conscious choice. The only conscious choice made in the doctrine of original sin is to conjure it up out of thin air in the first place.
"Return to Genesis and reread the Garden of Eden account. God didn't create the evil in man. God created man with a dominion and volition. Man chose to disobey God's will and rebelled when Adam submitted to temptation instead of obeying the mandate of God."
Adam and Eve had no knowledge of right and wrong before they ate the apple. You can't commit a sin if you are incapable of knowing right from wrong. God knew when he made Adam and Eve that they would eat the apple, yet he still created them ignorant and weak. The sin was God's. And the damning of the rest of humanity because of the *sin* of Adam and Eve is an abomination.
I was born innocent, free from sin. It is not POSSIBLE for me to have acted immorally before I was born.
Now, I don't believe in the Bible account anyway. I don't really believe in a God that is that cruel.
I have already forgotten how this came up in the thread; it might be better if we just all drop it and move on.
Nonsense.
"How can any finite sin be deserving of an infinite punishment?"
Matthew 12:32
"Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
You don't end up in hell for committing finite sin. Rejecting the Holy Spirit is not a finite sin. It's a lifestyle choice. It indicates exactly where your heart is.
It's not.
We have been made so that we cannot avoid sin.
We are made so we do not avoid sin, not so that was can not avoid sin.
Why therefore blame us for an unavoidable failure?
Who is blaming us?
Let me invert that question. The amount that a human can sin is necessarily finite. Yet the punishment for the sin of failure to repent is (at least) the witholding of an infinite reward; an infinite punishment. How can any finite sin be deserving of an infinite punishment? Only a being of infinite sadism and evil would tolerate such an equation.
The "infinite punishment" is akin to the eternity most atheists believe we all get now. How is giving someone what they expect a punishment? When you can create a universe, you can create it with the rules you think are more fair.
How can one justify witholding an infinite reward for a finite offence?
Why would anyone want an eternity with someone they don't want in their life now?
No. It's not obvious to me. What is obvious to me is that many people, but not all, refuse to be bullied.
There is no right not to be bullied. It's something that individuals fight and die for, and for a few, it's something their culture or their government enforces by law.
There are many denominations and Scripturally doctrines whic touch upon avoidance and repentance of sin, as well as doctrines of salvation and sanctification. Accordingly, there are many Christians who study these doctrines and Scripture and understand that in their continuing fellowship with the Lord and living with salvation, repentance or turning away from sin and returning to God by His protocols is the first step for a believer to continue to walk with God.
There maybe some confusion, though, regarding repentance as a necessary step for salvation. If you are exposed to a person demanding you turn away from what they call sin, before they are willing to acknowledge you might have salvation, there is a strong chance that the same person demanding repentance and tearful sorrow for your past actions isn't actually in fellowship with God themselves.
Most doctrine regarding repentance is structured for post-salvation sin. Even after salvation, we still have a thinking nature in our bodies which tempts us, even a naturally causes us to do things we don't want to do in our regenerated spirit as we are rightous before God. That nature is called the old sin nature, the old man, the natural man, our scarred soul, and a number of other epithets.
The old sin nature wasn't created by God. It was a consequence of Adam sinning and stepping away from God, resulting in a fallen spirit, separated from righteousness of God.
All if us today, without any faith in God, were condemned by God in the condemnation of Adam as a consequence of His sin. We are already lacking in eternal life because of that separation from God that occurred in Eden. It's a little but like a system state.
Imagine a telecoping boom crane as Adam. Adam is warned by the boss not to move the crane up near some power lines. Unknown to Adam, the crane is grounded and he is insulated, but if the crane encroaches upon the power lines, one function of the crane will cease to operate. It will fry the boom hydraulic pumps. Adam is tempted by a coworker helper to to lean the boom on the wires to help steady the bucket and the democratic socialist boom truck salesman encourages him to do it because the line won't surely unstabilize the bucket. Adam acquieses and lowers the boom against the line, the hydraulics leak out and the bucket lowers and Adam isn;t able to raise it up anymore.
Now the boss returns and calls for Adam. Adam comes out conscientious because he isn't in the bucket anymore and now he realizes it and was trying to build a ladder.
The boss does two things. One, he kicks Adam out of the company until he can do something the boss recognizes as righteous. He then tells the salesman from now on the remainder of the workers are always going to hate him and the salesman might hurt them, but they'll remove his head.
Now comes the boss's Son and He pays the price to fix the crane. Adam can come back, but doesn't mean all the new employees are 20 ft in the air when come back in. They are still in a state at the lower level when they start and only through faith in Him do they raise up in the boom again.
If the new workers don't operate the crane, or even get in the bucket, they are already on the ground.
Were you born with a regenerated spirit? If so, you are only the third person in all humanity to have done so and have made God a liar. I suspect you might not have as righteous a spirit naturally within you as one might think.
Gen 3:2-3 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"
Blows that claim don't it.
"the damning of the rest of humanity because of the *sin* of Adam and Eve is an abomination.
Yeah, life and Free will are terrible aren't they.
Well, I wouldn't say that certain rights are inherent within the individual but the desire to have certain rights.
Rights are always granted by others. If rights were inherent to a person, you could go to Saudi Arabia or North Korea and they couldn't do sh!t if you criticized the sheik or the Beloved Leader.
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