Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
Probably, lol
Thanks tons for your kind words.
I printed that post this morning and brought it to work with me, A-G. I read it on smoke breaks both at the P.O. and while continuing spring cleaning this afternoon. You’ve encouraged me more than you will likely know in this lifetime. But Our Father will tell you, show you, one day. Hallelujah.
Got references to back this up? My contention is biblical: souls are not pre-fabricated.
Here is one that all three of you may ponder: from How are Human Souls Created, a Christian site (with my emphases): Answer: There are two primary views on how the soul / spirit is created. (1) Traducianism is the theory that a soul is generated by the physical parents along with the body. Support for Traducianism is as follows: (A) In Genesis 2:7 God breathed the breath of life into Adam, something which did not happen again. (B) Adam had a son in his own likeness (Genesis 5:3). (C) God did no further creating (Genesis 2:2-3). (D) Adam's sin affects all men -- both physically and spiritually -- this makes sense if the body and soul / spirit come from the parents. (2) Creationism is the view that God creates a new soul / spirit when a human being is conceived. Creationism was held by many church fathers and also has Scriptural support. First, Scripture differentiates the origin of the soul from the origin of the body (Ecclesiastes 12:7, Isaiah 42:5, Zechariah 12:1, Hebrews 12:9). Second, if God creates each individual soul at the moment it is needed, the separation of soul and body is held firm. The ultimate answer to the question is that the soul / spirit does not exist before it inhabits the body. Whether the Traducianist view is correct or the Creationist view is correct, both agree that the soul does not exist prior to conception. Recommended Resource: In His Image by Brand & Yancey. Question: "How are human souls / spirits created?”
The pre-existence theory is decisively non-Christian, and non-Jewish: it is Gnostic and pagan. Among the more (in)famous Gnostics were Valentius, the almost-pope (c 175 AD), and Origen (c 200 AD). They both taught pre-existence of the souls.
The fact that +Paul teaches is it simply shows what most Christians are not aware of: that, I am sorry to say, many of his statements appear to smack of Gnosticism.
I understand what is being said, my contention is that we are using mathematical (man-made) boxes through which we can not "completely understand" the way Creation truly is no matter how many complementary "elements" (observational platforms) we create.
Seems to me that many people anthropomorphize God by thinking of Him as existing within a timeline (past, present, future) like we sense time passing.
It would be irrational for such a one to believe that God has never not known us.
For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. - Hebrews 4:3
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. - Rev 13:8
I thank God for you!
Because the Higgs field/boson (ordinary mass) has neither yet been observed nor made at Fermilab or CERN, many physicists are suggesting that particles may indeed be massless, their apparent masses correspondending to higher dimensional momentum components which cannot be detected. And P.S. Wesson suggests that the 1080 particles of our perceptible universe may actually be a single particle in a fifth time-like dimension multiply-imaged.
I find all this quite interesting and strongly agree that there is much we cannot understand about the physical creation much less "all that there is."
But the universe is intelligible precisely because it is structured, i.e. it is mathematical at the root. (Wigner's Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - further discussed by Cumrun Vafa here)
Therefore I very strongly disagree that mathematics is a creation of man. That is the Aristotlean paradigm.
Instead, I assert that God created an intelligible, structured universe which is mathematical at the root and thus we are able to discover physical laws, physical constants, mathematical structures and geometries - universals - which enable us to "have dominion."
IOW, I hold to the mathematical Platonist paradigm which says that the mathematics (and geometry) exists and the mathematician comes along and discovers it. Man didn't create pi, circles, Mandelbrot sets and so on - he discovered them.
Reimmanian geometry is also an example. It was described long before there was any use for it and yet when Einstein needed a means to describe general relativity, he was able to pull it off the shelf.
God is outside of time and predestines as our time marches on. This is the Catholic and generally pre-Reformation teaching. What I am saying is that one can write from the timelessness of God point of view, and one can write from the indivudual-in-time point of view. To the individual the election appears lost. To God, of course, there has never been an election.
OK, so in Catholicism, there is no sense of predestination or election as those words are used in the English. That is what I wanted to confirm. What you describe is a re-vamp of your salvation model, God plus man gives a chance of salvation.
Again, I direct you to the most lucid explanation by Bishop Minatios On Predestination; we discussed it at length on the Erasmus thread.
I apologize for not remembering. I frequently do need to hear things more than once for them to sink in. :) But honestly, from your link, it seemed that the Bishop's message was basically: "We have no idea what predestination and election mean, it is a great mystery of God. Therefore, revert to the Church's teachings on free-will salvation, and ............ that is the same thing as predestination." I must admit that I was uninspired. :)
The New Testament documents are not claiming to be B.C. as is the LXX.
According to this logic (I agree with Bruce) copies of ciopies, removed hundreds ofyears from originals (if there were complete originals) is not enough to retro-engineer any piece of OT/NT without having the original.
We do not need the Originals to get the perfect copy of what they said.
If we had lost the original copy of the Constitution, we could still reproduce it accurately by the copies that were made of it and references made to it in various documents.
What you cannot do is use the A.D. LXX to change the MT which is B.C..
Doing so, necessarily makes the Bible a human product. Also, the fact that some of the Hebrew language DSS agree with pre-Christian fragments of LXX shows that there was no single Jewish canon.
No, the Bible is God's product in which He used human beings to produce and preserve.
As far as the different Hebrew text type, that has nothing to do with the Jewish Canon, no more than the differing text types in the Greek affect the Christian Canon.
It only means that like the Greek, a corrupt Hebrew text was produced, and that Origen used that Hebrew text to edit the LXX.
Thus, todays LXX stands as a 3rd century A.D. witness to a particular translation it doesn't represent any B.C. translation.
But we have already discussed this ad nauseum.
Well, some 'lurkers' might want to know that these are facts and not just the opinion of a 'extremist Lutheran scholar'
No, Adam was made a perfect man, without sin.
The Angels were created also perfect, without sin.
A perfect God is totally capable of creating perfect beings.
So Christ was born without sin and thus, the Second Adam, representing mankind (Rom.5).
Christ had two natures and two wills, thus His human will just as able to reject the will of the Father as that of the first Adam
Nope. That would make Him imperfect. There was no possibility for Christ to sin. His two wills are in perfect harmony.
Well, according to your own Church, you are a heretic, denying the pronouncement of 6th major ecumenical Council
The Council's Pronouncement "Christ had two natures with two activities: as God working miracles, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven; as Man, performing the ordinary acts of daily life. Each nature exercises its own free will."(emphasis added) Christ's divine nature had a specific task to perform and so did His human nature. Each nature performed those tasks set forth without being confused, subjected to any change or working against each other. The two distinct natures and related to them activities were mystically united in the one Divine Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8069.asp<
Christ's human will had to make a decision to obey the will of the Father, which His Divine will did not have to make.
The Trinity is made up of three persons who share the same divine essence
Which is godliness or deity. There is no "His" (Christ's) deity; it's the same essence of the Father and the Holy Ghost.
Christ has two natures, one Divine and one Human.
To deny that is to deny the 3rd Ecumenical Council's pronouncment,
Jesus Christ and the Son of God, Logos. The Council decreed that Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Logos), is complete God and complete man, with a rational soul and body. http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8066.asp<
Well of course not, you have your own personal theological system going, that rejects what the Bible says and what your own Church teaches
That makes me a "Protestant" I suppose. They are just my opinions. I defer to the Church in the final analysis; a Protestant remains his own "pontiff."
No, a Protestant is under the authority of the Bible.
You 'defer' to the Church but you reject what it teaches in these major doctrines.
In other words, you give 'lip service' to them, professing to believe them, but in reality rejecting them.
I hope others of the Orthodox faith take note of your rejection of your own Church dogma, which you have denied in these posts.
True, because they were the Church that kept God's word
Kosta: "I think that was clear from my statement."
Oh no you don't! :) Alex knows the exact same thing that I do. While you accept the Church's teachings on any matter, you DO believe that Paul, as revealed to us in scripture, was WRONG. I have perceived this belief in many of your recent posts. For example, in 13,523 you said:
Fact is, the Church does not teach Paul as the Protestants interpret him because the Church concentrates on other apostolic teachings and find a common denominator or the most prevalent denominator as the orthodox teaching. The protestants simply take Paul as the standard and fit or reject the rest.
... For obvious reasons, the Church will never say that any one of the Apostles was wrong. But at the same time, the Church will not build its theology based on one of them, even an essential one (who also happens to be a controversial self-appointed later-comer whose teachings were not always in synch with the rest).
You don't say the Church interprets Paul another way, you say that the Church looks to other scripture for direction. In addition, if Paul was self-appointed, then how could he be inspired? This appears to put you in a very unique situation. I mean, on the one hand, you are the one guy on the other side who will stand up and say "Yes, Paul said what he said, and meant what he meant". For that, all I can do is applaud and respect you in the fullest. Then on the other hand, when it comes to scripture actually being "wrong", I have ...... difficulty. :)
I know that beause that is what the word 'Catholic' means in Greek.
There is nothing 'Roman' about it.
Chapter 8. Let nothing be done without the bishop. See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.
Yes, and the word Bishop is in the Bible, it is simply a minster who is an overseer.
Peter states that the chief Bishop is Christ.(1Pe.2:25) What isn't in the Bible are Cardinals, Archbishops and Popes, who outrank Christ!
Was the "bishop" also a mystical one?
There are two aspects to the church, one the mystical part, in which all true believers are part of Christ's body, being His bride(Eph.1, 5).
That is the church as an organism.
Then there is the Church as an Organization for which Christ supplies Pastors, Deacons, Bishops to lead and protect it (Eph.4).
The RCC is neither.
The early churches had nothing that could identify them with the Roman Catholic Church today, including a 'Priest class'.
Once more, you have the fantasies, I have the quote above.
Once more, you reject clear scripture.
All Ignatius stated is that those Ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's supper should be administered by ministers, but they are not a special caste, since all spiritual gifts are equal (1Cor.12) and there is no special priest caste, since all believers are priests and have direct access to God, as Peter states.
Romanism did not appear until the 4th century when it combined with the State to make a Church/State religion as found in the Vatican today.
“Romanism did not appear until the 4th century when it combined with the State to make a Church/State religion as found in the Vatican today.”
Where in heaven’s name did you get this idea? Your knowledge of the One Church of the first millenium is limited at best. Frankly, it appears to me that many Protestants view the early Church through a lens distorted by the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation, the Counter Reformation and medieval Western Christianity. Remember that in the Christian East there never was a Reformation, arguably because there was no need for one. In the 4th century, the great sees of Christendom, at least insofar as size and civilization were concerned, were located East of the Adriatic. The only Patriarchial See in the West was Rome and while it held a primacy of honor at least and had produced and would produce some few great Fathers of The Church, it was really pretty small potatoes compared to the Eastern Patriarchates. When Constantine the Great legalized The Church and called the Council of Nicea, the overwhelming number of attendees were eastern hierarchs, not Romans. The result of that Council was neither what Constantine, a man with Arian sympathies, intended or expected.The Church which was legalized by Constantine and held the Council of Nicea was NOT the Roman Catholic Church your spiritual forebears rebelled against in the 1500s.
You Western Christians are free to argue with Rome all you want, call it all the names you want. For us in the East it looks like a fight between a parent and wayward children. It is no fight of our making. But it is offensive when you use your 16th century or later ecclesiastical mythology to bash Rome with what is in fact a distortion of our Eastern Christian history.
Therefore I very strongly disagree that mathematics is a creation of man. That is the Aristotlean paradigm.
Came across an interesting take on the "Aristotelian paradigm" in my reading last night, from D. S. Kothari, writing about the complementarity principle in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume (Harvard University Press, 1985):
Hideki Yukawa was once asked whether young physicists in Japan, like most young physicists in the West, found it difficult to comprehend the idea of complementarity. He replied that Bohr's complementarity always appeared to them as quite evident: "You see, we in Japan have not been corrupted by Aristotle."The implications of complementarity go well beyond applications in physics. Kothari writes, "...the principle of complementarity, which we owe principally to Niels Bohr, is perhaps the most significant and revolutionary concept of modern physics. The complementarity approach can enable people to see that seemingly irreconcilable points of view need not be contradictory. These, on deeper understanding, may be found to be complementary and mutually illuminating -- the two opposing contradictory aspects being parts of a 'totality,' seen from different perspectives. It allows the possibility of accommodating widely divergent human experiences into an underlying harmony, and bringing to light new social and ethical vistas for exploration and for alleviation of human suffering. Bohr fervently hoped that one day complementarity would be an integral part of everyone's education and would provide guidance in the problems and challenges of life." [emphasis added](LOLOL!!!)
Anyhoot, the above-mentioned "totality" is (I think) that which is fundamentally constituted by the underlying geometry, presumably from the beginning. Math (geometry) is a sort of "dimensionless existent" which man is able to discover (because it is implicit in the order of the universe -- what David Bohm referred to as the "implicate order"). Indeed, mathematical formalism and symmetry led to the discovery of certain particles -- the positron and neutrino, for example; and also a certain species of quark. In the formalism, these appeared as "holes" (there were eerily "present" in their absence, so to speak!) or something missing that ought to have been there. So the particles were predicted theoretically. In the cases of the positron and neutrino, it took a while for physical confirmation -- that had to wait until the observational/measurement tools were adequate to that task. But viola! Both particles subsequently have been "observed" experimentally.
Alamo-Girl, you wrote: "Recently, a noted biologist, Lanza, proposed that the act of observation itself causes reality." That is an extraordinarily radical idea, to say the least. It may even be true in some sense. But I'm not quite ready to speculate on that issue yet!
Thank you so much for your stimulating essay/post!
Romanism did not appear until the 4th century when it combined with the State to make a Church/State religion as found in the Vatican today.
= = =
INDEED.
Political ENGULFMENT is not at all the same thing as God’s anointing or blessing or approval.
AMEN!
A lot of conflicts hereon have to do with either/or’s
when God seems to be about the business of one of His
both/and’s.
Have said that more than a few times. Evidently in exceedingly ignorable ways! LOL.
In a sense that he knows that we would be born, live and die and how we will be judged, all at the same "time," yes! But that's hardly something we could call "rational!" Amazing, yes, rational definitely not.
To imply from this that he has prefabricated our souls is neither logical not Christian. Among the Jews, only the Pharisees accepted such pagan, neo-Platonistic notions, but not all Jews by any measure, especially not the Sadducees.
The pre-existence of the souls is intimately related to re-incarnation, which the Church always rejected. But Pharisees believed in it (when Jesus asked "But who do you say that I am?" [Mat 16:15], the disciples said John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, etc.). However, the bible does not teach reincarnation or the pre-existence of the souls.
Some early second century Christians believed in pre-existence of the souls, such as +Justin Martyr and +Clement of Alexandria, as many of the early Christian beliefs were a mix of various sects.
Origen (late second century) taught it and was condemned specifically for his teaching of pre-existence of the souls (and universal salvation) in 553 AD by the Fifth Œcumenical Council.
I am not sure what Luther and Protestants believe, but I would imagine there is a rainbow of beliefs in that regard in those communities.
This belief, on the other hand, deeply rooted in Platonism, is the core of the Gnostic amalgam of beliefs, as well as of Asian (pagan) religions. As such the pre-existence of the souls is expressly pagan (and Pharisaical Judaism was tainted by it) and un-Christian.
Acceptance of the resurrection, by necessity, rejects reincarnation and the belief in the pre-existence of the souls.
Where in heaven’s name did you get this idea? Your knowledge of the One Church of the first millenium is limited at best. Frankly, it appears to me that many Protestants view the early Church through a lens distorted by the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation, the Counter Reformation and medieval Western Christianity. Remember that in the Christian East there never was a Reformation, arguably because there was no need for one. In the 4th century, the great sees of Christendom, at least insofar as size and civilization were concerned, were located East of the Adriatic. The only Patriarchial See in the West was Rome and while it held a primacy of honor at least and had produced and would produce some few great Fathers of The Church, it was really pretty small potatoes compared to the Eastern Patriarchates. When Constantine the Great legalized The Church and called the Council of Nicea, the overwhelming number of attendees were eastern hierarchs, not Romans. The result of that Council was neither what Constantine, a man with Arian sympathies, intended or expected.The Church which was legalized by Constantine and held the Council of Nicea was NOT the Roman Catholic Church your spiritual forebears rebelled against in the 1500s.
First, my forebears were not Protestant, they were Baptists, which were never part of the RCC.
Second, Rome did as you state, hold the primary role among the areas established by Constantine after he 'legalized' it.
Thus, the State and Church united together began with Constantine in the 4th century and its 'Roman wing' with it.
You Western Christians are free to argue with Rome all you want, call it all the names you want. For us in the East it looks like a fight between a parent and wayward children. It is no fight of our making. But it is offensive when you use your 16th century or later ecclesiastical mythology to bash Rome with what is in fact a distortion of our Eastern Christian history.
Actually, the 'Byzantine' wing (Eastern) began breaking with Rome.(Western) almost immediately.
Why?
Because you did not like the idea of the Roman Pope telling you what to do
To begin with, this tragic division was not an event, but a prolonged process stretching over centuries. The cracks and fissures in Christian unity are arguably visible as early as the fourth century. (emphasis added) By the fifth century, to repeat, Christendom was divided into five sees with Rome holding the primacy. This was determined by canonical decision and did not entail hegemony of any one local church or patriarchate over the others. For all that, during the progressive alienation noted above, Rome began to interpret her primacy in terms of sovereignty, as a God-given right involving universal jurisdiction in the Church. The collegial and conciliar nature of the Church, in effect, was gradually abandoned in favor of a supremacy of unlimited papal power over the entire Church. http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7053.asp
As for your opinions on Christian disagreements with Romanism, I could care less, since your 'Church' is as 'spiritually dead' as they are.
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