Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
Love is not attainable unless we have freedom to choose or accept Love
Love that is forced is not love..
Total Depravity is the destruction of love and is essentially the definition of Hell on earth.
Christ came so we may have life and live it abundantly!
That is because the Protestant mindset is to defer to themselves and their own opinion, while those of the Church defer to the Church.
That's not right, our mindset is to defer to scripture only. Sometimes my previous opinion has disagreed with scripture, such as with OSAS. Then, once I really learn the scripture I change my opinion to agree with it. Sanctification has happened and I am the better for it. AND, my true opinion HAS indeed changed. This is the part I'm talking about.
FK: "I respectfully disagree and say that not only does MY local church not know the truth fully, but that God's Church does not know the truth fully (unless it is unknowable to the individual). Otherwise, there is no more growth and sanctification ceases."
Sanctification is not "knowing about" Christ, as if you are studying for a test on your Bible Commentary. Kosta will no doubt agree that the holiest and most saintly are often the simplest of people, people who could care less what were the various theological explanations of grace vs. free will and the Scripture quotes that back up each side. This makes your faith strictly intellectual. ...
You are inferring what I did not imply. I was clearly speaking of "THE TRUTH" as a generality (Christian). Sanctification isn't ONLY knowing "about" Christ, however, it is certainly included in knowing Him through the scriptures more and more. I don't think you would deny that. Of course there are people without Bibles who are more sanctified than I am now. That is all controlled by God. But since I DO have a Bible I am sanctified when I read it and learn to be more like Him.
This does not mean my faith is only intellectual, I just didn't speak of the spiritual side. That includes prayer and meditation. I do not think the spiritual side of faith includes putting trust into other men. "Spiritual" is between the individual and God.
Yes, Quix, this is unfortunately true. And, of those 6 or 7 major statements that Harley mentions, I find that many of them try to straddle a very important fence, without coming out on one side or the other. That is the fence between synergism and monergism. I am saddened that Baptist leaders won't take a position as a body, and I assume it is to be inclusionary. However, I think it really hurts our ability to STAND for SOMETHING theologically. So, as an SB myself, I agree with Harley that this is a weakness in our faith.
A "D" student giving out an "F" is comedy..
Now Kosta, Bro . . . a word of caution . . .
wouldn’t want you to bloody your head on the hyper-Calvinist granite wall silly notion that humans have 0.000000000000000% choice in their relationship with God.
Remember . . . Calvinist construe the whole universe, God included . . . and certainly God and lesser cogs in the vast machine . . .
as mere robotized, mechanized, pin-balls in the vast great pin ball machine in the sky.
I assume that all of them who earnestly seek God and Love Him will have their theology adjusted IN HIS TIME . . . but in the mean time . . . please avoid the bloody cranium syndrome when attempting dialogue with hyper-Calvinists.
LOL.
As I understand "total depravity", and I may well be wrong, it's simply an assertion that no aspect or faculty of the human is free of taint. Consequently, even if we choose the right thing, our choosing will be at best imperfect. Where it gets dicey in is thinking about Reason.
And, yes, Hell on earth is kind of what's at stake here. Best case, without God's salvific intervention there is a kind of prolepsis not only of grace but of damnation. AND that's in Dante, so it MUST be true.
And as to Free Will, I think it's helpful to return to the phenomena once in a while and to realize that the notion is not a slam dunk. I simply cannot think that Luther and Calvin are, uh, totally depraved -- or significantly more depraved than I am, if left to my own devices. So I don't see Calvin is obviously perverted in his account of things. Maybe wrong, but not setting out to do evil.
My metaphor FWIW for understanding grace and the will is this: (I think I shared this with FK once.):
Your sadistic geometry prof has assigned you a difficult original. You spend hours on it. Every line you take on it fails. You are sick and tired. Then the answer comes to you.
And isn't that how we say it? It "came to me", as though it were not a result of our efforts but a gift from outside. In fact, I think all important truths (because they are True by virtue of the Truth Himself, Jesus Christ) "come to us".
Now when the answer comes we do not say,"Well, okay, I have the answer here. I can choose it or I can choose to go back to digesting my stomach lining. Hmm, what to do, what to do ...."
There is no question of choice. We embrace the answer and try to understand it and to work it out and live with it because our chance of choosing between this futile effort and that equally futile effort is swallowed up in the freedom of the truth.
Once I know the best way to New York, I don't think, "Gee I'll try and see if I can get there by going south." And we don't experience the loss of choice about how to get to New York as a loss of Freedom, but as the gaining of Freedom.
I don't think this is an exhaustive metaphor. It doesn't deal with every aspect of life in Christ -- and we still all have to ponder how it is that anyone, having tasted that Truth and Love, could look up from the fire on a chilly morning and say,"I do not know the man." But there's enough here to remind us, when we jump all over our Calvinist brethren for their detestable enormities and abominable heresies, that the question is deeper than we can deal with in a few angry or contemptuous words.
Yes, yes: I know I'm bad tempered and self-righteous.
I had the honor in my first tour in Taiwan in the Navy to meet up with Precious SB folk. I forget all the greats . . . some children of . . . who was it . . . the great early SB missionary to China . . .
Anyway—they were all solid Christians with solid well thought-out theology.
Some of them who are still alive are aghast at the turns of events in the denomination as a whole.
I don’t know about the shades of this’s and that’s. I know they hate the attempts to water down inerrancy. And that Scripture has a super high priority in their daily lives and in their theology.
Also, I don’t fault them for putting a super high priority on soul winning and loving people into The Kingdom and into maturity in Christ.
I do fault them for being wimpy and dismissive about walking in Holy Spirit’s giftings a la I Cor 12-14, however.
Regarding the doctrine of total depravity
I will be sending you freepmail soon.
No, hosepipe, you get it backwards (which is why you got what you got) an "F–" student giving someone a "D+" is comedy! Goodbye!
Naw, don't worry, Quix. Calves and I go way back...they are almost like long lost relatives. :)
Calves and I go way back...they are almost like long lost relatives. :)
= = =
I know the feeling!
How are the Calvinist granite bumps on your forehead?
LoL..
LoL..
But I still love you, hosepipe. :)
AWwwww... Hold my cigar and Wine glass.... ((( HUG ))).
All scripture “must be Spiritually discerned”. John 6 is no different. What mustn’t happen to it, it must not be ignored, under that pretext or any other.
Yet the scripture is full of praise for some people, Abel right in the same scope as Cain.
Romans 3 does not have the universality you ascribe to it, regardless of Noah: it is a quote from the Psalms (Jo Kus may be so kind as to remind us which), and the same Psalm goes on to speak of righteousness. There are more people than Noah similarly described. I simply show you that there is no sin in the Noah's episode by any objective measure. You can imagine something that is not in the scripture regarding Jesus as well and make him sinful by the same method. The only natural reading of the Noah's episode was that he drank because people need liquids and don't want dysentery, and that tired people get drunk and fall asleep without expecting it.
I am not sure at all that the Bible details at least one sin for all of God's servants.
This is neither here or there; Genesis 6:9 describes Noah as "a just and perfect man in his generations, he walked with God". Same situation as with Jesus as far as this particular issue is concerned; both are described as without sin, and both are not depicted ever sinning.
What tells you the comparison line is drawn based on whether one has familiarity with Jesus?
Because the Centurion stands apart on that basis only: the rest ask for hands-on healing, as they would a doctor; the centurion clearly has faith in the suparnaturality of Jesus' ability, not having met Him and not having witnessed Cana, walking on water, etc.
If it is the same grace that is available to any of us, and if Mary is the only one to have ever accepted it ... Her knowledge was based on Sola Scriptura
No, she is not the only one, but her task is unique. We accept the same ontological grace she did though. Was she going by the Hebrew Scripture? This is not how St. Luke tells it. It is a pious belief that she recognized Isaiah's prophecy in the Anunciation, but the scripture only tells us that she believed because the angel told her of the will of God.
and yet she still stands alone in the grace she accepted?
No, she doesn't; she is in that sense like any other saint.
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