Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
"If anathematizing me because I don't believe in Icons doesn't speak of a works salvation, I'm not sure what does (unless of course I repent of my Iconophobia)."
Why do you think that anathemizing Iconoclasts smacks of a works based salvation?
"K: "Orthodoxy can't be fully explained, it has to be experienced."
Pity."
Yes, indeed it is. So many Westerners, children of the Enlightenment and the Reformation, followers of a system created by Europeans who were angry at some pope, are far too proud to humble themselves before God and worship Him as He commanded and through that learn.
Oh trust me - if there's one thing I would never accuse Orthodoxy of, that would be of their accepting Holy Scripture as the highest, supremely infallible voice of authority within their churches.
I'm still looking for how that's done.
Because I don't believe that there is anything that I can do to earn my salvation, nor lose my salvation. My salvation is dependent upon Christ alone.
Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." -- 2 Corinthians 3:2-6"Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
I thank God for the Holy Spirit which gives life through the new testament of Jesus Christ.
What's your view of what to do when different folks claim they hear quite different things from that "highest, supremely infallible voice of authority"?
Amen!
"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God" -- 2 Corinthians 3:5
"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." -- Hebrews 12:1-2
It is comforting to see your random scripture generator in fine shape.
Is it that you have no free will or that there is no cause and effect or... ?
How is someone free who is a bound in sin?
His scriptures aren't random. They are rather specific. It would do you good to stop quipping at him and read them.
Your question is framed to answer itself in only one way.
I just can't see anything but a total loss of cause and effect in it. A loss of meaning.
Could you blaspheme the Holy Spirit and... no effect?
A true believer will not blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
Does it seem like to you that you never had any, or made any, choices along the way?
And you were born a True Believer?
My salvation was settled before the foundation of the world.
Is that a yes?
Is everyone either born a True Believer or born never to believe?
The choices made were only made because the Holy Spirit made my dead soul alive, gave me faith to believe and drew me to the Father. So, even with my faith itself, the credit belongs to God.
I've heard the rhetoric, forgive me, it sounds parroted. I'm asking whether you feel, believe you ever had choices to make, ever made choices.
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