FK: That would appear to confirm a belief that the scriptures are not from God, but are only from men. That's what I thought you thought.
Kosta: How so?
Because I thought you hold that the words of scriptures are men's words and not God's words, that God's inspiration only means that He nudged them to write at all, etc. Here you say that God's truth is not imperfect. That must be because He never gave it to the writers of the scriptures. I mean, consider how much of the Bible you accept. :)
So you claim that your faith and worship are perfect?
Of course not, else I would be God. The faith and worship are there in the scriptures and I continue to find more of it as I am sanctified in my Christian walk for the rest of my life.
You also must claim, then, that every version of the Bible, and every translation of it, is equally perfect because it contains the truth of God in it.
I can't possibly speak for every version since I haven't come close to reading all of them. I am familiar enough with the NIV, KJV, and ESV to know that all of them convey the true and complete faith in accordance with 2 Tim. 3:16-17.
And if the HS, which so many of you claim to be indwelling you..., "will teach you everything" you need to know, how does that explain 33,000 denominations and different beliefs?
Well, the question blows itself out of the water since it includes a false claim. The core beliefs of Bible-believing Christians are very similar, AND the teaching of the HS is a lifelong process.
But I have already told you that Jesus chose to work within the framework of Judaism, or else He could have just as easily confederated everyone's hearts and be done with the whole thing, no blood, no suffering...and within that framework He spoke what the Jews believed and have believed for centuries. He did not come to discredit their faith.
So Jesus played the hand He was dealt by man? Since you give these as the only two options it really seems like this is what you are saying. Besides, He certainly DID discredit the false faiths of many Jews.
Instead He came to reveal that God is not the Zeus-like God of the OT, but just the opposite.
God did not come to trash His own revelation. :) He showed many how they were misinterpreting the truth that was always there and is still there today.
We can ask, why did He even bother coming into this world as a Jew, since He must have known that, despite being sent ONLY for the lost sheep of Israel, the faith in Him was rejected by the very people He came for.
He came into the world as a Jew because the Jews were God's people. The lost sheep of Israel are all of the elect who do or did not yet believe, including Gentiles, as Paul tells us. Jews and Gentiles alike both rejected Him and accepted Him.
So, what difference does it make if He had challenged their beliefs or not, except that they would have rejected Him sooner!
Christ was not a salesman. The predestined elect were always going to be saved, and the lost will always be lost. Christ completed the revelation God wanted us to have.
But from what is written about His ministry, it is clear that God is not the cause of death, but is the source of life, and that passages in the OT that contradict Christ are not understood correctly.
That is the mono-faceted, smaller, limited God and starts with the incorrect presupposition that the Gospels are the complete message and the rest of the Bible is fluff. Christ had a specific mission for His time here on earth. For some reason you have converted that to the sum total of the entity we know as God. IOW, you have invented a rule of some kind that Christ's mission on earth was to show us everything that God wanted us to know. If that was really so, then He would have had no desire to tell others to know their OT scriptures. If the revelation of Jesus was absolutely everything, then Jesus would have had the same opinion of the OT as you do. He clearly did not.
Did God kill all the Egyptian firstborn? If that is the same God we know in Christ, He didn't. And I think the Church would be hard pressed to show otherwise.
That's because you see Christ's singular mission on earth to be the sum of His being. I don't know why you believe that, but to believe it WOULD require throwing out the vast majority of scriptures.
You are twisting what I wrote, which was: "It's not God's truth that is imperfect; it's our perception that is." God only reveals truth. We receive His revelation in an imperfect manner. That's all I meant. So, as far as the Bible is concerned, other than the eyewitness accounts of Christ (which are not revelations), the Bible contains God's truth but as understood and expressed through imperfect human capacity.
I accept all of the Bible (except for the Gospels) as God's revealed truth embedded in imperfect human perceptions.
Even from the Gospels we learn that the Apostles didn't understand fully who Christ was and earlier I mentioned their misunderstanding of the time of His second coming. So, imperfect perceptions and interpretations are the norm rather than an exception. Part of Jesus' ministry was to show exactly that to the Jews.
Where does the Bible prescribe "worship?"
I can't possibly speak for every version since I haven't come close to reading all of them. I am familiar enough with the NIV, KJV, and ESV to know that all of them convey the true and complete faith in accordance with 2 Tim. 3:16-17
There is no conflict between them at all? You now that for certain? Then why do we have more than one version?
The core beliefs of Bible-believing Christians are very similar, AND the teaching of the HS is a lifelong process
Jesus never spoke of the "core" belief. Core belief is not enough. What is the core belief? It's not even a fixed entity. It's what we don't share that blows your theory out of the water.
So Jesus played the hand He was dealt by man?
Well, He could have converted the hearts and not have to go through all the blood and guts and suffering, but He didn't. That shows that He chose to play the hand dealt by man. I know this may "offend" your idea of a more powerful God, but you will have to take that up with Him.
We find nothing unusual with that, given that God chose to humble Himself to become man.
Besides, He certainly DID discredit the false faiths of many Jews
He "discredited" some of the interpretations but not the faith itself.
God did not come to trash His own revelation. :) He showed many how they were misinterpreting the truth that was always there and is still there today.
I agree. Truth is truth yesterday, today and tomorrow. The problem is in knowing what is true and what isn't.
The Jews are God's people only because that' what they believe. Other nations believed that they were God's people. Eve Americans believe our destiny is providential.
Jesus never taught that the Gentiles are the lost sheep of Israel. That is Paul's claim. It was necessary to save the Church.
Christ was not a salesman. The predestined elect were always going to be saved, and the lost will always be lost. Christ completed the revelation God wanted us to have
That's nonsense, with all due respect, FK. Then what was His preaching all about? He never said what you wrote above. In fact He remind us that those who deny Him He will deny before the Father as well. In other words, He recognizes that people have a choice, and puts the consequence of our choice squarely on on our shoulders. God offers His love to all; we accept or reject it.
We (Orthodox and Catholics) are Christians; we believe in Christ. Where we can find Christ, based on the Gospels, we are sure it's God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are one and the same God as Christ. You cannot find Christ wihtout the Ftaher or without the Holy Spirit. And since Christ was observed and witnessed, the Gospels are our standard.
IOW, you have invented a rule of some kind that Christ's mission on earth was to show us everything that God wanted us to know. If that was really so, then He would have had no desire to tell others to know their OT scriptures
Well, if that is so, then I say the whole thing is invented! Everyone invented something. And what an invention it is! If we all lived according to it, what a wonderful world it would be, eve if it were only an invention!
Your rules are no more a fact than mine. Christ is the epitome of God's revelation, the apex of it, the complete and true revelation, and as such Christ, as witnessed represents the true God. Everything that doesn't conform to Christ is not Christian God, it's not Christianity. Logic, not an invention.
That's because you see Christ's singular mission on earth to be the sum of His being. I don't know why you believe that, but to believe it WOULD require throwing out the vast majority of scriptures.
The alternative is to make Christ something other than God, something lesser, which seems to be the underlying current in many so-called Christian groups outside the Apostolic Church.