Posted on 10/22/2013 4:45:20 AM PDT by don-o
God is “agapic love,” the preacher said, and paused. “God”—I knew what was -coming, the man being mired in the -sixties—“is a verb.” He assured the congregation that as long as they were “doing agapic love,” that—left -undefined—was all they needed to do. I could hear around me the sighs of people who have heard something they wanted to hear.
“God is a verb” is about as much doctrinal complexity as many American Christians seem to want, vague and useless as it is. They do not want anything too precise and specific, for that means exclusive, intellectual, and binding, nor anything too old, for that means irrelevant.
Average Agnostics
The average American thinks that when lots of nice people follow different religions, no religion should claim to be true in such a way that the others must be false. Everyone is happier, and no one will start fighting, when religion is a matter of taste, enjoyed privately, like an ethnic food. No one minds if a Scotsman eats haggis, as long as he eats it behind closed doors, but no one would tolerate his attempt to make it the sole main course in the high-school cafeteria.
The non-religious will explain their dislike of doctrines by saying that we ought to live and let live, that people are different, that religion is a private matter, and the like. The religious will explain it in two ways. One type (the believer) will say that Christianity is a matter of the heart, or a personal relationship with Christ, or that he has no creed but the Bible.
(Excerpt) Read more at touchstonemag.com ...
I'd expect a response like that from Sebelius ... not a Freeper.
Wow, dude, pretty blue language for a PG forum! It’s funny - I was just getting ready to apologize for inadvertently misconstruing as personal what was simply juvenile and ill thought. Maybe I was right after all.
As far as Augustine’s quote goes, although I suppose it lacks the rhetorical elegance of words and phrases like “screw you” and “you really ARE stupid”, it makes perfect sense to me.
It pisses me off and I showed it ...
I apologize
But ir was Augustine that started the thought pattern ... I only commented.
Apology accepted, and given. Pax tecum.
Once again, a Christian theologian attempting to think like a Pagan, and failing miserably.
When I was being trained in Messianic ministries, with the supposition that “God is a verb”, tell me how to equate that train of thought when God told Jeremiah, “I knew you, in the womb, before you were born.”
Do we attempt to use American or British definition of ‘verb’?
How do we classify by gender ‘verb’, as other foreign languages do, i.e., male, female, neuter?
Did you bother with reading the whole piece?
He’s a kind of pied piper of Churchianity.
He’s not comfortable with what Yehova has revealed of himself, so he clings to human creeds to limit Yehova to that with which he is comfortable.
Yehova’s elect exist completely outside of those creeds, and the clingers to creeds find themselves unable to contemplate Yehova’s elect.
Go to your respective corners, and at the bell come out fighting.
These words which you have heard are in the Divine Scriptures scattered up and down:
dono- offers:The creed is composed of words that are found in the Holy Scripture
but thence gathered and reduced into one, that the memory of slow persons might not be distressed; that every person may be able to say, able to hold, what he believes.
don-o offers: These words and the concepts they put forth are compiled into a short form. This is helpful, lest some of lesser mental ability might despair that he could not understand the tenets of the faith.
For have ye now merely heard that God is Almighty? But ye begin to have him for your father, when you have been born by the church as your Mother.
don-o paraphrase: As catechumens, you have learned the facts of the matter. Soon, Almighty God will indeed be your Father when you are received into His Church.
>> “The question I ask is WHY the big deal over words?” <<
.
They’re the words of men, not of Yehova.
Making men pleased with a set of conditions invented by men.
Do you really really believe THAT ?
And can you cite chapter and verse?
I have no idea what you are talking about.
I do
And can you cite chapter and verse?
It's a phrase that Cyprian of Carthage used around 250 AD in refuting the heresy of Novatian. The whole thing can be found here.
I will not be surprised if you reject this Holy Father, but I will link it for the sake of any honest seekers who may lurk on the thread.
the eunuch is in the Body of Christ, The Church. He was baptized into the Body, into Christ.
can you answer my question yes or no, was the eunuch saved? There is no record of his believing Jesus died for his sins, we only know he believed Jesus was the Son of God and he was baptized.
And how do I know you and your church are in complete deceit and apostacy?
2 Cor. 5:16 tells me so.
"Wherefore HENCEFORTH know we no man after the flesh; yea, thought we HAVE KNOWN Christ after the flesh, yet NOW HENCEFORTH know we Him NO MORE."
If you are following Christ's earthly ministry, while He was walking and talking and gathering together His 12 Apostles for His Kingdom reign, you are following Him AFTER THE FLESH. But He is not HERE now. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, in heaven, waiting for the fullness of the Gentiles to be brought in by the gospel of the grace of God. He is known NOW HENCEFORTH after the spirit, not the flesh. Everything we do, know, practice and believe is spiritual, not fleshly.
If you are following a Kingdom gospel, you are doing exactly what 2 Cor. 11:4 states: "For if he that cometh preacheth ANOTHER JESUS, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or ANOTHER GOSPEL, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him."
IF your church is preaching the Jesus Christ of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the early part of Acts, that is another Jesus. If your church is preaching the gospel of the kingdom, that is another gospel. Both of these are in TIME PAST. WE are in But NOW on God's timeline.
I’d expect a response like that from Sebelius ... not a Freeper
exactly how i felt when i read post #30
It’s funny you should mention how post #30 made you feel. It’s the same way I feel when someone posts to me who clearly doesn’t have a clue what God’s word actually says. They can be spotted within 2 words of their post. It usually starts out with “St. blah-blah said” or “the early church fathers agreed..”. Everything but “I was reading the Bible and I saw”...
It usually starts out with “St. blah-blah said” or “the early church fathers agreed..”.Will you ever give Christ some credit for all the work that He's done through His peoples? To dismiss the saints, is to be singularly focused. Christ was more spectacular than that.
Now are you talking about who Christ calls saints, or who your church calls saints? There’s a difference.
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:38
Is this verse not in your Bible?
Why yes, YES it is, Jvette...and so is 2 Tim. 2:15. Now, do you have that one in YOUR BIble?
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