[RussianConservative]

Orthodox bump...please contact other orthodox

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[TexasRepublic]

an Orthodox Christian perspective. This view holds firmly to the centrality of Christ, a doctrine which is not negotiable, yet acknowledges that salvation can be found outside Christianity.

Then this viewpoint is wrong, because Jesus said otherwise. He said no one comes to the Father, except by Him.

[TexasRepublic]

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

[SES1066]

BTTT

[George W. Bush]

Russian Conservative, I hope you recognize that this sweet-sounding theological path of 'those who follow the natural law may thereby receive salvation without knowing Christ' is the road to the kissing of Korans as the Roman pope did recently.

We Baptists will still proclaim the need of every soul to receive Christ. There can be no substitutes.

One cannot worship Buddha or the Muslim's Allah and be saved by Christ anyway. That is the worship of false gods, not the true God.

We see the Roman church in America has trod this ecumenical path, a sort of 'all-dogs-go-to-heaven' theology. They no longer will evangelize a Jew. How ridiculous Jesus and His disciples were not so wise as the modern Roman church because they did evangelize Jews and the early church was primarily composed of Jews.

This notion that living a good life will get you to heaven, no matter what you believe is anti-scriptural. The changing morality of man's societies provides no spiritual refuge. The only records we have indicate that the entire early church believed that only in Christ, and Him Crucified, was there any hope for any man in eternity.

Only Christ can sanctify us enough to approach the Father, either in our prayers or when we are finally in heaven.

To suggest that merely living a good life can save you is the ultimate Arminianism. It says that we can save ourselves by our own efforts and without God's assistance, without knowing God.

Many once-sound churches have broken themselves over these unanswerable questions over the fate of certain souls. However, scripture teaches that we are saved only in Christ. We should allow our Father and our King to determine that fate of all who lived outside a spiritual life in Christ. If we know Christ, we know He possesses a perfect justice. And when we finally look upon God, we will have no further questions or objections to His justice and His ways.

[taxcontrol]

Lets see my list would be:

Conservative Protestants - Best
Liberal Protestants - those who have missed the point or who have not read the book
Catholics - not bad, but got some strange ways of looking at things
Jews - God's chosen people but too bad they missed the Messiah

Islam - followers of a madman that wanted to be Jew/Christian but could never figure out how

Others - Prime witness/conversion opportunity

[No.6]

Hrmph.

The entirety of the non-exclusivity claim rests not on a Biblical exegesis, but on the footnote [10] which leads us to

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1885652054/qid=1061498961/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/002-0731783-2227220?v=glance&s=books

in which the excerpted pages begin with the rampantly Marxist:

"Over the last decade it has become only too clear that our subscription to the dominantly materialistic and mechanistic philosophies which determine the course of what we call the 'natural' sciences and their ramifications in the technological, industrial, political, economic, educational and practically every other sphere, has led us to build a type of society that desecrates and mutiliates human and natural life in all its aspects. ... We cannot prevent the proliferation of armed conflict and mass murder while we still regard the production and sale of deadly weapons not as an inhuman form of criminality and hypocrisy, but as something in which nation states and their human labor forces can quite legitimately engage in order to support their economies. Nor can the fight against pollution and mass starvation or anything else have any chance of success, so long as the means through which it is waged involve the same 'logic of production,' the same free-market selling techniques and the same ruthless competitive exploitation that have produced these ecological and social catastrophes in the first place."

And that's page ONE! Hitlery herself could hardly turn out a shriller diatribe against conservative principles.

Small wonder that by the time this "creative interpreter of the living tradition of the Orthodox Church" gets around to Christianity and other religions he rejects the idea that Christ is, as He said, the only Way, out of hand.

To their shame it looks like the American Greek Orthodox church has elected to attach itself to this along with radical environmentalism and other wackiness, which can be read on their site.

[armydoc]

If you get only one thing out of Jesus' words in the Gospels, its that belief in Him is the key to salvation. He also said this would be a "stumbling block" to some. Looks like the OE church stubbed their collective toe. How can fairness/justice be served with such a "scandal of exclusivity"? I'll leave that up to God, thank you very much. We get into trouble when we try to out-think God.