Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
So who, exactly, are you trashing? And why do you feel it's permissible to trash anyone?
This long discussion has been most cordial, except for people who feel compelled to trash others.
I have been coming out on this forum for since 2003. You have been here longer.
During that time I have seen a number of posts by Catholics on this site about Protestants becoming Catholics and how wonderful this is. I have also seen a number of posts from Catholics about the errors of all sorts of various Protestant topics. I doubt if you have ever taken the time to say how wrong it is to tell Protestants they're in error.
With all due respect and speaking the truth in love, your hands are not entirely clean in this matter. I've noticed by your web page you have a saying "Anti-Catholics please "minister" somewhere else!". Not exactly ecumenical in my way of thinking nor in conduct.
There is nothing in my posts that I have stated that is trashing Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Jews. It is my understanding from scripture that our Catholic brethren are wrong in their understanding and I'm here to share the scriptures. You may feel free to show me where I am wrong and, to be perfectly honest and blunt, I welcome you to do so. I am willing to change and have done so. However, your web page leads me to believe that you're far more interested in only listening to what the Catholic Church states. So, please, I'm not impress with "your great sadness" when you have other motives.
You left out one little word, Custos of the Woods: "received it as a gift. When you play the gotcha game you'd better be sure you have a strong hand before you smirkingly put your cards down face up.
I am very comfortable with my hand. I did not leave out the word "gift", you did. If you go back to your post in 1134 to Harley, you begin with insults, then you use the torch example. The immediately preceding paragraph speaks nothing about "gift" or gifting. You were explaining what you think "receive" means. You were illustrating your immediately preceding thought. The remainder of your post was, of course, simply more insults.
"Receiving" a thing has nothing to do with whether it was meant as a gift (Sam received injuries in the accident.). And, as I have elsewhere illustrated, the meaning of "gift" is not dependent on whether it was willingly accepted.
The ascension, the waiting in the upper room and the Holy spirit coming at Pentecost were different events but they were the same participants who were waiting for the endowment on power, the Holy spirit, promised by Jesus. This was a narrative letter. There were no chapters and verses. When Luke says "And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place" he is talking about the 120 people who were together in the upper room waiting. When Luke says in Acts 2:3 "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" he is speaking about all that waited including the women, otherwise the statement makes no sense.I understand that this is your interpretation.
I will be quite honest with you.
I was pinged to this thread. I don't normally post on your threads. I challenge you to find another of my posts, on a thread for a non-Catholic discussion, where I have been rude. You will not find one. When I go onto threads discussing Protestant beliefs
>>There is nothing in my posts that I have stated that is trashing Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Jews. <<
I never said you did and in fact stated that I agreed with you and the mature answer you gave.
>>It is my understanding from scripture that our Catholic brethren are wrong in their understanding and I'm here to share the scriptures. So, please, I'm not impress with "your great sadness" when you have other motives.<<
And your jumping to conclusions is quite evident.
This sentance is not complete in the last post.
"When I go onto threads discussing Protestant beliefs I try to be polite"
Dr. I was pinged here by P-marlowe.
Otherwise I would not even be here.
I was asked to tell someone to stop speaking Anti-Protestant dogma on this thread. It was then retracked by the person who pinged me here.
My apologies for interupting your thread. I said that I would stand behind anyone who had a problem with a Catholic being rude on a thread. I thought I was doing that. Again, my apologies.
Boy oh boy, Harley. This thread of yours has proved hearty, especially being that the post itself was barely touched upon. I think it's been a good thread, for the most part, and I think it's been cordial, for the most part, too. I think I learned a thing or two, too.
Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles. When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.To my eyes, this says that the twelve were together and implies nothing more. But I understand if you disagree.
Baron Baptiste is one of the best Yoga instructors in the world, today. He has a love for Christ (though I'm not sure he's a Christian) that gets him quite a bit of heat from those in the Yoga community.
I was (and still am, really) a big Beatle fan. I remember when John Lennon made his remark that the Beatles were more popular than Christ. Even, as much as I liked them, and as young as I was (9 or 10, I believe) I remember thinking to myself, 'boy is he kooky!' Later on when I was better able to grasp the sheer stupidity of his remark I remember being incredulous that he could believe that the birth of the Beatles was in any way shape or form on a par with the Birth of Christ. I used to joke that he must have thought it possible that an anno Lennon would be introduced.
My point is that Christ is everywhere, and nothing and no one can change that.
Anyway, I found this quote while rummaging around the net, and I really like it.
Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mahomet, and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and schools combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke words of life such as never were spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of any orator or poet; without writing a single line, He has set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. Born in a manger, and crucified as a malefactor, He now controls the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spiritual empire which embraces one-third of the inhabitants of the globe. There never was in this world a life so unpretending, modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition, and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations, and classes of men. The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and astonishing success in spite of the absence of those material, social, literary, and artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to success for a mere man. Author: Philip Schaff
I understand where you are coming from but look at how the verses flow:
Act 1:13 And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James [the son] of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas [the brother] of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,) Men [and] brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.
Act 1:21 Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
Act 1:23 And they appointed two,
Act 1:24 And they prayed, and said,
Act 1:26 And they gave forth their lots;
Act 2:1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
Act 2:3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
Act 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost,
There is no break in the sequence of referring to the 120.
In the first excerpted portion from my posting I distinguished between an offered gift, an accepted gift, a refused gift. Only an accepted gift is fully a gift. The modifier "fully" has been part of my argument from the beginning of this sub-topic on this thread and I repeated it in the posting to which you are now replying.
In the second excerpt, where you claim I am inconsistent when I make gifting "conditional" on acceptance, you fail to carry over the "fullness" qualification. So between excerpt one and excerpt two you have changed the terms and thus are doing apples and oranges.
In your assertion that follows you use "gift" unqualifiedly. I would agree with you that an incomplete gift exists independent of acceptance. But a complete gift does not. You are talking about "gift" in an unnuanced and imprecise way. Your point carries but only in an incomplete and imprecise way. You have not laid a finger on my point because you refuse to engage my qualification.
And your socks example actually proves my point. Of course your child is free to refuse them. If he does, you may punish him, of course. But have you never had an ungrateful child? If the child is uninterested in the socks, he does not see them as your gift. Your intention to gift him with them cannot make him see them as a gift, as you clearly admit. They are not a gift in the full sense unless he is grateful for them and recieves them knowing them to be a gift. If he is not interested in them he is refusing them as a gift, refusing to let them be a gift in the full sense. At that point, they are a half-gift, an incomplete gift, a refused gift, which is exactly what I said in the earlier postings.
And nothing you can do can make him grateful. Your threats or blandishments cannot make another person be grateful for what you intend as a gift. Your intent alone cannot make him grateful. And until he is grateful, the gift process is stymied, incomplete.
You still have not grasped the point, even though you and all of us have experienced this again and again. Okay, I intend to make a gift. From the giver's end, from my end it is a gift (your point) but not completely so (my point). The giver's intent can at most make it an offered gift. If the recipient refuses it it remains a refused gift--gift, yes, in a restricted way, but not a true and real and complete gift. Indeed, a refused gift is scarcely a gift at all. Have you not truly experienced a situation of thwarted gifting when the recipient is ungrateful and considers your intended gift to be bad or dangerous (in other words, refuses to see it as a gift)?
If you want to live with this limited kind of gifting as the sufficient to explain "gift," you are free to do so. I can't make you accept my gift of a fuller understanding of gifting and giftedness.
But in practice, you know very well the difference between an offered but refused gift and a gift gratefully accepted. That's the only point I was making. You actually know my point to be true in practice but you have let a stubborn mindset (denial of freedom) overcome what you know very well from practice.
The conclusion to all this is that we all know from plain experience that human beings are free, that we cannot be forced to be grateful, that if someone is ungrateful, the connection that was intended to be established by the loving intent of the giver is thwarted. That's just another way to say that God cannot make us love him, be grateful to him, against our will. The free-will-denying theology shatters against the reality of human experience, as your own "socks" example demonstrates.
You have refuted your own anti-free-will position in the very example you gave but you refuse to see it. And I, unlike you, believe you are free, so I won't insist that you see what you refuse to see, that you understand what you refuse to understand.
And I do not intend to insult with this. I'm bluntly trying to show you the fallacy in your non-free-will position, that it is refuted by your own experience and even by the example you cite. But I also believe that you are free, so I can only state it as plainly as I can. That you choose not to understand it is your own free choice.
First, regarding my "insults"--they responded to your own 'gotcha" tone.
Second, you wrote: "'Receiving' a thing has nothing to do with whether it was meant as a gift (Sam received injuries in the accident.)"
This illustrates well the way you ignore the context. I said that a gift requires reception for completion. The reception I referred to is the reception of a gift. My claim was that once a gift is offered, unless it is received, it is not fully a gift. You use the word "reception" in an entirely different (non-gift) context, then claim that it proves something about the role played by reception in a gift context.
This is circular reasoning. Of course, if you use the word "reception" in a non-gift context, it does not require a gift for its meaning. You switched from "receive a gift" to "receive a thing." I fully agree that if one receive a "thing" (a non-gift thing) then reception will a non-gift reception. But the context of the argument is gifting. You did an apples-oranges switch again. You think that words can be taken from one context and plopped into another context without consequences for their meaning. They can't.
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice, and proclaimed...
But just as we are never told specifically how many disciples were present at Pentecost, we are not told on how many of them the tongues of flame rested.
Enjoy, brother.
Yea, I tried that, even going to the parable of the Talents and the guy who buried his one talent...But, well, you know how it is.
Regards
IIRC, he was observing the absurdity of four lower-class boys from Liverpool eliciting more hoopla than the Son of God.
I'd agree that the doctrine only has meaning if the adherent is actually saved. I would also agree that there are many people who falsely assume their own salvation. I'd even say such people are worse off than people who have no faith at all. For the most part, I don't think the self-designation is done out of self-righteousness, I think it comes from an honest (right or wrong) interpretation of scripture, and an honest knowledge of one's own salvation experience. (Thank you for sharing about your experience.)
People have written about religious experiences, and it is quite subjective. The trick, though, is "has their life changed"? Scripture is clear that we cannot love without God, so a person who loves, really loves selflessly, not for selfish reasons, we can rest assured that the Spirit of God rests on that person.
Amen to that, Brother. God bless.
The point is if God wants a man to have the gift, that man will have the gift.
If God wants to save a man, that man will be saved.
If Christ died for you, you will have eternal life.
God is far less tentative than some would have Him.
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