Posted on 03/07/2006 1:23:31 PM PST by jecIIny
But if you're remaining within Christianity, you're not really changing religions. You are effectively changing political parties.
By the way, re: Rome: In your opinion, or in your understanding of Rome's opinion (which I expect is the same thing), can a nonCatholic professing Christian be saved?
My Dad, along with most the congregation, left the Episcopal Church in Tallahassee to join an African Anglican Church.
"By the way, re: Rome: In your opinion, or in your understanding of Rome's opinion (which I expect is the same thing), can a nonCatholic professing Christian be saved?"
Billions of non-Catholics go to heaven.
They are saved by Jesus.
How, when, where?
Can't say.
From what we know now from Near Death Experience studies, probably at the moment of death they meet God, which is to say Jesus, and the scales are lifted from their eyes. "My Lord and my God" they exclaim, and they embrace Jesus and are saved. They are the latest workers in the field.
Probably.
Not certainly.
The Church is like the Good Son who stayed and did his labors when the Prodigal Son returned. God is the Father of us all, even pagans, and he doesn't leave his children to die. The Good Son's resentfulness at having labored all his life was replied to by his father: 'All that is mine is yours, but your brother who was lost has come back, therefore we must rejoice.
That's how I think it works.
A Non-Catholic professing Christian, or a non-Christian period, who tries to live a good moral life and tries to follow God's will as he has been taught to understand it will not be thrown away by God.
He's still saved through Jesus, and the Church, but he is unaware of it in this life.
That's what I think.
That is an acceptable, although certainly not mandatory, belief for a Catholic to have.
I do not have a better "chance of getting into heaven" than you. I'm a Catholic because I think that's the properly constituted authority, and because I think that's what God wants. You're an Anglican because you think that's what God wants. One of us is right or both of us are wrong, or maybe both of us are right. None of it has any bearing, I suspect, on the ultimate disposition of our souls. I'm a parent. I love my child all the time. When she does what I want, and listens, I am happier with her, and when she defies me, I am angry with her, but I don't love her less or more depending on what she does. If she did something horrifically evil, I would be too surprised to comprehend it for awhile. I don't think she has it in her. Something horrifically evil would change the way I looked at my child, to I am not sure what. I don't want to imagine what it is like for the fathers of vicious killers.
I think that the relationship between our Father and heaven and us is like that.
I think that good, obedient Catholics are like my daughter when she's at her best, doing what she's told, without any sass, and happy and loving, etc. And then there's the other 85% of the time when she is not exactly doing that. That's the rest of humanity, other than those who are just utterly depraved and evil, who stand in a different place. I will leave it to God what he thinks of them. My mind does not wish to empathize with their viewpoint, because I don't want to let the evil that far inside.
When my daughter is not being perfect, is she bad, evil, wrong? No. She's just being willful. I love her anyway. It DOES make her a pain in the ass at times, but I still love her anyway, and there are limits to my vexation. That is what I expect is the case with God and the good in other denominations and religions.
There is no way in Hell that God sends everybody but obedient Catholics to heaven. I don't believe it, and the Church doesn't teach it.
I'd expect that they are in the cadre of my daughter the 85% of the time when she's not being perfect. Still loved, still very much in the family, not in any sense rejected hated...or damned. Just not perfectly obedient to her father. I don't think that I am a better father than God, and therefore, since I do not even consider, even have an inkling, of casting away my daughter in the 85% of the time she's challenging me a little bit (or a lot), I cannot believe that God is any different in dealing with his children.
And besides, I may be a Catholic, but I'm a SINFUL Catholic, so how does that make me a lick different than somebody who's not a Catholic? Indeed, somebody like yourself, who is behaving according to what God wants but isn't a Catholic, is almost certainly making God happier at that moment than I do when I lapse into some evil stupidity or other.
I think Catholics have the clearer picture, and the divinely authorized version of the religion, but I suspect that there are five times as many non-Catholics in Heaven or getting close to it as Catholics, because there are five times as many people in the world as Catholics, and most people are basically good.
There are, of course, monsters. But my daughter (and I) never cross that line (or even are tempted to. Honestly, have you ever seriously considered raping, maiming or murdering someone, let alone done it?), so I don't think that the regime God may have in store for monsters applies to regular folk who try to be good according to the lights God gave them to see it and the teaching their parents gave them. Hardly anyone really CHOOSES his religion; we mostly get that from our parents, and God chooses our parents, so he knows when he sends us down into the flesh what religion we're going to be. I don't think God predestines most of humanity to Hell by choosing to send them to Muslim, Hindu...or Episcopalian...parents. I think most Muslims, Hindus and Episcopalians go to Heaven.
Can I prove it?
Not on this side of the grave, no.
But we'll meet when we're dead, and remember this, and find out if I was right or not.
Catholic/Orthodox?
Which one?
Catholic or Orthodox?
Or orthodox Catholic?
So, you are changing religions.
Enjoy your new home. I hope it works out for you.
I am not an Anglican but rather an exCatholic Protestant.
I couldn't quite tell from your post whether you are a Universalist--does everyone, in your view, go to heaven?
I'm glad to hear you're not a Catholic Exclusivist. For my part, I agree that even Catholics can be saved!
Finally, I must take issue with your statement that "most people are basically good." That sentiment (for that's all it is) directly contradicts the very many Biblical pronouncements that "all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God", "There is no one good, not even one", etc., etc.
All of the Biblical pronouncements you cite are from Paul.
The Bible says that Job was without sin.
That contradicts Paul.
Paul does not have greater authority than Job. Paul does not override nor overrule Job.
Therefore, faced with the contradiction, we must conclude that this is not something upon which we can easily hand a whole doctrinal hat.
Likewise, that someone has sinned and isn't a Christian doesn't perforce mean that he doesn't go to heaven. Enoch walked with God. Elijah was taken to heaven in a golden chariot of fire. Neither were Christians. Direct and irreconcilable contradiction. Paul does not get to override the rest of the Bible. Paul does not have greater authority than Elijah or Genesis.
Paul says works don't matter.
James says faith without works is dead.
Direct contradiction.
Paul does not have superior authority to James.
It always seems to work out that way in debates, but there is no basis for overriding James in favor of something Paul said. There is equal basis for ignoring Paul and adhering to James.
And the proper answer, in the face of such a direct contradiction, is to not hang very much doctrinal weight on either position, because the Bible will not support it...not without choosing to say that some part of the Bible has greater authority than the other.
If we're going to do that, then the Gospels override everything else, because Jesus was God, and nobody else in the Bible is. So what He says overrides any apparent contradiction. Logic demands this, but there are those who say that EVERY WORD OF THE BIBLE has equal strength. The Bible doesn't say that, so it's a doctrine born purely of tradition. The Bible says that all Scripture is "God breathed", but doesn't define Scripture. When Paul said that, the Gospels hadn't even been written yet.
The Bible says the Sabbath is on Saturday.
It's one of the Ten Commandments, to honor the Saturday Sabbath and keep it holy. The Saturday sabbath is mentioned at least a hundred times in the Bible, and reiterated.
Never, anywhere in the Bible is it said that the sabbath has become Sunday. The Ten Commandments and the Bible say Saturday. Tradition says Sunday.
Does your Protestant Church meet on Saturday, or on Sunday?
If on Sunday, one what BIBLICAL Authority do you deft the Ten Commandments?
God says, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, how to divorce and what to do.
Jesus says, in the Gospels, that divorce wasn't a divine institution but a mere tradition of Moses (which would mean that the divorce rules in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not divinely inspired words, but merely Jewish traditions...which would mean that every word in the Bible is not directly from God). Jesus imposes a new rule: no divorce.
Does your church follow the rule imposed by Jesus, or the one in Leviticus, or do you have your own non-biblical traditions concerning divorce?
I take issue with excessive authority placed on a few lines of the Bible which are contradicted by some other line.
People are basically good, but fallen.
Sorry, friend, but you are completely mistaken. In Romans 3:10, when Paul wrote, “There is no one righteous, not even one…”, he was quoting Psalm 14:3, Psalm 53:3, and Ecclesiastes 7:20. Also see Psalm 143:2 and 2 Chronicles 6:36.
The Bible says that Job was without sin.
Please provide the specific chapter and verse. Also, please note Job 40:4: “I [Job] am unworthy…” and Job 42:6: “Therefore I [Job] despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
I take issue with excessive authority placed on a few lines of the Bible which are contradicted by some other line.
Let’s just start with the first contradiction you alleged.
Job 1:1
"In the land of Uz there was a blameless and upright man named Job, who feared God and avoided evil"
Blameless.
You have rightly shown that Paul was indeed quoting a Psalm when he said "No, not one". And the Psalm was not referring to mankind in general. It was referring to the persecutors about which the Psalmist was lamenting.
Yes indeed, 2 Chronicles 6:36 says no man doesn't sin, and that's true enough. But Job 1:1 says Job was sinless.
Of course, Job is a story aimed at proving a point, not a history.
Chronicles 6:36 states the truth more plainly: no man is without sin. (Although it's not the fact that this is written in Chronicles that makes that true. It's obvious, and Chronicles states the obvious.)
My point is not that there are really any men without sin; although query about babies and small children. There are little children without any moral blemishes, who still however bear "the curse of Adam", which is to say they are corruptible (which is not the same thing as already corrupt) and will die someday. But that's true of animals too.
My real point is that there is a contradiction there.
Job 1:1 flatly gives us a blameless man.
The author Chronicles and Paul say none like that existed.
I don't think it makes any difference, really.
Job is a story. There probably wasn't a real Job. Maybe that's why he was "blameless". He was an archetype of an impossibly good man.
But Elijah and Enoch were men, presumably therefore with sins, but snatched up into Heaven before Jesus, etc.
These texts taken altogether tell us...what?
That men are born corruptible in body, meaning they die.
That men commit sins.
And that God, in his discretion, overlooks those sins; at least he did in the case of Enoch and Elijah when he took them bodily off into heaven.
The only doctrine I'd build from that is that we die, we sin (these things are self-evident) and God decides what to overlook, because He's God.
Not sure where you're trying to go with this.
By the way, Job was real and is presented as such. In the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, I suggest we have no warrant for believing otherwise.
The point I made was in taking issue with your incorrect assertion, from which you seem now to be retreating, that anyone is blameless.
You made much in your last post, and continue in this one, of contradictions you've spotted in the Bible. I'll respond briefly before moving on to other pursuits, in the interest of offering you a truer view. There are no real contradictions in the Bible. Some are apparent contradictions which are resolvable after further study. Some aren't really contradictions but rather paradoxes, which also are resolvable. Let me recommend Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, which takes all the "contradictions" ever alleged and resolves them systematically.
We read Job quite differently.
I read a story that starts out with a sinless man, which God holds forth to the Devil as an example. God lets the Devil do his worst, and when all is ruined and Job kvetches at God, God says "who are you to question me".
I do not see any reason, at all, to read into the first sentence of Job the words "Job thought that he was a" blameless man. I read a blank assertion by the external author, and the assertion of Job's sinlessness makes the story much more powerful as an example of when bad things happen to good people.
Now, Paul engages in a bit of hyperbole when he says "Nobody is good, not one", at least if we take that literally to mean that everyone is rotten to the core. It's not true. And the Bible doesn't represent that to be true. The people in the Bible are both good and bad. David is perhaps the archetype. And the OT is replete with passages in which God rewards this or rewards that. What's God rewarding, badness?
No.
He's rewarding goodness, demonstrated by men, before Jesus came to earth.
And we still have the problem - not the apparent contradiction but the real problem - of Elijah snatched up into Heaven, and probably Enoch - by God before Jesus came to Earth. Now, of course, Jesus already was, and already could save, and forgive sin, etc., before he came to Earth. Some say otherwise, and quote Scripture to assert that. But then there're Elijah and Enoch that stick a wrench in that mechanism.
I said that men are BASICALLY good, which is not the same thing as saying that anybody is WHOLLY good. We're all an admixture of goodness and sin. The whole Bible gives tale after tale of it. One passage of Paul in hyperbolic mode saying NO ONE IS GOOD doesn't erase the rest of the goodness - and no, we don't need to cite to every case. We can just name a few...Rahab the Harlot, the Good Samaritan (was he not "good", because Paul says so?), the just judges, even Lot, alone saved by God because he did something good (and something bad too, offering up his daughters to be raped). If we read Paul to say "No one is PURE good", well, that's certainly true. Except for Job anyway, or Adam and Eve before the Fall (but these are probably fictional archetypes, not literal people, not that it makes any difference either way whether they are or not, really). Or Mary. The angels hailed Mary as "full of grace", and God Himself became flesh in her womb. Jesus, therefore, was not good, because a man, and by definition sinful? Apparently. Paul says that Jesus became sin.
Paul speaks in a lot of allegoric language.
Forgive me for a second posting in short order, but I still have a bee in my bonnet about certain things.
You cited "The first rule of Biblical interpretation".
The first rule according to WHOM?
Please cite the text that gives the "rule" for Biblical interpretation.
For that matter, please cite the text that tells us what IS Scripture and how we know.
My problem with this "rule" of interpretation is that it isn't a rule at all. It's an opinion about how to read the Bible. And it's an opinion that doesn't have any authority, really, other than the good opinion of the fellow who holds it...which isn't a BAD rule of authority, all things considered, but it's hardly binding on anyone, is it?
Biblical hermeneutics is a well-established discipline taught in every Christian seminary, the texts for which layout the consensus rules for textual interpretation with which apparently you are unfamiliar. I daresay you could discover them through the simple expedient of Googling "rules of Bible interpretation" and similar. In all kindness, you have revealed yourself to be a fitting candidate for the informed instruction of those more qualified in this regard.
May God bless you richly.
Greetings...If I may interject here, both of you don't seem to be giving standard interpretations of your own tradition (I understand Vicomte13 is Roman Catholic, and Hebrews 11:6 is Protestant?)
I'm a 2nd year seminary student--and don't know a lot, but have had a couple courses in books like Romans and the Pentatuch (first 5 books of the Old Testament). My perspective is very traditional conservative evangelical Protestant.
The book of Job is one most scholars believe is the oldest in the Bible, and has a primary theme of the classical issue called "the problem of evil," otherwise termed, 'why do the good suffer?'
Scripture uses human language (and Jesus Himself used hyperbola and exageration at times...to get his points across.) and unless there are 2 kinds of of descendents of Adam and Eve (sinners and Job, the perfect man) Paul is correct, without exageration, all have sinned. Paul does not contradict the WHOLE book of Job, because as "Hebrews 11:6" pointed out, Job himself confesses he was a sinner. Job 1:1 must be understood in light of the its context in the rest of the book AND in context and tension (sometimes) with the rest of the bible.
Job though, is a man VERY good (in that relative sense) especially when you look at his peers. He definitly seems to suffer for no reason (from his perspective...as he didn't hear the devil's conversations and accusations to God). The only reason God ever gives Job himself is a kind of: 'I am God, the great Creator and Sustainer, you are not....you simply cannot understand--so don't question Me.'
The idea that Job suffered as a result of his self-righteousness is not a standard interpretation at all....among Catholic or Protestant theologians. Now obviously one of the lessons of Job is that we should never even think of questioning God in His sovereign actions...even if from our perspective life seems to make no sense...but that's quite different than it being a cautionary tale about self-righteousness.
Still the fact that Job himself confesses his unrighteousness either means a)Job was lying...when answering God (which would make him a VERY bad man) or b)Job 1:1 must be understood in light of Job's own words, therefore Job was NOT a completely sinless human being (and therefore also Paul was not speaking in hyperbole).
Sin is like a poison, or a state of being....virtually no one is as bad as they could be, and yes, everyone is a mix of some good and some bad....but ANY bad at all equals a polluted being--someone who is unfit to live in the presence of God for eternity.
Sin is like poison or ink in a glass of water...one drop will pollute it enough to make it not fit to drink...in some (like say Job...) they may have just one drop, in others they may have half the glass as poison...which could hurt many more people....but both glasses are unfit to drink, of course one is a much better, purer glass than the other--but so what!!!?? The searing light of God demands total purity--and that is ONLY found in the life (and death) of Jesus.
St. Paul's argument in Romans is that ALL people, starting with the pagan idolatrous Gentiles of the time...and going on with the OT law-keeping (relatively)"good" Jews, being polluted to one degree or another by sin, are unfit to enjoy eternal life in fellowship with God. Both Gentiles and Jews can try and try to be good....but the standard is 100%, not 99% or 75% or (as Moslems say) 51%. Only one person in all of history was perfect.... Not doing anything He shouldn't of, and doing everything He should have....and never acusing God of injustice (as the relatively "good" compared to his peers and friends, Job did) and never even having a bad thought. The standard is much MORE than just the 10 commandments, its to love God with all ones heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself....ALL THE TIME. Even Mother Theresa, as good as she surely was....was not absolutely perfect in this sense. ALL of humanity depend, on the continuing mercy of God. This is what all the Old Testament saints depended on...and all those blood sacrifices they had to do--pointed to a future point (as we look back to a past point) in time where the penalties of sin would be fully paid for....AND the good life of merit would be fully lived...by a 2nd Adam (as the book of Hebrews puts it), that is Jesus Christ.
Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Job, Joseph, David, etc. all were looking forward in hope for the mercy of God--and that mercy was worked out, by the wonderful life and the passion of Jesus Christ on the cross. When they offered sacrifices, they were showing their faith that God would (somehow...they didn't really know) deal permanently with their sins. That blood of bulls and goats just didn't cut it alone....it was pointing toward a future time (and person, the God-Man Jesus).
In the same way we we each must look to His mercy in the life and death (and resurrection) of Jesus, to be the foundation of our good works...things we do out of gratefulness for the blood Jesus shed on the cross purchasing our life...this way, we're not working out of a "mercenary motive" (a selfish motive) "if I don't do this (and this and this...) I might go to hell!!!") rather as a adopted son, we as those who trust fully in the work of Jesus, do things out of simple love for God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, for the things they have done (and continue to do and will do!) for us. This is what is meant when Paul argued that the just shall live by faith--giving Abraham as a supreme example.
This is why James does not contradict Paul....faith without works is surely dead....as if there is a REAL faith--in the full atonement of Jesus for sins (as well as His life for our merit before God), works WILL follow. If they do not, then, ultimately you know that a person never really had faith. It's not "I'll do my best, and God will do the rest..." as that logically says that Jesus didn't do quite enough....He needs my help. Besides, what if He does his 50% and I only do 49%? Arghhh! "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect" said our Lord. No, we trust Him first, for our salvation, and our perfection....THEN in grateful love we will, without fear, serve Him gladly with all kinds of loving acts to God and our fellow man.
Honestly, knowing Romans pretty well, as well as James, I see no contradiction at all in their arguments...as they are talking about different things to different people. Paul is explaining the gospel to those who may not know it...James is warning people who claim to be Christians against following a false (no-works resulting) gospel. They both complement each other.
Anyway--I've tried to explain things in a clear friendly way--without demanding that either of you agree--I hope this has been a help.
You wrote: "Sin is like poison or ink in a glass of water...one drop will pollute it enough to make it not fit to drink...in some (like say Job...) they may have just one drop, in others they may have half the glass as poison...which could hurt many more people....but both glasses are unfit to drink, of course one is a much better, purer glass than the other--but so what!!!?? The searing light of God demands total purity--and that is ONLY found in the life (and death) of Jesus."
First, I appreciate your entering into the discussion. For my part, I do not get vexed in disagreements over these Biblical things, because I see clearly that the Bible is full of contradictions and difficulties which anybody who reads it has to work out. Therefore, it does not annoy me in the slightest when other people work them out in different ways.
But now, turning to what you've said above, I have three specific Biblical problems with it (leaving aside Job, about whom I disagree with your interpretation).
Come to think of it, I won't leave aside Job, because your comments highlight a few very important things, from my perspective. You mention that scholars believe that Job is the oldest book in the Bible. Now, the chronological order of the books in the Bible either makes a difference, or it does not. Without getting into an actual debate about chronological order (the traditions behind the Torah are certainly the oldest traditions in the Bible; Job is written from within a Jewish tradition, not without it, and the Jewish tradition is reflected in the Torah. Granted that the Torah may not have been written down in its present form until 500 BC with Ezra, but that doesn't make any difference, at least from my perspective. The Jewish religion as an oral tradition had the same authority before Ezra wrote (or rewrote) the Torah as after it. All that writing does is tend to fix a tradition at a given point in time. It does not make something more true. When Jeremiah, or Jesus, were speaking, they were not writing everything down and reading it. They were speaking out with the power of God, and what they were saying right then overrode anything else that was already written down Scriptually. One could not stand up to either Jeremiah or Jesus and declaim: "You are wrong! Because it says right here in the Scripture that..." Rather, whatever the Scripture said or says has to be reinterpreted in light of what God is saying NOW through a prophet or through Jesus. This is uncomfortable, but necessary. (If a Christian wishes to really debate this, he is cordially invited to return to the Saturday Sabbath, which is universally proclaimed a hundred times or more in the Bible, which is one of the Ten Commandments, and which is NOT something that is anywhere overridden in the New Testament Scripture. And yet, all Christians except the Seventh Day Adventists worship in Sunday, the Lord's Day, and ignore the Sabbath and the Commandment to honor it and keep it holy. Christians do so based upon their own tradition, which is quite extra-biblical, and which indeed defies the orders given by God in the Bible to honor the Saturday Sabbath. This is not a little thing. It is demonstrative of the truth of Christian religion: that it is NOT simply a matter of picking up the Bible and reading it according to a particular tradition. If it were that, then the Adventists are clearly right, since failure to honor the Saturday Sabbath is breaking one of the Ten Commandments and a hundred other Biblical exhortations, and the Saturday Sabbath was NOT one of the Commandments of the Old Testament that was anywhere directly suspended in the New.)
So, I won't leave aside Job because I think the argument that the later text disproves its starting line is forcing the text in order to meet a tradition. The text most cleanly reads as a story of a sinless man who faces terrible evil in spite of that, becomes embittered with God about that, demands an answer from God, is asked by God 'Who are YOU to question ME', and repents of his presumption. The moral message is much better taught if the text is read plainly, just like it is written. The effort to read Job 1:1 as not really meaning it seems to me rather desperate effort to force a theological tradition on a text that doesn't warrant it. Indeed, to do so changes the story from what I described to one in which God subtly punishes Job for sins he has, instead of testing him. In other words, your interpretation, traditional though it might be, subverts the text and makes it teach a completely different, and I believe unintended, message.
Which brings us back to your text which I cited above at the start of this e-missive. I will recite it:
"Sin is like poison or ink in a glass of water...one drop will pollute it enough to make it not fit to drink...in some (like say Job...) they may have just one drop, in others they may have half the glass as poison...which could hurt many more people....but both glasses are unfit to drink, of course one is a much better, purer glass than the other--but so what!!!?? The searing light of God demands total purity--and that is ONLY found in the life (and death) of Jesus."
There are four major problems with this interpretation and its tradition. Each of these problems is textual, and each one is insurmountable on its own. Taken all together, they tell me that your interpretation, though completely sincere and no doubt sanctioned by centuries of tradition, is simply not the point that God was making through Paul.
Just to be clear, what you have said is that one drop of sin makes a man filthy and completely incapable of standing with and before God, until Jesus' death purified it all.
The first problem with this is Enoch. Enoch lived long before Jesus. He didn't die. He walked with God. So, either Enoch was SINLESS, which would place him along with Job and would mean that Paul's "all have sinned" is wrong on at least two counts. OR, the better answer, is that God is God, God knows that men sin, and it is untrue that it is impossible for men to stand before God with less than total purity. God took Enoch up, so either Enoch was sinless, and Paul was wrong, or men can be taken up into heaven, without the death of Jesus having yet happened, and in spite of their sins, if God so chooses. The second answer is the better one. I doubt that Enoch was sinless. He was a man. But God is God, and the attempts to place some sort of limits on God, that he CANNOT have the impurity of sin in his presence is a denial of his divinity. God can do anything. And it is clearly untrue, from the direct biblcal text, that men could not go to God before Jesus came and died, or that the blot of sin which is on men, to the degree it is, renders them totally incapable of being accepted by God. Enoch was.
So was Elijah, snatched straight up to heaven. This isn't a little thing. It's a disproof of the theory that one little drop of sin is utter damnation. Either that's wrong, or Elijah and Enoch had no sin and Paul is wrong, or God forgave their sins and took them anyway, before the life and death of Jesus. The latter answer is what it probably true, and it might tell us something about the fate of virtuous pagans, something Paul might not like, but Paul is invited to go tell God that he's not allowed to take up Enoch or Elijah into heaven until Jesus' death. Given that God DID, according to the Bible, I just wouldn't persist in the tradition that absolute purity is required to be in the presence of God and be acceptable to God, because it clearly is not.
But if we persist awhile in the theory that absolute purity, stainlessness, sinlessness, is required for anyone to be in the presence of God, then what do we make of Mary, Mother of God? Forget about the Catholic traditions and focus on what the text says. In Luke, we read an angel of God addressing a human woman, hailing her gravely, and telling her "the Lord is with you". And this turns out to be literally the case. God literally comes into Mary and implants himself there. Now, Catholic tradition has followed that Pauline line you've insisted about, about how God can't stand in the presence of sin. And the Catholics decided that given that Pauline IMPOSSIBILITY, that God could not have entered sinful human flesh and abided there entombed in sin for 9 months...hence the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary herself was sinless from the time of her conception...to get around the problem of God being mixed with sin, God coming upon a sinful woman, etc. Of course, the immaculate conception doesn't REALLY get around the Pauline problem, because Paul said that NOBODY is without sin. So it's a conundrum...if one places too much weight on Paul.
Anywhere, there's the problem: the notion that nobody is without sin, joined with the idea that nobody with sin can stand in the presence of God. The first part is probably true, but the second part of that thesis falls apart on the text. Enoch either was without sin, or a man with sin can be snatched up to heaven. Elijah was either without sin, or a sinful man can be taken to heaven in glory. Mary was either without sin, or God can abide sin and be in its direct presence.
And then finally there is the problem of Paul saying (I believe in 1 Corinthians, but I don't have a Bible with me this instant to check) that Jesus BECAME sin. No, before we go off rapidly spinning to say that this doesn't mean what it says, like saying that Job 1:1 doesn't mean what it says, I think we ought to consider Enoch and Elijah and Mary and consider why we are spinning so hard. And the answer is that we're trying to defend a particular extra-Biblical hermeneutic that asserts certain things about Jesus and God, PARTICULARLY the notion that God can choose to forgive sins and let men with sins be in his presence. Yes, the Bible does say in parts that none is worthy of the presence of God...who can dispute THAT? And yet, worthy or no, God directly brought at least two men to heaven, and was more intimately present with one woman than with anyone else in history, all before the death of Jesus. For neither Enoch nor Elijah nor Mary were Christians at the time God took them into His direct presence.
I don't have any difficulty with any of this, really, becaues God is God and can do whatever he wants. I have difficulty abiding the argument that the Bible is a law text and a constitution, though. It's not. Other than the Torah, it was never intended to be.
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