Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
True you do... but some sheep in the sheep pen(s) have come out of the sheep pen(s)(John ch10).. You know, as Jesus beckoned them to do.. and many have not... But remain, drawing some kind of safety from the sheep pen(s).. fear maybe..
"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." -- Psalm 139:7-8
My argument is with people who mix apples and oranges and sell them as pomegranates. A little general education is Hebraica would dispell any notion that Jewish Sheol is equivalent to Christian hell. One specific feature of Judaism is that it believed God was indeed in Sheol, which was a "real" place where the deceased continued their earthly lives.
If you are going to quote scriptures, then quote them in context of Christian understanding instead of relying on the sophistry of lumping everything into one basket.
Again, your argument is with Scripture, Kosta
My argument is with some people's interpretation or better yet, misinterpretation of the scriptures within their cultural and contextual framework.
The Bible, gives us more than one definition of love...and in our lives we have many more.
And yet He doesn't stop until He catches every one of them and brings them back, where they belong.
Let's refer to that big book of God's word again and find the answer...
As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God." -- 1 Peter 2:15-16 "For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:
"For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." -- 1 Corinthians 6:20
"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." -- 1 Corinthians 10:31
And these things we do because it is by and for and through the will of God.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." -- Philippians 2:13
Keep trying.
LoL... cute.. methinks you missed something..
That was funny though..
Everything that happens is by God's will, but not necessarily by God's last action. However, in the way you are framing the issue you merely assign this responsibility to God, on our behalf, but you do not explain how it works. What did God do to earn this responsibility? For example, it sounds very much like you are saying that the mere act of creation puts an obligation on God to offer salvation to all. Therefore, in your mind, if Reformers deny that God offers salvation to all, then God is responsible for all who are not saved. This hypothesis would match everything you have said so far. If this is true, then how do you make the connection between the act of creation and the responsibility you assign to God?
So, in reality, they are not rejecting Christ, but are forced by God to reject Christ ...
This confirms my hypothesis. The mistake you make here is in equating God's will with who does the action, and who is responsible for that action. Consider the alternative that you are defending, which is, that man thwarts God's will, or that God doesn't care enough to have a will. That would be a very weak God in my book.
If God is in control and we have no free will then God moves us and God makes our decisions; we are puppets and He is the puppet master.
No, you jump from God is in control directly to God forces us to do evil. That is a false conclusion. God is in control means He gets what He wants. People make their own decisions to sin, without His help. There is no nexus without a duty, and that is what I am asking you to explain.
All the strings are His. And what we do is strict obedience to God's will, no matter if it's good or evil.
As we discussed earlier, your use of the word would have the Cardinals "obeying" me if they come back to win the division. It is not the normal use of the word.
If God is always in control, then we can't do anything on our own, whether it's good or evil. The sin of omission is not an option here. Puppets on the string do nothing unless the puppet master pulls their strings.
And so your analogy fails. Why is it impossible for God to simply leave people to their own sinful natures?
But the Bible says that God specifically hardened the Pharaoh's heart so that he would not relent. So, it was not the Pharaoh's own decision, but God's. By this logic, Judas and Hitler were simply obedient God's servants.
No, this is your interpretation of scripture you already believe to be false on its face. Your interpretation is not consistent with any other scripture I can think of. However, my interpretation, which is that God left Pharaoh to his own sinful nature, knowing the result, IS consistent with other scripture such as:
Rom 6:23 : For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Wages are earned, not given out as a gift or curse. Pharaoh earned the consequences of his sin. Pharaoh was responsible. This is one reason why your view of us is incorrect.
Precious instruction. Food for my thirsty soul. Thank you.
Why? Don't you ask for forgiveness in "Our Father..."? We can ask, provided we have forgiven those who trespassed against us.
Sure, but what good does it do? Apparently, one needs a priest to actually get forgiveness because that is how the Church set up the rules for itself. IIRC, if one is delinquent in making confession, he is not even supposed to take communion. If true, that sounds pretty forced to me.
The Bible tells us to confess to others. Confessing to God directly is like loving those who love you; no big deal.
What??? :) The Bible does tell us to confess to others, but for the sins we have committed against them. I have no issue with confessing all sins to another person if one is so moved, but confessing directly to God is taking a shortcut? That's ridiculous. :) Are you telling me that God would rather have us go through a middle man than to man up and confess what we did to Him directly? Where does this come from? Doesn't this go against everything we teach our children? If your child has wronged someone and wants to apologize face to face do you tell her to instead tell a friend to pass along the message? :)
FK:The verse is making a statement of fact, not an offer. It is akin to "If you eat from the tree, then you will surely die"
If-then is a conditional statement no matter how you look at it. A statement of what would have been "when you eat [in other words: you will eat] from the tree you're dead!"
I'm not arguing that it isn't a conditional statement, it is. I'm saying it's not an offer. When I tell my son "If it snows tonight, then you will be shoveling in the morning", I am not making him an offer, I am stating a matter of fact because I have the authority to do so.
We ARE to do because we are commanded so. Among many things, we are told to make disciples of ALL nations. No small job. :) As it affects humans, predestination is not a static term, but rather a term very much in continuous motion. Everything IS already laid out in God's mind, AND it still must take place within time. So in our experience, God is always in motion.
It is my unrewarding vocation to fight a desperate rear-guard against the marauding hordes of language debasers (nothing personal). A linguistic Roland am I.
On my grave will be written:
Parse THIS, sucker!
But do I understand you to say that the freedom God gives in Christ does not mean a freedom to reject God, but one can on a case by case basis, so to speak, reject His instructions as to this or that moral decision?
Just spekkerlatin' here, with two examples:
(1) In the sheriff's office where I worked, if we were not in a building, a vehicle, or a fight, we were ALWAYS to have our Smokey Bear hats on. ALWAYS. You get out of your car and walk 5 steps to a door, you get out, put on your hat, walk five steps, open the door, walk in, take your hat off (and stand around awkwardly with this big ol' hat in your hand).
Some of the deputies who had been there longer than the Sheriff would NOT do this if the sheriff was out of town. But they didn't want to quit being deputies.
OR
(2) Sometimes as teenagers we "hate" our parents for a while. But we still love them, we've just kind of lost sight of that for a while ...
Is it kind of like one or both of those?
OK, and this does lead me to ask what happens if the mortal sin is not taken care of, and the person dies and goes to hell. What happens to the indwelling Spirit in that case?
Amen. I thought the quote you gave from Westminster was perfect. :)
The burden is to show why would they stop what Christ commanded.
That is a sidestep. I say that they didn't stop. You are asserting that they lost the power to heal. I see no evidence of this in the Bible. Is it Tradition?
But, to give you a protestant answer, the Bible tells us sufficiently what we need to know. In this case, we seem to know two incompatible things: Christ never abolished miracles, but indeed commissions signs and healing, and the Apostles mysteriously stop.
That's just it, we DON'T KNOW that they stopped. What is your evidence? Did Jesus perform a miracle with everyone He met? Of course not, and that said nothing as to His ability to perform them. Just like the Apostles, in some cases Jesus did and in some He didn't.
The salvation model is indeed the same, but the Chruch was not there for the Old Testament folk as an ordinary means of grace.
Nice seeing you again.
The Catechism is indeed a layered cake. Often, a reference is to another document, which no doubt makes mention of five more, before you get to the scriptural reference. This is because Catholic doctrines synthesize the deposit of fath of which the scripture is but a component. To connect a doctrine to the supporting scripture it is often easier to go to a Catholic apologetic source that would defend the doctrine rather than merely explain what it is.
Thanx for the ping ... trying to follow along, ‘stayin’ otta tha way up on the porch.’
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