Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
How do you know that Luther was saved?
If it makes any difference to you, which I doubt, I am a Presbyterian.
I suppose you hold 2 Timothy 3:16-17 of no import, also?
Jesus in human form drove the money changers from the temple, yes. He displayed what has been described as human anger. Yet, I have heard from this forum that God has misled people in the past and not been entirely truthful.
Might a true God simply have been putting on effects for the watching humans?
Are you saying that God does not hate? That God does not love?
I’m fortunate.
I am no longer in my walled office; yet I still have the ability to intermittantly access both FR and the online Bible and Catechism.
I can type very fast and multitask with multiple Windows and the T1 network works okay. I’m very fortunate and just as fortunate to be here learning (and hopefully teaching a little bit as well).
This is NOT meant as a metaphor. I'm totally forgiven. But I think many, including the person picking up shards of glass from the carpet would think that that forgiveness (a) doesn't wipe out every debt, (b) actually prompts me to pay my debts.I meant a REAL window NOT a metaphorical one. True story: a girl drove into the corner of my fencing when she should have been looking at the road. She knocked the corner skew-wise. Doesn't she owe ME something?
Jesus paid for all the windows you will ever break.
So why does the judge down at General Dis'ric' Court say I have to make restitution? What, seriously, is the meaning of that? If I told Judge Barclay Jesus had already paid for the windows, he'd warn me and then I'd end up doing time for contempt or having a garnishment served on me or something.
While every sin is forgiven, there are also times when we are to pay restitution to those we have done something to. The payment is owed to the one whom damage is done. Sometimes you damage more than one person, you pay to all the people you have damaged. When it comes to damages against God, all restitution is already paid. The girl who drove into your fence owes you for a fence, regardless of how sorry she is, and you, being the magnanimous person you are, could forgive her of all damages. If, however, her brother came to you and said “My sister is learning to drive, and she might hit your fence, here is enough money to cover any damages she might do.” then you should not expect any more payment. In other words, she is ALREADY forgiven.
Well, once again those who disagree with the Protestant Wrecking Crew could only do so because they don't understand or haven't read Scripture.
LONG before I even THOUGHT of being Catholic it was a commonplace that God was "without parts or passions". Consequently those parts of the Scripture which you all cheerfully take as justification for scornfully proclaiming that we are either ignorant or stupid were understood as a moving effort to portray as best as it could be portrayed in human language what the Divine ACTION of Love is like.
By this reckoning, true Love is what God IS (and God chooses to be what He is), and what we call love is a kind of simulacrum of true love or a projection on a dull and torn screen of the Divine Love. Consequently, on a day to day basis, Love and pity and whatnot are things we suffer, things that happen to us. Only over time do we learn that real Love and Pity and the rest are actions and acts of will.
That God the Son of God suffers and dies is by the same sort of reckoning part of the incomprehensible mystery of the Incarnation. One thing we can say with some confidence is that God didn't send his only begotten Son because he FELT like it. He CHOSE, and chose freely, to do so.
But maybe it's just incomprehensible to us stupid Catholics, since those who have γνωσις, uh, I mean knowledge, know the nature of God so well that they can confidently mock those with whom they disagree.
I feel so, oh, I don't know, deflated ... not puffed up anyway. I leave that to those with γνωσισ.
You don't think it might just be possible that the word passion is being used in different ways here? If you'll excuse my ignorance in suggesting it....
So we'd say that When I sin, I , in principle, owe a debt to God. But we say "in principle" because it's paid. But I may also owe a debt to someone else, and THAT debt is not paid by the atonement wrought in Christ.
Oh wait! In a way it is. If I forgive the debt, then I am paid by Christ. Isn't that somehow right?
It's interesting, and I'm wanting to pick my way carefully, because of ψ 51 v. 6 "against you only have I sinned .." And that seems really true at a deep level. All sins are against God and all debts are somehow owed to Him. And thanks be to God who has in Christ squared the account.
I think where my mind wonders next is to wonder, as I have been doing for about 11 months or so, if accounting is an adequate analogy for justice.
Amen. Poster child for celibacy...
That is why I used the word damage, not sin, for the other people whom you have affected. We still need to pay damages if we have done someone wrong, but all our sins have been forgiven by God.
For example... take the sin of drunkenness. You will pay for your excess, maybe with a hangover, sick stomache, an angery wife, etc, but the sin against God (excessive drinking) is forgiven.
Bear in mind these are somewhat terms of art in the theology. It flows from the attributes of God as immutable, unchanging, etc.
For explanation of the Orthodox view, here's some excerpts from "An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" by St John Damascene:
Concerning the Holy Trinity.Therefore, theologically, disagreement over passion in this sense would involve disagreement with the other attributes as well or the logic of the theology it derives from.
We believe, then, in One God, one beginning, having no beginning, uncreate, unbegotten, imperishable and immortal, everlasting, infinite, uncircumscribed, boundless, of infinite power, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, without flux, passionless, unchangeable, unalterable, unseen, the fountain of goodness and justice, the light of the mindHow could that be immutable which is circumscribed and subject to passion? And how could that be passionless which is composed of elements and is resolved again into them? For combination is the beginning of conflict, and conflict of separation, and separation of dissolution, and dissolution is altogether foreign to God
Wherefore in God, Who alone is passionless and unalterable, and immutable, and ever so continueth, both begetting and creating are passionless. For being by nature passionless and not liable to flux, since He is simple and uncompound, He is not subject to passion or flux either in begetting or in creating, nor has He need of any co-operation
He is passionless and incorporeal: independent of the union of two again because He is incorporeal but also because He is the one and only God, and stands in need of no co-operation: and without end or cessation because He is without beginning, or time, or end, and ever continues the same.
thanks for your reply.
You have no clue what dispassionate means. Crack open a dictionary.
No need to post to me either.
Hey, yer spell check didn’t work.
Passions assigned to God are anthropomorphisms. I would think that the Portestant community would understand that. I was wrong, but not surprised.
Romans 3:28
Jesus was subject to all our passions in His human nature. Is God, in His divine nature, subject to pleasure? Pain? Death? Sex? Something He cannot resist? Something that compels Him to do things He doesn't want to do? Is God not perfectly content?
No, it's because you don't consider Christ as the full revelation of God. Rather your God is the angry tyrant of the OT. Christ did not come to tell us that God was wrong bur different from the way Jews imaged Him.
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