Conclusion from Peru and Mexico

email from Randall Easter | 25 January 2008 | Randall Easter

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply, dear Mad Dawg!

The first is the question of reason generally, and it touches on what it means to be in the image of God, what choice and freedom are, and a bunch o' stuff. And, of course, it touches on what reason is. The modern view seems to be that reason is "the meat computer", while the older view is it is a faculty whereby we perceive truth. (The lower case 't' is important here.)

Being a denizen of space and time, man suffers from an observer problem.

He travels a worldline. If Creation were a movie, he’d be seeing it one frame at a time, and not from the beginning of it.

By contrast, God sees “all that there is” all at once.

Time and space are part of the Creation, not properties of the Creator.

Thus only He knows objective Truth. He is. When He says a thing, it is.

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. – Exodus 3:14

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. – John 8:58

For the word of the LORD [is] right; and all his works [are done] in truth. He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD. By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spake, and it was [done]; he commanded, and it stood fast. – Psalms 33:4-9

Remember the former things of old: for I [am] God, and [there is] none else; [I am] God, and [there is] none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times [the things] that are not [yet] done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: - Isaiah 46:9-10

Whenever man - traveling his worldline - projects his own mind onto God he ends up anthropomorphizing God into a caricature, an imagining, a small “god” his puny, mortal mind can comprehend.

Sometimes posters around here nuance the words and say they believe “in” God because they can’t possibly understand Him. But what that really says to me is that the poster is throwing up his hands and saying that his own imaginings are the best that he can do.

Or to put it another way, he is trusting his own mind to figure God out (a futile task) rather than simply taking God at His word.

For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:8-9

The Law of the Excluded Middle (either/or – every proposition is either true or not true) is an example. It has served man well since the days of Aristotle. But even in observing the physical realm, the law does not hold. Whether one sees a particle or a wave depends on what he is looking for.

If the Law doesn’t hold consistently in the Creation, why would anyone think the Creator would have to comply with the Law of the Excluded Middle?

And yet there are beliefs which say that Jesus Christ must be either man or God. He can’t be both because of the Law of the Excluded Middle. Other beliefs say that because of the Law of Identity, the Father, Son and Spirit are separate Gods. And there are many other such examples that have led to various doctrines and traditions of men and disputes among the members of the body of Christ.

But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. – 2 Timothy 2:23

As for me, I do not and shall not intentionally filter the words of God. I gladly receive everything He says.

Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: - Luke 24:25

Your second point:

Then the other is the issue of closed communion…As long as you thought/think the doctrines and such were wedges and veils, I can't see the Holy Spirit (or the local holy-dude) letting you join us. I guess what is a fence to some is a gate to others.

Truly, I have no desire to partake in the Eucharist in the local Catholic church – I brought that up as “Exhibit A” evidence of the exclusivity of the “club.”

And from what I have read and heard and seen there are indeed many veils and wedges between God and man built into the dogma, doctrines, teachings and sacraments of the Catholic Church.

Considering my gift and calling is to encourage other Christians to focus on the one and only Great Commandment, to love God surpassingly above all else - I would do my very best to expose the wedges and veils and my presence would be rather disruptive. Nevertheless, if the Spirit led me to do it, I would.

For the gifts and calling of God [are] without repentance. - Romans 11:29 You continued:

me: And the Catholic Church is not God.

You: Um, duh? But it IS the body of Christ, we think.

See, there’s a wedge right there. LOL!

The body of Christ consists of all those chosen from the foundation of the world for redemption by the blood of the Lamb, regardless of when the person was, is or will be in the flesh.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. – I John 4:9

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. – John 17:20-23

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. – Colossians 3:3

According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: - Ephesians 1:4

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. - 2 Peter 3:9

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. – Ephesians 5:25-32

To God be the glory!

[Alamo-Girl]

Please consider yourself pinged to 3181.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for all of your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your encouragements, dear sister in Christ! I'm so glad to hear you have the gift of admonishment.

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed, there is much to be gained. Testing is for our the good.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

[hosepipe]

[ Constantine did not believe in the Divinity of Christ ,HP ]

He believed in the divinity of anything as much as a normal roman would.. WHich is not thinking much about it at all.. The roman gods were silly.. as were the greek ones.. No doubt he considered god was a belief of the low born..

[ Do you believe in the Divinity of Christ? ]

Of course I do, I even beiieve in the Seven Spirits of God as spoken in the book of Revelation..What are they?.. I dunno.. I dont even know what a spirit IS really..

Christ(Son of God) existed before he inhabited flesh for a time and is now as he was ib the beginning.. Spirit..

But then so are we spirits.. which was Jesus chief message.. That we are basically not flesh but spirits inhabiting flesh, for a time, as he did himself.. YOU getting any of this?.. LoL... Its quite a wonderful story even very good news.. [ Do you believe Christ is God in the Flesh? ]

NO.. I beleive Christ WAS God in the flesh.. When the flesh dies the spirit is free for another body/vessel.. That is if we need one at all.. Flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit as the word plainly conveys.. God-(Father, Son,Holy Spirit) are Spirit so are we "basically".. Presently we are slaves to this flesh.. grooming, feeding, watering, entertaining, breeding, working, bathing, and petting it.. and more.. A spirit needs none of that.. a spirit is free of fleshy slavery.. Hell might be being condemned to the flesh for eternity.. because "WE" LOVED IT SO..

[hosepipe]

[ First I never said she is a socialist or communist (they are not the same). ]

Yes they are.. Communism IS socialism..
----------------------

Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx

Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"How do you tell a Socialist:- It's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an Anti-Socialist someone who understands Marx and Lenin" -Ronald Reagan

[kosta50]

Yes they are.. Communism IS socialism

Obviously you don't know what you are talking about. They are not one and the same. Neither is fascism the same as nazism. There are important differences in each of them. That doesn't mean the differences make them desirable.

The rest of your post are slogans, not arguments.

So, you have issues with democracy? Are you in favor of a more, shall we say, dictatorial regime? Are you advocating regime change in America to a dictatirship? Pray tell.

[MarkBsnr]

Are you telling me that you see no substantive difference in following the Church of Jesus Christ, and in following the theology written by government bureaucrats?

You do realize that the monarch of England is the head of their church?

And you have no problem with it?

[MarkBsnr]

***That’s like saying “Dear, I have all the parts to assemble this gym set for the boys, you can go ahead and throw out the assembly instructions.” You’ll not see one of the Reformed who doesn’t regularly, if not daily, read and study the Bible for its wisdom, instruction, correction, and understanding from God. It is the HS who gives us understanding of what we have read.***

The Reformed claim is that the indwelling HS leads and guides and frogmarches all the elect to Heaven. If the knowledge is indwelling, of what use is a translation of a translation of a translation?

And all that Scripture means to the non elect is a cruel taunt from a cruel God who waves eternal salvation in front of them while telling them that they can never have it.

[MarkBsnr]

It’s your side that regularly mixes up the Word of God with the word of God. Jesus versus Scripture.

If you make them equivalent, then you are in effect worshiping the Bible.

[kosta50]

Christ(Son of God) existed before he inhabited flesh for a time and is now as he was ib the beginning.. Spirit..But then so are we spirits.. which was Jesus chief message.. That we are basically not flesh but spirits inhabiting flesh, for a time, as he did himself

So, you are saying we pre-existed as "spirits" and then (for some reason, such as being "naughty" maybe?) got "punished" and incarcerated in a body? Is that what you are preaching, hosepipe?

I beleive Christ WAS God in the flesh..

So, you are denying His bodily resurrection as well? Did His body decay? Was His resurrection only an illusion?

When the flesh dies the spirit is free for another body/vessel

Oh, so you are also preaching re-incarnation?

we are slaves to this flesh..Hell might be being condemned to the flesh for eternity

Tank you for finally exposing your book-case Gnosticism, hosepipe.

[MarkBsnr]

***[ Why would an all knowing, all seeing God need to test anything? ]

For our sakes silly.. So that “WE” would know who and what we are made of.. Not intellectually but practically and spiritually.. So we would know what we are, and what we ain’t.. Eternity is a long time and much to be gained or lost..***

Exactly so. Any testing is for us, not for God. He already knows all.

I am glad that you are not of the Reformed persuasion where you do not need Scripture, you have no need of testing, you have no need of repentence; you only have need of the indwelling moral compass that doesn’t allow one to commit evil (well, maybe you can, but since you have the indwelling HS, it doesn’t matter - you’re going to Heaven anyway no matter what you do).

[kosta50]

You’ll not see one of the Reformed who doesn’t regularly, if not daily, read and study the Bible for its wisdom, instruction, correction, and understanding from God. It is the HS who gives us understanding of what we have read.

Where do you find in the Bible such instruction? In Timothy it says it is "profitable" or "useful" (but it doesn't even specify what constitutes scriptures and who determines if they are). And where does it say in the Bible that one has to read it (privately or not) every day?

And from the Reformed point of view, what does it matter if you read scriptures or don't read them?

Your "understanding" does not affect your salvation, as nothing that you do or don't do does. So, it really doesn't matter what you do or even if you pray, or even sin: your destiny has been determined before you were even born, according to your theology, and nothing will change that (although the Bible says otherwise).

But if you read 2 Timothy (that Protestants love to spout), look closely at what it says:

and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. [2 Tim 3:15-17]

So, according to the author, the scriptures are known from infancy?

It also says that scriptures can make you wise, and that wisdom somehow makes you faithful, which saves you. So, in other words, the Bible can "save" you? Wow!

You will also notice that the same paragraph says that the "scriptures you have known from infancy [sic]" can help you attain salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ? Assuming 2 Tim was written by "Paul," as is widely held by fndamentalists but equally widely rejected by scholars, it would have been written probably between 55-60 AD. A that time there were no written books of the New Testament to help lead anyone to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ!

It would also mean that the infants who could "read" the scriptures and "know" them would have been born around the time of Jesus' Crucifixion (20-25 years earlier)! In other words, the infants in those days knew the scriptures by "osmosis?" LOL!

The most logical concusion one could deduce from this is that 2 Tim was written by someone other than St. Paul, but before 130 AD (since it is included in various canons after that date).

In otherwords, 2 Timothy, the one book the Protestants so love to quote from, appears to be a forgery.

[kosta50]

The earth and all it holds proceded out from God, and it is not God. Neither is the Bible

The reality shows us that it's not just the earth, and that the Creation is actually beyoind our comprehension and a mystery in and of itself.

It has been human tendency, as far back as we can tudy anthropology, that humans tended to assign that which they didn't understand to "God" or demons. Be it earthquake, thunder, desease, flood, you name it, it was always lost its divine lustre when the cause was finally discovered.

The divine argument is actually valid only so long as we don't know the cause...and that's pretty sad. The track record doesn't look good for those who persist in assigning divinity to all human ignorance.

We can't think only in terms of us and earth. We have to think it terms of not one galaxy with billions of stars but of billions of galaxies that existed hidden from our view for aeons and in terms of what else is hidden from us...tgo realize that we have no clue what the purpose of all this is. But it sure ain't us.

[Mad Dawg]

As to the heretic being the Church's problem: I like to say,"It's not your fault, but it's your problem." Yeah, I tend to ward the codependent end of the spectrum, so I think that if one of my sheepies is sick, it's my problem. But you're right. I HAVE been known to put a sheep down (in my REAL, not parabolical, flock, I hasten to add ...) You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think, and some chose to be ill and cannot give up their choice.

Ah, the "Culpability and thesosis" comment prods me to remember the appearance we give of being legalistic. (Not saying it's NOT a reality, leaving that open, thus saying "appearance" only.)

The 'will' to me is conceptually problematic. But I do think what one might call spiritual sicknesses of the will abound. Theosis, I would suggest, can by said at some point to involve, even to require, the will to self-abandonment, the will to be filled with something other than oneself.

I think there are demonic "intelligences" who can chain or cripple the will. I think further this can happen, sometimes, "just because", but other times because the possessed has been monkeying around where he ought not to have been monkeying around.

IN the latter case, once the demon is driven out, there may still be some illness of the will that led the victim to make himself vulnerable to possession -- even if it's only a failure to take advantage of the usual spiritual prophylaxis. If that okay to say?

The money phrase in the question about Baptism is "according to the sacrament of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church...or according to the sacrament of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, ...". For us all you need is (a) An intention to baptize - and that could be merely "I am trying to do whatever it is the Church does when she baptizes." (b) Water. (c) A baptismal formula in involving the Trinity, such as, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." IF all that has happened, the catechumen is sho' 'nuff a member of the Church and, to say the same thing another way, grafted into the mystical Body of Christ. Whether he perseveres to the end is another story.

And so a person can be a member but in "bad standing" or in what you might call "imperfect standing", like a child who is not admitted to all the sacraments because of age and discretion and such, or like Alamo-Girl who (I assume she is baptize as specified above) does not agree that the Church that we're talking about is more than an institution of men and does not agree with what we hold to be de fide. A member, to be sure, but not yet appropriate for "all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining".

The question you did not understand, rephrased: We say that in Baptism God grafts you into the body of Christ, forgives all your sins up to that point, grants you Spiritual rebirth (whether you feel it or not), and like that. What do you all say happens at Baptism?

We're on the same page about heresies and theosis, I think.

I don't get the Atheism as a result of Western heresies because I would have thought there were atheists before the Church. However I do think many atheists say"I don't believe in God," because they don't believe in some cartoon figure presented by crappy catechesis in the West, among us papists as well as among the separated brethren. I often find myself trying to explain that I don't believe in the god they don't believe either.

Thanks for the conversation.

[hosepipe]

[ Obviously you don't know what you are talking about. They are not one and the same. ]

Yes they are .. they are not the exactly same (I did not say that) but communism "IS" socialism.. it is measured in degrees.. By the way, Nazism is also socialism.. The Nazis were socalists.. for that was the name of the party.. They were just CALLED Nazis..

I submit that it is YOU that is ignorant.. Democracy is a bad thing, and a bad form of government.. The United States is NOT a democracy... The U.S. Constitution has the words democracy, democratic or democrat in it NOWHERE.. by design.. Because democracy is Mob Rule by mobsters and our founders(U.S.) KNEW that.. Democracy is Tribal Law.. like Sharia Law(Islam) is.. Democracy causes socilaism.. WHY?.... the United States is a republic and NOT a democracy could be an interesting study for you.. for there are reasons very good reasons for it.. The U.S. is a Constitutional Republic..

[Quix]

WONDERFUL BIBLICALLY TRUE exposition. Thanks Big

[hosepipe]

[ So, you are saying we pre-existed as "spirits" and then (for some reason, such as being "naughty" maybe?) got "punished" and incarcerated in a body? Is that what you are preaching, hosepipe? ]

No.. I'm saying JESUS pre-existed as the Son of God(being eternal you know).. was incarnated, and was resurrected, body and all... you know like Lazarus was.. except was in the SAME body.. According to acts Jesus body went thru walls.. no human body could do that.. [ So, you are denying His bodily resurrection as well? Did His body decay? Was His resurrection only an illusion? ]

Nope.. being GOD he could resurrect ROCKS.. like he did with Lazarus.. When he appeared one of times(after resurrection) hes said don't touch me.. Another time there was the Thomas story/event.. WHat you're saying I'm not inplying what I'm saying your not "getting".. [ Oh, so you are also preaching re-incarnation? ]

Nope... Im preaching re-enspiritation.. God is Spirit and we are spirit to.. "the flesh profits NOTHING".. You know the verses(you know in the bible).. I hope.. [ Thank you for finally exposing your book-case Gnosticism, hosepipe.]

Gnostic Smoskic.. Gnostics were fatalists, like muslims.. I'm not.. I get the feeling you obsess on Gnostism.. and are maybe a Cargo Cultist.. like many christian religionists..

What IS a christian by your standards?...

[Marysecretary]

I think you will be very surprised at who is in heaven, Kolo. Why, you might even see A-G, Dr. E, Quix, Manfred, Marysecretary and others who disagree with you. Hope we see you there too, sincerely so.