Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
***We stand in a unique position where on the one hand we call the Greeks and Romanists to give up their notions of an ontological Church and its notion of corporate revelation and on the other hand we call out to Evangelicals to reject their individualistic, subjectivistic spirituality that believes parroting the Bible is the same as knowing God and rejecting the corporate creeds and confessions they forget that man’s heart is a perpetual forge of idols that needs to be checked by the corporate Church. ***
Winner of the longest sentence of the day!!! Congratulations :>)
kosta: I agree, but that hardly explains the role of St. Paul, or the book entitled "Revelation of John" (aka the Book of Revelation).
Paul, no doubt, was witness to the many events of Christ and had a direct revelation of Christ and was confirmed by the other Apostles as an Apostle. John, the author of Revelations, was a direct Apostle and witness.
That's possible, but the "help for the Holy Spirit" is a faith-based assumption and should correctly be stated "and we believe with the help of the Holy Spirit," as a matter of faith, rather than as a matter of fact.
No need to dictomize between faith and fact. Matters of faith could be fact. You place faith in atheist scholars and in some instances the trust you place in their conclusions may turn out to be fact.
It's all [Scripture] based on copies of copies and on a priori faith. If faith is salvific, then there is no need for scriptures. You don't learn how to believe through the Bible. In order for the Bible to "make sense" you already have to believe. But if you already believe, what are you going to change? Is believing in God not enough?
Is seeing the face of God in creation a priori? No, I know God by experiencing creation. Is seeing the face of God through my conscience a priori? No, I know God by my experiences of conscience. Is seeing the face of God in Scripture a priori? No, I know God by experiencing him through Scripture. Faith is not salvic. Christ is salvic. Faith is merely the instrumentality that appropriates Christ's righteousness. It's impossible to believe in the true God unless you believe he revealed himself. Since God revealed himself in Christ and we can know of Christ through Scripture then one must believe in the divinity of Scripture in order to trust Christ and appropriate his righteousness.
those who believe [can't] prove anything by quoting the bible.
Trusting in the promises of him who is completely trustworthy really has nothing to prove. All we can do is point to where he has shown his trustworthiness. If you don't trust the record of his trustworthiness then you won't trust the promises.
Not if they thought he was a demon.
Regarding John's assertion of Jesus' divinity, of all the Apostles, John is the only Apostle who leaves no doubt that Jesus is divine.
The whole issue with John came up when you asserted that cJesus was crucified because John wrote about him cliaming to be God. That would be only according to Mark.
But as much as the other Gospels speak of Christ's humanity, John's speaks of his divnity ("and the Word became flesh"). But think of the chronological aspects of these Gospels. John's is being written at the end of the first century, some 50-60 years after Chirst, after Jamnia, and when Christian theology is distinctly rejecting Judaism.
It took Christianity some 400 years to fully formulate what it believed in and to canonize the New Testament. To claim that it was equally believed everywhere by all is simply not the case, just as it is the case today. The same thing is true with Christ's divnity.
[grin] What’s the prize?
That's more or less a BIG 10-4.
I think that modern scholarship and all that has something to tell us. But when the dust settles, the Bible is what we got. It's not all we got, I as a good Papist add, but it's what we got.
If I live a lot longer and (my cat stays off my keyboard and) I someday get smart, I'm going to write a paper on how the writers of the Scriptures and Our Lord interpret the Scriptures. It seems to me sometimes that they took incredible liberties.
But I think it's quite right to say that the inspiration of the writers gave them more than they sometimes could write. This accounts for the luminous quality of Scripture, which I personally find most apparent in John and Hebrews. Both are, I think, exquisitely crafted (kata sarka) and both are almost bursting because what the write is called to write is too big for his mind and his words.
Any adult who can read John 13:30b - ην δε νυχ and not shiver just isn't paying attention.
In kosta's defense I have to say that once we stipulate that what is going on in the Bible is "too true for words" (as I like to say) we've pretty much agreed that working out the details of the authority of Scripture isn't going to be as cut and dried as we might like.
You did a marvelous job as far as my untrained eyes can see:
The Incarnation thing is about (1.a) what it was that became incarnate, and (1.b) from where, so to speak, he became incarnate, and about (2) how great was the self-emptying that Incarnation, AND (3) that the Incarnation -- the "work of Christ", His whole earthly life from conception to Ascension -- is, inter alia, revelatory. You wanna know Who God is? Look at IHS. You wanna know what omnipotence and bliss are? Look at an infant or a man being tortured to death. Like that.
+Athanasius: "For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality. For while He Himself was in no way injured, being impossible and incorruptible and very Word and God, men who were suffering, and for whose sakes He endured all this, He maintained and preserved in His own impassibility."
I will agree that scholars of the Greek Church are "atheists" if you agree that the Reformed are deceived by Satan. How's that?
I am not interested in your prejudices. Keep them to yourself.
You believe the presuppositions of atheists and mystics. I believe the presupposition of God himself
Presumptuous, aren't you? You can't prove that. You are spouting your own convictions as "facts." You have no proof whatsoever that you even know God. And is that sentence not an oxymoron? Does God presuppose? You are tripping over Reformed verbosity because it makes them sound "smarter."
When I read Scripture I see the face of God and when you read Scripture you see backward fools
You not only assume that your visions are genuine, but you claim to know what I see. Next thing you'll tell me is what I had for dinner...is that what they teach you in the Reformed lecture halls they call "churches?"
Reformationals are consciously Trinitarian (not the subordianist type of the Greeks)
How are Greeks "subordainst?" That is a term usually applied to those cults that subordinate the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father, such as Arians. Surely you are not implying such nonsense?
Revealing himself to the puny categories of the human mind is condescending to the almighty.
If He did, that was His decision. He wanted it. You are outdoing yourself.
You also call yourself "Reformed," yet your description of the "human element" in the Bible is not what your Reformed co-believers on these Forums proclaim. But, then again, given the unending buffet of Protestant innovations, it is perfectly possible to be something no one else is and use the same label.
Contrary to your description here, the Reformed on these Forums do have Creeds and, in fact, quote the Westminster Confession ad nauseum.
But, hey, if you say you are Reformed, so be it. Why not? Each Reformed is his own "pope." It's a man-made, feel-good religion, that feeds one's ego and pride and self-righteousness to the point where some will even arrogate themselves the "powers" of knowing what others see.
Yet another 10-4!
I would rather say faith is the gift through which God bestows (rather than "appropriates" with an indeterminate subject) Christ's righteousness, and I would have put a paragraph break after "righteousnss" and before "It's". But for my money these sentences are the saddharma.
Now there's plenty of room of RC/Prot disagreement about the, sort of, quality of the necessity of revelation, so this isn't a kumbaya fest. But these are good words.
Sorry, but that went way over my head. What does "subordianist" mean?
You have no objective proof whatsoever that the scripture is anything but a book. You claim that a book is holy and I aks you to prove it. The Jews claim only tre oT is "holy," and the Muslims cliam the Koran is "holy," and the LDS claim all books are whole including the Book of Mormon...men decide. Get it? It's all abrakadabra without a shred of evidence or proof.
If you believe it is holy then it is holy but only as far as you are concerned. State it as your belieef "I believe the Bible is holy." Cliaming it as a matter of fact is foolish because such an extraodrinary claim cannot be backed up by equally extraordinary evidence.
I've already demonstrated the irrationality of this thinking earlier and you had no reply and yet you continue with these nonsense assertions
You have not proven anything, leats of all anything requiring reason. You can't even prove your basic premise, namely that the Bible is holy. All your prtenses are subjecitve beliefs. How can you prove soemthing irrational if you use irrational a priori beliefs?
The messianic "myth" developed directly after the Fall when God promised that Eve's descendant would crush Satan. That is patently false. Pre-captivity Judaism did not expect a messiah, did not have a concept of messiah, and did not have a concept of the devil. Satan in Judaism is an obedient servant of God. Judaism explicitly rejects any notion that an angel can rebel against God's will.
Yes indeed! Have been there and have done that. :)
***Next thing you’ll tell me is what I had for dinner...***
Food? Just a guess.
Sounds great. Now if you could only prove it...You take it on blind faith. The myth perpetuated through Acts is that they all kissed and made up. The evidence shows that was not the case.
The myth that claims that John of the Revelation was an Apostle and a witness is manifested by the fact that nothing has divided the Church to this day more than that uncalled for book. But don't take that to be the "atheist Greek Church" position: it's mine.
All we know is that St. Paul claims he was instantly converted, and even that account is not really flawlessly matching the one in Acts.
All we have is that St. Paul claims to be preaching the Gospel of Christ, when he never met Christ in person. His gospel, as he calls it, is not the same as the Gospels (of which only two of four are actual witnesses); One must wonder what happened to the other 7 Apostles? Could they not write?
No need to dictomize between faith and fact. Matters of faith could be fact. You place faith in atheist scholars and in some instances the trust you place in their conclusions may turn out to be fact
Oh, baloney! I don't place "faith" in scholars. I look at their the evidence they present to match their claims, which is leaps more than any evidence offered for abracadabra superstitions some people offer as "proof" when it comes to the Bible.
It's impossible to believe in the true God unless you believe he revealed himself
It's impossible to believe...unless youj believe... oxymoron of the week!
Is seeing the face of God in creation a priori?
Where is God in creation if not in your mind? You are assuming God created the world. At one time people believed lightening was God's "anger," and diseases were "demonic possessions." Man's fancy creates all sorts of things.
Since God revealed himself in Christ and we can know of Christ through Scripture then one must believe in the divinity of Scripture in order to trust Christ and appropriate his righteousness
Actually, to be correct, God revealed Himself in Jesus (Christ is a title, or at least it was until St. Paul made it Jesus' "last name."). But the correct wording should be "Since we believe that God revealed Himself in Jesus..."
Trusting in the promises of him who is completely trustworthy really has nothing to prove
Christ did not offer only promises; he also offered miracles, i.e. "proofs." And even then not everybody believed. Trust me.
Bingo!
And my crystal ball says you will get a phone call... :)
Strange way to put it for him! As if he was denying Christ's humanity. For Christ would have not only suffered and felt corruption, but we also believe He died before He resurrected.
I guess its the psychic in me. Pick a card, any card. Nope, not that one... wait... 3 of spades?
Strange way to put it for him! As if he was denying Christ's humanity.
Huh? What I quoted was directly from the translation of On the Incarnation of the Word (cf. Section 54) found on NewAdvent, to which I provided the link above. God is impassible and incorruptible. There is no denial of Christ's humanity, nor is there any confusion. You wrote:
For Christ would have not only suffered and felt corruption, but we also believe He died before He resurrected.
Absolutely! (How could you have a resurrection without a death?) But God is impassible and incorruptible, so what are we to make of this? From +John Damascene's Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III:
Chapter 26: "The Word of God then itself endured all in the flesh, while His divine nature which alone was passionless remained void of passion. For since the one Christ, Who is a compound of divinity and humanity, and exists in divinity and humanity, truly suffered, that part which is capable of passion suffered as it was natural it should, but that part which was void of passion did not share in the suffering. For the soul, indeed, since it is capable of passion shares in the pain and suffering of a bodily cut, though it is not cut itself but only the body: but the divine part which is void of passion does not share in the suffering of the body.
"Observe, further, that we say that God suffered in the flesh, but never that His divinity suffered in the flesh, or that God suffered through the flesh. For if, when the sun is shining upon a tree, the axe should cleave the tree, and, nevertheless, the sun remains uncleft and void of passion, much more will the passionless divinity of the Word, united in subsistence to the flesh, remain void of passion when the body undergoes passion. And should any one pour water over flaming steel, it is that which naturally suffers by the water, I mean, the fire, that is quenched, but the steel remains untouched (for it is not the nature of steel to be destroyed by water): much more, then, when the flesh suffered did His only passionless divinity escape all passion although abiding inseparable from it. For one must not take the examples too absolutely and strictly: indeed, in the examples, one must consider both what is like and what is unlike, otherwise it would not be an example. For, if they were like in all respects they would be identities, and not examples, and all the more so in dealing with divine matters. For one cannot find an example that is like in all respects whether we are dealing with theology or the dispensation."
Chapter 28: "The word corruption has two meanings. For it signifies all the human sufferings, such as hunger, thirst, weariness, the piercing with nails, death, that is, the separation of soul and body, and so forth. In this sense we say that our Lord's body was subject to corruption. For He voluntarily accepted all these things. But corruption means also the complete resolution of the body into its constituent elements, and its utter disappearance, which is spoken of by many preferably as destruction. The body of our Lord did not experience this form of corruption, as the prophet David says, For You will not leave my soul in hell, neither will You allow Your holy one to see corruption.
"Wherefore to say, with that foolish Julianus and Gaïanus, that our Lord's body was incorruptible, in the first sense of the word, before His resurrection is impious. For if it were incorruptible it was not really, but only apparently, of the same essence as ours, and what the Gospel tells us happened, viz. the hunger, the thirst, the nails, the wound in His side, the death, did not actually occur. But if they only apparently happened, then the mystery of the dispensation is an imposture and a sham, and He became man only in appearance, and not in actual fact, and we are saved only in appearance, and not in actual fact. But God forbid, and may those who so say have no part in the salvation. But we have obtained and shall obtain the true salvation. But in the second meaning of the word "corruption," we confess that our Lord's body is incorruptible, that is, indestructible, for such is the tradition of the inspired Fathers. Indeed, after the resurrection of our Saviour from the dead, we say that our Lord's body is incorruptible even in the first sense of the word. For our Lord by His own body bestowed the gifts both of resurrection and of subsequent incorruption even on our own body, He Himself having become to us the firstfruits both of resurrection and incorruption, and of passionlessness 1 Corinthians 15:20 . For as the divine Apostle says, This corruptible must put on incorruption."
***
But of course you already knew that. :)
There is no contradiction here. Read post 3407 again. That quote from +Athanasius is the doctrine of the Incarnation in a nutshell, the concise statement of all that he had previously laid out and argued in his treatise. And MD nailed it, just as concisely, and expressed it very well IMHO.
Who, me?
Actually, while true in many contingencies and contexts . . .
I was typically afraid of my own shadow and certainly of my mother’s stern look and voice and particularly her WHACK! . . . But I did bend over once to pick up my towel once drying off in front of the old gas stove in the adobe mud hut . . . thankfully without resulting in a brand.
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