Posted on 11/24/2009 4:10:44 PM PST by NYer
Statistics released Nov. 24 by the FBI show hate crimes against religious groups increased by 9% from 2007 to 2008.
USA Today reported that in 2008, there 1,519 incidents against people based on their religion, the statistics show.
The figures reveal that while anti-Jewish attacks made up the highest percentage of the attacks (17%), there was an increase in hate crimes against Catholics — 75, up from 61 in 2007.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said the increase may be due to the Church becoming more vocal on life issues such as abortion and homosexual unions.
As the Catholic bishops take a stronger stance, he said, it filters down to the laity, and as more traditional Catholics become more vocal, they become targets for those who disagree with them.
“Unfortunately, it spills over into violence,” he said, adding that it’s just going to get worse before it gets better.
“I’ve never seen our country so culturally divided and so polarized,” he said. “These issues are not going away.”
Was the bread that fed 5000 metaphorical bread? There is nothing in how the episode is described to suggest that. You are digging a deeper hole for your exegetics. How about Jesus on the Cross, -- was that a symbol as well?
So, the Father sits there and says "you, you and you...will believe" and "you, you and you, will not." So, why is Jesus getting all worked up with the Jews as if it was their decision? I am sorry, this just doesn't make much sense; it's asinine.
I mean, he is angry with them because they don't believe, and yet it's not up to them to believe or not to believe, but on God who "gives" it to some and "holds back" from others!
So what is your point? Should I discard your opinion simply because you have low opinion of the Koran? Show me where Bultmann is wrong, not whether you hold his opinions in low esteem. I quotes him using very precise and verifiable statements. Why don't you simply refute them with equal validity? Why don't you show me that chapter 5 and 6 of John's Gospel are not out of order, or that Chapter 21 is not an addition tot the last chapter?
The very first chapter of John “the Word became flesh” and in the 20th chapter John’s report of Jesus’ invitation to Thomas to touch His wounded flesh dispels any notion that John’s gospel was influenced by incipient gnosticism
No sir. Jesus became flesh so he can suffer. Wasn't that the idea for Incarnation? It is only in his body that he could become subject to passions, and death. John still maintains that flesh counts for nothing, and that only the spirit is pure. That is Gnostic. Agian, if Gnostics didn't find him appelaing they would't have used him before Christians did.
As for Thomas, I suppose God could have just given him the faith without the theatrics, don't you think so?
Of COURSE Jesus had a real body. It was his real body hanging on the cross.
In Chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians, however, Paul is dealing with the Church, and how it is taking the Eucharist so badly as to not take it at all, because it does so with divisions, humiliating the poor, drunkenness, etc.
And in chapters 12-14, Paul discusses spiritual gifts, and how they are to be used to build up the body of Christ which is the Church.
And at the end of chapter 11, in this discussion of how to behave in church [or assembly, or congregation...I still prefer the latter, and haven’t changed on that point], he tells them that by their behavior they fail to discern the body of Christ.
Now, did he suddenly stop his discussion on the need to realize that the assembly at Corinth is the Body of Christ, and that they shouldn’t unite themselves with idols by eating sacrifices to idols, and they shouldn’t promote divisions and strife in the assembly by their behavior, and suddenly switch gears for a couple of verses to address transubstantiation? And then immediately switch back for the next 3 chapters?
I suppose it is possible, but the burden of evidence is on you. My explanation of the verses makes them agree with his topic throughout most of the entire book of 1 Corinthians. Yours has it a couple of verses dropped from nowhere to discuss a subject that has very little to do with anything else in 1 Corinthians.
“The Chruch got her beliefs directly from Christ, and produced the scripture to support them. The Protestants got their beliefs from Luther’s fanatasies.”
Odd, then, that the folks deluded by Luther fantasies can give lucid explanations, while the church that produced scripture to support its beliefs cannot find the support there! If the Catholic Church produced scripture to support the beliefs given them by Christ, where is the support for transubstantiation, Purgatory, Priests, Penance, Indulgences, Papal Supremacy, etc?
“we belief His words, including John 6. We don’t walk away.”
Neither do I. In John 6, he repeatedly talks about belief. He talks about living forever in the spirit by eating bread from heaven - not bread like manna, that was physically bread from heaven, but by eating the Bread of Life - Jesus. And those who come to him will not hunger, and those who believe in him will not thirst. And the Jews are upset, not because he says bread, but because he claims to have come from heaven - yet they know his parents? Who does he think he is - God?
THAT is the hard saying - that Jesus Christ is God. The problem isn’t that he says eat my flesh, for no one believed he wanted to be attacked, struck down, beaten to death and consumed by cannibals, but because in saying ‘eat my flesh’ he is either God or a nutjob.
“But how does that prove the metaphirical nature of the Eucharist?”
I dunno - why would I expect an icon produced by Catholics to support anything other than Catholic belief?
He isn’t talking about just Judas, for we read, “it is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him...” So it isn’t just Judas, but the disciples who leave who fall over the stumbling block.
“Was the bread that fed 5000 metaphorical bread? There is nothing in how the episode is described to suggest that. You are digging a deeper hole for your exegetics. How about Jesus on the Cross, — was that a symbol as well?”
The bread given the 5000 was physical, and when they come seeking more physical bread, Jesus tells them “”Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”
He CONTRASTS the physical bread with the bread he will give them - if they come to him and believe.
No, Jesus on the Cross wasn’t a symbol, nor is there anything in the account of the crucifixion that would encourage one to take it as a metaphor.
kosta50 writes, “I mean, he is angry with them because they don’t believe, and yet it’s not up to them to believe or not to believe, but on God who “gives” it to some and “holds back” from others!”
I don’t understand how predestination / free will works. I don’t know the depths of the human soul, or how it is that some come to God and some do not. The Apostle Paul doesn’t either, other than to give the sovereignty of God its due.
Logic is good, kosta50, but it doesn’t suffice to explain all things. That is where belief comes in. I don’t know all about predestination and free will, but I trust God to be just.
You write, “Why don’t you show me that chapter 5 and 6 of John’s Gospel are not out of order, or that Chapter 21 is not an addition tot the last chapter?”
You may have noticed that John isn’t written as a description of history, but as a collection of the teachings of Jesus. That doesn’t make the teachings non-historical or invalid or confusing. John 6 makes sense, unless it is forced to discuss something that was never there to begin with.
If you think John 21 is a later addition, give us a concise argument for why. My wife says I don’t have time to be making all these posts, let alone to start reading Bultmann to discuss a few sentences.
“John still maintains that flesh counts for nothing”
The entire New Testament teaches that the flesh, by itself, and a life lived without spiritual regeneration, is worthless. Flesh is not a reference here to the atoms in our bodies, but to a life lived without discernment of spiritual things. Pagans who entered the church (or assemblies, or congregations) - see the wheat and tares parable - did damage. They brought in a lot of false teaching, as was expected - see Acts 20, 2 John, 2 Peter, etc.
One of the false teachings they brought in was that flesh was bad. This brought in ideas such as celibacy. The fault is not with God, but with evil men who distort the truth rather than turn to it.
You know that can't be true, Alex. There were 11 disciples. The accounts of Jesus' death are obviously not eyewitness accounts. None of them actually witnessed Jesus' resurrection either. Even before Jesus ascends some were doubtful (even though they already received the Holy Spirit according to John). So, even if we assume that all eleven believed the apostles did not teach doctrine but recounting anecdotes about Jesus, his miracles, etc.
So we have an apostle tell a crowd what (he remembers) Jesus said. He also recounts his miracles, death and resurrection (what he heard from others). A few people in the crowd are "converted" and they go to their spouses and "witness" to them what they heard. Some of the spouses are "converted" and they "witness" to their neighbors some of whom are "converted" and so on...you get the picture.
Before you know it you have a multitude of "witnesses" who are no witnesses at all. All they do is believe a tale. There is no doctrine. But you have a crowd that for one reason or another now believes the stories, and they gather to praise God and break the bread.
My point is that what these small groups, nascent churches, believed did not come "directly from Christ" but from his disciples telling stories about Jesus. Big difference. No one saw Jesus die or resurrect. The stories are presented as "eyewitness" accounts except there are no eyewitnesses. At any rate, the entire Church belief at that time was reduced to the conviction that Jesus was the Christ, the long awaited Messiah, and that he will come back within their lifetime. There was no doctrine. The new followers still went to synagogues and practiced Judaism, not Christianity. .
Curious minds would like to know...
THAT is the hard saying - that Jesus Christ is God.
A God who only does what he is told to do...
“it is the Spirit who gives life;
That's not what the Greek text says. There is no "who" there. The Greek says "the spirit is the [thing] making alive."
and when they come seeking more physical bread, Jesus tells them ...Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life..."
Oh try that at the next Memorial Day BBQ party when someone comes back for more hamburgers!
Logic is good, kosta50, but it doesn’t suffice to explain all things. That is where belief comes in. I don’t know all about predestination and free will, but I trust God to be just.
But logic tells you that something is positively wrong when one and the same person, in the same context says two opposite things. Specifically, he is angry and nasty to the Jews for their disbelief, as if it were their fault, while asserting that God the Father decides who comes to Jesus and who doesn't.
but I trust God to be just
Why?
life lived without discernment of spiritual things
What is a spiritual thing and how does one 'discern' spiritual things?
We agree there [that Josephus is biased] (which on second read we don't agree on. He's not unreliable, you can rely on his biases for certain. Knowing that you can interpret and mollify them).
My refutation of your position and sources follows:
From Judaism 101
• Judaism does not have a[ny] formal mandatory beliefs[No Pharisee would say that or believe it]
• The most accepted summary of Jewish beliefs is Rambam's 13 principles of faith [do.]
• Even these basic principles have been debated [obviously true]
• Judaism focuses on the relationships between the Creator, mankind, and the land of Israel [Again, no Pharisee would say this]
Let's set up some working definitions:
Israel (noun)Hebrew meaning One who prevails with God or Let God prevail.
1. This name was given to Jacob at Penuel (Gen. 32: 28) and Bethel (Gen. 35: 10)
2. The descendants of Jacob/Israel and their kingdom which eventually divided into North named Israel (majority) and South called Judah.
3. As explained by Paul in Rom. 10: 1; Rom. 11: 7; Gal. 6: 16; Eph. 2: 12; a true believer in Christ.
Taking definition 2, the literal descendants of the man Israel (12 tribes) we can move on.
Judah (noun) Hebrew:Praised
1) the son of Jacob by Leah
2) the tribe descended from Judah the son of Jacob
3) the territory occupied by the tribe of Judah
4) the kingdom comprised of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin which occupied the southern part of Canaan after the nation split upon the death of Solomon.
That kingdom ceased to exist after being conquered by the Babylonian Empire. The other ten tribes had already been lost, although Ephraim, Manasseh and Simeon or their remnants are thought to have "fled" to Judah later. The Davidic line continued, even in exile under Babylonian rule.
A Jew, first mentioned in 2 Kgs. 16: 6 refers to a man of the Southern Kingdom, Judah. Now in modern usage we call any descendant of Jacob a Jew, but it most accurately refers to the tribe of Judah and the remnants that remain. So that a Jew is an Israelite, but not all Israelites are Jews.
The balance of your sources: BBC, Belief.net and Religion Facts all support the Sadducean epicurean view of the world. Reinforcing, not refuting my contention.
So, all in all, there is no set list of beliefs to which any Jew is held dogmatically, except perhaps among the ultra-Orthodox.
This is my point exactly. The Pharisees of Jesus' time believed the opposite, hence the "Hedge" about the Law. The ultra-Orthodox would feel right at home in 20 AD Jerusalem (religiously) the rest of Judaism would be viewed as Sadducean at best, Samaritans, or worse.
(continued in next post)
This one in particular is statistically fantastic and causes one to doubt statistics. According to UJC out of 100 Jews 10 are Orthodox, 26 Conservative, 35 Reform, 20 bloodline Jew, 9 Other (whatever that constitutes). Now given that a household has at least one member how can the Orthodox constitute one out of five Jewish Households from the second smallest population group?
WILL YOUR GRANDCHILDREN BE JEWISH? According to this site (an interesting read in and of itself) the Orthodox have on average 6.4 children(!). Given the above demographics provided the Orthodox would have two five person households (Father, Mother, 3 Children) and be on the small side. That's 2 households for every 100 Jews. The numbers don't add up.
Furthermore, demographics as they relate to religious practice do matter. Although God claims all people in Exodus, he singles out the descendants of Jacob (Israel) as a peculiar people to him of which He will make a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation (Ex. 19:6). So at least in God's eyes being a Jew is religious. He then sets out a series of rules and commandments (10 to start) that become the Law binding on all Israel (including the tribe of Judah, today's Jews).
Now, what survived is Pharisaical Judaism following the destruction of the Temple. "Sadduceeization" of rabbinic Judaism is a relatively recent phenomenon (apparently less than or just about 100 years old) and mostly characteristic of Judaism in the U.S. reform and Liberal Judaism do not reject Pharisaical beliefs about the coming messiah and the resurrection as a matter of dogma, but as a matter of personal "take" on the issue, which means that some believe it and others don't.
This paragraph of yours completely supports my contention that modern Judaism (through matrilineal descent) has become Sadducean. No Pharisee would allow for a "personal take" on belief of or about God. Follow the Law is their tenet (it was in this that Jesus attacked them as hypocrites).
Judaism was never a monolithic and universal religion.
Absurd on its face given the Biblical evidence already referred to. In God's eyes the religion of Israel was specific and applied to all Israelites of which Judah is and remains a part.
That's why what makes you Jewish is not your faith but genetics
(not genetics, but your mother's line alone)
(you are "born" Jewish if you mother is Jewish)
(correct by blood not religiosity)
and 'tradition.'
(wrong-bloodline by mother only)
That's why even an atheist can be a Jew, but not a Christian.
Does not follow clearly from what you stated, but you are a Jew through your matrilineal line despite your beliefs. A Jew can accept Christ and still be a Jew given the belief/bloodline separation that occurred historically (not in God's eyes, He still expects to gather Israel as a hen gathereth her chicks). Much Jewish atheism or ambivalence was born out of the Holocaust experience which lead to the thinking that "how can a loving God allow this to happen to His Chosen People". This is in part because of the Sadducean view on the Resurrection which had already taken philosophical hold over European Jewry.
The one thing that unites all Jewish etc, no matter how Orthodox or liberal, is their rejection of Jesus as a deity.
Not true as I've stated above. See: Jews for Jesus and Jews for Jesus-Wiki article
I reiterate my claim and contention that 1. All people are God's, but Israel is (Ex. 19:5) a treasured possession (of God), the theocratic epitome of a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation (combining familial bloodline, religious belief and observance, and physical place). That this was maintained despite the loss of physical place across most of recorded history substantiates my view, especially in light of the messianic expectation on both Christian and Jewish religious sides that the Ten Tribes will return or be found.
So any Jew, despite his wishes or desires contrary is still subject to the covenant made by his ancestors (definitional in the OT). That the Sadducees were Hellenized (which you admit was the "realpolitic" of the day) thus practicing the socio/political convenience of religion while fully epicurean in their daily lives. The parallel would be the Kennedy clans Catholicism - politically necessary, but not practical for daily living. By majority of population today's Jews (the known remnant of Israel, God's Chosen) are secularized, modern, and reject the oral tradition of the Pharisees. This parallels the Sadducees of old, not perfectly but very well.
When Christ cleared the temple of money-changers and vendors it was the Sadducees that were incensed. For them it was normal to mix the two and acceptable.
You and Blue Duncan are correct that the overall topic in 1 Corinthians is the Church as the assembly of the faithful. I do not dispute that.
But the discourse about the Eucharist is "not dropped from nowhere". If it were, it is would not be a burden on me but rather on St. Paul to explain to us why he chose to write what he indeed wrote. Would you disagree that in the narrow context the body is no longer the Church but it is the physical and real body of Christ that was delivered? So then THAT is the body to be discerned. Or else, St. Paul is expressing what you try to force him to express very poorly, talking of metaphorical body and then in the middle of it switching to the physical body in a blink of the eye.
So the question becomes, why are these two connected?
Cuz the Bible tells us so.
When Jesus celebrated the First Mass at the Last Supper, He gave us a sacrament that we are to do in common ("divide it among you", all references here are form Luke 22), as an assembly as a memorial of Him. He further said that in the Kingdom of Heaven he will eat with us. That Kingdom is the Church. He eats with us, and we eat with Him. But this is also His body, as the words of the Institution make clear. The body of the faithful meets the resurrected body of Christ. This is why our Church is an icon of Christ, -- because we have the Eucharist to make us His body. Remove the Eucharist and you no longer are the Body.
I will simply reiterate the following:
(1) Jews are Semitic people in origin and as such there is a genetic component to the Jewish nation.
(2) Jews are born "Jewish" (no faith required) if their mother is Jewish based on the Abrahamic myth. For those who become Jewish by conversion faith is required, and that faith excludes, and always excluded, any and all other deities, including Christ or Allah.
(4) Jews who were born to a Jewish mother but are atheists are still Jews because they do not worship false gods. Jews who believe in a divine Christ (or any other deity) do. The Hebrew God does not care if you believe in him; he demands only that his people obey his laws. An atheist Jew who lives a righteous life is acceptable to God of Israel. Works, not faith.
(5) From what we know about the sadducees is based on the writings of their adversaries, and as such potentially unreliable. They are described as Bible literalists, as accepting only the Pentateuch (the five Books of Moses) as the "Bible," while rejecting the oral Torah, the resurrection of the dead, the existence of angels and demons, or the need for a messiah. There are scholars who claim even the Sadducees were heterodox in these beliefs. But by far most of their disagreements were of ritualistic nature as regards Temple procedures.
(6) As far as I know, no modern (overtly epicurean or not) Jewish sect today believes in any of these landmark tenets of Sadduceeism. Rather I would just call it secularized "Phariseetism." The reason for that is that Sadducees disappeared with the Temple, or shortly thereafter. They disappeared along with the Essenes, and were survived by the Pharisees who defined Judaism ever since the end of the 1st century until today.
The fact that they some of them became epicurean in their weltanschauung, and secular pragmatists in religious matters, doesn't make them Sadducees. They still, to a greater or lesser degree, use the Tanakh rather than only the Pentateuch, recognize the existence of the soul, angels, demons, afterlife or even the need for a messiah.
To claim that modern Judaism is representative of the Sadducees smacks of a college cafeteria straw man.
You don't? The Bible tells you it is God who hardens and softens hearts as he pleases, who grants eyes and ears to those he favors, and it is God the Father who draws some to his Son, for no one comes to him on his own.
Yet, that doesn't stop you from calling the unbelieving Samaritan woman dense, or the Jewish unbelief stupidity.
Nor does it stop Jesus from calling the Canaanite woman essentially a dog, or calling the Jews devil's children for their unbelief, as if it were their fault.
How charitable of both of you.
You seem to assume I’m a hard-core predestinationist. I’m not.
For one thing, I don’t believe in irresistible grace, or that God has predestined individuals for damnation.
We had a heated discussion on this in our Sunday School class today, and I’ve spent a few hours reading this afternoon, and I’m sick of reading and thinking about predestination/free will. Had it up to my eyeballs, for today!
I’ll try to give you more of a response later...maybe a few days from now. But I won’t pretend that I’ll have the ‘final answer’ on the subject. It has been debated for 2000 years, and by folks smarter and more devoted than I am.
May point was that despite the undianiable fact that the Bible is clear where faith comes from (God), both Jesus and you waste no time calling unbelieving Jews and Samaritans stupid, dense, and worse.
John wrote to assist Jewish Christian readers to continue believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. He does not need to tell the basic gospel story again; his readers, apparently, already know it. Their need was for a clearer and stronger understanding of who Jesus was. John says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”(John 20:30-31) The words translated here as “you may believe” do not have the meaning “come to believe” in the original but “go on believing.”
The temple had been destroyed and the minority of believers from Jewish backgrounds were largely ostracized by the local synagogues and may have begun to wonder if they had made the right choice in following Jesus. John’s Gospel provided them with much encouragement in the belief that Jesus is the true fulfillment of all of the central hopes and aspirations of Judaism. John was also fighting against the infiltration of incipient Gnosticism by the early Gnostic teacher Cerinthus, who taught a form docetism—the belief that Christ only “seemed” to be human. Hence, John emphasized Jesus’ full deity and His full humanity. Jewish Christians were wondering if they had believed badly. John, therefore, is using these miracles and what Jesus says about them to persuade the readers of the rightness of what he is saying. He is not writing a history or a biography of Jesus but is attempting to strengthen in his readers a particular view of Jesus and to help them decide to give up their allegiance to Judaism and to commit all to Jesus. However he does use historical and geographical information in arguing his case. John gives us more specifically historical and topographical information than the other three Evangelists combined.
Chapters 5 and 6 should be grouped together as a single section. They are connected by a common theme; the nature and causes of Israel’s lack of faith in Jesus. Chapter 5 is concerned with the form which this unbelief took among the Jews at Jerusalem, and chapter 6 with the expression of it by the peasants in Galilee. The New Testament has much to say about the refusal of the Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah and it has been the cause of bitter controversy between Jews and Christians ever since. It was very natural therefore that John should have been at pains to record in greater detail than the earlier evangelists the reasons for this great rejection, as they had found expression during the earthly life of Jesus.
Both these chapters begin with an account of a mighty work of Jesus; and in each case the evangelist is relating stories similar to those found in the earlier Gospels. Though the scene of the first miracle is Jerusalem, and that of the second Galilee, the background of both events is provided by a Jewish festival. The better-attested reading a feast in 5:1, which now has the support of the Bodmer papyrus, the reference could be to any feast; and there is no need to assume that the chapters have been dislocated, and to attempt to restore the ‘original’ order by placing chapter 6 before chapter.
The primary purpose for which chapter 21 was added may well have been to correct an error which had arisen owing to a misquotation of what Jesus had said about the survival of John till the Lord should return in glory, for it is with the quotation of Jesus’ actual words on this subject, spoken at the time when Peter was recommissioned as a shepherd of Christ’s flock, that the narrative abruptly ends. Rumor had it that the Lord had prophesied that John would be alive when He came again, and the evangelist is anxious to make it perfectly clear that Jesus had only spoken hypothetically about such a possibility. Jesus said not. . . He shall not die; but, if I will that he tarry till I come (23). But, in other ways, this section makes a most fitting appendage to the Gospel. Peter is still a sinful man; the stains of recent disloyalty are on his conscience, and the penetrating gaze of Jesus is still fresh in his memory. More than the disciples present with him in the boat he needs to be personally assured of the forgiveness made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
“Show me where Bultmann is wrong, not whether you hold his opinions in low esteem. I quotes him using very precise and verifiable statements. Why don't you simply refute them with equal validity?”
Bultmann applied a complicated theory of style—critical method to John’s supposed literary sources, and postulates a redactor, who has added some passages and phrases to bring the Gospel into line with the Synoptic tradition and ecclesiastical theology. If there were passages which differed in a marked way from the style of the main portions of the Gospel, he thought this might be some indication of the use of separate sources, or of the hand of a redactor. He arrived at these sources by an examination of stylistic phenomena and rhythmic patterns, as a result of which he claims to be able to distinguish not only the separate sources but also the redactional elements.
Most scholars (cf. his pupil Kasemann, Guthrie, Dodd), have rejected Bultmann’s style—critical method because of the general unity of the book; grammatical peculiarities are fairly evenly distributed throughout the Gospel; skepticism of the Gnostic origin of the revelation sources; the stylistic features that Bultmann used as criteria for distinguishing between his two major sources occur in both; difficulty in freeing style criticism from the Bultmann's personal bias. They believe that Bultmann’s style criticism must lead ultimately to the denial of written sources altogether.
As for the issue of predestination, I clearly understand Mr. Rogers' view. This is seldom taught any longer. My journey to the predestination side has to do with the question posed by St. Cyprian to Augustine, "What have you received that has not been given to you?" The real answer to this penetrating question is, in fact, everything has been given to us including our ability to repent, our faith, and the wisdom that comes from above. If one truly wants to acknowledge that God has provided these things, they cannot help but believe in predestination as St. Augustine rightfully concluded. I would recommend Mr. Roger read, A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints by St Augustine which, in my opinion, gives the most pointed argument for Predestination. It doesn't escape me that people dismiss this treatise without rebuttal much like people saying global warming is "settled science".
And as for Mr. Rogers complaint from his wife that he spends too much time posting, I can fully sympathize with his dilemma and his wife's complaint. Sometimes one has to simply slip away and enjoy a good cup of egg nog and a Christmas cookie with the one they love. :O)
Oh, but it can be educational! :)
Mr Rogers, let me give a plug for the best and clearest treatment of predestination I've ever read, by Bishop Elias Minatios:
The Western mind makes the subject unnecessarily complex. Repeat after me: God knows our freely made choices before we make them, and predestines us accordingly for glory or dishonor. Case closed.
Just so we all understand the context (Mr Rogers will be happy!), are you are suggesting John writes (at the very end of the first century) to Jewish Christians? Where do you get that from?
Their need was for a clearer and stronger understanding of who Jesus was.
That was true for all, not just the dwindling number of Jewish Christians. The movement needed divine authority now that it was officially rejected as a Jewish sect by the Jamnia rabbis. So, the author of John naturally builds up Jesus to that status.
No one would be telling the Jews, who were familiar with the Old Testament "In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God." They knew better that Jewish scriptures did not say that! But the Greeks on the other hand, were a tabula rasa on which you could write anything you wanted! The Greeks knew nothing of the Jewish scriptures, their God or Judaism.
All the Apostles who were of any consequence (after all we know only what a handful of the 13 did; the others left no footprints worth recording or remembering!) left Israel and were either in Rome, or Greece, but not in Israel. Those who remained in Israel disappeared with the destruction of the Jerusalem Church and the stoning of James in 62 or 64 AD.
“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book
Luke 1:3 seems to suggest otherwise.
”(John 20:30-31) The words translated here as “you may believe” do not have the meaning “come to believe” in the original but “go on believing.”
Go on believing is a phrase found in latter-day copies. The oldest known copies say that you "may [or might] believe." The difference in Greek is one letter (s) instead of pisteuete the variants have pisteusete.
If you have a copy of John 20:31 as it appears in P66 (Bodmer papyrus II), I would like to see it. I was unable to find a photograph of it online.
The primary purpose for which chapter 21 was added may well have been to correct an error which had arisen owing to a misquotation of what Jesus had said about the survival of John till the Lord should return in glory
That's an admission that the Bible is not a pristine word of God but that it contains uninspired text. By the end of the 1st century it was obvious to everyone that the belief held and taught by the apostles (including Paul) that Jesus was coming back in their lifetime was false teaching and it had a very detrimental effect on the following when it became obvious that all but john have already died and Jesus did not come back. At this time II Peter appears as a badly needed "'damage control" to urge patience and to re-calculate and re-interpret the false impression.
Bultmann applied a complicated theory of style
Look, I presented specific verses along wight objections. Rather than go into descriptive opinions about Bultmann's style, just give me specific answers to the particular verses he motions.
Well, you didn't look hard enough, HD. Post #1416 states "It is their unbelief...and Jesus has no more interest in giving in to their stupidity now than he did when the Samaritan woman pretended to be dense.]
Please remember that the Orthodox teaches, "...that when man fell he did not receive Adam's sin and guilt - but his punishment, which is corrupt human nature." Original Sin-an Orthodox View
No, that's the teaching of some probably Protestant-turned-Orthodox OCA grenius who didn't leave his Protestant mindset outside when he decided to become Orhtodox. That's the problem with Orthodoxy in America...they just don't get it becausethey still have their Protestants goggles on.
The real Orthodox Church teaches that corrupt human nature is a consequence of Adm's sin, a terminal illness that is passed (infects) on to all Adam's offspring, and salvation is spiritually healing, or restoring humanity to their original state, in the likeness of God (Christlike), or theosis. Please don't quote to me anything that has to do with OCA because as fra as I am cocerned they are not an Orthodox Church (yet). And no other Orthodox Church except Russian recognizes it as such.
As for the issue of predestination, I clearly understand Mr. Rogers' view. This is seldom taught any longer
I am glad to hear that, but nevertheless the Bible says God gives you faith or God doesn't give you faith. He either hardens your heart or he doesn't. I imagine it has become obvious even to hard-core Reformists that double predestination just doesn't have much appeal these days, so perhaps not teaching it is a good call. The Bible says nothing about our ability to choose if we come to Jesus. Jesus in the Bible says no one comes to him unless the Father gives someone to him. Of course that makes Jesus' rants about not believing him kinda silly, doesn't it?
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