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Author Topic:   Jesus and his sacrifice is Satan’s test of man’s morality.
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 398 of 478 (776388)
01-12-2016 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 397 by Aussie
01-12-2016 4:15 PM


Re: Moderator Request
The problem is that you insist on equating my defense of the sovereignty of God with the idea that I coldly defend the killing of children. No, I'm refusing to give in to your spurious equation. All I'm doing is defending the sovereignty of God and the inerrancy of the Bible.
Your position is sort of like saying if I have a pet cat and coolly defend my right to have the cat and the cat's right to exist, and to have its own natural instincts, I must therefore cold-bloodedly hate birds and mice.
It sounds like you believe your equation to the point that you'd happily dispatch me with your own hands.
No, I believe in God, I know Him to be nothing but good and all His judgments righteous, including the judgments that scare me. It's YOU who turn all this into an accusation of me. It has nothing to do with me.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 397 by Aussie, posted 01-12-2016 4:15 PM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 400 by Aussie, posted 01-12-2016 5:00 PM Faith has replied
 Message 402 by Tangle, posted 01-12-2016 5:05 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 399 of 478 (776390)
01-12-2016 4:57 PM
Reply to: Message 395 by NoNukes
01-12-2016 2:19 PM


Re: Rationalizing Killing
The only cage is the cage YOU all invent by your disdain of the idea of Biblical inerrancy. YOU all can twist it into something that would put a noose around my neck. YOUR definitions and judgments are a cage. Nothing I believe in itself has that problem.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 401 of 478 (776395)
01-12-2016 5:03 PM
Reply to: Message 400 by Aussie
01-12-2016 5:00 PM


Re: Moderator Request
I am simply horrified that you do not give the lives of infants and children in the Bible the same compassion.
Then you are insisting on maintaining the same false thinking that would dispatch me with your own hands. It is YOU who say I lack this compassion based on your spurious logic. What I'm doing is refusing to allow you any justification for your equation. You are turning my theological position into a personal accusation. YOU are doing that.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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 Message 400 by Aussie, posted 01-12-2016 5:00 PM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 406 by Aussie, posted 01-12-2016 5:22 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 403 of 478 (776397)
01-12-2016 5:07 PM
Reply to: Message 402 by Tangle
01-12-2016 5:05 PM


Re: Moderator Request
It's amazing that you can't see how you are imposing a cheap shallow moralism of your own on this issue.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 402 by Tangle, posted 01-12-2016 5:05 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 407 of 478 (776403)
01-12-2016 5:42 PM
Reply to: Message 406 by Aussie
01-12-2016 5:22 PM


Re: Moderator Request
NO! That is NOT my "stated position." NEVER did I STATE any such thing. Go find it and prove it. That is YOUR interpretation of what I've said. It's your bogus equation.

This message is a reply to:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 409 of 478 (776405)
01-12-2016 6:31 PM
Reply to: Message 408 by LamarkNewAge
01-12-2016 6:14 PM


Re: Catholic origins
I think historians consider the start of frh or early Catholicism around the time of Clement of Rome (or 1 Clement) which is universally dated to 96 to 97 AD. Right after that, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus were written (and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 was inserted into Paul's writings). Then Ignatius of Antioch. Then Polycarp.
The Protestant Reformers agreed on the year 606 as the start of the Roman Church, when the papacy was officialized by I-forget-who. However, Constantine's conversion is another relevant date. But although there were some doctrinal romanisms in some of the early fathers such as Clement, I've never heard anyone date the RCC to that period.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 408 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-12-2016 6:14 PM LamarkNewAge has replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 424 of 478 (776545)
01-15-2016 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 423 by Blue Jay
01-15-2016 12:27 PM


There is no rationalizing going on
I answered this many times over by now, Blue Jay, and I don't want to spend much time on it now. [Msg=369] is probably the most complete answer I gave.
The basic premise of the distinction is that if "God told me to do it" is a legitimate motive for killing someone, it opens a lot of doors for a lot of corrupt people to justify a lot of senseless killings with spurious claims to divine appointment.
In relation to the Bible this is absolute screaming nonsense. The number of deranged people who would read the Old Testament as such a license must be so minuscule as to be nonexistent. The OT accounts of God's commandments to kill a particular tribe of people are HISTORICAL accounts, nothing that could be rightly taken as a commandment to the reader; the context was always God's JUDGMENT of that people, the causes of which are given in the scripture. Also such events stopped, I don't know what date to give that but not long after the time of David I'd guess; not that wars didn't still occur, but the commandments people are complaining about here weren't part of them as I recall. I could be wrong about the dating though. Still, we're talking about ANCIENT history LONG SINCE over and done with.
ALSO, clearly scripture does not have the people claiming "God told me to do it," Scripture itself quotes GOD HIMSELF giving the command. If you don't believe that scripture was inspired by God you'll impute it to the people, but believers impute it to God. Please don't give the obvious answer that comes to your mind.
God seems fully capable of precise, surgical killings without the collateral damage and ambiguity about ulterior motives that inevitably follow killings carried out by the hands of mortal men, so it seems curious to me that He sometimes prefers to use the messier, bloodier way.
I don't know the reason for this though I suggested one earlier. Perhaps kbertsche does. But I don't care either because to me the Bible is God's word and if there is a reason I need to know I'll eventually know it.
Faith writes:
If the Bible could have been manipulated to legitimize the actions of "misquided followers and malicious pretenders" there is no reason to take the Bible seriously at all. It's Bible inerrancy or nothing.
This is basically what I just said above.
The Bible clearly has been manipulated to legitimize the actions of malicious parties. You yourself believe that the Catholic Church appropriated and molested biblical authority to justify a large number of heinous crimes throughout the centuries. They believed they had a divine "license to kill," and the reason they believed that was because the Bible is filled with rhetoric about divinely-sanctioned killings.
I refer you back to my [Msg=369] again. Prove that the RCC used the BIBLE to justify their murders. That's a false claim. They didn't even use the Bible in the churches in those days, they made up their own rules. The RCC is not a Bible-based religion, it's pure paganism and superstition with a little Bible thrown in here and there.
ABE: ALSO, IT WAS THE BIBLE-BELIEVERS OR PROTESTANTS WHO WERE KILLED BY THE RCC IN THE GREATEST NUMBERS FOR THAT VERY CRIME OF BELIEVING THE BIBLE, AND OF HAVING IT IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGES. /abe
It's hard to take the things people have said against me in this thread for believing that the Bible is God-inspired. I think this needs to be my last post on this subject.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 423 by Blue Jay, posted 01-15-2016 12:27 PM Blue Jay has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 426 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 11:02 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 425 of 478 (776547)
01-15-2016 1:24 PM
Reply to: Message 379 by Aussie
01-11-2016 1:05 PM


Re: misrepresentation
Oh, one last post:
I probably won't be around for the mass beheadings, though I'll be sorry to miss all the excitement.
Yes, Faith. You will be sorry to miss the excitement of more mass slaughter.
The thick blackness of your worldview continues to seep through the cracks. Please remember we openly disavow your own words here. We are not twisting anything. In this regard you are morally compromised.
You seem to have missed that I was sarcastically talking about the beheadings of CHRISTIANS, which I see as the likely ultimate result of the kind of thinking you are doing. Whether you personally want to behead me or not, your words could certainly inspire others to do the job. You'd be sorry at that outcome I suppose, but read your own words. They're pretty incendiary.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 428 by jar, posted 01-17-2016 11:23 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 429 of 478 (776619)
01-17-2016 11:48 AM
Reply to: Message 428 by jar
01-17-2016 11:23 AM


Re: misrepresentation
Well, we used to have it so I don't know what point you think are making. You seem to be missing mine though. The probability of anti-Christian violence happening soon isn't the point, the point is that the accusatory rhetoric is the sort of propaganda that could provoke something if circumstances warranted it. The condemnatory vilifying language is quite severe, just read it. It took decades for the anti-Jewish rhetoric to issue in the Holocaust. Such incendiary rhetoric in fact is far more likely to provoke anti-Christian repercussions than anything that's been quoted here from the Bible would provoke violence against anybody. But as I said, I personally will probably not be around for any such consequences.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 428 by jar, posted 01-17-2016 11:23 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 430 of 478 (776620)
01-17-2016 11:56 AM
Reply to: Message 426 by LamarkNewAge
01-17-2016 11:02 AM


Re: There is no rationalizing going on
quote:
ALSO, clearly scripture does not have the people claiming "God told me to do it," Scripture itself quotes GOD HIMSELF giving the command. If you don't believe that scripture was inspired by God you'll impute it to the people, but believers impute it to God
Most believers (especially before the time of Constantine) rejected the Old Testament.
That is so absurd I can't even imagine where you got such an idea. Throughout Jesus' ministry and for some years afterward before the New Testament gospels and letters were all written and circulated among the churches, all they had was the "Old Testament." It was those writings that are referred to in the NT as the scriptures. When Jesus quotes from the scripture He's quoting from the Old Testament; when Paul taught in the synagogues from the scriptures he taught from the Old Testament. It took a while for the New Testament documents to accumulate but meanwhile the Old Testament WAS the Bible for the believers in Christ. As He Himself told the disciples on the road to Emmaus, all the scriptures (the Old Testament) testify of Him.
It was (for the most part)only the Roman Catholics (and those they influenced) that held the Old Testament in esteem.
The issue is that most "Christian" people today follow the Catholics (with a high opinion of the Old Testament being God-inspired), but that wasn't true in the early centuries.
May I ask what denomination or church or religious organization you belong to? Where are you getting these absolutely absurd ideas?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 426 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 11:02 AM LamarkNewAge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 432 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 4:31 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 433 of 478 (776641)
01-17-2016 6:39 PM
Reply to: Message 432 by LamarkNewAge
01-17-2016 4:31 PM


Re: There is no rationalizing going on
I worded that poorly but Manicheans, Gnostics, and Marcionits outnumbers Catholics.
I guess you are following Catholic bogus history in constructing yet another bogus history. The fact is that there were NO Catholics before Constantine. The Roman Church didn't get established until a couple of centuries after Constantine. And all those gnostic type heretics were dealt with by the early church and didn't outnumber Christian believers. What ARE you talking about?
I have noticed as far back as 2000 that Catholics were outnumbered by other Christians,
What are you talking about? When? There was no Roman Catholic Church before Constantine, and the Catholics are outnumbered by nobody today, except barely by Islam, not by any Christians. The RCC that claims it WAS the Christian church wouldn't make such a distinction, they just think ALL Christians R them.
and that the pre-Constantine persecutions were mostly made up. Finally leading historian has shown us amazing things (that I never even could have imagined)
All those persecutions by the Caesars that drove the Christians into the catacombs, that included Christians being thrown to the lions in the arena, that included Nero's burning them as torches for his garden, were made up?
You mean that quote by Candida Moss? Here's one unfavorable review of her book, and you can find others if you google her. Oh well, I guess you're ready to believe any oddball who comes down the pike claiming to see history better than anybody else.
ABE: I realize rather late that you have a habit of exaggerating things. Moss' book according to the link I gave was not anywhere near as provocative as the titles suggest, or that you suggest. Apparently she pointed out facts that should be well known anyway, such as that the persecutions were not continuous. But nobody has ever disputed that. It's factually true as stated. In the end the book sounds like it didn't contribute much if anything new to the study of the early persecutions, didn't overturn the previously held views, just seems to have been designed to sound like it does. What you say above, "... that the pre-Constantine persecutions were mostly made up" is nothing her book proved or even tried to prove, just your own imagination. [/abe]
After scanning the rest of your post I'm abandoning mine. Yours is all about silly rewrites of history to no purpose. The Catholic Church did enough damage to the history of the church in order to pretend they were the original church, we don't need more bogus history to confuse things.
I recommend the History of Romanism by John Dowling, and the History of Protestantism by J A Wylie. Both are online.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 432 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 4:31 PM LamarkNewAge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 434 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 8:12 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 435 of 478 (776645)
01-17-2016 8:18 PM
Reply to: Message 434 by LamarkNewAge
01-17-2016 8:12 PM


Re: Paul L. Maier is in love with Constantine
NO idea what you are talking about. Paul Maier was the author of the review of Moss' book. Where did he say anything about Dan Brown and Constantine? Please provide quotes and links if necessary. You write so disconnectedly I can't follow you. You write gobbledegook. That website is Christian Research Institute, it's not run by Paul Maier. They merely included his article about Moss.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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 Message 437 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 8:41 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 439 of 478 (776651)
01-17-2016 10:39 PM
Reply to: Message 437 by LamarkNewAge
01-17-2016 8:41 PM


Re: Paul L. Maier is in love with Constantine
quote:
NO idea what you are talking about. Paul Maier was the author of the review of Moss' book. Where did he say anything about Dan Brown and Constantine? Please provide quotes and links if necessary. You write so disconnectedly I can't follow you. You write gobbledegook. That website is Christian Research Institute, it's not run by Paul Maier. They merely included his article about Moss.
The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? Mass Market Paperback — April 19, 2004
by Hank Hanegraaff (Author), Paul Maier (Author
Amazon.com
quote:
but Constantine was a convert; he couldn't do enough for the church; he's the one who summoned the First Ecumenical Council. In the session at Nicea, he paid for the travel expenses, lodging expenses of all the churchmen coming across the empire, 300 strong. You can just see how the truth is manipulated continually in this novel.
The Lutheran Hour
As usual I can't tell what you are trying to say. You show that Maier collaborated with Hanegraaff on a book denouncing "The Da Vinci Code," which proves what? Maier and Hanegraaff obviously agree about that book and Moss' book. Your point is? Why did you quote that paragraph abpve? It certainly doesn't prove your claim that Maier "loves Constantine," it is meant to answer some outrageous claims by Dan Brown about Constantine's role in the church, first saying that he couldn't have had anything to do with the Biblical canon because that was already established before he came along; and then going on to describe Constantine's zeal for his new religion, which prompted him to bring about and provide financial support for the Council of Nicea. About which you seem to be insinuating all kinds of things that aren't supported by the facts.
People were eventually killed in the tens of millions over these stupid terminological differences that the "Church Councils" obsessed over.
Here again I have NO idea what you are talking about. What "tens of millions" were killed due to the conclusions of Nicaea? Many of the Church Councils, which in the early days were NOT Roman Catholic in any sense, but conferences attended by the leaders of the hundreds of churches across the empire, were called to resolve important doctrinal disputes, and ended up establishing important doctrine against various of the heresies of the day. The doctrinal conclusions of many of these councils are far from mere terminological differences, but are considered today to be of great importance to the clarity of Christian doctrine against many heresies.
Nicaea wasn't just a bogus theological debate, it was a political movement.
It was neither a "bogus theological debate" NOR "a political movement." It was an important conference of Christian leaders that established important Christian doctrine against various heresies.
That is the persecution we should worry about.
What persecution? A political movement? A bogus theological debate? These persecuted whom? What ARE you talking about?
Again, what happened to the Manicheans?
You can google the term as well as I can.
They were heretics, LNA, sometimes persecuted for it, ended up in China for some period, eventually died out.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 437 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 8:41 PM LamarkNewAge has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 440 of 478 (776652)
01-17-2016 10:45 PM
Reply to: Message 438 by LamarkNewAge
01-17-2016 10:17 PM


Re: Paul Maier makes a big deal about the specific Nicaea vote.
So you consider the Manichaeans to have been the possessors of truth and the council a fraud because it rejected it? Sorry, history and the Bible are on the side of the judgment of the Church. Nicaea was not a Catholic convention since the Roman Church did not yet exist, the papacy did not yet exist, the superstitious pagan Romanisms that later came to characterized it were not yet in place, it was just the bishopric of Rome at that point and the council voted rightly for the true doctrine and against the heresies. Persecuting the Manichaeans was not a Christian response to the judgement against them, however, I think that can be understood as the beginning of Constantine's true invluence as representative of the power of the Roman Empire, which he bestowed on the Bishop of Rome, with all the pomp and pagan trappings of the Empire.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 438 by LamarkNewAge, posted 01-17-2016 10:17 PM LamarkNewAge has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 443 of 478 (776667)
01-18-2016 3:23 AM
Reply to: Message 441 by dwise1
01-18-2016 2:47 AM


The Council of Nicaea misinterpreted
Then in 325 BCE, Emperor Constantine called a council to decide what true Christianity was. THREE HUNDRED YEARS LATER!!!!!!!!!
I try to think of Faith's position and the position of every other "true believer". And with each generation the idea of an "absolute truth" becomes less and less tenuous. Let's assume that each generation is 30 years. And let us assume that Jesus spoke the truth. In 300 generations, that would have been 100 generations.
Have you ever played that game of "telegraph"? (or "telephone"). That is the model of passing information from one generation to the next. What happens in that game? The message gets garbled very quickly.
You fail to note the major reason none of this resembles the little game of telephone: the fact that the council was called to resolve among other things a doctrinal dispute about the nature of Christ based on the New Testament documents that had been circulating among the churches for those three hundred years, and continued thereafter to circulate, not on anybody's fallible memory. The documents themselves would have been solid evidence of the original text if that question arose, since there would have been hundreds of them that could be compared for the purpose of correcting any small errors that had crept in from the necessity of frequent hand copying. The existence of such documents down the centuries absolutely removes the issues from the realm of imagination and guesswork, and the resulting doctrinal statement therefore expresses the trustworthy understanding of the scriptures of the majority of the Church, which continues to be available to theologians and Bible readers today using the same logical procedures to interpret the same texts. Arius was found to have the defective understanding of the nature of Christ from the same scriptures all the others made use of.
Here's the Wikipedia account of the council:
One purpose of the council was to resolve disagreements arising from within the Church of Alexandria over the nature of the Son in his relationship to the Father: in particular, whether the Son had been 'begotten' by the Father from his own being, and therefore having no beginning, or else created out of nothing, and therefore having a beginning.[11] St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius took the first position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arianism comes, took the second. The council decided against the Arians overwhelmingly (of the estimated 250—318 attendees, all but two agreed to sign the creed and these two, along with Arius, were banished to Illyria).[12]
There is no reason whatever to think the vote was manipulated in any way, which is what LNA is claiming. The vast majority understood the scriptures to define the nature of Christ according to the Creed that the council produced, which expressed the beliefs of the majority of attendees against those of Arius: Christ begotten not made for starters.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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