Salvation by faith and works : intellectually ridiculous?

Deja vu. The issue of universal fatherhood has been addressed - in the passage that Trixie quoted in Message 44:

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Mat 25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
Mat 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

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It says "all nations" - not "the select few from all nations". Everybody will be numbered either among the sheep or the goats.God created all mankind. We are all His children.

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What part of "all nations" do you not understand?

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It doesn't specifically say "living and dead" - but either way, there are no exclusions.We are all God's children.

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God created us all. Fathers create children.Ergo we are all God's children.

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Once a father, always a father. No matter what his children do, no matter how he punishes them, a father is still a father to his children. Fatherhood is not something that can be undone.

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You keep saying that. Why don't you just tell me what you want connected instead of asking a lot of inane questions?

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God does not "deny" paternity.Remember the prodigal son? He took his inheritance and left home to "do his own thing". He denied his father. His father never denied him.When he was destitute, at "rock bottom", the son returned home in the hope of receiving a handout from his father. Deep down, he knew that his father was a good man who would not deny a crust of bread to a hungry person - even a son who had denied him.But his father didn't just feed him. He welcomed him back as the son he had always been.That is what John was talking about."Becoming" the children of God doesn't mean that we have not always been the children of God. It doesn't mean that God has "denied" us or disinherited us. Our inheritance is there, it's a done deal - all we have to do is use it. All we have to do is return home.We were all created the children of God. He has never denied us.

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The ideas are covered elsewhere in scripture and are easy to extract because that is the archetypal picture of a father-son relationship. The Father never turns His back on His son. Period. Exactly. Born a son, always a son - never denied by the Father. Of course they were also the children of God. Born a son, always a son. The fact that they were temporarily "adopted" by Satan has no bearing on Who their natural Father was. God has no enemies.

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So you lump us in with all the other creatures, do you? My cousins the chimps will be glad to hear that. I'll do better than see it - I'll show it:

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Joh 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Born again.Remember the parable of the prodigal son (which I tried without much success to explain to iano)? The son turned his back on the father. The father never turned his back on the son.When the son returned to his father, he was effectively "born again" - i.e. his life with his father began again, from scratch.But in the father's eyes, his son was always his son.Similarly, We are born the children of God. We are always His children, even if we turn our backs on Him. If we turn toward Him again, we are "born again" - our lives with Him begin again, as if we had never done wrong.

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Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

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We are all "born of the Holy Spirit" when we are created (born). We all have God's spirit/life breathed into us. The only difference is in how we choose to use it - squander it like the prodigal son, or use it as it was intended. Once again, I refer you to the prodigal son. By turning back to the Father, we accept the priviledges of being His sons. We were his sons all along, even if we repudiated Him. It is our responsibility to act like the sons of God.As I tried to explain to iano (without much success), God is not a dead-beat dad. He would never turn His back on His own children. And Jesus came to tell the Old Testament folk that they were doing it wrong. The parable of the prodigal son (where have I heard that before?) shows that the fundamental relationship between God and man is a Father/son relationship. And it's not a Father/adopted-son relationship, either. It's a Father/natural-born-son-who-will-always-be-my-son-no-matter-what-bone-headed-thing-he-does relationship.All we have to do to enjoy that inherent relationship is go back home.

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(The phrase "born again" is not my invention, by the way. )I don't see that it makes any difference. Rebirth, reawakening, realization.... You're asserting that, and...?What do you suppose the parable means then? Is it not the parable of the prodigal son after all? Is it really the parable of the complete-stranger-who-became-like-a-son? "Receive and believe" = go home to the relationship that is waiting there for you. I don't see why you think those other scriptures negate the Father/son relationship so clearly spelled out in the parable. Exactly. We have already had the fleshly birth. The rebirth/reawakening that we need is the (spiritual) realization that the Father is waiting at home for our return. Let's look at the previous verse:

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Psa 104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.

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Here again, God's spirit is associated with the breath of life, as I said. But the holy-spirit/breath-of-life is already in us, from our physical birth. The rebirth is a symbolic re-entering of the holy-spirit/breath-of-life as well as a spiritual (and even physical) return to the Father's house. How does that negate the fundamental Father/son relationship? It's still once a son, always a son. Are you thinking of this?

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1Co 6:15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid.

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I don't see how that changes our lifelong Father/son relationship with God. The parable of the prodigal son indicates a natural-born son. Once a son, always a son. If you contend otherwise, you'd better have an "alternate ending" for that parable, because you've rendered it meaningless as written. I'm not even going down that road. I know that our Hebrew scholars have already tried to set you straight on that.In any case, "Father" is not a name, it's a title. It describes our realtionship with God.No, it was not used in the Old testament, but Jesus came and told us that we should use it because that is what our relationship to God is - a Father/son relationship.The father/son relationship that He described in the parable is that of a natural-born son, who is accepted by his father, no matter what. It is not a case of the son having to jump through hoops, wave a chicken over his head and shout "I be-LIEV-ah!"All the son has to do is go home.

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Jesus gave us another picture of our relationship with God: Shepherd/sheep. (And that one goes all the way back to the psalms, in case anybody is tempted to suggest that it was invented for the New Testament.)The shepherd leaves his warm home, leaves the ninety-and-nine in the fold, and goes out on a dark and stormy night to find the one lost sheep.All of those sheep, of course, were born into the flock. They didn't have to "believe" in order to "become" members of the flock.If we are prodigal, our Father will always welcome us home. And even if we don't turn toward home on our own, our Shepherd will come looking for us. Amen.

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Lately, I've been thinking of heaven and hell as a continuum rather than a dichotomy.The works-only people (the sheep) would be up at the "heaven" end, with all the "nice" people. Mother Theresa would give them a nice cup of tea, or some hot soup, because she wants to, not because she has to.The faith-and-works people would be in the middle, with all the other faith-and-works people. That would be punishment enough for them, constantly bickering about whose faith was stronger and who just scraped past whom. They would be a "transitional species" between sheep and goats.The faith-only people (goats) would be down at the "hell" end with all the nastiest people in the world. Hitler would be constantly yelling at them and Dahmer would be trying to eat them.You gets what you pays for.

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On the contrary. The Bible says:

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2Pe 3:9 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.

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If the Lord is "not willing that any should perish", my guess is that it ain't gonna happen. It would seem that "salvation for all" is a given.The Catholic Church uses "purgatory" as a temporary holding-cell/rehab-facility for those not ready for full-blown heaven - and the Pope could probably mount a pretty good defense for that concept.What I'm saying isn't very different - you get what's coming to you, the punishment fits the crime, instant karma....The concept of a loving God is irreconcilable with the concept of billions in eternal torment. At least I'm ordering off the menu. You're trying to bring your own food in with you.

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No, guilt. Self-imposed guilt. The message is "You are forgiven." According to my scorecard:Love: 311
Wrath: 199but why quibble? In any case - even setting word-countery aside, love beateth wrath, hands down.

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Pro 15:1 A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

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A lil old soft answer is all it taketh. (Notice that Percy doesn't provide very many "hatey" faces either.)

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Sorry, I'm not familiar with that particular branch office of this forum. Link please? Allow me to remind you that this is the Faith and Belief Forum. I am not contractually bound to back up anything I believe. Nor is the question particularly on-topic.If you would care to bring your question over to the Bible Study Forum (why do you avoid the Bible Study Forum so studiously? ), I would be glad to enlighten you to the best of my exceedingly humble abilities.If not, I have an endless supply of sentimentality to bury you in.

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