The Tension of Faith

Limited atonement is strictly based on the Bible as are all of Calvin's teachings but it's complicated arguing all that so I'd rather not get into it beyond saying that we need to be careful not to confuse what God does with our own personal feelings and beliefs. God's choosing us and directing our beliefs is beyond our ability to experience or even understand. If we believe we believe and we don't need to believe that God is directing us to believe. Arminianism works fine on the level of personal belief and experience, but it is false on the level of the theology of God's perspective. I think it was Luther who said that predestination and election shouldn't be taught except to very mature knowledgeable believers, and even then we might be better off not thinking a lot about it. The problem is our inability to understand the mind of God. Nevertheless the concepts ARE in scripture.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm not ignoring questions, I'm giving answers that you and others don't like.

When was that? In Jesus' time they had the Old Testament which is full of prophecy of the Messiah God was going to send. That's how they knew the time had come for Him to appear, those who DID know that anyway, who knew the scriptures. When Jesus asked them who He was and they knew He was the Messiah, that's because they knew the Old Testament prophecies. Remember Anna and Simeon who spent all their time in the temple, knowing the Messiah was due? Remember Jesus telling the two disciples on the way to Emmaus that scripture is clear that the Messiah must suffer? Not all understood the scriptures rightly which is why so many didn't recognize Him as the Messiah, so they had to be taught, but it IS all there, and those who followed Him learned about Him firsthand: that's what got written down as the gospels and the whole New Testament. For me becoming a believer was somewhat similar. Before I knew anything about the Bible or Christ or salvation I got hit as if by a lightning bolt with the certainty that God is real, and that came from some Hindu teachers, not Christians. I was standing in a New Age bookstore skimming through some Hindu books, and they all talked about God as a reality that could be experienced. I felt like I was riveted to the floor by this lightning bolt. But that was just the beginning. After I got my feet unglued and left the bookstore (in a state of amazement, almost floating out the door) I had months ahead of me of reading to come to believe in Christ through God's word, and it became clear to me that the Bible MUST be God's word because otherwise we would be completely in the dark about these things. Once you know the Bible is God's word and MUST be God's word because otherwise we really are at the mercy of our fallen minds and the "helpfulness" of demons who love to trip us up, once you know that how can you question it? All you can do is rely on it, take it as your authority and teacher. That's what it's for. Without it all kinds of religions are invented that have some partial truths but a lot of demonic "help" as well. The Bible is God's gift to us to teach us the truth about Himself and the Moral Law and the nature of sin and God's Judgments and Christ and salvation, and to keep us from the errors of our fallen minds. You DO mislead new believers by questioning it. There is no other source of reliable information about God.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't see the contradictions, they seem to be made up by nonbelievers. Doubting its authority and truthfulness will just leave you without answers. There's something quite amazing that happens when you take it as your authority and expect it to reveal marvelous truths to you, which won't happen if you indulge your doubts.

Let me put it this way: There are no SIGNIFICANT contradictions, that change any important meanings. Oh I know what's claimed about it by the unbelievers, I even have a thick book answering them all. Any that aren't yet resolved would no doubt be resolved with a better understanding. Meanwhile the Bible is a divine teacher of truth which you are sadly deprived of experiencing. Once you know the Bible is divinely inspired it's actually stupid to pick it apart. For all I know all those "contradictions" are there just to keep some people away from it. As Pascal said, it has enough light for those who believe, and enough obscurity to keep the insincere away (or keep them in the dark or something like that).Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is not exactly true. We are not as God originally created us, nothing in this world is, the world is under the curse of the Fall, the disobedience of our original parents. He may bless us with accurate knowledge if we have a humble respect for Him, but if we trust in ourselves instead, He may leave us to our own devices, which means leaving us to the errors we are prone to make through our unaided fallen minds. How long did it take humanity to arrive at any decent method of scientific inquiry? That should be a clue to our fallenness, and when we did arrive at a decent science that may very well have been due to the scientists who respected God so that He led them to effective methods.Yes God could lead us in science too if we respect Him, pray to Him, but again, He has given us one divinely inspired source of knowledge, the Bible, and it is extreme folly to rip it apart with our broken minds. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've been impressed with how kbertsche has been getting to the heart of the matters being discussed here, both in raising the question of whether the original readers would have seen contradictions in the Bible, and earlier in saying both the Arminian and Calvinist views are in the Bible when I was stumbling around the question.Unbelievers are always seeing contradictions in the Bible and lies in the simple statements of believers. Evidence of the fallen mind it seems to me. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There are not two different creation stories, there is one creation story followed by a discussion of an aspect of the creation. This and the ridiculous notion that there is more than one Flood story in the Bible are evidence of fallen minds doing their destructive work on God's truth.Oh, and humility is shown in deferring to God, certainly not in putting trust in your own fallible mind. That is the essence of pride.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

there is no contradiction in the Bible about historical dating, and I don't "hold" God to any standard, that would be the height of arrogance against God, He IS the standard and He holds US accountable, not the other way around. the right way to read the Bible is to let it read us. Even you if you wanted to could prove that there are no contradictions in the Bible, so I assume you don't want to, you prefer to trust your own fallible mind.No we don't only have our fallen minds, we have God who will answer sincere prayers for understanding, truth, wisdom, knowledge.abe: I'm not talking about shutting down our minds, just realizing they are fallible, and submitting to God so that He can correct our thinking. /abeThose Christian scientists misread the evidence, trusting the evidence through their own minds I suppose rather than seeking God to explain it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I already answered this more than once in the last few posts, so I guess you didn't read any of it? Our minds are not as He originally created them. I try to imagine what they must have been like originally and they must have been powerhouses intimately connected to God. But now they are damaged by the Fall. But if we pray for help, sincerely trust and respect God, He will guide us, but if we just trust in our ability to think without His help, no, we can't count on getting things right. If we could count on that why is there disagreement on everything? Being inspired by God ensures it contains the truth, and the writers of every one of those books was inspired by God. "All scripture is God-breathed..." But not without being soaked in prayer and humbly distrustful of our own raw thoughts... Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him. The Bible is the way we find out about Jesus, it's how we know anything at all about Him, you cannot know Him without the Bible as our guide. Your accusation that it is "bibliolatry" to use the Bible as our only route to knowledge of God. It's like saying we don't need to go to school, we can know everything without any teaching. The Bible introduces us to Jesus, but after you have that relationship you still have to have the Bible to be sure you are actually having that relationship and not just making it up. Bible believers don't miss anything, but you can get yourself deceived by your way of thinking.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, my understanding has God commanding the execution of judgment according to the Moral Law, about which He is trying to teach us by having it written down, which is what you are resisting... Jesus is not saying they got it wrong. He Himself is the Author of the Old Testament, as you ought to know but it sounds like you don't. You are wrongly dividing the word of Truth as usual, since Jesus is here addressing each of us personally to love our personal enemies, He is not addressing the nation of Israel which was the context of the Old Testament command. As for stoning, that made sense as the execution of justice in a theocracy, so that sin would not spread and corrupt the nation, but after Jesus has come the focus becomes individual and personal. He speaks to the woman caught in adultery as a sinning individual being judged by sinning individuals, whom He challenges concerning their own personal sins which are relevant in the new context but not the old. He changes the context. Sin is now primarily a matter of the heart whereas in the theocracy it was a matter of behavior within the social context. Likewise there are no longer prohibitions on certain foods because there is no longer a reason for them as there was in the OT context of the theocratic nation of Israel.The gospel is going out to the Gentiles, to the entire world. Jesus has come not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it: the sins God punished in the OT are not now permitted because Jesus has come, but Jesus will go to the cross to pay for them in His own body, and out of love for Him we obey the Law, not under threat of stoning let alone eternal Hell. He forgives sin because of His own sacrifice to pay for it.But we are nevertheless to understand the TRUE RIGHTEOUS penalty for sin without His atonement from the severity of the judgments God commanded in the OT. By refusing to believe the accounts of the severe punishments in the OT you just water down the significance of Jesus' atonement. You seem to be hung up on this idea of God "dictating" things, and you are misunderstanding how the term "inspire" is used in the context of God's authorship of the Bible. Again, the scripture is "God-breathed," that's what is translated "inspired." God infused His thoughts into the minds of the writers, not by dictation but by making them aware of His intent. Believers now may hear from God in a similar way as He "speaks" to our minds and hearts to let us know His will or wisdom on a certain subject. It isn't a dictation, the written word comes through the personality of the writer, not word for word but with God's intent accurately expressed. Every writing is stamped with the personality of the writer, and yet it is God's mind that is expressed. Of course. You don't think God can guide hundreds of writers in different cultural contexts as He wills? What an odd idea. Why would that be?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Often what looks at first like a contradiction is really a matter of context. Arminian concepts relate to the human perspective for instance, while Calvinist concepts describe God's perspective, so there is no contradiction. Both are true.

Loving your neighbor does require the punishment of transgressors to keep your neighbor from committing them.

In the human perspective you have free will and a choice, and that's true; from God's perspective He determines it all but that doesn't impact our personal experience.

I disagree, Phat, I do not have to subject the Bible to scientific inquiry. There is nothing dishonest about that stance, and I find your attitude reprehensible. A radical stand for God against all the compromising nonsense you are always flirting with shouldn't dissuade anyone from Christ.