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Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Religion or Science - How do they compare? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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People today believe for precisely the same reason they believed ten thousand years ago: Ignorance and tribalism. I think that probably describes YOUR belief in what you are saying here, but it doesn't describe belief in Christ or the God of the Bible or other revelations in the Bibgle.
In the spirit of your own post, prove me wrong. Perhaps foreveryoung will answer you, but what I'd say is that the Biblical account of the spread of belief in Christ shows a lot of resistance to it. Those who believed were in the tens of thousands among the Jews before it went out to the Gentiles, but that was only a small part of the Jewish population. "Ignorance and tribalism" hardly describe the persuasion of the many who did believe, especially considering that you immediately became a target of both the Jews and the Roman Caesars. All the original twelve apostles died for their belief at the hands of persecutors. In some parts of the world today Christianity continues to spread despite similar persecution. There are millions of Chinese Christians now despite the hostility of the Communist regime, and many Muslims who convert have to consciously decide it's worth losing their lives when they do so. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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Yes, the claim is that your belief in invisible, mythical beings (gods) is the same as a belief in other invisible, mythical beings (elves, fairies, leprechauns, trolls, ents, mad hatters, demons, unicorns, gobblins etc etc etc). The proof is an obvious one, if you can produce your invisible being, I'm wrong. How would you suggest one go about proving the existence of invisible beings? Actually I'm sure you have a few watching you this very minute but they wouldn't want to blow their cover with you since it benefits them not to be believed in.
The positive claim is that god exists, so if anyone is going to be convinced by that they're going to need the evidence. That's the way it works, the guy claiming something is real, needs to demonstrate that it's real. The same applies to fairies, elves, goblins......... Sometimes a person just has to respect the claims of other human beings who describe their experiences of God and some of those other creatures you mention. The real experiences don't sound like fiction by the way, and even you could tell the difference if you'd stop and think about it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
How would you suggest one go about proving the existence of invisible beings? That's not my problem. No, but if you insist it be proved and you know it can't be you're being a little, shall we say, disingenuous.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I need a really good reason to believe something utterly preposterous. That lots of intelligent sane people describe them to you really ought to count as a good enough reason to think there might be something to it, even if it doesn't lead you to outright belief in them. Really. And most of the believers in these things are certainly intelligent and sane. But what you do is say they can't be intelligent and sane BECAUSE they believe in these things. Catch 22.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Yes lots of people believe in invisible beings and they should be taken seriously, especially if they describe personal experiences.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
When intelligent people believe in something you dismiss as daft, and they claim personal experience whereas all you have is your judgmental attitude, why should anyone believe you?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Not God, and a Christian should know that.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
GDR writes: Faith writes: I read a lot of heresies, cults, occultism, before going with what I recognized to be the truth. Heresies aren't new, they are very old. At some point, especially with bad eyes, the reasonable thing to do is stop wasting time on the devil's lies and grow in what you know to be true. There are a great number of Christians that view your understanding of the Scriptures and for that matter of God to be heretical. You adhere to an OT version of God in order to try and twist the Bible into a shape that isn't intended, distorting a great deal of what Jesus taught and died for, and what God resurrected Him for. I was just reading through some of the reviews of Fleming Rutledge's book, The Crucifixion, that you mentioned you are reading. It may not be possible, in fact I'm pretty sure it isn't possible, but I'm thinking maybe I should read it because it is a whole area of liberal Christianity I'm not up on and it desperately needs comparison with the orthodox view. I was astonished to see her quoted as saying that the cross is hardly ever preached on in churches these days, because in the circles I'm familiar with the complaint might actually be the opposite, that preachers spend so much time preaching the cross of Christ that we hardly ever get to hear about sanctification. This seems to be another huge area of polarization in today's world, like all the others I particularly encounter here at EvC. This morning it makes me cry. Sometimes it makes me angry but lately I'm seeing how futile the debate is and tears are the only true response to that. And especially to ideas about the crucifixion that deny supernatural salvation of souls because that most likely means there are an awful lot of "Christians" who are going to go to Hell, and that is something to cry about.
I couldn't find out from any of the reviews, though they are full of praise of a general sort, what she thinks the crucifixion most importantly represents in her system of thinking. Is there a way you could describe that briefly? Is any of it about supernatural salvation in which He died to pay for our sins to remove God's wrath from us? As for calling each other heretics, it seemed to me that you are calling most of the greats of Christian history heretics, the ones who have most inspired me. I don't suppose it will persuade you of anything but I got into trying to list them all in my head and thought I might do it here just for the record.
Lots more I know I'm forgetting. But there are a few off the top of my head that I consider great preachers and teachers that you must be classifying as heretics because they preach salvation by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone by scripture alone . ABE: Some I've remembered since writing the above:George Muller, who lived more completely by faith alone than any other Christian I can think of; Corrie ten Boom, Dutch protector of Jews during WWii, who spent time in a Nazi prison camp Brother Andrew, Dutch Christian called by God to take Bibles behind the Iron Curtain after WWII Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Resistance to Nazism who was executed for an attempt on Hitler's life. Billy Graham of course. Albert Mohler, contemporary, A W Tozer one of the greatest American preachers and writers, mid 20th century, AW Pink, English theologian early 20th century, love the guy, Oswald Chambers, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, 20th century. And now I've forgotten some others I'd remembered too, Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I was hoping you could just sum it up in a couple of sentences. So far the article has that same vagueness all the reviews have. It's hard to tell how certain words are being used --- liberal Christians don't use words the same way orthodox Christians do. However, just saying that the crucifixion has always been problematic reveals the liberal framework since no orthodox would ever say it was problematic. I'll have to copy the article and try to read it later.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Missed your point. I don't want to subscribe to CT. If you can't or won't try to sum it up for me I'll just have to wait until I run across a review that is clearer.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Today there is a "See Inside" feature attached to the book at Amazon, which I didn't see yesterday, and another review I didn't see which is a little clearer than the others, a reader who gives it two stars and titles her comments "culturally sensitive theology." She writes:
Rutledge reveals her discomfort with the orthodox position of penal substitution as a necessary work of Christ on the cross. Painfully conscious of the "bloody" punishment that the cross represents, historically & theologically, she tries to uncouple its punitive implication from Jesus' suffering. That God's mercy cannot be shown to us without His justice does not seem to matter to her as a matter of logic, even after spending many pages explaining the seriousness of sin & its implication in God's eyes. To be uncomfortable with penal substitution is to be uncomfortable with Christianity itself because that is what the cross is all about. I wonder what she makes of the term "salvation" since that would have to be one of those words a liberal fills with different content than an orthodox traditional Christian does. Is Jesus God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity? Are those even words she uses? And if she does in what sense, some kind of intellectualized sophistical liberal sense or the traditional sense? Does she believe in a literal Hell? Does Jesus' death on the cross save us from it? Well, I can't afford the book right now but maybe my curiosity to see her answers to these questions, which I'm sure at this point will turn out to be serious heresy, will lead me to buy it sometime in the future.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Still fascinated by this book I read another review, one I'd already read but now I have a framework for it knowing that Rutledge can't embrace penal substitution, which is the same thing as being unable to embrace Christ and Christianity.
So I read in the No. 1 Positive Review:
As we see the magnitude of the death of Christ, we are drawn into the heart of God. Rutledge insists: Christians do not simply look to the cross of Christ with prayerful reverence. We are set in motion by its power, energized by it, upheld by it, guaranteed by it, secured by it. This is a lot of typical "liberal Christian" totally empty verbiage, which is what I'm now gathering characterizes Rutledge's book. It must take a lot of concentration to avoid embracing the true meaning of the cross, which is penal substitution, in favor of a lot of other supposed values which amount to a lot of empty verbiage. Each of the sentences I quoted from that review is sheer contentless gobbledygook. Drawn into the heart of God? By the "magnitude" of Christ's death? Do Christians look at the cross with "prayerful reverence?" No, we look to the Cross primarily with GRATITUDE for God's love and mercy to us that He sacrificed His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him shall have everlasting life. REAL everlasting life, not some kind of empty emotionalistic gutted bunch of words. What on earth does any of this mean? We are "set in motion" by it? You mean something like spinning like a top perhaps? By it's "power?" What sort of power would that be? Verbal power? Emotional power? Certainly not REAL power, the sort Paul talked about in Romans:
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for the Jew first but also the Greek. Even those words can sound empty in the context of Rutledge's book and she's probably quoted them with as much verbose meaningless emptiness as she can manage to stuff into them too. You have to be a traditional believer to know Paul is talking about a REAL power of a REAL salvation from a REAL Hell by a REAL death of a REAL God-Man. Well, I don't think I need to read the book now, GDR. I'm sorry anyone takes this stuff seriously. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You've never actually defined what you consider to be Christian that I recall. Apparently this book seems to you to be Christian, does that mean you particularly favor Liberal Christianity? Can you say exactly what it is you regard as Christian? Perhaps name someone you think of as a prime representative of Christianity, or a school or theology or doctrine or church or whatever you would identify. I know what GDR thinks, but do you share his definitions or something else?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
All right, so you don't really have a worked-out positive definition, what you have is a strong sense of what it isn't?
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Thanks Phat.
Penal substitution has biblical support: Here's a quote from the Gospel Coalition:
PSA is explicit in the Servant Song of Isaiah 53, which delivers a penal substitutionary perspective on both the atonement and the work of God’s servant. The four Gospels either explicitly quote or implicitly reference the Servant Song more often than any other OT passage. As R.T France observes, the entire trajectory of Jesus’ earthly ministry as recorded in Scripture is an embodiment of the suffering servant who’s life culminated in a cross and death, before climaxing in a resurrection: But he was pierced for our transgressions,he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6) PSA feature prominently in Paul’s letter to the Romans where the apostle depicts it as God's answer to the guilt and wrath brought on by our rebellion God. The great turning point in Romans is the exegesis of the gospel in 3:21-26, where Paul explains how God’s gift of righteousness, comes through faith in Jesus Christ and by his propitiatory death on the cross. As J.I. Packer notes: With the other New Testament writers, Paul always points to the death of Jesus as the atoning event, and explains the atonement in terms of representative substitution — the innocent taking the place of the guilty, in the name and for the sake of the guilty, under the axe of God’s judicial retribution(J.I Packer, Knowing God) The concept of penal substitution is implicit in the Old Testament image of the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat that was released into the desert bearing the sins of the people. Jesus is presented as the true Lamb of God in many places in the New Testament. His being sacrificed for us mneans He was sacrificed in our place to pay for our sins, which was the function of the animal sascrifices in the OT.
Ligonier Ministries gives a pretty thorough account of the various views of the atonement over the centuries, arguing that penal substitution is the only completely satisfactory interpretation. The whole discussion is too lengthy to copy out here but here is the conclusion in a nutshell:
it is vital that we contend for an account of the atonement which views it as penal (that Christ satisfied the penalty of the law, as the righteousness of the Father demanded) substitution (that he underwent this penalty in our place). Any other model of the atonement will both fail the test of biblical witness, and leave us without an adequate plea for forgiveness and acceptance with God. There are other references both pro and con on the Google page for "Is penal substitution biblical?"
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