I still feel I need to know more about how Ravi got into what he got into. Did he believe what he was saying at the time in some weird way perhaps? If he taught a class at Oxford in Wycliffe Hall I think he said or maybe I have the name wrong, did he feel he could call himself a professor without bothering about accurate titles or what? His statement of repentance or apology emphasizes the importance of using correct titles, so is he saying he was just ignorant or sloppy about their use or what? Yes I'm trying to find a way to minimize it but in the end maybe he was conscious of it all.
However, that doesn't make what you said wrong, about how the church forgives and wipes the slate clean, because scripture is clear that we do forgive and consider the slate wiped clean if there is repentance. And if we are born again then God does not count our sins against us. But we do have to repent.
And we still suffer consequences for our sins in this life. Remember David who sinned with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered. The conseqeucnes were horrendous. First his baby son with Bathsheba died, then one of his other sons raped his half sister and then treated her like dirt. Then Absalom rebelled and tried to take David's throne from him and died. All that came from David's sins with Bathsheba. We all suffer for our sins and sometimes our sins have consequences for others too.
I see some in my own life, some sufferings and deprivation of happiness for me and even my descendants too as a result of my own sins. It's depressing but it's better to know it than not. This is how the Moral Law works, and it works in everybody's life, believer or nonbeliever. But still God accepts my repentance and welcomes me back as far as my future life with Him goes. I do have to suffer here nevertheless.
I do think the church is in bad shape these days, and I count myself as in bad shape too, in our apparent weakness of falling into sin. However, there are plenty of examples of that among the Christians in the New Testament too, we're not alone, although it's possible more of us are weak now, I don't really know. The fact that we supposedly live in a "Christian" culture may have something to do with this: we don't expect ourselves to rise much above the culture. We all know unbelievers who live good lives too. Nevertheless the author is right that there SHOULD be a distinction between us and the culture that is not apparent. In my own place I could point out that I was a far WORSE sinner before I became a believer but nobody here knew me then.
When we fall sometimes it's hard to get up, sometimes we don't even know we fell. There's a whole discussion that could be had in here somewhere but maybe not here since this is supposed to be about the apologists. I've avoided this thread to some extent probably mostly because attacking the apologists seems odd to me. All they are doing is trying to spell out the Christian doctrines, so it becomes a discussion about the doctrines anyway, rather than the apologists per se.
Billy Graham was always impressive with his strict rules about avoiding occasions of temptation, particularly with women. But also we need to pray for those in the public eye because they are particular targets.
Anyway thanks for your response. I hadn't listened to Ravi in years abut always thought he did a good job.
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
In reading what Turek has to say he makes the whole point of being a Christian is that one gets saved. Again, he puts the whole point of Christianity as being focused on self benefit. That is 180 degrees from what we see in Jesus. The whole point of Christianity is to serve, not be served.
GDR, do you really not get that most "serving" that is done is done for personal benefit? To feel good about yourself, to feel superior to others, to get credit of one sort or another, some kind of reward from God or whatnot? That's the most common sin there is, and it's a form of spiritual sin. When Paul said it's not about works "lest any man should boast," that's what he meant. Boasting comes with doing good works, not with salvation.
Have you studied the Beatitudes? "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is the first one. It's not about literal poverty, being poor in material goods, it's about being poor IN SPIRIT, which means not trusting in ourselves, not thinking we have anything good to offer God or anyone else. It's foundational to the whole Christian life. Basically what it means is that we have to be free of self-righteousness, of thinking we can accomplish anything at all in our own strength. We have to know that we can do absolutely nothing on our own, no good works for sure, nothing, that we are incapable of anything good, it all has to come from God. That's basic humility, pointing to your good heart or your good deeds is pride.
The Reformation doctrine of "Total depravity" is another way of saying that. We CAN'T do good works, GDR, it isn't in us, we're fallen. Salvation is regeneration of the spirit we lost at the Fall by which we can eventually reclaim some of the ability to do good that we lost but the more we reclaim the more we will learn that it all comes from God anyway and not from us. But you'd have us somehow think we can have a good heart without that. That's self-deception to a monumental degree. Even after being saved we are subject to our wretched fallen nature, and one of our biggest sins is thinking we're good or are capable of doing good.
The saddest people are the ones who think they'll go to heaven because they've been good people. Well I don't doubt that they have been good by our woefully inadequate standards, but it isn't goodness that gets us saved, that is what Paul meant, we are sinners deserving only of eternal damnation, saved only by God's grace and by nothing in ourselves. We need Jesus' goodness in our place to save us, or to have any ability to do any kind of good at all.
AbE: I understand that you sorta kinda give credit to God for our ability to do good, but as long as your focus is on doing good you are building up pride and self-righteousness or "boasting."
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
Yes we are to do good deeds, but fallen people can't do good deeds, or to be precise, good deeds that God regards as good deeds, you have to be regenerated and if your focus is all on good deeds as is the case with some here there is no sign of regeneration involved, especially with those who denigrate the whole idea of salvation.
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
If you read what I have written Faith I think I have been clear that serving is about serving with no consideration of any reward and all that you describe above would be a reward. As C S Lewis says the greatest sin is the sin of pride. You have completely misread what it is that I have been saying.
You are right, I should have addressed that. The thing is it's impossible and we easily delude ourselves if we think we are accomplishing that. I read a lot of the mystics at one time, both Catholic and Protestant, and they get so deeply into watching their motivations at such depths they know that we deceive ourselves all the time and can't see it.
In any case you denigrate salvation which is the only way we could ever begin to do a single good deed in the requisite purity, and although we are to do good deeds based on our salvation that's based on knowing that God accepts our efforts at that point because He overlooks our sinfulness based on Christ's work.
You however talk about having a good heart as if that's even possible and it simply is not, and you compound that error by the way you talk about salvation as something selfish rather than the merciful gift of God to miserable sinners who are incapable of doing one good thing by His holy standards.
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
capable of doing good.
Life is a gift of God and so is the ability to love others. We can choose to accept that gift of being able to feel and act on love from God, or we are free to reject it.
Yes everything comes from God but the whole point of a teaching like "total depravity" is that we are fallen and do not have the ability to love as God would have us love. Our love is riddled with self seeking too, the idea that we can do anything good without desiring reward is some kind of self deception. I think some of us sometimes come close, sometimes all of us may come close at some times, but the main message of scripture is that we are fallen and have to be regenerated in order to recover the lost life of God of Eden.
IMHO the saddest people are those that think that they'll go to heaven, (and going to heaven is Platonic and not scriptural), because they believe they have the correct doctrine.
It isn't an intellectual doctrine, it's FAITH and faith is an active almost living thing, the "evidence of things unseen, the substance of things hoped for" or the other way around I often get it wrong. Faith grasps realities we otherwise have no way of knowing and one thing it grasps is our regenerated spirits that were lost at the Fall. And that is absolutely basic. We cannot do one good thing until we're regenerated, born again.
The study of Revelation I've been doing has been truly a revelation for me. Yes we will go to heaven, we who are raptured, and so will all those who die in Christ during the Tribulation as well, but that isn't our final abode. The millennia kingdom is really something to think about, the restoration of Eden, and that willb e followed by the eternal kingdom. But I don't want to get into all that. The point is that salvation is a change in our nature that recovers spiritual abilities we lost, and it is abdsolutely necessary for fitting us for a future life, first on a renovated Earth and then the New Jerusalem. The Love we should grow into over that time is far beyond anything we can imagine now.
It isn't about what we do it is about the heart, which is the motivation for what we do.
You always make it sound as if we could just DECIDE to be that way and overlook the scriptural requirement that we be CHANGED, that is, born again, our spiritual faculty restored.
Out of curiosity, I wonder about yourself. I'm sure that you do things for others that cost you time and/or money. If Tangle were to convince you that your beliefs are false and you accepted atheism would you still do those things that you do now?
I definitely do a lot more good deeds as a Christian than I ever did as an atheist.
I understand that you sorta kinda give credit to God for our ability to do good, but as long as your focus is on doing good you are building up pride and self-righteousness or "boasting."
I think that you have a rather low opinion of people in general if you believe that they can't do good without being prideful and self righteousness.
Believe me I don't have the spiritual wisdom to recognize such things, I get it all from the Bible and reading the best most spiritually experienced Christians. They see into their own hearts to a depth I'm not capable of.
The Bible tells us we can. Just read my signature. We are called to humble kindness and justice.
It's not that we're to stop doing whatever we can, it's that we're to stop thinking it amounts to anything in God's eyes unless it's through Christ's sacrifice for us, and to stop giving ourselves credit for any good we might ever seem to accomplish.
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
Again though Faith your whole reason to be a Christian is to figure out how to gain salvation. It isn't that it doesn't matter but it is actually a by-product of fulfilling the vocation that God calls all humans to.
No, you have it backwards. We are not called to anything UNTIL we are regenerated. It is only the regenerated spirit that God can use. But anyone who has any inkling of how we all deserve Hell and what Hell is, would be some kind of nonhuman not to make that the first thing we seek. Without even understanding what it is and how necessary it is. To call a desire to avoid an eternity of torment selfishness, or its fulfillment a mere by-product of something you think is bigger or more noble is a strange idea about humanity. Do you have ANY idea of what Hell is going to be? Or the Lake of Fire? If God didn't save us from that we'd just spend our lives fearing it anyway, if we believed in it of course, and that would make us useless to everybody.
Certainly nobody fills that vocation even close to perfectly. We all succumb regularly to selfishness. The point is that we are called to set our lives on a trajectory that leads us in the direction of a Christ like life based solely on sacrificial love, not that we ever, at least in this life, come close to achieving it.
Again you act like you think this is possible in our present human condition through a mere act of will. You don't believe in the Fall then, don't think we are fallen, having lost so much of our original human qualities we CAN'T do what you keep saying we are to do. You are missing all the scriptures that require us to be changed, regenerated, born again, etc. We have to be restored to the spiritual capacities we lost at the Fall. That is the whole point of Jesus' incarnation, to restore the lost Creation Satan stole from us. I hope you'll want to take a look at Revelation some time, it's fascinating once you have a teachere who helps you get a handle on it as MacArthur is doing for me. THAT's our real "vocation" or destiny, the recovery of the whole Creation, destroyed by the Fall then doubly destroyed in the Flood not to mention by all our sinfulness ever since. And if what you want is agape love THAT's where it's going to be found, not anywhere on the planet as things are now.
There will always be those, possibly because of growing up in abusive homes, that are virtually incapable of living the lives that God hopes we will, but at the same time they may hate the way they live and in their hearts desperately want to live the life that we are called to.
Teach them about being born again. They'll still suffer from their broken lives but being born again is the way we get to where they want to be. MacArthur has a teaching on it.
It is about the heart
I think it's Jeremiah where we are told "our hearts are deceitful above all things." Putting any trust in our unregenerated human hearts is folly. Even regenerated we can't trust them.
and I am quite content to let God look after things after this life comes to an end. As Paul says judge not that you be not judged.
Please don't be content with not knowing whether you are saved or not, you HAVE to be saved GDR. I don't "judge" you, I don't judge anybody's sins, I've got worse ones anyway, but you may be pure except for one teeny little lle you told when you were five and you still need to be regenerated.
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
Sure there are lots of ways we have faith but I'm talking about the faith that saves us, faith that Christ died in our place to save us from eternal punishment. One of the five "solas" of the Reformation: "Sola Fide" It's even in that passage we've already discussed here: "For it is by faith that we are saved and not by works, lest any man should boast." It is BY FAITH that we are saved.....
Re: Dr.Turek weighs in on Protestant and Catholic differences.
The study of Revelation I've been doing has been truly a revelation for me. Yes we will go to heaven, we who are raptured, and so will all those who die in Christ during the Tribulation as well, but that isn't our final abode. The millennia kingdom is really something to think about, the restoration of Eden, and that willb e followed by the eternal kingdom. But I don't want to get into all that. The point is that salvation is a change in our nature that recovers spiritual abilities we lost, and it is absolutely necessary for fitting us for a future life, first on a renovated Earth and then the New Jerusalem. The Love we should grow into over that time is far beyond anything we can imagine now.
That understanding of doctrine comes from reading the Bible with a western 21st century understanding of something written by a 1st century Jew to a 1st century audience. It is if I wrote that it was raining cats and dogs and someone 2000 years from now understands that our pets were picked up by a cyclone and then rained down on us.
Balderdash!
You always make it sound as if we could just DECIDE to be that way and overlook the scriptural requirement that we be CHANGED, that is, born again, our spiritual faculty restored.
It isn't a matter of one day deciding something. It is just that one day we might have an opportunity to do something kind for some one. Maybe give a couple of bucks to someone who is homeless. Something we hadn't done before. Maybe a week later we do the same thing again, and then again and the again. Gradually we start understanding that this is normal and the way that we should live out lives.
Let me see if I can say it more clearly. You make it sound as if we could do all this from our current human nature in a way that would please God, and I'm saying no, all THAT kind of righteousness is as "filthy rags" as scripture says, it's worth nothing to God. It has to be motivated by the regenerated nature in which Christ comes to dwell in us.
On the other hand maybe one day we stick a chocolate bar in our pocket and leave the store without paying for it. A week later we get away with it again, and again. Ultimately that way of life becomes the norm for us.
One way I think I'm probably born again is that I can't bear to find out that inadvertently I got through the line without paying for something and I have to go out of my way to take it back and pay for it. Either doing good or stealing for me couldn't be a mere matter of habituation, I have a strong sense of having to do the right thing. I did not have that strong a sense when I was an atheist although I was generally honest.
It isn't that those trajectories can't change and start going the opposite way but hopefully you get my point. I might suggest reading C S Lewis' book The Great Divorce" to see what I'm getting at. Also his last book in the Narnia series, The Last Battle, can be really helpful.
I read everything Lewis wrote but so long ago I'm afraid I've forgotten most of it. But it's hard to think he'd say that a CHRISTIAN who was born again could get habituated to a sinful habit. Or if we did we'd lose all our spiritual sensitivity, as in the scripture verse about our souls becoming lean. Have to look that one up.
I definitely do a lot more good deeds as a Christian than I ever did as an atheist.
Then maybe you are just doing good deeds to get in God's good books.
Why would you think that? My motives may not always be pure and in fact i'm sure they aren't but I do good out of obedience to Christ.
My point was if you now became an atheist, and as a result you stopped doing the good deeds, then it sounds like you would have been doing them as you expected a positive result for yourself.
.
I wouldn't, I'd figure I hadn't really been a saved Christian. If I had been I couldn't become an atheist or if I tried my conscience would be killing me all the time. As it is I sometimes violate my conscience enough to know how much it hurts.
If you would keep doing them it would be an indication that the good deeds represent who you are regardless of belief.
Well, yeah, people are different and some people have a naturally stronger conscience than others do so what you are saying could be true, but then I'd assume the person never was a Christian in either case, just doing whatever their natural character leads them to do.
In everything you've said here you are clearly not thinking in terms of the change I keep talking about, the need to be regenerated. You really do seem to think it's all based on our normal nature which is fallen nature. If we "become a Christian" and do good deeds we are doing them in some way that doesn't spring from the heart, and if it IS all coming from our unregenerated nature that would be true, and some "Christians" ARE unregenerated and don't know it. So if they fall away and become atheists they never were born again anyway and they just give up the good deeds that didn't spring from the heart anyway. And what I keep trying to say to you is that they CAN'T spring from the heart of an unregenerated person, you really do have to be born again.
Turns out MacArthur has quite a few sermons on being born again, listed at this You Tube page. I'd like to listen to a couple of them myself but I haven't yet so I don't know which is the best for someone who rejects the idea. But I'll post one of the videos for a start anyway: . . .
. . I suspect we've said it all anyway, the same discussion we usually have and since it's more or less off topic here let's call it finished, or take it up somewhere else.
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