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christians that are not church members over the years i have met christians who are not associated with any local church and are not members of any local church this is an issue that may be very personal but is important what does the bible say about this and how can we encourage our friends with regard to this issue gary chin staff engineer sun microsystems mt view ca gchin eng sun com
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re am i going to hell tbrent ecn purdue edu timothy j brent writes i have stated before that i do not consider myself an atheist but so you believe in the existance of one creator i assume definitely do not believe in the christian god the recent discussion about atheists and hell combined with a post to another group to the effect of you will all go to hell has me interested in the consensus as to how a god might judge men as a catholic i was told that a jew buddhist etc might go to heaven but obviously some people do not believe this even more see atheists and pagans i assume i would be lumped into this category to be hellbound i know you believe only god can judge and i do not ask you to just for your opinions ok god has the disclaimer reserves the right to judge individual cases if we believe him to be loving then we also believe him to be able to serve justice to all don t worry if a jew or athiest is going to heaven or hell for that is god to judge although truly if you were concerned you could only worry abput those who refuse to believe satisfy gods decrees as much as keeping yourself straight if you see something going on that is wrong discuss it and explore it before making summary judgement people have enough free will to choose for themselves so don t force choices on them just inform them of what they re choices are god will take care of the rest in his justice thanks tim mohammad r khan khan nova gmi edu after july please send mail to mkhan nyx cs du edu
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re bible unsuitable for new christians news cbnewsk att com writes true also read peter peter warns that the scriptures are often hard to understand by those who are not learned on the subject where do insparations miracles fit in i was a new reader to the bible and qu ran at the same time in my life and i can tell you that i would have drifted in my faith if those books were not exposed to me joe moore mohammad r khan khan nova gmi edu after july please send mail to mkhan nyx cs du edu
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re help i m a commited christian that is battling with a problem i know that romans talks about how we are saved by our faith not our deeds yet hebrews and james say that faith without deeds is useless saying you fools do you still think that just believing is enough stuff deleted now i am of the opinion that you a saved through faith alone not what you do as taught in romans but how can i square up in my mind the teachings of james in conjunction with the lukewarm christian being spat out can anyone help me this really bothers me i have received tons of mail from people replying to this article i wrote and i would just like to thank everyone who took the time to give me a hand it has indeed helped me and re affirmed alot of theories that i held but was a little unsure about god bless you all will dallas cowboys world champions
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re doing the work of god desiree bradley desiree bradley mindlink bc ca wrote the next sunday the sermon was about joshua where the israelites take jericho and then proceed to massacre everybody there except for rahab who had sheltered the spies with those reports about bosnia in my mind i felt uncomfortable about the minister saying that the massacre the one in joshua was right but what really bothered me was that if i was going to try taking christianity seriously i shouldn t be so troubled about the reports of ethnic cleansing in bosnia certainly my sympathies shouldn t be with the moslims considering that the bosnian muslims are descendants of christians who under turkish rule converted to islam could the serbs be doing god s work perhaps it would be useful to ask whether those doing the ethnic cleansing could be said to be loving those they are killing in the very act of killing does it reflect the attitude of god who sends rain to both the just and the unjust if not then christians should be uncomfortable with it jesus gave his followers the law of love to follow and it is by exhibiting this that disciples will be known doctrinal or political correctness is not the standard so i don t see why christians should be moved against the serbs because their ancestors converted from christianity to islam it seems to me that as a christian you should be troubled by the ethnic cleansing peace scott shalkowski scott arts uwa edu au
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national day of prayer this is an annual time of prayer organized by the focus on the family organization if you have not heard about it on your christian radio station or at your local church call them and they may be able to give you the information many cities in the san francisco bay area have local coordinators organizing the time and the place to meet to pray in san francisco oakland berkeley san jose people will be meeting at pm at each city s city hall last year i attended at the mountain view city hall it was a very quiet and meaningful time of prayer gary chin staff engineer sun microsystems mt view ca gchin eng sun com
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re hell black sabbath in apr geneva rutgers edu jprzybyl skidmore edu writes i may be wrong but wasn t jeff fenholt part of black sabbath he s a major brother in christ now he totally changed his life around and why should he have been any different then ozzy osbourne ex singer and main character of the black sabbath of good ole days past is and always was a devout catholic or so i ve heard over on the alt rock n roll metal newsgroups an i figure those folks oughta know disclaimer it s great to be young and insane
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re the arrogance of christians why do we follow god so blindly have you ever asked a physically blind person why he or she follows a seeing eye dog the answer is quite simple the dog can see and the blind person cannot of course you may ask if i cannot trust my own senses how do i know whether what i see and hear about god is truth or a lie that is why we need faith to be saved we must force ourselves to believe that god knows the truth and loves us enough to share it with us even when it defies what we think we know why would he have created us if he did not love us enough to help us through this world seems to me if you learned to differentiate between illusion and reality on your own you wouldn t need to rely on doctrines that need to be updated my experience of christianity years is that most christians seek answers from clergymen who have little or no direct experience of spiritual matters and that most of these questions can be answered by simple introspection most people suspect that they cannot trust their senses but few take the next step to figure out that they can trust themselves not to get too esoteric but it seems that most religions christianity included are founded by particularly intuitive people who understand this stuff deleted as for you no one can convert you you must choose to follow god of your own will if you are ever to follow him all we as christians wish to do is share with you the love we have received from god if you reject that we have to accept your decision although we always keep the offer open to you if you really want to find out why we believe what we believe i can only suggest you try praying for faith reading the bible and asking christians about their experiences personally and what if the original poster pixie is never converted does it make sense that she or i or the majority of humanity for that matter would go to hell for eternity as many christians believe it makes more sense to me that rather than be converted to a centuries old doctrine that holds no life for her that she simply continue to decide for herself what is best you may be right about christians relying on clergy but i have some reason to hope you re not protestants emphasize conversion experience of the holy spirit and use of the bible this is intended to make sure that christians have religious experience of their own and that they have some basis on which to judge claims of clergy and other christians i can t speak for catholics and orthodox but i believe they also attempt to avoid having members who simply repeat what they are told i admit that this isn t always successful we certainly see young people join our church because at that age parents expect it but most of our members do seem quite able and willing to make judgements for themselves and have a commitment that comes out of their own experience unfortunately it s the nature of usenet that doctrinal disagreements get emphasized so it looks like we spend most of our time dealing with doctrine that s certainly not my experience of the way christians really live clh
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re daily verse in article apr athos rutgers edu petch gvg gvg tek com chuck petch writes how much better to get wisdom than gold to choose understanding rather than silver proverbs ah and how amen to that one thanks chuck for sharing after all no one can serve two masters god and money after all the preciousness of god as lord and savior is far more valuable than being a millionaire will ever be in him scott
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re some questions from a new christian ofm responds to a query about reference works aside from a commentary you might also want to consider an introduction these are books intended for use in undergraduate bible courses they give historical background discussion of literary styles etc and generally they have good bibligraphies for further reading i typically recommend kee froehlich and young s nt introduction two other intros to consider the introduction by ku mmel is a translation of a strandard nt text the references are slightly dated and the style is somewhat dense but the book contains a wealth of information perrin and duling s intro is also very good it s somewhat more modern than ku mmel s but not quite so densely packed also the authors tend to go through the books of the nt in the historical order of composition this gives a very useful perspective on the development of the nt there are also some good one volume commentaries probably the best recommendation these days would be harper s bible commentary a slight dissent i think the harper s is ok but not great one particular problem i have is that it tends to be pretty skimpy on bibliographic material my feeling is that it is ok for quick look ups but not real useful for study in depth e g i keep a copy in my office at work i think there may be a couple of books with this title so far as i know there is the only one book with this exact title james l mays general editor harper and row although i think i recall a older series under the name harper commentaries also there s a separate harper s bible dictionary most of my comments on the hc also apply to the hbd my favorite one volume commentary is the new jerome biblical commentary the njbc is rather catholic in focus and somewhat biased towards the nt the reader can decide for her or himself whether these are pluses or minuses in any case the scholarship is by and large excellent note the njbc is a completely reworked updated version of the jerome biblical commentary copies of which can still be found on sale nichael
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god shaped hole was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu johnsd rpi edu dan johnson writes those who have an empty spot in the god shaped hole in their hearts must do something to ease the pain i have heard this claim quite a few times does anybody here know who first came up with the god shaped hole business was it pascal or maybe descartes who first used this figure of speech i seem to have some vague recollections from reading some of their essays but i certainly couldn t say it was one of them for sure todd smith tsmith cs stanford edu
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re can sin block our prayers in article apr athos rutgers edu qucdn queensu ca writes i have heard an interesting notion that sin can block our prayers to god i e god will not hear our prayers if we have not confessed our sins now i am totally supportive of confessing our sins before god but i simply do not believe god will shut us out just because we did not confess this is kind of like the idea that suffering is caused by sin which as any job reader will realize is too simpilistic rest deleted can the father possibly not hear the words of his children of course he hears all your prayers whether you are a sinner or a saint no questions the real question you should be asking is does sin block our hearing his answer and the answer to that question is a resounding yes to paraphrase the gospel many are called but few choose to listen and so it is with prayer in christ james james hale lincoln school of health sciences computing unit la trobe university bundoora australia james hale latrobe edu au the grace of god rests gently on forgiving eyes and everything they look on speaks of him to the beholder he can see no evil nothing in the world to fear and no one who is different from himself text p
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daily verse above all love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins ipeter
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu aa freenet carleton ca mark baker writes very good and reasonable statements on authority deleted the atheist position seems to be that there are no authorities this is a reasonable assertion in itself but it leads to a practical difficulty if you reject all authority out of hand you reject all possibility of every receiving information thus the atheist position can never possibly change it is non falsifiable and therefore unscintific this is not true the athiest s position is that there is no proof of the existence of god as much as some people accept their church their priests or straight from their own scriptures as the proof this does not satisfy atheists atheists do believe in recognisable authorities if they were as dogmatic as you claim they are they would be trying to prove every time they got up what they dispute is that churches priests scriptures etc represent true authorities and know the truth to demand scintific or rational proof of god s existence is to deny god s existence since neither science nor reason can in their very nature prove anything are you asking us to believe blindly you are trying to deny that part of us that makes us ask the question does god exist i e self awareness and reason if we do not use our ability to reason we become as ignorant as the other animals on this earth does god want us to be like that you are right that science and reason cannot prove anything however if we do not use them we can only then believe on faith alone and since we can only use faith why is one picture of god e g hinduism any less valid than another e g christianity mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis don lowe department of physics monash university melbourne victoria australia
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re ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu mayne ds scri fsu edu bill mayne writes in article apr athos rutgers edu miner kuhub cc ukans edu writes any former atheists converted by argument this is an excellent question and i ll be anxious to see if there are any such cases i doubt it in the medieval period esp th cent when aquinas flourished argument was a useful tool because everyone knew the rules today when you can t count on people knowing even the basics of logic or seeing through rhetoric a good argument is often indistinguishable from a poor one the last sentence is ironic since so many readers of soc religion christian seem to not be embarrassed by apologists such as josh mcdowell and c s lewis i haven t followed whatever discussion there may have been on these people but i feel that c s lewis is an excellent apologist and i see no reason for embarrassment if you think that errors and flawed arguments are a reason for dismissing a thinker you must dismiss nearly every thinker from descartes to kant any philosophy course will introduce you to their weaknesses the above also expresses a rather odd sense of history what makes you think the masses in aquinas day who were mostly illiterate knew any more about rhetoric and logic than most people today if writings from the period seem elevated consider that only the cream of the crop so to speak could read and write if everyone in the medieval period knew the rules it was a matter of uncritically accepting what they were told i said nothing about the masses however comparing the masses in our day and in aquinas day really is odd read ortega y gasset on this i m talking about the familiar experience of arguing all night and winning on logic and evidence only to discover your opponent to be unaware even intuitively of things like entailment let alone pragmatics i am assuming that both parties are college graduates or better myself i don t bother any more ken miner kuhub cc ukans edu nobody can explain everything to everybody opinions are my own g k chesterton
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re some questions from a new christian steven r hoskins bach udel edu wrote hi i am new to this newsgroup and also fairly new to christianity i realize i am very ignorant about much of the bible and quite possibly about what christians should hold as true this i am trying to rectify by reading the bible of course but it would be helpful to also read a good interpretation commentary on the bible or other relevant aspects of the christian faith one of my questions i would like to ask is can anyone recommend a good reading list of theological works intended for a lay person i d recommend mcdowell s evidence that demands a verdict books i think and manfred brauch s hard sayings of paul he also may have done hard sayings of jesus my focus would be for a new christian to struggle with his faith and be encouraged by the historical evidence especially one who comes from a background which emphasizes knowable faith scott dittman email sdittman wlu edu university registrar talk fax washington and lee university snail mail lexington virginia
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re when are two people married in god s eyes in article apr athos rutgers edu randerso acad sahs uth tmc edu robert anderson writes i would like to get your opinions on this when exactly does an engaged couple become married in god s eyes not if they are unwilling to go through a public marriage ceremony nor if they say they are willing but have not actually done so let s distinguish real logistical problems like being stranded on a desert island from excuses such as waiting for so and so s brother to come back from being in the army so he can be in the ceremony michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi
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re proof of resurection jsledd ssdc sas upenn edu james sledd writes finally there is no proof of the resurrection of christ except in our spirits communion with his and the father s it is a matter of faith belief without logical proof incedently one of the largest stumbling blocks for rational western man myself included i hope that this is taken in the spirit it was intended and not as a rejection of the resurrection s occurance i beleive but i wanted to point out the weakness of logical proofs terms are being used in a loaded way here logical proof is an extremely messy thing to apply to real life if you think otherwise try to construct a proof that yesterday happened obviously it did anyone old enough to be reading this was there for it and remembers that it happened but proof a proof starts with axioms and goes somewhere you need axioms to talk about logical proof you can say that you remember yesterday and that you take as axiom that anything you clearly remember happened i could counterclaim that you hallucinated the whole thing to talk about proofs of historical events you have to relax the terms a bit you can show evidences not proofs evidences of the resurrected jesus exist proofs do not i think christianity goes down in flames if the resurrection is ever disproved i also think that this will not happen as the evidence for the resurrection is quite good as these things go it is not entirely fair to claim that you can only take the resurrection on faith there are reasons to believe it that appeal to the mind too
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some questions from a new christian reply to pwhite empros com in article apr athos rutgers edu bach udel edu steven r hoskins writes i have another question i would like to ask i am not yet affiliated with any one congregation aside from matters of taste what criteria should one use in choosing a church i don t really know the difference between the various protestant denominations here in america people tend to think of choosing a church much like they think of choosing a car or a country club what i mean is that our culture is such that we tend towards satisfying our own wants rather than considering things with others in mind and not making prayer an initial and primary part of the decision process people tend to treat church as they would a club and when something is less than to their liking off they go to another one i think that scripture presents the idea that god takes a different perspective on the church choosing process it seems to me from cor that god doesn t subscribe to the idea of us choosing a church at all but that he places us in the body as he wants us so i think a better question is not how do i choose a church but how do i figure out where god is trying to place me if a person was instrumental in leading you to christ the church they go to is a logical first choice you have been born into the family of god people should hop around from church to church as often as they hop from natural family to family if you met the lord on your own so to speak there may not be an easily identifiable church to try for starters here you are more like an orphan prayerfully go and leave yourself on a few doorsteps and see if anyplace feels like home i wouldn t expect that god want to place you in a church where you have difficulty fitting in with the people but on the other hand there are no perfect churches if you have an attitude of looking for problems you will both find them and make them on the other hand if you have an attitude of love and committment you will spread that wherever you go in general i think that god will try to place you in a church that talks about the lord in the way that you have come to know him and is expanding on that base peter white disclaimer none of what is written necessarily reflects a view of my company phil i want to know christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in niv his sufferings becoming like him in his death
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re re does god love you in article apr athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org jayne kulikauskas writes i am uncomfortable with the tract in general because there seems to be an innappropriate emphasis on hell god deserves our love and worship because of who he is i do not like the idea of frightening people into accepting christ and yet jayne as we read the gospels and in particular the topics that jesus himself spoke on hell figures in a large of the time certainly more than heaven itself paul as we learn in i thess taught new believers and new churches eschatology and did not hesitate to teach hell and damnation rev chapter is very specific and cannot be allegorized i think the word throne is used times in rev and that the unbelieving come to receive the assignment of the severity of judgement for in john we read that they are already judged rom speaks that every mouth will be shut there is no recourse excuse or defense i see evangelism as combining a way of living that shows god s love with putting into words and explaining that love preaching the gospel without living the gospel is no better than being a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal yes i agree with you life is often like a pendulum where it swings to extremes before stopping at moderation i think we have seen the extreme of the hell fire brimstone preacher but also we have seen the other extreme where hell not talked about at all for fear of offending someones sensibilities i forget who founded the word of life ministries but i remember him telling a story he was in a small town hardware store and some how a man got to the point of telling him that he didn t believe in satan or hell he believed everybody was going to heaven it was at this point that the man was asked to pray to god that he would send his children to hell of course the man wouldn t do it but the point was made many people say they don t believe in hell but they are not willing to really place their faith in that it doesn t exist if this man had he would of prayed the prayer because hell didn t exist and there would have been no fear in having his prayer answered and yet they walk as if they believe they will never be sent there i d use a different illustration however i have to include myself in it when i watch say a basketball go bulls game and i see a blatant foul that isn t called oi vey what s with that ref that he didn t make that call it s unfair and just so in life righteousness demands payment as the surgeon takes knife in hand to cut the cancer away so god cuts off that which is still of the old creation we must preach the gospel in all its richness which includes the fact that if you reject the way and the truth and the life then broad is the way to distruction here s a question how many of you are christians because you are afraid of going to hell how many are responding to god s love i think i would fall in there somewhere actually it was both after all repentance isn t only a turning towards but also a turning away from no again if jesus used it in his ministry then i can surely see that we should do it also in love of course but in truth most assuredly i have thought about writing something on this topic but not now and here i would say that there are some good reasons for its existence and its eternality god is light yes he is love but his love has the boundary of holiness dignity of man either a man is a robot or he is a responsible creature if responsible then he is also accountable the awfulness of sin today we have a poor poor concept of sin god christ he was willing to die and go there himself to offer an avenue to the whosoever will rex
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major views of the trinity with frank s permission i have added some information here and in one case changed the order of his contributions in order to clarify the historical relationship of the views my comments are based primarily on william rusch s historical summary in the trinitarian controversy fortress i m going to save this as an faq clh major views of the trinity second century the writers of the nd cent are important because they set up much of the context for the later discussions justin martyr aristides athenagoras tatian and theophilus of antioch are known as the apologists their theology has often been described as logos theology based strongly on wording in john they took more or less a two phase approach through eternity the logos was with the father as his mind or thought this immanent word became expressed as god revealed himself in history ultimately in jesus thus jesus full distinction from the father only became visible in history though the logos had been present in god from eternity rusch regards this view is containing many of the emphases of the final orthodox position but in a form which is less sophisticated because it did not have the technical language to properly deal with the eternal plurality in the godhead irenaeus held views somewhat similar to the apologists however he was uncomfortable with the two stage approach he still viewed god as one personage with distinctions that did not become fully visible except through his process of self revelation the economy the distinctions are present in his essential nature irenaeus emphasized the holy spirit more than the apologists irenaeus views should probably be called economic trinitarianism though that term is normally used as below to refer to later developments third century clh dynamic monarchianism source theodotus adherents paul of samosota artemon socinus modern unitarians perception of god s essence the unity of god denotes both oneness of nature and oneness of person the son and the holy spirit therefore are consubstantial with the father s divine essence only as impersonal attributes the divine dunamis came upon the man jesus but he was not god in the strict sense of the word perception of god s subsistence the notion of a subsistent god is a palpable impossibility since his perfect unity is perfectly indivisible the diversity of god is apparent and not real since the christ event and the work of the holy spirit attest only to a dynamic operation within god not to a hypostatic union asignation of deity eternality father unique originator of the universe he is eternal self existent and without beginning or end son a virtuous but finite man in whose life god was dynamically present in a unique way christ definitely was not deity though his humanity was deified holy spirit an impersonal attribute of the godhead no deity or eternality is ascribed to the holy spirit criticism s elevates reason above the witness of biblical revelation concerning the trinity categorically denies the deity of christ and of the holy spirit thereby undermining the theological undergirding for the biblical doctrine of salvation in summary this probably best thought of as not being trinitarianism at all god is an undifferentiated one son and holy spirit are seen as simply names for the man jesus and the grace of god active in the church clh modalistic monarchianism source praxeas adherents noatus sabellius swedenborg scleiermacher united pentecostals jesus only perception of god s essence the unity of god is ultra simplex he is qualitatively characterized in his essence by one nature and person this essence may be designated interchangeably as father son and holy spirit they are different names for but identical with the unified simplex god the three names are the three modes by which god reveals himself perception of god s subsistence the concept of a subsistent god is erroneous and confounds the real issue of the phenomenon of god s modalistic manifesting of himself the paradox of a subsisting three in oneness is refuted by recognizing that god is not three persons but one person with three different names and corresponding roles following one another like parts of a drama asignation of deity eternality father fully god and fully eternal as the primal mode or manifestation of the only unique and unitary god son full deity eternality ascribed only in the sense of his being another mode of the one god and identical with his essence he is the same god manifested in temporal sequence specific to a role incarnation holy spirit eternal god only as the tile designates the phase in which the one god in temporal sequence manifested himself pursuant to the role of regeneration and sanctification criticism s depersonalizes the godhead to compensate for its trinitarian deficiencies this view propounds ideas that are clearly heretical its concept of successive manifestations of the godhead cannot account for such simultaneous appearances of the three persons as at christ s baptism rusch comments that evidence on these beliefs is sketchy there are actually two slightly different groups included noetus and his followers and sabellius noetus was apparently more extreme sabellius followed him and attempted to use some features of economic trinitarianism to create a more sophisticated view unfortunately information about sabellius comes from a century later and there seems to be some confusion between him and marcellus of ancyra clh i ve moved the following description to be with the other third century views it originally appeared near the end clh economic trinitarianism source hippolytus tertullian adherents various neo economic trinitarians perception of god s essence the godhead is characterized by triunity father son and holy spirit are the three manifestations of one identical indivisible substance the perfect unity and consubstantiality are especially comprehended in such manifest triadic deeds as creation and redemption perception of god s subsistence subsistence within the godhead is articulated by means of such terms as distinction and distribution dispelling effectively the notion of separateness or division asignation of deity eternality the equal deity of father son and holy spirit is clearly elucidated in observation of the simultaneous relational operational features of the godhead co eternality at times does not intelligibly surface in this ambiguous view but it seems to be a logical implication criticism s is more tentative and ambiguous in its treatment of the relational aspect of the trinity note that this is a development of the apologists and irenaeus as mentioned above as with them the threeness is visible primarily in the various ways that god revealed himself in history however they did say that this is a manifestation of a plurality that is somehow present in the godhead from the beginning tertullian talks of the father son and holy spirit as being three that are one in substance many people regard this view as being essentially orthodox but with less developed philosophical categories clh origen developing further an approach started by clement attempted to apply neo platonism to christian thought he set many of the terms of the coming battle in platonic fashion he sees the son as a mediator mediating between the absolute one of god and the plurality of creating beings the son is generated but he is eternally generated that is the relationship between father and son is eternal it cannot be said that there was once when he was not a phrase that will haunt the discussion for centuries having the son is intrinsic to his concept of god the father and son are described as separate hypostases though this may not have quite the meaning of separate subsistence that it had in some contexts the union is one of love and action but there is some reason to think that he may have used the term homoousios of the same substance the holy spirit is also an active personal substance originated by the father through the son origen s intent is trinitarian not tritheistic but he pushes things in the direction of separateness fourth century clh subordinationism often called arianism clh source arius major adherents modern jehovah s witnesses and several other lesser known cults perception of god s essence the inherent oneness of god s nature is properly identifiable with the father only the son and the holy spirit are discreet entities who do not share the divine essence perception of god s subsistence the unipersonal essence of god precludes the concept of divine subsistence with a godhead threeness in oneness is self contradictory and violates biblical principles of a monotheistic god asignation of deity eternality father the only one unbegotten god who is eternal and without beginning son a created being and therefore not eternal though he is to be venerated he is not of the divine essence holy spirit a nonpersonal noneternal emanation of the father he is viewed as an influence an expression of god deity is not ascribed to him criticism s it is at variance with abundant scriptural testimony respecting the deity of both christ and the holy spirit its hierarchial concept likewise asserts three essentially separate persons with regard to the father christ and the holy spirit this results in a totally confused soteriology note also that in most versions of this view the son is not fully human either he is supernatural and sinless that distinguishes this view from adoptionism clh orthodox trinitarianism source athanasius adherents basil gregory of nyssa gregory of nazianzus augustine thomas aquinas luther calvin contemporary orthodox christianity perception of god s essence god s being is perfectly unified and simplex of one essence this essence of deity is held in common by father son and holy spirit the three persons are consubstantial coinherent co equal and co eternal perception of god s subsistence the divine subsistence is said to occur in three modes of being or hypostases as such the godhead exists undivided in divided persons this view contemplates an identity in nature and cooperation in function without the denial of distinctions of persons in the godhead asignation of deity eternality in its final distillation this view unhesitatingly sets forth father son and holy spirit as co equal and co eternal in the godhead with regard to both the divine essence and function criticism s the only shortcoming has to do with the limitations inherent in human language and thought itself the impossibility of totally describing the ineffable mystery of three in oneness at least in the th cent there were several different approaches all of which fit the description here and all regarded as orthodox but which are somewhat different in detail nicea was originally held to respond to arius arius can be thought of as carrying origen s thought a bit too far to the point of making the son a separate entity in general the east tended to take an approach based on origen s and it was hard to get acceptance of nicea in the east its final acceptance was based on the work of athanasius with the cappadocians gregory of nyssa and gregory of nazianzus among others while starting with three they show that their unity in nature and and action is such that one must think of them as being a single god this allowed the council of constantinople in to get wide agreement on the idea of three hypostatese and one ousia clh adapted from charts of christian theology and doctrine by h wayne house frank if one wished to contend with him he could not answer him one time out of a thousand job
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love europe are any readers of s r c going to the love europe congress in germany this july michael davis cs mcd brunel ac uk
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re doing the work of god desiree bradley desiree bradley mindlink bc ca asked us whether we should think of the serbs as doing god s work in bosnia i ve refrained from posting in hope that someone who is more familiar with the ot than i would answer but at this point i feel i have to say something many things about this posting bother me i know of not the slightest suggestion in the nt that christians should use force to propagate the gospel and the idea that we should not be concerned about the death of moslems violates the heart of the gospel christ died to break down these distinctions in him there is neither jew nor greek there is neither slave nor free there is neither male nor female if moslems do not know him we may preach to them but we don t kill them furthermore the attack is between states not religions there are christians being attacked as well one of the towns under attack is one of the few places where christians and moslems are living together peacefully the precedents being suggested are from the ot there are in fact two different things being alluded to the first is from the entry into canaan for that to be a parallel we would need for god to have promised this land through a prophet and we would need the war to be a holy war there were tight constraints on behavior in those attacks any violations were likely to cause the israelites to be defeated rape would not have been tolerated while the accounts in joshua emphasize towns that were totally destroyed note that it was possible for a town to make peace with the israelites and that once that was done even when deception was involved they were expected to honor it in contrast there have been many violations of agreement in this incident i see no evidence that god has granted bosnia to the serbs as a promised land and if he had their behavior would have disqualified this from being a holy war the other ot parallel is from later when israel was defeated by assyria and babylonia the prophets saw this as a judgement on israel for her sins someone asks whether we shouldn t see this as a judgement on the bosnians for their sins this sounds like a replay of the old claim that we shouldn t have doctors or hospitals because illness is god s judgement yes even bad things may be used by god for good that includes actions of bad people but that doesn t justify them if you read the prophets you find them very clear that in attacking israel the assyrians and babylonians were acting as unintentional agents of god their intent was to attack god s people and they would be judged for it the fact that they were actually carrying out god s plan didn t excuse their action furthermore we shouldn t conclude from this that all attacks are judgements from god god explicitly interpreted that case through his prophets as far as i know he did not send any prophets to bosnia while i find it hard to see any good in the current fighting i am sure god will eventually make good come out of bad but that doesn t justify it and it won t save the people who are doing it from judgement i am particularly concerned about the implications of this issue because of current tensions between the west and moslem oriented nations what we do not need is for moslems to conclude that christians think it s ok to kill moslems the implications for the mid east and even relations with american moslems could be quite serious
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daily verse but someone will say you have faith i have deeds show me your faith without deeds and i will show you my faith by what i do james
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maybe hi christian friends my name is joel i have a sister who s th birthday is tomorrow she used to be on fire for the lord but somehow for some reason she became cold she don t want to associate anymore with her old christian friends so i thought maybe some of you could help her out again by sending her a postcard or card with a little message of encouragement hand written is okay her address is hobart ave san jose ca thank you and god bless ps jesus christ is lord i have some qualms about postings like this you might want to engage in a bit more conversation with joel before deluging someone who doesn t expect it with cards clh
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re hell black sabbath in article apr geneva rutgers edu salaris niblick ecn purdue edu rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrabbits writes i like those lyrics since whenever i am approached by judgemental pharisitical evangelical fundamentalists who throw the bible at me because i have long hair wear a black leather jacket and listen to black sabbath i have something to throw back it just goes to show that there are more important evils in the world to battle than rock lyrics it just goes to show that not all evangelical fundamentalists are pharisitical i wear a black leather jacket like classic rock but no longer have the long locks i once had however i too rely upon the bible as a basis for christian ethics a fundamentalistic evangelical rex
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re help i m a commited christian that is battling with a problem i know that romans talks about how we are saved by our faith not our deeds yet hebrews and james say that faith without deeds is useless saying you fools do you still think that just believing is enough stuff deleted now i am of the opinion that you a saved through faith alone not what you do as taught in romans but how can i square up in my mind the teachings of james in conjunction with the lukewarm christian being spat out can anyone help me this really bothers me will there has been a lot of discussion going on about this over in s r c b s i will make the case here though and try to help you out for by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of god not of works lest any man should boast ephesians yes it is by god s grace and our faith that we are saved we are not saved by what we do however if ye love me keep my commandments john keeping christ s commandments is a work per se and a demonstration of our love for him also he spake also this parable a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came and sought fruit thereon and found none then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard behold these three years i come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none cut it down why cumbereth it the ground and he answering said unto him lord let it alone this year also till i shall dig about it and dung it and if it bear fruit well and if not then after that thou shalt cut it down luke again ye have not chosen me but i have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain that whatsoever ye shall ask of the father in my name he may give it you john it is clear from these verses that we are called to bring forth fruit what is that fruit well paul speaks of the fruit of the spirit being love joy peace patience etc all of these are things that are manifest in the actions that we carry out if a person claims to believe in jesus christ but does not do the things christ commanded i dare say that they really don t have any faith asking which is more important faith or works is like asking which blade on a pair of scissors is most important or like asking which leg of your pants is more important good works should come out of and be a result of our faith to have faith true faith in christ requires you to do what he commands the parable above speaks allegorically of a person who does bear no fruit christs commands are actions and if we don t do those actions and produce fruit then we shall be uprooted just like the tree it is a dead and useless faith which has no action behind it actions prove our faith and show the genuineness of it i can sit and talk for days about the fact that i have so much faith in my ability to jump off a building and not hit the ground in other words i can sit and tell you all day long that i have faith in my ability to fly i really don t have that faith though unless i am willing to jump off the roof and take the test words and talk mean nothing i could go on and give more scriptures and if people want me to i will but this should be sufficient hope it helped jon sig file broken please try later
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re being right about messiahs in article geneva rutgers edu desiree bradley mindlink bc ca desiree bradley writes i must have missed the postings about waco david koresh and the second coming how does one tell if a second coming is the real thing unless the person claiming to be it is obviously insane first by his fruits the messiah comes to build the kingdom of heaven on the earth he also comes to first reveal the root cause of original sin fallen nature and then provide a means to cut the connection to that original sin he also wants to create world peace based on godism the messiah s teachings will build on the foundation of the bible but provide profound new insights into the nature of god the fall of man the purpose of creation and god s providence of restoration it will also provide a foundation for the unity of all the world s religions many christians expect jesus to come on literal clouds so they may miss him when he returns just as the jewish people missed jesus years ago they are still waiting for his first coming the jewish people of that age expected elijah to come first jesus said that john the baptist was elijah but john the baptist denied that he was elijah how did this reflect on jesus later in prison john even questioned who jesus was is he the one who is to come or do we look for another see book of matthew i m not saying that david koresh is the second coming of christ how could somebody who breaks his word be the second coming koresh did promise that he would come out of his compound if only he was allowed to give a radio broadcast he didn t still it seems to me that he did fool some people david koresh didn t even come close the problem is that people like this make it difficult for people to believe and trust in the real messiah when he does show up and from my meagre knowledge of the bible it seems that christians have been hard on the jews of christ s day for being cautious about accepting somebody that their religious authorities didn t accept as the messiah so i was surprised that nobody had discussed the difficulty of wanting to be early to recognize the second coming while at the same time not wanting to be credulously believing just anybody who claims to be god very good point and perhaps the most important point of all for christians how to recognize the second coming the messiah should not claim to be god what sets a messiah apart is that he is born without original sin he is not born perfect but achieves perfection after a period of growth adam and eve were born sinless but they fell and this tragedy meant that it would take god thousands of years to create the kingdom of heaven on the earth as god originally intended god s restoration providence is still not complete the messiah is the true son of god one with god god s representative on the earth but not god himself there is only one god mark and then if any one says to you look here is the christ or look there he is do not believe it mark and then they will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory my understanding of jesus answer is that unlike his first coming which was veiled the second coming will be quite unmistakeable by the way from koresh s public statement it s not so clear to me that he is claiming to be christ who else in this world is claiming to be the messiah maybe he s already here mike
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witches and wiccan your opinion i am a student at uw eau claire i am doing a paper an witches and wanted to get your point of view i will not use you name unless you specifically tell me to do so please answer this question as a christian are you offended by witches and wiccan do you feel that tehy are pagan in the evil sense of the word you time and cooperation is appreciated thanks j this survey is being conducted in partial fulfillment of the course requirements for engl taught by karen welch at the university of wisconsin eau claire this course is in compliance with the course certification requirements of the university institutional review board for the protection of human subjects but is it in compliance with any reasonable method for choosing samples clh
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re assurance of hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu lfoard hopper virginia edu lawrence c foard writes and many others mailed me here is a reply to one of the letters seems to me that atheist do not like the doctrine of hell there s nothing like a preacher to put fear into an ignorant man if god hadn t created hell in the first place there d be no no need to die and save us isn t it also a bit paradoxical to say god died when in fact no such thing is remotely possible can the infinite die your using th century concepts to interprete st century writers of course in your termonology god could not cease to exist however that is not what death ever means in the scriptures if you will study the word you will see that it signifies separation death is separation not ceastation this is the reason for the agony of the cross for the first time in eternity one member of the godhead was separated from the other two i once met a young lady that was as beautiful as any model that ever lived she was as personable as any saint ever imagined she was to become my girlfriend for several years however having been drafted we were separated by distance to me that was a form of death later she decided that she couldn t wait for me to come home and bid me adue that to me was death it was separation from that which had made me whole death is separation and eternal death is eternal separation from his fellowship not because he chose to send you into outer darkness but because you chose to go there did you know that jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven thank you for this info what respect i had for the man now has been diminished tenfold i promise never again to say how wise or loving this man was when i rebelled against my earthly father he spanked me i found no wisdom in that until i had grown older and especially until i had my own children he was trying to guide me away from hurt that would enter my life if i continued on my suicidal course he did it in love though i interpreted it as harsh and unloving if god warns of impending danger that is love if choose to let us do as we please and then at the end tell us the rules that would be harsh you have a conscience no matter how calused or fallen it is that witnesses to you that a thing is wrong and that there is cause for fear being jesus was allegedly god i doubt he could honestly feel the pinpricks man dealt him this may give light to the error of your understanding one must have correct knowledge in order to have correct faith faith and knowledge are inseparable jesus most certainly felt the pinpricks of life as the scripture say heb for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but one who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin the kenosis passage of phil states that he gave up his godhead attributes when he took upon himself humanity it has been a favorite meditation of mine to think about this it was to be my phd thesis the consciousness of christ i have talked at length with a great many people about this interesting study including clh it is my conclussion that as jesus the nd member of the trinity actually suffered as we do he became part of the human race and experienced it as we do he grew in knowledge he chose not to grasp his omniscience but chose to be taught it is my understanding that he was led of the spirit to such an extent that sometimes it is hard to distinquish between jesus the man and jesus as god but in jn where the adulterous women was thrown before him the tenses are quite clear in that the whole situation took him by surprise that is he was not aware that this event was to take place in time he was living sequential history as you or i maybe some other time we can discuss this but it is a very lengthy discussion and one that causes the curcuit breakers of the brain to pop more often than not thanks again for the info just so you know some friends and i are starting a freethinkers organization and i m going to use some of the info you provided for an organization intro duction i was once a member of that club the free thinker is a glorious ideal by contrast of course you believe that the believer is the unforunate repository of everything that is dogmatic inhibited reactionary and repressive i find such a stance to be as amusing as it is absurd if the liberal humanist wishes to criticize a christian or a buddhist or a marxist that is his right but what he must not pretend is that he was led to this solely by his rational doubt when in fact he was led to it by his faith he must acknowledge that while it is rational doubt for him as a free thinker to criticize the christian it might equally be a rational doubt for the christian to criticize him as a humanist if there is no faith there can be no dout there is no faith which cannot choose to cast doubt on some other faith pascal pointed out that sceptical arguments allow the positive to be positive few speak dubiously of scepticism the fact that skeptics are not skeptical about skepticism is further evidence that to doubt anything we must believe in something else the person who is skeptical toward one faith or even most faiths will be the devoted adherent of another in fact it is a measure of his poverty both that he is unaware of it and that he can define himself only in negative terms hence the term a theist some people claim otherwise and argue vociferously for complete skepticism in my campus ministry i ran across this more times than i care to remember however they disproved their own argument with every thought every word every point of logic that they used every moment of shared communication speaks against their total skepticism their very insistence of trying to make sense is eloquent testimony to assumptions that are powerful though silent that is to say that complete skepticism is impossible and limited skepticism is arbitrary next time you re in a room of skeptics yell out look your fly is undone each person chooses what he is skeptical about and what he believes without skepticism to stress this is to belabor the obvious but it underlines the point that no one can know exhaustively how he knows what he knows pure objectivism is a myth and complete skepticism an impossiblity the answer to this impasse lies in a rd way of knowing one which is based on presuppositions but if knowledge proceeds on what must be presupposed before it is proved the cover is blown on the pretentions of critical doubt and critical doubt depends on the idea that human knowledge is totally objective and neutral in other words another myth presuppositions my friend it is impossible to doubt anything unless there is something we do not doubt our own assumptions presuppostions even these can be criticezed only upon the basis of other assumptions presuppostitons are our silent partners in thought but their silence must not be mistaken for absence i tell you what if god condemns me for being honest he is unworthy of my worship better to burn in hell than to serve a tyrant in heaven of course that is hardly an original statement milton coined it but it had been in use for millenia it was even used in the first highlander movie but again your presuption is based on a faulty knowledge of the character of god you are operating off of a presuppositional premise of humanistic theology not what he has revealed of himself through history through his prophets through his word and lastly but most of all thru his son if you are to reject god s annointed savior then reject him from a correct understanding of himself rex
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr geneva rutgers edu phs d vaxc cc monash edu au writes but what if the geologists are wrong and these people are warning of a non existent danger analogies can only push an argument so far on both sides both melinda s and yours assume the premises used to set up your respective analogies are true and thus the correct conclusion will arise the important point to note is the different directions both sides come from christians believe they know the truth and thus believe they have the right and duty to tell the truth to all christians can get offended if others do not believe what is self evidently to them the truth non christians do not believe this is the truth and get offended at them because they christians claim to know the truth the analogy does not depend on the premisses being true because the question under discussion is not truth but arrogance a similar analogy might be a medical doctor who believes that a blood transfusion is necessary to save the life of a child whose parents are jehovah s witnesses and so have conscientious objections to blood transfusion the doctor s efforts to persuade them to agree to a blood transfusion could be perceived to be arrogant in precisely the same way as christians could be perceived to be arrogant the truth or otherwise of the belief that a blood transfusion is necessary to save the life of the child is irrelevant here what matters is that the doctor believes it to be true and could be seen to be trying to foce his beliefs on the parents and this could well be perceived as arrogance steve hayes department of missiology editorial department univ of south africa p o box pretoria south africa internet hayesstw risc unisa ac za fidonet steve hayes p f n z fidonet org faq missiology is the study of christian mission and is part of the faculty of theology at unisa
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re src dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu darius lecointe writes i find it interesting that cls never answered any of the questions posed then he goes on the make statements which make me shudder he has established a two tiered god one set of rules for the jews his people and another set for the saved gentiles his people why would god discriminate does the jew who accepts jesus now have to live under the gentile rules god has one set of rules for all his people paul was never against the law in fact he says repeatedly that faith establishes rather that annuls the law paul s point is germane to both jews and greeks the law can never be used as an instrument of salvation and please do not combine the ceremonial and moral laws in one in matt christ plainly says what he came to do and you say he was only saying that for the jews s benefit your christ must be a politician speaking from both sides of his mouth as paul said i have not so learned christ forget all the theology just do what jesus says your excuses will not hold up in a court of law on earth far less in god s judgement hall pardon me for being a little confused but at the beginning of your second paragraph you say god has one set of rules for all his people yet at the end of the same paragraph you declare please do not combine the ceremonial and moral laws in one not only do i not understand where in the bible you find the declaration that there are laws ceremonial and moral but i am also unclear on whether you think it is bad to have sets of laws in the first place if it s bad to have sets of laws how can there be a ceremonial law that is different from the moral law and vice versa i would also be interested in your comments on the passage in i cor where paul teaches different rules for covering you head while praying depending on whether you are a man or a woman do you think the apostles can prescribe different sets of rules for men and women if so then why not for jews and gentiles also why did paul who was so opposed to circumcising gentiles voluntarily circumcise timothy mark
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re sabbath admissions of in article apr geneva rutgers edu clh writes re are you christian or pauline both sure why not but are you using paul to correct the words of jesus there is no doubt in my mind about what is sin and what is not at least not in this case jesus did not deal explicitly with the question of whether the law was binding on gentiles so anyone who dissolves even one of the smallest commands and teaches others the same way will be known as the lowest in the kingdom of the skies whereas anyone who keeps the commands and teaches them too will be known as someone great in the kingdom of the skies mat gaus are you an anyone or are you a no one why not assume that since jesus didn t say that his words apply only to jews that they apply to all human beings irregardless of race or sex why not assume that even though jesus did not mention your name still jesus was talking directly to you that s why i have to cite evidence such as the way jesus dealt with the centurion as to general jewish views on this i am dependent largely on studies of pauline theology one by h j schoeps and one whose author i can t come up with at the moment both authors are jews also various christian and non christian jews have discussed the issue here and in other newsgroups mat is clear that the law is still valid it does not say that it applies to gentiles does it say that it applies to you are you anyone or no one and yes i say that the specific requirement for worship on the sabbath in the ten commandments is a ceremonial detail when you re looking at the obligations of gentiles ex jps remember the sabbath day and keep it holy six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a sabbath of the lord your god you shall not do any work you your son or daughter your male or female slave or your cattle or the stranger who is within your settlements for in six days the lord made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them and he rested on the seventh day therefore the lord blessed the sabbath day and hollowed it note there is no specific requirement for worship here however i for one would not be so bold as to call these verses a ceremonial detail similarly circumcision don t many christians still practice circumcision i m not sure quite what else i can say on this subject again it s unfortunate the jesus didn t answer the question directly it s unfortunate that jesus didn t use your name directly or maybe jesus did are you somebody or nobody however we do know what the st cent jewish approach was how jesus dealt with at least one gentile and how jesus disciples dealt with the issue when it became more acute i m referring to acts more than paul given that these are all in agreement i don t see that there s a big problem if you don t see a problem then perhaps there is none as paul closes romans gaus in short pursue the ends of peace and of building each other up don t let dietary considerations undo the work of god everything may be clean but it s evil for the person who eats it in an offensive spirit better not to eat the meat or drink the wine or whatever else your brother is offended by as for the faith that you have keep that between yourself and god the person is in luck who doesn t condemn himself for what he samples on the other hand the person with doubts about something who eats it anyway is guilty because he isn t acting on his faith and any failure to act on faith is a sin as far as i know christians except specific jewish christian groups and maybe some of the sabbatarians both of which are very small groups do not practice circumcision on religious grounds in some countries it has been done for supposed health reasons but i ve not heard it argued that it is being done because of the biblical commandment clh
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr geneva rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes hold it i said that all of scripture is true however discerning exactly what jesus paul and company were trying to say is not always so easy i don t believe that paul was trying to say that all women should behave that way rather he was trying to say that under the circumstances at the time the women he was speaking to would best avoid volubility and cover their heads this has to do with maintaining a proper witness toward others remember that any number of relativistic statements can be derived from absolutes for instance it is absolutely right for christians to strive for peace however this does not rule out trying to maintain world peace by resorting to violence on occasion yes my opinion i agree that there is truth in scripture there are principles to be learned from it claiming that that truth is absolute though seems to imply a literal reading of the bible if it were absolute truth constant across time culture etc then no interpretation would be necessary i strongly disagree that absolute truth would not require interpretation that s because truth may be absolute but it may not be obvious like so many things the truth is always subject to misinterpretation i strongly suspect that we are reaching an impasse here which is why i deign from commenting much further sure the bible preaches absolute truths however exactly what those truths are is sometimes a matter of confusion as i said the bible does preach absolute truths sometimes those fundamental principles are crystal clear at least to evangelicals this is where the arrogance comes in to play since these principles are crystal clear to evangelicals maybe the rest of us should just take their word for it maybe it isn t at all crystal clear to me that their fundamental principles are either fundamental or principles now hold it i never said that christians cannot be arrogant indeed as many other christians on src have stressed before this is a trap that christians must always be wary about however this does not mean that if you believe in the absolutes established by the bible you are necessarily being arrogant a christian can believe that the word of god is absolute but he or she should not expect this to be immediately evident to everyone so i think that your position is the bible is absolute truth but as we are prone to error in our interpretation we cannot reliably determine if we have figured out what that truth is did i get that right not quite you say that according to my stance we cannot reliably determine what is true that is not what i said i say that as fallible human beings we cannot discern the truth with certainty the distinction is subtle yet important when a scientist performs an experiment he can claim that his results are reliable without claiming that absolutely no mistake whatsoever could have been made in other words he can admit that he could be mistaken without sacrificing his convictions nobody can establish what absolute truth is with certainty throughout the centuries philosophers have argued about what we can know with complete certainty and what we cannot descartes made a step in the right direction when he uttered cogito ergo sum yet we have not advanced much beyond that do you believe that other people aside from you exist do you believe that the computer terminal you are using exists if so can you be absolutely certain about that are you sure it is not some grand illusion of course you have no such assurance this does not mean however that for all practical purposes you can be certain that they exist so it is with christianity the most mature christians i know have deep convictions about absolute morality yet they acknowledge that there is a non zero probability that they are wrong this does not however mean that they should or do abandon these absolutes what s the point of spending all this time claiming and defending absolute truth when we can never know what those truths are and we can never or at least shouldn t act upon them what practical difference can this make as i said we can never be absolutely certain that we are correct this does not mean that we cannot be certain enough in light of the evidence to render all doubts unreasonable virgilio dean velasco jr department of electrical eng g and applied physics cwru graduate student roboticist in training and q wannabee bullwinkle that man s intimidating a referee my boss is a not very well he doesn t look like one at all jewish carpenter
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re questioning authority despite my trendy liberal feminist tendencies and the fact that i basically agree with what you are saying i will rebut dr nancy s sweetie writes chris mussack writes for all those people who insist i question authority why authorities sometimes tell people to do evil things people who just follow orders have tortured and killed others in very large numbers and protest their innocence afterwards the basic question here is how do i know what i am supposed to do this is true in every situation that comes up some people do not think about it at all and merely follow their impulses i claim that is just as dangerous as following authority i could site sexually transmitted diseases drug abuse all manner of criminal activity the savings and loan scandal car accidents eggs thrown at my house all are examples of people not following authority i could easily argue that in the evil examples you gave the problem was a leader not following his authority and doing what he wanted of course where is the top of the chain therein lies our search when your authority starts telling you to do things you should ask questions except for situations of pressing need i said shut the hatch because the submarine is filling with water any reasonable authority should be able to give at least some justification that you can understand i don t think it s as simple as you are claiming pressing need is ambiguous should i recycle or not realize that i have four kids who despite being very precocious of course are very tiring with their constant lack of understanding the tremendous knowledge i wish to impart to them just be sure to listen when authority answers ahh an ironic ending the irony i was implying in my initial pithy retort to the bumper sticker cliche question authority was that i was questioning the authority of the person telling me to question authority it seems there is a certain segment of society that finds meaning only in being different only in rebelling forsaking everything for the sake of freedom i question their integrity and fortitude there is another freedom that comes from doing a task correctly different people are at different levels of development in different areas part of the challenge of life is to find the right authorities to follow we can t know everything about everything often when learning a new skill or subject i will follow the teacher perhaps blindly only when i have learned enough to ask appropriate questions should i question him only when i have developed my skills enough should i challenge him once again how do i know when i get to those stages if you have to be told to question authority perhaps you shouldn t chris mussack a good comedian should never have to explain his jokes
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re the arrogance of christians i ve just read carol s response and i just had to get into this i ve got some verses which are not subject to interpretation because they say what they say they are peter timothy and galatians also based on the fact that jesus is the word incarnate and he judges people if they follow him see acts and john and that those who reject jesus teachings are judged by the very words he spoke see john then jesus words are true and do not need interpretation nor would it be just of god to judge based on his word if it had to be interpreted joe fisher
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re cell church discussion group in article apr geneva rutgers edu reid cs uiuc edu jon reid writes i am beginning an e mail discussion group about cell churches if you are please define cell church i missed it somewhere in the past when this was brought up before joe fisher
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re religious wars in article apr geneva rutgers edu fraseraj dcs glasgow ac uk andrew j fraser writes well you know that religion has caused more wars than anything else it bothers me that i cannot seem to find a satisfactory response to this after all if our religion is all about peace and love why have there been so many religious wars of course if this question was asked in a group dealing with economics the answer would be that the cause of war was economic my observations over the past years and not withstanding a little history reading beside is that while religious differences do play a part in many of the conflicts so does unfortunately race economics and any other items that identify one group of men as being different from another if we want to couch the cause of conflict in christian terms i would put it while christ died for our sins we are yet sinners while some individuals assume christlike natures most of us do not even come close i realize that in many ways this is a trite answer but i guess that it is my way of rationalizing man s constant or so it seems conflict jerry kemp somtime consultant internet kempja rcwusr bp com kemp ja tnd dnet bp com
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re prayers and advice requested on family problem julie it is a really trying situation that you have described my brother was living with someone like that and things were almost as bad although he left after a considerably shorter amount of time due to other problems with the relationship anyway the best thing to do would be to get everyone in the same room together optimally in a room with nothing breakable lock the door behind you throw the key out underneath the door just as far as the longest hand can reach you would like to get out after the conclusion i would imagine and hash things out more than likely there will be screaming crying and possibly hitting unless of course someone decided to bring some rope to tie people down some of the best strategies in keeping things calmer would include have each individual own their own statements ie i feel that this relationship is hurting everyone involved because or i really don t understand where you re coming from reinforce statements by paraphrasing etc ie so you think that we did this because of well let me just say that the reason for this was don t accuse each other it was your fault that happened find a common ground about something lampshades really are decorational and functional at the same time guaranteed in a situation like this there is going to be some gunnysacking re hashing topics which were assumed resolved but were truly not and someone feels someone else is to blame however this should be kept to a minimum and simply ask for forgiveness or apologize about each situation without holding a smoldering grudge the relationship really can work it s just a matter of keeping things smooth and even it s sort of like making a peace treaty between warring factions you can t give one side everything there must be a compromise breaks can be taken but communication between everyone involved must continue if the relationships here are to survive joe fisher
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re about eliz c prophet in article apr geneva rutgers edu jek cu nih gov writes rob butera asks about a book called the lost years of jesus by elizabeth clare prophet marriage if i remember aright base almost all their teachings on messages they have allegedly received by telepathy from tibet i should be surprised if the book you mention has any scholarly basis actually there was very little to the book first of all looking at the titles of her other books i would personally consider her to be engaged in a bizarre form of christian like mysticism heavily influenced by eastern philosphies great titles like the astrology of the horsemen however other than the chapter one into there s nothing original biased or even new this book it is basically a collection of previously published works by those who claim that there exist buddhist and hindu stories that christ visited india and china he was known as issa during the period from late teens to age conclusion the book actually lets you come to your own view by presenting a summary of various published works and letters all of which you could verify independently it includes refutations to such works as well therefore even if you think she is theologically warped this book is a nice reference summary for the interested rob butera ece grad student only sick music makes money today rice university houston tx nietzsche
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart first i thank collectively all people who have given good answers to my questions in my follow up to jason smith s posting i will address some issues that have caused misunderstanding jason smith jasons atlastele com wrote in article apr athos rutgers edu kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes i also concede that i was doubly remiss as i asserted no reasonable alternative exists an entirely subjective statement on my part and one that could be invalidated given time and further discovery by the scientist i also understand that a proving a theory does not necessarily specify that this is how it happened but proposes a likely description of the phenomena in question am i mistaken with this understanding yes to some degree there was an excellent discussion in sci skeptic on the nature of scientific work two weeks ago i hope it did not escape your notice the correct word is likely there is no way to be sure our models and theories are absolutely correct theories are backed up by evidence but not proved no theory can be true in a mathematical sense however theories are not mere descriptions or rationalisations of phenomena it is extremely important to test whether theories can predict something new or not yet observed all successful theories science has come up with have passed this test including the big bang theory of cosmic evolution the theory of natural selection etc it does not mean they must be correct but they are not mere best fits for the data but if you claim that there must be an answer to how did the universe our spacetime emerge from nothing science has some good candidates for an answer all of which require something we christians readily admit to faith well yes if you want to believe in them this is not what science requires take a good look at the theory and the evidence see if the theory has made any successful predictions and use your reason disbelievers are not punished the fact that there are several candidates belies that none are conclusive with out conclusive evidence we are left with faith this is what puzzles me why do we need to have faith in anything my fellow atheists would call me a weak atheist someone who is unable to believe ie fails to entertain any belief in god yes i know that one can t believe without god s help luther makes this quite clear in his letter to erasmus i m afraid this does not change my situation a couple of paragraphs deleted summary we ask why does the universe exist i think this question should actually be split into two parts namely why is there existence why anything exists and how did the universe emerge from nothing deletions the question why anything exists can be countered by demanding answer to a question why there is nothing in nothingness or in non existence actually both questions turn out to be devoid of meaning things that exist do and things that don t exist don t exist tautology at its best carefully examine the original question and then the counter question the first asks why while the second is a request for definition no it is not although it does look like one this is a true dichotomy either something exists or nothing exists if nothing exists nobody would ask why if something exists it is possible to ask why but actually no existing being could give an answer imagine for a moment that the nobodies in non existence could also ask why nothing exists this is equivalent to my counter question why nothing exists in nothingness now why anything exists is equivalent to why something exists in somethingness this is what i meant with my tautology my apologies for the poor wording in my previous post i might add the worldview of things that exist do and things that don t don t is as grounded in the realm of the non falsifiable as does the theist s belief in god it is based on the assumption that there is not a reason for being something as ultimately un supportable as the position of there being a reason its very foundation exists in the same soil as that of one who claims there is a reason i do indeed think there probably is no reason for being or existence in general for reasons i stated above however they will still leave open the question why this and not that and this is where theistic explanations come in science cannot give reasons for any particular human being s existence we come to this either i am therefore i am or i am for a reason this is a deep philosophical question is determinism true or not also is god deterministic or not i tend to think this question has no meaning in his case if i am for a reason i ve yet failed to see what it would be from our perspective it looks like i exist for truly random reasons i just rolled two dice why did i get and how can i believe there is any better reason for my existence if the former is a satisfactory answer then you are done for you are satisfied and need not a doctor if the latter your search is just beginning yes i am satisfied with this reason until i find something better my years of christianity were of no help in this respect i have to admit but i am patient another answer is that god is the source of all existence this sounds much better but i am tempted to ask does god himself exist then if god is the source of his own existence it can only mean that he has in terms of human time always existed but this is not the same as the source of all existence this does not preclude his existence it only seeks to identify his qualities implying he exists to have qualities btw no it doesn t but i think an existing god cannot know why he exists for an answer to this question is not knowable of course this should not be any obstacle to belief in his existence i also have discovered science is an inadequate tool to answer why it appears that m pihko agrees as we shall see but because a tool is inadequate to answer a question does not preclude the question asserting that why is an invalid question does not provide an answer it is impossible to know unknowable things however the question why do i exist in particular is not an invalid question this is not what i said but from our perspective it is impossible to tell and i can t just believe in any given explanation instead of another especially since i found i was deluding myself my apologies i was using why as why did this come to be why did pre existence become existence why did pre spacetime become spacetime i think pre existence is an oxymoron there is no time outside of this spacetime except in some other universe and from that perspective our universe never was it exists only for those who are inside it but we come to the admission that science fails to answer why because it can t be answered in the realm of modern science does that make the question invalid no the validity of the question has to be discussed separately i think philosophy is of great help here what can be known and what is not knowable m pihko does present a good point though we may need to ask what do i as an individual christian base my faith on will it be shaken by the production of evidence that shatters our sacred cows or will we seek to understand if a new discovery truly disagrees with what god said and continues to say in his word this is a very good question in trying to answer this and numerous other questions that bothered me i finally found nothing to base my faith on i think it would be honest if we all asked ourselves why do i believe or why i don t believe petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
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re branch davidians info in article mar athos rutgers edu clitton opie bgsu edu writes from clitton opie bgsu edu subject branch davidians info date mar gmt i am looking for any information on the branch davidians send info to chad litton acs dept bgsu bowling green oh or e mail to clitton andy bgsu edu thanks in advance i don t claim to be an expert on the branch davidians but i might know more than most the branch davidian group led by koresh is actually one of two off shoots of a group known as the shephard s rod the shephard s rod now defunct as far as i know broke off from the sda church in the s the shephard s rod broke away from the sda church because they felt that the sda church was becoming weak and falling into apostacy they felt that they were the remnant spoken about in revelation about the koresh group koresh gained control of it in or once in control he made himself the center of it he proclaimed himself as christ koresh himself came from an sda background he was excommunicated as a young adult by the local congregation for trying to exert too much control over the youth in the church after this he joined the branch davidians they were are a survivalist cult this is why they had the stockpile of weapons food a bomb shelter etc they had no intent of raiding the us government or anything they were preparing for armaggedon and were putting themselves in a self defense position in my opinion if the atf and the fbi had left well enough alone we wouldn t have the blood of children crying out from the ashes in waco if you want to know about the shephard s rod you might want to visit the local sda church and talk to some of the older people they could give you some insight into where koresh got his theology tammy
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re assurance of hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu lfoard hopper virginia edu lawrence c foard writes a god who must motivate through fear is not a god worthy of worship if the god jesus spoke of did indeed exist he would not need hell to the reason for the existence of hell is justice fear is only an effect of the reality of hell boundary the catechist no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo vulgata latina
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re atheists and hell db n andrew cmu edu d andrew byler writes mark schnitzius writes literal interpreters of the bible will have a problem with this view since the bible talks about the fires of hell and such this is something i ve always found confusing if all your nerve endings die with your physical body why would flame hurt you how can one wail and gnash teeth with no lungs and no teeth one can feel physical pain by having a body which if you know the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is what people will have after the great judgement we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come nicene constantinopolitan creed you will have both body and soul in hell eventually now this is getting interesting i was raised roman catholic before becoming an atheist so i have stated this creed you quote nearly every sunday until i was about for some reason i always took the resurrection in this statement to mean the resurrection of the soul but i guess resurrection does strictly mean the raising of the physical body i have some questions on this point i always thought that christians believe the descent into hell was pretty much immediate and that there are people burning in hell right now you seem to be implying that it will not occur until after the great judgement which i read as meaning the proverbial judgment day i was always a little confused on this point even when i was with the church maybe someone can clear it up for me where will my soul which by the way i don t believe in exist until that time will the new body i will have be created out of the same atoms that my body now is made of or will it be built from scratch my physical body now is susceptible to aging etc so i guess my new body will have to be radically different in order to be immortal so it can be tortured for all eternity since i will have a physical body i assume it will need a physical place to exist in where is this hell in the center of the earth do you think we could find it if we dig mark schnitzius schnitzi eola cs ucf edu univ of central florida there is not complete agreement on the details of the afterlife i think the most common view is that final disposition does not occur until a final judgement which is still in the future in the meantime some believe that people sleep until the final resurrection or because god is above time pass directly from death to the future time when the resurrection occurs while others believe that souls have a disembodied pre resurrection existence until then there are probably other alternatives that i m omitting the new body is generally conceived of being implemented in a different technology than the current one one which is not mortal paul talks about the mortal being raised to immortality and jesus resurrected body which is the first example clearly was not subject to the same kind of limitations as ours it is assumed that there are enough similarities that people will recognize each other but i don t think most people claim to know the details i don t think i d say it s the same atoms i d assume there would be some analog of a physical place but i wouldn t expect to find it under the earth or up in the sky i d suspect that it s in another dimension outside this physical world or whatever but again we have little in the way of details clh
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re wbt was re phone number of wycliffe translators uk poram mlsma att att com wrote having met peter kingston of wbt some years back he struck me as an exemplery and dedicated christian whose main concern was with translation of the word of god and the welfare of the people group he was serving wbt literature is concerned mainly with providing scripture in minority languages yes in fact peter is now at wycliffe hq in the u k and is a member of my church i would fully endorse the above peter is a very godly man with a passion for serving christ on one occasion he specifically addressed the issue of cultural interference in a sermon presumably from his experience of allegations directed at wycliffe perhaps i could find the tape michael davis cs mcd brunel ac uk
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re hell black sabbath hey i may be wrong but wasn t jeff fenholt part of black sabbath he s a major brother in christ now he totally changed his life around and he and his wife go on tours singing witnessing and spreading the gospel for christ i may be wrong about black sabbath but i know he was in a similar band if it wasn t that particular group how great is th love the father has lavished on us that we should be called children of god and that is what we are john grace and peace to all i ll see you all someday jenny jprzybyl scott skidmore edu
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re hearing sinners in article apr geneva rutgers edu jek cu nih gov writes on the question does god hear the prayers of sinners we need to distinguish if we say that he never hears the prayers of any who have sinned we make pointless all prayers by anyone born less than centuries ago but if we consider the prayers of the impenitent sinner of someone who says lord i want you to do this for me but don t expect me to change my way of life that is a different matter i have no doubt that god hears everybody s prayers however he does things his way i e things will happen only if it is his will now if the question really is does god grant everybody s wishes then you ll get a brutal shot of reality similar to when you didn t get that toy you wanted for christmas you just cannot expect to get everything you want in this world mark ashley disclaimer my opinions not harris marka gcx ssd csd harris com the lost los angelino
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re when are two people married in god s eyes in article apr geneva rutgers edu cs mcd brunel ac uk michael c davis writes i would like to get your opinions on this when exactly does an engaged couple become married in god s eyes some say that if the two have publically announced their plans to marry have made their vows to god and are unswervingly committed to one another i realize this is a subjective qualifier they are married joined in god s sight the way i read scripture a couple becomes married when they are physically married i e when they first have sexual intercourse some years ago an anglican synod was discussing the marriage canons and there was some debate on what actually constituted a marriage the bishop of natal whose wife of many years had died and who had recently remarried announced it must be consummated and looked like that cat that got the cream so i suppose he at least would agree with you steve hayes department of missiology editorial department univ of south africa p o box pretoria south africa internet hayesstw risc unisa ac za fidonet steve hayes p f n z fidonet org faq missiology is the study of christian mission and is part of the faculty of theology at unisa
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re latest on branch davidians in article apr geneva rutgers edu conditt tsd arlut utexas edu paul conditt wrote i think it s really sad that so many people put their faith in a mere man even if he did claim to be the son of god and or a prophet i ll pose a question here that s got me thinking what distinguishes true religion from cults i m speaking generally here not specifially about christianity jerry falwell was on good morning america on tuesday ostensibly to answer this question basically he said that true religion follows a message whereas a cult follows a person but then christianity is a cult because the message of christianity is the person of jesus so what distinguishes for example the branch davidian cult from the presbyterian church doctrinal differences don t answer the question imho so don t use them as an answer scott at brandeis but god demonstrates his the lord bless you and keep you own love for us in that the lord make his face shine on you while we were yet sinners and be gracious to you christ died for us the lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace romans nasb numbers nasb there have been some attempts to characterize cult most commonly it uses characteristics involving high pressure brainwashing techniques etc but some people characterize it by doctrinal error in the end i m afraid it becomes a term with no precise meaning that s used primarily to dismiss groups as not worthy of serious consideration that doesn t mean that there aren t groups that do highly irresponsible things and have serious doctrinal errors but past discussions have not suggested to me that cult is a very helpful term clh
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re proof of resurection in article apr geneva rutgers edu andrew srsune shlrc mq edu au andrew mcveigh writes the bible s message is that we are to love all people and that all people are redeemable it preaches a message of repentance and of giving unfortunately all people have deceitful hearts and are capable of turning this message around and contorting it in sometimes unbelievable ways this is also a fundamental christian doctrine andrew how i wish this were true and how i long for the day in which it will be true but alas it is not true of history the bible does not have a message it has messages and some of those are messages of repentance and giving to turn the other cheek and do unto the least of these but some of the messages are the complete opposite like the isrealites order to wipe out other tribes including women and children down to cattle and punished severely when they were less than complete about the job like jews who are said to have cried out in matthew his blood be upon our heads and our childrens heads a verse quoted in every pogrom from the crusades to the holocaust have these been misunderstood i think not they have only been understood too clearly it is essential that christians grasp firmly the good the bible teaches the meek carpenter from nazareth is a potent symbol for how we should be his teachings we must take to heart but we cannot ignore the other material in the bible which is not to our liking and say those who live by that have misread it to say that is only to chose a point of interpretation and declare it normative such can be done with the same legitmacy by anyone instead we must let the text critique the text understanding that there is both good and bad in our sacred corpus we test all things and hold fast to that which is good p s i believe that a line of questioning like you presented is strangely enough compatible with becoming a christian certainly christianity encourages one to question the behaviour of the world and especially christians i praise god for jesus christ and the fact that we can doubt our beliefs and still come back to god and be forgiven time and time again at the risk of sounding heretical well ok more heretical i don t think that doubt is something which requires forgiveness it is something which requires introspection and reflection if that is a sin then there can be no salvation for doubt is an inescapble part of being human consider job his friends had no doubt whereas job had no doubt in himself but doubted the wisdom and justice of god when god finally did appear he rebuked the friends and had job make sacrifices for them to be a christian it to always have doubt or not to have honesty randy
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re the arrogance of christians i ve just read carol s response and i just had to get into this i ve got some verses which are not subject to interpretation because they say what they say joe just cause you say they aren t subject to interpretation doesn t necesarily make it so that s your interpretation of these texts they are peter timothy and galatians peter but know this first of all that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one s own interpretation for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the holy spirit spoke from god the study notes in my bible offer three possible meanings for verse apparantly it s not as clear to charles ryrie as it is to you timothy all scripture is inspired by god and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction for training in righteousness that the man of god may be adequate equipped for every good work galations for i would have you know brethren that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man for i neither received it from man nor was i taught it but i receieved it through a revelation of jesus christ when i read these passages it was not immediately clear to me what every phrase meant i had stop and think about the possible connotations of words what the intent of the author may have been wonder if the translator used the correct english word to convey the same meaning i had to interpret if you want to believe that your are not interpreting scripture as you read there s probably nothing i can say to change your mind but i think it s naive to think that our culture experiences education do not affect everything we read also based on the fact that jesus is the word incarnate and he judges people if they follow him see acts and john and that those who reject jesus teachings are judged by the very words he spoke see john then jesus words are true and do not need interpretation nor would it be just of god to judge based on his word if it had to be interpreted in college i took an entire course in biblical interpretation go to any christian bookstore there are scores of books on interpreting and understanding scripture if interpretation is unnecessary there are an awful lot of misguided christians out there wasting a lot of time and energy on it carol alvin caralv auto trol com
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re iterations of the bible ofm replies to a question on the multiplicity of translations of the bible as far as i know no christians believe that the process of copying manuscripts or the process of translating is free of error unfortunately this isn t true on another news group earlier this year someone posted that the king james bible was the divinely inspired version of the bible in english and was therefore inerrant all other english translations were from satan trying to deceive the body of christ a few years ago the pastor of a church i was attending showed me a poster advertising the availability of a certain man to address congregations very prominantly on the poster was the fact that the man used only the kjv the idea that the kjv is the english bible is more prevalent than many might think scott at brandeis but god demonstrates his the lord bless you and keep you own love for us in that the lord make his face shine on you while we were yet sinners and be gracious to you christ died for us the lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace romans nasb numbers nasb
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re serbian genocide work of god d andrew kille writes are you suggesting that god supports genocide perhaps the germans were punishing jews on god s behalf any god who works that way is indescribably evil and unworthy of my worship or faith the bible does tell us that governments are ordained by god romans and furthermore god foreknows everything that would happen it is just to difficult for humans to graps with our limited minds the inevitablity of the sucess of god s plan and this is especially hard to grasp when we see governemnts doing evil however though they are doing evil and we should not cooperate with them when they do such it must be understood that what happens is what god wanted so as to lead to the final sucess of his plan to save as many souls from hell as is possible in short the slaughter in bosnia though deplorable in the eyes of god maybe then again they might be getting their just deserts now rather than later there are plenty of examples of god killing people for their sins onan in the old testmament for example and annias and spahira in the new is what he willed to happen so that his plan might be accomplished but don t forget it is not unbiblical for god to use one nation to execute his just judgement upon another the romans were used to fulfill the chorus of let his blood be upon our hands of the crowd in jersualem and chaldea was chastised by babylon which got israel which was inturn gotten by persia etc god does use nations to punish other nations as the bible very clearly shows in the old testament don t you remember the words of god recorded in daniel mene mene tekel peres babylon had been weighed in the balance scales of god s justice found severly wanting and was thus given over to the persians as their due punishment for their rebellion another exammple is the extirmination of the cannanites ordered by god as the task of israel the cannanites had been given their chance found severly wanting and the great judge carried out his just sentence accrodingly i could go on with more examples but i see little need to do so as my point is quite clear two things need to be remembered at all times it is not up to us to question why god has ordered the world as he has in his divine wisdom he made the world as was best in his eyes and like paul says in romans the clay is not one to tlak back to the potter the message of jesus christ is as follows repent now for the kingdom of heaven is at hand jesus christ did not allow any time for dilly dallying let the dead bury the dead come follow me there is not an infinite amount of time rather christ is passing by right now calling people to follow him and become fishers of men he does not say well alright you can call me back in a week and see if my kingdom fits in with your plans he said follow me his message is not i m just a sweety pie who would never hurt a fly you ve got all the time in the world and divine judgement that s only a fairy tale our great god and savior jesus christ titus is also the just and righteous judge of the world and it is not up to the defendants in the trial to be questioning his entirely just sentences of either chastisement or mercy d andrew byler does not he who ways the heart perceive sin and will he not judge men according to their works proverbs
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re atheists and hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes i don t have a problem with being condemned to hell either the way i see it if god wants to punish me for being honest in my skepticism that is for saying he doesn t exist he certainly wouldn t be changing his nature besides i would rather spend an eternity in hell than be beside god in heaven knowing even one man would spend his eternal life being scorched for his wrongdoings i see some irony here jesus was willing to go through torture to free you from the definite promise of hell based on adam eve s fall from grace but rather than allow him to stand in your place you would give up your redemption to stand with those who do not accept his grace god would rather have none in hell which seems to put the burden of choice on us of course this is all fictional anyway since you reject him also my former sociology professor once told us at the beginning of our term you all start out with an a what you do with that during the course of this term is up to you in the beginning adam and eve were given an a mark haefner
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re cell church discussion group then by that definition i would be in a cell church only here at iu not when the whole group gets together at indianapolis every week in attendance joe fisher
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re christians that are not church members here are some notes about what the church is to be like and some helpful ideas about how to choose a church colossians a jesus is the head of the body the church b you cannot say yes to jesus but no to the church ephesians a the church is the family of god b the church is based on the word of god only cornerstone christ foundation apostles new testament prophets old testament see revelation corinthians a baptism is when we become a member of the church as for the question of denominations a the bible teaches that there is only one church from ephesians romans corinthians b corinthians says that there should be no divisions in the church there should be no following of personalities in the church and in time their writings c there are so many churches today because of a problem timothy says that people will turn away from the truth and try to find a church that teaches a doctrine that suits their lifestyle hebrews a do not miss church b purpose is to encourage each other so we will remain faithful involved on a relationship level in the church c must come to all services another verse which is helpful is hebrews the church should be encouraging daily as it is their duty to do of course more standards apply timothy people in the church should be watching their lives and doctrines to make sure they both live up to the word entirely ie disciples acts the pastor does not come close to the apostle paul natural conclusion since the apostle paul talked with jesus directly face to face so if the bereans who were considered noble didn t take paul at his word but checked out what he said with scripture to verify his statements then church members are to do the same and verify the pastor s statements if they are not verifiable or valid in light of other verses then that group should be avoided as a church would ve made a wonderful suggestion to the waco group especially in light of matthew joe fisher
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re when are two people married in god s eyes i have a question for you all related to this jesus condemns divorce several times in the new testament and i have a hard time with this the catholic church as far as i can tell does grant annulments with the statement that the marriage never really existed in god s eyes please if i am mistinterpreting correct me however i have witnessed marriages where two people were very much in love but recognized that they were destroying themselves and each other by staying in a marriage and that the problems were due to personal childhood issues that had never been resolved i ask you is divorce justified in such a case they knew who they were what they were doing they were deeply in love but in the end it did not work out i must admit that i don t see jesus forcing them to live together or even condemning that they go and seek happiness with someone else later on opinions vera i am your clock i bind unto myself today vera noyes i am your religion the strong name of the noye midway uchicago edu i own you trinity no disclaimer what lard st patrick s breastplate is there to disclaim this is a commonly discussed question though it s been long enough that i ll allow it to be asked as you might expect there is a range of answers catholics and some others will say that divorce is never justified by the way in situations where someone is being abused or for other serious cause separation is allowed by all traditions that i know no one should be forced to stay in a situation where they are in danger others see it as a last resort in situations that have fallen apart badly enough that the best we can hope for is to choose the lesser of evils in some sense the difficult legal question turns out not to be divorce but remarriage that s because of jesus statement in mark and par as with so many other things this turns on your approach to the bible conservative protestants tend to see statements like this as having no exceptions more liberal ones are willing to make allowances for situations where a literal interpretation would lead to painful results it is noted that at the time it was possible for a man to divorce his wife almost on a whim thus a common explanation in the more liberal approach is that jesus was trying to protect people from this sort of thing not to establish an absolute rule to which there could never be exceptions catholics as is typical with catholic ethics take a theoretical hard line but allow for exceptions in practice through the process of anullment in the last discussion most of our non catholic readers seemed to accept with some reluctance that in some cases there might be no good alternative but there was a feeling that the church should often be doing a better job of helping people prepare for marriage and deal with problems that come up during it and that in a properly run church divorce should not be necessary clh
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re knowing god s will hi i don t know much about bible could you tell me the relations of christians with non christians in bible how should be the relations of christian nations with each other and the relations of christian nations with other nations who are not christians the other question is about the concept of religion in bible does the religion of god include and necessitate any law to be extracted from bible or is the religion only a belief and nothing to do with the government sides if for example any government or a nation is one of the wrongdoings according to bible how should they be treated is there any statement in bible saying that bible is a guide for every aspects of life thank you beytullah
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re harrassed at work could use some prayers i d just like to repeat and emphasize that because someone else is trying to make you feel horrible and worthless does not mean that you should feel that way although that s easier to say than believe sometimes remember god made you and loves you so he must think you re something special excuse the trite language here also the bully may just be someone who is mean for no reason not out of intentional mental torture has anyone else been harassed maybe they re just not talking about it i would have emailed but my reactions weren t fast enough and the post i m responding to didn t include your address just take courage and remember that all of us on the net are rooting for you take care vera hand over hand noye midway uchicago edu doesn t seem so much vera noyes hand over hand is the strength of the common touch drop me a line if you re in the mood rush hand over fist
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re am i going to hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu stoney oyster smcm edu stanley toney writes muslims i fear have been given a lie from the fater of lies satan they need christ as do us all stan toney stoney oyster smcm edu my opinions are my own you may borrow them just picked out this one point because it struck me why do you believe this muslims believe in many of the same things that christians and jews believe they believe jesus while not the messiah is a prophet this seems to me to be much closer to christianity than other religions are then again i tend to be somewhat liberal about others beliefs this also relates to the serbian ethnic cleansing question i have been waiting for condemnations of this and have seen very few how can we stand by and watch innocent people even people whose beliefs we condemn if this is the case and don t get me wrong the things fundamenalist muslims have to say about women make my blood boil be tortured raped the stories about that made me physically ill and killed jesus loves all not just those who love him back and he would advocate kindness toward them in the hopes of converting them if that s the way you want to put it rather than killing them i m sorry i got off the subject here maybe i should have used a different title i did need to get this off my chest however peace shalom vera shanti hand over hand noye midway uchicago edu doesn t seem so much vera noyes hand over hand is the strength of the common touch drop me a line if you re in the mood rush hand over fist i am also worried about this issue i ve made a posting under my own name earlier today i do not much want to discuss moslem beliefs here this isn t the right group for it their beliefs about jesus appear to come as much from the koran as the bible this means that while they honor him what they think he did and stood for differs in many ways from christian beliefs about him but moslem beliefs are an appropriate topic for soc religion islam as i m sure you know many christians believe that you must accept christ in order to be saved while stanley s comment appears to be anti moslem i would assume he would say the same thing about all religions other than christianity clh
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re am i going to hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu tbrent ecn purdue edu timothy j brent writes i have stated before that i do not consider myself an atheist but definitely do not believe in the christian god the recent discussion about atheists and hell combined with a post to another group to the effect of you will all go to hell has me interested in the consensus as to how a god might judge men as a catholic i was told that a jew buddhist etc might go to heaven but obviously some people do not believe this even more see atheists and pagans i assume i would be lumped into this category to be hellbound i know you believe only god can judge and i do not ask you to just for your opinions dear tim you say that you were a catholic but if you do not believe in the christian god i suppose that means the god of the bible and publicly state this you are in all probability not a roman catholic public heretics even those who err in good faith material heretics do not belong to the body of the church fundamentals of catholic dogma ludwig ott p all is not lost however as you still might belong spiritually to the church by your desire to belong to it as you said only god can judge the condition of a man s soul about judgment on the other hand st paul cor urges christians to judge their fellow christians following the apostle s teaching i judge that you should reconsider returning to the christian fold and embrace the god of abraham isaac and jacob he is the god who lives concerning what you were told about non believers when you were a catholic that is true as i have posted before vatican ii lumen gentium ii n teaches those who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of christ or his chruch but who nevertheless seek god with a sincere heart and moved by grace try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience those too may achieve eternal salvation responding to your solicitation for opinions on the thinking processes of god the best i can do is refer you to scripture scripture is one of the best sources for learning what can be known about god stick with the best boundary the catechist no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo tr esp vulgata latina
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re the arrogance of christians in article geneva rutgers edu gt b prism gatech edu boundary writes dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie writes deletia sig p s if you do sincerely believe that a god exists why do you follow it blindly do the words question authority mean anything to you i defy any theist to reply deletia formalities i probably should let this pass it s not worth the time and it s not really intended for me but i couldn t resist a personal weakness of mine jerkius kneeus tragically incurable the foundation for faith in god is reason without which the existence of god could not be proven that his existence can be proven by reason is indisputable cf my short treatise traditional proofs for the existence of god and summa theologica not so i can prove that the existance of god is disputable by showing that people dispute it this is easy i dispute that god exists simple i missed your traditional proofs treatise but the proofs i remember from the summa theologic the ways i think it was were rather poor stuff the ontological argument is about a billion times better imho i would think you d want non traditional proofs considering the general failure of the traditional proofs at least the ones i know of i am thinking of the ontological argument the cosmological argument and the teleological argument those are the ones traditional enough to have funny names anyway now given that god exists and that his existence can be proven by reason i assert that his commands must be followed blindly although in our fallen condition we must always have some measure of doubt about our faith why this is the real question so to discuss it i ll assume god exists otherwise there is no heavenly authority to babble about because god is the first cause of all things the first mover of matter the independent thing that requires nothing else for its existence the measure of all that is perfect and the essential being who gives order to the universe logos please show this is the case i am familiar with the first cause argument and i ll accept for the sake of argument that there is a first cause even though i find some of its premices questionable the rest you ll have to show this includes that the first cause is god i next assert that god is all good got it i deny that god is all good so there if this is so then that which is contrary to the will of god is evil i e the absence of the good and since god can never contradict himself then by his promise of a savior as early as the protoevangelium of genesis god instructs that because a human adam was first responsible for man s alienation from the source of all good a man would be required to act to restore the friendship thus god became incarnate in the person of the messiah this isn t self consistent if humans must renew the relationship then god incarnate or not can t do it well unless you think god is human granted god made himself human but this is nonetheless cheating the intent of the statement is clearly that man has to fix the problem he caused god fixing it even by indirect means contradicts this now this messiah claimed that he is the truth john if this claim is true then we are bound by reason to follow him who is truth incarnate why also why assume said claim is true anyway if i claim to be truth are you bound by reason to follow me you next seem to have a problem with authority have you tried the united states marine corps yet i can tell you first hand that it is an excellent instructor in authority undoubtably do you mean to imply we should all obey the commands of the marines without question you seem to imply this about god and that the marines are similar in this respect if this is not what you are trying to say they please explain what it is you are saying as i have missed it if you have not yet had the privilege i will reply that the authority which is truth incarnate may never be questioned and thus must be followed blindly why why not question it even if it is truth we cannot know this certainly so why is it so irrational to question perhaps we will thus discover that we were wrong you assert that god is truth and we can t question truth but i assert that god is not truth and anyway we can question truth how is it my assertion is less good than yours one may not deny the truth oh i hereby deny i hope you ll agree is the truth granted i look pretty damn silly saying something like that but i needed something we d both agree was clearly true now you ll notice no stormtroopers have marched in to drag me off to the gulag no heaven lighting bolts either no mysterious net outages i seem to be permited to say such things absurd or not for example when the proverbial apple fell on isaac newton s head he could have denied that it happened but he did not the laws of physics must be obeyed whether a human likes them or not they are true they are certainly not true at least the ones newton derived are not true and are indeed wildly inaccurate at high speeds or small distances we do not have a set of laws of physics that always works in all cases if we did physics would be over already science is all about questioning this sort of truth if we didn t we d still follow aristotle i d generalize this a little more if you want to learn anything new you must question the things you know tm because you can always be wrong therefore the authority which is truth may not be denied even presupposing that truth may not be denied and may not be questioned and that god is truth it only follows that god may not be denied or questioned not that he must be obeyed we could unquestioningly disobey him how annoying of us but you have not connected denial with disobedience dan no nickname johnson and god said jeeze this is dull and it was dull genesis these opinions probably show what i know
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re was jesus black this subject seems to be incredibly inflammatory those who subscribe to biblical archaeology review will remember a spectacular letter battle set off when someone complained about a franklin mint ad bar is a great magazine but the contrast between the rather scholarly articles and the incredibly sleazy ads is extreme in this ad they were hawking a doll with a head based on the famous bust of nefertiti giving the face a typical doll pink complexion the letter complained about this as a misrepresentation on the grounds that nefertiti was a beautiful black queen this set off an exchange of hotheaded letters than ran for several issues to the point where they had an article from an egyptologist titled was cleopatra black the answer to the title is no she was greek i have to say that i hear a hysterical note in much of the complaining i personally have seen only one blond haired jesus in the national shrine in wash dc and i found it very jarring western representations vary enourmously but in general the image of is of a youngish male with dark hair and beard of a sort that can be found modulo the nose all up and down the mediterranean also if what i remember is correct the black madonna doesn t represent a person with negroid features it is black because of an accident joe buehler in the presence of all those marble statues one is prone to forget that greeks are rather likely to have black hair when one crosses the bosporus the situation breaks down completely are turks white how about persians or various groups in the indian subcontinent was gandhi white how about the arabs or picture nassar and sadat standing side by side and then there are the ethiopians those of a white racist bent are not likely to say that any of these people are white i e of the racist s race if i may risk a potentially inflammatory remark one undercurrent of this seems to be the identification of modern jews as members of the oppressor race considering the extreme dicotomy between medieval religion on the one hand and medieval antisemitism on the other i don t think that this jesus was white thesis ever played the roles that some hold it did representations of jesus as black or korean or whatever are fine it seems awfully self serving to insist that jesus belongs to one s own racial group c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god
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looking for videotapes i have been looking at some of the recent productions on homosexuality and decided that i was interested in videotaped copies of these if anyone can help me out here i would very much appreciate it here is what i am looking for the gay agenda produced by ty beeson s group the report john ankerberg s recent series understanding homosexuality and experiencing genuine change james kennedy s special on homosexuality which aired this week and the portion of the previous week s program which discussed the gay agenda i will not pay money for copies since this is copyrighted material and that would be illegal i will pay for return postage if somebody can think of something they would desire in trade please let me know and i ll see what i can do oh btw i m watching the march on washington right now on c span other than the fact that i m generally repulsed by what i m watching i found one thing of interest general david dinkins just finished speaking and remarked that the new york city delegation consists of about people funny i don t see people out there period must ve been quite the party scene last night or maybe their exaggerations were just too much sean patrick ryan fsspr aurora alaska edu or sean freds cojones com oregon dr anchorage ak fnord abortion stops a beating heart disclaimer i didn t inhale either iditarod scoreboard men women read alt flame sean ryan i don t suppose you d be interested in hearing about the homosexual agenda from homosexual christians these portrayals of the homosexual agenda are regarded by some as being somewhat akin to trying to understand fundamentalist christianity by looking at the branch dividians you might also want to look at some outside evaluations of the groups claiming to change homosexuals when our church the presbyterian church usa looked into this issue even the conservative members of the committee were concerned about how real and long lasting the changes were i ll be interested to get reports from police and the press about the number of people participating today presumably we ll have a better idea by tomorrow clh
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re am i going to hell xopr maccvm corp mot com gerald mcpherson writes if you reject the claims of jesus and still go to heaven then the joke s on me if you reject him and go to hell that s no joke but it will be final if this is god s attitude then i ll think i ll go along with terry pratchett s religious philosophy oh i believe in god i just don t actually like the blighter p moorcockpratchettdenislearydelasoulu iainmbanksneworderheathersbatmanpjorourke clive p a u l m o l o n e y come let us retract the foreskin of misconception james trinity college dublin and apply the wire brush of enlightenment geoffm brownbladerunnersugarcubeselectronicblaylockpowersspikeleekatebushhamcornpizza
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re did he really rise in article apr geneva rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes the basic problem with your argument is your total and complete reliance on the biblical text luke s account is highly suspect i would refer you to the hermeneia commentary on acts in article apr geneva rutgers edu ata hfsi hfsi com john ata writes even if there was no independent proof that luke s account was valid i find it strange that you would take the negation of it as truth without any direct historical evidence at least that you ve mentioned to back it up the assertion was made unequivocally that no christian ever sufferred for their faith by believing in the resurrection luke s account suggests otherwise and in the absence of direct eyewitnesses who can claim that luke is mistaken then i suggest that this unequivocal assertion is suspect john the problem here is that you have taken one peice of my response without bothering to connect it with the other parts i have repeatedly noted that one needs to take the problematic historcity of acts and then examine the work of john dominic crossan and burton mack once you have taken the time to examine recent developments in biblical scholarship i think you will grasp more clearly what i am saying i think the original claim may have been somewhat more limited than this it was an answer to the claim that the witnesses couldn t be lying because they were willign to suffer for their beliefs thus it s not necessary to show that no christian ever suffered for believing in the resurrection rather the issue is whether those who witnessed it did i do agree that the posting you re responding to shows that there can be liberal as well as conservative dogmatism clh certainly this is an issue as i think the situation in waco shows most clearly if all that is required is that people are willing to die for a belief for it to be true then surely david koresh is the son of god no the spurrious arguement that the resurrection had to be true for people to be willing to die must be put to rest the other problem is that it is so monologocentric even if the resurrection was a big deal which it doesn t seem to have been for either q thomas or even john to a certain degree there are a lot of other things which the early christians could have been doing together that would have been worth dying for it is my belief that even the idea of a mixed race community which brought down regional national boundaries in the name of koinonia could have been enough for people to be willing to die radical communties do that e g jonestown waco warsaw etc but my original point was that roman persecution which is the only persecution we have documented proof of was not about whether a carpenter came back from the dead such a claim was not unique nor particularly abhorent to the roman or greek mind my point is that avoidance of military and civic duty i e emperor worship would have been much more problematic which has nothing to do with the resurrection at all when nero used christians as human torches to light up his dinner party it wasn t because the believe in a risen savior it was because they were supposedly involved in incest and cannablism the argument that christians were martyred for the resurrection just cannot stand up to critical examination randy
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any good electronic christian magazine hi i d like to subscribe to leadership magazine but wonder if there is one on disk instead of on paper having it on disk would save me retyping illustrations etc into a word processor it s just cut and paste if there are other good christian magazines like leadership on disk media i d appreciate any info with gratitude james
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survey faith vs reason the following is a survey we are conducting for a term project in a philosophy class it is not meant to give us anything interesting statistically we want to hear what kind of voices there are out there we are not asking for full blown essays but please give us what you can as i do not read these groups often please email all responses to me at shimpei leland stanford edu as my mail account is not infinite if you can delete the questions and just have numbered answers when you write back i would really appreciate it since we would like to start analyzing the result as soon as possible we would like to have the answers by april if you absolutely cannot make it by then though we would still liken to hear your answer if anyone is interested in our final project please send a note to that effect would like to have the answers by april if you absolutely cannot make it by then though we would still like to hear your answer if anyone is interested in our final project please send a note to that effect or better yet include a note along with your survey response and i ll try to email it to you probably in late may survey question have you ever had trouble reconciling faith and reason if so what was the trouble for example have you ever been unsure whether creationism or evolutionism holds more truth do you practice tarot cards palm readings or divination that conflicts with your scientific knowledge of the world does your religion require you to ignore physical realities that you have seen for yourself or makes logical sense to you basically we would like to know if you ever believed in something that your reason tells you is wrong question if you have had conflict how did do you resolve the conflict question if you haven t had trouble why do you think you haven t is there a set of guidelines you use for solving these problems thank you very much for your time shimpei yamashita stanford university email shimpei leland stanford edu there are three kinds of mathematicians those who can count and those who can t it seems to be that time of year please remember that he s asked for you to respond by email clh
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re sex education in article apr geneva rutgers edu bruce liv ac uk bruce stephens writes i d be fascinated to see such evidence please send me your article on the negative side however i suspect that any such simplistic link abstinence education decreased pregnancy contraceptive education increased pregnancy is false the us which i d guess has one of the largest proportion of non liberal sex education in the western world also has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates please correct me if my guess is wrong i ve sent the article in terms of the group discussion i wanted to point out that non liberal education head in the sand is not the same as abstinence education we had non liberal education regarding drugs when i was a kid in the s which didn t do us a lot of good but abstinence education regarding drugs has proven effective i think joe kellett jkellett netcom com
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re doing the work of god hedrick cs rutgers edu writes down these distinctions in him there is neither jew nor greek there is neither slave nor free there is neither male nor female if moslems do not know him we may preach to them but we don t kill as a muslim spelled sometimes as moslem i must say that muslims strong ly believe in jesus refered in islamic text as eesau as jesus j esu s esu pronounced eee saw yah we knew him well ideally this war should not even be and even in a time of war our goal is peace we should try to refrain from viloating the peace of others as then if we do violate we will not have peace in ourselves i don t like this war eaither it is a conflict of territory croats muslims and serbs lived together before in peace the rallying point is race and im sure that there is a general out there who wouldn t mind being a president mohammad r khan khan nova gmi edu after july please send mail to mkhan nyx cs du edu from a christian perspective moslem ideas about jesus look rather seriously erroneous i ve generally tried to avoid discussions of islam in this group since soc religion islam is the right place for that thus i don t much want to go into detail i will simply note that moslems reject most of what christians regard as the most essential facts about jesus so at least from a christian perspective moslems don t know jesus again this is no justification for christians to hate moslems or to kill them i agree with you that this war should never be clh
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q the lost gospel just finished reading burton mack s new book the lost gospel q and christian origins i thought it was totally cool anyone else read it and want to talk randy
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re was jesus black jesus was born a jew we have biblical accounts of both his mother s ancestry and his father s both tracing back to david it seems reasonable to assume therefore that jesus was semitic as an interesting aside jesus being semitic makes him neither white nor black and in some sense underscores the point made earlier that his color was not important it was his message his grace and his divinity that we should concentrate on finally i would direct anyone interested in african involvement in the church to the account of the conversion of the ethiopian eunuch in acts chapter i think it s chapter this is one of the earliest conversions and the eunuch treasurer to the queen of the ethiopians was definitely african because ethiopia at that time indicated a region just south of egypt many also speculate that this man was not only the first african christian but the first black christian as well god bless charles campbell
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re christians that are not church members in article gchin ssf eng sun com writes over the years i have met christians who are not associated with any local church and are not members of any local church this is an issue that may be very personal but is important what does the bible say about this and how can we encourage our friends with regard to this issue this brings up an interesting subject that has not been discussed much and probably has not been studied much as some of you may be aware i ve posted a lot of articles lately on personality typing of which the mbti is a test vehicle to come up to speed just read alt psychology personality and or ask for by personality type summary file one observation is that people have significantly different personalities no question on this which seem to be essentially in born with respect to church attendance and participation some people thrive on this while other people have real difficulty with this because they prefer a more solitary and contemplative lifestyle that is they are de energized if confronted with excessive closeness to outside activities and lots of people of course this is measured by extroversion introversion my impression is that many churches are totally blind to this fact and create environments that scare away many who are naturally introverted there are many introverted characters in the bible btw i know i am quite introverted in preference and find the pressure by many churches to participate to meet together in large groups etc to be very uncomfortable knowing what i know now these churches have been overly influenced by highly extroverted people who thrive on this sort of thing btw there s nothing wrong with either extroversion or introversion both preferences have their place in the body maybe i should define extrovert introvert more carefully since these words are usually not used correctly in our culture the extrovert introvert scale is a measure of how a person is energized the following is excerpted from my summary energizing how a person is energized extroversion e preference for drawing energy from the outside world of people activities or things introversion i preference for drawing energy from one s internal world of ideas emotions or impressions hopefully this will elicit further discussion as to how churches can structure themselves to meet the real needs of the people who comprise the body of christ instead of trying to change people s personalities to fit them into a particular framework i m sure there are other aspects of how churches have not properly understood personality variances among their members to the detriment of all jon noring charter member infj club if you re dying to know what infj means be brave e mail me i ll send info jon noring noring netcom com jkn international ip fred s gourmet chocolate carlton place phone chips world s best livermore ca v mail who are you read alt psychology personality that s where the action is
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re when are two people married in god s eyes y in article apr geneva rutgers edu marka hcx ssd csd harris com mark ashley writes those with bibles on hand can give the exact chapter verse at the time jesus told peter that he was the rock he said whatever you hold true on earth is held true in heaven and whatever you don t hold true won t be true in heaven therefore with respect to marriage the ceremony has to be done by an rc priest no big parties required just the priest the couple and witnesses divorce is not allowed but anullments are granted upon approval by either the bishop or the pope not sure if the pope delegates this function maybe i m a little tired but i can t seem to follow the logic here if whatever is held true on earth is held true in heaven how is it that a priest rc only apparently is required in fact if i read the next verse correctly matthew i understand that for a marriage to take place only two are required to agree on earth touching one thing and it shall be done todd mark ashley disclaimer my opinions not harris marka gcx ssd csd harris com the lost los angelino unfortunately i haven t been able to find any completely precise statements about what is needed as usual the current edition of the catholic encyclopedia is frustratingly vague i do know that the priest is viewed as a witness and thus in some sense would not be required however part of the purpose of formal marriage is to avoid any ambiguity about who has and has not taken on the commitment the community provides support to marriage and in cases of problems are involved in helping to make sure that the people carry out as much of their commitment as possible thus marriage must be a public commitment the presence of a priest is required for a regular marriage where i m not clear is exactly where the boundaries are in exceptional cases valid but irregular ne temere says that no marriage involving a catholic is valid without a priest according to the oxford dictionary of the church and they imply that the new canon law retains this but i d rather see a more recent and authoritative source note that while a catholic priest is required for catholics the catholic church does recognize marriage between baptized non catholics as valid without a priest clh
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re the arrogance of christians to what follows our moderator has already answered the charge of arrogance more ably that i could have done so so i will confine myself to answering the charge of illogic in a previous article eugene bigelow ebay sun com geno says if i don t think my belief is right and everyone else s belief is wrong then i don t have a belief this is simply what belief means unfortunatly this seems to be how christians are taught to think when it comes to their religion this is how everyone in the western intellectual tradition is or was taught to think it is the fundamental premis a is not not a if a thing is true then its converse is necessarilly false without this basic asumption theology and science as we know them are alike impossible we should distinguish the strong and weak meanings of the word believe however the weak sense means i am not sure i believe tom went to the library but he could have gone to the track the strong sense means i am so certain that i use it as a basis of thought i believe that nature operates according to certain fundamental laws despite the fact that nature appears capricious and unpredictable christian belief is of the strong kind though christians may well hold beliefs of the weak kind on any number of theological and ecclesiological topics some take it to the extreme and say that their religion is the only one and if you don t accept their teachings then you won t be saved note that these are two separate ideas most hold the first view but the majority do not hold the second is is again a matter of pure logic that if christanity is true then hinduism for example must necessarilly be false insofar as it contradicts or is incompatible with christaianity and as a matter of logic vice versa it takes quite a bit of arrogance to claim to know what god thinks wants it is arrogant to claim to know what anyone thinks or wants unless they have told you christians believe god has told us what he thinks and wants especially when it s based upon your interpretation of a book most christians do not base their belief on the bible but on the living tradition of the church established by christ and guided constantly by the holy spirit the bible is simply the written core of that tradition the logic in the above statement is faulty in that it assumes two people with differing beliefs can t both be correct if depends what you mean by differing if i believe tom is six feet tall and you believe he weighs pounds our beliefs differ but we may both be right if i believe tom is six feet tall and you beleive that he is four foot nine one of us at least must be wrong it s all about perception no two people are exactly alike no two people perceive everything in the same way i believe that there is one truth call it god s truth a universal truth or call it what you will i don t believe god presents this truth i think it is just there and it s up to you to look for and see it through prayer meditation inspir ation dreams or whatever just because people may perceive this truth differently it doesn t mean one is wrong and the other is right thus you believe that there is a single truth but that no human being can find it you assert that anyone who believe that we can find absolute truth is mistaken in short you believe that anyone who does not share your belief on this point is wrong qed as an example take the question is the glass half empty or half full you can have two different answers which are contradictory and yet both are correct so for your belief to be true does not require everyone else s belief to be wrong here i begin to suspect that your real difficulty is not with the knowability of truth but simply with language saying that the glass is half empty is not a contradiction of the statement that it is half full it is the same fact expressed in different words the whole point of this phrase is to illustrate the different ways the pessimist and the optimist express the same fact it is of course quite true that different people may express the same belief in different words it is also true that they may fail to understand each other s words as expressions of the same belief and may argue bitterly and believe that they are miles apart great scisms have occurred in just this way and much ecumenical work has been done simply in resolving differences in language which conceal agreement in belief this does not mean in any sense that all beliefs are equally valid since some of the beliefs people hold contradict some other beliefs that other people hold after all obfuscations of language and culture in the expression of those beliefs have been stripped away some of the beliefs that some people hold must necessarilly be false and it is neither arrogant nor illogical to say so if i believe x and you believe y we may both be correct but if y is equivalent to not x then one of us is wrong and as long as we hold our respective beliefs we must each regard the other as in error mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis
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re was jesus black in article apr geneva rutgers edu shd andy bgsu edu sherlette dixon writes the people who post to this particular newsgroup are either too cowardly more accusations about a worldwide conspiracy against blacks since jesus was born in the middle east then i expect his human features to be similar to middle easterners at that point in time and since the camera wasn t invented yet we can only guess what he looked like for example with all the dinosaur bones we re digging up we still don t know if they were yellow polka dotted or purplish orange likewise i don t think anybody has a picture of jesus is there so our current image of jesus is our best guess okay so let s assume that jesus is black would that make you follow his techings cause if you follow his teachings skin color becomes a moot point anyway what counts more in your life your faith in jesus or his skin color as a human in the interest of historical accuracy however since jesus was from israel wouldn t his skin color be like any other jew i e fair skinned although probably heavily tanned from the desert sun experts in this area speak up cause i m not mark ashley disclaimer my opinions not harris marka gcx ssd csd harris com the lost los angelino
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re sabbath admissions of in article apr athos rutgers edu dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu darius lecointe writes faq and darius response deleted darius it s not clear how much more needs to be said other than the faq i think paul s comments on esteeming one day over another rom is probably all that needs to be said i accept that darius is doing what he does in honor of the lord i just wish he might equally accept that those who esteem all days alike are similarly doing their best to honor the lord i am myself an sda and i am in total agreement with what darius has to say i also worship on saturday to honor the lord your mention of esteeming all days alike imo has to do with the fast days observed by the jews but no matter how you interpret that passage i do accept your worship on sunday as being done in honor of the lord in contrast with what many of my fellow sda believers may believe to me though the bible overwhelmingly points to saturday as the day to be kept in honor of creation and of god s deliverance of the israelites from egyptian bondage to those who would attempt to point out that my observance of saturday is being legalistic this is simply not the case rather keeping saturday allows me a full day to rest and contemplate god s goodness and grace however i d like to be clear that i do not think there s unambiguous proof that regular christian worship was on the first day as i indicated there are responses on both of the passages cited similarly with cor it says that on the first day they should set aside money for paul s collection now if you want to believe that they gathered specially to do this or that they did it in their homes i can t disprove it but the obvious time for a congregation to take an offering would be when they normally gather for worship and if they were expected to do it in their homes there would be no reason to mention a specific day the idea was introduced to me once that the reason paul wanted the corinthians to lay aside money for the collection on the first day of the week was because that was when they received their weekly wages paul wanted them to lay aside money for the collection as first priority before spending their money on other things i do not have any proof in front of me for this though although it would explain why they would lay aside money in their homes instead of a meeting so i think the most obvious reading of this is that on the first day of every week simply means every time they gather for worship i think the reason we have only implications and not clear statements is that the nt authors assumed that their readers knew when christian worship was it would seem to me that you assume that the christians in the nt regularly worshipped on the first day i assume that the christians in the nt regularly worshipped on the seventh day but i agree with you that we only have implications because the authors did assume the reader knew when worhip was mark
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re when are two people married in god s eyes robert anderson randerso acad sahs uth tmc edu wrote i would like to get your opinions on this when exactly does an engaged couple become married in god s eyes some say that if the two have publically announced their plans to marry have made their vows to god and are unswervingly committed to one another i realize this is a subjective qualifier they are married joined in god s sight the way i read scripture a couple becomes married when they are physically married i e when they first have sexual intercourse e g the end of genesis quoted from memory for this reason a man shall leave his parents and be joined to his wife and they will become one flesh jesus also quotes this scripture referring to marriage if you read through genesis in particular you will often come across the phraseology man lay with woman and she became his wife this implies that she became his wife when they lay together i e at the point of intercourse compare this with jewish tradition joseph when he heard that mary was pregnant had it in mind to divorce her quietly but mary and joseph were betrothed not married i e they were in a binding relationship which required a divorce to get out of but marriage would not occur until mary and joseph went to bed together compare with christ and the church ephesians revelation the church is described as the bride of christ but the marriage of the lamb takes place when jesus returns i e we are in a binding love relationship with jesus but we are still looking forward to the time when the marriage will take place i see this as the spiritual equivalent of sexual intercourse because it represents the most intimate fellowship possible between man and god in summary engagement should be honoured as a binding relationship but it is not marriage a civil ceremony is not marriage either marriage occurs at the point when the betrothed couple go to bed together i don t mean to demean the civil or church ceremony ours was great i don t mean to be too pedantic historically i think i am correct in stating that the civil ceremony i e a marriage recognised by the state has only been around in the west since napoleon who introduced it to keep tabs on the people although i m ready to be corrected on that point this view obviously raises some questions what about those who have had sex with one or more partners without considering marriage are those people also married if it is true that marriage occurs at the point of intercourse is it necessary to be married in the eyes of the state i would say yes because this honours the laws of our nations in the west although it is not illegal to sleep together though unmarried in most western countries i believe that it is god honouring to proclaim our marriage to the state and to our friends before actually consummating our marriage its to do with our being salt and light and also to do with how people will perceive us i e it is culturally insensitive to declare yourself married without going through a civil ceremony michael davis cs mcd brunel ac uk and hast thou slain the jabberwock come to my arms my beamish boy
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re certainty and arrogance responding to the moderator in article apr athos rutgers edu alvin spot colorado edu kenneth alvin writes choosing what to believe and rely on are important areas of personal sovereignty what bothers me is when others suggest that in these matters of faith their specific beliefs are not only true to them but are absolute and should be binding on others it follows from this that god must give everyone the same revelation of truth and thus anyone who comes to a different conclusion is intentionally choosing the wrong path this is the arrogance i see a lack of respect for the honest conclusions of others on matters which are between them and god it is certainly reasonable to ask for some humility about our own ability to know the truth there are also different paths in some areas of practice but i d like to see more clarification about what you mean when you reject the idea of saying their specific beliefs are not only true to them but are absolute and should be binding on others if something is true it is true for everyone assuming that the belief is something about god history etc yes i agree what i m trying to point out is that in matters of faith i e tenets which are not logically persuasive one may be convinced of the truth of certain things through for instance personal revelation and its certainly fine to share that revelation or those beliefs with others and i don t think that its arrogant persay to accepts matters of pure faith as truth for oneself where i think the conflict arises is in assuming that where disagreements on beliefs arise all others must have been given the same truth and that god must reveal his truth to everyone in such a way that all would honestly agree i think this can lead to the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with you are being sinful or dishonest that they are rejecting something they know to be truth because it is inconvenient for them or because they wish to spurn god i would say that this is equivalent to assuming that all truths one holds are universal and absolute and the problem i see with this is that it negates the individuality of humans and their relationships with god this does not mean there is no absolute truth just that some areas of doctrinal disagreement may be areas where god has not established or revealed that truth comments criticism welcome ken alvin ucsu colorado edu i agree with you clh
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re easter what s in a name was re new testament double stan in article apr athos rutgers edu dsegard nyx cs du edu daniel segard writes that argument would be more compelling if it were not for the ishtar eggs and ishtar bunnies why mix pagan fertility symbols from the worship of the pagan goddess of fertility with biblical belief what would really be lost if all of you were to just drop the word easter and replace all such occurances with resurrection sunday would you not show up for services if they were called resurrection sunday services rather than easter services there is another way to view this the true celebration is easter the resurrection of our lord this has been true from the foundation of the world pagan practices are then either foreshadowings of the true celebration of the resurrection in which dim light was shone forth so that people would recognize the full truth when it was manifested or satanic counterfeits intended to deceive us so that we would not recognize the truth when it was manifested i don t believe the second argument because i believe in the power of the resurrection the fulfillment of the incarnation and our hope earlier or parallel ideas in other religions clearly are dim images of the truth of the resurrection as paul states we see through a glass darkly so do others it serves no purpose arguing about who has the darker or lighter glass the foreshadowings are not perfect so what our understnding of god is today imperfect for we are not yet perfected theosis is not a gift such that wham we re perfect larry overacker llo shell com lawrence overacker shell oil company information center houston tx llo shell com
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intolerance eternal life etc hi xian netters god bless you contents intro love your neighbor reaction to posts a purpose b eternal life i ve been reading this news group religiously for about a month sometimes it really gives me what i need spiritually at other times i get a little irate there are all kinds of people in every group and i take offense at intolerance it s awfully hard to tolerate such people oops i ve gone over my smiley quota already and it s only the second paragraph imho they should follow the commandment to love thy neighbor and leave the judging up to god specifically one s sexual orientation is part of one s self love the sinner hate the sin does not apply pay attention fundaligionists love your neighbor wether you like it or not i d be happy to get flamed endlessly and loose scripture quotation contests galore to defend this point i beleive this is correct btw love the sinner hate the sin is a slippery slope with hatred at the bottom incredibly chopped up post i won t even try to tell you where the deletions came out means jayne means dan johnson means eric in article athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org jayne kulikauskas writes gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes no free gifts of meaning i never quite understood how any god can just give your life meaning actually if he says you exists to do or be x that gives you a purpose if you care to accept it but is that the same thing but i digress i find that i am dissatisfied with the little purposes that we can manufacture for ourselves little in the cosmic sense even the greatest of the great pharos are long gone the pyramids historical oddities being worn down by the wind eventually to be turned into dust mankind itself will one day perish without some interconnectedness that transcends the physical without god it is all pointless in the end most people are able to live with that and for them little purposes success money power effecting change helping others suffice i suppose they never think about the cosmic scale or are at least able to put it out of their minds to me it is comforting to know that reality is an illusion that the true reality underneath the the physical is spirit that this world is a school of sorts where we learn and grow and our souls mature that gives a purpose to my little purposes and takes some of the pressure off it s not so necessary to make this life a success in human terms if you re really just here to learn it s more important to progress grow persist to learn to love yourself and others and to express your love especially when it s dificult to do so honest effort is rewarded by god he knows our limitations i will live forever with god ah now here we begin to diverge i will not live forever with anyone i don t think you will either but you are welcome to your opinion on the matter interesting theological question i have a feeling that most common perception of eternal life is way off base if i were to be imprisoned in the limited ego mind i am in now i doubt i would choose imortality it would get awfully boring two serious questions invitations to discussion what is the nature of eternal life how can we as mortals locked into space time conceive of it possible answer for the best we can do is metaphor analogy question a what is the best metaphor
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re can sin block our prayers in article apr athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org jayne kulikauskas writes mike boulder snsc unr edu mike mccormick writes not honoring our wives can cause our prayers to be hindered prayers may not be hindered i peter one interpretation i ve heard of this verse is that it refers to the sin of physically abusing one s wife the husband is usually physically stronger than his wife but is not permitted to use this to dominate her he must honor her as his sister in christ this would therefore be an example of a specific sin that blocks prayer jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org i would be a bit more specific in looking at this verse in regard to blocking prayer i have trouble thinking that god would allow anything to block our access to him in prayer especially if we have sinned and are praying for forgivenenss i can see however how our prayer life might be hindered by our sin if we are concentrating on what is causing the sin or what has happened we may not be thinking about prayer thus our prayers are hindered by our own actions but i don t think anything can block the transmission or reception of prayer to god shalom len howard
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart soc religion christian in article apr athos rutgers edu trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes norris athena mit edu writes for example why does the universe exist at all must there be a why to this i ask because of what you also assume about god namely that he just exists with no why to his existence so the question is reversed why can t we assume the universe just exists as you assume god to just exist why must there be a why to the universe whether there is a why or not we have to find it this is pascal s wager if there is no why and we spend our lives searching then we have merely wasted our lives which were meaningless anyway if there is a why and we don t search for it then we have wasted our potentially meaningful lives suppose the universe is billion years old and suppose it lasts another billion years suppose i live to be that is nothing that is so small that it is scary so by searching for the why along with my friends here on earth if nothing else we aren t so scared what if you woke up at a party with no memory and everyone was discussing who the host might be there might not be a host you say i say let s go find him the party s going to be over sometime maybe he ll let us stay because we recognize our own mortality we have to find the why well then buddhism confucianism taoism hinduism judaism zoerasterism shintoism and islam should fit this bit of logic quite nicely all have depth all have enduring values thus all must be true this is a good point but more of a good point for studying religion than ignoring it some christians disagree with me but it is worthwhile to study different religions and philosophies and glean the truth from them to quote of course out of context test everything and keep what is true chris mussack
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re the arrogance of christians in a previous article mhsu lonestar utsa edu melinda hsu says well the argument usually stops right there in the end aren t we all just kids groping for the truth if so do we have the authority to declare all other beliefs besides our own as false if i don t think my belief is right and everyone else s belief is wrong then i don t have a belief this is simply what belief means where does the authority for a belief come from nowhere for a belief is itself authoratative if i produce authority for a belief where will i find authority for my belief in the legitimacy of the authority in short the mind has to start somewhere by the way the majority of christians i e catholics believe in the authority of the church and derive the authority of the bible from its acceptance by the church mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis
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rom article ready requests a section of richard badenas book christ the end of the law romans in pauline perspective the section i have is on the contextual setting and meaning of romans in addition there are endnotes since the file is so long and because of other reasons i will take requests for the article personally of course i believe badenas insights to be true and quite damaging to the traditional augustinian calvinist view ted kalivoda tedr athena cs uga edu university of georgia athens ucns institute of higher ed
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu hayesstw risc unisa ac za steve hayes writes say for example there are people living on a volcanic island and a group of geologists determine that a volcano is imminent they warn the people on the island that they are in danger and should leave a group of people on the island is given the task of warning others of the danger they believe the danger is real but others may not does that mean that the first group are necessarily arrogant in warning others of the danger does it mean that they are saying that their beliefs are correct and all others are false but what if the geologists are wrong and these people are warning of a non existent danger analogies can only push an argument so far on both sides both melinda s and yours assume the premises used to set up your respective analogies are true and thus the correct conclusion will arise the important point to note is the different directions both sides come from christians believe they know the truth and thus believe they have the right and duty to tell the truth to all christians can get offended if others do not believe what is self evidently to them the truth non christians do not believe this is the truth and get offended at them because they christians claim to know the truth btw this argument goes for anyone i am not just bagging christians neither side can be really reconciled unless one of the parties changes their mind as melinda pointed out there is no point in arguing along these lines because both approach from a different premise a more useful line of discussion is why people believe in particular faiths personally i don t mind what anyone believes as long as they allow me mine and we can all live peacefully steve hayes department of missiology editorial department don lowe department of physics monash university melbourne victoria australia
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re accepting jesus in your heart i have been told that i seem to be very smug in my post i appoligize if anyone felt this way i did not at all desire to come across in that way i was trying to express that i didn t understand his logic and that i wished him the best in his life in christ s love bryan whitsell
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watt misquoted heath athena cs uga edu terrance heath writes i realize i m entering this discussion rather late but i do have one question wasn t it a reagan appointee james watt a pentacostal christian i think who was the secretary of the interior who saw no problem with deforestation since we were living in the last days and ours would be the last generation to see the redwoods anyway for the record on february at a house of representatives interior committee meeting rep james weaver d ore asked watt whether you agree that we should save some of our scenic resources for our children not just gobble them up all at once watt s answer was absolutely that is the delicate balance the secretary of the interior must have to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations i do not know how many future generations we can count on before the lord returns whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to have the resources needed for future generations my source is a column by rowland evans and robert novak on the op ed page of the washington post for friday august yours james kiefer
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re accepting jeesus in your heart in apr athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org writes gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes firstly i am an atheist i am not posting here as an immature flame start but rather to express an opinion to my intended audience deleted we are just animals we need sleep food and we reproduce and we die i am glad that i am not an atheist it seems tragic that some people choose a meaningless existence how terrible to go on living only because one fears death more than life huh okay so i m not eric molas but even if that is how he feels about life i disagree with it life to me is definitely not meaningless it has precisely the purpose and meaning i choose to give it i go on living because i like living if i needed any further reason i d be free completely free to pick any reason that suited me that freedom can be almost intoxicating it s probably the closest i ve ever been to a religious experience i m very glad i am an atheist i wouldn t be anything else i feel so sorry for eric and yet any attempts to share my joy in life with him would be considered as further evidence of the infectious nature of christianity not unless in explaining your own subjective experience you also try to convert him or proselytize merely explaining the effects you personally experience religion as having on you is not infectious not unless eric is paranoid that is as a christian i am free to be a human person i think love choose and create i will live forever with god whatever floats your goat you sound happy enough that s fairly much all that matters right christ is not a kind of drug drugs are a replacement for christ erh pardon but it strikes me that sentence sounds reversible those who have an empty spot in the god shaped hole in their hearts must do something to ease the pain empty spot god shaped hole i hear such things a lot from theists never quite did understand what they were talking about i have no such emptiness or hole maybe some others do i wouldn t know but i don t and if i did i d seek help about it doesn t sound like a mentally healthy situation at all walking around with a hole in oneself thank you eric for your post it has helped me to appreciate how much god has blessed me i hope that you will someday have a more joy filled and abundant life well not having written that original post i don t know if it was intended to be interpreted in such a way but having reread it carefully i somewhat doubt it at least that s not how he gets across to me your mileage may vary disclaimer it s great to be young and insane
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hebrew grammar texts choose english or german greetings probably a tired old horse but maybe with a slightly different twist i wanted to know if there are any good english language texts for learning ancient hebrew and how these compare with german educational texts qualitywise if anybody has an idea i can t figure out if i should buy one here for later study or wait until i get back to the u s something i find interesting about studying theology in germany is the fact that the students get their ancient language learning out of the way early i m not a theology student but i spend a lot of time with such folks in their careers they take the first two years or so to just do greek and latin and hebrew possibly aramaic too who knows what s it like at divinity schools or seminaries in the states is there a lot of language instruction done i really don t have a basis for comparison regards phil philip sells is anything too hard for the lord k hobbes kzoo edu gen for better of worse we don t have the tradition of classical education in the u s so generally if a seminary believes students should know greek they have to teach it it s common for seminaries to require at least a semester each of hebrew and greek though of course more is required for serious scholarship clh
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re cause trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes norris athena mit edu writes some stuff deleted fortunately for the convenience of us believers there is a class of questions that can never be reduced away by natural science for example why does the universe exist at all must there be a why to this i ask because of what you also assume about god namely that he just exists with no why to his existence so the question is reversed why can t we assume the universe just exists as you assume god to just exist why must there be a why to the universe remainder of message deleted pardon me for replying to only a portion of your message the reason we can say god just exists and can t say the universe just exists is because the universe is a natural realm and is subject to natural laws in general and the law of cause and effect in particular that is we observe in nature that every cause has an effect and every effect was produced by a cause the existence of the natural realm as an effect itself cannot be its own cause it must therefore have a supernatural cause god on the other hand is a supernatural being and is therefore not subject to such natural laws as the law of cause and effect as a supernatural being god s eternal existence does not imply a previous cause the way the existence of a physical natural cosmos does thus those who believe in the supernatural have a valid basis for accepting the existence of uncaused phenomena such as the eternal god whereas those who deny the existence of the supernatural are faced with the dilemma of a physical universe whose very nature shows that it is not sufficient to explain its own existence this is of course an oversimplification of a complex topic but i just wanted to clarify some important differences between the supernatural god and the natural the universe since you seem to mistake them as being interchangeable mark
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re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes we are just animals we need sleep food and we reproduce and we die i agree we need sleep etc but i disagree we are just animals that statement is a categorical negative it s like saying there are no polkadoted elephants it may be true but one would have to be omniscient to know for sure rob steele in coming to understand anything mit lincoln laboratory we are rejecting the facts as they wood st m are for us in favour of the facts lexington ma as they are c s lewis
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes well then buddhism confucianism taoism hinduism judaism zoerasterism shintoism and islam should fit this bit of logic quite nicely all have depth all have enduring values thus all must be true yep there s truth in all those religions even in science christianity doesn t claim to know it all it does claim certain things are true though that contradict other religions truth claims so they can t all be true rob steele in coming to understand anything mit lincoln laboratory we are rejecting the facts as they wood st m are for us in favour of the facts lexington ma as they are c s lewis
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re when are two people married in god s eyes i think it was lewis who said that in a wedding it s the principals that marry each other the church and the state are present merely as witnesses rob steele in coming to understand anything mit lincoln laboratory we are rejecting the facts as they wood st m are for us in favour of the facts lexington ma as they are c s lewis this is not just lewis it s a summary of standard catholic theology however this doesn t mean that the presence of those witnesses is optional except in odd situations like the standard desert island clh
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re some questions from a new christian bach udel edu steven r hoskins writes i realize i am very ignorant about much of the bible and quite possibly about what christians should hold as true this i am trying to rectify by reading the bible of course but it would be helpful to also read a good interpretation commentary on the bible or other relevant aspects of the christian faith one of my questions i would like to ask is can anyone recommend a good reading list of theological works intended for a lay person i won t even recommend books from my congregation what you ask sounds attractive but it is dangerous as a new christian you don t want to be contaminated with other people s interpretation steep your self in scripture and discuss with other christians read if your must but remember that what other people write is their interpretation god has promised to give you light so ask for it i have another question i would like to ask i am not yet affiliated with any one congregation aside from matters of taste what criteria should one use in choosing a church i don t really know the difference between the various protestant denominations don t wait too long before attaching yourself to church just remember to always compare what they teach you with scripture like the bereans did darius
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when are two people married listowner i have sent this to mr anderson privately post it only if you think it of general interest here is a copy of something i wrote for another list you may find it relevant a listmember asks what makes common law marriages wrong a common law marriage is not necessarily wrong in itself there is nothing in the bible old or new testament about getting married by a preacher or by a priest jewish or christian and in fact jewish priests have never had any connection with weddings there is a common notion that the marriage is performed by the clergyman in fact the traditional christian view at least in the west is that the bride and groom are the ministers of the marriage and that the clergyman is there only as a witness however the essential ingredient of a marriage is mutual commitment two persons are considered to be married if and only if they have bound themselves by mutual promises to live together as husband and wife forsaking all others till death do them part the reason why those who have reason to be concerned about who is married to whom have always insisted on some kind of public ceremony is in order that society and the couple themselves may be clear about whether a commitment has been made suppose that we do away with the public ceremony the standard vows etc instead we have a man and a woman settling down to live together after a year or so the man says to the woman hey honey it was great while it lasted but i think it s time to move on she says what are you talking about he says i am leaving you and looking for someone prettier and younger she says but you can t we are married he says what are you talking about we never got married she says i remember distinctly what you said to me the night we first made love you said my love for you is as deep as the ocean as eternal as the stars as long as i live i am yours utterly and completely when i lie on my deathbed my last feeble breath will utter your name my he says oh that that was just rhetoric just poetry when a man is in a romantic mood he is bound to say all kinds of silly things like that you mustn t take them literally and that is why you have an insistence on a formal ceremony that is a matter of public record the church insists on it because it is her duty among other things to give moral advice and you cannot give a man moral advice about his relations with a woman if you have no idea who is married to whom if anybody and vice versa the state insists on it since the state has a concern with property rights with child care and support and therefore needs to know who has made what commitments to whom prospective fathers in law insist on it because they don t want their daughters seduced and abandoned prospective spouses insist on it because they want to make sure they know whether what they are hearing is a real commitment or just poetry and persons making vows themselves insist on making them formally and publicly in order that they may be clear in their own minds about what it is that they are doing and may know themselves that this is not just rhetoric this is the real thing hence the insistence on a formal public explicit avowal of the marriage commitment the church goes further and insists that when christians marry a clergyman shall be present at the wedding and record the vows on behalf of the church not because it is impossible to have a valid wedding without a clergyman but in order to make sure that the couple understand what the christian teaching about marriage is and that they are in fact promising to be married in a christian sense the church also prefers a standard marriage vow and is wary of letting couples write their own vows for much the same reason that lawyers prefer standard terminology when they draw up a will or a contract certain language has been repeatedly used in wills and one can be sure how the courts will interpret it try to say the same thing in your own words and you may find that the probate judge s interpretation of them is not at all what you intended similarly the church prefers to avoid endless debates about whether you are my main squeeze and i am here for the long haul do in fact cover the same territory as forsaking all others and till death do us part this topic has come up on the list before is there any topic that hasn t one listmember was asking if a couple love each other and are living together isn t that marriage in the eyes of god eventually someone asked in that case what is their status if they break up is that the moral equivalent of getting a divorce are they in a relationship that god forbids either of them to walk out on the original questioner said good grief i never thought of that in fact there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that someone who says we don t need a piece of paper or a ceremony in front of a judge or a preacher in order to show that we love each other is trying to have it both ways to have the advantages of marriage plus the option of changing his mind with a minimum of bother at this point someone may say none of this applies to me and my mate we are quite clear on the fact that we have assumed a lifelong commitment for better or worse forsaking all others till death us do part so in our case no ceremony is needed to this my reply would be the reason for requiring a driver s license is to keep dangerous drivers off the road what is wrong in itself is not the existence of unlicensed drivers but the existence of dangerous drivers however testing and licensing drivers is an obvious and reasonable means of pursuing the goal of reducing the number of dangerous drivers on the road therefore the state rightly makes and enforces such laws and you the citizen have a positive moral obligation to refrain from driving without a license no matter how much of a hotshot behind the wheel you think you are back to the original question we have a listmember who knows a couple who have been living together for around years he asks at what point did they stop fornicating and start being married i answer at the point if any where they both definitely and explicitly accepted an obligation to be faithful to each other for better or worse as long as they both lived if they have accepted such an obligation what are their reasons for not being willing to declare it in front of say a justice of the peace yours james kiefer
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9,096 |
soc.religion.christian
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book review wanted i m interested if anyone out here can point me towards a review of the following book in any scholarly christian journal whether it be conservative or liberal protestant or catholic the lost years of jesus documentary evidence for jesus year journey to the east by elizabeth clare prophet supposedly this is a theory that was refuted in the past and she has re examined it i thought this was just another novel book but i saw it listed as a text for a class in religious studies here also the endorsements seem to come from some credible sources so i m wondering if scholars have reviewed it or anyone on the net for that matter rob butera ece grad student only sick music makes money today rice university houston tx nietzsche
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9,097 |
soc.religion.christian
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re did he really rise frank i got your mailing on early historical references to christianity i d like to respond but i lost your address please mail me scott oser
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9,098 |
soc.religion.christian
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bible unsuitable for new christians a new christian wrote that he was new to the faith and learning about it by reading the bible of course i am not at all sure this is the best path to follow while the bible is for christians the word of god the revelation of god is jesus christ and the chief legacy of this revalation is the church i am not recommending any one denommination but i do recommend finding a comfortable christian congregation in which to develop your faith rather than just reading the bible this does not mean that the bible should not be read although i would stick to the gospels epistles and psalms and avoid the book of revelation altogether until you are with friends you are comfortable with i am sure that mistakenly fervent projects to read the entire bible have frequently bogged down with a remarkable lack of fervour somewhere in the middle of leviticus or for the really sturdy somewhere in chronicles the point is that the bible is their to illustrate the faith of christians but does not provide the totality of that faith vital beliefs of virtually all christians are simply not mentioned the trinity the duality of natures in christ types of church organization all these beliefs and practices have developed from the lived experience of the christian people an experience lived one hopes in the spirit as such the bible i think is better studies in the context of a congregation and the context of other reading following up on a suggestion of an old confessor of mine i would even suggest that a good novel is a good way to reflect on the christian life most novels of any profundity are actually discussing the nature of good and evil in the human heart my own induction into the christian faith was brought about after grace through reading graham greene the power and the glory and the poetry of gerard manley hopkins i would also recommend graham greene s monsignor quixote and any novel by iris murdoch the last is not even a christian but such is her insistence on the need for the good life that frankly i often am more uplifted and god directed after reading her than after reading many parts of the bible and that after all is what being a christian is all about letting your soul and your life be in some way directed towards the infinite represented to us by the person of jesus christ paul halsall halsall murray fordham edu
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9,099 |
soc.religion.christian
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re nature of god re environmentalism and paganism in a previous article mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington says in article apr athos rutgers edu heath athena cs uga edu terrance heath writes that is not necessarily unorthodox when christians call god father we are using a metaphor the bible in one place refers to god as being like a mother god is neither a father nor a mother in the literal sense god has some of the attributes of both the father metaphor is usually used because for most people at most times it is the less misleading of the two possibilities i don t know which passage you are refering to but the passage i have often seen cited as an example of a mother image of god is isaiah can a woman forget her sucking child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb even these may forget yet i will not forget you this passage is not a mother image of god at all the mother here is the image of the best human constancy can show and it is contrasted with the constancy of god the mother figure here represents mankind not god mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis luke o jerusalem jerusalem killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you how often would i have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not clh
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