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re sspx schism larry l overacker writes responding to simon i may be interesting to see some brief selections posted to the net my understanding is that sspx does not consider itself in schism or legitimately excommunicated but that s really beside the point what does the roman catholic church say excommunication can be real apart from formal excommunication as provided for in canon law here s some of the theology involved for the interested there is confusion over this issue of the sspx s schism often the basic problem is lack of an ability to distinguish between true obedience false obedience disobedience schism take the various classifications of obedience first there are important elements involved here for my purposes a command the response made to the command as far as the command goes commands can be legitimate such as the pope ordering catholics to not eat meat on fridays or they can be illegitimate such as the pope ordering catholics to worship the god dagon when every other full moon comes around as far as the response to a command goes it can be to refuse to do what is commanded or to comply making a table there are thus possibilites command response name legitimate comply true obedience illegitimate refuse true obedience legitimate refuse disobedience illegitimate comply false obedience so now you see where my classifications of obedience come from obedience is not solely a matter of compliance refusal the nature of the commands must also be taken into account it is not enough to consider someone s compliance or refusal and then say whether they are obedient or disobedient you also have to take into consideration whether the commands are good or bad in my example if the pope commands all catholics to worship the god dagon and they all refuse they aren t being disobedient at all as far as the society of saint pius x goes they are certainly refusing to comply with certain things the pope desires but that alone is insufficient to allow one to label them disobedient you also have to consider the nature of the papal desires and there s the rub sspx says the popes since vatican ii have been commanding certain very bad things for the church the popes have of course disagreed so where are we are we in another arian heresy complete with weak popes or are the sspx priests modern martin luthers well the only way to answer that is to examine who is saying what and what the traditional teaching of the church is the problem here is that very few catholics have much of an idea of what is really going on and what the issues are the religion of american catholics is especially defective in intellectual depth you will never read about the issues being discussed in the catholic press in this country on the other hand one italian catholic magazine i get days has had interviews with the superior general of the society of saint pius x many catholics will decide to side with the pope there is some soundness in this because the papacy is infallible so eventually some pope will straighten all this out but on the other hand there is also unsoundness in this in that in the short term the popes may indeed be wrong and such catholics are doing nothing to help the situation by obeying them where they re wrong in fact if the situation is grave enough they sin in obeying him at the very least they re wasting a great opportunity because they are failing to love christ in a heroic way at the very time that he needs this badly schism let s move on to schism what is it schism is a superset of disobedience refusal to obey a legitimate command all schismatics are disobedient but it s a superset so it doesn t work the other way around not all disobeyers are schismatics the mere fact that the sspx priests don t comply with the holy father s desires doesn t make them schismatics so what is it that must be added to disobedience to constitute a schism maybe this something else makes the sspx priests schismatics you must add this the rejection of the right to command look in any decent reference on catholic theology and that s what you ll find the distinguishing criterion of schism is rejection of the right to command here s what the catholic encyclopedia says for example not every disobedience is a schism in order to possess this character it must include besides the trangression of the commands of superiors denial of their divine right to command from the ce article schism is the society of saint pius x then schismatic the answer is a clear no they say that the pope is their boss they pray for him every day and that s all that matters as far as schism goes what all this boils down to is this if we leave aside the consideration of the exact nature of their objections their position is a legitimate one as far as the catholic theology of obedience and schism goes they are resisting certain papal policies because they think that they are clearly contrary to the traditional teaching of the papacy and the best interests of the church in fact someone who finds himself in this situation has a duty to resist now what is the stance of rome on all this well if you read the holy father s motu proprio ecclesia dei you can find out it s the definitive document on the subject a motu proprio is a specifically papal act it s not the product of a roman congregation a letter that the pope has possibly never even read it s from the pope himself his boss is god there s no one else to complain to in this document the holy father says among other things the episcopal consecrations performed by archbishop lefebvre constituted a schismatic act archbishop lefebvre s problem was a misunderstanding of the nature of tradtion both are confusing i fail to see the logic of the pope s points as far as the episcopal consecrations go i read an interesting article in a translation of the italian magazine si si no no it all gets back to the question of jurisdiction if episcopal consecrations imply rejection of the pope s jurisdiction then they would truly constitute a schismatic act justifying excommunication under the current code of canon law but my problem with this is this according to the traditional theology of holy orders episcopal consecration does not confer jurisdiction it only confers the power of order the ability to confect the sacraments jurisdiction must be conferred by someone else with the power to confer it such as the pope the society bishops knowing the traditional theology quite well take great pains to avoid any pretence of jurisdiction over anyone they simply confer those sacraments that require a bishop the si si no no article was interesting in that it posited that the reason that the pope said what he did is that he has a novel post vatican ii idea of holy orders according to this idea episcopal consecration does confer jurisdiction i lent the article to a friend unfortunately so can t tell you more i believe they quoted the new code of canon law in support of this idea the pope s thinking on this point remains a great puzzle to me there s no way there is a schism according to traditional catholic theology so why does the pope think this as far as the points regarding the nature of tradition goes here s the passage in question the root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of tradtion incomplete because it does not take sufficiently into the account the living character of tradition which as the second vatican council clearly taught comes from the apostles and progresses in the church with the help of the holy spirit there is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on this comes about in various ways it comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts it comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience and it comes from the preaching of those who have received along with their right of succession in the espiscopate the sure charism of truth but especially contradictory is a notion of tradition which opposes the universal magisterium of the church possessed by the bishop of rome and the body of bishops it is impossible to remain faithful to the tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom in the person of the apostle peter christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his church papal motu proprio ecclesia dei july it seems to me that the holy father is making two points here that can be simplified to the following vatican council ii has happened i am the pope the argument being that either case is sufficient to prove that archbishop lefebvre must be wrong because he disagrees with them this is weak to say the least it would have helped clarify things more if the pope had addressed archbishop lefebvre s concerns in detail what is john paul ii s stand on the social kingship of christ as taught by gregory xvi pius ix leo xiii pius xi and pius xii for example are we supposed to ignore what all these popes said on the subject i don t know what the future will hold but the powers that be in the sspx are still talking with rome and trying to straighten things out many people would prefer to call a justified refusal to obey justified disobedience or even obeying god rather than man calling a refusal to obey obedience puts us into a sort of alice in wonderland world where words mean whatever we want them to mean similarly schism indicates a formal break in the church if the pope says that a schism exists it seems to me that by definition it exists it may be that the pope is on the wrong side of the break that there is no good reason for the break to exist and that it will shortly be healed but how can one deny that it does in fact exist it seems to me that you are in grave danger of destroying the thing you are trying to reform the power of the papacy what good will it do you if you become reconciled to the the pope in the future but in the process you have destroyed his ability to use the tools of church discipline it s one thing to hold that the pope has misused his powers and excommunicated someone wrongly it s something else to say that his excommunication did not take effect and the schism is all in his imagination that means that acts of church discipline are not legal tools but acts whose validity is open to debate generally it has been liberal catholics who have had problems with the pope while they have often objected to church sanctions generally they have admitted that the sanctions exist you are now opening the door to people simply ignoring papal decisions claiming to be truly obeying by disobeying and to be in communion while excommunicated this would seem to be precisely the denial of divine right to command that you say defines schism clh
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re quality of catholic liturgy tim rolfe writes without active participation if you know the latin one really beautiful way to hear the passion is it s being chanted by three deacons the narrator chants in the middle baritone range jesus chants in the bass and others directly quoted are handled by a high tenor i heard the gregorian chant of the passion on good friday in this liturgy our lord is definitely very sad it s as if he has resigned himself to die for these poor pitiful creatures who are killing him the chant is quite beautiful
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re anger paul conditt writes in case you couldn t tell i get extremely angry and upset when i see things like this instead of rationalizing our own fears and phobias we need to be reaching out to people with aids and other socially unacceptable diseases whether they got the disease through their own actions or not is irrelevant they still need jesus aaron bryce cardenas writes the first issue you bring up is your anger it is obvious ly wrong to be angry gal for any reason especially extremely angry which is on par with hatred jesus has every reason to be angry at us for putting him on the cross with our sin yet his prayer was forgive them father they know not what they do i don t know why it is so obvious we are not speaking of acts of the flesh we are just speaking of emotions emotions are not of themselves moral or immoral good or bad emotions just are the first step is not to label his emotion as good or bad or to numb ourselves so that we hide our true feelings it is to accept ourselves as we are as god accepts us it seems that paul s anger he has accepted and channeled it to a plea to all of us to refrain from passing judgement on those afflicted with a disease and to reach out to others give in calling his arguments foolish belittling them to only quarrels avoiding action because of fear to give others a bad feeling he s not forgiving re think it aaron don t be quick to judge he has forgiven those with aids he has dealt with and taken responsibility for his feelings and made appropriate choices for action on such feelings he has not given in to his anger joe moore
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re online bible as bible study in apr athos rutgers edu eng nusunix nus sg ling siew wee writes hello i am about to embark on a bible study on acts i have online bible software with me i would like to know the the background of the authors of its various topics articles and about the author of the people s new testament i need to know how realible is the articles in the online bible software specifically for your convenience i want to know about the darby translation i have never heard of this one j n darby was one of the founders of the plymouth brethren and an early supporter of dispensationalism f f bruce highly approved of his translation he also translated the bible into several other languages young s literal translation i have also never heard of this was from the same fellow who did young s concordance which was a standard reference work similar to strong s concordance the realiability of the hebrew greek lexicon i believe that these just follow standard reference works the authors from which denomination etc of the articles in the topics modules some are by larry pierce brethren some are by baptists and i think that thompson of chain reference fame was presbyterian the realiability of the treasury of scripture knowlege as i have never heard of too another standard reference work that has been around for decades a new version was just released and is available through christian book distributers who are the commentators scofield and b w johnson who wrote the scofield reference bible and the people s new testament respectively c i scofield was the creator of the scofield reference bible for many people but not me this is the study bible the notes are strongly dispensational the realiability of the strong numbers these are probably the most accurate strong s numbers available shawn abigail abigail ramsey cs laurentian ca
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re sda doctrinal distinctives healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes in article mar athos rutgers edu jodfishe silver ucs indiana edu joseph dale fisher writes there is a book provided by the sda which is entitled the seventh day adventist church believes or something like that the book is called basic fundamental beliefs or something very close to that the number is not i have a copy at home i m away at school actually the book is called seventh day adventists believe and there are basica beliefs i believe it is printed by the reveiew and herald publishing association competition is the law of the jungle cooperation is the law of civilization eldridge cleaver sherman cox ii scox uahcs cs uah edu
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re rebuilding the temple was re anybody out there tcsteven iaserv b ingr com todd stevens writes chuck petch writes now it appears that nothing stands in the way of rebuilding and resuming sacrifices as the scriptures indicate will happen in the last days although the israeli government will give the permission to start i think it is the hand of god holding the project until he is ready to let it happen brothers and sisters the time is at hand our redemption is drawing near look up how is a scriptural levitical priesthood resumed are there any jews who can legitimately prove their levite bloodline if i am not mistaken the jewish family names cohen kahn etc are considered to be legitimate indicators of descent from aaron the family names levi levene etc are considered to be legitimate indicators of descent from levi the main legal issue is the purification of the priesthood which is supposed to involve finding the ashes of of the red heifer last used for this purpose years ago steven stovall stovall exeter cs ucla edu
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tuff to be a christian bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes i don t think most people understand what a christian is it is certainly not what i see a lot in churches rather i think it should be a way of life and a total sacrafice of everything for god s sake he loved us enough to die and save us so we should do the typical statement from an irrational and brainwashed person the bible was written by some male chavnist thousands of years ago as were all of the holy books follow the parts that you think are suitable for modern life ignore the others for heaven s sake don t take it literally same hey we can t do it god himself inspires us to turn our lives over to him that s tuff and most people don t want to do it to be a real christian would be something for the strong to persevere at but so you think it is easy to be a muslim or be a buddhist the buddha s commandments are yrs older than christ s and in my opinion tougher to follow moreover the buddha says that we are intrinsically good as against christ s we are all sinners only we allow ourselves to be distracted by meditating we can awaken ourselves etc etc also there is no concept of god in buddhism in my opinion you can be an atheist and a buddhist but to awaken yourself is no easy task can you stay away from eating meat can you sit still and think of nothing meditate for sometime everyday buddhists do or are supposed to can you pray five times a day can you fast for a month every year ramzan are you willing to give th of your income as tithe muslims do in fact i think jesus was an ordinary man just as buddha and mohamed probably with a philosopy ahead of the times where he lived considering the fact that christianity is a young religion compared to hindiusm judaism zorasterism buddihsm it is also very probable that the bible is merely a collection of borrowed ideas there was a good deal of trade between the eastern lands and the middle east at the time of christ and perhaps some more but leave the crap in it out woman was created after man to be his helper etc aras just like weight lifting or guitar playing drums whatever it takes time we don t rush it in one day christianity is your whole life it is not going to church once a week or helping poor people once in a while we box everything into time units such as work at this time sports tv social life god is above these boxes and should be when ever i turn on my tv there is this pat robertson and other brain washers oh boy what an act they put on with an number to turn in your pledges god it seems is alive and well inside these boxes carried with us into all these boxes that we have created for ourselves parting question would you have become a christian if you had not been indoctrinated by your parents you probably never learned about any other religion to make a comparative study and therefore i claim you are brain washed
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c s lewis is ok was ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu mayne ds scri fsu edu bill mayne wrote 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 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 bill mayne this may be unfair to lewis the most prominent fallacy attributed to him is the liar lunatic and lord as quoted by many christians this is a logical fallacy in its original context it was not clh exactly c s lewis has taken a couple of pretty severe hits in this group lately first somebody was accusing him of being self righteous and unconvincing now we are told that we christians should be embarrassed by him as well as by josh mcdowell about whom i have no comment having never read his work anyone who thinks that c s lewis was self righteous ought to read his introduction to the problem of pain which is his theodicy in it he explains that he wanted to publish the book anonymously why although he believed in the argument he was presenting he did not want to seem to presume to tell others how brave they should be in the face of their own suffering he did not want people to think that he was presenting himself as some kind of model of fortitude or that he was anything other than what he considered himself to be a great coward ofm has adequately handled the question of whether we ought to be embarrassed by lewis liar lunatic lord argument which by the way is part of a much bigger discourse i would just like to add that far from being embarrassed by lewis i am in a state of continual amazement at the soundness and clarity of the arguments he presents phil hey we re talking about the phone company here the phone company doesn t have opinions on this kind of stuff this is all me
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doctrine of god this is being posted as a general outline for your personal study of this doctrine the doctrine of god i the persons of the godhead of all of the doctrines of scripture this is the most important the bible is pre eminently a revelation of god therefore our first objective in studying the bible should be to know god i believe that the bible teaches that there are three persons in the godhead trinity god the father god the son the lord jesus christ and god the holy spirit i believe that they are individual persons who are one in nature meaning that they are identical in nature each possessing the same divine attributes they are also equally worthy of our worship our trust and our obedience cf matt cor john ii the attributes or characteristics of the godhead a god s nature is revealed in the name he has taken for himself jehovah he is the living god eternal and unchanging he is without beginning and without ending cf isa b god is a spirit cf john c god is love cf john as such he is gracious merciful good faithful patient and full of lovingkindness cf psa psa nahum d but god is also holy and righteous he is absolutely without sin in his nature and so is incapable of sinning in though word or action cf ex isa e god is omnipresent everywhere present at the same time in the completeness of his person omniscient all knowing knowing all things the end from the beginning infinitely wise omnipotent almighty sovereign with unlimited power over all creation god is infinite in his presence wisdom and power it is my conviction that the work of the lord in our day has become very man centered and that the people in our churches know very little about god i believe that the lord s work needs to be god centered and that the people of god need to understand that god is sovereign in all things in the affairs of nations in the lives of all people and in the carrying out of his purposes regarding salvation iii the works of the godhead a in creation all three persons of the godhead were active in creating and all three are active in sustaining creation and in ordering the course of human affairs for nations as well as individual people to the end of time cf gen john col heb b in salvation in order to understand salvation i believe that it is absolutely necessary to begin with god not with man all three persons of the godhead have been and are active in salvation god the father salvation originated with god the members of the godhead determined in eternity past that there would be salvation the conditions under which people could and would be saved and even who would be saved election to salvation is recognized in scripture as the work of god the father cf eph thess christ the son of god the lord jesus christ through his birth by the virgin mary came to the earth to accomplish two important works a he came as the final and complete revelation of god the father cf col heb b he came to provide salvation for all whom the father had chosen he did this by his death on the cross by his bodily resurrection and by his present intercessory work in heaven the work of salvation will be completed for us when the lord returns cf rom cor heb john the holy spirit as the author of scripture the theme of which is christ and his redemptive work the holy spirit is carrying out the redemptive plan of god in the following ways a he convicts of sin cf john b he regenerates known in the bible as the new birth cf john c he indwells each believer to fulfill the work of sanctification cf john d he seals every believer in christ thus making salvation secure cf eph e he baptizes every believer into the body of christ cf cor f he teaches every believer the truth of scripture cf john g he bestows spiritual gifts on the people of god for ministry cf cor h he restrains sin cf gal i he empowers for living and for service cf acts liane brown internet brownli ohsu edu portland oregon
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re questions who exactly is the lord god or jesus christ john says nkjv the little green gideon someone forced on me one day in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god the word refers to jesus christ so from this john declares that god and jesus are one therefore the lord refers to both also david in the psalms refers to both god in heaven and the coming messiah as his lord once again this refers to god and jesus what is the definition of a truly religious person should he she not swear curse does it say anything about this in the bible some of the most truly religious people i ve known have not been christians and some of the greatest christians i ve known have been truly irreligious however to answer your question the bible speaks of this in many places a previous post to james is a good one another is psalm lord who may abide in your tabernacle who may dwell in your holy hill he who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart he who does not backbite with his tongue nor does evil to his neighbor nor does he take up a reproach against his friend i whose eyes a vile person is despised but he honors those who fear the lord he who swears to his own hurt and does not change he who does not put out money at usury nor does he take a bribe aginst the innocent he who does these things shall never be moved rob coffey indeed the safest road to coffey cptc neep wisc edu hell is the gradual one the if you send mail to cptc gentle slope soft underfoot i ll never read it without sudden turnings without milestones without signposts screwtape the day techwood meets the wrecking ball the world shall rejoice but i ll have lost a former home
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being right about messiahs 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 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 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 mark and then if any one says to you look here is the christ or look there he is do not believe it mark false christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders to lead astray if possible the elect mark but take heed i have told you all things beforehand mark but in those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light mark and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken 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 he s telling us not to be misled by the other things that have to happen before his second coming the actual second coming will make his power openly visible by the way from koresh s public statement it s not so clear to me that he is claiming to be christ clh
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an agnostic s question pardon me if this is the wrong newsgroup i would describe myself as an agnostic in so far as i m sure there is no single universal supreme being but if there is one and it is just we will surely be judged on whether we lived good lives striving to achieve that goodness that is within the power of each of us now the complication is that one of my best friends has become very fundamentalist that would normally be a non issue with me but he feels it is his responsibility to proselytize me which i guess it is according to his faith this is a great strain to our friendship i would have no problem if the subject didn t come up but when it does the discussion quickly begins to offend both of us he is offended because i call into question his bedrock beliefs i am offended by what i feel is a subscription to superstition rationalized by such circular arguments as the bible is god s word because he tells us in the bible that it is so so my question is how can i convince him that this is a subject better left undiscussed so we can preserve what is in all areas other than religious beliefs a great friendship how do i convince him that i am beyond saving so he won t try thanks for any advice jim tomlinson falling snow bogart project jdt voodoo ca boeing com excellent snow boeing computer services uunet bcstec voodoo jdt anderson gabriel
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re phone number of wycliffe translators uk i m concerned about a recent posting about wbt sil i thought they d pretty much been denounced as a right wing organization involved in ideological manipulation and cultural interference including vietnam and south america a commission from mexican academia denounced them in as a covert political and ideological institution used by the u s govt as an instrument of control regulation penetration espionage and repression my concern is that this group may be seen as acceptable and even praiseworthy by readers of soc religion christian it s important that christians don t immediately accept every christian organization as automatically above reproach mp
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esotericism i m compiling a bibliography on religious perspectives on esotericism hermeticism gnosticism mysticism occultism alchemy and magic and am interested in sources that others have found particularly interesting and insightful i m especially interested in medieval works such as the chemical wedding of christian rosenkreutz and arthurian legends please feel free too to send personal opinions on any of the above pro or con or anywhere in between thanks much stephen twelker twelker ide com
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re certainty and arrogance in an earlier article i explained that what many people find arrogant about christians is that some christians profess absolute certianty about their beliefs and doctrines that is many christians insist that they cannot have made any mistakes when discovering their beliefs which amounts to saying that they are infallible impicitly claiming to be infallible is pretty arrogant most of us will probably agree in short the problem is that no matter how good your sources are if any part of your doctrines or beliefs rest on your own thinking and reasoning then those doctrines are suspect so long as your own brain is involved there is a possibility for error i summarised the problem by writing there is no way out of the loop someone called rexlex has claimed that there is a way out of the loop but he did not bother to explain what it was preferring instead to paraphrase sartre ramble about wittgenstein and say that the conclusion of my argument leads to relativism as i have explained to him before you cannot reject an argument as false because you dislike where it leads the facts do not change just because you dislike them rexlex wrote i disagree with dr nancy s sweetie s conclusion because if it is taken to fruition it leads to relativism which leads to dispair however as any first year philosophy student can explain what rexlex has written does not constitute a refutation all he has said is that he does not like what i wrote he has done nothing at all to dispute it there were two sentences in rexlex s post that seemed relevant to the point at hand there is such a thing as true truth and it is real it can be experienced and it is verifiable i do not dispute that some truths can be verified through experience i have for example direct experience of adding numbers i don t claim to be infallible at it in fact i remember doing sums incorrectly but i do claim that i have direct experience of reasoning about numbers however once we go past experiencing things and start reasoning about them we are on much shakier ground that was the point of the earlier article human brains are infested with sin and they can only be trusted in very limited circumstances it is only because of god s own revelation that we can be absolute about a thing but how far does that get you once god s revelation stops and your own reasoning begins possibility for error appears for example let s suppose that our modern bible translations include a perfect rendering of jesus words at the last supper and that jesus said exactly this is my body we ll presume that what he said was totally without error and absolutely true what can we be certain of not much at the moment he stops speaking and people start interpreting the possibility of error appears did he mean that literally or not we do not have any record that he elaborated on the words was he thinking of tran or con substatiation he didn t say we interpret this passage using our brains we think and reason and draw conclusions but we know that our brains are not perfect our thinking often leads us wrong this is something that most of us have direct experience of why should anyone believe that his reasoning which he knows to be fallible can lead him to perfect conclusions so given the assumptions in this example what we can be certain of is that jesus said this is my body beyond that once we start making up doctrines and using our brains to reason about what christ revealed we get into trouble unless you are infallible there are very few things you can be certain of to the extent that doctrines rely on fallible human thinking they cannot be certain that is the problem of seeming arrogant the non christians around us know that human beings make mistakes just as surely as we know it they do not believe we are infallible any more than we do when christians speak as if they believe their own reasoning can never lead them astray when we implicitly claim that we are infallible the non christians around us rarely believe that implicit claim witnessing is hardly going to work when the person you are talking to believes that you are either too foolish to recognise your own limits or intentionally trying to cover them up i think it would be far better to say what things we are certain of and what things we are only very confident of for example we might say that we know our sin for recognising sin is something we directly experience but other things whether based on reasoning from scripture or extra biblical thinking should not be labled as infallible we should say that we are very confident of them and be ready to explain our reasoning but so far as i am aware none of us is infallible speaking or acting as if our thinking is flawless is ridiculous rexlex suggested that people read he is there and he is not silent by francis schaeffer i didn t think very highly of it but i think that mr schaeffer is grossly overrated by many evangelical christians somebody else might like it though so don t let my opinion stop you from reading it if someone is interested in my opinion i d suggest on certainty by ludwig wittgenstein darren f provine kilroy gboro rowan edu if any substantial number of talk religion misc readers read some wittgenstein of the postings would disappear if they understood some wittgenstein would disappear michael l siemon
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re sabbath admissions of all of the arguments concerning the sabbath ought to make the point pretty clear anyone outside of the catholic or orthodox oranglican or monophysite churches ourght to worship on saturday if they are really sola scriptura otherwise they are following a law put into effect by the church and only the above chruches really recognize any power of the chruch to do so andy byler you will note that nothing in the faq said anything about the church establishing or changing a law the argument against the sabbath is that it is part of the ceremonial law and like the rest of the ceremonial law is not binding on christians this argument is based on paul s letters acts and in a more general sense jesus teachings further most people argue that scripture shows worship occuring on sunday and paul endorsing it i understand that these points are disputed and do not want to go around the dispute one more time the point i m making here is not that these arguments are right but that the backing they claim is scripture accepting the principle of sola scriptura does not commit us to obeying the entire jewish law acts and paul s letters are quite clear on that i think even the sda s accept it the disagreement is on where the bible would have us place the line by the way protestants do give authority to the church in matters that are not dictated by god that s why churches are free to determine their own liturgies church polity etc if you accept that the sabbath is not binding on christians then the day of worship falls into the category of items on which individual christians or since worship is by its nature a group activity churches are free to decide clh
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thinking about heaven james sledd asks what is the nature of eternal life how can we as mortals locked into space time conceive of it a if the best we can do is metaphor analogy then what is the best metaphor c s lewis s essay the weight of glory deals with this question i recommend it enthusiastically you might also read the chapter on heaven in his book the problem of pain he gives a fictional treatment in his book the great divorce i have found all of these very helpful you might also be helped by the treatment in dante s divine comedy heaven occupies the last third of the poem but i cannot imagine reading it other than from the beginning i urge you to use the translation by dorothy l sayers available from penguin paperbacks yours james kiefer
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quality of catholic liturgy i appreciated the follow ups and replies to my earlier query one reply which i have lost suggested several parishes in new york that have good masses one of which was corpus christi in downtown manhattan by coincidence last week s america the national jesuit magazine carried an interview with fr myles bourke corpus christi s pastor emeritus fr bourke also directed the nt translation in the new american bible he noted certain practices have been introduced into the mass in such a manner that an atmosphere of banality and sometimes of hilarity has trivialized the liturgy i note that at my parents parish on easter helium filled balloons were distributed at the offertory apparently to aid in understanding the word risen this was not a kiddie mass either but the well attended mass i wanted to note the generous spirit behind the replies this newsgroup as a whole offers generally moderate perhaps because it s moderated conversation on topics that often lead people to extreme behavior including myself sometimes people do go over the top but the remarkable thing is how that is the exception i think benefits of the doubt are generally granted it seems so christian john murray
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re did he really rise in article apr geneva rutgers edu parkin eng sun com writes desperately wanted the jewish people to accept him as the messiah if the crucification was the will of god how could jesus pray that this cup pass from him was this out of weakness never many men and women have given their lives for their country or other noble causes is jesus less than these no he is not he knew the crucification was not the will of god god s will was that the jewish people accept jesus as the messiah and that the kingdom of heaven be established on the earth with jesus as it s head just like the jewish people expected if this had happened years ago can you imagine what why do you assume that jesus s plea to his father to let this cup pass from him was merely a plea to escape death when i look at jesus in the garden i see a man god who all his life had had the presense of his father with him as a result he knew every detail about his death long before the agony in the garden but as that hour approached he felt abandoned by his father his presense diminishing with each passing minute in addition it was brought more and more to jesus s attention the betrayal of judas was probably a big impact that his suffering would be to no avail for many people especially those who would reject him not only then but in the future i truly believe that the majority of jesus s suffering was mental and spiritual while the physical portion was only the tip of the iceburg btw we know from john s account that jesus shunned becomming an earthly king from john joh after the people saw the miraculous sign that jesus did they began to say surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world joh jesus knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force withdrew again to a mountain by himself this does not seem like a man who would regret not becoming an earthly king no jesus knew his mission was to redeem all jew gentile people and establish his kingdom in the hearts of those who would believe this was utterly mistaken much to jesus s dismay as an aspiration to some earthly kingdom but he knew what his father s will was and followed it obediently even in the darkness of his passion john g ata technical consultant internet ata hfsi com hfs inc va uucp uunet hfsi ata westpark drive ms voice mclean va fax
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re hell black sabbath in article apr geneva rutgers edu jprzybyl skidmore edu jennifer przybylinski writes 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 jeff fenholt claims to have once been a roadie for black sabbath he was never ever a musician in the band he was in st louis several months back the poster i saw at the christian bookstore i frequent really turned me off it was addressed to all homosexuals prostitutes drug addicts alcoholics and headbangers or something like that well if i showed up with my long hair and black leather jacket i would have felt a little pre judged as a orthodox christian and a headbanger i was slightly insulted at being lumped together with drug addicts and alcoholics oh yes i suppose since i drink a good german beer now and then that makes me an alcoholic not steven c salaris we re a lot more dangerous than live crew salaris carcs wustl edu and their stupid use of foul language because we have ideas we have a philosophy geoff tate queensryche
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harrassed at work could use some prayers my news feed is broken and i haven t received any new news in hours more than days so if you reply to this please send private email to the address esther demand ed ray com i have set the reply to line to have that address but i don t know if it will work it depends upon the software but generally i wouldn t expect reply to to cause an email cc to be sent in addition to a posting you ll probably need to do something specific which will vary depending upon your news software clh at any rate i need some support much thanks to jayne k who is already supporting me with kind words and prayers i ve been working at this company for eight years in various engineering jobs i m female yesterday i counted and realized that on seven different occasions i ve been sexually harrassed at this company seven times eight years yesterday was the most recent one someone left an x rated photo of a nude woman in my desk drawer i m really upset by this i suppose it could have been worse it could have been a man having sex with a sheep or something there was no note i do not know if it was someone s idea of an innocent joke that went awry someone s sick idea of flirting an act of emotional terrorism that worked i dreaded coming back to work today what if my boss comes in to ask me some kind of question i don t know the answer so i take a military specification down off from my shelf to look up the answer and out falls a picture of a man having sex with a sheep i generally have a bible on my desk for occasional inspiration what if i open it up to corinthians and find a picture a la the north american man boy love association i want to throw up just thinking about this stuff i can lock up my desk but i can t lock up every book i have in the office i can t trust that someone won t shove something into my briefcase or my coat pocket when i m not looking so that i go home to find such a picture or a threat or a raunchy note about what someone wants to do to my body to make it worse the entire department went out to lunch yesterday to treat our marvelous secretary to lunch the appointed hour for leaving was i was working in another building but wanted to go to the lunch so i returned at only to find that ever single person had already left for lunch they left at or so no one could be bothered to call me at the other building even though my number was posted so i came back to a department that looked like a neutron bomb had gone off and i was the sole survivor this despite the fact that everyone knew how bad i felt about this naked woman being left in my desk drawer i need some prayers i can t stop crying i am so deeply wounded that it s ridiculous i feel like i m some kind of sub human piece of garbage for people to reduce me and my sisters to simply sex organs and the sex act i feel like i m a sub human piece of garbage that s not worthy of a simple phone call saying we re leaving for mary s lunch a little early so that bob can get back for a big meeting please pray that my resentments will either go away or be miraculously turned into something positive please pray that whoever is torturing me so will stop and find some healing for him or herself please pray for my being healed from this latest wound which falls on top of a whole slew of other wounds please pray that i can find a new job in a place where the corporate culture does its best to prevent such harrassment from happening in the first place and swiftly acts appropriately when something occurs despite its best precautions this company in my opinion has pretty words about how sexual harrassment isn t tolerated but when you get right down to it how is it that one female engineer can be touched inappropriately left obsene or threatening notes left obscene pictures spoken to lewdly etc seven times in eight years in the same place pretty words from the company do me no good when i m terrified or healing from the latest assault and please pray that i don t turn into an automaton because of this that s my bad habit ignore it and it will go away you re not worth anyone s time so don t go talking to anyone about this you re right you are a sub human piece of garbage and deserve to be treated this way you are just an object you prostitute your mind to this company so why can t others expect you to prostitute your body there as well what makes you think women aren t just possessions and nothing more than sex organs and their ability to perform the sex act this is the kind of thinking that can catapault one into a major depressive episode please pray that these thoughts don t come into my head and stay there triggering depression please pray that this latest trauma doesn t come between me and god in a way a wound like this is an invitation to a deeper connection to god and it s also a possible trigger for a spiritual crisis that can separate one mentally from god i know god doesn t drop me from his loving hand but it s awfully easy for me to walk to the edge of the hand look down think i m falling and forget that god s still holding on to me although this probably isn t entirely appropriate for this newsgroup i really can use the kind of loving support you all provide for this reason i hope good mr moderator allows me this latest indulgence after all he s allowed me the thermometer note and a few other off the wall topics thanks in advance to everyone for your support and prayers peace to you esther esther paris raytheon equipment div marlboro ma esther demand ed ray com in his esteem nothing that was large enough to please was too small for the fingers john kitto the lost senses
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re sspx schism in article apr geneva rutgers edu shellgate llo uu psi com larry l overacker writes you ask where we are i would echo that question i m not trying to be contentious but assuming that the pope has universal jurisdiction and authority what authority do you rely upon for your decisions what prevents me from choosing any doctrine i like and saying that papal disagreement is an error that will be resolved in time this is especially true since councils of bishops have basically stood by the pope the ultimate question is the traditional theology of the church this is the only thing that it is possible to resist a pope for his departure from the traditional doctrine of the church if commands from any authority conflict with tradition the commands must be disobeyed my own view on this is that this conflict could only happen in a major way god would never allow a hair splitting situation to develop it would be too complex for people to figure out i don t view the present situation in the church as anything extremely complicated run through a list of what has happened in the last years in the catholic church and any impartial observer will be aghast it appears that much of what lies at the heart of this matter is disagreements over what is tradition and tradition and also over authority and discipline the problems stem from a general widespread ignorance of the catholic faith in my opinion most catholics know about zilch about the catholic faith this leaves them wide open for destruction by erring bishops it s basically the reformation part ii there is not even a question in my mind that in some respects the shards of the catholic church are currently being trampled upon by the catholic hierarchy i could go on listing shocking things for an hour probably take the situation in campos brazil for example i m reading a book on what happened there after vatican council ii the bishop antonio de castro mayer never introduced all the changes that followed in the wake of vatican ii he kept the traditional mass the same old catechisms etc he made sure the people knew their faith the catholic theology of obedience what modernism was etc he innoculated the people against what was coming well one day the order came from rome for his retirement it came when the pope was sick bishop de castro mayer waited until the pope recovered then inquired whether this command was what the pope really wanted or something that some liberal had commanded in his absence the pope confirmed the decision so the good bishop retired the injustice that followed was completely incredible a new bishop was installed he proceeded to expel most of bishop de castro mayer s clergy from their churches because they refused to celebrate the new mass the new bishop would visit a parish and celebrate a new mass the people would promptly walk out of the church en masse the bishop was enraged by this he usually resorted to enlisting the help of the secular authorities to eject the priest from the church the priests would just start building new churches the people were completely behind them the old parishes had the new mass as the bishop desired and virtually no parishioners the prime motivation for all this was completely illegal according to canon law no priest can be penalized in any way for saying the traditional mass because of legislation enacted by pope saint pius v nor is there any obligation to say the new mass during all this process the people of campos not just private individuals but including civil authorities were constantly sending petitions and letters to rome to do something about the new modernist bishop nothing was ever done no help ever arrived from rome eventually priests were kicked out and about people my question to the supporters of sspx is this is there any way that your positions with respect to church reforms could change and be conformed to those of the pope assuming that the pope s position does not change and that the leaders of sspx don t jointly make such choice if not this appears to be claiming infallible teaching authority if i adopt the view that i m not wrong i can t be wrong and there s no way i ll change my mind you must change yours that i ve either left the catholic church or it has left me if the pope defines certain things ex cathedra that would be the end of the controversy that process is all very well understood in catholic theology and anyone who doesn t go along with it is an instant non catholic the problem here is that people do not appreciate what is going on in the catholic world if they knew the faith and what our bishops are doing they would be shocked we sould argue from now until the second coming about what the real traditional teaching of the church is if this were a simple matter east and west would not have been separated for over years this isn t the case in the catholic church there is a massive body of traditional teaching the popes of the last years are especially relevant there is no question at all what the traditional doctrine is i thought that the teaching magisterieum of the church did not allow error in teachings regarding faith and morals even in the short term i may be wrong here i m not roman catholic that s heresy more or less although they have done a great job since the reformation the last years have seen so many errors spread that it s pitiful infallibility rests in the pope and in the church as a whole in the short term a pope or large sections of the church can go astray in fact that s what usually happens during a major heresy large sections of the church go astray the pope historically has been much more reliable everything will always come back in the long run what would be the effect of a pope making an ex cathedra statement regarding the sspx situation would it be honored if not how do you get around the formal doctrine of infallibility again i m not trying to be contentions i m trying to understand since i m orthodox i ve got no real vested interest in the outcome one way or the other yes it would be honored infallibility is infallibility but what is he going to define that the new mass is a better expression of the catholic faith than the old that sex education in the catholic schools is wonderful that all religions are wonderful except for that professed by the popes prior to vatican ii it does if the command was legitimate sspx does not view the pope s commands as legitimate why this is a very slippery slope not really start studying the major catholic theologians of the last years everything is very well spelled out the west excels at critical thought remember that s what catholic theologians have been busy at for centuries
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re when are two people married in god s eyes in article apr geneva rutgers edu mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes 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 i disagree people marry each other when they commit fully to each other as life partners they are married the ceremony may assist in emphasizing the depth of such a commitment but is of itself nothing god knows our hearts he knows when two have committed themselves to be one he knows the fears and delusions we have that keep us from fully giving ourselves to another the way i see it you d have to be living together in a marriage for somewhere between and years before anyone knew if a marriage really existed but god knows i don t think god keeps a scorebook joe moore
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re certainty and arrogance darren dr nancy s sweetie kilroy gboro rowan edu writes darren in an earlier article i explained that what many people find darren arrogant about christians is that some christians profess darren absolute certainty about their beliefs and doctrines and darren in short the problem is that no matter how good your sources darren are if any part of your doctrines or beliefs rest on your own darren thinking and reasoning then those doctrines are suspect the point that darren raises is a very lutheran viewpoint while reason is a gift from god it is also infected by sin yet we do not reject reason entirely and neither i think does darren we need reason as darren himself has pointed out to comprehend god s revelation of himself in the bible but reason alone is not sufficient to comprehend and believe the word we need first and foremost faith for the sinful mind is hostile to god it does not submit to god s law nor can it do so romans luther accepted scripture as the sole means of revelation sola scriptura but accepted the necessity of the use of reason with faith in comprehending that revelation yet luther also said regarding baptism but mad reason rushes forth and because baptism is not dazzling like the works which we do regards it as worthless large catechism fourth part baptism to make matters more complicated luther was the sort of theologian that many people would describe as an absolutist i ve seen him described as a take no prisoners theologian we might conclude given these observations that luther was inconsistent or mad and surely at least some have come to that conclusion but it might be useful to recall that jesus was also called mad and peter felt compelled to defend himself and the apostles against a charge of drunkenness on pentecost so we as christians ought to be careful about rejecting luther or others as mad rather we should imitate the bereans who examined the scriptures every day to see if what paul said was true acts the basis for the confidence with which luther peter paul and many others preached the gospel was not just reason but faith and the holy spirit this is not faith divorced from reason but a faith that guides informs and uses reason the spirit enables us to know the truth and to proclaim it boldly god does not want us to preach the message that i think that jesus might have risen from the dead but rather i know that my redeemer lives job the christian does not side with pilate in saying what is truth but rather follows christ who said in fact for this reason i was born and for this i came into the world to testify to the truth everyone on the side of truth listens to me john we can know the truth because god has promised us that we can know the truth jesus said if you hold to my teachings you are really my disciples then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free john the proverbs urge us buy the truth and do not sell it pr the psalmist prayed do not snatch to word of truth from my mouth ps evidently he believed that the word of truth was in fact in his mouth yet we do indeed appear arrogant if our claim to the truth is motivated by self glorification but if we present the truth as the teachings of scripture revealed by the spirit and not our own invention and if we stand ready to be proved wrong on the basis of scripture as luther did then we are not arrogant but humble we should humbly trust in god s promise of truth just as we trust in his promise of forgiveness rexlex it is only because of god s own revelation that we can be rexlex absolute about a thing darren but how far does that get you once god s revelation stops darren and your own reasoning begins possibility for error appears i agree that we must make a distinction between the clear teachings of scripture and the products of our own reason even when such reasoning is based on scripture however i think i would draw the line of distinction more reasonably and less academically than you would darren for example let s suppose that our modern bible translations darren include a perfect rendering of jesus words at the last supper darren and that jesus said exactly this is my body darren we ll presume that what he said was totally without error and darren absolutely true what can we be certain of not much darren at the moment he stops speaking and people start darren interpreting the possibility of error appears did he mean darren that literally or not we do not have any record that he darren elaborated on the words was he thinking of tran or con darren substantiation he didn t say darren is almost at the point of making a very lutheran statement about the lord s supper the lutheran approach is to say that if jesus said this is my body then that is what we should believe other interpretations are rejected simply because they are not taught in scripture recall that jesus words do not stand alone on this subject we also have paul s words in corinthians in which he passed on to us what he received from the lord in particular he said for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the lord s death until he comes by these words we should believe that the bread that we eat in the lord s supper really is bread as well as the lord s body as our senses in fact tell us does this prove that tran substantiation is false i suppose someone could say that paul spoke metaphorically of the lord s body as bread simply because that is the way the body appears when we eat it but this thought is found nowhere in scripture so we reject it thus the primary reason for rejecting tran substantiation is not that we can prove it false but that it is simply not found in scripture side remark i ve been told that the lutheran doctrine on real presence is con substantiation but it has been non lutherans who have told me this we tend not to use the word i almost think that this is used more by professors of comparative religion who need labels to compare catholic lutheran and reformed teachings on the lord s supper but almost every church wants to call their own teaching real presence because that was the traditional teaching of the church end side remark darren when christians speak as if they believe their own reasoning darren can never lead them astray when we implicitly claim that we darren are infallible the non christians around us rarely believe darren that implicit claim witnessing is hardly going to work when darren the person you are talking to believes that you are either too darren foolish to recognise your own limits or intentionally trying darren to cover them up this is precisely why christians should not rely on rationalizations in their witnessing it is far better to take the approach i d like to show you what scripture says you decide for yourself whether to believe it or not darren rexlex suggested that people read he is there and he is not darren silent by francis schaeffer i didn t think very highly of darren it but i think that mr schaeffer is grossly overrated by many darren evangelical christians somebody else might like it though darren so don t let my opinion stop you from reading it darren if someone is interested in my opinion i d suggest on darren certainty by ludwig wittgenstein as long as we re trading references i d like to suggest dr siegbert becker s paperback the foolishness of god the place of reason in lutheran theology published by northwestern publishing house this book was based on becker s doctoral thesis at the university of chicago david wagner not by might nor by power a confessional lutheran but by my spirit says the lord almighty zechariah
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re question jesus alone oneness in article apr geneva rutgers edu bjorn b larsen delab sintef no a writes can anybody tell me the basic reasons for holding a belief that there is only jesus and vice versa the foundations for the trinity bjorn i d love to know how jesus only proponents would answer questions like who is this father jesus keeps referring to why does he call himself the son why does he pray to the father and not to himself why does he emphasize that he does his father s will and not his own if he was doing his own will what kind of example is that should we follow it when he says he has to return to the father who is he going to when he says he does this in order that the comforter the holy spirit might come who might that be if he claims that the coming of the holy spirit is such a blessing that it s worth his leaving us and returning to the father what can that mean if there is no holy spirit why doesn t the best known christian prayer begin our saviour who art in heaven rather than our father do they have answers to these questions that are even plausible further entertaining queries are left as an exercise to the reader drt david r tucker kg s drt athena mit edu there may be some misunderstanding over terms here i believe jesus only originally was in the context of baptism these are folks who believe that baptism should be done with a formula mentioning only jesus rather than father son and holy spirit this may have doctrinal implications but as far as i know it does not mean that these folks deny the existence or divinity of the father i m not the right one to describe this theology and in fact i think there may be several including what would classically be called monophysite or arian two rather different views as well as some who have beliefs that are probably consistent with trinitarian standards but who won t use trinitarian language because they misunderstand it or simply because it is not biblical clh
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daily verse for the lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of god and the dead in christ will rise first then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together to meet the lord in the air and thus we shall always be with the lord thessalonians
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re god shaped hole was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr geneva rutgers edu fraseraj dcs glasgow ac uk andrew j fraser writes several people were involved in trying to figure out who first used the phrase god shaped hole clh there is a god shaped vacuum in all of us or something to that effect is generally attributed to blaise pascal i believe this is a just another of way of expressing the basic truth all things were created by him and for him emphasis mine col rev if you and i have been created for god naturally there will be a vacuum if god is not our all and all in fact the first chapter of collosians brings out this status of christ that he should have the preeminence when you life is alligned with him and you do his will then the vacuum is filled marc chamberland mchamberland violet uwaterloo ca
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radio free thulcandra was dungeons dragons an author s view there was a recent discussion of dungeons and dragons and other role playing games since there is a lot of crossover between gamers and science fiction and fantasy fans i will mention that i am the editor and publisher of radio free thulcanra a christian oriented science fiction fanzine it is not a christian magazine with a special interest in science fiction it is a science fiction fanzine with a special interest in christianity gaming is not a major topic of discussion but it has come up in some letters no there are no arguments about whether d d is satanic people who think it is are not likely to be reading rft anyway i am now working on the april issue i will send a sample copy to any reader of soc religion christian who requests it it is printed on paper so requests should include a snail mail address marty helgesen bitnet mnhcc cunyvm internet mnhcc cunyvm cuny edu what if there were no such thing as a hypothetical situation
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re being right about messiahs jesus isn t god when jesus returns some people may miss him what version of the bible do you read mike jesus is god incarnate in flesh jesus said i and the father are one jesus was taken up to heaven after his day post resurrection stint and the angels who were there assured the apostles that jesus would return the same way and that everyone will see the coming that s why jesus warned that many would come claiming to be him but that we would know when jesus actually returns these are two very large parts of my faith and you definitely hit a nerve sheila patterson cit cr technical support cornell university ithaca ny
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re revelations babylon in article apr geneva rutgers edu jbuddenberg vax cns muskingum edu jimmy buddenberg writes hello all we are doing a bible study at my college on revelations we have been doing pretty good as far as getting some sort of reasonable interpretation we are now on chapters and which talk about the woman on the beast and the fall of babylon i believe the beast is the antichrist some may differ but it seems obvious and the woman represents babylon which stands for rome or the roman catholic church what are some views on this interpretation is the falling babylon in chapter the same babylon in as in chapter the catholic church hate to step on toes thanks an interesting interpretation of revelation and has been given by evangelist david wilkerson i am not saying that i totally agree with his interpretation but it is certainly believable and good food for thought he interprets the babylon of revelation as being none other than the good old u s of a that s right america he supports his claim in several ways the babylon of revelation is the world leader in trade and commerce and the whole world wept when babylon fell the american dollar despite the japanese success of the th century is still the most sought after currency in the world if the u s were destroyed wouldn t the whole world mourn the bible also talks about babylon being a home of harlots sin and adultery i am paraphrasing of course babylon s sin affected or should i say infected the whole world it doesn t take much looking to see that the u s is in a state of moral decay hasn t the american culture and hollywood spread the do it if it feels good mentality all over the world i think though that what mr wilkerson uses as his strongest argument is the fact that revelation calls babylon babylon the great and portrays it as the most powerful nation on earth no matter how dissatisfied you are with the state of our country i don t think you would have too much trouble agreeing that the u s is still the most powerful nation on earth again this interpretation is not necessarily my own but i do find it worthy of consideration jeffrey little
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afterlife here is another way of looking at it when we die we are released from the arc of time and able to comprehend our lives in toto to visit each moment in time sequentially or all at once but not able to alter the actions thoughts or feelings we had have will have in this life from that perspective i posit that all will have direct knowledge of god and be able to recognize at each moment of time wether we were doing what we ought that the experience of having lived a life far from god will be an eternal torment that having lived a life of grace will be an eternal joy that the resurrection of the body comes not from any physical reconstitution of our present forms but knowledge of our present forms by our fully cognizant souls as an aside if we were to be restricted for all time to our present form would you opt for immortality james sledd think in n dimensions listen for the voice of god
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helphelp part hello i m back i would first like to thank each and every person who sent me a response be it a positive or negative one i read every letter and thought about each one i got all sorts of responses from marry her to have nothing ever to do with her again through reading the bible and through a lot of prayer here is what i have decided to do i sent her a letter today first i told her that if she was really serious about moving away from home to another state that i would do anything to get you here in nc i told her that i tried to find out if there were any new stores planning to be built but they wouldn t tell me about her marraige comment i m not gonna call it a proposal cause i still don t know if it was a total joke or not i more or less said that marry me well get transferred to nc first and then we ll talk hopefully what i said could be interpreted either way needless to say there has been a lot of praying over this i have done a lot of reading about marraige from the bible if she was dead serious about getting married i wouldn t do it yet simply b c she is not as far as i know to this point a christian it just wouldn t work w o god in the marraige as well i figure that if god wanrs this to go through he s kept us in touch for years now he can handle one more if god wants it to happen it will happen she will be in nc in june meetinf some relatives so i ll get to see her and i ll get a letter from her befoe then so i know more of what to look forward to i guess all i can do now is wait and pray i have decided not to tell my folks until i m totally sure what is going on i do ask that everyone that wrote me to please keep this situation in your prayers finally i would like to thank everyone who wrote in if you have anything else for me i will be at this email address for one week please tell me anyhting you want i m curious how folks think about what i did thanx chris
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re an agnostic s question in article apr geneva rutgers edu jdt voodoo ca boeing com jim tomlinson jimt ii writes pardon me if this is the wrong newsgroup i would describe myself as an agnostic in so far as i m sure there is no single universal supreme being but if there is one and it is just we will surely be judged on whether we lived good lives striving to achieve that goodness that is within the power of each of us now the complication is that one of my best friends has become very fundamentalist that would normally be a non issue with me but he feels it is his responsibility to proselytize me which i guess it is according to his faith this is a great strain to our friendship sorry to disappoint you but i m afraid your friendship is in danger perhaps you should examine in yourself why as such a good friend you are unwilling to accept this imortant part of your friends life why do you call into question his faith your friend has changed he has found something that fills a need in his life you need to decide if you are still his friend whether you can accommodate his new life it sounds as if you are criticizing him for a fundamental belief in the bible yet you are quick to reveal that your fundamental belief that it is superstition perhaps if he knew you at least took him seriously that you at least took an interest in the light he has found that you at least tried to understand what has become a special part of his life you could together decide to become fundamentalists respect each others differences and remain friends or part ways maybe even if you stuck it out with him you could help him to un convert of course if you go in with that attitude he will surely see through your intentions and begin to resent you i happen to be a person very tolerant of fundamentalists because i know that the idea of a simple black and white approach to life is appealing i don t happen to share the beliefs of fundamentalists but i am not offended by their prosyletizing i had a few good conversations with some witnesses who came to my door i didn t switch my beliefs but for those at home who maybe need a friendly face to invite them somewhere the witnesses provide a wonderful service you may have been conditioned to believe that religion is unimportant and witnessing is obnoxious but why are you afraid you might be converted and become one of them that you will be swept up in fundamentalism that you will become a weirdo friendship s a two way street you must respect your friend all of him including his beliefs if you want the friendship to continue joe moore
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re bible unsuitable for new christians true also read peter peter warns that the scriptures are often hard to understand by those who are not learned on the subject joe moore
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re need a book in article apr athos rutgers edu bassili cs arizona edu amgad z bassili writes i appreciate if anyone can point out some good books about the dead sea scrolls of qumran thanks in advance please reply by e mail at bassili cs arizona edu ok boys girls hang on here we go christ s eternal gospel robinson robinson the dead sea scrolls the nt ws lasor james the just in habakkuk pesher rh eisenman maccabees quamran rh eisenman dead sea scrolls uncovered eisenman wise dead sea scrolls deception baigent leigh jesus riddle of dead sea scrolls b thiering jesus scroll d joyce happy reading welcome aboard a poor wayfaring stranger some say a strange one in a strange land disclaimer not my employer s opinion probably not your s either and only mine when authorized try roger holfeltz stortek com note that this list covers quite a variety of views as such it s probably a good one but if you want to read just one book beware that a couple of the books on that list represent views that are shall we say unusual clh
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saint story st aloysius gonzaga heres a story of a saint that people might like to read i got it from a the morning star and am posting it with the permission of the editor saint aloysius gonzaga the patron of youth the marquis gonzaga had high aspirations for his son the prince gonzage he wanted him to become a famous brave and honoured soldier after all he must carry on the great family name of gonzaga of course he was to become far more famous brave and honoured than his father could ever have imagined though not in the manner expected saint aloysius mother was a woman who received immense joy from praying to god and meditating on the divine mysteries and the life of our lord she had little time for the pleasures of this life as saint aloysius grew he began to resemble his mother more than his father saint aloysius had learned numerous expressions from his father s soldiers but the moment he discovered that they were vulgar he fainted from shock this shows his immense hatred of sin what an example for us of the contempt we must have for sin about the time of his first holy communion which he received from the archbishop of milan charles borromeo whom himself became a great saint he con secrated his purity to god and asked the blessed virgin to protect his innocence for life he wanted to share our lord s suffering to show his reciprocal love he started by denying his passions he avoided eating the finest foods wearing the best clothes and would put pieces of wood in his bed in order to mortify himself for the love of god while he was in his early teens his father sent him and his younger brother to the court of the spanish king phillip obediently he set out to make the best of it he mixed in well with the people of the royal court for he was handsome polite intelligent and always had something interesting to say not long before this time the great soldier saint saint igna tius of loyola had founded the society of jesus the jesuits towards which saint aloysius began to have a yearning when he finally told his father the marquis flew into a rage and forbade his son to become a priest after a short time his father sent him to the great cities in order that he be tempted away from the priesthood but even through these trials saint aloysius grew in his desire for the religious life and was strengthened in the virtue of purity the marquis plans were obviously failing so he con fronted his son will you or will you not obey me and forget this foolish ness i will not father was the in evitable reply then leave from my sight and don t return until you change your mind with tears clouding his eyes the saint left the room to pray tell me lord what am i to do tell me tell me he knelt down to flagellate himself as he had done several times before but this time he was seen the onlooker rushed to the marquis this at last brought the proud man to his senses the lord wants him the lord can have him he gave his consent for his son to become a jesuit after some years at the end of the sixteenth century a terri ble epidemic broke out in rome all the hospitals were full and could house no more so the jesuits opened their own saint aloy sius did all he could in the hospitals particularly to prepare the dying for a holy death saint aloysius himself contracted the plague from carrying and nursing the sick for three months he lay with a burning fever and finally on june st he gave his soul to the lord while gazing at a crucifix let us invoke saint aloysius as our patron and imitate him in his humility purity and confidence in prayer saint aloysius gonzaga pray for us brendan arthur prayer is as necessary to a person consecrated to the service of others as a sword is to a soldier god bless from simon lines simon p shields programmer viva cristo rey monash university college gippsland ph jhs switchback rd churchill fax
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re when are two people married in god s eyes in a previous article randerso acad sahs uth tmc edu robert anderson says 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 i have discussed this with my girlfriend often i consider myself married though legally i am not neither of us have been with other people sexually although we have been with each other we did not have sexual relations until we decided to marry eventually for financial and distance reasons we will not be legally married for another year and a half until then i consider myself married for life in god s eyes i have faith that we have a strong relationship and have had for over years and will be full of joy when we marry in a church first however we must find a church we will be living in a new area when we marry and will need to find a new church community anyway i feel that if two people commit to marriage before god they are married and are bound by that commitment rick szanto polk speakers rock computer engineer mac s suck nothing personal case western zeta psi rules reserve university
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pastoral authority there is some controversy in my denomination as to what authority is vested in the pastor i am still forming my opinion i am solicing opinions and references for what that is how much and how it should be used as a general reference i would not exclude responses from different denominations based on biblical teachings but you have to understand our church is independent protestant and likely to be much different from those that follow ecclesiastical authority in the church we may need to discuss the roles of deacons and elders thanks for your replies answer not a fool according to his folly lest thou also be like unto him answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit proverbs
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am i going to hell 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 thanks tim
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re certainty and arrogance my last article included this quote if any substantial number of talk religion misc readers read some wittgenstein of the postings would disappear if they understood some wittgenstein would disappear michael l siemon someone called boundary wrote this quote seems a little arrogant don t you think there is a convention called a smiley which looks like this it is supposed to look like a sideways smiley face and indicates that the preceding comment is supposed to be funny and i ll note that i have participated on talk religion misc for over five years i d say mr siemon was not too far off in the meat of his reply mr boundary serves up an excellent example of what i meant by there is no way out of the loop i wrote that human brains are infested with sin and can be trusted only in limited circumstances in reply mr boundary wrote i would beg to differ with you here the properly formed conscience can be trusted virtually all the time which just moves the problem back one level how do you tell if your conscience is properly formed the only way to tell is to presuppose that you are capable of judging the formed ness of your own conscience in other words you can only be sure that your conscience is properly formed if you assume that your evaluation can be trusted assuming your conclusions saves you a lot of time i ll grant but it s not a valid way of reasoning unless you are infallible your judgements about your own thinking cannot be certain therefore it is not possible to be certain your conscience is properly formed whatever that is supposed to mean mr boundary then gives another paradigm example of the problem now you have hit on the purpose of the church it is by necessity the infallible interpreter of divine revelation without the church christianity would be nothing more than a bunch of little divisive sects the church is by necessity the infallible interpreter of divine revelation how do you know presumably you believe this because of some argument or another how do you know that the argument contains no mistakes you write therefore although our minds are finite and susceptible to error our competence in arriving at inductive insights gives confidence in our ability to distinguish what is true from what is not true even in areas not subject to the experimental method but there is a huge difference between confidence in our ability to distinguish what is true from what is not true and infallible i am confident about a lot of things but absolute certainty is a very long way from confident this discussion is about the arrogance of claiming to be absolutely certain really go check the subject line saying you are absolutely certain is significantly different than saying you are confident when you say that you are confident that invites people to ask why except in very limited circumstances when you say that you are absolutely certain it invites people to dismiss you as someone who does not have any idea of his own fallibility i have yet to meet anyone who believed in a knowably infallible source of truth who would admit the possibility of errors in his reasoning all of them every last one has claimed that he was himself infallible the result has been to convince me that they had no idea what was going on darren f provine kilroy gboro rowan edu this particular discussion may not be entirely relevant to the original criticism i get the feeling that the original poster regarded as arrogant the very idea that there are right and wrong answers in religion and that the difference can have eternal consequences when i say that i think there is a hell and that he is at least in significant danger of ending up there i will admit that as you say the reasoning processes i used to reach this are fallible thus at least in principle i could be wrong but these basic facts are clearly enough taught in the bible that i think it s unlikely that i m misinterpreting it in order to get this level of confidence i ve tried to frame my statement sufficiently carefully as to sidestep a number of the more controversial issues i haven t for example said that all non christians will definitely end up in hell and i haven t attempted to describe hell in any detail i have a feeling that my view is going to be regarded as arrogant and intolerant even though i acknowledge that i m fallible and so there s some chance i m wrong don t get me wrong i think there are a lot of genuinely arrogant christians and often criticism of us is justified but in at least some cases i think the criticisms constitute blaming the messenger if the universe is set up so that there are eternal consequences for certain decisions it s not my fault i m just telling it the way i think it is you may think god is immoral for setting things up that way it s one of the critiques of christianity that i find it most difficult to respond to but it s not arrogance for me to tell what i think is the truth clh
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re latest on branch davidians in apr geneva rutgers edu aaron binah cc brandeis edu scott aaron writes 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 as far as i can see one of the big differences between davidians and christians is in who they follow i have sometimes tried to put myself in the feet of one of jesus s disciples basically they gave up a lot career possibly family and well a whole bunch to follow jesus so what is the difference it is quite plain jesus was good and david koresh was not the problem is i think is that we try to legislate what is good and what is bad in terms of principles for instance there are thousands of laws in the u s governing what is legal and what is not often it is hard to bring people to justice because it is not possible to find a legal way to do it if only we could trust judges to be just then we could tell them to administer justice fairly and justice would be followed but since judges don t always get it right we have a complicated system involving precedent and bunches of other stuff which attempt to make the imperfect the justice of man into something perfect but what i hear about the justice system in the u s tells me that quite the opposite is true there is also a problem that we tend to judge the presentation more than the material being presented so we might consider a ranting christian to be bad but an eloquent person from another religion to be good this goes along with the american desire to protect the constitution at all costs even if it allows people to do bad things i think that it is the message that is important if a man is presenting a false message even if he is ever ever so mild mannered then that man is performing a tremendous disservice i know that i am rambling here i guess that what i am trying to say is that we shouldn t be looking for principles that tell us why the davidians got it wrong it is not wrong to follow and worship a person but it is important to choose the right person it is simple choose jesus and you got it right choose anyone else and you got it wrong why because jesus is the begotten son of god and nobody else is jesus was without sin and nobody else was stephen
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serbian genocide work of god are the serbs doing the work of god hmm i ve been wondering if anyone would ever ask the question are the governments of the united states and europe not moving to end the ethnic cleansing by the serbs because the targets are muslims can does god use those who are not following him to accomplish tasks for him esp those tasks that are punative james sledd no cute sig but i m working on it
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goodbye but not forever praise god i m writing everyone to inform you that i have been accepted to the doctor of psychology program at fuller theological seminary in pasadena ca i ve been working long and hard to try to get in there and have said many hours of prayer i m very excited for this opportunity but also very nervous about it i d appreciate the prayers of the readers of this group for my preparation for school this summer and for my career as a graduate student i d also appreciate any information any of the readers of this group might have about fuller pasadena or california in general like good places to have fun good churches to check out or anything else that might be good for me to know also if anyone knows of any foundations that might have funding or scholarship money available please let me know of course if you wish to make a personal contribution the contract for my current job is over at the end of april i ll be taking a couple classes at ut this summer and then i ll be moving to pasadena hopefully i ll be able to get net access next fall although fuller doesn t have it itself i ve enjoyed the interesting discussions and i commend everyone for their earnest search to please god thanks to our moderator for providing such a wonderful service and in doing a great job of running this news group may god bless you all vaya con dios mi amigas y amigos paul paul conditt internet conditt titan tsd arlut utexas edu applied research phone fax laboratories fedex burnet road austin texas university of texas postal p o box austin texas austin texas the most wonderful place in texas to live ttttttttttttttt ttt ttt ttt ttt ttttttttttttt texas tech lady raiders tt ttt tt swc champions ttt ncaa national champions ttt ttttttt
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re did he really rise in article apr geneva rutgers edu gt b prism gatech edu boundary writes anecedotal material which ultimately shows that but from my experience the modern jew is not known for his proselytism a rabbi once told me that theres is a talmudic tradition that someone who wanted to convert to judaism was to be turned away three times if they continue then they were accepted
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re losing your temper is not a christian trait sheila patterson writes i always suspected that i was human too it is the desire to be like christ that often causes christians to be very critical of themselves and other christians i d like to remind people of the withering of the fig tree and jesus driving the money changers et al out of the temple i think those were two instances of christ showing anger as part of his human side jeff johnson jcj tellabs com
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re maybe 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 i d suggest that more than some qualms are in order without knowing anything about the situation it is impossible to evaluate the appropriateness of writing some folks will check others with more zeal than time may not imho requests of this nature should be made only for oneself or for someone who knows and approves of the idea otherwise it is intrusive and disrespectful of the individual revdak netcom com
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re prayers and advice requested on family problem cloak yourself in god s sustaining and abiding love pray pray pray pray for your brother that he will assume the godly role that is his pray for your sister in law the what ever is driving her to separate your brother and herself from the the rest of the family will be healed pray for god to give you the peace in the knowledge that you may not be able to fix it from your description it would appear that it will require devine intervention and the realization by your brother as to what his responsibilities are seek godly counsel from your pastor or other spiritually mature believer know always that he is akways there as a conforter and will give you wisdon and direction as you call on him
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help in a prior article lmvec westminster ac uk william hargreaves writes 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 if you agree that good works have a role somewhere you will generally find yourself in one of two camps faith works salvation or faith salvation works either works are required for salvation or faith will inevitably result in good works i am also of the opinion that salvation is by faith alone based on ephesians and romans i also conclude that james when read in context is teaching bullet above when james speaks of justification i would claim that he is not speaking of god declaring the believing sinner innocent in his sight paul s use of the word instead he is speaking of the sinner s profession of faith being justified or proven by the display of good works also according to james the abscence of such works is evidence for a dead or useless faith which fails to save james is not a problem for the doctrine of salvation by faith if it is teaching works would have their place not as merit toward salvation but as evidence of true faith regards dave weaver he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to weaver chdasic sps mot com gain what he cannot lose jim elliot there are of course a number of other possibilities the reformers believed salvation faith works some of us suspect that the three things are tied up together in such a way that no diagram of this form can do it justice clh
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re when are two people married in god s e 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 how do you know this
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re the arrogance of christians 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 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 it takes quite a bit of arrogance to claim to know what god thinks wants especially when it s based upon your interpretation of a book the logic in the above statement is faulty in that it assumes two people with differing beliefs can t both be correct 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 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 if a person has what they believe is convincing evidence that god will save only christians it s hard to see how you can criticize them for arrogance for saying so it could be that they re wrong but i hardly see that it s arrogance let s look at this a bit closer suppose we had some combination of prophets and messiahs that taught us things but didn t say anything about exclusivity if we believe them and then add and anybody who believes anything else is damned then you could well criticize us for arrogance but in this case the exclusivity is in the message as it comes from the prophets etc so we could be wrong in believing it but i don t see how we can be called arrogant maybe the world isn t a soft place maybe certain choices actually do have eternal consequences i can see calling the christian message arrogant in a certain sense though only in the same sense as calling the law of gravitation arrogant because it doesn t give us any option over whether we fall if we jump off a building but not christians for passing it on given that they believe it the complaints i can see making are that christians are wrong or that god is arrogant clh
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re proof of resurection in article apr geneva rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes following christ from captialist who have polluted the enviorment in strict obedience to the gensis command to subdue the earth to nazi s who have justly punished the jews for the killing christ it is funny how this one little quote from genesis is treated by certain anti christians as if christians have been given a firm command to destroy the earth you could prove almost anything by taking little quotes out of context from the bible it s a big book you know i doubt you could find a single case of a anti ecological action taking place specifically because teh perpetrator was motivated by a christian belief as for the nazis they were motivated by german nationalism not by christianity in fact they despised christianity as a weak pacifist religion and were much more keen on pagan glorification of strength and warfare they killed the jews because they were not germans not because they were christ killers they were just as keen on killing the other non german ethnic minority the romanies or gypsies matthew huntbach
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re sspx schism bob van cleef writes if the papacy is infallible and this is a matter of faith then the pope cannot be wrong if on the other hand this is not a matter of faith but a matter of church law then we should still obey as the pope is the legal head of the church in other words given the doctrine of infallibility we have no choice but to obey this is a primary problem in the church today what you are saying is more or less heresy you might call it infallibilism it s the idea that the pope is always right in everything he says or does this is virtually all over the place especially in this country the pope is only infallible under certain very specific and well defined conditions when these conditions are not met he can make mistakes he can make big mistakes a couple historical examples come to mind bishop robert grosseteste was perhaps the greatest product of the english catholic church at one point during his career the reigning pope decided to install one of his nephews in an english see bishop grosseteste said that this would happen over his dead body though maybe not in so many words you have to treat popes with respect even when they are wrong the problem was that this nephew would just collect the income of the see and probably never set foot there this would deprive the people of the see of a shepherd bishop grosseteste was quite right in what he did another example is that of pope john xxii a pope of the middle ages he decided that souls that were saved did not enjoy the beatific vision until the last judgement he decided that this should be a defined doctrine of the church though he didn t quite get around to defining it now there s no way this is compatible with catholic doctrine the pope s doctrine was criticised by many in the church he went so far as to put a number of his opponents in jail even in the end he had to admit his mistake shortly before he died he recanted his successor made the exact opposite idea a dogma of the church if you consult any of the great catholic theologians who treat of such subjects such as st robert bellarmine a doctor of the church you will find detailed discussions of whether the pope can personally fall into heresy or schism the teaching of all such theologians is that the commands of a pope must be resisted if they are to the detriment of the catholic faith a pope s authority is given for the purpose of building up the catholic church commands in conflict with this purpose have no legal or moral force
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr geneva rutgers edu hayesstw risc unisa ac za steve hayes writes 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 let me carry that a step further most doctors would not claim to be infallible indeed they would generally admit that they could conceivably be wrong e g that in this case a blood tranfusion might not turn out to be necessary after all however the doctors would have enough confidence and conviction to claim out of genuine concern that is is necessary as fallible human beings they must acknowledge the possibility that they are wrong however they would also say that such doubts are not reasonable and stand by their convictions 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 help in article apr geneva rutgers edu lmvec westminster ac uk william hargreaves writes hi everyone 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 now if someone is fully believing but there life is totally lead by themselves and not by god according to romans that person is still saved by there faith my yes and no i do not believe the above scenario is not possible either they are believing and living in at least some part led by god else they are not believing intellectually but waiting is not enough especially important to remember is that no one can judge whether you are so committed nor can you judge someone else i guess the closest we can come to know someone s situation is listening to their own statements this can be fallible as is our sense of communion one with another but then there is the bit which says that god preferes someone who is cold to him i e doesn t know him condemned so a lukewarm christian someone who knows and believes in god but doesn t make any attempt to live by the bible regarding this passage we need to remember that this is a letter to a church at laodicea people who are of the body of christ rev he talks about their works a translation could say that he says their lack of concern makes him sick to the point of throwing up 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 right saving is by faith alone except that faith does not come alone if you catch the two meanings i can offer the explanation that jesus would that we were either on fire for him or so cold we knew we were not in his will and thus could be made aware of our separation this is admonishment for his children not eternal damnation answer not a fool according to his folly lest thou also be like unto him answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit proverbs
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re cell church discussion group jodfishe silver ucs indiana edu joseph dale fisher writes please define cell church i missed it somewhere in the past when this was brought up before in a cell church the fundamental building block is the cell group a small group of no more than believers the small groups are responsible for the ministry of the church evangelism and discipleship the emphasis is on relationships not on programs and both the evangelism and the discipling are relationship based this will probably raise more questions than it answered but that s it in a nutshell jon reid he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep reid cs uiuc edu to gain what he cannot lose jim elliot
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re proof of resurection in article apr geneva rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes we also cannot fail to note the intense suffering a devastation which has been wrecked on our world because of christians who were certain they were following christ from captialist who have polluted the enviorment in strict obedience to the gensis command to subdue the earth to nazi s who have justly punished the jews for the killing christ as well as the other progroms the innocent women who were burned alive in accordance with you shall not allow a witch to live the moslems who were killed in the crusades the god fearing men destroyed by the inquistion the religious wars in spain france england etc christianity has undoubtedly caused the most suffering and needless loss of life by individuals whose certainity that they were following the instructions therein was unquestionable there is much to grieve randy very interesting but i also believe that you have presented a misleading argument christianity is not the cause of the massacres and horrific injustices that you relate rather they are the fault of people who misunderstand jesus christ s message and modify it to suit their own beliefs and aims rather than alter their ambitions to be more in line with those presented as desirable in the new testament with every truthful and good message that carries authority or implied authority comes the inevitable fact that some many people will understand it in a distorted way with inevitable consequences 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 one of the problems is that you look at the world through the eyes of western history i think that you will find many many cases of massacres that were instigated by people who never claimed they were christian i am not saying this to justify the massacres that were but i am merely pointing you to a tendency which is present in humans already consider the world without christianity i doubt that we would have the same freedoms in the countries in which we live if it wasn t for the peaceful doctrines of jesus christ perhaps we would even be confronted by a very harsh religion i won t name any here though one comes to mind which would not even allow us the freedom of speech to debate such subjects point the blame at inherent human tendencies of thirst for power greed and hatred please don t point the blame at a message which preaches fundamental giving and denial in love for others yours in christ andrew mcveigh 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 andrew mcveigh
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re catholic church poland in article apr geneva rutgers edu s let rug nl m m zwart writes i m writing a paper on the role of the catholic church in poland after church concerning the abortion law religious education at schools there was an article on clari news religion in the last few days about a polish tribunal decision it said that crucifixes and religious classes in public schools were okay and that children who did not want to take religion class could not be forced to take an ethics class as a substitute larry henling lmh shakes caltech edu
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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 moreover luke s account is written at least years after the fact in the meantime everyone he mentions has died and attempts to find actual written sources behind the text have come up with only the we section of the later portion of acts as firmly established moreover pauls account of some of the events in acts as recorded in galatians fail to establish the acts accounts 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 randy john g ata technical consultant internet ata hfsi com hfs inc va uucp uunet hfsi ata westpark drive ms voice mclean va fax 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
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re sabbath admissions of i have been following this thread on talk religion soc religion christian bible study and here with interest i am amazed at the different non biblical argument those who oppose the sabbath present one question comes to mind especially since my last one was not answered from scripture maybe clh may wish to provide the first response there is a lot of talk about the sabbath of the tc being ceremonial answer this since the tc commandments is one law with ten parts on what biblical basis have you decided that only the sabbath portion is ceremonial or you say that the seventh day is the sabbath but not applicable to gentile christians does that mean the sabbath commandment has been annulled references please if god did not intend his requirements on the jews to be applicable to gentile christians why did he make it plain that the gentiles were now grafted into the commonwealth of israel darius acts rom col gal i believe we ve gotten into a loop at this point this is one of those classic situations where both sides think they have clear scriptural support and there s no obvious argument that is going to change anybody s mind i don t think we re going anything but repeating ourselves clh
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none i am satan
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu oser fermi wustl edu scott oser writes and the two simplest refutations are these what impact the only record of impact comes from the new testament i have no guarantee that its books are in the least accurate and that the recorded impact actually happened i find it interesting that no other contemporary source records an eclipse an earthquake a temple curtain being torn etc the earliest written claim we have of jesus resurrection is from the pauline epistles none of which were written sooner than years after the supposed event first off i d say that the impact if right before your eyes that we are even discussing this is a major impact in and of itself further the early church bears testimony to the impact it seems probable that no one displayed the body of jesus because no one knew where it was i personally believe that the most likely explanation was that the body was stolen by disciples or by graverobbers don t bother with the point about the guards it only appears in one gospel and seems like exactly the sort of thing early christians might make up in order to counter the grave robbing charge the new testament does record that jews believed the body had been stolen if there were really guards they could not have effectively made this claim as they did of course they knew where it was don t forget that jesus was seen by both the jews and the romans as a troublemaker pilate was no fool and didn t need the additional headaches of some fishermen stealing jesus body to make it appear he had arisen since jesus was buried in the grave of a man well know to the sanhedrin to say that they didn t know where he was buried begs the question now you say that you think that the disciples stole the body but think on this a moment would you die to maintain something you knew to be a deliberate lie if not then why do you think the disciples would now i m not talking about dying for something you firmly believe to be the truth but unbeknown to you it is a lie many have done this no i m talking about dying by beheading stoning crucifixion etc for something you know to be a lie thus you position with regards to the disciples stealing the body seems rather lightweight to me as for graverobbers why risk the severe penalties for grave robbing over the body of jesus he wasn t buried with great riches so again this is an argument that can be discounted that leaves you back on square one what happened to the body ihl gene the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the university of north carolina at chapel hill the campus office for information technology or the experimental bulletin board service internet launchpad unc edu or again let me comment that the most plausible non christian scenario and the one typically suggested by sceptics who are knowledgeable about the nt is that the resurrection was a subjective event and the empty tomb stories are a result of accounts growing in the telling clh
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re hell in article apr athos rutgers edu dmn kepler unh edu there s a seeker born every minute writes that would depend on what heaven is like if god is a king and an eternity in heaven consists of giving thanks and praise to the king i might opt for hell i read a lovely account of a missionary trying to but then on the other hand if you really loved that king more than you did yourself and he loved you to the point of assuring you that the eternal time spent with him would be eternal ecstasy would you really opt for that choice dana john g ata technical consultant internet ata hfsi com hfs inc va uucp uunet hfsi ata westpark drive ms voice mclean va fax
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes in article apr athos rutgers edu luomat alleg edu timothy j luoma writes in article apr athos rutgers edu suppose you were part of the christian consipracy which was going to tell people that christ had risen never mind the stoning the being burned alive the possible crucifixion let s just talk about a scourging the whip that would be used would have broken pottery metal no one was ever flogged beaten burned fed to the lions or killed in any other way because of a belief in the resurrection sorry to disappoint you i think you are vastly oversimplifying things we know that early christians suffered totures because of their witness to christ for example act his speech persuaded them they called the apostles in and had them flogged then they ordered them not to speak in the name of jesus and let them go act the apostles left the sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name it appears that the jewish rulers of that time had a particular aversion to even hearing jesus s name act we gave you strict orders not to teach in this name he said yet you have filled jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man s blood finally the first apostle s death james of zebedee was certainly not by rome s hand any more than the first martyr stephen the idea of resurrection is one which can be found in a host of different forms in the religions of antiquity the problem was not the resurrection which was a mediorce issue for a tiny fragment of the jewish population the problem was that if one believed in the resurrection then one must believe in jesus as truly being the son of god and what he stood for and preached during his ministry on earth that would have been extremely difficult for some people especially those that had plotted to kill him randy john g ata technical consultant internet ata hfsi com hfs inc va uucp uunet hfsi ata westpark drive ms voice mclean va fax
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re the arrogance of christians in a previous article phs d vaxc cc monash edu au says in article apr athos rutgers edu aa freenet carleton ca mark baker writes 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 i am asking you to believe in things not visible i don t know if this is believeing blindly or not i m not sure how blindness comes into it i do not deny reason indeed i insist upon it but reason only draws conclusions from evidence if you decide in advance that your reason will act only on the evidence of the five physical senses then you cut reason off from any possibility of reaching a conclusion outside the physical sphere beyond the rather provocative if inconclusive conclusion that the physical sphere is not self explanatory christians claim that they have received a different kind of evidence which they call faith and which is a gift of god that is this evidence is the evidence of a thing which chooses to reveal or hide itself the evidence of the senses cannot tell you is such a ting exists reasoning on the evidence of the senses won t help either but christians do reason of the evidence of faith and do claim that this evidence is wholly consistent with the evidence of the other senses and indeed that the evidence of these other senses is part of god s revelation of himself to us it is not necessarilly the case however that knowledge of a god must come through this route there may be other senses than the physical ones providing evidence of non physical realities there may of course be physical realities of a type for which we have no corresponding senses for all we know these senses if they exist may provide valid evidence for reason to work on and as with all senses these senses may be impaired in some people that is they may be spiritually blind in this sense belief in god becomes an act of sight and it is disbelief which is blind 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 faith as i have said is not opposed to reason it is simply a new source of evidence on which reason may operate it is clear that human beings have many systems for explaining the evidence of the physical senses and similarly there are many systems for explaining the evidence provided by faith religious believers in general and christians in particular use reason to help sift through the evidence to come to a clearer understanding of the evidence provided by faith science claims with good reason to be the most valid system for explaining the physical universe and christianity claims also with good reason to be the most valid system possessed of the best evidence for explaining gods revelations of himself to man if you doubt that christians use reason read this newsgroup for a while and you will see rational debate aplenty 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 tuff to be a christian someone writing anonymously asks would you have become a christian if you had not been indoctrinated by your parents you probably never learned about any other religion to make a comparative study and therefore i claim you are brain washed i did become a christian without having been indoctrinated by my parents and having studied buddhism fairly carefully and other religions to a lesser degree i made a decision to accept the truth claims of christianity after having given it a lot of thought i have to point out that the process was not purely a cold rational one there was a powerful experiential element as well also my calvinist should rest assured that i don t lay any of the responsibility for the outcome my conversion on anyone but god it took me years and years for this all to happen because i had many of the objections that this poster puts forward i grew up in the shadow of generic authoritarian conservative denomination and i knew that that wasn t a way of life that i could adopt but i gradually learned not to tar all of christianity with the same brush and realized quite suddenly one cold winter night that i accepted what i had heretofore rejected i am quite certain that i was not brain washed bill hovingh
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re hebrew grammar texts choose english or german phil sells writes 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 my impression is that for advanced work you will be much better off with german reference works lexicons concordances especially for a first time encounter my personal preference would be to deal with a textbook written in my native language but if you know german and are in germany pick up all the reference books you think you can handle i only know these works by reputation since my german is most rusty but i d look at the following books koehler s lexicon mandeldern s concordance the jenni westermann theological dictionary of the ot 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 the amount of language instruction available at us seminaries varies widely mostly depending on the denominational heritage of the school presbyterian and reformed seminaries probably place a lot more emphasis on the biblical languages than others of course any divinity school that has a doctoral program in biblical studies is going to have extensive language resources but there are quite a few masters degree granting seminaries here at which the attitude seems to be more well if you re really interested we ll give you a semester long course but we don t understand why the pattern here at the louisville presbyterian seminary is for first year students to take intensive five week introductory language courses in each language followed by semester long exegesis courses that is hebrew in august ot exegesis in the fall greek in january nt exegesis in the spring these courses are required for graduation a third or a half of the students i d say take advanced biblical work that requires language work
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re when are two people married in god s eyes in article apr geneva rutgers edu rob ll mit edu writes 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 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 i originally wrote to the person who asked this question personally but decided to post the information i had on the topic i spoke to the pastor of my parish catholic recently by coincidence on this subject his explaination was that while it is possible for a couple to marry without the presence of a priest it is important to have it recognized by the church as soon as it is possible because the church recoginizes itself as a community of believers members of the church to some degree are to be held accountable to each other to be less hypothetical than that mythical couple on the desert island there are many places in the world that do not have priests availible for marriages on a regular basis therefore couples get married without the priest being present but get the priest to testify to their marriage when one comes through the area i remember a religion teacher in high school saying that the marriage ceremony is not for the benefit of the couple as much as it is for the benefit of the community thus married couples have some responsibility to the community to stay married as divorce sets a bad example for the community also the couple has vowed to become one with one another the community should be able to rely on that couple to be as one while couples may marry without witnesses they may not get anulments without a priest present an anulment is simply an admission of the church that what they had declared a marriage was not in fact a marriage at all for whatever reason so don t start getting married in the back seat of a station wagon and giving yourselves anulments a half hour later i tend to agree with the response back there that said couples become married as soon as they consumate their marriage but i would add that couples should consider their marriage consumated if they have sex whether or not they intended to be married assuming they were both willing partners to the sexual act the couple must be prepared to raise any children they may have as a result of that sexual act with the benefit of both parents sex is a commitment i believe in god s eyes but i m digressing god be with you malcusco
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orthodox list i recently had to move and forgot to update my address to the orthodox mailing list can anyone e mail me the address for changes and what exactly i have to put in caps etc please send the original subscription address also thanks ahead of time ed ed shredder sayre internet shredder telerama pgh pa us unemployment studies major
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why religion and which religion my family has never been particularly religious singing christmas carols is about the limit for them thus i ve never really believed in god and heaven although i don t actually believe that they don t exist either i m sort of undecided probably like a lot of people i guess lately i ve been thinking about it all a lot more and i wondered how religious people can be so convinced that there is a god i feel as though i want to believe but i m not used to believing things without proof just as i can t believe that there definitely isn t a god so i can t definitely believe that there is i wondered if most of you were brought up by religious families and never believed any different can anyone help me to understand how your belief and faith in god can be so strong another question that frequently crosses my mind is which religion is correct how do you choose a religion and how do you know that the christian god exists and the gods of other religions don t how do you feel about people who follow other religions how about atheists and people like me agnostics i suppose do you respect their religion and accept their beliefs as just as valid as your own isn t there contradiction between the religions how can your religion be more valid than any others do you have less respect for someone if they re not religious or if they follow a different religion than you would if they were christian also how much of the scriptures are correct are all events in the bible really supposed to have happened or are they just supposed to be stories with morals showing a true christian how to behave i generally follow most of the christian ideas which i suppose are fairly universal throughout all religions not killing stealing etc and loving my neighbour for want of a better expression the only part i find hard is the actual belief in god finally what is god s attitude to people like me who don t quite believe in him but are generally fairly good people surely not believing doesn t make me a worse person if not i find myself wondering why i so strongly want to really believe and to find a religion sorry if i waffled on a bit i was just writing ideas as they came into my head i m sure i probably repeated myself a bit too thanks for the help paul simmons there s been enough discussion about evidence for christianity recently that you may prefer to respond to this via email rather than as a posting clh
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re sabbath admissions of i wrote in response to dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu darius lecointe 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 was paul a god too is an interpretation of the words of paul of higher priority than the direct word of jesus in matt paul begins romans with if someone is weak in the faith do you count yourself as one who is weak in the faith 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 yes but what does the bible have to say what did jesus say paul closes romans with 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 gaus isbn have you read the ten commandments which are a portion of the law have you read jesus word in matt is there any doubt in your mind about what is right and what is sin greek hamartia missing the mark 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 whereas the ten commandments and jesus words in matt are fairly clear are they not the difficulty with both of these passages is that they are actually about something else they both look like they are talking about nnregular christian meetings but neither explicitly says and they gathered every sunday for worship we get various pieces of information but nothing aimed at answering this question matt doesn t answer your question what day christians met in their houses acts despite darius confusion is described by acts as occuring on sunday it doesn t say they gathered to see paul off but that when they were gathered for breaking bread breaking bread roughly synonymous with eating 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 how do you unite this concept of yours with the ten commandments and jesus s word in matt 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 clh or they assumed that the ten commandments and jesus word in matt actually stood for something perhaps they were strong in the faith no i don t believe that paul can overrule god however paul was writing for a largely gentile audience the law was regarded by jews at the time and now as binding on jews but not on gentiles there are rules that were binding on all human beings the so called noachic laws but they are quite minimal the issue that the church had to face after jesus death was what to do about gentiles who wanted to follow christ the decision not to impose the law on them didn t say that the law was abolished it simply acknowledged that fact that it didn t apply to gentiles thus there is no contradiction with mat as far as i can tell both paul and other jewish christians did continue to participate in jewish worship on the sabbath thus they continued to obey the law the issue was and is with gentile christians who are not covered by the law or at least not by the ceremonial aspects of it jesus dealt mostly with jews i think we can reasonably assume that mat was directed to a jewish audience he did interact with gentiles a few times e g the centurion whose slave was healed and a couple of others the terms used to describe the centurion see luke suggest that he was a god fearer i e a gentile who followed god but had not adopted the whole jewish law he was commended by jewish elders as a worthy person and jesus accepted him as such this seems to me to indicate that jesus accepted the prevailing view that gentiles need not accept the law however there s more involved if you want to compare jesus and paul on the law in order to get a full picture of the role of the law we have to come to grips with paul s apparent rejection of the law and how that relates to jesus commendation of the law at least as i read paul he says that the law serves a purpose that has been in a certain sense superceded again this issue isn t one of the abolition of the law in the middle of his discussion paul notes that he might be understood this way and assures us that that s not what he intends to say rather he sees the law as primarily being present to convict people of their sinfulness but ultimately it s an impossible standard and one that has been superceded by christ paul s comments are not the world s clearest here and not everyone agrees with my reading but the interesting thing to notice is that even this radical position does not entail an abolition of the law it still remains as an uncompromising standard from which not an iota or dot may be removed for its purpose of convicting of sin it s important that it not be relaxed however for christians it s not the end ultimately we live in faith not law while the theoretical categories they use are rather different in the end i think jesus and paul come to a rather similar conclusion the quoted passage from mat should be taken in the context of the rest of the sermon on the mount where jesus shows us how he interprets the law the not an iota or dot would suggest a rather literal reading but in fact that s not jesus approach jesus interpretations emphasize the intent of the law and stay away from the ceremonial details indeed he is well known for taking a rather free attitude towards the sabbath and kosher laws some scholars claim that mat needs to be taken in the context of st cent jewish discussions jesus accuses his opponents of caring about giving a tenth of even the most minor herbs but neglecting the things that really matter justice mercy and faith and caring about how cups and plates are cleaned but not about the fact that inside the people who use them are full of extortion and rapacity mat this and the discussion later in mat suggest that jesus has a very specific view of the law in mind and that when he talks about maintaining the law in its full strength he is thinking of these aspects of it paul s conclusion is similar while he talks about the law being superceded all of the specific examples he gives involve the ceremonial law such as circumcision and the sabbath he is quite concerned about maintaining moral standards the net result of this is that when paul talks about the law being superceded and jesus talks about the law being maintained i believe they are talking about different aspects of the law paul is embroiled in arguments about circumcision as is natural in letters responding to specific situations he s looking at the aspect of the law that is currently causing trouble the law as specifically jewish ceremonies he certainly does not intend to abolish divine standards of conduct on the other hand when jesus commends the law he seems to be talking the law in its broadest implications for morals and human relationships and deemphasizing those aspects that were later to give paul so much trouble it s unfortunate that people use the same terms in different ways but we should be familiar with that from current conflicts look at the way terms like family values take on special meaning from the current context imagine some poor historian of the future trying to figure out why family values should be used as a code word for opposition to homosexuality in one specific period in the u s i think law had taken on a similar role in the arguments paul was involved in paul was clearly not rejecting all of the jewish values that go along with the term law any more than people who concerned about the family values movement are really opposed to family values clh
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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 it has to do with honoring the laws of the state 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 i would go further if a couple are unwilling to have their commitment publicly witnessed and recorded that s prima facie evidence that the commitment isn t really there 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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immaterial afterlife was is hell real in article c zaym m u spss com goer midway uchicago edu writes i thought everyone who died simply went to sheol the notion of going to heaven is a christianization based on those parts of the nt that speak of an immaterial afterlife richard l goerwitz goer midway uchicago bitnet goer midway uchicago edu rutgers oddjob ellis goer where in the bible is there any teaching about an immaterial afterlife i was always taught that both the o t jews and the n t christians would have found the notion incomprehensible as do i don t we christians believe in the resurrection of the body or do you mean by material simply the stuff made of the elements that we know and love too much stan armstrong religious studies dept saint mary s university halifax n s armstrong husky stmarys ca att clyde watmath water dalcs armstrng
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re sspx schism from jhpb sarto budd lake nj us joseph h buehler many catholics will decide to side with the pope there is some soundness in this because the papacy is infallible so eventually some pope will straighten all this out but on the other hand there is also unsoundness in this in that in the short term the popes may indeed be wrong and such catholics are doing nothing to help the situation by obeying them where they re wrong in fact if the situation is grave enough they sin in obeying him at the very least they re wasting a great opportunity because they are failing to love christ in a heroic way at the very time that he needs this badly joe your logic excapes me if the papacy is infallible and this is a matter of faith then the pope cannot be wrong if on the other hand this is not a matter of faith but a matter of church law then we should still obey as the pope is the legal head of the church in other words given the doctrine of infallibility we have no choice but to obey bob bob van cleef peace be revc garg campbell ca us the land of garg bbs unto you bbs you might want to look at the faq on infallibility the doctrine on infallibility does not say that the pope is always right all catholic theologians acknowledge that there have been a number of occasions when the pope was wrong there appear to be two aspects to infallibility one is a general concept that in the long run the church is protected from serious error however this does not mean that it s impossible for it to take wrong turns at one time or another the more specific concept of papal infallibility is that in very specific circumstances a papal statement can be known to be infallible however a relatively small fraction of statements meet those criteria this does not absolve catholics from the duty to obey even ordinary teachings of the pope however only a few teachings are made in a way that is explicitly infallible clh
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christian s need for christianity was in article apr geneva rutgers edu mussack austin ibm com writes for example why does the universe exist at all 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 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 i find this view of christianity to be quite disheartening and sad the idea that life only has meaning or importance if there is a creator does not seem like much of a basis for belief and the logic is also appalling god must exist because i want him to i have heard this line of reasoning before and wonder how prevalent it is certainly in modern society many people are convinced life is hopeless or so the pollsters and newscasts state but i don t see where this is a good reason to become religious if you want meaning why not just join a cult such as in waco the leaders will give you the security blanket you desire larry henling lmh shakes caltech edu
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christian parenting hi i am a sociology student and i am currently researching into young offenders i am looking at the way various groups of children are raised at home at the moment i am formlulating information on discipline within the christian home please if you are a parent in this catagory can you email me your response to the following questionaire all responses will be treated confidentially and will only be used to prepare stats ages sexes of children do you spank your kids if so how often do you use an implement to spank with if you do not spank what method of discipline do you use your age your location while under the age of did you ever commit a criminal offence how ere you disciplined as a kid thank you in advance for any reply you can make please e mail your replies rather than post them on the newsgroup i hope it is obvious that responses to this question are likely to have serious problems when used for research purposes our readers are not likely to be a random sample of christians and this form does not contain enough information to act as a stratified sample perhaps someone who is familiar with research methods might want to correspond with him clh
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re anger in article apr geneva rutgers edu news cbnewsk att com writes paul conditt writes insert deletion of paul s and aaron s discourse on anger ref galatians i don t know why it is so obvious we are not speaking of acts of the flesh we are just speaking of emotions emotions are not of themselves moral or immoral good or bad emotions just are the first step is not to label his emotion as good or bad or to numb ourselves so that we hide our true feelings it is to accept ourselves as we are as god accepts us oh but they definitely can be please look at colossians and ephesians emotions can be controlled and god puts very strong emphasis on self control otherwise why would he have paul write to timothy so much about making sure to teach self control insert deletion of remainder of paragraph re think it aaron don t be quick to judge he has forgiven those with aids he has dealt with and taken responsibility for his feelings and made appropriate choices for action on such feelings he has not given in to his anger please re think and re read for yourself joe again the issue is self control especially over feelings and actions for our actions stem from our feelings in many instances as for god giving in to his anger that comes very soon joe moore joe fisher
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re tuff to be a christian in article apr geneva rutgers edu mdbs ms uky edu no name writes bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes i don t think most people understand what a christian is it is certainly not what i see a lot in churches rather i think it should be a way of life and a total sacrafice of everything for god s sake he loved us enough to die and save us so we should do the typical statement from an irrational and brainwashed person the bible was written by some male chavnist thousands of years ago as were all of the holy books follow the parts that you think are suitable for modern life ignore the others for heaven s sake don t take it literally please leave heaven out of it for his own sake i pray that dan does take it literally because that s how god intended it to be taken dan your view of many groups appears correct from my point of view however i have found a group which is truly meeting requirements laid down by the bible on what it means to be a disciple of jesus i have no clue where wwc is but please mail me i d really like to get you in touch with them same hey we can t do it god himself inspires us to turn our lives over to him that s tuff and most people don t want to do it to be a real christian would be something for the strong to persevere at but insert deletion of ranting about other religions which obviously has gone off center of dan s original context dan i m familiar with this one you ve got a point though there are some who don t want to turn over everything and be a disciple some have no clue about it because they ve not been taught some have done exactly that and turned over everything to follow jesus some are blocked by difficult doctrine taught by uncaring pharisees and teachers of the law however jesus pointed out what it takes to follow him and to be his disciple in luke and luke my question is why do people ignore the command and treat it as optional i certainly don t have an answer to this insert deletion parting question would you have become a christian if you had not been indoctrinated by your parents you probably never learned about any other religion to make a comparative study and therefore i claim you are brain washed my parents had nothing to do with it god had and has everything to do with it as for these attacking responses i must say that i disagree with your tone and what appears to be some very judgmental statements possibly to the point of slander when talking about people not what they do please if you have a response state it instead of flying off the handle on some discourse which may have nothing truly to do with what is being discussed i m sure both dan and i would have a much happier time with your responses joe
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interdisc bible research inst hi anyone know anything about the interdisciplinary bible research institute operating out of hatfield pa i m really interested in their theories on old earth as opposed to young earth and what they believe about evolution thanks in the master charley seek god and you will find among other things piercing pleasure seek pleasure and you will find boredom disillusionment and enslavement john white eros defiled note that i do not accept discussions of evolution here as there is a dedicated group for that talk origins clh
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helphlphelphelp this is somewhat long but pleas read it boy am i glad you decided to read this i ve got a problem that i need as many people s help from as possible before i go in to the details of this let me go ahead and tell you that though it may sound it this is not one of those boy meets girl problem at least not totally like that to me anyway ok i am a year old sophmore at ncsu about years ago my family and i were vacationing at the coast in a cottage we rented across the street was ths girl who would whistle at me whenever she saw me her name in erin well we became friends that week at the beach and have been writing each other for about years there was a period of about years we lost contact but that was a while ago by the way erin lives in kansas and me in nc ok last year in one of her letters she says that she is coming back to nc to see some of her family who are gonna be there so i drove about hours to see her this is where it begins i spent the whole day with erin one of the best days of my life even though we had been writing each other we still had to get used to being in person she has got to be the most incredible woman i ever met she s one year older than me btw i mean no person in the world could ask for a better person not only was she incredibly beautiful not to mention way out of my league although i m not unattractive mind you but she had a great personality and a great sence of humor her family is one of those families who goes to church but that is about the extent of their christianity you know the kind of people but she knows i am a christian well you get the idea of what i think of her if there is ever such a thing as love at first sight i found it that was last year i kid you not when i say that i have thought about her every day since then in out letters erin and i always kid each other about not finding dates which is true for me but i know it can t be for her she has had some problems at home her folks split up and she ended up leaving school now we are at the present let me give you part of the letter i got from her last week okay now i m going to try to explain my life to you i m not going to ku anymore because something just isn t right college just wasn t clicking with me here greek life is really big here and that just isn t my way i wasn t taking any classes that truly interested me i really have no idea of what i want to do with my life i was interested in something medical physical therpy i love working with kids but it just didn t work for me at this university and my parents could tell so i m working full time at the bass store bass shoes that is and now i have a part time job at a local daycare i work in the infant room m w f i ve really enjoyed it so far it spices up my week a little bit and it s great experience as of now i m not planning on going back to school in the very near future the main reason being my indecision on what i want to study but i definatley plan on going back within the next couple of years where i have no idea except for one thing it won t be to kansas right noew i m discussing a promotion with my boss and district manager it looks like i ll train at the store i work at now for about months as assistant manager and when that s done i ll basically be given a list of stores newly or soon to be built to chose where i would like to manage i ve pretty much decided on either one of the carolinas hopeully close to the beach wouldn t it be fun to actually see each other more than once every few years what do you think abou that i would like to know your opinion this job would pretty much be temporary but it is very good pay and any thye of management experience would look good on an application or resume the company is solid and treats it employees very well good benefits bonuses medical plans plus after year of full time service they will reimburse tuition i do have school money waitng for me but this will help especially since i will probably end up paying out of state tuition wherever i go chris i really would like to know what you think of my decision i respect your opinion i ve been completely lost for what to do for soooo long that when the opportunity came along it sounded really good i do like my job although i m about sure that i want to do more with my life than reatil management but it is something i don t think earning about a year for a year old female is too bad anyway onto your career decisions i ll solve your problem right now marry me you can do your pilot thing i like to be by myself sometimes seriously or not as seriously do what will make you the happiest worry about the home life later ok well i m sure you see what has got me so uptight what do you think she meant about the marraige thing i dream at night about marrying her and then she mentions it in her letter i don t know what to think since she wants to move to the carolina s should i search out a bass store near here and aske her to come to carolina i always pick on those people who graduate from high school and get married but what does she mean i ve had a lot of stress lately with exams and also the fact that i don t date beacause no time not that much that most college women are wrapped up in the social scene with the greeks whic as a christian i can t support and here she says she doesn t like the greek thing either maybe i m so stunned because there is actually a girl that i am so attracted to paying some real attention to me i mean what if she did move to nc what would i do i m only and she i m only a sophmore struggling through classes i have prayed about this over the past year from time to time saying god if she is the right one let the situation open up could this be my sign i would do anything to get her to nc here is some moree that makes it worse should i call her i m terrible over the phone i don t even like to talk to my friends here for longer than minutes i mean what would a girl as perfect as her want with a very average guy like me i m really confused i would really appreciate any help i can get thanx chris i have a feeling that it might be more appropriate to talk with chris directly via email clh
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re sex education in article apr athos rutgers edu jviv usmi midland chevron com john viveiros writes it seems i spend a significant amount of my time correcting errors about the reliability tests for condoms and abstinence a few years ago i saw that famous study that showed a failure rate for condoms the same study showed a failure rate for abstinence that is adult couples who relied on abstinence to prevent pregnancy got pregnant in alarming numbers they didn t have the willpower to abstain and we re thinking that this will work with high school kids i am told that planned parenthood siecus style values free methods that teach contraceptive technology and advise kids how to make choices actually increase pregnancy rates i posted a long article on this a while back and will be happy to email a copy to any who are interested the article included sources to contact for information on research verifying these statements and an outstanding source for info on acquiring abstinence related curricula even in single copy quantities for home use the same research produced the results that abstinence related curricula were found to decrease pregnancy rates in teens i assume that it is reasonable to assume that the aids rate will fluctuate with the pregnancy rate the difference is not in contraceptive technology but in the values taught to the children the pp siecus curricula taught the kids that they have legitimate choices while the abstinence related curricula taught them that they did not have legitimate choices other than abstinence it is the values system that is the strongest determinent of the behavior behavior of these kids despite the better track record of abstinence related curricula they are suppressed in favor of curricula that produce an effect contrary to that desired question for further discussion as they say in the textbooks why don t we teach safe drug use to kids instead of drug abstinence isn t it because we know that a class in how to use drugs safely if you choose to use drugs would increase drug use why isn t drug abstinence education barred from schools because it teaches religion aren t we abandoning those children who will use drugs anyway and need instruction in their safe use joe kellett jkellett netcom com
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re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu johnsd rpi edu writes in article athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org jayne kulikauskas writes drugs are a replacement for christ 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 this is why the most effective substance abuse recovery programs involve meeting peoples spiritual needs you might want to provide some evidence next time you make a claim like this in step programs like alcoholics anonymous one of the steps involves acknowleding a higher power aa and other step abuse recovery programs are acknowledged as being among the most effective unfortunately as evidence for god this can be dismissed by stating that the same defect of personality makes substance abusers as makes people religious and the debunker could perhaps acknowledge that being religious is a better crutch than being a drug addict but still maintain that both are escapism and i suspect that there are some atheists who would find the substance abuse preferable to christianity i think that an essential problem with communication between christ ians and atheists is that as christians we necessarily see ourselves as incomplete and needing god the god shaped hole while atheists necessarily see themselves as self sufficient if the atheists are right christians are guilty of being morally weak and too cowardly to stand up for themselves if the christians are right the atheists are guilty of considerable arrogance i use the term atheist to refer to a person who has a definite conviction that there is no god as opposed to one who does not know and or does not care about god seanna watson bell northern research pray that at the end of living seanna bnr ca ottawa ontario canada of philosophies and creeds god will find his people busy opinion what opinions oh these opinions planting trees and sowing seeds no they re not bnr s they re mine i knew i d left them somewhere fred kaan let s see i spelled sowing right i got the author s name right maybe my rd iteration sig will be a keeper
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re so far so good in article c z u jxo spss com luomat alleg edu writes this may be a really dumb one but i ll ask it anyways christians know that they can never live up to the requirements of god right i may be wrong but that is my understanding but they still try to do it doesn t it seem like we are spending all of our lives trying to reach a goal we can never achieve i know that we are saved by faith and not by works but does that mean that once we are saved we don t have to do anything i think james tells us that faith without works is dead paraphrase how does this work so long as we think that good things are what we have to do rather than what we come to want to do we miss the point the more we love god the more we come to love what and whom he loves when i find that what i am doing is not good it is not a sign to try even harder romans it is a sign to seek god when i am aware of jesus presence i usually want what he wants it is his strenth his love that empowers my weakness stan armstrong religious studies dept saint mary s university halifax n s armstrong husky stmarys ca att clyde watmath water dalcs armstrng
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does just justifiable war exist hi there netters i have a question i would very much like to see some discussion on is there such a thing as a justifible war what i would love to see it some basis from scripture for either all war is wrong or some war is justifiable to get things started i would like to outline why i am asking the question in my high school days i had been quite involved in the the new zealand cadet forces this is a bit like rotc from what i understand of it but with a lot more emphasis on fun than military career training through this i became extremely enamoured of flying have become involved in the sport of gliding and have a great interest in military aviation hardware as the very best a real flyer could ask for my favourite computer games are the accurate simulations of military aircraft both past and present i became a christian about years ago and at the time rejected all military activity as immoral for me all war was in complete opposition to god s commandments to love one another especially one s enemies during the war in iraq i found myself with great excitement listening to the reports of the effectiveness of the the attacks using the aviation technology i so admire the f a stealh bomber the f f and f strike aircraft etc after the war concluded i began to really enjoy simulations based around this conflict great to go and bomb saddam s bio weapons plants in an f a on my computer or shoot down some of his mig s in an f the simulation of the death of people was a wonderful game i imagine the real pilots view the real thing in much the same way one only has to look at the language used to see that the personal impact of war is ignored a building containing people or an aircraft flown by a pilot is simply a target dead civilians are collateral damage these euphanisms are a way of removing the reality of war from the people whose support are necessary for the continued waging of war one only has to look at vietnam to see how important public opinion is now we see troops sponsored by the united nations entering somalia and the prospect of military intervention in the muslim croat serb conflict in the former yugoslavia my revulsion in particular to the siege of sarajevo and in the last few days of sorry bout spelling sebrenitsa has caused me to rethink where i stand on justifiable war i will list several wars in the last years i can look at each and say yes this may have been justifible this may not these are simply my gut reactions to each in many cases with the benefit of the impartiality history brings let me go through a few and state some of my reasons for my reaction i am not a historian so excuse any historical blunders i am working from popular history as it is known in new zealand the second world war murder of jews hitler had to be stopped massive civilian casualties on both sides dresden hiroshima nagasaki probably justifiable korean war political expansionism by north korea basically communism vs capitalism probably not justifiable vietnam as above worsened by us involvement vietnamese invasion of cambodia genocide by khmer rouge probably justifiable iraq desert storm political expansionism threat to world oil supply other factors such as genocide not sure but probably justifiable a future involvement in bosnia genocide so called ethnic cleansing emotive much tv coverage of atrocities and civilian casualties probably justifiable possible future use of nuclear weapons tactical or strategic somewhere in the world by the us in response to someone else e g libya or israel my feelings in this are simple nuclear war weapons are abhorrent i love the new zealand government s stand on banning all nuclear armed or powered warships from nz port never justifiable these are my own views i have looked at scripture and i am confused i would appreciate others view particularly those based on scripture i don t want a naaahh yer wrong i think answers thanks for your help alastair thomson phone chief programmer fax the black albatross porject university of otago department of computer science e mail alastair farli otago ac nz p o box athomson otago ac nz dunedin nextmail welcome new zealand god loved the world so much that he gave us his son to die in our place so that we may have eternal life john paraphrase
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when is a couple married i used to be a marriage commissioner for the alaska court system sort of a justice of the peace i had great difficulty with that duty i used to pray earnestly in the courthouse bathroom before the ceremonies mostly asking that the couples would come to appreciate and fulfill the true holiness and divine purpose in marriage couples who obviously didn t realize that marriage is god s institution not the state s gradually however i came to conclude that because i was acting in a strictly secular public capacity established as such by both the state and the expectations of the couples involved i was really conducting a purely secular legal civil event with no greater moral or religious implications than if i had been conducting a civil trial the couple who told me mid ceremony to please hurry it up may have helped me to this conclusion i thought i had neatly rationalized a clear and sharp distinction between marriage before god and marriage before the state until i had to deal with my own divorce keeping matthew in mind i felt that the state had no business dissolving my marriage established before god but of course it assumed jurisdiction nonetheless i would ask those of you proposing answers to this question to consider this issue s logical extension if intercourse or the mental intent of the parties or the ceremony of the church or any combination thereof establishes marriage then at what moment is it dissolved karl thoennes iii university of alaska
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divine providence vs murphy s law romans rsv we know that in everything god works for good with those who love him who are called according to his purpose murphy s law if anything can go wrong it will we are all quite familiar with the amplifications and commentary on murphy s law but how do we harmonize that with romans for that matter how appropriate is humor contradicted by scripture tim rolfe rolfe dsuvax dsu edu rolfe junior dsu edu
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re accepting jesus in your heart religion especially christianity is nothing more than a drug some people use drugs as an escape from reality christians inject themselves with jeezus and live with that high why would you say especially christianity mark
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what s in a name the sequel i ve been thinking about the idea that was raised by michael covington i think that words mean what we think they mean regardless of etymology i ve been reflecting on what certain words meant in my childhood and tracing how this shaped some of my attitudes i grew up in a home where christ was a bad word people who were very angry said it the word christian meant someone who was not a jew it carried connotations of otherness of threat of enemy it took some time to figure out that there was a connection between christ and christian when i accepted jesus i expected to be disowned to become a christian meant to join the enemy i knew others would consider me a traitor at some level i agreed but was still prepared to pay this price like esau i sold my birthright however i made a better bargain he only got some stew but i got the incomparable riches of knowing christ as it turned out my parents did not disown me i found out later that they were hoping it was a phase that i would grow out of by the time they had decided it wasn t a phase they were sort of used to it they didn t disown me but they didn t completely accept the situation either for example they didn t come to my wedding because it was in a church when i visited my grandmother in the hospital a few days before her death she said to me as far as i m concerned you still are a jew what she meant was that she loved me and forgave me but i am not a jew i am a christian i ll concede one that likes chicken soup with matzoh balls i do not keep kosher i do not celebrate the sabbath on saturday my sons are not circumcised but these things are true of some people who do consider themselves jews it is not these rules that make people jews it is the heritage from the past i gave up the past this is why i find it hard to relate to messianic jews their experience is unlike mine they still consider themselves jews while following jesus some would even say that i must do so too i am at a stage of my life now where i would like to have a heritage it was not something i valued very much when i gave it but i did have a sense that i was giving it for god it may have been a small sacrifice it may have been an unnecessary sacrifice but i gave it and do not want to ask for it back and while i don t have the heritage i was born with i do have another i am an outcast from the house of israel but i am a member of the church one of the things i like about being a catholic christian is that it is rich in tradition it gives me a feeling of once again being rooted in the past this is probably one of the reasons why i don t like it when people mess around with christian traditions for example changing the name of easter these traditions fill an important emotional need of mine i suppose the point of all this is that people shouldn t assume that all believers of jewish background are the same for some jewish christian is a good name for others it is an oxymoron jayne kulikauskas jayen mmalt guild org
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re tuff to be a christian in article apr geneva rutgers edu mdbs ms uky edu no name writes bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes same hey we can t do it god himself inspires us to turn our lives over to him that s tuff and most people don t want to do it to be a real christian would be something for the strong to persevere at but so you think it is easy to be a muslim or be a buddhist good points on buddhism etc deleted just because one says christianity true christianity is hard to follow faithfully does not mean that one discounts the validity and difficulty of other religions i admire those of any religion who are willing to make the kind of sacrifices and dedicate themselves spiritually in the way you are talking about more deleted and perhaps some more but leave the crap in it out woman was created after man to be his helper etc do you think this is what christianity is all about not all christians believe in this particular story literally it sounds above like you are supporting a policy of to each his own here is another example of that if it helps someone s faith to take every word of the bible literally i support and respect that too time we don t rush it in one day christianity is your whole life it is not going to church once a week or helping poor people once in a while we box everything into time units such as work at this time sports tv social life god is above these boxes and should be when ever i turn on my tv there is this pat robertson and other brain washers oh boy what an act they put on with an number to turn in your pledges god it seems is alive and well inside these boxes please don t judge all of christianity by one man the only man one can truly judge all of christianity by is jesus makes sense right i think his point about how we put our lives into little boxes is very true what does your comment about robertson have to do with that carried with us into all these boxes that we have created for ourselves parting question would you have become a christian if you had not been indoctrinated by your parents you probably never learned about any other religion to make a comparative study and therefore i claim you are brain washed i was raised agnostic my father was never baptised and was raised atheist he is not an atheist because he found a close mindedness present in the viewpoint of his parents equal to the close mindedness he found in the viewpoint of the christians he came in contact with thus i was free to choose how to live my life and he supported the decision i made to join the episcopal church although he emphasized to me that his respect for my beliefs should result in my not intruding on his beliefs ie i should not try to convert him as that is his decision please no flames or advice on how to convert him one of my good friends is hindi and i greatly respect her beliefs and the culture surrounding her religion my best friend is jewish and i have always held a profound resepct for the jewish religion chaim potok and isaac bashevis singer are two of my favorite authors i really do not think you can make that kind of generalization about how christians choose and i do mean choose their faith if they have not consciously accepted the faith in their adult lives which is what confirmation represents then you can talk about their being brainwashed vera if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice rush freewill
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re an agnostic s question perhaps you can tell your friend that you feel pressured by his continual discussions of this topic surely he doesn t feel you should be pressured into something you feel uncomfortable about since christianity should be a choice one should make on one s own please also realize that he is doing this out of friendship he probably feels you are missing out on something great and wants to tell you about it but since you know where you can learn about christianity you can tell him that it is now up to you to make that choice and if the choice is no you should be respected for that personally i believe that a christian s mission is just to be christ like showing his her own faith and happiness in that faith and make sure people know they are welcome to talk to you about it i do not believe in imposing your beliefs upon others but then again everyone s definitions of imposing may differ i hope i have made myself clear if not please correct me 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
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re sspx schism here is some material by michael davies on the subject of schism in general and archishop lefebvre in particular he wrote it around the first part of the two part article was on the scandalous activities of archbishop weakland in this country but i cut all that and i pared down the rest to what was relevant joe buehler schism and disobedience according to st thomas aquinas schism consists primarily in a refusal of submission to the pope or communion with the members of the church united to him on first sight it would appear that whatever the subjective motivation of the archbishop as discussed above he must be in a state of objective schism as he has refused to submit to the pope on a very grave matter involving his supreme power of jurisdiction however standard catholic textbooks of theology make it clear that while all schisms involve disobedience not all acts of disobedience are schismatic if this were so as was noted at the beginning of this article it would mean that the number of american bishops who are not schismatic would not reach double figures the distinction between disobedience and schism is made very clear in the article on schism in the very authoritative dictionnaire de theologie catholique the article is by father yves congar who is certainly no friend of archbishop lefebvre he explains that schism and disobedience are so similar that they are often confused father congar writes that schism involves a refusal to accept the existence of legitimate authority in the church for example luther s rejection of the papacy father congar explains that the refusal to accept a decision of legitimate authority in a particular instance does not constitute schism but disobedience the catholic encyclopedia explains that for a catholic to be truly schismatic he would have to intend to sever himself from the church as far as in him lies it adds that not every disobedience is schism in order to possess this character it must include besides the transgression of the command of the superiors a denial of their divine right to command not only does mgr lefebvre not deny the divine right of the pope to command but he affirms repeatedly his recognition of the pope s authority and his intention of never breaking away from rome the archbishop made his attitude clear in the july august issue of days we pray for the pope every day nothing has changed with the consecrations last june we are not sedevacantists we recognize in john paul ii the legitimate pope of the catholic church we don t even say that he is a heretical pope we only say that his modernist actions favor heresy intrinsically schismatic the principal argument used by those claiming that mgr lefebvre is in schism is that the consecration of a bishop without a papal mandate is an intrinsically schismatic act a bishop who carries out such a consecration it is claimed becomes ipso facto a schismatic this is not true if such a consecration is an intrinsically schismatic act it would always have involved the penalty of excommunication in the code of canon law the offence was punished only by suspension see canon of the code pope pius xii had raised the penalty to excommunication as a response to the establishment of a schismatic church in china the consecration of these illicit chinese bishops differed radically from the consecrations carried out by mgr lefebvre as the professed intention was to repudiate the authority of the pope that is to deny that he has the right to govern the church and the illicitly consecrated chinese bishops were given a mandate to exercise an apostolic mission neither archbishop lefebvre nor any of the bishops he has consecrated claim that they have powers of jurisdiction they have been consecrated solely for the purpose of ensuring the survival of the society by carrying out ordinations and also to perform confirmations i do not wish to minimize in any way the gravity of the step take by mgr lefebvre the consecration of bishops without a papal mandate is far more serious matter than the ordination of priests as it involves a refusal in practice of the primacy or jurisdiction belonging by divine right to the roman pontiff but the archbishop could argue that the crisis afflicting the church could not be more grave and that grave measures were needed in response it appears to be taken for granted by most of the archbishop s critics that he was excommunicated for the offense of schism and the vatican has certainly been guilty of fostering this impression there is not so much as a modicum of truth in this allegation the new code of canon law includes a section beginning with canon entitled penalties for specific offenses de poenis in singula dicta the first part deals with offenses against religion and the unity of the church de delictis contra religionem et ecclesiae unitatem canon deals with the offense of schism which is evidently together with apostasy and heresy one of the three fundamental offenses against the unity of the church but the archbishop was not excommunicated under the terms of this canon or indeed under any canon involving an offense against religion or the unity of the church the canon cited in his excommunication comes from the third section of penalties for specific offenses which is entitled usurpation of ecclesial functions and offenses in their exercise de munerum ecclesiasticorum usurpatione degue delictis iniis exercendis the canon in question is canon which reads a bishop who consecrates someone bishop and the person who receives such a consecration from a bishop without a pontifical mandate incur an automatic latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the holy see the scandalous attempts to smear archbishop lefebvre with the offense of schism are then contrary to both truth and charity a comparable smear under civil as opposed to ecclesiastical law would certainly justify legal action for libel involving massive damages an accurate parallel would be to state that a man convicted of manslaughter had been convicted of first degree murder i must stress that what i have written here is not the dubious opinion of laymen unversed in the intricacies of canon law canon lawyers without the least shred of sympathy for mgr lefebvre have repudiated the charge of schism made against him as totally untenable father patrick yaldrini dean of the faculty of canon law of the institut catholique in paris noted in the july issue of valeurs actuelles that as i have just explained mgr lefebvre was not excommunicated for schism but for the usurpation of an ecclesiastical function he added that it is not the consecration of a bishop which constitutes schism but the conferral of an apostolic mission upon the illicitly consecrated bishop it is this usurpation of the powers of the sovereign pontiff which proves the intention of establishing a parallel church cardinal rosalio lara president of the pontifical commission for the authentic interpretation of canon law commented on the consecrations in the july issue of la repubblica it would be hard to imagine a more authoritative opinion the cardinal wrote the act of consecrating a bishop without a papal mandate is not in itself a schismatic act in fact the code that deals with offenses is divided into two sections one deals with offenses against religion and the unity of the church and these are apostasy schism and heresy consecrating a bishop with a pontifical mandate is on the contrary an offense against the exercise of a specific ministry for example in the case of the consecrations carried out by the vietnamese archbishop ngo dinh thuc in and although the archbishop was excommunicated he was not considered to have committed a schismatic act because there was no intention of a breach with the church it is not simply unjust but ludicrous to suggest that in consecrating bishops without a papal mandate archbishop lefebvre had the least intent of establishing a schismatic church he is not a schismatic and will never be a schismatic the archbishop considers correctly that the the church is undergoing its worst crisis since the arian heresy and that for the good of the church it was necessary for him to consecrate the four bishops to ensure the future of his society canon law provides for just such a situation and even if one believes that the future of the society could have been guaranteed without these consecrations the fact that the archbishop believed sincerely that it could not means as canon law states clearly that he has not incurred excommunication furthermore while the vatican allows such prelates as archbishop weakland to undermine the faith with impunity it cannot expect catholics to pay the least attention to its sanctions against a great and orthodox archbishop whose entire life has been devoted to the service of the church and the salvation of souls dr eric m de saventhem president of the international una voce association is one of the best informed laymen in the church and he knows the archbishop intimately dr de saventhem like myself has no greater desire than to see a reconciliation between mgr lefebvre and the holy see during the archbishop s lifetime a quotation from a statement by dr de saventhem which was published in the february remnant merits careful study in retrospect the road leading to the consecrations of june appears more paved with grave roman and unfortunately also papal omissions than with lefebvrist obstinancies and from the eyes of an informed public this cannot be hidden by attempting to present the archbishop s act of grave disobedience as an offense against the faith it is said today that mgr lefebvre has an erroneous concept of tradition if this were so cardinal ratzinger could not on behalf of the pope have addressed to the archbishop the following words in his letter of july your ardent desire to safeguard tradition by procuring for it the means to live and prosper testifies to your attachment to the faith of all time the holy father understands your concern and shares it
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart jason smith jasons atlastele com wrote the discussion begins why does the universe exist at all one of the laws of nature specifying cause and effect seems to dictate at least to this layman s mind there must be a causal event no reasonable alternative exists i would argue that causality is actually a property of spacetime causes precede their effects 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 i have always wondered why christians use the there are questions science or atheism cannot answer argument i hope this is the appropriate group to ask this question the most popular question is the question of origins why does the universe exist or anything for that matter 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 it is clear science has nothing to say about the first question however is it a meaningful question after all i would say it isn t consider the following a die hard skeptic being be it human or whatever attempts to doubt one s very existence since it is so easy to doubt everything else i cannot be sure the world exists it may be my mind fooling me can i ever be sure i exist however it is only possible to exist or not to exist someone insert an appropriate shakespeare quote here a being that does not exist cannot doubt one s existence a being that does exist can doubt one s existence but this would be pointless the being would exist anyway let us return to the original question why a being that does not exist does not need any reasons for its non existence this being is not sure whether anything else exists but his mind but let us assume that the world exists independent of the mind the objectivity postulate 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 i seriously doubt god could have an answer to this question some christians i have talked to have said that actually god is himself the existence however i see several problems with this answer first it inevitably leads to the conclusion that god is actually all existence good and evil devils and angels us and them this is pantheism not christianity 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 argument sounds like god does not exist but meta exists and from his meta existent perspective he created existence i think this is actually a nonsolution a mere twist of words the best answer i have heard is that human reasoning is incapable of understanding such questions being an atheist myself i do not accept such answers since i do not have any other methods the second question how did the universe emerge from nothing belongs to the domain of science and i for one do not doubt the question can be answered by its methods many cosmologists have suggested that it is entirely possible for universes to emerge from vacuum this possibility has been suggested in a recent hawking biography see also lizhi shuxian creation of the universe world scientific however i think the sci groups are more appropriate for discussions like this as far as i can tell the very laws of nature demand a why that isn t true of something outside of nature i e super natural this is not true science is a collection of models telling us how not why something happens i cannot see any good reason why the why questions would be bound only to natural things assuming that the supernatural domain exists if supernatural beings exist it is as appropriate to ask why they do so as it is to ask why we exist i believe the genetic code will be entirely deciphered in our lifetimes but we will not see man convert entirely inert material into self sustaining reproducing life ever i ve never been much of a prophet though i can t even picture new york in my mind i don t believe any technology would be able to produce that necessary spark of life despite having all of the parts available just my opinion this opinion is also called vitalism namely that living systems are somehow fundamentally different from inanimate systems do christians in general adopt this position what would happen when scientists announce they have created primitive life say small bacteria in a lab there is a problem with your prophecy artificial life has been created although not yet in a chemical form computer simulations of evolution contain systems that are as much alive as any bacterium although their code is electronic as well as their metabolism see a recent book steven levy artificial life the quest for a new creation jonathan cape london artificial chemical life is just around the corner after all no spark of life has been found to be necessary living systems do not violate any physical laws as we know them you don t mind if a few of us send up a prayer on your behalf during your research do you after all if we of christ are deluding ourselves you really have nothing to worry about eh exactly this is why i think atheists should not post any evangelical atheist arguments to soc religion groups since people who seek to find peace in religions must be allowed to gather together i would normally have asked these questions in alt atheism or talk religion misc but it seems many christians do not read these groups 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 a question that has bee bothering me wquinnan sdcc ucsd edu malcusco writes my problem with science is that often it allows us to assume we know what is best for ourselves god endowed us with the ability to produce life through sexual relations for example but he did not make that availible to everyone does that mean that if science can over ride god s decision through alterations that god wills for us to have the power to decide who should and should not be able to have children should men be allowed to have babies if that is made possible in a word yes i don t believe that physical knowledge has a great deal of impact on the power of god in the past god gave us the ability to create life through sexual relations now he is giving us the ability to create life through in vitro fertilization the difference between the two is merely cosmetic and even if we gain the ability to create universes we won t begin to approach the glory of god the power we are being given is a test and i am sure that in many cases we will use our new abilities unwisely but people have been using sexuality unwisely for millenia and i haven t heard an outcry to abolish it yet no matter how far we extend our dominion over the physical world we aren t impinging on god s power it s only when we attempt to gain control of the spiritual world those things that can t be approached through science and logic that we begin to interfere with god alan terlep and the scorpion says it s oakland university rochester mi in my nature atterlep vela acs oakland edu
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re the arrogance of christians phs d vaxc cc monash edu au writes in article apr athos rutgers edu aa freenet carleton ca mark baker writes 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 you haven t fully explained the atheist position many theists believe that there is no proof of the existence of god but choose to believe in him anyway i haven t yet found an argument for atheism that can t quickly be broken down to unprovable assumptions this isn t a problem with me everybody needs to have a faith but if you believe that you can provide a purely logical argument for the nonexistence of god i d really like to see it 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 ahh but when you use science and reason you have faith in certain beliefs of the scientific method for example the physical laws of the universe are stable our observations of reality are a valid basis for a determination of truth objective reality exists logical argument is a valid way to answer all questions can you prove any of these alan terlep and the scorpion says it s oakland university rochester mi in my nature atterlep vela acs oakland edu
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re being right about messiahs desiree bradley mindlink bc ca desiree bradley writes 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 this is a good point christ was hardly the only person who claimed to be the messiah in fact a number of messiahs were active in the area from the time of the roman conquest to after the fall of masada many of the statements made by the apostles especially their repeated attempts to give jesus a sword give him military power point to the fact that they didn t realize the true nature of his reign until after the fact many of the statements in the bible can be seen as being oriented toward explaining this new definition of messiah to the jews who were being preached to alan terlep and the scorpion says it s oakland university rochester mi in my nature atterlep vela acs oakland edu
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atheists and hell hello i have seen two common threads running through postings by atheists on the newsgroup and i think that they can be used to explain each other unfortunately i don t have direct quotes handy atheists believe that when they die they die forever a god who would condemn those who fail to believe in him to eternal death is unfair i don t see what the problem is to christians hell is by definition eternal death exactly what atheists are expecting when they die there s no reason hell has to be especially awful to most people eternal death is bad enough literal interpreters of the bible will have a problem with this view since the bible talks about the fires of hell and such personally i don t think that people in hell will be thrust into flame any more than i expect to jesus with a double edged sword issuing from his mouth i treat both these statements as metaphorical alan terlep and the scorpion says it s oakland university rochester mi in my nature atterlep vela acs oakland edu rushing in where angels fear to tread jody
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re tuff to be a christian in article apr geneva rutgers edu mdbs ms uky edu no name writes parting question would you have become a christian if you had not been indoctrinated by your parents you probably never learned about any other religion to make a comparative study and therefore i claim you are brain washed you write as if no one ever became a christian except people from christian families this is not true as quite a few people on this group can attest including me richard aquinas chonak norris mit edu usenet addict intp seeking job change sys mgr vax sis cobol dtr progr unix c x
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re sabbath admissions of in response to some of the discussions on the sabbath andrew byler commented that if we really followed sola scriptura we would worship on saturday the change to sunday was a law made by the church and we don t acknowledge its authority to make laws i noted that protestants do not consider sunday worship a law clh he was not referring to the faq but to the five sabbath admissions posted on the bible study group this is what prompted someone to send the faq to me the argument against the sabbath is that it is part of the ceremonial law and like the rest of the n ceremonial law is not binding on christians you cannot show from scripture that the weekly sabbath is part of the ceremonial laws before you post a text in reply investigate its context if you accept that the sabbath is not binding on christians then the day of worship falls into the category of items on which individual christians or since worship is by its nature a group activity churches are free to decide can the churches also decide what is and is not sin interesting where there is no divine imperative of course we must establish rules of operation but we cannot be as creative with what god has explicitly spoken on darius again in the normal protestant interpretation sunday is not a law and worshipping on another day is not a sin churches are free to decide on the day they will meet just as they are free to decide on the hour it would not be a sin to worship on some other day but if you belong to a church that worships on sunday and you show up on monday you will probably worship alone clh
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poem the sophomore romans the sophomore says what is truth and turns to bask in the admiration of his peers how modern how daring how liberating how modern how daring how liberating they chant the sophomore being american doesn t know that his question modern skeptical cynical was asked before by a modern skeptical cynical urbane cosmopolitan politician appointed not elected who happened to live two thousand years ago like many politicians he cared less about ideals than results less about ends than means less about anything than keeping his job and his head we might call him a bit brutal though firm would be kinder and no doubt stalin who let nobody go laughed at his laxness he didn t like his job perhaps he no longer hoped for better nor feared worse except regarding his head and when these wily jews with their heads i win tails you lose conundrums brought forth their madman his first impulse was to play the roman i find nothing wrong with him see to it yourselves but when they mentioned king and caesar his heart froze if he killed their madman he d start a riot and lose his job and his head if he saved the king of the jews he d piss off caesar and lose his job and his head and when his wife told him to have nothing to do with the righteous lout she didn t tell him anything he hadn t already figured out so he punted not my jurisdiction take him to see herod who just happened to be in town herod appreciated the courtesy but wasn t worried and sent the sharp tongued fool who suddenly didn t have much to say funny how people lose it under pressure back in the attire proper to his royal state his ass is covered if herod has no problem caesar certainly won t the fool can be king of whatever world he wants as long as it s not caesar s i m letting him go he said with a shout looks like he ll last this one out the crowd s reaction puzzled him they really wanted him dead they didn t want the king of the jews they wanted barabbas instead and as josephus records they got him oh well he thought they all look the same to me and we ll get barabbas next time and if i can get them to say we have no king but caesar by killing a madman hell i ll kill ten a day and then pilate had his fun a little joke short to the point trilingual and all this went as it always does when someone gets caught in the gears of government and there s a scientific explanation no doubt for the superstitious rumors persisting to this day that it didn t all end with a tomb and a roman squadron on guard our sophomore doesn t know about this he doesn t recognize his kindred spirit or truth either as he admits i guess we haven t learned much in two thousand years fred gilham gilham csl sri com peace is only better than war when it s not hell too war being hell makes sense walker percy the second coming
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assurance of hell i dreamed that the great judgment morning had dawned and the trumpet had blown i dreamed that the sinners had gathered for judgment before the white throne oh what weeping and wailing as the lost were told of their fate they cried for the rock and the mountains they prayed but their prayers were too late the soul that had put off salvation not tonight i ll get saved by and by no time now to think of religion alas he had found time to die and i saw a great white throne now some have protest by saying that the fear of hell is not good for motivation yet jesus thought it was paul thought it was paul said knowing therefore the terror of the lord we persuade men today too much of our evangelism is nothing but soft soap and some of it is nothing but evangelical salesmanship we don t tell people anymore that there s such a thing as sin or that there s such a place as hell as jayne has said this doesn t mean we have to come on so strong so as to hit people over the head with a baseball bat yet the fact remains there is a place called hell a place so fearful that god died to save us from having to experience it whatever you or i as christians do we should do whatever we can to win people to the lord if for no other reason to keep them from going to outer darkness jesus in mt tells us that he didn t prepare hell for people he prepared it for the devil and his angels no where in the bible do i read anywhere that god predestined anybody to go to hell d l moody use to say that the elect are the whosoever will and the nonelect are the whosoever wont s whether or not that s theologically sound i couldn t defend but its practical jesus said to the people of israel ye would not now some of you may not be students of the bible heck some of you may not be christians have you ever said to somebody i don t believe in hell i believe in the religion of jesus but did you know that jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven oh i believe in the religion of the sermon on the mount you find hell taught by jesus in the sermon on the mount you ll read that jesus talked about the tree being cast into the fire several times he talks about hell and about judgment in fact over and over in the synoptics matthew mark and luke jesus talks about hell not isaiah not moses not john the baptist though he did but jesus the son of god the great beloved one preached about hell because he loved people and didn t want to see them go there now if there is no hell then jesus preached in vain it was our lord jesus not some angry baptist preacher that said where the worm never dies and where the fire never goes out jesus said that it was jesus who called hell a furnace of fire it was jesus that used the word condemnation and this is the condemnation that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil jesus said that how can we get it across to you that a loving dying jesus preached about hell not only that but he went through hell that s what calgary was all about when my lord was on the cross darkness fell he called hell outer darkness do you have this idea that hell is a place where the gamblers are gambling over here the drunks are getting drunk over there and the prostitutes are prostituting their bodies over there that s not what hell is hell s not a party there s no fellowship there he called it outer darkness outer away from god darkness god is light no when he was on the cross he was made sin for you and for me god treated jesus the way sinners have to be treated that s is a sobering thought as my son would say an awesome thought my god my god why hast thou forsaken me hell is isolation there s no fellowship in hell there s no friendship in hell there s no loving embrace in hell there s no hand shake in hell there s no word of encouragement in hell i thirst it goes much deeper than physical thirst hell is eternal craving with no satisfaction the man whose life was lived for drugs will crave it eternally the man whose life was lived for the lust of a woman s body will crave it eternally and not be satisfied one theologian has put it this way and i think it deserves merit what is hell hell is just the kind of environment that matches the internal condition of the lost in a recent post i was trying to remember the founder of the word of life ministries i ve remembered his name jack wertzen and found that the illustration that i gave wasn t his his illustration was that he was talking to his barber and his barber s wife and daughter had just recently been saved and he was commenting about it to jack they sing these songs and read bible verses and their praising this and that i can t stand it jack do you think god would send me to hell jack answered by saying yes i think he would of course the barber said what do you mean by that well if you can t stand living at home with your wife and daughter who sing hymns and praises to god now what would you do in heaven where they ll do it for eternity you d be miserable because god loves you he d put you where it would match what you really are it makes a man think the crucifixion of jesus christ is a fact that necessitates the eternal existence of hell because on the cross he performed an eternal act don t ask me how i don t know but he is god and he is the infinite eternal and when he died he died an infinite eternal death it is by that eternal act that he purchased eternal life for the whosoever wills he suffered eternal judgment a lot of people would like to detour around hell by saying everybody is going to be saved eventually universalism my bible says no he ll separate them the sheep from the goats after you die there s a probationary period in which god prepares you for heaven no my bible says that it is appointed unto men once to die and then comes judgment some of the cultist believe in annihilation after you die sssswish just like a mosquito you re squished out no in rev we are told that their is eternal existence in hell just as there is in heaven i don t enjoy making these kind of statements and maybe you don t enjoy listening to them but we have to preach the entire word of god there is a place called hell if i could give one verse of scripture that could give any hope that people aren t going there i d give it to you but i haven t found it that fact that there is a place called hell the fact that our god is a god of holiness and must judge sin the fact that he has made us the kind of creatures we are and therefore we re responsible the fact that he has placed us in a uni verse that has purpose and design behind it the fact that sin is such an awful thing and the fact that god himself went through hell to save us from hell leads us to two applications as i ve already mentioned if you are a christian you must worn others its not good enough to stop and fix their flat tire and not tell them that just around the bend the bridge is out knowing therefore the terror of lord we persuade men if you haven t accepted jesus are your savior you re taking an awful chance as i say to the jehovah witnesses who no longer frequent my door if you are right and i am wrong then i will have lived a good life and will die and cease to exist but if i am right and you are wrong then you will die and suffer eternal damnation i don t mean to make fun at this point but its like dirty harry said you ve got to ask yourself do i feel lucky well do you a man s got to know his limitations don t be one of the whosoever wont s because while i was yet a sinner he died for me there s no greater love than this that a man lay down his life for another rex
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re sabbath admissions of 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 darius
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