Uber Genius

Yes, you’re making my point! It isn’t until Romans that we start to acquire some important details about our need for a savior and what salvation is saving us from and who we become. That is why when scholars want to teach about the Kingdom of God being ushered in they go to the gospels, and for assurance of salvation they go to Paul’s epistles. Shoot I remember losing sleep over the branches thrown in the fire Jesus gives in John. But when I read 1 Cor 12-15 I saw clearly that we don’t lose salvation because of sin. If we only use the gospels we never see the relationship of works and grace identified!

Sorry working off my cell phone rather than tablet and the interface is cutoff sometimes.

Yet how did Peter and Paul and Barnabas preach in Acts? By referring to evidence which there audience “knew.” By arguing that evidence just as Jesus taught them to after his resurrection. Acts 13-19 we see Paul’s method of getting people to believe was to engage in evidence supporting premises which in trim supported arguments. No “Just believe,” in Acts. If we only had the book of John you might be able to make your case. But we have Acts, Gal., Rom., Eph. Those are in your canon aren’t they?

Have it your way! The demons believe in God and they shutter according to James. Do we want to qualify belief? So Jesus also ate with sinners even whores (I believe is how your people put it). Luke 7:36-50 records Jesus rebuking the Pharisees because they judged a prostitute. You need to explain why Jesus treated the outcasts from your list above with great love and mercy and treated the Pharisees (those religiously arrogant self-important people who judge people by their appearance) as outcasts. So it seems that you may have more to fear than the whores and drug-addicts you inveigh against. Further you keep on ignoring the data of Acts and the Epistles where we have a clearer description of salvation and assurance of salvation than the gospels. Deleting data from God's word can’t be a good thing.

I like the fact that they point out atheism has no way to provide meaning to suffering. You suffer then you die, end of story. But the Christian suffers, dies, and then RULES AND REIGNS WITH CHRISTMFOR ETERNITY. CHRIST WHO IS OUR SUFFERING SERVANT WHO CAME TO MODEL GOD's servant heart! on a different note I would avoid the response, "We just don't know that God doesn't have a morally sufficient reason." This approach often gets boiled down to, "It a mystery and we just have to trust God." It is not the correct rhetorical strategy to brush someone off this way. I would piont out that there are many circumstances where we put our children in temporary pain (braces, medical procedures that ultimately heal the child, sacrificing soldiers to suffer in war to prevent greater suffering by weaker members of society). So it is not clear that we don't make choices to increase suffering for a while only to get a better result down the road. If we being fallible do this regularly, why would God, having all knowledge about what causes will lead to what effects in the future, not be able to bring good out of evil and suffering the way we do when we bring our kid to the emergency room to have them set a broken arm in our 3-year old. He doesn't understand why we are putting him or her in greater pain, he or she is 3! I argue that this is analogous to God's allowing evil and suffering.

"Logical problem of evil is no longer argued by philosophers. The reason is that God could have morally compelling reasons to allow evil." One of those is God's desire for humans to love and worship him. only free creatures can worship and love. It it may not be feasible for God to create a world where mankind all freely chooses to love and obey. Remember God can't force someone to freely do something more than he can make a square circle or create a married bachelor. For more on the free will defense see Alvin Plantinga. Also see William Lane Craig's animated video here:

Genius. LOL. Love your thinking.

"It appears to be out of accord with the rest of scripture." "it has been used as a club by Irresponsible preachers." A.W. Tozer. Assurance of salvation appears across many passages. Tozer rightly identifies this passage as "out of accord." One of our Biblical Interpretation rules is known as the rule of perspicuity. Which is just a fancy way of saying we interpret the unclear in light of the clear. There are numerous passages about sin in the Bible. But if we want a full account of sin, its origin, its universality, its effect we would go to the book of Romans. Similarly we learn about salvation in relation to works in Romans or Ephesians or Galatians. We would not go to the Gospels for evidence or data on salvation because Jesus was preaching about ushering in the KOG. Assurance of salvation is found in Romans in the context of an outline that starts with all sin and are separated, Jews are equally separated, Jesus solves the sin problem through faith for Jew and gentile alike, we are sanctified not by works of the law but through adoption as sons and trust in the work of the HS, who also seals us in Christ. Clear. Our salvation has nothing to do with works and maintaining salvation can't have anything to do with works. Only by taken passages out of context and inferring meaning that the original audience never would have understood of the original texts do we get assurance of salvation by works! The text in Hebrews is very controversial and has been since Church Fathers started commenting on it 1700 years ago. Its is unclear who these individuals are (saved who have rejected Christ committing the only unpardonable sin of rejecting the HS' witness regarding our sin and need for Christ's sacrifice, not Ever saved,or not sanctified by works (the least likely inference)).

That is why there is a reformation process Paul describes as "Being perfected in the twinkling of an eye." Further in 1 Cor 3:12-15 we see Christians who live like non-Christians "laying up evil works wood, hay, and stubble," that will burn up in the judgement. Those people will "suffer loss, but not loss of salvation." So firstly, your view is knocked down (that is a philosophical phrase for shown to be untenable or completely false), by Paul. Secondly, to avoid these types of theological missteps analogies from what we would do as limited, fallible creatures, being analogous to what an infinitely good, all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect eternal God would do seem self-evidently (for most anyways) false! Galatians 3 dealt with the saved by grace and perfected by works theology. "Foolish, ignorant, bewitched," are not superlatives! I would engage further but I have to go serve food at a shelter to "Unrepentant, homeless, smelly drug-addicts who are mostly beggars and thieves." Now come-on your not really a Christian are you? You are posing as a straw man Christian the media represents as Christian, right? You know the ones, Westboro Baptists, who have never read any of the NT but claim to represent Jesus. Or the guys like Brother Judd or Sister Cindy who travel around the country telling college students they are going to hell because they are whores and whoremongers.

Though I'm simpathetic to your inference that Calvinism is deeply flawed, you have assembled a lengthy ad hominem attack which is fallacious and in no way weakens Calvinism. it could be the case Augustine held false beliefs and was a bad person set undeceiving all Christians and further that Calvin unwittingly used Augustine (as well as Aquinas, and Anselm) to form his beliefs. But this does nothing to engage the beliefs and the inference from the data of scripture. Suppose I give an argument with premises and data why I think Abe Lincoln was the best POTUS of the 19th Century. Now supposed I secretly thought he was best because he had a marvelous beard, and I too have a similar beard, and my favorite rock group is ZZ Top again because at least secretly I am enamoured by their beards. So what. I still gave evidence that supported premises in arguments that Abe was best. Those arguments are true or false based on the premises and evidence not my attributes such as sanity. As you look up ad hominem fallacy also include genetic fallacy. There are great inductive, abductive and deductive arguments against Calvinism. But you don't engage those arguments here.

We do see a different approach by Peter and Paul. But we see the NT has one savior, with different authors writing about different things to different audiences. Peter addresses a worldview common to 2nd Temple Judaism; a significantly different worldview than the pagan cultures Paul is addressing. Secondly, as two speakers asked to speak on the meaning of the cross might produce different messages due to the multifaceted nature of the cross, so too we see Hebrews (speaking to a Jewish audience) produces a different teaching about Christ's supremacy over angel, and The Law, than Peter's message (also to a Jewish audience) about the gospel of the kingdom of God. Just as authors talking about Ronald Reagan's Presidency might highlight his battle with Communism and his attempt to bring down the iron curtain. Other authors might discuss Reagan's supply-side economics, still others might highlight why Reagan left the Democratic Party, still other authors might focus on Reagan's involvement in the Iran Contra scandal. One person, many perspectives.

This seems like a human problem, not a Catholic problem per se. Why do you think that reporters don't report other conspiracies to cover-up pastoral abuse? Finally, the report suggested a Law association that had helped a dozen churches since 1969. Only one case of abuse cover-up is highlighted in the 8-month investigation. One data point is not a line, two data points are not a trend, so the article seems to be very big on method of cover-up and small on actual examples. i have been falsely accused of harassment in a work situation. I was received no less than 4 calls by individuals who had been falsely accused by the same person. I engaged a lawyer and informed my boss that HR would have to provide a bridge number for my lawyer, as the accuser was known to the company to falsely accuse men of sexual harassment and I was going to name the previous HR individuals who had hid the false abuse claims, and my boss who had his the claims as well, and the company in a defamation law suit. The false claims were dropped immediately. Point is that I am quick to advise pastors to have a plan to handle false abuse claims. Further many scammers find churches to be easy marks for insurance fraud scammers claiming abuse. One former acquantence was lured into counseling a woman (after twice referring her to the pastoral staff). The woman made unwanted advances during counseling. When the pastor shared this info with me I advised he run not walk away. He didn't. Months later he committed adultury. Within one week of the event he was named along with the church in a $1 million law suit by the couple. They settlement was for low six-figures. Imagine his surprise when the lawyer informed him that he was the fourth pastor in 10 years that this couple had sued. I'm am distrustful of most of the media these days. But they are secular and wouldn't seem to have a dog in the hunt shaming Catholics but somehow protecting non-Catholics. Help me understand why they would under-report these incidents?

I don't understand the reasoning of attacking someone who raises the issue that some abuse goes unreported if it is associated with other denominations.

Details about the earth quake opening directly under cross is unverifiable! Location of ark being exactly under cross is unverifiable. lid coming off makes no sense as blood was sprinkled on top not in

Did you mean to quote new atheist Richard Dawkins? Bayes theorem suggests differently. But we do need evidence. And need it to be raw not edited.

Response violates the law of the excluded middle When we read Luther, or Bonehoffer or even how Plato and Aristotle argued against atheism in their day, we can grow spiritually via the truths we discover. All truth is God's truth, is a quote from none other than the father of Christian philosophy, Augustine! Reaffirmed often and even the motto of many Christian colleges. You seem to be in scarce company on the narrowness of "spiritual" knowledge" above.

Not at all sure that we should "keep it simple," as you suggest. Jesus, is recorded as growing in wisdom for almost two decade after he intellectually crushed the top Jewish Scholars of his day. Nothing simple there. paul studied for decades before he started writing the epistles, nothing simple there. Studying a hot Big Bang inflationary cosmology is not simple but has pointed to the creation of the universe from nothing which has in turn become an important argument for God's existence known as the Kalam cosmological argument. Further, the fine-tuning of the original constants of physics for life (31 in number currently) form another powerful argument for God's existence known as the fine-tuning argument. I thank God that he has granted me access to the complexity by providing specialist in knowledge areas like astrophysics, and medicine, and ancient Semetic languages and all available on a very complex internet searched by a complex software called scholar Google, etc. etc etc. Millions of atheists worldwide have complexity simplified by Christians helping them understand how all creation testifies of God's existence. I'm not afraid of complexity, rigorous study and the HS will help us understand the scriptures, and there concomitant theological and practical implications. Nothing simple there either. So I'm as yet unconvinced of your hypothesis.

Further, scholars suggest 17 points in common between the Genesis account and the Mesopotamian traditions, the “Atra-Hasis Epic,” the Ras Shamra version, the epic of “Gilgamesh” tablet XI, and the Sumerian “Eridu Genesis” version. The claim isn't "Hey other cultures wrote about the flood." This is the Old Josh McDowell claim also known as minimalism. The he claim is how do explain the larg number of similarities, not just in thems (I.E. There is a flood and a God and a rescuer), but how does one explains order and details and metaphoric copying ? see http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2007/03/07/Genesis-and-Ancient-Near-Eastern-Stories-of-Creation-and-Flood-Part-IV.aspx There are numerous laws in Leviticus that are copies from the code of hemorobi that predate the oldest date for the Pentateuch by over 300 years. Did God give these codes to an ancient Asyrian King the way he gave them to Moses? So I don't think this view that Moses interacted with other ideas rather than copying what God dictated, undermines the inspirational aspect of the text. GOd knew in advance what Moses would write. He chose Moses. He gave Moses revelation directly and indirectly. i don't reject the the young Earth view based on my view of how Moses compiled the text. I reject it on other exegetical grounds.

Hear is the problem: 1 - I don't beleive in the dictation theory of inspiration. 2 - I have said early and often that I beleive Moses was literate! Further he had exposure to the various Mesopotamian accounts and would refer to them, edit them, correct them based on divine revelation, etc. 3 - You seem to suggest here and other places that if we don't label the literary structure as "Literal." then we give up all the meaning in your list, which is absurd. No scholar makes that connection. 4 - We make pronouncements on textual literary structure not by consequences those pronouncement have on our theology but rather by the elements of the text. By following those rules I agree with a literal Adam and Eve, a literal Eden, a literal Fall that impacts all Adams offspring as seen in Roms. 3 and elsewhere.

Getting us back to the original topic of suspicion of science, I suggest that the core problem is not science per se as all beleive that the inductive method implemented in a rigorous way over time (decades, centuries, and millenia), will tend to more accurate explanations of the physical world in which we live. Politicization is a process where a particular science area has preliminary findings that can be used to support a premise in a political argument. Climate change became politicized in the 1990s. By the first decade of the new millennium we saw Al Gore (inventor of the Internet) claiming that by 2015 or earlier we would see both ice caps melt completely during the summer months and NY City would be under a foot of water. when this didn't happen was the science or political arguments changed to fit the data? No! Science does best when scientist operate inductively rather than deductively. what has happened in the climate field is that PhDs find that they can't even submit a dissertation that suggests that anthropogenic relationships are negligible (humans aren't responsible for climate change in the main). Further funding at NSF has become much more politically focused under Eugenie Scott. And it remains politicized. So in certain areas of research we see a deductive approach; that is the Professor says, I know humans are the primary cause of climate change, therefore I will model (create a mathematical function that represents a strong relationship between human independent variables and climate change related dependent variables). Further, we see Journals in the field both popular and semi popular are run by likeminded individuals who are suspect of any research that doesn't support their inference. Then ofcourse we have the media and actors joining politicians in a litany of propaganda about "Settled science," followed by curricula in K-12 teaching settled science and voila, we have cultural bias driving scientific pronouncements much the way the Catholic Church was accused of doing 500 years ago. How do do we get past such a entangled corruption? I will make some suggestions in a later post. It is important to recognize that the example above is NOT the rule but rather the exception in science research. The age of the Earth or the existence of dark energy or implications of Everett's inference on how Quantum theory works in our world have no such political uses. Age of universe and cosmological origins are politically efite. So no politician seems to care and much of the nasty deductive anti-science never gets off the ground.

Strangely uncontroversial. Perhaps the education level of the group didn't afford them the opportunity to parse your statement properly.

Hilarious. I was raised in the Episcopal Church (a dead country club) then after becoming Christian started attending a charismatic church. The people were lovely, but the preaching was ...of the spirit-led variety. I held the same view as your band leader qua preaching until the age of 20 when I started to examine the rationality of Jesus. His enormous intellect, and his arguments were amazing. He prepared and memorized material. Further, so did Paul and the author of Hebrews. Once I started doing inductive Bible studies in the early 1080s I was hooked. One quick aside. I had a great lay Bible teacher at my Charismatic church. He exposed me to Hebrew and Greek. Our class surveyed church history, and systematic theology. I have been fortunate to be exposed to a wide variety of Christian practice and beliefs. This is why I eschew the boundary-keeping in favor of letting the HS develop people intellectually over time as they mature.

So your point is that when Jude and Peter quote 1 Enoch they are quoting oral tradition? Okay. But they are quoting they hold as true. So first of all doesn't that destroy all quotations equally? Eg. "Jesus was quoting Isaiah," "No, he was quoting oral tradition of Isaiah, so we can't trust what Jesus was saying." Doctrinal error approach seems circular. Remember that Luther argued that James be pulled out of the canon because it disagreed (on its face anyway) with his sola gratia message. Likewise some of the ante-Nicene Church Fathers were accused of similar arguments. So we we to argue from doctrine as a precondition of canon as opposed to canon as a precondition of doctrine seems backward and consequentialist. But the point is moot since I am not relying on 1 Enoch for doctrine, nor am I arguing for its inclusion in the canon. Just suggesting that it was a source of true beliefs for some NT writers and the origin of texts penned by Peter and the author of Jude and The scholarly work Nestle-Aland catalogs all sources based survey of similar phrases in original languages and based on order of appearance. It is in the index not the textual notes. http://drmsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/New-Testament-Allusions-to-Apocrypha-and-Pseudepigrapha.pdf gives a list of the txts that scholars suspect have their origin in intertestimental writings not in the Protestant canon. The point here is the NT authors were not illiterate. They were readers and were familiar with, and reacted to the things that were written and discussed in their culture. Sometime they lifted ideas from other texts not in the Bible, other times the lifted the argument and structure and changed the key elements to contrast the Christian worldview to the Second Temple Jewish worldview. Sometimes they repeated things they took to be true from other sources. We must remember that the majority of early NT quotes of the OT were from the Septuagint. My point is that it is anachronistic to take Luther's worldview and read it back into the worldview of the NT authors.

You argued that if an theory wasn't clear to (You and modern readers) that there could be interpreted a period between days (Yoms) that we didn't have an option to suggest this interpretation. So fine. You have given us a premise that states God must be clear in how he communicates in order to accept that communication. I gave a counter-example of the problem of evil which is the single largest unknown that theists have had to defend for 2300 years. If God being clear to both ancient and modern readers alike, without the type of deep contextual and language and Hebrew Grammar, figurative structure, etc. then we would certainly expect a clear concise answer to the problem of evil. Not chopped up over a half-dozen texts, not spanning texts compiled over 1000s of years, not deduced after 2000 years of doctrinal discussions. Show me that text. Job gives no explanation of the problem of evil. Jesus when ask about the tower of Siloam dodges the question completely. I'm not asking you to give me it, I know it. I'm asking you to answer my knockdown objection to your GOD ALWAYS PRESENTS CLEAR ANSWERS understandable to both ancients and modern alike. If as I contend, the most important objection to non-believers is the problem of evil then it follows that it would be important to God to give us the clarity you suggest. Please provide a reference where he CLEARLY does that. Or upon further reflection you might reconsider your clarity standard as arbitrary and subjective and approach the text of Genesis abductively. That is to say see which of seven present Bible-believing, conservative theories about the text of Genesis gives the most reasonable account of the data of scripture found in Gen 1-2.4 in terms of depth, breadth, consistency based on exegesis of the text(s). Remember that the sacred space requirements of the Levitical laws are completely opaque as to why we need to do these things.

Yes most would agree, we have some truculent responses missing the point of the context of the original distinction which was essential DOCTRINE, to which I made an obviously unsuccessful attempt to correct the equivocation but alas querulous and truculent are often attended by stubbornness. At this point, why bother? It may be time to abandon hope of a rational discussion about Essential Doctrine having nothing to do with CANON, or view of sanctification, or view of end times. Your patience outshines my own.