The only reason the creationists don’t believe in evolution is because it conflicts with the original sin of adam and eve story that leads to the story of jesus. Normal Christians would believe in it but they are lead to believe it is debated in the scientific community (which is like debating Newton’s theory of Gravity) by their pastors, religious leaders, or anyone that would inherit these ideas from these pastors and religious leaders. The leaders make it out to be that you are questioning theories in the same way scientists do, but don’t include that science is based on evidence not stories. Plus, they believe, the bible is infallible and can’t be in anyway proven incorrect by an authority figure.
If kanicbird is going to ignore this, I’ll address it.
There are differences between God portrayed in the Old and New Testaments, and that difference shows up in the differences between evangelical vs. more liberal Christianity. God in the OT is a more strict and punishing God. However, there is an important point: Genesis is made up of at least four documents, two of which are called P (for priestly) and J (for Jawhist). P is written in a more formal tone, and is exemplified by the first story of creation (Gen 1:1 to 2:3). J is written with a different style of prose, and begins at Gen 2:4 for the second story of Creation and carries on for a while. These documents were split up and assembled into the book of Genesis perhaps 1000 years before Christ. Both P and J tell the stories of Moses, David and others, but with different points of view, different messages and occasional contradictions.
The later stories (mostly in J) in Genesis do indeed involve sinful leaders. The theme that runs through them is that even though human sin, thus breaking their covenant with God, God doesn’t give up on them. God continues to call them back into covenant, over and over again. Applied to us, God doesn’t abandon us, no matter what we do. God is eternally patient and keeps calling us back to try again.
This is reflected in the confession of sin and exhortation I said this morning and at every service:
“Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.”
Immediately after that prayer we hear the Priest say “Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life. Amen.”
The last part of the last prayer said during the service is “…And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.”
We confess that we have sinned, we are forgiven, and we are sent back to our lives to try again to live a life we are called by God to live. We break the covenant, and we are called back by God to try again. This humble confession and merciful acceptance is lost on people like Ted Haggard, James Dobson, Pat Robertson and others who follow that theology.
Interestingly enough, today’s Epistle reading was from James 2:8-17. Twice toward the end of the reading, the author addresses faith and actions: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? … In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” This ties into the exhortation I hear every Sunday, and it also explains a major difference between evangelical and Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian (among a few other Protestant) theologies.
When Martin Luther rebelled against the Church and its belief in prayer and indulgences as a way to salvation, he could not reconcile himself to the above passage from James. He firmly believed that the only way to salvation was by accepting the freely given Divine Grace. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, Calvin taught something slightly different that was more in line with the passage from James. This part of Calvinism made its way into the mainline Protestant Churches (with the exception of Lutheranism), but later evangelical churches that were formed held on to the Lutheran idea of faith alone.
Thus today, a major theme in the life of evangelical Christians is praise and worship. Reading the Bible is an act of worship, and just hearing the Word of God brings faith. They also work praise into everything they say. They have to give praise and worship by reading the Bible, because they have no other appropriate response to God’s call back to try again. They have rules of life based on the OT Jewish laws (the 10 commandments being to only recognized ones), but fail when it comes to gray areas. Thus, there is an element of “The ends justify the means” because of a general lack of emphasis on or recognition of actions.
Other Protestant Christians, including myself, tend to give praise at specific sacramental times, and spend the rest of the time living (as best we can) Jesus’ teachings. Reading the Bible is not an act of worship, and faith comes from the action of the Holy Spirit, not from simply hearing Scripture. My actions reflect my state of grace and whether or not I’m trying to live a holy life. The whole idea of the altar call to be saved is a foreign one to me. If I don’t walk the walk, my faith is worthless and my talk is hot air.
Vlad/Igor
Huh?! :dubious:
My understand is Gen 1:1 to 2:3 is God’s idea plan for humanity with a single ‘commandment’ - be fruitful and increase and what we will return to. Gen 2:4 on to Rev is what must be due to sin to return to the original conditions.
Also the difference is the God of the OT is acting as a mediator for us and the ‘gods’ we submitted to. The God of the NT is our personal direct relationship with our Father.
I do basically agree with the rest of your post.
God’s way is not a fall back to primitive levels, that is one of the lies of the world, God wants good things for us and He does not want us to worry about what to eat or wear.
In our world angels of the gods this world serves (basically the devil and his demons) enslave humanity to do their work. This is not what God intended. Angels were made very powerful, and were suppose to serve us, providing for our needs at a much advance level. This will be restored. We are really children running around in adult bodies doing work that God never intended us to do.
Uh-huh. Humm…
Oh, I see now. Thank you for making it so** clear. **
The Jewish interpretation of their own scripture is that the individual parts of Creation are blessed by God, which included the land that they lived on. The first story of creation places humans as the most important part of Creation and stewards of of it. The second story of creation (Gen 2:4-25) runs opposite, with humans created first, and then the rest of Creation after. Creation was made for them. It is the story of the birth of the nation Israel, anchoring it to the fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Where else would have Cain and Able found wives, if they weren’t part of Eden? What follows immediately from mention of Cain’s wife (where did she come from?) is a genealogy that mentions the ancient patiarchs of the Abrahamic traditions that eventually lead to Judaism.
I follow the Jewish interpretation. It’s their scripture. They wrote it and this is how it fits into my Christian roots.
Vlad/Igor
I understand this in three ways. One is historical, one is theistically mythical and one is psychologically mystical.
Historically these are two different myths giving two different names of ‘God’ (The Elohim - plural and YHWH [which never was pronounced ‘Jehovah’] singular) probably of Sumerian and Egyptian origin respectively. (Ptah, the Egyptian potter god who made Man out of clay was a pretty lowly figure). The first says that Man is the ‘likeness’ or ‘image’ or ‘reflection’ or maybe today ‘hologram’ of God, the second that Man is an animal who should never have gained self-awareness and the knowledge of good and evil (see ‘rape thread’ for more about that)
Mythically, the Supreme Unknowable Deity created ‘Man’ as a lesser version of ‘Himself’, a spiritual-mental being. Subsequently (and probably after the loss of Lilith) the creator demi-god of this (material) world created a material body from the physical world in which the Hologram of God was trapped and ignorant. Who is normally said to be ‘Lord of this world’? Who is often ‘jealous’ and ‘wrathful’ and ‘wreaking vengeance’? Who wants blind obedience and adoration from unthinking creatures without morality? Who is most likely to throw a tantrum because they Are become as Us, knowing good from evil? That is, Gen 3 says outright that we are as good as ‘Jehovah’ any day - and ‘Job’ really goes further to say we are morally a sight better. In the end, Job gives in because ‘God’ is behaving like the school bully huffing and puffing that He is not bound by His own laws: the image Job has of a ‘just god’ is morally superior to ‘God’ himself!
Psycho-mythically, what do we most associate with deity? Surely it is creation, imagination, justice, love. Those are qualities our minds (spirituality) have - they are not features of the natural animal world. That world is “Jehovah’s”, the world of amoral instinctive obedience where everything in the garden is lovely because ‘we’ lack the ability to know good from evil and imagine better.
The ‘Snake story’ is a common one - one version is the Dragon’s Hoard, another the Golden Fleece but Genesis is unique because Genesis reverses it. In every other version some scaly beast tries to prevent man’s access to Divine Knowledge. I wonder if the pagan ancients saw Jews as the Satanists of their time?
If God called them back, then the reason for Jesus coming to save them was unecessary. According to Genesis the punishment for sin was death, that was the explaination the people used to explain why people die. The idea of a soul came much later, probably when someone was unconcious for awhile and then came to.
If Fod knows all things and He knew Adam and Eve would sin
I was interupted for some reason I must have hit a wrong button, I apologize.
I meant, If God knows all things and knew that Adam and Eve were going to sin, it seems unreasonable for Him to punish them for not doing as he asked, when he knew that they were not going to;and why He wanted to keep them ignorant of the difference between good and evil seems a little silly for a God that great to do.
He also knew that Cain would slay Abel so that doesn’t seem very logical either.
I know one can interpret the Bible in many ways and is done by humans , all claiming to have special knowledge given to them by a Holy Spirit. If God is a Spirit and Jesus (is now a Spirit) then there sems to be a question of why there is a third person who is the Holy Spirit. Every one I know who believe they are led by the Holy Soirt have different ideas of
I was interrupted for some reason I must have hit a wrong button, I apologize.
I meant, If God knows all things and knew that Adam and Eve were going to sin, it seems unreasonable for Him to punish them for not doing as he asked, when he knew that they were not going to;and why He wanted to keep them ignorent of the difference between good and evil seems a little silly for a God that great to do.
He also knew that Cain would slay Abel so that doesn’t seem very logical either.
I know one can interpret the Bible in many ways and is done by humans , all claiming to have special knowledge given to them by a Holy Spirit. If God is a Spirit and Jesus (is now a Spirit) then there sems to be a question of why there is a third person who is the Holy Spirit. Every one I know who believe they are led by the Holy Spirit have different ideas of of What God wants and inspires them to believe differently…hence many different religions all claiming to be the true one!
Eating of the tree of knowledge was about hubris, I believe; humans assuming they know as much as God about living with each other and in Creation as God does. The later stories demonstrate that that is not the case. But the story also indicates that humans do have innate wisdom, and eating from the Tree was the reason. The later stories show that there is cost to human wisdom as opposed to perfect divine wisdom.
Here we get into Free Will. God is believed to be omniscient and omnipotent, but respects our ability to freely choose between right and wrong. It is a solution to the problem of why evil exists in a universe created and watched over by God. Others choose to personify evil, and pit personified evil against personified deity. I don’t like this solution because it removes the supreme position of God and makes Lucifer/Satan equal to God. I much prefer the Islamic view of God as the most “good” in Creation.
Free Will and its issues have been kicked around for as long as people have believed in an unknowable deity that created the universe. A more recent example is Calvinist theology that was taken to its extreme in the form of Predestination. Predestination held that our fate (heaven or hell, saved or damned) was determined by God for us before we were born. The immediate question is: why bother living a good life if it doesn’t matter? What’s the point of life if its already been decided? Free Will allows for emotional and spiritual growth, from tragedy as well as from fulfillment. We’ve seen what kind of people children become when they are forced into a life or career they never wanted, or whose parents did everything for them. Exercise of Free Will is an essential part of human life, even in light of divine omniscience.
Christian theology holds that Jesus came to balance Judaism. Jesus addresses the excessive influence of the Sadduces and Pharisees, ruling classes of Jews who were stripping the worship of God of its spiritual component and turning it into a highly legalistic religion that was creating injustice. Jesus restored that balance within Judaism by saying that all actions had to be out of love first, then to fulfill the law. This balance was lost when Paul began converting non-Jews. They didn’t have to convert to Judaism, thus didn’t have legal guidelines to maintain that balance. Mohammad was the last of the prophets to bring that balance back, and is seen to complete the circle: Abrahamic tradition (spirituality and law) -> Judaism (law only) -> Christianity (spirituality only) -> Islam (spirituality and law). I’ve seen attempts to bring that balance back within Christianity though emphasis on Paul’s instructions in Thessalonians I and II, Colossians and Corinthians I and II.
The Trinity is a hard concept to explain, and has led to charges of polytheism from Muslims I’ve come across. There is one deity, called Adonai, God, Allah, etc., who is completely separate and transcendent from human experience. Hindus and Muslims believe that deity is utterly unknowable. The problem is, how does this transcendent being interact with us, if at all? How do we explain certain highly subjective experiences that seem to have no external cause? The answer is that God visits the human sphere of experience as the Holy Spirit. The prophets Moses, Elijah, and Mohammad were human but also interacted with the Holy Spirit in some form. Jesus is believed to be God incarnated as a human, so that God could bring a very intimate message to the world as well as experience human life first hand.
I’ve always seen that claim as mistaking a personal call to a particular belief with a call to the world. Very few people were called by God to be prophets, but since its such a high-profile and respectable position, everyone wants to think they’re a prophet. I prefer the Buddhist wheel, where all spokes lead to the same point. We’re all on our own personal paths, all heading for the same thing. The experience of the journey is important, but the common goal in more important.
Vlad/Igor
Some other things a Biblical literalist is required to believe or accept or follow as an example, along with young Earth creationism:
Actually Jesus did away with the law totally:
Abraham was to follow his heart, not some written code.
And Mohammad was not the last of the prophets, prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit:
As is alive today as it is in the ends times:
My understanding is the Father is unknowable in a direct sense. Jesus, the son, is God working through the people to the extent that that person has surrendered his life to Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is God working through spiritual beings to the extent that that spiritual being has surrendered themselves to Jesus.
The gift of prophecy is not uncommon in my experience, but you have to know Jesus to be able to understand what is prophesy, or else it will be hidden from you.
IMHO all faiths have soe aspect of the truth of God and will eventually all lead to God through Jesus
Also it is not a high profile nor respectable position. Jesus said:
Mark 6:4
Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”
The Prophets were commonly put down or to death
That was Paul. He was in the process of building churches in non-Jewish (Gentile) areas, and addressing the continual question of “Do I have to be a Jew to be a Christian?” Paul’s response was no (Gal 5:1-7), and was backed up by the Apostles (Acts 15:1-11, Gal 2:3-9), . Thus was Christian spirituality spread without Jewish law. Jesus said he did not come to replace the Jewish law (Mt 5:17) and in John, there is recognition of a restoration of balance: Jn 1:17.
Historians ans theologians recognize a series of religious traditions that came out of the Middle East, known as the Abrahamic Traditions. The early Abrahamic religion had elements of Jewish law and mysticism (I referred to this as spirituality previously), and sometime before Jesus’ ministry, Judaism had become a Rabbinic, legalistic religion without much mysticism. Jesus brought that mysticism back, balancing Jewish law and restoring, if you will, the Abrahamic religion. However, Paul’s introduction of Christian mysticism without Jewish law to the Gentiles lost that balance, until it was restored again by Mohammad.
In the bad old days, yes. But in the modern world of sound bites gladly spread by mass media and sound bytes spread instantaneously by the Internet, being a prophet is a high profile, lucrative vocation, and there are plenty of people still living for the Eschaton to encourage them.
The YECs have backed themselves into an intellectual (or more properly anti-intellectual) corner. By using science to attempt to prove or validate their literalist beliefs, they have compromised their faith and demonstrated that it is susceptible. They are doing the equivalent of using a pair of pliers to remove a round-headed screw to prove that the pliers are actually a screwdriver. What they should be doing is using pliers to remove a nut, a screwdriver to remove the screw, and recognition that the rotary motion common to both exercises does not equate pliers and screwdrivers.
Vlad/Igor
I don’t know what happened to Mohammad, but Paul was not just a servant of Jesus, but a prisoner of Jesus. He submitted totally to Jesus and was put on a very very short leash. As such his writings ARE the Word of God. Yes God did send him to the Gentiles - but this is largely irrelevant in this context as God is ‘no respecter of person’
In short it’s Jesus plus nothing, and this issue is disguised very clearly here:
Not also verse 8 above the Gospel was mentioned in ‘advance to Abraham’ meaning the good news of the new convent was available to Abraham.
Also verse 10, all under the law are under a curse along with:
Again it’s Jesus plus nothing. Salvation is a free gift of God, there is nothing we can do to earn it, there is nothing we can do to lose it.
Perhaps a physic which is of the occult, but not a true prophet, you can see one such false prophetess in the church of Thyatira in Rev 2. The high level position is generally the pastor (who are not shepherds BTW, Scripture never relates the two) , though this is IMHO the lowest position in the invisible church, many pastors are the modern day Pharisees, who Jesus called sons of the devil.
That is not the same thing as saying Jesus did away with the law, which is what you said above. Regardless of Paul’s status and inspiration, the decision to not require conversion to Judaism was made after Jesus’ death. To say that it really was Jesus is wrong when it is documented in the extra-Gospel book of Acts and Paul’s letter to the Galatian church that it was Paul and the Apostles.
You misunderstand the events and reason for the letter to the Galatians. There were other Christians who were telling the members of the church in Galatia that they needed to convert to Judaism before becoming Christians. There was a showdown over this in Jerusalem, and the Apostles sided with Paul that no one had to convert to Judaism first. To be very clear, this was a letter written by Paul to the church in Galatia addressing a very specific problem. It is not a Gospel, and has a very different function and reason for being than the Gospels that contain Jesus’ teachings. That said, it contains precedence for why neither you nor I are Jewish, and had it not been for Paul’s efforts, Christianity might never have caught on the way it did.
Gal 3:1-14 outlines Paul’s reasons:
3:6) All who believe in God are children of Abraham, whether they are Jewish or Gentile Christians because
3:8) Paul reinterprets the Torah (Gen 12:3) to apply God’s blessing of Abraham to extend to non-Jews;
3:10) Paul reinterprets Deut 27:26 (A list of prohibitions declared by Moses, ending with a denouncement of those who do not follow the laws laid out in Deut 27:15-25) to say that those who do follow the law are denounced;
3:11) Paul reinterprets Hab 2:4 (originally written as as response to why God permits the wicked to seemingly triumph over the righteous), claiming it is applicable because of Lev 18:5 (God tells Moses not to live as Egyptians or Canaanites do, but as God commands them to);
3:14) And finally that Abraham’s blessing came through Jesus to the Gentiles.
So, Paul pretty much rifled through his Torah, picked out a few verses that appeared on their face to be relevant, only to say eventually that it’s just 'cause of Jesus and Jewish law is bad. This is not one of his better arguments, and he would have done better by relating the story of Jesus recognizing the faith of a Canaanite woman (Mat 15:21-28) or Jesus ministering to the Samarian woman at the well (John 4:7-26). Both of these stories were probably known around Jerusalem, but to be fair, Paul may not have been aware of them. However, Chapter 3 is a pretty weak argument, and likely an indication of the power struggle he was having with the Christians who insisted on circumcision first.
I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say here.
Vlad/Igor
Reminds of a little old lady caller on the Larry King radio program many years ago. The topic was the unrest in the Middle East and she called in to say, “I don’t see why the Christians, Muslims and Jews can’t all get along-they all worship Jesus in their own way.”
You might be making the common make of equivocating different definitions of free will.
The one definition is used to indicate that one has done something voluntarily: I do this of my own free will.
People do things of their own free will.
The other definition describes the ability to make a choice (or choices) that are not determined by a prior cause.
Of course, if God creates a person, the individual’s God given attributes (preferences, tendencies, etc.) determine what they will decide. If God gives them preternatural wisdom, they will make insightful decisions, if God gives them bloodlust, they will choose violent paths. Preternatural wisdom and bloodlust? Might be nice to see in a movie, but not someone you want to invite to a kegger.
The idea that God gives someone “Free Will” (which simply means a person lacks characteristics that determine their decision making process) isn’t logically coherent, unless you can think of a way in which it is?
I don’t know if Christianity is “spirituality only”, in any sense, from its alleged beginnings:
Here’s a quote attributed to Jesus (Matthew 5:17-18):
“17Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
I suppose you could argue that the separation of church and state in predominately (in the sense that the majority of organized religion is some form of Christianity) Christian nations indicates that Christian priest’s have less power over the legal system than say, Islamic clerics (in predominately Islamic nations). I wouldn’t say it’s from a lack of trying…
I wouldn’t say that about all Hinduism (or all of Islam).
Read a bit about Hindu concepts of God here.
Before Moses was Hammurabi, who said many things that you will find echoed in later Semitic religion (such as Judaism), although his religious views obviously hadn’t evolved into the idea of a single creator God.
He said he spoke for his God(s) just as the others claimed to speak for theirs (but preceded them with his God given laws, which happened to be a bit… harsher, but perhaps fitting to the times).
What goal is this?