"Christian" Dogma in a Nutshell

Originally posted by Coletti
[b]What part? Which of the statements are incorrect?

1) Man is "evil" "depraved" etc etc etc by nature;

2) Man doesn't merit salvation but it is given to him as an act of grace IF;

3) He believes that Jesus Christ is his Savior and Lord.



None. Each is correct. But these are not a good "synopsis of "Christia ...[text shortened]... thethreshold/articles/topic/fivesolas.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_solas[/b]

Perhaps, but all those solas wouldn't fit into a nutshell.

Originally posted by Darfius
Originally posted by dottewell
[b]What exactly is this "repentence"?

Repentance is to stop sinning. Literally to "turn away" from it.

Is it just being sorry for my sins?

That combined with the action of stopping.

Can I not repent without believing in God?

No, because the point of repentance is to display to God that ...[text shortened]... f you think that's impossible, I have a feeling you never graced the honor roll.[/b]

So repentence is stopping sinning, yet you may sin as often as me. This is okay, though, because you are covered by the blood of Christ.

Not believing in God, then, but believing in "Christ's sin-washing blood" is the free pass into heaven. Apparently don't have to act any better than me.

"If God appeared personally and in all His glory to a skeptic, said skeptic would stop sinning completely for all eternity and be completely content. Oh, and Darth Vader is real and lives in Jersey."

Oh, you do have a low opinion of sceptics, don't you?

The test is that one has to believe in something, yet that something is made a matter of faith with little objective evidence. I didn't think that was too difficult to understand, but what do I know? I only got a MPhil in Philosophy from Cambridge Uni. You "graced the honour roll".

Originally posted by dottewell
So repentence is stopping sinning, yet you may sin as often as me. This is okay, though, because you are covered by the blood of Christ.

Not believing in God, then, but believing in "Christ's sin-washing blood" is the free pass into heaven. Apparently don't have to act any better than me.

[i]"If God appeared personally and in all His glory to a skept ow? I only got a MPhil in Philosophy from Cambridge Uni. You "graced the honour roll".

[/i]There is more about being saved than just 'stopping' sinning.
There is more to it to than our actions and beliefs, it goes to our
relationship with God, the work of salvation is God's. We follow
through on our part which includes repentence.
Kelly

Originally posted by lucifershammer
I fail to see how you and others have refuted this "over and over again". Bbarr has argued that one can have "free will" and still always choose in just one manner - I just fail to see how that's free in any sense of the word.

Also, in the GAFE II thread I argued that the common definition of omnipotence and omniscience are self-contradictory.

What I have refuted is that the existence of free will necessarily implies a choice set of good/evil actions.

Edit: It's really a trivial exercise . . . once you take the blinders off that is. 😛

Originally posted by Darfius

Repentance is to stop sinning. Literally to "turn away" from it.
To repent is to change one's thinking, not to feel sorry, or even to turn away. Man is told to change his mind in relation to his thinking regarding Jesus Christ.

The point is that Christians' sins are covered by the blood of Christ.
All sin is paid for, by the work of Christ on the cross. No one goes to hell for sin. Period. If one is to go to hell, it is for unbelief/rejection, not sin.


If God appeared personally and in all His glory to a skeptic, said skeptic would stop sinning completely for all eternity and be completely content.
Sin, missing the mark, is possible even by the person who is intimately aware of God and all of His glory. Witness one former guardian of God's glory, Lucifer. Was Lucifer (who had more access than any other creature to God and His glory) content?

Originally posted by dottewell
What exactly is this "repentence"? Is it just being sorry for my sins? Can I not repent without believing in God?

Do you commit less sins than I because you are saved?

Are you not saying that God will forgive us anything if we just believe in him?

How are people who do not believe in God because of a lack of evidence "turning away" from him? I am ...[text shortened]... imself to them, clearly and personally, they would follow and obey. Why the impossible test?

What is exactly repentence?
Repentence is making a conscious decision to change because you are truly sorry for your sins and WANT to change.

Can I not repent without beleiving in God?
Sure, but more than likely you will return to it. Christ said that whoever commits a sin is a slave of sin. Lots of people repent after using drugs and say they will never go back to it. Problem is they can't stop because its power over them is greater than their power over it. Chist said that he came to set the captives free. The things that you do and you hate yourself for later can end only through the power of Christ. Sin entices you with a certain degree of pleasure and causes you to become self centered and narsasistic as a result. Your number one goal in life then ends up being to pursue personal gratification over all else and at others expense.

Do you commit less sins than I because you are saved?
Yes, you should. If you have truly repented and turn to Christ to free you of your sins you should prevail against them at some point. Chist even gave a grave reminder to this effect. He said that those who come to me and say Lord, Lord will not necessarily enter heaven. He says that those who PRACTICE iniquity will not enter in. Not those who have commited iniquity. This is why Chirst hated hypocrites. I do realize that there are those who use christianity as a license to sin. This, however, is not chrisitanity and is a misrepresentation. If you are truly repentant, you do not wish to have a license to sin. Then again, you don't need a license to sin, now do you. You should be motivated to overcome sin because it is a destructive force in your life and because you love the Lord. Loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself is the greatest command in the Bible. If you do this, you will keep all the rest of the commandments without even trying to. You will not want to steal, bear false witness, or murder any one if you follow the greatest commandment. After all, if you truly love someone you will want to do what pleases them, do you not? Although it may be difficult at times it is never burdensome because you love them. This is the true christian perspective. It is not about thinking about God with a giant hammer in the sky waiting to wack you over the head when you get out of line. It is also not about becoming preoccupied with the Mosaic law and judging others by it. Simply put, it is about pursuing a loving relationship with God and other people whom he has created.

Are you saying that God will forgive us anything if we just beleive in him?
No I am not. The Bible points out that Satan also beleives in God and that it does not save him. There is a big difference between beleiving in something and placing your faith in something. Faith is what saves us and is counted as righteousness in the eyes of God. In fact, the Bible even goes as far to say that whatever is not of faith is sin. Faith is nothing more than beleiving the word of God. The Bible teaches that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. This is simply how we are wired. The more we are told something whether it be right or wrong, the more we begin to believe in it. It is therefore your optoin as to what you want to build your faith in. In fact, unbeleif is simply beleif in reverse. Why focus on the glass as half empty when you can see that it is half full. An example of what I am telling you is in the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt. There they had witnessed one of the greatest miracles of all time. They saw the Red Sea open up which allowed them to cross to the other side and avoid the Egyptian army that was out to destroy them. Then when they crossed the Red sea, it engulfed and destroyed the pursing Egyptian army. Soon afterwards, however, they asked Moses why God had brought them out into the wilderness to die. Then they wanted to turn right around and go back to Egypt to be slaves again. They beleived in God and saw his miracle, but they did not place their faith in him. This is why it is pointless for God to hit you over the head with a bat to prove to you that he exists. Faith has more to do with the conditon of your heart than in knowing and witnessing the facts for yourself. Look at the life of Jesus himself. He went around healing people and raising people from the dead. What was their response. Their response was to nail him to a cross. Did God not come down in person in the person of Christ? He has been there and done that. A good representation of the human race are the two theives on the cross next to Jesus. Both theives were guilty and condemed to die just as we are all sinners and are condemed to die. We are also all suffering to various degrees along the way. Nothing can change this fact. One of the theives next to Jesus cursed him and mocked him and said if you be the true Christ save us and get us down from here. The other theif looked at Christ and asked him to remeber him in paradise. Both were suffering the same fate and both had the same data to assess the situation. However, each had a different outcome. One reached out in faith and was saved and the other withdrew. Why? As I said before, faith has to do more with the condition of ones heart than it does knowing the facts.

Originally posted by whodey
What is exactly repentence?
Repentence is making a conscious decision to change because you are truly sorry for your sins and WANT to change.

Can I not repent without beleiving in God?
Sure, but more than likely you will return to it. Christ said that whoever commits a sin is a slave of sin. Lots of people repent after using drugs and say they will ...[text shortened]... before, faith has to do more with the condition of ones heart than it does knowing the facts.

From http://cutandpaste.com.

Originally posted by telerion
I have offered scripture which takes a much stronger stance. You may not like the message Lu Ham, but what I have written is xianity in a nutshell.

Alright, let's take a look at the scripture with "a much stronger stance" in context:

Ps.14
[0] To the choirmaster. Of David.
[1] The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none that does good.
[2] The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
to see if there are any that act wisely,
that seek after God.
[3] They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt;
there is none that does good,
no, not one.
[4] Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread,
and do not call upon the LORD?
[5] There they shall be in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
[6] You would confound the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is his refuge.
[7] O that deliverance for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people,
Jacob shall rejoice, Israel shall be glad.
(RSV)

It's clear this psalm splits up the human race between the "fools" and the "generation of the righteous". Far from your "all men are scum" message, this psalm affirms the existence of just men. It's clear that the whole "children of men" phrase refers to the "fools" from the previous verse and "evildoers" in v.4.

I don't have the time now (I'm at work), but when I return I'll look at the other two verses you cited. I'm pretty sure they'll say the same thing when read in context.

Originally posted by telerion
What I have refuted is that the existence of free will necessarily implies a choice set of good/evil actions.

Edit: It's really a trivial exercise . . . once you take the blinders off that is. 😛

Really? Seems to me you're the one with the blinders (see my previous post).

Unless you're using a compatibilist notion of "free will" (which isn't really "free" in any meaningful sense of the word anyway; and it certainly isn't "free will" because there isn't a "will" to speak of), then I fail to see how you've refuted the idea that the existence of free will does not necessarily imply a choice set of good/evil actions.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Alright, let's take a look at the scripture with "a much stronger stance" [b]in context:

Ps.14
[0] To the choirmaster. Of David.
[1] The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none that does good.
[2] The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
to see if there are any ...[text shortened]... I'm pretty sure they'll say the same thing when read in context.[/b]

I guess this depends upon how you read the Bible. If the Psalms and Isaiah are only works inspired by God for past time periods, then you are correct that those two verses speak to something slightly different. The Psalms speaks of the unrighteous (naturally the enemies of the Psalmist) and the passage in Isaiah, I believe, is speaking to the then exiled Hebrews. If you read these verses as having relevance for today and where transgressions = fallen state even for us, then I do not think they can be so easily dismissed.

The verse from Job applies whichever way you read the Bible. The speaker is clearly making a declaration about the nature of man.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Really? Seems to me you're the one with the blinders (see my previous post).

Unless you're using a compatibilist notion of "free will" (which isn't really "free" in any meaningful sense of the word anyway; and it certainly isn't "free will" because there isn't a "will" to speak of), then I fail to see how you've refuted the idea that the existence of free will does not necessarily imply a choice set of good/evil actions.

All right, in my argument I define "free will" as follows:

If an agent who has chosen action A in state of the world S could have chosen action A' in S, then the agent possesses free will.

Contrast this to determinism where the state of the world is mapped one-to-one to the choice set (consider simultaneous none-conflicting choices (choices from disjoint sets within the choice set) as a single vector). The definition also rules out computers and robots having free will.

It is important to note that from the definition of free will above, nothing about the choice set is implied except that it contains at least two actions (A and A'😉.

Under this framework, it is possible to live in a world in which evil actions cannot be executed and all agents have free will. The agents simply choose actions from choice sets over which good/evil do not apply. For instance, I am at a pet store, I could, WLOG, purchase a dog, purchase a cat, or a purchase a bird. In general, there is no reason to assume that any one of these actions is either good or evil.

You seem to assume that to have free will, an agents choice set must be unrestricted, that is it must be equal to the universal set over all actions. If this is true, then certainly some of the choice set contains actions over which good/evil is an appropriate description. However, from casual observation of the world, we recognize that if we do have free will, then this assumption must be false because there is no doubt that our choice set is indeed constrained. The clear constraints are over time and other bounds on the human body. I cannot drink all the water in the ocean. I cannot breathe all the oxygen from the air. I cannot prevent Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated. I cannot extinguish all the stars in the Milky Way. I cannot dip my hands in a neutron star. These are chooses that I simply cannot choose to do. If I was created by a being, then this limitation on my choices arises from the manner in which the being designed me.

Another possibility is that there are restrictions, the presence of which we cannot be aware. We may be unaware because we do not have knowledge of these restrictions existence (e.g. the neutron star action above to a person in the 6th century B.C.E.), or if a Creator of the Universe exists, then we may also be unaware, because that type of choice was not permitted in Creation. I bring up this second possibility because it comes up when we speak of what the Creator might have chosen to do (e.g. chosen to make us unable to choose an evil action).

According to the definition at the top however, the nature of the restrictions is irrelevant as long as the restriction allows for at least two actions.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
If one is to go to hell, it is for unbelief/rejection, not sin.

That's precisely the problem with it.

Originally posted by dottewell
That's precisely the problem with it.

If one is to go to Hell it is because of sin, period. Unbelief, rejection
of the truth are simply part of the sin package, the part that helps
keep people where they want to be, in their sin.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
If one is to go to Hell it is because of sin, period. Unbelief, rejection
of the truth are simply part of the sin package, the part that helps
keep people where they want to be, in their sin.
Kelly

As all sin was paid for with the work of Christ on the cross ("It is finished," was a perfect tense: established in the past, worked in the present, holds true forever), there is but one issue, one test that is before man. That issue is belief/acceptance of that work on behalf of man.
Nothing separates man from the love of God in Christ Jesus... no work on the part of man is capable of erasing what God has accomplished in Jesus Christ. The issue is nonmeritorious faith, not work.