Apostacy and Salvation

Read 1 Corinthians 2:6-16

You seem to have pegged the issue correctly, cloudyday. While it's true that believing Christianity's teachings and/or thinking oneself to be a Christian does not actually make one a Christian if, by the deepest meaning of that term we mean one who has a real relationship with Christ. Many people would make that point.

The problem is that only God knows who his disciples are, i.e. the ones with the genuine relationship. That makes debating the #1 issue that people bring to the topic--"WHO IS in that category, then?"--impossible of resolution.

Under the influence of secular education, everyone is treating any truth as a scientific truth which should be well evidenced. However in reality, not all truth is a scientific truth. For example, history as a category of truth is mostly without evidence. Humans basically have no access to history as a whole till an event or a figure is famous enough for humans at that time to document it/him down. Humans later will rely on faith in the document to get a clue on what had happened. If the grandpa of your grandpa is a no body, then you may never prove his existence (what he had said and done) with evidence.

Evidence is over emphasized under secular education. Humans basically don't rely on evidence at all to reach a truth. They rely more often on witnessing to reach a truth. Even in the case when the kind of truth can be evidenced, such as science, humans in majority don't bother to examine the evidence. You don't use a telescope to tell that earth is revolving around the sun. You rely on believing a small group of humans called scientists to get to the truth.

That being said, the difference between history and religion doesn't lay on whether things can be evidenced. The difference is that history is more believable as history is about daily matters we can speculate on a daily basis even nowadays. Religion however is more or less about supernatural encounters normal folks can hardly experience. It has nothing to do with evidence.

If God has a good reason to hide behind (and He does), the only way left for Him to keep humans informed of is by showing up to a small group of humans for them to write about Him, and for the rest of humans in later history to believe what is said about Him to reach the truth. There's no other way round. To put it another way, if God is a truth believing in what being said by His witnesses is the only way to reach such a truth. There's no other way round.

Not all the gods of other religions have a good reason to avoid direct encounters of humans. If the gods are superior and they really care about humans, they should show up to guide humans. They don't usually have a good reason to hide behind. The Christianity God has a good reason because He granted the covenant to humans. The covenant demands human faith for humans to be saved. If He shows up to everyone, it simultaneously means no humans can be saved at all.

If on the other hand He doesn't show up at all, then no humans can be informed of His existence and His requirements set forth for humans to follow. The only way which works is for Him to show up to the dedicated witnesses for them to write about Him then for the rest to believe.

cloudyday2 said:

So we don't clutter the thread about Baptism, I started this thread. Feel free to post your thoughts

Some people believe that genuine Christians can never become non-Christians, because there is an irreversible change when the person becomes a Christian. I suppose this is what people call "once saved always saved" OSAS.

As an ex-Christian, I know that I certainly believed in Christianity in the past and made an effort to follow Jesus. However, I never had a conversion experience, so I always wondered if God didn't like me and had predestined me to go to hell for some reason. I became skeptical of Christianity due to the absence of any evidence. A few years ago I had psychotic breakdown and became very religious in the Eastern Orthodox church. The hallucinations and delusions seemed like the evidence that I had been seeking so long. Then I recovered and became an atheist again. So OSAS would say I was never a Christian.

Click to expand...

The doctrine of OSAS within the Evangelical world is, largely, a holdover from Calvinism. Modern Evangelicalism is largely a kind of composite of traditional Reformed theology on the one hand and Revivalistic Pietism on the other (with a Wesleyan-Arminian influence within it).

In Calvinism there is a consistency in theology in which the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints is a rather certain outcome; whereby given the Total Depravity (or Total Inability) of man due to sin renders the will broken and unable to move in the direction of God it is therefore only a God who, mercifully, elects the some to eternal salvation. It is an Unconditional Election, those predestined by God by God's own sovereign choice (and thus God passes over the rest, ergo Double Predestination). Therefore Christ's atoning work is Limited Atonement, for Christ died only for the elect, as the elect chosen and predestined by God will be those who, according to the Irresistible Grace of God will have faith--and since such grace is irresistible and man is totally unable to choose or reject it therefore follows that the elect cannot, by any means, fall away--the elect whom God has chosen will believe and endure until the end according to the God who sovereignly has declared this to be.

There is, thus, an internal consistency in the Calvinist system.

In contrast the Arminian system rejects the total inability of man but instead teaches that there is a prevenient grace, a universal grace, that enables the otherwise totally unable or depraved man to reach out to God in faith; and God has chosen to elect those who come to Him to eternal glory having accomplished the means of this through the death of His Son whereby whosoever may come and believe. Thus there is a grace for everyone, and if one perseveres in faith in God's grace they may endure until the end--though it remains possible that they fall away.

Modern Evangelicalism is very often 4/5 Arminian and 1/5 Calvinist. The 1/5 being what in Calvinism is Perseverance of the Saints, but is often called in Evangelical circles OSAS.

However there is, of course, a number of Evangelicals who embrace a mostly or full subscription of Calvinism; just as there are some Evangelicals who embrace a full Arminian confession.

-CryptoLutheran

cloudyday2 said:

So we don't clutter the thread about Baptism, I started this thread. Feel free to post your thoughts

Some people believe that genuine Christians can never become non-Christians, because there is an irreversible change when the person becomes a Christian. I suppose this is what people call "once saved always saved" OSAS.

As an ex-Christian, I know that I certainly believed in Christianity in the past and made an effort to follow Jesus. However, I never had a conversion experience, so I always wondered if God didn't like me and had predestined me to go to hell for some reason. I became skeptical of Christianity due to the absence of any evidence. A few years ago I had psychotic breakdown and became very religious in the Eastern Orthodox church. The hallucinations and delusions seemed like the evidence that I had been seeking so long. Then I recovered and became an atheist again. So OSAS would say I was never a Christian.

Click to expand...

I am concerned with your focus of belief because when you say that you “believed in Christianity” I wonder if your relationship was with a philosophy and not Christ Himself. As far as the Calvinistic doctrines of unconditional election and eternal security (OSAS) are concerned, and Crucis gives a good synopsis of the doctrine, I don’t think that this doctrine accurately reflects God’s activity in our salvation. If I look at Rom. 8:28-30, and this is the set of verses that the Calvinists use to support their doctrine, we find the Greek verb progninosko which is translated “to foreknow” and its meaning is to know ahead of time. However, this does not mean that God knew therefore he predestined outside of man’s ability to choose (freewill).

“In Scripture God’s knowing often refers to His entering into relationship with someone” (Moo 270). When “foreknow” and “foreknowledge” are used in the New Testament, the sense of God entering into a relationship is what is being transmitted in four of the six times that these words are used. So Paul may be saying that God knows every person’s decision to believe or not to believe. So, I don’t think that we believe because we are chosen but rather we are chosen because we believe.

You describe a lack of evidence as a factor in your skepticism and I wonder if you would elaborate on that. What evidence are you referring to? Also, there seems to be a desire for an external or experiential verification of salvation. Is this accurate? I don’t want to address an issue that is not an issue.

… even when I was a Christian I thought of salvation as a universal process that would eventually save everybody. So I imagined some people were more earnest than others as Christians, but I didn't imagine this poof-bang - instant transition from unsaved to saved.

Click to expand...

This is your quote from the “baptism” thread. Salvation is universally offered but it is not universally accepted which you yourself demonstrate. The “poof-bang” description of salvation is indeed instant because Christ affirmed the completion and end of His salvific work (John 19:30). There is no waiting for something else to be accomplished on God’s end and all that awaits is man’s entering in to a relationship with Him through Christ’s work. If you notice that some believers seem to be more like Christ than others, this is a demonstration of sanctification. Sanctification is the defeat of sin as we are set apart, made holy, and gradually develop into Christ’s likeness.

Works Cited

Moo, Douglas J. Romans The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2000. Print.

cloudyday2 said:

I expect God to do something to convince me that He exists. God also needs to show me that He agrees with Christianity and isn't some other religion's God.

Click to expand...

Having created the universe, given Man intelligence, and inspiring the Bible with even more specific information, what else should any individual expect?
We thoroughly believe a lot more in life than just the existence of God...and on much less direct evidence.

cloudyday2 said:

There are lots of alternative explanations. I require God to be more than simply a creator. For example, maybe the universe is something disgusting growing on some blueberries that God left in the back corner of his refrigerator. As soon as God notices the blueberries, He will toss them in the garbage. That doesn't fit my requirements for God. God must listen and care about people before I will listen and care about Him.

Click to expand...

OK. I just don't think that God has any obligation to make a special, personal, appeal to you or to perform some tricks in order to get his own creation to acknowledge him.

cloudyday2 said:

True, but God has nobody to blame but Himself if people ignore Him. If He is more concerned with hiding from the paparazzi than He is in helping people, then I'm not interested

Click to expand...

OK. I figure that He has accounted for it happening.

cloudyday2 said:

I definitely wasn't in a relationship with a philosophy, because I'm not a very philosophical person. Initially, I was indoctrinated to believe in Christianity. More recently, I was having some mild psychosis. I expect God to do something to convince me that He exists. God also needs to show me that He agrees with Christianity and isn't some other religion's God.

Click to expand...

Proof that gods existed was not an issue in the Ancient Near East. The issue was to determine which god was the one who created order and purpose in the universe and held together all that existed. In my understanding, this is what Genesis 1-11 describes and gives witness to. God’ authority and power were demonstrated throughout the Old Testament as He manifested Himself to several Bible characters, such as Moses and Abraham. These manifestations, His intervention with enemies, and His Prophets are what was to convince Israel that Yahweh was the one true God. There was no need to prove His existence. For the ANE, what we call the super-natural was their natural. There was no super-natural occurrences, as we would call them, because the ANE believed that all activities and events in their lives were controlled by gods and that was natural.

The New Testament is not much different in that the advent of Christ was not done to prove that God existed. The miracles of Christ were to demonstrate His authority and His deity. The capstone of course is His resurrection from the dead and the empty tomb. In order to answer the question of God’s existence, we can extrapolate proof from the NT records even though that is not what the records were designed to do. So, the NT is an account of Christ’s power, authority, deity, and existence. I think that you would agree that no one can come back from the dead unless God was directly involved. And He would not be involved in resurrecting an imposter. Therefore, if you are not convinced that God exists by virtue of the NT witness, then you must demonstrate how you have falsified those records and narratives. If you cannot falsify the NT records and witness, then you are simply refusing without reason and logic to accept what is demonstrated as truth.

I've seen odd things myself and heard testimonies from family members and others (even forum members), so I sometimes think there might be some kind of God. Christianity is a much harder sell, because I see so many problems there.

Click to expand...

This is encouraging and I am pleased that you are open to investigation of God’s existence and Christ’s reality. I do have a question and I want to frame it in such a way that it does not appear that I am calloused to your past experiences. In the OP, you mention hallucinations and delusions that you accepted as proof of the authenticity of Christianity and the faith that you had in it. And yet you desire some type of sign or manifestation once again to convince you that God exists and Christ really did do those things in the NT accounts. In light of this, don’t you think that it would be better for you to depend on a logical method of reasoning to determine the truthfulness of the biblical accounts and leave the experiential demands that you crave, alone? I say this with care, concern, and empathy. It just seems that you are demanding a method of belief that has already proven itself untrustworthy for you. Don’t you think that reasoning would be a better method of determining the truth?

You may want to reconsider your interpretation of Judaism and Christianity. You indicate that you were once a Christian but without a conversion experience, then later you state "almost no confidence" in Christianity. You state that you would never be confident of your own reasoning --- that you need verification. None of that indicates a clear understanding of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Covenant. With each of the latter you need to start on page one.

You seem to believe that God is hiding, if he exists at all. But are you looking in the right place? I believe our own consciousness can be seen as a part of God. Every living thing, a locus of his spirit looking out at everything else. You want God to be more involved, more obvious. More tricks and miracles. More evidence that you're special.

Try releasing all that, starting with a blank slate, and just observing the world, using it as a template to figure out what God is like. You can get an idea of who God is by analyzing what he created. I think he did that intentionally. But I don't think you can completely comprehend him--he IS God after all

cloudyday2 said:

I can't imagine myself investing any time starting over from page one to give religion another chance.

Click to expand...

Can you please explain what you think you would need to do as a Christian that you aren't already doing now? As I understand, you would continue to examine ideas for truth just as you already are, but with the basic assumption that God is real. This would be interesting to know.

cloudyday2 said:

Nothing comes to mind.

Click to expand...

So it seems to indicate that it isn't about investing time, but something else that prevents you from doing it. Do you agree?