• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

Are These Mainstream Doctrines In Need of Reform?

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Incorrect. It's clumsy to YOU because you weren't raised in Greek or Hebrew culture. No one raised you from birth to consistently think of breath and soul as one and the same concept. "And the Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living being" (Gen 2:7). Some noted scholars regard this passage as the insufflation of Adam's soul as breath/wind into his body. The Hebrew mind, then, would find it TOTALLY CLUMSY for you to suggest that God puts an immaterial soul in our body, whether human or divine.

Especially because it leads to logical contradictions - an immaterial soul totally contradicts common sense.
 
Upvote 0

straykat

Well-Known Member
Apr 17, 2018
1,120
640
Catacombs
✟37,648.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Private

It's clumsy to any translator. It's why it's not used consistently that way.

And plenty of people were raised in these cultures and used them interchangeably. Jews still do to this day. They also think of the "Spirit" (ruach) in terms of Inspiration and relate it to the Presence of God in the tabernacle/temple especially. It's not mere wind in a religious context. The same goes for ancient Greeks outside the bible. Some used it to refer to souls.. and that all of our "pneumas" were fragments of Zeus.

Secondly, our language makes it clumsy because we borrow from many sources. Spirit is from Latin, but Wind is Germanic. Greeks didn't have this mess. But you work with what you have.
 
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Modern Jews are certainly not in the domain that I was referring to. I couldn't care less about their opinions of spirit. I was thinking of ancient Hebrews, and of Christian Greeks raised in the apostolic era, before the doctrine of immaterialism infected the church.
 
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
InterestedApologist said:
He is therefore infinite
I promised everyone a critique of infinitude.

The notion of an actual EXISTING infinity is a humanly incomprehensible concept. For example suppose I have an infinite amount of money. I then lose several billion dollars in a gambling transaction or a market crash. How much money do I have left? Infinity? The same amount I started with? This makes no sense.

Infinite love contradicts the facts of Scripture. Why so? Genuine love is more than saying, "I love you." It is self-sacrificial, it ACTS on your behalf, it INTERVENES. It feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and shelters the homeless.

Therefore if God love were infinite, there would be no limitations to His intervention. For example this means unlimited atonement - even the devils would not stand condemned. Even the sin of rejecting salvation would be forgiven, fully atoned for, and thus not punishable.

There is no atonement, no salvation, for the fallen angels. Therefore God's love isn't infinite.

IN my view, God's love is PERFECT. He fully realizes His potential for love. If He could give us more help, He would. But granting love to sinners who, inevitably, will continue to sin and hurt His feelings, is painful. Since He has a finite capacity for suffering and cannot afford to subject Himself to a degree of pain beyond His limit, He did not atone for the fallen angels. To go beyond His known limits would emotionally destabilize the Godhead (in the sense of putting it on the verge of a 'nervous breakdown' defined as a loss of sanity) - and thereby put us all in grave danger.

Prayer and praise are the OPPOSITE of hurting God's feelings. They alleviate some of the pain, thereby increasing His pain tolerance to a level allowing Him to SAVE MORE PEOPLE. The church is so confused. God isn't in need of evangelists and missionaries. What He needs is prayer and praise. He needs fellowship with His bride. When His NEEDS are met, it liberates Him to send revival - sent with prophetic revelation that let's a man know whether he has been appointed to evangelism and missions.

But I digress. Other problems with infinitude:
(1) A God with infinite knowledge, specifically foreknowledge, would not have free will. Free will must be defined as a moment of indecision and deliberation eventually culminating in a resoluteness of decision. It doesn't make sense for someone to say, "Although I haven't yet made my decision, I already foreknow it."
(2) Foreknowledge raises serious doubts about the goodness of God. (I suppose some will argue that God's knowledge is logically subsequent to any given future event, but here too this would seem to be speaking in incomprehensible terms). If God foreknew the fall of Adam,Eve, and Lucifer, why not create Bob, Sue, and Vincent instead?
(3) If my earlier account of Yahweh's 'awakening' in the Totality is correct, He is trapped in time just like we are, and thus would have no way of obtaining foreknowledge.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

InterestedApologist

Active Member
Aug 17, 2017
123
63
51
Earth
✟44,376.00
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Private

A Biblical definition of love works for me:

1 Cor. 13:4-7
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Notice diminishing suffering is not present in the Biblical definition of love. I do not hold to your viewof love, cause it is arbitrarily defined by yourself as you desire it to be.


Your ability to comprehend something has little impact on whether it is true or real. Do you know all the intricate details of how the human body works? Likely not, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or work. Your inability to understand something does not make that thing logically inconsistent.

Additionally, you have at length criticized preachers and doctrine for claiming they know something they don’t or cannot know, all while advocating that you have a right theology. Unfortunately, as you have just stated scripture is relevant to you only if it agrees with your theology. Further weakening your argument is a lack of scriptural support for your theology. Saying you adhere to the nicean creed is not a support for your many assertions.

I am not trying to be mean here, but it appears you are making God in your own image.
 
Reactions: HatGuy
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
That seems a bit silly. Not sure what I'm missing here.

Surely, "love" content with everyone being miserable and unwilling to alleviate their misery is not love at all (viz. "I love you neighbor but won't give you a crumb if you're starving to death.")

Perhaps you overlooked verses such as this:
"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (Jn 15:13).
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son...so they shall not perish but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16)
"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8).

But really you're just playing semantic games - call it 'love' or call it 'mercy' or call it 'kindness' (whatever you like), the bottom line is that an INFINITELY GOOD/BENEVOLENT God, by definition, must be dedicated to minimizing suffering. Which means that, for mainstream theology, the problem of evil is indeed a real problem.

The human body is a silly example, and this sort of thing was already addressed twice on the thread. The human body is QUANTITATIVE lack of comprehension, not a QUALTTATIVE one. Do I know how the human body works? Absolutely. Every process within the human body (as with a computer) boils down to flows of matter. Have I learned or memorized the full list of those material flows - the full quantity of them? No. Never said I had. So?

A QUALITATIVE issue would be like to trying to comprehend a square circle. Impossible. You say that God created space. Ok, where did He put it, when He made it? Not into an existing space? This is gibberish, so there isn't much point speculating about it.


Additionally, you have at length criticized preachers and doctrine for claiming they know something they don’t or cannot know, all while advocating that you have a right theology.
(Sigh). I've been over this. See my signature.

You then proceed with random statements. When people neglect to address my specific arguments, both the logic and verses that I adduced, and start rambling on with negative, unsupported generalizations about me - all the while lacking a bill of particulars - it's very telling.
Unfortunately, as you have just stated scripture is relevant to you only if it agrees with your theology.
Whatever.
Further weakening your argument is a lack of scriptural support for your theology.
Why should I give you more Scripture when you don't address those already adduced?

Saying you adhere to the nicean creed is not a support for your many assertions. [/quote[

I am not trying to be mean here, but it appears you are making God in your own image.
 
Upvote 0

Noxot

anarchist personalist
Site Supporter
Aug 6, 2007
8,192
2,452
38
dallas, texas
Visit site
✟253,899.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Others
imo even God has to have freedom, which implies potential being. Father is the very first something of God, though I can't grasp whatever this could mean but shall I then belittle God by my weak and pathetic nature?

how could it be that my mind can conceive of countless many potential realities unless in some manner they were real if only vaguely so? is my mind the limit of reality? or is it because reality is so grand that it can contain my best conceptions and further that I can have enough faith to know that the best I can conceive is something that God is far greater than?

truth is an image, an image filled with life. a life that never stops. and so this image of glory keeps becoming more and more glorious. ah if i dive deeper I see that the essence of truth is love. what are creatures but crystallized truths born of love?

what is this entire reality but something born out of some greater reality that is more fundamental than this one? I do believe that God is in a process of becoming but I don't think he is as young as 13 billion years. in my world how old is God? because surly I love God so much that I became my own reality for him.

i'm too jealous to let just this pathetic universe define God. good thing I know that mind is more fundamental to God, since he loves souls more than he does images we play in. there is absolutely no such thing as love without mind. I see no point in this physical universe existing unless it was for some kind of grand and eternal purpose. I think reality is much stranger than we give it credit for and something that we will keep on learning about and experiencing.

to me time is just a state of being and i'm sure that there are many kinds of times. change and changelessness both serve a divine purpose and so both exist.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
I don't limit God's age to 13 billion years either. I can say with some degree of confidence that it was at least 13 billion years, and certainly that He is of a finite age, but I have no idea just how old He is. (I'm a little scared to find out, because I'm guilty of giving him far too little praise already!)

I see some truths in your statements but several of them are unhelpful because they are too unclear. For the entirety of this thread, I've been expressing my frustration with theologians and preachers alike who publish or teach unclear material - without even so much as warning their audience that it's nebulous. The participant is then struggling to comprehend (wondering if he himself is obtuse) something that is probably incomprehensible. Very annoying. Very misleading.
 
Upvote 0

rjs330

Well-Known Member
May 22, 2015
28,214
9,085
65
✟431,367.00
Gender
Male
Faith
Pentecostal

I am glad you use words like "in my view". Because most of what you say certainly isn't supported by scripture. You are entitled to your view, but that certainly doesn't make any of what you say truth.

If we are going to talk about God, I think we ought to consult with the scriptures and if what we say doesn't align with scriptures then we ought to be taken with a very large lump of salt.
 
Upvote 0

straykat

Well-Known Member
Apr 17, 2018
1,120
640
Catacombs
✟37,648.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Private
Did I just read that right? Someone actually thinks God has an age? Oy vey. Time is but a creation itself...and a flimsy one at that. God wouldn't God if he was subject to it.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’

"From everlasting to everlasting you are God"

"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

"I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
 
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
.

That's silly. Every Christian, including myself, consults the Scriptures. It's a question of interpretation.

I'm pretty confident that if what YOU say is both inherently self-contradictory and contradicts the Scriptures, it's not the truth and it's certainly not the correct interpretation of the Bible. You haven't challenged any of my specific arguments or conclusions. In my experience, this usually means you cannot resolve my alleged contradictions against some of the traditional dogmas.

I don't think you're fooling anyone. If you've got a stronger position, prove it. That's what this forum is for - it's not for empty hot air.
 
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Did I just read that right? Someone actually thinks God has an age? Oy vey. Time is but a creation itself...and a flimsy one at that. God wouldn't God if he was subject to it.
So indoctrinated. I realize that SOUNDS like an argument, but it's actually not. It's just philosophical indoctrination - the kind of hollow philosophy that assumes, 'God is not God unless He has EVERY conceivable transcendent attribute - NO MATTER HOW SELF-CONTRADICTORY IT IS."

See the problem? Let me ask you, is God subject to 2 + 2 = 4? Is He subject to the law of non-contradiction? Certainly (unless theology reduces to nonsense/gibberish). Therefore, we must be open to the possibility of ADDITIONAL LIMITATIONS (if we intend to be rational).

The problem here, is you simply ASSUME that God must transcend everthing including time (hence you don't concern yourself with possible contradictions arising from that assumption). Assuming and proving are two different things. Merely assuming is NOT an argument.

I've shown on this thread that a timeless God is self-contradictory. Please address the arguments.

(Sigh) For the third time I'm here saying on this thread, I don't care if you've got a million verses - it's all worthless if your position is either (1) logically inconsisent or (2) humanly incomprehensible (and thus gibberish).

Let's take a look at some of those verses.

‘I AM has sent me to you.’ Ok, was there a time when Yahweh was not? No. If you read my thread, you'd know that I regard Yahweh's first thought as the beginning of time. No problems here.
.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." Ditto. No problems here.

"From everlasting to everlasting you are God". No problems here either. Will there ever be a time when God is no longer God? Certainly not.


"Now to the King eternal [everlasting], immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen." That verse doesn't mean timeless. It means everlasting.

You've proven nothing. You've merely regurgitated dogmatic indoctrination.

Here's an interesting verse. "The Ancient of Days took His seat." Sounds like time to me. (That's not a proof, just a casual observation. I've already provided fairly water-tight proofs on this thread).
 
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Indoctrinated? Is that supposed to be an insult? Of course I am. I'm part of the Church. Apparently you're not. I'm sorry for that.
I wouldn't call it an insult. Just an observation.
 
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
To save you a little time (no pun intended), here are some of the arguments against a timeless God.

A timeless God would have no merit and thus merit no praise because all of us hold to the same definition of merit - it's a status acheived by freely choosing to labor/suffer for a righteous cause over an exended period of time (e.g. Calvary).

A timeless God could have no free will. Free will is a moment of deliberation and indecision eventually culminating in a transition to resoluteness. Here too, if God has never enjoyed free will, he has no merit and merits no praise.

Yet some on this thread have said, 'You are using reasoning rather than Scripture'

Calvary is not Scripture? And what does the Bible have to say about merit? Does the Bible ascribe merit without desert? Throughout the Bible, free will (and therefore time) is a presupposition in the following sense:
(1) If you freely choose to do what is right, you have merit.
(2) If you freely choose to sin, you lack merit.
It doesn't really make sense for me to quote Scripture on this point because it's backed by every chapter of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Do I really need to cite all those verses here on this forum? How can I post so many verses on one thread?
 
Upvote 0

rjs330

Well-Known Member
May 22, 2015
28,214
9,085
65
✟431,367.00
Gender
Male
Faith
Pentecostal

That's the mistake a lot folks make. The vast majority of scripture is not in for personal interpretation. That's precisely why we have these discussions on these forums. People far to often impose personal belief onto scripture rather than aligning belief to scripture. It's fairly obvious you are doing that. Talking about the insanity of God? Or God keeping from going insane? What? Where on Earth in scripture does that come from?
 
Upvote 0

InterestedApologist

Active Member
Aug 17, 2017
123
63
51
Earth
✟44,376.00
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Private
That seems a bit silly. Not sure what I'm missing here.

I literally gave you God’s definition of love according to scripture, and your response is that God’s definition of love is silly because it isn’t the same as yours.


Your arguments on God’s character and the nature of love are just naively narrow and poorly constructed. They don’t even work from a strictly human perspective. You want to excoriate God’s character because of suffering, and then you disprove your point by quoting scripture illustrating God’s love by his willingness to sacrifice himself in the form of His son. This sacrifice is to save us from eternal separation from him, the worst suffering imaginable. All of this is consistent with the scripture I posted.

Humans chose and choose to sin. We live in a fallen world where Jesus told us there would be suffering. It is expected! This isn’t God’s fault, it is our own. Furthermore, God did not spare His only son from experiencing that very same fallen world and giving Himself up as a sacrifice while we were still His enemies! I must surmise that you lack a belief in heaven, as you are so concerned with suffering here, you are forgetting this life is but a vapor. The word says that the trials and suffering we experience here are not worthy to be compared to the riches and joy that await us.

I know you think you are onto something new and revolutionary with “your theology”, but all you have offered up so far is scriptural inconsistency mixed with freshman level philosophy. You clearly have worked hard to build a philosophical framework you like, but you value your own wisdom over Biblical evidence, which you have repeated several times. I hope in the future you will open your mind to scripture first, and then conform your reason to be in harmony with it, instead of contradictory to it.
 
Reactions: rjs330
Upvote 0

JAL

Veteran
Site Supporter
Oct 16, 2004
10,778
928
Visit site
✟343,550.00
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single

You see, I didn't make up the story of Lucifer, nor the story of Adam and Eve. THAT'S SCRIPTURE. It's also a HORRIBLE PREDICAMENT TO PUT SOMEONE IN. Giving someone the 'opportunity' to condemn himself to hell? What kind of a cruel monster what NEEDLESSLY put someone (much less 100 billlion humans who've live and died to date plus countless angels), in that sort of predicament?

Problem is, the Bible ALSO says that God is perfect in love. That itself is ALSO SCRIPTURE.

Has anyone noticed, yet, that my position is founded on Scripture? The stories of Lucifer, Adam and Eve, the demise of th world, and the eventual climaxing of it all on Calvary are so historically tragic that I for one could wish it weren't all true. YET THAT'S SCRIPTURE.

So it APPEARS to be a contradiction, on the face of it. This is a problem known historically as the 'problem of evil'. A considerable number of theologians (and numerous philosophers both Christian and non-Christian) have TALKED about it because it IS A REAL PROBLEM. For atheists today, it is their most staunch objection to any (theistic) Doctrine of God.

So unless we want to live a life of denial, we need to resolve this problem. We need to respond to the atheist's insistence that our God is a monster.

And the church has had 2,000 year to do it. I still haven't seen anything convincing yet. I took a university class on the Philosphy of Religion, and the problem of evil was one of the central topics. Saw nothing very helpful or convincing.

What do you want me to do? Wait another 2,000 years? Watch His Name continue to be slandered for annother two millennia? That would be your definition of being theologically responsible? I would call it irresponsible.

After 2,000 years of unsatisfying traditional 'solutions', it's become pretty obvious that a NON-TRADITIONAL solution is called for. So yes, while I feel your pain that, FROM THE TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE, it feels like insanity to talk about God's insanity, it's also insanity to continue to assume, after 2,000 years, that a traditional perspective will solve the problem.

Let's review our options:
Either:
(A) God created us because NEEDED us OR
(B) He merely because He WANTED us (He made us just for the fun of it, which seems monstrous). He's an infinitely self-sufficient being who, as such, didn't need us for us fun but created us anyway? This is a problem.

Therefore if we're going to step outside the bounds of TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE, we'll have recourse to option A. Fine. But WHY would God need us? Answer: perhaps He is a FINITE BEING whence the possibility of weaknesses and vulnerabilities such as insanity looms on the horizon.

So He evidently has one weakness or another (viz 'God rested on the 7th day' as though FATIGUED).
Note: Jesus is God and became fatigued.
Conclusion: God is potentially susceptible to fatigue.

Second example:
God came to the earth as the man Jesus.
As a man, Jesus was POTENTIALLY susceptible to every human frailty, including INSANITY.
Conclusion: God is potentially susceptible to insanity.

Whether or not you happen to AGREE with this kind of reasoning, no one's likely to convince me that it's peurile. Unfortunately my hands are tied to defend it, because there's only so much I can say for fear of Staff deleting this thread for a second time (not sure how far I'm allowed to go).

One final example. Genesis features an enumeration of God's creations. After each one is itemized, it is sealed with the words, 'And God saw that it was good' - UNTIL HE CREATED ADAM. That was the ONE THING of which He said, it is NOT good, for "It is not good for man to be alone."

WHY is it not good? Afer 6,000 years of human history since Adam, it's pretty clear why. Too much loneliness and isolation can corrupt mental health to the point of INSANITY.

What's God's REMEDY to the problem of Adam's loneliness? A BRIDE. The logic is irresistible. Where there is danger of loneliness-based INSANITY, God's first and foremost solution IS A BRIDE.

Now, what role does the CHURCH play for God? She is His bride.

So if you're going to try to tell me that the Bible has NOTHING to say about God's sanity, I will simply beg to differ.

Insanity is only one possible weakness justifying our creation. Actually I provided a SECOND weakness as well (but personally I think both weaknesses factored in God's decision). The second weakness is that the task of becoming holy (whereby He acquired merit and thus now merits praise) was probably too daunting for Him to undertake without some hope of reward. The angels and the church, as His eternal companion, was that reward.

You're welcome to come up with a better solution to the problem of evil. But I for one am not going to wait around for another 2,000 years, holding my breath for it.
 
Upvote 0