Misused Christian beliefs

[Akita Suggagaki]

Yes, good work. But then I have issue even with Paul. Innocent children die without sin.
We are just layering a natural human condition with guilt.

 

[cloudyday2]

Would you quote the passage you are referencing ? (What you said is not said anywhere in Scripture)

Are you talking about "born from above" or something else? If you read the post from @hedrick that I quoted there is an explanation of "born from above" as an alternative interpretation of "born again".

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Apparently some Essenes believed that people were either children of light or children of darkness. Some Essenes believed in freewill and some did not. (The Qumran Essenes did not believe in freewill.)

So is Jesus gathering people who are ALREADY born from above (at birth) or is Jesus exhorting people to BECOME born from above somehow (through baptism or repentance or joining a Christian group)?

Jesus says "you are either for Me or against Me; either gathering with Me or scattering" ..

no in-between. So everyone is either children of Light or children of darkness, as all Scripture likewise agrees in perfect harmony with God's Plan.

Jesus is not gathering people who are already born from above (at birth), nor exhorting people to BECOME born from above somehow (through baptism or repentance or joining a Christian group) ....

Those propositions or premises you state in the question/post are not in Scripture.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Yes, good work. But then I have issue even with Paul. Innocent children die without sin.
We are just layering a natural human condition with guilt.

Paul wrote as written in all Scripture, what Yahuweh breathed through him,
NOT of his own doing, no.
Anyone who has an issue with any of the messengers of Yahuweh, has an issue with the Creator who called, chose and sent them.
According to all Scripture, there are no innocent children as if free from sin and deserving death.

 

[cloudyday2]

The immensely influential Augustine, who derived it from a Latin mistranslation of Romans 5:12.

To me that doesn't seem plausible, because Augustine was more comfortable reading Greek than Latin and probably had a Greek manuscript. Are you sure he was reading a Latin manuscript?

 

[hedrick]

To me that doesn't seem plausible, because Augustine was more comfortable reading Greek than Latin and probably had a Greek manuscript. Are you sure he was reading a Latin manuscript?

I'm not so sure this is true. How Bad Were Augustine's Greek Skills? - exegetical.tools

 

[cloudyday2]

It is not like falling from the sky .

When Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden

the word means also divorce,

Divorce comes before marriage.

Sin banishes the Shechinah, the Divine Presence.

A marriage in the wake of a divorce in spiritual terms,

is conceivable after a state of "Divorce" only when there was repentence in the interim.


"Indeed, it is impossible for the wicked to begin to serve G-d without first repenting for their past.
(Alter Rebbe)

Here is a link I found about the Garden of Eden from a Jewish perspective. Does that match your thinking on it?
The Story of Adam and Eve in the Bible

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

there are no innocent children

How then does an infant sin before the age od reason?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

How then does an infant sin before the age od reason?

It is not possible for me to reply (on this site) correctly to someone who believes in such catholic teachings.

 

[cloudyday2]

I'm not so sure this is true. How Bad Were Augustine's Greek Skills? - exegetical.tools

That's interesting. I suppose the Latin mistranslation theory is a good one then.

 

[cloudyday2]

According to all Scripture, there are no innocent children as if free from sin and deserving death.

This seems to be different from the view described by @caerlerion which I understood to be that Adam opened the door for death to enter the world, and anybody who sinned exposed himself/herself to death. So there was no hereditary sin from Adam's mistake, but there was a new risk of death that could only be resisted through a sinless life. Am I summarizing that wrong?

 

[hedrick]

How then does an infant sin before the age od reason?

The best commentary of Romans that I know (Dunn) thinks that 5:12-14 actually doesn’t make a clear choice between corporate sin and individual sin. Paul is unlikely to have meant quite the Augustinian meaning. But I believe he did recognize the corporate nature of sin. We don’t just all individually happen to sin. Much of our sin is collective. But we also all (except maybe infants) have individual responsibility as well.

I’m not sure this answers the question of infants. Of course most Christians, even in the Augustinian tradition, think infants are saved, so perhaps the issue isn’t pressing.

It can’t be literally true that death came from sin. It’s obvious that humanity never developed as a species designed to live forever, and that basic design was frozen well before there were any humans around to sin.

But Calvin’s interpretation of the Fall is worth looking at here. Calvin believed that the death that God threatened wasn’t literal. He thought that if we had never sinned, we still wouldn’t have lived in the current world forever. Rather, we would have transitioned peacefully into eternal life. Sin causes that transition to be experienced as fear and pain, i.e. death as we now know it.

This is surely not what the author of Genesis meant, and probably not even Paul, but it provides an interpretation that might work with current biological knowledge.

 

[Robban]

Here is a link I found about the Garden of Eden from a Jewish perspective. Does that match your thinking on it?
The Story of Adam and Eve in the Bible

More or less but it is possible to rise higher,

the link was more of an introduction,

maybe to give an appitizer,

good in as much as it arouses questions.

 

[cloudyday2]

But I believe he did recognize the corporate nature of sin. We don’t just all individually happen to sin. Much of our sin is collective. But we also all (except maybe infants) have individual responsibility as well.

It occurred to me that it is easier for me to love my neighbor if he/she is also trying to love me. Some of the corporate nature of sin might be the "what goes around comes around" type. Drop somebody into a war zone and see how well he can practice "love thy neighbor".

 

[Romans 8]

I imagine two guys in hell:
- What are you in for?
- I raped a child and killed my parents. What about you?
- I did yoga and listened to The Beatles.

I mean, it is of course possible that God will send you to hell for listening to a particular type of music, but then it's impossible to say what will determine who goes where in the afterlife. For all we know only people with white socks go to heaven, because if it depends on your taste in music, it has nothing to do with morality or what we call logic.
Yep. Better here than on Facebook

This is where the misunderstanding lays. You're not sent to hell because you sinned. You're sent to hell because you're an enemy of God. All Christians sin, it's in our nature to sin, we're born sinners. We sin, we repent, wash rinse, and repeat. A Christian recognizes the one and only God of the Bible and follows and accepts Jesus and what he did on the cross. I thought you used to be a Christian, how can you not know this?

By all means do, I'm not one to do personal attacks on forums. Personally I'm here because I think some of the debates are interesting and fun.

I deleted that last bit. It was too early in the morning, actually your posts are kind of funny but you fundamentally misunderstand salvation.

 

[Romans 8]

LOL, you have a way with words ("What an amazing trade off. Ones salvation for the freedom to play horrible music and wear women's yoga pants.")

BTW, if you post that thread I would be happy to explain why I come to CF (FWIW). The "world religions" sub-forum is the only one that I follow consistently.

And, my inspiration for creating this thread was my realization that Christianity could be a lot more marketable in modern society if certain doctrines were gone. Of course that doesn't mean those doctrines SHOULD be gone - maybe they are essential unpleasant truths. But I have a suspicion that some of these doctrines that turn people away from Christianity are being misused.

Adding or subtracting from the Bible is a sure way to spend eternity in hell fire. Christianity isn't supposed to be marketable or popular in the world.

I can't say there's anything in the Bible that makes me wish it were different. Many Christians have no clue about the basics of the Bible after decades of going to church. The Bible deserves a proper study rather than second hand information or assumptions based on reading a few verses. The Bible is a very logical book and the only source of true comfort for the nearly dead.

I think yourself and Holo are here for more than just entertainment. I think you guys are trying to edify your souls, likely unbeknownst to you both. I would put money on the fact that you both convert before your dirt if you don't die a sudden death. I pray you both have the time to come to your senses and seek God with all your heart, mind and soul.

 

[charsan]

I thought we might share the beliefs we see as bogus or misused?

That everything that is not evangelical must be Catholic

 

[Romans 8]

What about meditations on the Breath? Is that type of meditation satanic? Our breath is a gift from God, it's not New Age or Eastern Religion or anything like that is why I ask.

Yes especially the breathing exercises. They're meant to put you in a state of trance, (Buddhists call it emptiness meditation) so that you're more open to demonic influence. It doesn't mean that everyone that partakes in yoga and meditation will be demon possessed/influenced. It means you're going to be at a much higher risk. You have a much higher chance of demonic influence with divination or playing with Ouija boards. But even then one isn't guaranteed demonic encounters. But if you do end up at the short end of the stick, it could take years to get proper deliverance. There are countless Christians that became Christians based solely on their experiences with the demonic. Before their encounter with demons, they joked about it much like the participants in this thread.

 

[Zoness]

Adding or subtracting from the Bible is a sure way to spend eternity in hell fire. Christianity isn't supposed to be marketable or popular in the world..

Oof, Protestants are going to be in a rough spot what with marking the Deuterocanonical books as Apocryphal hereby enabling their Bibles to be reduced to 66 books.

 

[Romans 8]

Oof, Protestants are going to be in a rough spot what with marking the Deuterocanonical books as Apocryphal hereby enabling their Bibles to be reduced to 66 books.

The Apocrypha books are not added for good reason.