Should I eat breakfast or not?

Is a law's value in its longevity? In its universality? In its intent? In its effect?
Since I personally am not eternal, I don't find longevity rationales particularly persuasive.
BTJM.

sentipente said:

So you think that the book God wrote with His own creative hand is of less authority than the books that was written by His creatures. That is an interesting position to take.

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Senti, why do you keep putting words in my mouth that I did not say? I did not say that creation has "less" authority than the Bible. I did, however, say that you cannot -- from worshipping God in creation alone, without reading the Bible -- acquire the knowledge that you need for salvation!

To put it in terms as simple as I know how, a person who has never read the Bible, never heard the name of Jesus, cannot get saved by worshipping God in creation alone, as important as that is!

MRHarvey said:

Senti, why do you keep putting words in my mouth that I did not say? I did not say that creation has "less" authority than the Bible. I did, however, say that you cannot -- from worshipping God in creation alone, without reading the Bible -- acquire the knowledge that you need for salvation!

To put it in terms as simple as I know how, a person who has never read the Bible, never heard the name of Jesus, cannot get saved by worshipping God in creation alone, as important as that is!

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So you are saying that Jesus cannot save lost people on His own; he needs our help. This is the popular view but it is not supported by the fullness of the biblical teaching. Salvation is a unilateral act and I know every argument you may make to deny it. Salvation by knowledge. How do you like that?

AzA said:

1. The dichotomy between "general revelation" and "special revelation" is wholly theological, that is, theoretical-analytical and imposed. The scriptures usually classified as "special revelation" do not make this distinction. In those scriptures, that which is revealed is revealed. That which is occluded is occluded. There is no maybe-sorta-kinda: God self-reveals. And creation reveals God.

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Of course the phrases "General Revelation" and "Special Revelation" do not occur in the Bible. I also noticed that you just used the word "occluded", in reference to the Bible, even though the word "occlude" is nowhere mentioned in the Bible. That is for the same reason that the word, "Trinity" does not occur in the Bible. The Bible was never intended to be a text book of systematic theology!

Although the word "Trinity" does not occur in the Bible, the concept of the Trinity is taught throughout the Bible. (Lack of time and space does not permit me to go into detail about that topic here.)

Similary, the Scriptures to which you have alluded, Aza, refer to the concept of God's General Revelation. And there are several Scriptures that refer to the concept of what theologians now call God's Special Revelation. Time and space permit me to quote only one such Scripture passage here:

2. Not knowing that his songs would later be collected and added to ... The Bible, David said ....

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How do you know that he didn't know that his songs would later be included in the Bible?

3. Not knowing that his letter to some Romans would later be combined with other letters and then added ... The Bible, Paul stated that ....

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Again, how did you know that Paul didn't know that his epistles would be included in the Bible?

If God cannot in fact be authentically known from the work of His hands, and does not show Himself clearly in and to creation, then Paul was not just mistaken but also grossly misjudged humankind.

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Aza, you fail to make the distinction between knowing about God, and knowing God personally! Part of the problem is with our poverty-stricken English language. In French, they have two verbs that are generally translated as "to know" in English. One is savoir, which means to know facts. The other is connaitre, which means to know somebody personally.

I have already agreed that you can get to know a great deal about the nature and character of God through His creation. I never disagreed with anybody on that point! In fact, very much the opposite! I made my wholehearted agreement on that point abundantly clear!

The point that I made before is that the knowledge that God reveals about Himself through creation, apart from the Bible, is not sufficient for salvation! And because a person must be saved -- or converted, or born again, or whichever term you prefer to use -- in order to actually know God personally, a person cannot come to know God personally from creation alone, without the Bible!

Other witnesses to the revelatory power of creation include Job and Isaiah. And me. None of these witnesses wax quite so lyrical about the revelatory power of the scroll.

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Again, Aza, you seem to be confused about what a "revelatory power" is, and what it is not! What you call "the scrolls" are not a revelatory power of God, nor were they ever intended to be! Rather, the scrolls are a record of God's revelation of Himself to humanity!

Post-Jesus, writers began to lyricize Him as well. But even in Jesus, the same sound pattern of revelation applied. God self-revealed in Jesus. And, through One born of a woman, creation revealed God.

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You are, of course, right on the point that creation reveals God. However, since the beginning of creation, its purpose was more than just to reveal to us that there is a God; the very purpose of creation all along was to point us to the coming of the Saviour! A good book for you to read about that is Eternity in their Hearts, by Pastor Don Richardson. (I would quote a specific passage from it it I could, but I do not happen to have a copy of it in hand at the moment.)

Ironically it was because of scroll-dependence that the first-century Jews had a spot of trouble perceiving 'God with them.' It would be a shame for us to commit the same error.

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Lest anything I have said in the past be misinterpreted, I believe with all my heart that there is some truth in all faiths. I believe that there is some truth in all religious writings. But when you name any non-Christian faith, the reason that God gave them the light that He gave them was to point them to Jesus! Again, Eternity in their Hearts will make this issue clearer than I could here, with the limited time and space that I have!

With love in Christ,
MRHarvey

Harvey, the truth is that you could never have written all you just wrote there if someone had not taught it to you or you had not read it in a book. What you are doing now is merely defending a position. A good example of this is the fact that you just tried to imply that David believed his songs would be put in a book for us to read, or that Paul expected us to be reading his epistles in 2008.

You're entitled to believe that God's self-revelation pre-Bible was inadequate. Follow the premise through. If His self-revelation was inadequate before the collection of disparate letters, laws, histories, and poems, then everybody pre-collection and contemporarily without collection has an excuse.

Paul, on the other hand, said God had "clearly" manifested Himself with-out the Bible such that He could be and was "understood" -- and because of His clear self-revelation and because humans understood, because of their intimate knowing, no one had any excuse.

My comment on the fact that theology often dissociates what the Bible does not dissociate has nothing to do with the presence or absence of words, or even the richness of French or other Romance languages compared to English. Since you raised it, though, note which of the root verbs for "know" French and Spanish translations use in verse 21 to convey the meaning of gnosis. They inflect connaitre, not savoir. Conocer, not saber.

Interesting as all that is, no, we are not saved by articulation. That doesn't stop the conviction that we are saved by articulation rather than by God's act from forcing the backformation of supportive theology. And here we are.

sentipente said:

So you are saying that Jesus cannot save lost people on His own; he needs our help. This is the popular view but it is not supported by the fullness of the biblical teaching. Salvation is a unilateral act and I know every argument you may make to deny it. Salvation by knowledge. How do you like that?

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I am not limiting the ability of God -- I never have limited the ability of God -- to make the salvation message, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, known to unsaved people by whatever means He chooses!

However, it is important, very important, to make the distinction between between what God "can/cannot" do, and what God does do, and what He does not do!

If it were His will to do so, God could make the salvation message known to unsaved persons without using human beings to do so. But He doesn't. That's not the way He works.

If God worked that way, Our Lord would not have given us this command:
In Mark, Jesus stated essentially the same command in a slightly different way, as follows...

And one more Scripture that shows that God uses human beings -- Christian missionaries -- to make the Gospel known to people (rather than using some other means) is found in Romans, namely:
Last of all, but by no means least, is the passage from the Book of Acts, which I alluded to earlier (and which actually started this little sub-thread). Of course, when Cornelius prayed to God, the Lord could have revealed the gospel to Cornelius directly and supernaturally, without using Peter or any other human agent! But He didn't! Instead, he sent Peter to share the gospel with Cornelius. Again, because that is the way God works!

Salvation is a unilateral act....

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I don't know how you can say that salvation is a unilateral act! Salavation is always at least bilateral; it is always between at least two persons or beings, namely, God and the person who is being saved!

Here is the bottom line: It is not that God "needs" our help to communicate the gospel to unsaved persons, but He gives us the privilege of being used by Him in that way! And He does not make the gospel known to unsaved human beings without using human Christian missionaries -- even though, in theory, He could -- because that is simply not the way He works!

Harvey, the lost person does not have to be even conscious to be saved. Salvation is the act of the Savior. Don't confuse the news of salvation with the act of salvation. It was not enough for slavery to be abolished in the US. The slaves had to be informed of it because a slave will continue to act as a slave until he gets the news that he has been freed. The purpose of the Gospel Commission is not to bring salvation but to bring the news of salvation. Remember that it is news not a prophecy. News relates to something that has happened in the past. If there was still something for the lost to do it could not be news. At best it would be good advice.

sentipente said:

Harvey, the truth is that you could never have written all you just wrote there if someone had not taught it to you or you had not read it in a book. What you are doing now is merely defending a position. A good example of this is the fact that you just tried to imply that David believed his songs would be put in a book for us to read, or that Paul expected us to be reading his epistles in 2008.

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Senti, I made no secret of the fact that I borrowed a lot of the ideas, in that posting, from that book, Eternity in Their Hearts, and from other written materials I have read, and from sermons that I have heard.

The same holds true for you, for Aza, for Moicherie, and for everyone else who has posted in this sub-thread. None of you could have written what you have written if it had not been taught to you, or if you had not read it somewhere! So, what is the point you are making? Are you implying that it is wrong for me to borrow ideas from others, but that it is all right for you, Aza, et al to do so?

About the possibility that both David and Paul may have known, thousands of years ago, that their writings would one day be included with the Scriptures that they already had, in a volume that we now call the Holy Bible ... I didn't borrow that from any other human being. The Holy Spirit simply put that on my heart. Or, depending on your theology, you might just say that I thought of it myself. But I make no unique claim to being the only one who thought of it! I may pat myself on the back a little too much sometimes, but not that much!

sentipente said:

Harvey, the lost person does not have to be even conscious to be saved. Salvation is the act of the Savior. Don't confuse the news of salvation with the act of salvation. It was not enough for slavery to be abolished in the US. The slaves had to be informed of it because a slave will continue to act as a slave until he gets the news that he has been freed. The purpose of the Gospel Commission is not to bring salvation but to bring the news of salvation. Remember that it is news not a prophecy. News relates to something that has happened in the past. If there was still something for the lost to do it could not be news. At best it would be good advice.

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Senti, I'm not sure what is the point you are making when you say,

... the lost person does not have to be even conscious to be saved.

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Are you talking about predestination, even in part? If you are, please say so! I would actually love to start a new discussion about predestination!

I am not, at any rate, necessarily disagreeing with what you said there. I am open-minded to the possibility that God might even -- at least, occasionally -- communicate the Gospel message by supernatural means, even to someone who is unconcious! But do you know of a concrete example of someone to whom and for whom God has actually done this? If you do, please tell me! As I said, I am open-minded to the possibility! (Of course, in order for any other human being to know about it, it would also have to be that that person regained consciousness later on.)

Salvation is the act of the Savior.

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Of course it is! I was sure that I already made it clear that I agreed with that!

Don't confuse the news of salvation with the act of salvation.

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You cannot make a distinction between one and the other. At least, the Scriptures treat what you call "the news of salvation" and what you call "the act of salvation" as one and the same. Remember, Jesus said to Zaccheus "This day is salvation come to this house ...." (Luke 19:9) He did not say, "This day the 'news of' salvation is come to this house!"

Go ahead and make the distinction between "the act of salvation" and "the news of salvation", for the sake of convenience, if you want to! I have no qualms with that. But don't tell me that I am "confusing" the two when THE BIBLE doesn't make the distinction between the two!

If you still think that I am confusing the news of salvation with the act of salvation, take it up with Jesus Himself, not with me!

If there was still something for the lost to do it could not be news.

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It is not not that the lost have to "do" anything to receive salvation! However, they have to acknowledge that they need it! Again, if it were God's will to do so, He could force the gift of salvation on somebody who doesn't have the humility to admit that he or she needs it. But He doesn't, because that is not the way God works!

Were you forced to be born, Harvey?
Or were you born?

AzA said:

You're entitled to believe that God's self-revelation pre-Bible was inadequate. Follow the premise through.

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At the moment, I do not want to get into discussing how people got saved before the writing of the Bible was completed. Obviously, under those previous dispensations, at least some people did get saved without the complete Bible. But taking into account that we now have the complete Bible, let it suffice to say that under this present dispensation (and at the moment, I am using the word "dispensation" only for lack of a better term), the knowledge about God that one may gain from creation alone is not sufficient for salvation.

If His self-revelation was inadequate before the collection of disparate letters, laws, histories, and poems, then everybody pre-collection and contemporarily without collection has an excuse.

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I am disappointed, to say the least, that you would degrade the Word of God to the level of " [A] collection of disparate letters, laws, histories, and poems." Whether you believe that all of the Bible is the inspired Word of God, or whether you believe that the Bible merely "contains" the Word of God (thereby leaving the door open to the possibility that some parts of it were written by men who were not inspired by God), to call it what you have called it is disrespectful to God, to say the least!

Above all, the Holy Bible is anything but disparate! On the contrary. The Bible is totally coherent, totally harmonious! The very fact that the Bible flows so well and holds together so well from Genesis through Revelation is proof that it was inspired by God in a special way ... in a way that no other work has ever been! In posting number 106 (in this same thread), I briefly give a number of irrefutable proofs that the Bible is/contains the Word of God! And I could give an infinitely greater number of proofs, if time and space permitted!

Paul, on the other hand, said God had "clearly" manifested Himself with-out the Bible such that He could be and was "understood" -- and because of His clear self-revelation and because humans understood, because of their intimate knowing, no one had any excuse.

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Aza, you are thinking inside a box when you say that. You are making the equation...
You need to think outside the box. There are many ways that the phrase, "men are without excuse", can be interpreted!

What I am about to give you is the interpertation that I like, at the present time. And by no means do I insist that this is the only correct interpretation!

When a particular individual lives up to the light (the knowledge of God's truth) that he (or she) already has, God reveals more light to him (or her). And, as a rule of thumb, if he continues to live up to the light that God contnues to reveal to him, God eventually sends a missionary to him to share the gospel with him. This is exactly how God worked with Cornelius! Cornelius and his family lived up to all the light that God had revealed to them, and God was honoured by that! So He sent Peter to Cornelius, to communicate the gospel with them!

And how does this pertain to being without excuse? Because the reverse of what I said above is also true. When an usaved person rejects the light that God has previously revealed to him, and dies in that state, the reason that he goes to Hell isn't because he never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Rather, he goes to Hell because he rejected the light that God revealed to him. And because he rejected the light that God revealed to him, he cannot make the excuse -- when he stands before the Great White Throne of Judgment -- "But I never heard the gospel! I never had a chance for salvation!"

My comment [is] on the fact that theology often dissociates what the Bible does not dissociate ....

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In this particular case, theology does not dissociate anything that the Bible does not dissociate. The phrases, "God's General Revelation" and "God's Special Revelation" are merely convienent terms for us to use for the purposes of specificity. Using those terms does not dissociate one from the other! Just as teaching the doctrine of the Trinity does not mean that you are dissociating God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit from one another!

Since you raised it, though, note which of the root verbs for "know" French and Spanish translations use in verse 21 to convey the meaning of gnosis. They inflect connaitre, not savoir. Conocer, not saber.

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I would also like to mention that it is not only the Romance languages that make that distinction; the German language makes that distinction, too! In German kennen is equivalent to connaitre, and weissen is equivalent to savoir.

I acknowledge that you are right on the point that you made in the quotation above. But that does not negate my previous point, that a person can know all kinds of things about God without actually knowing God personally!

Aza, since you have kept referring to the passage from Romans that uses the phrase "men are without excuse", let both of us, together, look at that phrase in the context in which Paul used it. That will help us to get a better handle whether or not the phrase really means that they (the people to whom Paul is referring) already had the knowledge necessary for salvation or not!

As Paul has written ...
I know that that quotation is rather lengthy, but I don't really apologize for the fact that it was necessary to quote Paul so extensively, in order to get the point across!

This quotation, when taken in its entirety, actually supports my point that they knowledge that they (the people about whom Paul is speaking) have about God from creation alone is not sufficient for salvation!

If they already had sufficent knowledge for salvation, then they would have been saved. And if they were saved, they would have given thanks to God, which they did not do (verse 21). And then their hearts would not have been darkened, as they were! And then, they would not have become degraded, and God would not have delivered them up -- as He did -- to all kinds of sins, including animal worship (verse 23), generally worshipping the creation rather than the Creator (verse 25), sexual immorality, and all other kinds other kinds of lusts (verses 26 and 27). And that's just to name a few of the sins that God delivered them up to! And we must remeber that it was God, not Satan, who gave them over to all of these sins (verse 24)!

In short, if the knowledge about God that they had before were supposed to be sufficient for salvation, it certainly didn't do them much good!

Interesting as all that is, no, we are not saved by articulation. That doesn't stop the conviction that we are saved by articulation rather than by God's act from forcing the backformation of supportive theology. And here we are.

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I don't know who ever said that we are saved by articulation! It certainly was not I who said that! I have always acknowledged that we are saved by God's act!

AzA said:

Were you forced to be born, Harvey?
Or were you born?

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Hi, Aza!

You could go either way in answering that question. On the one hand, since I had no choice in the matter, you could say that I was "forced" to be born!

That said, I would prefer to simply say, I was born! That is nothing more than my personal preference!

Good.

Our casual use of the word obscures the fact that it does not convey the subject's activity. You were born (adjective) only because another person bore you (verb). The decision to conceive you, bear you to term, and contract you out happened without your vote. Your sole 'contribution' was to cooperate with the contractions at the right or induced time, and you were not capable of saying "no." You might have folded your hands and it would have taken a little longer, but you'd still have been born.

You were simply born. Not predestinated.

AzA said:

Good.

Our casual use of the word obscures the fact that it does not convey the subject's activity. You were born (adjective) only because another person bore you (verb). The decision to conceive you, bear you to term, and contract you out happened without your vote. Your sole 'contribution' was to cooperate with the contractions at the right or induced time, and you were not capable of saying "no." You might have folded your hands and it would have taken a little longer, but you'd still have been born.

You were simply born. Not predestinated.

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Of course, from our human standpoint, I was simply born, and not predestined. That is to say, until I the day that emerged from the body of my mother in a living state, nobody on Earth -- not even my mother -- knew for sure that I was going to be born alive.

However, GOD knew from the beginning of creation that I was going to be born alive! One of the reasons why I say this is because the Scripture tells us that God knows the end from the beginning. (Isaiah 46:10) And because God knows the end from the beginning, He knew from the beginning that I was going to be born.

So, for the moment, this is the question that I am asking: Is God's knowing that I was going to be born the same as Him predestining me to be born?

I'm not trying to argue with you. I am just asking.

MRHarvey said:

Of course, from our human standpoint, I was simply born, and not predestined. That is to say, until I the day that emerged from the body of my mother in a living state, nobody on Earth -- not even my mother -- knew for sure that I was going to be born alive.

However, GOD knew from the beginning of creation that I was going to be born alive! One of the reasons why I say this is because the Scripture tells us that God knows the end from the beginning. (Isaiah 46:10) And because God knows the end from the beginning, He knew from the beginning that I was going to be born.

So, for the moment, this is the question that I am asking: Is God's knowing that I was going to be born the same as Him predestining me to be born?

I'm not trying to argue with you. I am just asking.

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so then God also knew all those babies who would be aborted, miscarried, or born dead? Interesting indeed...

MRHarvey said:

At the moment, I do not want to get into discussing how people got saved before the writing of the Bible was completed. Obviously, under those previous dispensations, at least some people did get saved without the complete Bible. But taking into account that we now have the complete Bible, let it suffice to say that under this present dispensation (and at the moment, I am using the word "dispensation" only for lack of a better term), the knowledge about God that one may gain from creation alone is not sufficient for salvation.

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What makes you so certain that it is complete? Didn't the Jews of Jesus' day believe their Scriptures were complete?

MRHarvey said:

Again, if it were God's will to do so, He could force the gift of salvation on somebody who doesn't have the humility to admit that he or she needs it. But He doesn't, because that is not the way God works!

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If you truly believe that why do you believe He will burn some of His children in hell? Surely, you don't think anyone is going to walk voluntarily into a lake of fire.

It is unfortunate that predestination has come to connote force.
There is nothing that God does not know; He is not constrained by time; and there is no will of His that does not come to pass.

AzA said:

there is no will of His that does not come to pass.

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Otherwise, why pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?"