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That's easy to disprove. Heb 11 celebrated the act as one of the most righteous acts in human history. Now suppose I am a man who PRESUMES (without 100% certainty) that God will resurrect my son upon killing him. So I kill him. Would you celebrate me? Is that kind of behavior paradigmatic? Is that what Abraham did? Is that what were supposed to emulate?
Heb 11 is supposed to provide models we should emulate.
Calvin called it a feeling of certainty. So do I.
Have you even tried to UNDERSTAND Heb 11? My objection stands. Resolve the charge of contradiction.Have you even read Hebrews 11? It says exactly what I said.
Heb 11:19 "He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, "
Abraham's willingness to kill his son is a remarkable lesson in faith, because he had so much faith in God's promise he was prepared to kill his son assuming he would be resurrected.
So if I tried to kill my own son without 100% certainty, you'd praise my action as a remarkable lesson in faith?Have you even read Hebrews 11? It says exactly what I said.
Heb 11:19 "He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, "
Abraham's willingness to kill his son is a remarkable lesson in faith, because he had so much faith in God's promise he was prepared to kill his son assuming he would be resurrected.
Talk about moving the goalposts ! Every single post of yours seems to be a hodge-podge of random strands of my thinking yanked out of each of their separate discrete context, as a completely illegitemate strategy of trying to make my position look random.Calvin didn't call it a feeling of certainty in regard to actions of conscience.
That's easy to disprove. Heb 11 celebrated the act as one of the most righteous acts in human history. Now suppose I am a man who PRESUMES (without 100% certainty) that God will resurrect my son upon killing him. So I kill him. Would you celebrate me? Is that kind of behavior paradigmatic? Is that what Abraham did? Is that what were supposed to emulate?
Heb 11 is supposed to provide models we should emulate.
One step at a time. Before we talk more about the role of the Voice, explain to me how it makes sense to celebrate a man who kills his son with less than 100% certainty that it is the morally right thing to do.Hebrews 11 tells us why Abraham was happy to kill his son.
It doesn't say it was because "the Voice endued him with 100% certainty that it was the morally upright step to take"
Talk about moving the goalposts ! Every single post of yours seems to be a hodge-podge of random strands of my thinking yanked out of each of their separate discrete context, as a completely illegitemate strategy of trying to make my position look random.
One step at a time. Before we talk more about the role of the Voice, explain to me how it makes sense to celebrate a man who kills his son with less than 100% certainty that it is the morally right thing to do.
You keep drawing artificial, bogus distinctions. And it's wearing me out. I'm in a meeting but trying to comment on this.I'm moving goalposts????
One minute you define the Spirits inward witness as feelings of certainty in regard to our actions of conscience. Contra Calvin.
Next minute you say it is feelings of certainty in regard to the authenticity of scripture. Pro Calvin.
Make your mind up.
Yes that's one FACET of the Inward Witness, His ability to speak to us about moral actions.I'm moving goalposts????
One minute you define the Spirits inward witness as feelings of certainty in regard to our actions of conscience...
Yes, that is another FACET of the Inward Witness, His ability to speak to us about doctrines.Next minute you say it is feelings of certainty in regard to the authenticity of scripture. Pro Calvin.
So Abraham went AGAINST His conscience in your view !!!! He disobeyed his conscience ! Great. You have finally been the one person to find an exception to the rule of conscience! You succeeded! Where everyone else failed! Here's the rule again:A feeling of certainty from the Spirit's inward witness? Abraham would have felt no such thing. He wasn't reading scripture.
Abraham would have no doubt felt his conscience telling him not to do it, but his faith was even stronger than his own conscience and he was willing to disobey it.
When Direct Revelation is defined in terms of a tautological principle (conscience), it makes no sense to refer to is as dangerous or unreliable,i.e. something that should NOT be relied on. Until you can undermine the tautology...
"If I feel certain that action A is evil, and B is good, I should opt for B"
...you're speaking empty words. On the surface they might SOUND "theological" and "reasonable" but ultimately those words make no sense at all.
Sorry you lost me on that one. You seem to be responding to a slightly older post, and I have no recollection of the context of that exchange. Not even sure who is each of the "he"-pronouns in your statement.I didn't get the sense that is what he meant by it.
But even if he did, the conscience should be guided by the Word of God, or it is indeed unreliable, and can be even dangerous. I got the notion though, from his post, that he meant something more along the lines of conscience guided by direct revelation from God (as opposed to Scripture).
Thank you for your kind words, by the way.
Scripture-writing? I'm not even sure that Paul saw himself as a writer of "scripture" in the sense of envisioning or planning the current canon foreseen to be a world-wide publication. More likely he wrote a bunch of letters that the church, ipso facto, DECIDED to canonize.Really. So we would still have scripture-writing, authoritative, miracle-working, eye-witness Apostles of Christ today, if only it wasn't for those pesky Sola Scriptura guys.?
The Galatians didn't hear the same Voice that Abraham heard? That's odd, because Jesus said:There is no evidence that the Galatians received direct revelations from God. The similarity between Abraham and the Galatians that Paul pointed out was they both believed the word of God. It doesn't say the Galatians received that word in the same way as Abraham did. Paul makes no mention of the mechanism of reception. You are reading something into scripture that isn't there.
Conscience and intuition are the receptors of revelation. Conscience tells us that something is wrong. Truth is revealed to intuition. If there was no devil and Christians were 100% tuned into God, there would be no need for the Bible. Obviously that is not the case.I've done a couple of threads on this issue, but I still feel that virtually no one gets it. Let's try this again.
This time, I'll begin by showing that Sola Scriptura faces the same logical difficulty as Tradition. Once again, our basic choices are:
(1) Tradition
(2) Sola Scriptura
(3) Conscience, informed by Direct Revelation (my position).
Tradition is the claim, "Never rely on your own opinions, instead believe what the Catholic church teaches" (or Orthodox church). The logical difficulty here is obvious: if an agnostic gradually reaches the opinion that the Catholic church is the truth, he should not become a Catholic, because he was told to never rely on his own opinions. His opinions carry no weight. He is stuck.
Likewise, Sola Scriptura is the claim, "Never rely on your own opinions, instead believe what the Bible teaches." Same logical impasse - it implies that an agnostic who begins to form Christian opinions should not act on them because opinions carry no weight.
Thus Sola Scriptura is total nonsense. Moreover it couldn't even boast ubiquity for 90% of human history, until the dawn of the printing press around 1500 A.D.
Every historic wane of prophets is fertile ground for the spawn of a Bible-scholar movement (a Sola Scriptura movement) that artificially fills the (universally felt) need for religious leadership. In Christ's day, the Sola Scriptura parties largely consisted of the Pharisees, Saducees, and teachers of the law. In diametric opposition to this accursed epistemology, Christ The Prophet arrived as the antithesis of the Sola Scriptura insanity, denouncing the widely accepted beliefs and practices as man-made religious traditions. He made it clear that HIS teaching derived not from the seminaries of His day but directly from the Father, literally face to face, and thus by Direct Revelation.
History repeats itself. The wane of the early apostles/prophets culminated, once again, in the spawning of more Sola Scriptura movements. Even today's advocates of Tradition are actually Sola Scriptura advocates in disguise, because their conclusions are grounded four-square on Bible-scholarship - an exegetical analysis of scripture, history, and culture. And thus, as Andrew Murray lamented, the mistake of the Galatian church is repeated to this day in all the churches - even in the churches most confidently self-assured that they are free from the Galatian error.
We need revival. And the only sure way to get it - if Galatians 3 is any authority on the matter - is to receive outpourings of the Spirit via "the hearing of faith" (which is the literal rendering of the Greek). This is a clear reference to Direct Revelation, anecdotal indeed of Paul's own affair with Direct Revelation outlined in Galatians 1.
Revival does not depend on intellectualism at all. It depends on Christians getting real with God, praying, repenting and seeking. I have a short book about the greatest revival in the 20th century, right at the start in Wales. There was zero emphasis on doctrine. It was all about spiritually dead Christians coming alive and getting real with God. One result was unity, not in doctrine but in love and in the Spirit. Shut down theological institutions, quit arguing about non-issues and cry out to God. I have my own views about church life. Since the modern church model is an absolute failure, something has to change. But just fixing the structure is nowhere near enough. The church is people, not an organisation. Start with people. If they are right, the rest will fall into place.Scripture-writing? I'm not even sure that Paul saw himself as a writer of "scripture" in the sense of envisioning or planning the current canon foreseen to be a world-wide publication. More likely he wrote a bunch of letters that the church, ipso facto, DECIDED to canonize.
What pesky Sola Scriptura guys? I'm referring to the whole church. Even most charismatics subscribe to the dogma that, ultimately, we must "check it out with Scripture". And they too have traded in the apostolic government for a modernized clergy, characterized by man-made liturgical traditions shoved down God's throat. Case in point. I attended a charismatic church whose leader insisted on a big choir. Is there strong NT support for a choir? I don't see much, if any. Does this mean he's wrong? No - but here's the point:
(1) Some insist that we DO need choirs, and claim to know it.
(2) Others insist that we do NOT need choirs, and claim to know it.
BOTH parties are shoving their traditions down God's throat because what they NEED to do is admit that, until Direct Revelation gives them 100% certainty, NEITHER of them knows for sure the truth about choirs.
Thus, virtually all the churches are built on a platform of intellectual dishonesty - by and large the leaders are claiming to know things that they do not, in fact, actually know. Given that fact, how can we expect revival? And how can this possibly be fertile soil for the raising up of apostles and prophets?
In another church I went to, the "pastor" was also called a "bishop" (understood to be a grade higher than a pastor). On what basis are people making these distinctions? Why are they claiming to "know" the legitimacy of applying such titles to seemingly ordinary men? Why are they shoving these titles down God's throat?
Until we repent of intellectual dishonesty, I don't see much hope for revival.
Every time I use a different word, or express a different FACET of my position, you call it a contradiction, and tell me to make up my mind. You Sola Scriptura advocates have had 2,000 years to unfold your position. I'm trying to explain my views in one thread, which means YOU need to read between the lines, but you conveniently refuse to do this because you want to claim everything is a contradiction.
You say I contradicted Calvin. Not at all. In Calvin's view, BOTH of these facets were involved. That is to say, the Inward Witness gives us feelings of certainty about the authenticity of Scripture AS A MEANS of convicting our conscience of the need for a moral action - the action of repentance unto salvation.
So Abraham went AGAINST His conscience in your view !!!! He disobeyed his conscience ! Great. You have finally been the one person to find an exception to the rule of conscience! You succeeded! Where everyone else failed!
Here's the rule again:
"If I feel certain that action-A is evil, and B is good, I should opt for B".
Scripture-writing? I'm not even sure that Paul saw himself as a writer of "scripture" in the sense of envisioning or planning the current canon foreseen to be a world-wide publication. More likely he wrote a bunch of letters that the church, ipso facto, DECIDED to canonize.
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