See, that is what I mean, you don't make the most basic insights. Temporal simply means temporary and we are all sinners in that sense. Eternal sin results in eternal death, aka hell, that is what I call perdition. Remember the passage in John where Jesus was calling his enemies 'children of your father the devil'? It's in the sixth chapter of John if memory serves. That's perdition, just like blasphemy of the Holy Spirit it's not reversible. You really have to discern between sin that is an overt act and an act of omission because if you don't you get this monolithic meaning that never refers to the righteousness that God provided to us through Christ. Sin is anything that falls short of the perfect righteousness of God. Think about it and we can talk about this some more.
I'm sorry, but in my books and as far as I've ever seen in the Bible sin is precisely "anything that falls short of the perfect righteousness of God", and that is about as monolithic as you could ever ask for. I don't think you have a Biblical understanding in what you call "eternal sin". For look at the passage you cite, actually John 8:42-47, where Jesus calls the Jews "children of your father the devil". Actually, even I was surprised reading that passage - Jesus addresses this to the Jews who
believe! (John 8:31) But anyway. This is clearly not the "unpardonable sin", whatever you believe about that, and some of the Jews were clearly forgiven for it. Look at the context: from John 7 to 8, Jesus has been speaking at the Feast of Tabernacles, and one of the things He condemns them for is wanting to kill Him (8:40). Now turn to Acts, and what do we see? Peter preaches repentance to the Jews at Pentecost, and three thousand were saved that day!
Now both the Feast of Tabernacles and Pentecost were feasts mandated over the entire Jewish diaspora (if memory serves), and thus it beggars imagination to believe that of all the Jews called "children of the devil" by Jesus, not one of them was present and converted at the Pentecost when Peter preached. Furthermore, the converted Jews at Pentecost were "cut to the heart" after Peter accused them of plotting Jesus' death, and why would they have felt so if not because they had actually wanted to kill Jesus - in other words, if they had not actually been under the category of "children of the Devil" in John?
What about the rest of Scripture? What does it say?
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
(Hebrews 10:26-29 NIV)
Whatever you believe about the perseverance of the saints you will agree with me that no one sin is singled out for naming in this warning - or rather, no one sin is
excluded from the possibility of leading to perdition.
Any sin leads ultimately to death if not stemmed by the sacrifice of Christ.
Or what about Revelations?
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."
(Revelation 21:8 NIV)
Note that the list here of what you might call "eternal sins" includes cowardice and "vileness" (however you'd define
that) along with the "heavyweights" like unbelief and idolatry. Again, there are no safe sins! There are no "temporal sins" that, by virtue of being milder than other sins, will not ultimately lead to hell.
I was recently leading a study on 1 John and we looked at a verse that seems to contradict that:
If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.
(1 John 5:16 NIV)
Of course, our Biblical senses should be tingling because what does Paul say in Romans?
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NIV) - no ifs, no buts. Our conclusion was that the difference between sins that lead to death and sins that don't is not a matter of "degree" - it is not as if there is a "death list" of sins that God can never forgive and an "okay list" of sins that God can overlook. Rather,
any sin leads to death - if not stemmed in the redemptive work of Christ. And
any sin may not lead to death - if we confess our sins and believe that God is righteous and just to forgive and purify, mentioned earlier in 1 John (1:9).
So that's my hamartiology for you. And quite frankly, I see plenty of biblical support for my views, but not for your idea of "eternal sin".
I hope everyone sees that shernren is now talking to me in the third person.
Honestly, I don't get why that bugs mark so much.
As Mallon has pointed out, this is not a private or one-on-one conversation. In fact, in every debate I've been to, my job as a debater has never been to convince my opponents but to convince the judges - hence, we refer to the opposition as "they" and not "you".
Yes you, you don't attack believers who embrace Creationism as a doctrine as if they were the enemy unless you are divisive and contentious.
What? Who did I attack?
You don't, are you still nursing a Tilich style of theology? It's nothing but a worldly philosophy put in theological terms.
I see an attack, and it looks for all the world like you've declared me the enemy.
After calling BD senseless you proceeded to claim that I based my arguments on a single passage of Scripture. That is not true and you know it because I have done extensive expositions of the related texts, again and again and again and again.
One last time.
Firstly, Busterdog said himself that '
I don't use "making sense" or "makes more sense" primarly as a standard'. When I said '
"sense" is not really a criterion for you in ordering your mind.' I was really just paraphrasing what he himself said - albeit extremely harshly.
Secondly, what exactly did I say in my post?
All Mark has ever recently shown for his theology in this thread is a snippet from Romans 5, which doesn't even support his point, and which misses out a pivotal verse 12 which clearly states that all die because all sin.
How can he say his viewpoint is Scriptural? It doesn't proceed from all of Scripture - just a snippet - and it is contradicted by ideas that take in far more Scripture than he does. Oh, and it sends aborted fetuses to hell. (Shock value!)
(emphases added) Now, this thread ran its course around the beginning of this year; a few days ago it was resuscitated with post #82, and I made this comment in post #111, implicitly referring to the posts you made between #82 and #111 as "recent" (March '07 is hardly "recent", is it?) The only Scriptural citation I saw you using in that stretch of posts was the Romans citation I saw in #100, and that was what I was referring to. I certainly didn't mean to say that you have never ever referred to any other passages of Scripture in any form to bolster your arguments; just that you hadn't done so
recently in this thread.
I hope that makes things clear.
You sound like you actually care....wow...I wasn't expecting you to actually care if TE was heresy.
Thanks mark, you really made my day with this. I can't think of a better way to encourage a brother than to act surprised when he says that he cares about what he believes.
Quite frankly, mark, you have no idea how much thought and effort goes into my long posts. For every idea I state there are probably two or three that I have personally mused over, considered, and rejected based on the Bible's evidence. For every verse I quote I can name a few more which I thought might support my case, then looked up, considered the context, and decided after all that they might not be suitable. I take pains to emphasize what comes clearly from Scripture and what I personally believe; I adduce support from multiple authors and cultural backgrounds within Scripture. I make it a point to read even authors I don't agree with to see what I can learn; right now I'm digesting two books, both talking about the Bible but from diametrically opposite viewpoints - one as conservative as can be, one fully siding with higher criticism.
And you don't know how many nights I've stayed up, not over an assignment or project, but over a thought about science-religion relations that occurred to me the other day. It's been three years now since I first considered that creationism might not be the right way to go; three years of hard work and thought. Every day at university I keep my eyes peeled for some seminar, or conference, or talk that might stand the remote chance of bringing me closer to a better understanding of it. I've picked up from scratch the rudiments of paleontology and geology - as well, of course, as quite a fair bit of evolutionary biology. Through all of this I believe that I have kept my heart open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit which may well convince me that I am wrong above and over everything I have constructed up to now.
Are you surprised that I care about whether I'm believing in heresy or not? Wow. I'm pleasantly surprised that you even noticed.
Can I ask you a question in return? Before the posts I made in this thread, had you honestly ever considered what Ezekiel, Hebrews, James and 1 John had to say about sin?
Look, if you are opposed to YEC because you believe that Natural Science has made it's case then go in peace, I have no problem with you. I will happily argue my points based on Paleontology and Biology at length but I will never judge you as a Christian for that reason. If on the other hand you go after essential doctrine and the Biblical basis for Creationism I am perfectly capable of confronting you on that level and it will not be the lighthearted exchange I relish in the discussions.
And I have already pointed out that in fact my personal view on hamartiology is in fact
perfectly compatible with a creationist viewpoint on human origins. Strangely, that doesn't prevent it from being incompatible with you - but who am I to judge about that?
You cannot have it both ways, you can't brand Creationism psuedo-science because it's religious and then take that same theory of origins into a doctrinal context. I will not sit still for it.
Whoa - when did I "brand creationism pseudo-science because it's religious"? The most I have really ever said about it is that it doesn't work. That's a far cry from what you imply.
I'm not telling you what you should do, religion is a deeply personal pursuit. All I'm asking is that you don't form your religious convictions based on what worldly scholars and scientists are telling you.
Of course not. That's why (in case it's escaped your notice) I happen to quote the Bible a lot in my theological posts ...
One thing is clear, Paul was a Creationist. He may not have cared one way or the other but he saw deep theological significance in the sin of Adam and how it is affected us all.
And he took great pains to say that all died because
all sinned.
Like I tried to tell you, stop it, I'm not the enemy.
Dude, have you ever read the things that are written during church splits. When the Methodists split with the Holiness Movement that said terrible things about one another. When the Holiness Movement split with the Pentecostals it was even worse. Did you ever hear of the Thirty Years War or the Civil War in England? This kind of thing can get ugly, don't be the guy who fires the first shot.
I'm sorry, but you're now the one who's initiated talk about church splits.
I honestly lost a lot of respect for you when you refused the formal debate that you invited. Then you were saying even harsher things and still refused to defend your statements formally.
You've had many months now to read my explicit statement about the formal debate proposal. I turned it down precisely because I was not going to formally defend something I could no longer believe, i.e. that creationists are the new geocentrists. I was mistaken to claim that. And I have said so since the time I turned down the debate.
(Hey look - shernren actually cares about what he believes! And he will actually back down from something that he is convinced he was wrong about!)
Grace and peace to you too.