Tiny little Kids learn how to share the Gospel.

The Liturgist

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Yes, actually those children are giving the answer to that question. If one believes on Jesus Christ they have eternal life. That's in John 6:47, John 5:24, John 3:16-18, Eph. 2:8,9, actually about 150 times in the Bible....So, regardless of what any church father says, the Word of God, the Bible is the Truth. Isa. 8:20. And someday, you won't be standing in front of any of these church fathers, but you'll stand in front of God Himself.
Forgive me, but I have no quarrel with you over this issue but rather only disagree with what @d taylor said earlier in the thread and continues to say.
 
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d taylor

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I did not say that, you are putting words in my mouth!

Well you say we disagree and i believe a person receives God's free gift of Eternal Life by faith in The Messiah. What do you believe, how does a person receive God's free gift of eternal Life.
 
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The Liturgist

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Well you say we disagree and i believe a person receives God's free gift of Eternal Life by faith in The Messiah. What do you believe, how does a person receive God's free gift of eternal Life.
What you are saying is a gross distortion of my post, which was not a dissent that we are saved by faith, which is an axiom of Christianity, but rather to the anti-sacramentalism of your post.
 
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d taylor

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What you are saying is a gross distortion of my post, which was not a dissent that we are saved by faith, which is an axiom of Christianity, but rather to the anti-sacramentalism of your post.

I am 100% anti sacrament, when that is applied to or made a condition for receiving God's free gift of Eternal Life.
 
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Kees Boer

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I am 100% anti sacrament, when that is applied to or made a condition for receiving God's free gift of Eternal Life.
Yes, and the last supper is given to us to remind us of God's love in giving us that free gift of Eternal Life. He wants us to devote ourselves to that, to never forget His love for us, totally unconditional.
 
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The Liturgist

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I am 100% anti sacrament, when that is applied to or made a condition for receiving God's free gift of Eternal Life.
Because this is off-topic, I am going to link you to a thread in which the OP explore views concerning the importance of baptizing children where possible:

 
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Because this is off-topic, I am going to link you to a thread in which the OP explore views concerning the importance of baptizing children where possible:

That Passage doesn't deal with baptism.... The children of Israel were too scared. They grumbled in their tents and believed that God hated them and had taken them out of Egypt and delivered them into the hand of the Amorites to destroy them. They worried about their children, but their children, or the next generation were going to be the ones, who took the land... 40 years later.
 
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The Liturgist

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That Passage doesn't deal with baptism.... The children of Israel were too scared. They grumbled in their tents and believed that God hated them and had taken them out of Egypt and delivered them into the hand of the Amorites to destroy them. They worried about their children, but their children, or the next generation were going to be the ones, who took the land... 40 years later.
You should make that post in the thread I linked to, because I did not write it, my friend @Ain't Zwinglian did, and it represents his perspective.

My own view as it pertains to this thread was I believe accidentally mischaracterized by d taylor, on the assumption that my approach to Baptism and sacramental theology is Augustinian. On the contrary, as an Orthodox Christian, I disagree with St. Augustine in terms of his approach to rejecting the false argument of Pelagius that we can save ourselves through works, because in suggesting that original sin spreads like a venereal disease and that unbaptized infants are damned, St. Augustine made two errors, the latter view by the way not even being Roman Catholic doctrine, and also being extremely problematic, for example, clashing with the veneration of the 40,000 Holy Innocents as saints on December 28th, which is an extremely important feast day in the Orthodox Church, and its proximity to the Nativity on December 25th and the Feast of St. Stephen the Illustrious Protomartyr on December 27th (according to our Calendar) is not an accident, for the Holy Innocents and St. Stephen were the first to die for Christ, and we believe all of them to have been saved.

Rather, in rejecting the Pelagian error that man can save himself through good works, we subscribe to the hamartiology of original sin articulated by another fifth century Latin, the great monastic St. John Cassian, whose Conferences were historically read in the West before the great schism and who was historically much more important in Western theology than St. Augustine, before the Great Schism of 1054 and the Fourth Crusade waged not even against the Islamic oppresssors of Christians in the Holy Land but rather against the Christians of the Byzantine Empire for the benefit of Venice cemented a Western tradition to what is called Scholastic Theology, which began with the likes of Anselm of Canterbury and which was epitomized by Thomas Aquinas.

The view of St. John Cassian, which is sometimes called “ancestral sin” to differentiate it from the original sin theology of St. Augustine, also has the advantage of making it so that a doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, who we of the Orthodox persuasion venerate, as unnecessary, since the marriage bed is undefiled, yet even she, though sinless, required the salvation provided by our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, who is responsible for the salvation of those who believe in Him.

This being said, baptism is extremely important, for as it says in the Nicene Creed, which is also part of the Statement of Faith for Christian Forums, we believe in one Baptism for the remission of sin.

Thus, Baptism is extremely important. However, one who is of an age of awareness is saved as soon as one chooses to believe in Christ. This is reflected in that when one becomes a Catechumen, from that point on they receive an Orthodox funeral, along with the Baptized, for they are preparing for Baptism. With infants there is no catechumenate; we baptize them and then confirm them and administer them Holy Communion around eight days after birth, which coincides with the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord (note that the Orthodox do not believe in circumcision as required for salvation and in principle, it is only widely practiced among certain ethnic groups within the Orthodox Church that are largely of Jewish descent, for example, the Nasranis, or St. Thomas Christians, of India, many of whom are partially or entirely descended from the Kochin Jews of Kerala, and the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox, whose largest ethnic group are almost entirely of Jewish descent, being descended from the Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, who were descended from the offspring of King Solomon and Queen Kandake, and even among these groups circumcision is obviously a cultural heritage rather than a sacrament, and also in North America, where for many decades pediatric surgeons promoted it to everyone as a means of generating revenue.

Baptism on the other hand is salvific, even though one can be saved without it; Baptism and the Eucharist are an extremely important part of the affirmation of the faith for Christians who confess Christ. We regard Baptism as regenerative and the Eucharist to be the actual body and blood of our Lord and the medicine of immortality, by which we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, as described in 1 Corinthians 10-12 and John 6.

We are of the view that when preaching the Gospel, that Gospel includes everything our Lord taught, including the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 and the institution of the Eucharist at the last supper, the occasion of which is discussed in the three Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11, and the meaning of which is further explored in John 6.

Thus, I am of the personal view that in teaching children to spread the Gospel among themselves, which is of benefit wherever, as is so often the case, the godparents of the child neglect their responsibility, they should be taught to spread these teachings of Christ.

Thus I believe that our Lord loves and saves innocent children, but at the same time, we should baptize and communicate them starting at infancy, for our Lord said in Matthew 19:14 “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." This is obviously a different view than what we see in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church; some Eastern sui juris Catholic Churches which are basically Orthodox in communion with the Pope do communicate infants, while others delay this until First Communion and then do Chrismation as part of confirmation, administered by the bishop to adolescents, whereas we Chrismate immediately.

This has numerous benefits for the children. For example, it ensures that they are not possessed, for baptism is an exorcism, and possession thus can only happen through intentional rejection of the faith of that baptism much later in life. It ensures that through Chrismation, they receive the seal of the Holy Spirit. And the participation of young children in Holy Communion is of extreme value: in the Methodist church in which I was raised I first recall partaking of the Eucharist at the age of four, and this was one of the best experiences of my life and cemented my faith.

However, d taylor was incorrect when he asserted that I was suggesting that Baptism is an absolute requirement for salvation. Rather, the remark he made which I objected to is that

“It is the same ole problem that has affected humanity for ages, they simply think they can work their way back to God. And they think it is right because they go to church, read The Bible, have been baptized, repented from their sins, etc..

But they do not see it as work/obedience because they have redefine faith to included obedience.”

I objected to this remark because I do believe that Salvation is a Free Gift from God, and that the way God tells us in the Gospels to obtain this Gift is a process which for most will include baptism and the Eucharist, and for anyone who is mature, entails repenting of sin, because the act of believing in Christ is literally an act of repentence. When we choose to believe in Christ, we are changing our mind, and the literal Greek translation of the word repentance is metanoia, which means “to change your mind,” and hamartia, which we translate as sin, means “to miss the mark.” It is missing the mark to the most extreme extent to not believe in Christ and thus choosing to believe in Him is to repent of profound sin. Baptism is the sacrament which washes away that sin, and the Eucharist remits sin and confers immortality, for it is the Body broken for the remittance of sin and the Blood of the New Covenant, but if we die before we have the opportunity to be baptized, or if we die confessing Christ before men, for example, as so many Christian martyrs have done under the Roman Empire, Islam, Communism, and so on, such as the Good Thief on the Cross, we are saved, for our Lord promised in Matthew 10:32 “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”

Asserting this is not asserting that we can save ourselves, which is the heresy of Pelagius; rather, it is to say that God has provided any who will accept it a free gift of salvation, and He has provided means of receiving His uncreated grace.

My remarks were severely misunderstood by dd taylor and subsequently by yourself, so I feel compelled to clarify this point. I do wish you had simply believed me when I stated that what you felt I believed was not actually the case, because I have been extremely ill and until this morning have not been well enough to write a detailed reply.
 
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The Liturgist

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Well you say we disagree and i believe a person receives God's free gift of Eternal Life by faith in The Messiah. What do you believe, how does a person receive God's free gift of eternal Life.

I believe we receive God’s free gift of eternal life by faith in the Messiah! Who is God, by the way. Jesus Christ is literally the Incarnate Word of God.

I am 100% anti sacrament, when that is applied to or made a condition for receiving God's free gift of Eternal Life.

Here is what you wrote that I object to:

Nothing wrong with being baptized, repenting of sins or joining a church but a person (unbeliever) need to understand doing those actions does not give an unbeliever God's free gift of Eternal Life.

This is in my opinion an error because anyone who sincerely repents of their sins and is baptized and thus joins the Church has by neccessity become a believer, because they have repented of the false belief that Jesus Christ is not God incarnate who gave His life on the Cross that anyone who believes in Him might be saved, as we are assured in John 3:14. This is not works righteousness, it is literally the Gospel. And in the Gospel there are some who are clearly saved who were not baptized, but Baptism is provided for us as a means of washing away all sins, and the Eucharist is likewise provided for us as a means of receiving sacramental grace.

However, it is a doctrine of the early Church, of the Orthodox, of most Protestants, and even of the Roman Catholics that there are circumstances where one who has never received the sacraments is nonetheless saved.
 
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Kees Boer

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The Greek word for Repentance is METANOIA as you pointed out. That does mean a change of mind. It does not by itself refer to sin. One would have to look at the context to figure that out. The phrase "repent of sin" does not occur in the Bible anywhere. I made a short video on it.

 
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d taylor

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I believe we receive God’s free gift of eternal life by faith in the Messiah! Who is God, by the way. Jesus Christ is literally the Incarnate Word of God.



Here is what you wrote that I object to:



This is in my opinion an error because anyone who sincerely repents of their sins and is baptized and thus joins the Church has by neccessity become a believer, because they have repented of the false belief that Jesus Christ is not God incarnate who gave His life on the Cross that anyone who believes in Him might be saved, as we are assured in John 3:14. This is not works righteousness, it is literally the Gospel. And in the Gospel there are some who are clearly saved who were not baptized, but Baptism is provided for us as a means of washing away all sins, and the Eucharist is likewise provided for us as a means of receiving sacramental grace.

However, it is a doctrine of the early Church, of the Orthodox, of most Protestants, and even of the Roman Catholics that there are circumstances where one who has never received the sacraments is nonetheless saved.
Faith is basically defined in two ways among church people and these two ways are not the same.

1. The first way and the most popular view of faith is that faith is defined as obedience. So when a person says they have faith in the Messiah they are basically saying they are in obedience to The Messiah by baptism, repentance, commitment, etc...

Now is this faith really in The Messiah or in actions (baptism, repentance, commitment, etc..) a person is or will do.

----------------------------------------------------------

2. The faith defined as the way i believe The Bible is using faith. Is that a person is fully persuaded by the evidence presented in The Bible of the promise of God. And that faith in this promise of God gives an unbeliever God's free gift of Eternal Life.

The promise of God, is that all who believe in The Name of The Messiah. That He is who He says He is The promised Son of God, The Christ/Messiah and trust in The Messiah for Eternal Life receives Eternal Life. No other action is required

So faith as given in The Bible is simply believing the promise of God, as stated in these verses below.

John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
John 3:14,15 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be save
John 3:18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
John 3:36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
John 5:24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.
John 6:47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believe in Me has everlasting life.
John 11:25,26,27 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
John 20:31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
 
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The Liturgist

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The Greek word for Repentance is METANOIA as you pointed out. That does mean a change of mind. It does not by itself refer to sin. One would have to look at the context to figure that out. The phrase "repent of sin" does not occur in the Bible anywhere. I made a short video on it.

That really assumes a Western forensic understanding of sin.

If we look at the example of the Eastern churches, which do not look at sins forensically but medicinally, as a disease that we suffer from, then the concept of changing our mind so as not to engage in those things that cause us to suffer makes more sense. And indeed if one needs to change ones mind, then one has missed the mark, which is the literal definition of hamartia. And we miss the mark at the speed of thought.

Through the grace of the Holy Spirit however we can get better in terms of the illness of sin, through the mortification of the passions. And this is literally salvific, if we look at the word salvation, which literally refers to salve, i.e. a balm, in terms of healing. Christ came into the world to heal it, that is to say, to heal creation and specifically, us, since we are the part of creation which has fallen into sin.
 
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The Liturgist

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Faith is basically defined in two ways among church people and these two ways are not the same.

1. The first way and the most popular view of faith is that faith is defined as obedience. So when a person says they have faith in the Messiah they are basically saying they are in obedience to The Messiah by baptism, repentance, commitment, etc...

Now is this faith really in The Messiah or in actions (baptism, repentance, commitment, etc..) a person is or will do.

2. The faith defined as the way i believe The Bible is using faith. Is that a person is fully persuaded by the evidence presented in The Bible of the promise of God. And that faith in this promise of God gives an unbeliever God's free gift of Eternal Life.

The promise of God, is that all who believe in The Name of The Messiah. That He is who He says He is The promised Son of God, The Christ/Messiah and trust in The Messiah for Eternal Life receives Eternal Life. No other action is required

Right, the problem with your approach is that it actually paradoxically does require action, in that it requires a conscious intellectual process of being informed of evidence in the Bible and then a belief in that promise. Now, aside from the fact that your interpretation is contrary to what the New Testament itself says, because the New Testament tells us to repent, to be baptized and to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to partake of the Eucharist, and also that faith without works is dead (James 2:26 , which it must be stressed does not exclude Sola Fide, since Protestants such as my friends @ViaCrucis @Roymond and @MarkRohfrietsch will assert that through the grace of the indwelling Holy Spirit we produce good works as the fruit of a living faith, but which does exclude Nuda Fide ), the interpretation you offer also has the problem in that it requires an intellectual process which some people are incapable of.

I myself refuse to accept a soteriology which requires an intellectual assent which infants and the mentally disabled are incapable of engaging in. Now, a faith that Christ will save us is salvific, but so is sacramental baptism and chrismation and communion, and repentance from sin, and for that matter, martyrdom for Christ is also salvific, and thus God has provided for the salvation of infants and the mentally disabled who lack the ability to be fully persuaded of anything on an intellectual level.
 
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d taylor

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Right, the problem with your approach is that it actually paradoxically does require action, in that it requires a conscious intellectual process of being informed of evidence in the Bible and then a belief in that promise. Now, aside from the fact that your interpretation is contrary to what the New Testament itself says, because the New Testament tells us to repent, to be baptized and to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to partake of the Eucharist, and also that faith without works is dead (James 2:26 , which it must be stressed does not exclude Sola Fide, since Protestants such as my friends @ViaCrucis @Roymond and @MarkRohfrietsch will assert that through the grace of the indwelling Holy Spirit we produce good works as the fruit of a living faith, but which does exclude Nuda Fide ), the interpretation you offer also has the problem in that it requires an intellectual process which some people are incapable of.

I myself refuse to accept a soteriology which requires an intellectual assent which infants and the mentally disabled are incapable of engaging in. Now, a faith that Christ will save us is salvific, but so is sacramental baptism and chrismation and communion, and repentance from sin, and for that matter, martyrdom for Christ is also salvific, and thus God has provided for the salvation of infants and the mentally disabled who lack the ability to be fully persuaded of anything on an intellectual level.

Contrary, i just posted about 7 or 8 verses stating that Eternal Life/ Everlasting life is received by faith in The Messiah.

Basically it boils down to we believe in two different God's. Your God requires a person to save themselves by actions that they may preform hoping that they have enough obedience to be judged worthy of receiving eternal life at their judgment.

Where as the God i believe in offers Eternal Life as a free gift, received by a person at the very moment they trust, believe, have faith in The Messiah. With no other action required by a person and not only do they receive God's free gift of Eternal Life at the moment of faith in The Messiah. God permanently seals this person's Eternal Life so they may never lose it no matter how they live their life. Even if they lose faith and become an unbeliever because of some influence or event in their life.
 
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Your God requires a person to save themselves by actions that they may preform hoping that they have enough obedience to be judged worthy of receiving eternal life at their judgment.
That is absolutely not true as I have said repeatedly. I believe that we can be saved by our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ even if we are unable to perform any actions.

You continue to mischaracterize my posts, and to make false assertions about my faith, which is extremely offensive. I need to ask you to carefully reread my post, because if you do so, you will see this allegation is baseless.
 
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Where as the God i believe in offers Eternal Life as a free gift, received by a person at the very moment they trust, believe, have faith in The Messiah.
That is an action they have to consciously engage in. I believe salvation is possible even for those people who lack the intellectual ability to trust or believe in anything, for example, someone born with extreme cognitive deficits or an infant. Why do you insist on a soteriology that excludes such people from salvation by requiring intellectual assent?
 
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Contrary, i just posted about 7 or 8 verses stating that Eternal Life/ Everlasting life is received by faith in The Messiah.
You can’t negate a verse you don’t like, such as Matthew 28:19 or James 2:26 , by posting another verse. That’s eisegesis. Rather, all of these verses have to be taken into account exegetically.
 
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This is a video that really has helped a lot of people on the issue of repentance. Take a look at it. It's about 6 minutes long. I made it over a year and a half ago. It's a topic that is very misunderstood.

The problem with that video is you are correctly focusing on the fact that the word for repentance is Metanoia without focusing on what sin means in the context of the Greek New Testament and the Greek Church, which is to say imperfection (hamartia, missing the mark), which is a disease to be cured as opposed to the Latin forensic interpretation.

Thus the correct understanding of metanoia is changing our mind and resolving to accept the grace of the Holy Spirit so that God can work within us to perfect us through the process of Theosis. After all, our Lord tells us to be perfect even as our heavenly father is perfect. This we cannot accomplish on our own, but through faith in Jesus Christ, which is an act of metanoia, changing our mind, we can receive the grace of the Holy Spirit which begins the process by which we are perfected in Christ so that when we are raised, we are raised incorruptible, becoming through grace what Christ is by nature, for to quote St. Athanasius, God became man so that man could become god.
 
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Kees Boer

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The problem with that video is you are correctly focusing on the fact that the word for repentance is Metanoia without focusing on what sin means in the context of the Greek New Testament and the Greek Church, which is to say imperfection (hamartia, missing the mark), which is a disease to be cured as opposed to the Latin forensic interpretation.

Thus the correct understanding of metanoia is changing our mind and resolving to accept the grace of the Holy Spirit so that God can work within us to perfect us through the process of Theosis. After all, our Lord tells us to be perfect even as our heavenly father is perfect. This we cannot accomplish on our own, but through faith in Jesus Christ, which is an act of metanoia, changing our mind, we can receive the grace of the Holy Spirit which begins the process by which we are perfected in Christ so that when we are raised, we are raised incorruptible, becoming through grace what Christ is by nature, for to quote St. Athanasius, God became man so that man could become god.
Where in the Bible does It say to repent of sin?
 
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