Why do Christians disagree? Part 2

[2PhiloVoid]

So do you think this synergy is happening as we speak, are Christians coming slowly together, drawing close to the actual truth in your view?

As to whether Christians are "coming together" through illumination and synergy of the Holy Spirit, well, that again is a social complexity dependent on the individual Christians being evaluated. Some Christians disagree with others because they are still stubborn in nature. Some uneducated. Some able but not ready to agree with others. Some not in a place conducive to their having a better understanding of some things God may want us all to understand. And then, there's also the fact that the Bible is not a comprehensive spiritual textbook, written to answer all and every question we might all have about the totality of life and any spiritual reality.

Moreover, there are epistemological complexities, conceptual, perceptual, some even emotional, that typically play a part in the fact that Christians "disagree." These epistemological complexities are, I think, normative for the human condition, quite apart even from the idea that sin can also play some part in Christian disagreements. However, the presence of sin would not be something we would consider normative for better synergy, but rather an unfortunate human factor.

 

[Athée]

it contains enough of God's knowledge to do three things:
1. convince those who read it of the living presence of God
2. convince those who read it of sin and it's destructive power
3. present a remedy for sin

What about that synergy you were describing earlier, do you believe that to be happening?
Is it possible for someone to read the Bible earnestly and not come away with those three things, living presence, sin and the remedy? That is that they might just not be convinced that it is true?

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[John Hyperspace]

That's interesting, you seem to have a much more passive view of the Holy spirt than I usually hear. Why do you think so many Christians think that the holy Spirit does lead the believer into all truth in a more active way?

Probably because whereas I'm lead to understand the word "spirit" as an abstraction ("That girl has spirit!") they are lead to understand the word "spirit" as an empirical thing that flies around and passes through walls and talks to people and such. They understand "earth and heaven" as some sort of dual-empirical realms, the latter being more "whispy" but both can be empirically experienced; while I believe "earth and heaven" are metaphor of empirical objects and abstract objects e.g. ideas.

 

[Athée]

yes, He did.
and yes, He does.

OK, so my question is why does it seem to be the case that Christians continue to disagree?

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[Athée]

When I was a grad student in Boston, I became friends with a very bright Christian women named Linda. She was in an impossible marriage with a sexually unfaithful husband. Her misery prompted her to ask God whether divorce was permissible. She prayed about this and then used an interpretive technique called bibliomancy; that is, she prayed, closed her eyes, and randomly opened her Bible and blindly pointed her finger at a text which turned out to be Jesus' prohibition against divorce in Mark 10:2-11. To her, this seemed like divine guidance, but she asked me what I thought of her conclusion.

I felt prompted to ask for her Bible. I closed my eyes, instantly randomly zapped my finger inside, and found it pointing to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which gives permission for men to divorce their wives and specifies how to go about this. Linda was thunderstruck by this paranormal demonstration. When she composed herself, she smiled and wryly asked, "So are you saying your divine guidance trumps my guidance?" I was amazed at my impulse to do this and my success in doing so.

Years later, when I was a theology professor, I shared this story with a classics professor and his wife. They asked for a demonstration and I asked them to pick a subject. They replied, "How about a verse about a grain or chemical?" I closed my finger, zapped it in a Bible twice, and both times found my finger pointing to a verse about wheat!

Back to Linda. I replied to he question, "No, Linda, I accidentally discovered my odd talent to randomly open the Bible and point my finger at a verse that was startlingly relevant to an issue or desire I was contemplating. Early on, when I used this method, my imagined prophecy was amazing fulfilled shortly thereafter. My mistake was to assume I could do this at will. I found I could paranormally close my eyes and insert my finger on a verse that is startlingly relevant to a desire or problem I was contemplating, but that most of the time, the prophecy to be inferred from this coincidence never came true. So I concluded that I had simply activated a hidden psychic ability of my mind that had no necessary relationship with divine revelation.

I then explained, "What this really means, Linda, is that you should base your decision whether to get a divorce on your understanding of New Testament teaching and your resulting intuition about God's will on this question. But don't place any credence in the bibliomancy method." I then pointed to Matthew 19:9 where Jesus implies that divorce and remarriage are permissible in the case of a spouse's adultery. Linda changed her mind and got the divorce.

In fact, Mark 10:2-11 is merely presenting Jesus' general guideline that divorce is normally wrong, but Matthew 19:9 is identifying adultery as an exception to this rule. The permissive text in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is part of the Old Testament Law that Jesus annulled.

I like the idea of bibliomancy, I will use that in future discussions Congratulations on your superpower!


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[John Hyperspace]

Please, read the rules. There is a rule about saying that a particular group (INCLUDING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH) are not Christians.

I said no such a thing; what makes you think that I did?

 

[com7fy8]

So ball caps I undrstand. How could I, in real life, identify these chosen few?

The ability to do this comes with growing in real love so then you can tell who else is being real. But if you look for who has certain ideas, someone might be parroting what they think you want to hear, so then they can use you. So, we need to grow in the ability to be able to tell the difference.

One thing which helps me is I see if someone helps me to get real correction (Hebrews 12:4-11, James 5:16, Galatians 6:1) so I am more real with God and loving any and all people; and I can see if the person is a good example helping me to relate personally with others who are real in love.

So, I do not go by having similar hobbies or if someone is charming and flatters me

And there are seniors who have been more and more real in the faith, for much longer than me. But they might not put on much of a show, might be quiet. So, we need to be humble and sensitive and prayerful in order to be able to share well with really mature senior people . . . versus looking for birds of our own feather and age >

"For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?" (in Matthew 5:46)

Do you think people make mistakes in interpreting the bible in the way you suggested above or does this kind of study always lead to the truth?

Each person and each group can have different results. Ones who are getting somewhere as a whole might table a subject if they aren't getting anywhere with it.

If it doesn't and resonate Christians disagree how would you determine who was correct in any given instance?

If a certain person is stubborn and wrong, there may be no way to help the person, at least at that time; so ones might be patient and move on and pray for the person to become humble. Other times, ones discuss and someone helps the others to get what is good. I find that mature people don't deal much with doctrinal controversy, but concentrate on how to grow in seeking God and loving. In case someone brings up a hot but getting nowhere topic, a mature one might get out of it, just by saying he hasn't looked into it

 

[Athée]

Since I started with a comparison of a competitive event, I will continue on that train of reason.

In any sport, competition, game (although the gospel message including the entire history according to the word of God is not a game) there are always different points of view. Any master of it will have a different opinion of another master. That is if we compare top biblical theologians with each other, we will see the same issue.

God's foundational truths are not debated much.
It's when you get into things that are not directly affecting salvation that we see debates.

However, like I said before, since your still denying that He exists, things will not be apparent to you. You have eyes but don't see and ears but don't hear.

I don't know why He did it this way. If I was to guess, I would say that He wanted people who believed on the little bit that is given to them. Anyone will believe in something if they hold it in their hand. But only the truly faithful will trust His word without putting their fingers in His nail holes and their hand in His side.

These people have their eyes open and their faith rewarded with knowledge and confirmation that can not be taught, told or shown to anyone unless they experience it for themselves.

Who gets to decide what the foundational truths are that these masters get to agree on, or is it a case where you start where they all agree but as soon as you reach the first one where there is debate you draw the line?

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[Athée]

Since I started with a comparison of a competitive event, I will continue on that train of reason.

In any sport, competition, game (although the gospel message including the entire history according to the word of God is not a game) there are always different points of view. Any master of it will have a different opinion of another master. That is if we compare top biblical theologians with each other, we will see the same issue.

God's foundational truths are not debated much.
It's when you get into things that are not directly affecting salvation that we see debates.

However, like I said before, since your still denying that He exists, things will not be apparent to you. You have eyes but don't see and ears but don't hear.

I don't know why He did it this way. If I was to guess, I would say that He wanted people who believed on the little bit that is given to them. Anyone will believe in something if they hold it in their hand. But only the truly faithful will trust His word without putting their fingers in His nail holes and their hand in His side.

These people have their eyes open and their faith rewarded with knowledge and confirmation that can not be taught, told or shown to anyone unless they experience it for themselves.

It seems that the story of doubting Thomas would be relevant here. How do you think it related to the point you are making?

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[Athée]

Yes. It is called a cosmic butt whooping - if you are wise, and He knows you are one of His children. In other words, that "invictus" against lack of humility is a part of what Christian''s call "saving grace."

The grace is that He cares enough for tou, and your correction that He would even reproof you/spiritually spank you. Since you are His, you will eventually come back to Him.

Even if you wander as far as the prodigal son, or further. Christ said no one can snatched His from Him. So, if you are His, you are His; nothing can pull you so fat away that you can't recoil back to Him.

So why do you think that God allows so much confusion and dissent among his children given that you also belive he could fix it if he wanted to?

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[Kit Sigmon]

Note:
I am re-posting this discussion after the former was closed. I have been informed that I did not transgress the rules so I am hoping this one will be allowed to continue. The following is the OP from that first thread.

Hi all,

I am an atheist, married to a wonderful Christian woman. In hopes of coming to belive what she believes I have started attending a bible study group with some cool guys from our church.

One question that keeps coming up in our discussions is this notion of the indwelling of the spirit as it pertains to interpreting the Bible.
I have often heard that when a believer reads the bible the truth of it will be revealed to them by the Holy Spirit.
If that is the case why do so many Christians disagree about interpreting scripture?
Probably the same reason why Lucifer and a host of the angels turned against God...pride.
Two-thirds of the angels kept they heavenly estate.
It seems submission to God still be a big issue for a lot of people/persons, whether they be created persons(angels), highly educated humans or not so educated humans. We have free will to choose what we will do or not do.

The Pharisees/teachers of the Torah didn't accept the Lord ...Jesus talked(and taught) with them, evidently they didn't agree.
The Truth(Jesus) was there amongst them and many of the teachers of the Torah, the uneducated, the poor, rich etc they rejected Jesus as Lord. Many others did accept Jesus.

They(teachers of the Torah) continued rejecting "truth"...even when they witnessed the miracles, many had been present when Jesus was baptized by John the baptizer; there was the appearing of dove(holy spirit), the audible voice of God declaring Jesus to be His son, in whom He was well pleased... yet there were eye witnesses to all that who said like: "bah humbug!"

Jesus did his heavenly Father's will, lived a sinless life, redeemed mankind(Jesus' death of the cross) etc...still there be people who reject Jesus as their Lord/Savior.

The most common response in our group was that people supress/make errors even though the holy Spirit is teaching them the truth . If this were the case wouldn't we expect broad agreement on any particular issue as the supression and error would be idiosyncratic to any particular believer but the consensus would remain (same principle as poll the audience in Who Wants to be a Millionaire , all the people who know the right answer pick the same one, everyone who doesn't spreads their votes out over the possible choices leaving the truth clearly indicated.
In our group this ended with the guys just saying they don't really have a good answer for this problem, which while intellectually honest is not super helpful
Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

Note: This is not supposed to be a debate thread so as you respond I will try to simply ask questions to clarify rather than offer rebuttals. As such if you can think of a counter argument to your own position please include it and also include why you don't find that counter argument compelling

Thanks for your time and intellectual effort.

Peace

Believers who disagree/quarrel... this is in Chapter 15 of Acts.

(You can read that chapter, er, actually read the whole book of Acts when you have the time...you see, the book of Acts, is the acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.)

Now in the matter of the bad quarrel relating to John Mark, Paul and Barnabas parted from one another, but continued to spread the gospel...Barnabas took John Mark, they went to Cyprus; Paul took Silas and they went to Syria and Cilicia to establish churches.

I also found that it be Paul who would go onto write much about keeping unity with the brethren.
Examples: “Love one another with brotherly affection” Romans 12:10.
“Live in harmony with one another”- Romans 12:16.

“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” -Romans 12:18.

“(Be) eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace -Ephesians 4:3.

” Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” -Philippians 2:2.

“Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” -Colossians 3:13.

In some cases the Gospel be advanced through disagreement or separation... in the case of Paul and Barnabas there'd been two men, one team in one place.
After they parted company, there you have 5 men, two teams in two places with churches being established.

Although Paul and Barnabas parted, they did so respectfully, not with rancor. Both men continued spreading the gospel, not spreading bad stuff about one another.

Did Paul and Barnabas continue being at odds?
Let's look at their situation...say in like 10 years, scripture:
In 1 Corinthians 9:6 Paul mentions Barnabas as a fellow apostle and a fellow worker in the cause of Jesus Christ. Ten years passes from the time of the argument and Paul is able to look at Barnabas and say, “My friend, my fellow apostle, my partner, my co-worker.” Something had happened to bring about reconciliation and healing...the holy spirit continued to do his job an it wasn't an overnight thing.

Did Paul have a change of heart towards John Mark? scripture verses: Colossians 4:10 and 2 Timothy 4:11...
I believe like 15 or so years had passed since "the split".

I also be looking at how the bible(scriptures) doesn't say Paul was right and Barnabas be wrong/or Barnabas be right and Paul be wrong. It presents what happened, how they continued on presenting the gospel and in time, reconciled.
..this all be work of the Holy Spirit enabling them to keep to the real task, preaching the Good News of the Gospel, establishing churches etc.

Romans 15:5-6
“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The above is what be done for me and my husband.
We can discuss our different beliefs without getting bent out of shape, because our foundation be in our Lord Jesus Christ, who will make all things known to us, whether in this life or in heaven, it be fine either way.
We continue chasing after the Lord together and doing the things that be clear in scripture.
An older man said this to me a long time ago when I was a young girl: "I have no time for arguing about things, there's some stuff in the Bible I'm not sure of but the things that are clear, I do them and it be enough to keep me occupied each day."

Athee... R. A. Torrey did much study on the Holy Spirit, he put it all in a book called:
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit.
It's available on amazon.com (I just checked.)

It takes time Athee, we ain't going to have all the answers given to us by the Holy Spirit at the snap of the finger. The believer's walk of faith and learning will continue on until he/she is present with the Lord in Glory.

The Holy Spirit continues to work in the life of the believer and he also works in the life of the unbeliever...it be the Holy Spirit that "woos", "draws" us...cause none can come to the Lord unless the Holy Spirit be doing his job...it's not done by intellect, there has to be an inward working on the sinners "heart", it's a spiritual thing that only the holy spirit of God can do as the person yields themselves to the wooing/drawing of the Holy Spirit.

I hope this can be of some help to you, peace to you Athee and have a good night's rest.

 

[Athée]

Hi, Athée God bless you; and I hope you are indeed being more and more blessed with your Christian wife. To keep it simple, my opinion is that the best thing you can do is get to know the people who help you find out how to love. But also give attention to getting the right ideas about God's word. But because Christians can have different views, I think this means we have the challenge of being honest with God and ourselves and admitting how any of us, being human, can be mistaken and not even know it. So - - - therefore . . . trust our Heavenly Father to do what He knows we need . . . but mainly so we find out how to be and how to relate in His love. There is plenty of scripture which can help us with this.It is certainly reasonable that if all the Christians are being inspired by the Holy Spirit, then we will all have the same beliefs. But, Athée, each of us is not perfect, including how we each have our own idiosyncrasies and we can feel that God has given us our different ideas.

And I might say, we might believe we all can be taught the same way by the Holy Spirit, but we need to pray and submit to God, personally, in order to get things the way He would teach us. And I think it is simple > we do not all pray so meticulously, in order to make sure we really have heard from God. Plus, this comes with maturity and experience, plus God is mainly concerned about how we develop in love and not only in our belief understanding.

So, we might, too, be first concerned with how each scripture means for us to become in love and how we relate with God and caringly share with people and reach with hope for ones who do not know how to love us.

Then we are more concerned with the love meaning, of any scripture, instead of an intellectual and scholarly meaning. And, even if it is hard to get an explanation, we might be able to apply a scripture to how to love, since loving is not an intellectual thing . . . to my knowledge and in my experience Do I have scripture? >

"to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:19

So . . . one might debate > but we need to get the right beliefs, and this takes study and the help of Bible scholars. But, I offer, we can in our imperfection be too fast to assume that our favorite people must be the ones with the right beliefs. We can even pay a lot of money for the books and schooling which our favorite people recommend, but we can be only looking for training in order to give scriptures and/or arguments which justify our favorites. And we have spent a lot of time and money on that, possibly.

Rocky gives us an item which could be an example of a subject which is debated by differing self-favoring people; I hope to use this as an example, in my next post, Athée.

Well I will look forward to toe next post because I am still wondering how we determine these right beliefs

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[Athée]

As to whether Christians are "coming together" through illumination and synergy of the Holy Spirit, well, that again is a social complexity dependent on the individual Christians being evaluated. Some Christians disagree with others because they are still stubborn in nature. Some uneducated. Some able but not ready to agree with others. Some not in a place conducive to their having a better understanding of some things God may want us all to understand. And then, there's also the fact that the Bible is not a comprehensive spiritual textbook, written to answer all and every question we might all have about the totality of life and any spiritual reality.

Moreover, there are epistemological complexities, conceptual, perceptual, some even emotional, that typically play a part in the fact that Christians "disagree." These epistemological complexities are, I think, normative for the human condition, quite apart even from the idea that sin can also play some part in Christian disagreements. However, the presence of sin would not be something we would consider normative for better synergy, but rather an unfortunate human factor.

If Jesus was the plan from before the universe began perhaps sin might be a normative part of the plan? In any event why do you think that God allows such division and confusion?
Also I didn't read the by line at first but I knew it was you as soon as I read the word normative (ya clear thinking show off! )
Thanks again for a great post.

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[Aryeh]

So why do you think that God allows so much confusion and dissent among his children given that you also belive he could fix it if he wanted to?

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We brought the confusion and dissent ouselves, and depending on the circumstances we have to deal with the consequences.

God can't always fix our mess. He could, but then He would be a lousy parent. Children have to make their mistakes. But when it gets out of hand He intervenes. Remember, we are children of God, so He is raising little gods. Part of that means learning to take responsibility for our actions, and seeing them all the way through.

 

[Athée]

The ability to do this comes with growing in real love so then you can tell who else is being real. But if you look for who has certain ideas, someone might be parroting what they think you want to hear, so then they can use you. So, we need to grow in the ability to be able to tell the difference.

One thing which helps me is I see if someone helps me to get real correction (Hebrews 12:4-11, James 5:16, Galatians 6:1) so I am more real with God and loving any and all people; and I can see if the person is a good example helping me to relate personally with others who are real in love.

So, I do not go by having similar hobbies or if someone is charming and flatters me

And there are seniors who have been more and more real in the faith, for much longer than me. But they might not put on much of a show, might be quiet. So, we need to be humble and sensitive and prayerful in order to be able to share well with really mature senior people . . . versus looking for birds of our own feather and age >

"For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?" (in Matthew 5:46)

Each person and each group can have different results. Ones who are getting somewhere as a whole might table a subject if they aren't getting anywhere with it. If a certain person is stubborn and wrong, there may be no way to help the person, at least at that time; so ones might be patient and move on and pray for the person to become humble. Other times, ones discuss and someone helps the others to get what is good. I find that mature people don't deal much with doctrinal controversy, but concentrate on how to grow in seeking God and loving. In case someone brings up a hot but getting nowhere topic, a mature one might get out of it, just by saying he hasn't looked into it

So the way you identify these Christians to whom the holy Spirit actually speaks (the red caps as it were), is the latest the things they tell you make you feel close to God and help you be more loving?
Also you belive that a sign of wisdom (a red cap trait?), is simply avoiding difficult interpretation issues in scripture?

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[rockytopva]

You ask why Christians disagree on a forum that represents denominations from Messianic to Charismatic, and everything in between. I am hoping that a variety of conclusions can be expected!

 

[Athée]

We brought the confusion and dissent ouselves, and depending on the circumstances we have to deal with the consequences.

God can't always fix our mess. He could, but then He would be a lousy parent. Children have to make their mistakes. But when it gets out of hand He intervenes. Remember, we are children of God, so He is raising little gods. Part of that means learning to take responsibility for our actions, and seeing them all the way through.

The parent analogy is an interesting one ( I have 3 myself - great fun to make but a lot of work after that! ... and well worth the work and love they require too ). As a father it seems to me that if my children were fighting among each other one saying the earth is a sphere, one saying it is flat and the other saying we are floating on A'tuin the giant turtle through space that I would rather step in and tell the the truth (the turtle obviously ) rather than see them create a rift that would last a life time. Why do you think God seems to choose otherwise based on what you wrote?

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[JacksBratt]

Do you think people make mistakes in interpreting the bible in the way you suggested above or does this kind of study always lead to the truth? If it doesn't and resonate Christians disagree how would you determine who was correct in any given instance?

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I think that when you get into really intricate theology, that the fact that we are incapable to think like God, takes over.

We know so very little about the dimension of the heavens, and their workings, it is arrogant, in many cases to, as mortal men, say that we know for sure, on some issues.

 

[Norbert L]

Note:
I am re-posting this discussion after the former was closed. I have been informed that I did not transgress the rules so I am hoping this one will be allowed to continue. The following is the OP from that first thread.

Hi all,

I am an atheist, married to a wonderful Christian woman. In hopes of coming to belive what she believes I have started attending a bible study group with some cool guys from our church.

One question that keeps coming up in our discussions is this notion of the indwelling of the spirit as it pertains to interpreting the Bible.
I have often heard that when a believer reads the bible the truth of it will be revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. If that is the case why do so many Christians disagree about interpreting scripture?
The most common response in our group was that people supress/make errors even though the holy Spirit is teaching them the truth . If this were the case wouldn't we expect broad agreement on any particular issue as the supression and error would be idiosyncratic to any particular believer but the consensus would remain (same principle as poll the audience in Who Wants to be a Millionaire , all the people who know the right answer pick the same one, everyone who doesn't spreads their votes out over the possible choices leaving the truth clearly indicated.
In our group this ended with the guys just saying they don't really have a good answer for this problem, which while intellectually honest is not super helpful
Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

Note: This is not supposed to be a debate thread so as you respond I will try to simply ask questions to clarify rather than offer rebuttals. As such if you can think of a counter argument to your own position please include it and also include why you don't find that counter argument compelling

Thanks for your time and intellectual effort.

Peace

The example of 'who wants to be a millionaire' has a flaw. I own a Bible trivia game that works in the same manner. Those type of questions and answers are not what is at issue. What you're getting into is a Freud vs. Jung type of comparison.

The struggle within Christianity is interpretation, what were the human authors actually thinking when they were commissioned to write the scripture.

Here is one of the reasons why there is disagreement. Acts 20:30 and Jude 1:12. The one thing to note is these statements occurred during the time period right at the beginning of Christianity. Should the large group of people associating with the name of Christ today have it all figured out by now?

Another thing to note and it's a matter of interpretation. John 14:26 Who is Jesus talking to? Christians today like me or just to those disciples that were present during that time?

 

[JacksBratt]

Who gets to decide what the foundational truths are that these masters get to agree on, or is it a case where you start where they all agree but as soon as you reach the first one where there is debate you draw the line?

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I don't think it really matters, does it? Once you have established that the most important possession that you have is your soul and the most important thing you can do is ensure that it will have eternal life in glory compared to Hell, the rest becomes fluff, chatter and banter.

I could really care less if the earth is flat, round, square and flat... Or, that Satan and Lucifer are different entities or the same one... Or that the "sons of God" in Genesis are fallen angels or some strange lineage of other humans... Or if the earth stopped spinning or the moon and sun stopped circling the earth... Or if "once saved, always saved" is true or false.

I have been accepted into the family of Christ. I have accepted His gift of salvation. I strive, every day to not sin or sin less. I use Christ as my compass for every decision I make. I am assured that when I die, or when He comes again, I will be with Him and I will know no more pain or sorrow...

The rest..........clanging symbols, noise and babble.

I read the Bible and K.I.S.S.... or keep it simple stupid.

I am an intelligent enough man to know that I don't know everything. I stand on the Rock of ages... Christ and His cleansing blood...

What else do I need to worry about?