Why do Christians disagree? Part 2

[David Vogel]

So it sounds like at the root of things you would say, there is a truth of doctrine X according to God, but that despite the fact that the holy Spirit tries to communicate this truth to us we don't understand it because we are imperfect. Is that close?

No, not really. If the Holy Spirit tried to communicate something to us in a way we could not misunderstand, he could and would, our imperfection notwithstanding. That is how, for example, prophecy or the inspiration of the writers of Scripture worked. But that is not how reading the Bible works.

Nowhere in the Bible we are promised that being indwelt by the Holy Spirit means we will always perfectly understand God's word, and in fact we see plenty of examples of New Testament Christians who disagreed about things, including about how to understand the Scriptures. None of the apostolic writers seem to find that surprising. That being the case, whatever the Spirit's work in helping us understand the Bible is, there doesn't seem to be any reason to think its results should be instantaneous or produce immediate consensus.

I think a good analogy is to how the Holy Spirit works to sanctify us. He does a real work in us, working alongside and through our own efforts, and we see increasing holiness over time. Similarly, the Spirit teaches us to better understand God's word, working alongside and through our own efforts to study and discern, and we see increasing understanding over time. If we think of it as teaching (a gradual process), a word often used in the NT to describe the Spirit's work, it helps to explain why it's a gradual process which leaves room for disagreement among brothers and sisters in the faith.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

did it never occur to you that every church that has left the Catholic Church has used the same reasoning; that they are the ones who are right and the church that they left is the one that is wrong?

So how is it that they never thought to go backwards to find the original Truth if every church before them was wrong?
Did they somehow miss the lesson that was contained in the parable of The Prodigal Son?

Sorry, merely saying yours is right and the others are wrong doesn't cut it.

 

[pdudgeon]

So that being the case, that the holy Spirit can and does reveal knowledge such that even sinful men and women can not be mistaken about the truth of the matter, why do you think he allows so much confusion and division?

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because He knows that it is willful confusion and division caused by sin.

Imagine sin as a high wall between God and man. God is trying to communicate with man but the barrier of the wall causes audio and visual distortions, so that only portions of His true message gets through.

Enter Jesus, who is not affected by the wall and can witness first hand to men, and get God's message through.
Some hear and believe but others have too much invested in their worldly positions to want to listen. Those are the ones who kill Jesus. and go on to kill anyone who threatens the status quo of sin.

Enter the Holy Spirit, the messenger of God and Jesus who cannot be killed or muffled. He also cuts through the barage of sin with the truth.
Between the three of them they leave enough of the message behind to both convince and convict anyone who will listen of the badness of sin.

what a person does with that message when they find it is their most important decision in their whole life.

 

[pdudgeon]

Sorry, merely saying yours is right and the others are wrong doesn't cut it.

sure it does. Jesus created the Church.and what He creates is excellent.

 

[ChristianFromKazakhstan]

Actually this makes a lot of sense to me. If the truth is actually being given to the barest handful we would expect the majority to be disagreeing all over the place. I wonder, since all small groups will thunk that they are of course the group that has it right, how could that small group to whom the holy spirt is actually giving the truth, demonstrate this to the rest of the groups. What do you think?

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I really don't know if anything can and should be done about it. I know it's frustrating, same for me. Perhaps a solution once attempted by Leo Tolstoi is something that might be beneficial. He wrote his own clear and non-contradictory gospel by taking the 4 canonical gospels and re-working them. An orthodox Christian most of his life, he came to realization of Jesus near the end of it. Excommunicated because of that. He never did start to fully practice what he believed. So, we don't know now if there would be any benefit in trying to create an improved version of the Gospels. I love Tolstoi's "Confession" and "About faith" essays. Honesty. The disease of our age is hypocrisy. And not just in the religious realm. It's a plague of humanity all across its ideological and institutional strata.

 

[pdudgeon]

A couple of questions...as always
In regards to th first section. What if the person dillegently studying is simply not capable. Maybe there is a mild ID or perhaps just economically they can't afford the time to do a thorough study?
It seems to be the case that you belive there is a truth to any individual doctrine that can be arrived at by proper study and by communally interpreting the scriptures, accessing older and wiser Christians. I wonder how an older and wiser Christian can demonstrate that they bar in fact such, or is any position they take automatically imbued with truth by the simple fact that they are older and have studied more than a younger person?

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fortunately that is not the case. a little child can understand Jesus as can anyone---once they drop the cynacism and disbeief.

 

[pdudgeon]

Actually this makes a lot of sense to me. If the truth is actually being given to the barest handful we would expect the majority to be disagreeing all over the place. I wonder, since all small groups will thunk that they are of course the group that has it right, how could that small group to whom the holy spirt is actually giving the truth, demonstrate this to the rest of the groups. What do you think?

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it's easier than you might imagine.
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit indwelling each individual which is recognized between those individuals.

Or to put it another way, if you were wearing a red ball cap and you walked into a room of strangers, to find a friend all you have to do is to look for the red ball caps. It's the same way with recognizing the Holy Spirit.

 

[JacksBratt]

Maybe I misrepresented my question. I was not asking of the telephone chain was broken rather I was asking , if the message was mistaken somewhere along the line, would the holy Spirit be able to step in and get things back on track in your view?

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In my view, the written, Canonized bible, is the word of God. I believe that He had people in place from the day it was first penned to paper until now, to keep the translation we have today as His true word. Some will be KJVO or King James version only. I tend to read them and, now, with technology, you can search the original words in Hebrew and decide for yourself.

 

[Athée]

No, not really. If the Holy Spirit tried to communicate something to us in a way we could not misunderstand, he could and would, our imperfection notwithstanding. That is how, for example, prophecy or the inspiration of the writers of Scripture worked. But that is not how reading the Bible works.

Nowhere in the Bible we are promised that being indwelt by the Holy Spirit means we will always perfectly understand God's word, and in fact we see plenty of examples of New Testament Christians who disagreed about things, including about how to understand the Scriptures. None of the apostolic writers seem to find that surprising. That being the case, whatever the Spirit's work in helping us understand the Bible is, there doesn't seem to be any reason to think its results should be instantaneous or produce immediate consensus.

I think a good analogy is to how the Holy Spirit works to sanctify us. He does a real work in us, working alongside and through our own efforts, and we see increasing holiness over time. Similarly, the Spirit teaches us to better understand God's word, working alongside and through our own efforts to study and discern, and we see increasing understanding over time. If we think of it as teaching (a gradual process), a word often used in the NT to describe the Spirit's work, it helps to explain why it's a gradual process which leaves room for disagreement among brothers and sisters in the faith.

So that being the case I have two questions.
1)Why do you think God prefers all the confusion and division over teaching Christians the truth?
2) If we understand the actual truth better as we continue to study and get older we would expect that the elders in all the various denominations would slowly be harmonizing their views. Do you think this is happening. If not, why?

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[pdudgeon]

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?
Also if the Bible doesn't contain all of God's knowledge (and I agree it couldn't possibly) what does it contain in your opinion?

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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

 

[pdudgeon]

Maybe I misrepresented my question. I was not asking of the telephone chain was broken rather I was asking , if the message was mistaken somewhere along the line, would the holy Spirit be able to step in and get things back on track in your view?

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yes, He did.
and yes, He does.

 

[Athée]

fortunately that is not the case. a little child can understand Jesus as can anyone---once they drop the cynacism and disbeief.

How does this relate to your earlier idea that the truth of a matter can be arrived at through long and careful study and by testing your conclusions against the wisdom of the elders?

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[Deadworm]

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.

 

[JacksBratt]

That is a really interesting perspective. It seems to me though that in Chess you can have a legitimate debate about what strategy is more effective in a given situation. I would have thought that God's truths are not as subjective as that. Am I mistaken?
I also wonder if you are saying that from my outsider perspective this seems like a problem but if I were to accept the religion it would be resolved from an insider perspective?

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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.

 

[Aryeh]

That is really interesting, so for you humility or lack of it is the key. Do you think that God could overcome this problem of lack of humility so that everyone could know the truth?

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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.

 

[com7fy8]

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.

wouldn't we expect broad agreement on any particular issue as the supression and error would be idiosyncratic to any particular believer

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.

 

[com7fy8]

I believe in the seven churches as ages according to Revelation Chapters 1-3...

Ephesus - Messianic - Beginning with the Apostle to the Circumcision, Peter
Smyrna - Martyr - Beginning with the Apostle to the Un-Circumcision, Peter
Pergamos - Orthodoxy formed in this time... Pergos is a tower... Needed in the dark ages
Thyatira - Catholicism formed in this time - The spirit of Jezebel is to control and to dominate.
Sardis - Protestantism formed in this time- A sardius is a gem - elegant yet hard and rigid
Philadelphia - Wesleyism formed in this time - To be sanctioned is to acquire it with love.
Laodicea - Charismatic movement formed in this time - Beginning with DL Moody, the first to make money off of ministry

There are people who believe these churches represent the church at different ages in her history. Others find that these messages in Revelation were written to geographically located churches in the time of the writer who ones understand is John who wrote the gospel of John.

I, personally, see that the "ages" idea is not directly stated in this message. Plus, I find the context supports that these messages were written to churches who personally knew John. But > more than if the churches are ages or located churches . . . or maybe both meanings are intended, for all I know > mainly, I get that whatever Jesus writes to each group is what somehow can go for me. Because I can be wrong, at least somewhat in every way that these people are criticized, plus all the blessings can also go for me, as much as I get real in love.

So, Athée, even if I can't prove my doctrinal ideas about these scriptures, or at least can't get everyone to agree with me, yes I can get however every scripture can help me get correction and develop in how to love.

For one example, I recall that the Ephesians are criticized for leaving their first love. Yes, they were quite busy with serving, but not with Jesus, I can see this means. And yes I need to make sure I serve because I am really with Jesus in His love, and not only trying to make a show to impress others and myself.

And the message to Laodicea often comes to mind to confront how I could evaluate how I am doing, by seeing how all my worldly needs are met. And I can be mainly concerned about how things are going for me, instead of caring for others as well as I care about my own self. So, it can confront me plus encourage me to find out better how to love others as myself.

And, by the way, you can see that I receive a confrontation against how I am or could be wrong, but also I see the encouragement to go on to all that is so good and better. I think you can benefit from God's word, if you consider how often the scriptures will give a very strong confrontation, but with the confrontation comes an obvious or implied encouragement of how God has hope for you to have all which is so better than what needs to be corrected.

But a number of people are criticism and comparison minded, so when they read a scripture and get an understanding, they only get what they use to judge others. They do not move on to all the good which God intends for them. And, right here in our Christian Forums, you can see how ones have their conclusions about things not really stated or greatly emphasized in God's word; yet, they can be quite heavy-handed with anyone who disagrees with them. And ones disagreeing can use up quite some space and time and attention with what might not even be a side-show issue . . . compared with finding out how to love

 

[Athée]

it's easier than you might imagine.
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit indwelling each individual which is recognized between those individuals.

Or to put it another way, if you were wearing a red ball cap and you walked into a room of strangers, to find a friend all you have to do is to look for the red ball caps. It's the same way with recognizing the Holy Spirit.

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

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[Paul of Eugene OR]

sure it does. Jesus created the Church.and what He creates is excellent.

Sorry, merely saying Jesus created yours and not the others doesn't cut it.

 

[Athée]

In my view, the written, Canonized bible, is the word of God. I believe that He had people in place from the day it was first penned to paper until now, to keep the translation we have today as His true word. Some will be KJVO or King James version only. I tend to read them and, now, with technology, you can search the original words in Hebrew and decide for yourself.

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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