You applied assumption in place of context, I note.
Imagine willfully not trying tohonor Mary as much as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
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Last: 49 min ago by Sam Lowry
I find it amazing, on this subject no one can have an opinion. We have to be in line with Luther or suffer eternal damnation.
FLBear5630 said:
I find it amazing, on this subject no one can have an opinion. We have to be in line with Luther or suffer eternal damnation.
Uhhhhhhhh, no, only the RCs and Orthos have this delusion that we're followers of Luther.
Speaking for myself, I follow Jesus Christ and trust Scripture. Sorry, no need for popes, patriarchs, legalese or extra conditions from any man.
FLBear5630 said:
You guys really get into the minutia.
Do you really think Jesus wanted us to overthink like we have? Does that seem like the son of a Carpenter?
One thing he was very clear on is theres one church
Martin Luther may be rotting in hell as we speak
That is where we differ, i believe the scriptures were written, compiled and edited by man. Each part and version for different audiences. The Church Councils, Luther, and all the rest had man driven motives. So, to say this is the absolute truth, no interpretation or analysis allowed 2000 years later? Seen too.many Boards, councils and man made certification groups operate. Just like Paul and James/Peter, people don't give up power without a fight and Paul strikes me as a political operator in with Fishermen...
As for Holy Spirit inspired, the fact the basic message has not changed is a true miracle. Details, not so much. I view God as a big picture sort, spin the top and let man figure out the rest through free will
As for Holy Spirit inspired, the fact the basic message has not changed is a true miracle. Details, not so much. I view God as a big picture sort, spin the top and let man figure out the rest through free will
Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:
I'm just reading the text in the way reasonable people always have, understanding that works are required of us while we're alive. Your interpretation misses the meaning because it seeks only to entrap. This is what pharisaic arguments always do.
I have no disagreement that works are required of us while we're alive. But the verse is not saying, no matter how you want to twist or misuse it, that works are required for salvation. Your argument that simply sleeping to avoid sin is a "work" pretty much shows that it is you that is arguing in bad faith.
If we agree that works are required of us while we're alive, then the person who immediately dies hasn't failed the requirement. Whether it pertains to salvation is a separate issue, which you're trying to piggyback onto what was evidently a willful misreading of the verse.
The "sleeping is a work" argument is your own invention and another prime example of pharisaic absurdity.
The person who immediately dies without works HAS failed the requirement. The only way you can squirm out of this, is by arguing in bad faith and re-defining "works" to include the very act of coming to faith in Jesus itself. THAT is the only willful misreading that is going on here.
The irony of your statement is that by re-defining "works", you are the one piggy-backing your whole system of works onto the verse in James.
The "sleeping is a work" comes straight from your argument that simply avoiding sin is a work, which happens when we sleep. You just aren't owning up to your argument.
A person's faith is no less real because death deprives them of the opportunity to show it.
If you've paid attention to anything that Doc has posted, you should understand the work involved in actively choosing grace and resisting sin. This whole tangent about sleep is childish and not worth pursuing.
Who's arguing that the person's faith is less real because they died early? My argument is affirming that.
Choosing grace is not a work. That's a bad faith redefinition of it. Resisting sin, is a work, I agree. The difference between our stances is that you believe that a faith is "dead" if it doesn't have works like that, period, while my stance is that in the absolute sense, that is not true.
The "sleeping" argument was far from being a tangent. Again, it was directly derived from your own argument, which you aren't willing to own up to. Just say your argument was bad, instead of trying to blame the other person for your bad argument. That's all you have to do.
Choosing grace every day and every hour is work, and faith is indeed dead without it.
No, the act of "choosing" is not a work. "Choosing" to do the right thing is not doing the right thing. It is very interesting how you guys have now resorted to re-defining "works" in order to save your belief system.
I assume you know that's not what I meant.
What happened was that in order for your (you and Doc's) view that James 2 is an absolute statement about salvation to be correct, you HAD to argue that even the initial act of believing the gospel is a "work". This is a clear indication of the weakness of your position. All I'm trying to do is get you to see that.
Nobody's saying the choosing itself is a merit you bank. That's not the argument.
Paul already settled this in Gal 5:6, the only faith that counts is faith working through love. It's not faith plus works as two separate transactions you're stacking together. It's that living faith is inherently active. James says the same thing in 2:17, faith without works is dead. Dead faith isn't a weaker version of real faith, it's not faith at all, it's just intellectual assent. You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence. Paul and James are describing one organic reality. You're the one who has to split it into two categories to make sola fide work.
You're having the same problems Luther had and why he wanted to remove James. He was so committed to sola fide that James 2 became a huge threat to his whole system. That's why he called it an epistle of straw and floated dropping it from the canon. He didn't do that because he found some obscure manuscript problem. He did it because James flatly contradicts the version of faith alone he needed to be true.
Honestly this whole framework you're defending is downstream of a specific philosophical inheritance: Late medieval nominalism, Ockham's voluntarism, the shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones. That's the actual root of the system you're arguing from.
You: "You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence."
Your arms must be getting really tired punching that Calvinist straw man over and over. Let me know when you'll actually engage what's being argued. NO ONE is saying faith is a "static" thing. Or that it merely gets "bestowed" on you. At this point to give you a doll and ask you to point to where the Calvinist hurt you.
We're saying the same thing about faith - true faith will be manifested in works (but not all works is the manifestation of true faith). This is perfectlly in line with James 2 and Paul's "faith working through love". We are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone (except for the caveats mentioned already). The real difference between our views is that I'm saying a person is saved by their faith in their heart (what Scripture says). Their works are a manifestation of that faith, and they are rewarded for their works. Your view, however, is that even though someone has true belief in their heart, their salvation is still contingent on their performance, i.e. their ability to "cooperate". In your view, you can't ever know if you've cooperated enough, and thus you can never know if you're saved. This is a direct contradiction to Scripture. It also falsifies Jesus' own declaration that "whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life", because in your view you can be a true believer, but not "cooperate" enough through your own effort, and thus you won't have eternal life. So it is impossible for your view to be correct. You still haven't, and never will escape this fatal flaw in your view. I just wonder if you'll ever have the honesty and humility to acknowledge this.
No, it's not "late medieval nominalism" or "Ockham's voluntarism" or a "shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones". You're getting lost in Orthodox apologist pseudo-intellectualism and punching at straw men. You just don't know what you're taking about.
You are relying on a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy to keep your system from collapsing under the weight of real life. Your argument assumes that if a person has 'initial faith,' it can never go away. And if they do fall away, your system forces you to say, 'Well, they never had true faith in the first place.'
The flaw in your argument is the unbiblical assumption that genuine faith, once possessed, can never be lost. I think you can legit have faith and then you can abandon it, and the way that happens has to do with works: if you are not praying, if you are not fighting sin, if you are not actively striving to be like Christ (synergy), your faith will starve. It will wither. You will apostatize, guaranteed. That faith that was once in the heart, won't be there. That behavior is a cooperation with Christ and your own free will. That's synergy.
Proof: Hebrews 10:26 "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". The "willful sin" in Hebrews 10:26 is apostasy: a deliberate, total, and continuous turning of one's back on Jesus Christ and that was told to believers and the text explicitly says they no longer remain, which means they belonged at one point. Verse 29 warns of the apostate who has 'profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.'
You absolutely should abandon your reformed view of sola fide. You claim you have 'assurance' because of the belief in your heart. But by your own theology, you cannot possibly know if your current faith is 'true saving faith' or just 'temporary faith' (evanescent grace). This is why you should, at the very least, hold to the Arminian view that lots of protestants adhere to.
There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. Just because I don't completely agree with the whole Calvinist view of faith and free will, doesn't mean I'm saying they aren't true Christians. And Calvinism isn't all of Protestantism. You're misusing logical concepts, which only speaks to the general problem with logical thinking that you seem to be having - which puts the soundness of your views under serious question, imo.
Once again, you're not reading the Bible correctly. Look closely at the verse you cited: "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." - note that the verse says knowledge of, NOT belief or faith in the truth.
Look closely also at your other citation, verse 29: "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified," - note it's punishment that is deserved, NOT actually administered. Also notice that the "punishment" is never said to be loss of salvation.
These once again demonstrate that your view is built upon your (and your church's) flawed reading of Scripture.
FLBear5630 said:
That is where we differ, i believe the scriptures were written, compiled and edited by man. Each part and version for different audiences. The Church Councils, Luther, and all the rest had man driven motives. So, to say this is the absolute truth, no interpretation or analysis allowed 2000 years later? Seen too.many Boards, councils and man made certification groups operate. Just like Paul and James/Peter, people don't give up power without a fight and Paul strikes me as a political operator in with Fishermen...
As for Holy Spirit inspired, the fact the basic message has not changed is a true miracle. Details, not so much. I view God as a big picture sort, spin the top and let man figure out the rest through free will
I appreciate your perspective, FLBear, and especially your courtesy in how you present them. But I take a different view on Scripture, specifically because I believe God is real and takes an active role in how His Word is presented.
I believe that Satan would be delighted to mislead believers, and nothing would do that quite so well as Satan getting false teachings accepted as Scripture. Certainly we have seen this with the Quran, the Book of Mormon, Scientology, the Talmud, many attempts to change the Gospel or malign Christ. I believe that where Holy Scripture is concerned, the Holy Spirit has protected Scripture so that we will have a clear source for God's words for us, and a trustworthy tool to test human claims.
I also do not see Paul in the way you describe. Consider, after all, that the Gospel accounts show Peter as impulsive and prone to argue, even with Jesus. Do you think Peter was suddenly passive when speaking to believers after Christ ascended to the Father? I believe Peter had a number of arguments with Paul and others, in good faith of course but Peter was still in character the same zealot.
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:
I'm just reading the text in the way reasonable people always have, understanding that works are required of us while we're alive. Your interpretation misses the meaning because it seeks only to entrap. This is what pharisaic arguments always do.
I have no disagreement that works are required of us while we're alive. But the verse is not saying, no matter how you want to twist or misuse it, that works are required for salvation. Your argument that simply sleeping to avoid sin is a "work" pretty much shows that it is you that is arguing in bad faith.
If we agree that works are required of us while we're alive, then the person who immediately dies hasn't failed the requirement. Whether it pertains to salvation is a separate issue, which you're trying to piggyback onto what was evidently a willful misreading of the verse.
The "sleeping is a work" argument is your own invention and another prime example of pharisaic absurdity.
The person who immediately dies without works HAS failed the requirement. The only way you can squirm out of this, is by arguing in bad faith and re-defining "works" to include the very act of coming to faith in Jesus itself. THAT is the only willful misreading that is going on here.
The irony of your statement is that by re-defining "works", you are the one piggy-backing your whole system of works onto the verse in James.
The "sleeping is a work" comes straight from your argument that simply avoiding sin is a work, which happens when we sleep. You just aren't owning up to your argument.
A person's faith is no less real because death deprives them of the opportunity to show it.
If you've paid attention to anything that Doc has posted, you should understand the work involved in actively choosing grace and resisting sin. This whole tangent about sleep is childish and not worth pursuing.
Who's arguing that the person's faith is less real because they died early? My argument is affirming that.
Choosing grace is not a work. That's a bad faith redefinition of it. Resisting sin, is a work, I agree. The difference between our stances is that you believe that a faith is "dead" if it doesn't have works like that, period, while my stance is that in the absolute sense, that is not true.
The "sleeping" argument was far from being a tangent. Again, it was directly derived from your own argument, which you aren't willing to own up to. Just say your argument was bad, instead of trying to blame the other person for your bad argument. That's all you have to do.
Choosing grace every day and every hour is work, and faith is indeed dead without it.
No, the act of "choosing" is not a work. "Choosing" to do the right thing is not doing the right thing. It is very interesting how you guys have now resorted to re-defining "works" in order to save your belief system.
I assume you know that's not what I meant.
What happened was that in order for your (you and Doc's) view that James 2 is an absolute statement about salvation to be correct, you HAD to argue that even the initial act of believing the gospel is a "work". This is a clear indication of the weakness of your position. All I'm trying to do is get you to see that.
Nobody's saying the choosing itself is a merit you bank. That's not the argument.
Paul already settled this in Gal 5:6, the only faith that counts is faith working through love. It's not faith plus works as two separate transactions you're stacking together. It's that living faith is inherently active. James says the same thing in 2:17, faith without works is dead. Dead faith isn't a weaker version of real faith, it's not faith at all, it's just intellectual assent. You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence. Paul and James are describing one organic reality. You're the one who has to split it into two categories to make sola fide work.
You're having the same problems Luther had and why he wanted to remove James. He was so committed to sola fide that James 2 became a huge threat to his whole system. That's why he called it an epistle of straw and floated dropping it from the canon. He didn't do that because he found some obscure manuscript problem. He did it because James flatly contradicts the version of faith alone he needed to be true.
Honestly this whole framework you're defending is downstream of a specific philosophical inheritance: Late medieval nominalism, Ockham's voluntarism, the shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones. That's the actual root of the system you're arguing from.
You: "You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence."
Your arms must be getting really tired punching that Calvinist straw man over and over. Let me know when you'll actually engage what's being argued. NO ONE is saying faith is a "static" thing. Or that it merely gets "bestowed" on you. At this point to give you a doll and ask you to point to where the Calvinist hurt you.
We're saying the same thing about faith - true faith will be manifested in works (but not all works is the manifestation of true faith). This is perfectlly in line with James 2 and Paul's "faith working through love". We are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone (except for the caveats mentioned already). The real difference between our views is that I'm saying a person is saved by their faith in their heart (what Scripture says). Their works are a manifestation of that faith, and they are rewarded for their works. Your view, however, is that even though someone has true belief in their heart, their salvation is still contingent on their performance, i.e. their ability to "cooperate". In your view, you can't ever know if you've cooperated enough, and thus you can never know if you're saved. This is a direct contradiction to Scripture. It also falsifies Jesus' own declaration that "whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life", because in your view you can be a true believer, but not "cooperate" enough through your own effort, and thus you won't have eternal life. So it is impossible for your view to be correct. You still haven't, and never will escape this fatal flaw in your view. I just wonder if you'll ever have the honesty and humility to acknowledge this.
No, it's not "late medieval nominalism" or "Ockham's voluntarism" or a "shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones". You're getting lost in Orthodox apologist pseudo-intellectualism and punching at straw men. You just don't know what you're taking about.
You are relying on a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy to keep your system from collapsing under the weight of real life. Your argument assumes that if a person has 'initial faith,' it can never go away. And if they do fall away, your system forces you to say, 'Well, they never had true faith in the first place.'
The flaw in your argument is the unbiblical assumption that genuine faith, once possessed, can never be lost. I think you can legit have faith and then you can abandon it, and the way that happens has to do with works: if you are not praying, if you are not fighting sin, if you are not actively striving to be like Christ (synergy), your faith will starve. It will wither. You will apostatize, guaranteed. That faith that was once in the heart, won't be there. That behavior is a cooperation with Christ and your own free will. That's synergy.
Proof: Hebrews 10:26 "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". The "willful sin" in Hebrews 10:26 is apostasy: a deliberate, total, and continuous turning of one's back on Jesus Christ and that was told to believers and the text explicitly says they no longer remain, which means they belonged at one point. Verse 29 warns of the apostate who has 'profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.'
You absolutely should abandon your reformed view of sola fide. You claim you have 'assurance' because of the belief in your heart. But by your own theology, you cannot possibly know if your current faith is 'true saving faith' or just 'temporary faith' (evanescent grace). This is why you should, at the very least, hold to the Arminian view that lots of protestants adhere to.
There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. Just because I don't completely agree with the whole Calvinist view of faith and free will, doesn't mean I'm saying they aren't true Christians. And Calvinism isn't all of Protestantism. You're misusing logical concepts, which only speaks to the general problem with logical thinking that you seem to be having - which puts the soundness of your views under serious question, imo.
Once again, you're not reading the Bible correctly. Look closely at the verse you cited: "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." - note that the verse says knowledge of, NOT belief or faith in the truth.
Look closely also at your other citation, verse 29: "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified," - note it's punishment that is deserved, NOT actually administered. Also notice that the "punishment" is never said to be loss of salvation.
These once again demonstrate that your view is built upon your (and your church's) flawed reading of Scripture.
You serious?
You can't say a sacrifice "no longer remains" for someone it was never applied to in the first place. That phrasing only makes sense if the sacrifice for their sins WAS there, covering them, and then stopped being available to them. Mere head knowledge was never "covered" by a sacrifice to begin with, so there'd be nothing to say "no longer remains."
Your answer has always been that if someone abandoned the faith, then it proves the faith wasn't true to begin with. You've defined "true faith" so it can never be falsified by an actual case. Every apparent counterexample gets reclassified as fake by definition, not by evidence. That's the no true Scotsman fallacy you hold to. That's exactly what you're doing with Hebrews 6:4-6. The text describes people enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, sharing in the Holy Spirit, and then falling away. Instead of taking that at face value, you're using "true faith always perseveres" to declare, without any exegetical basis in the passage itself, that these people must not have had true faith. The passage becomes unfalsifiable evidence for your view no matter what it actually says. That's the fallacy.
When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?
I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?
That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ." That's not humility, that's the opposite. Paul didn't talk about himself that way. He said he disciplined his body and kept it under control so that after preaching to others he himself wouldn't be disqualified (1 Cor 9:27).
Brother, this is what I'm talking about. I basically went through this exact same scenario. Watch:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZq4hOrJFfO/?igsh=MW1kdXJrYjg4aWR5MA==
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZq4hOrJFfO/?igsh=MW1kdXJrYjg4aWR5MA==
Oldbear83 said:FLBear5630 said:
That is where we differ, i believe the scriptures were written, compiled and edited by man. Each part and version for different audiences. The Church Councils, Luther, and all the rest had man driven motives. So, to say this is the absolute truth, no interpretation or analysis allowed 2000 years later? Seen too.many Boards, councils and man made certification groups operate. Just like Paul and James/Peter, people don't give up power without a fight and Paul strikes me as a political operator in with Fishermen...
As for Holy Spirit inspired, the fact the basic message has not changed is a true miracle. Details, not so much. I view God as a big picture sort, spin the top and let man figure out the rest through free will
I appreciate your perspective, FLBear, and especially your courtesy in how you present them. But I take a different view on Scripture, specifically because I believe God is real and takes an active role in how His Word is presented.
I believe that Satan would be delighted to mislead believers, and nothing would do that quite so well as Satan getting false teachings accepted as Scripture. Certainly we have seen this with the Quran, the Book of Mormon, Scientology, the Talmud, many attempts to change the Gospel or malign Christ. I believe that where Holy Scripture is concerned, the Holy Spirit has protected Scripture so that we will have a clear source for God's words for us, and a trustworthy tool to test human claims.
I also do not see Paul in the way you describe. Consider, after all, that the Gospel accounts show Peter as impulsive and prone to argue, even with Jesus. Do you think Peter was suddenly passive when speaking to believers after Christ ascended to the Father? I believe Peter had a number of arguments with Paul and others, in good faith of course but Peter was still in character the same zealot.
Of course they did, they were human. This is an issue I have struggled with since childhood. How much is literal and how much is symbolic? I do envy you guys that have the faith of a child, that is the highest calling.
FLBear5630 said:Oldbear83 said:FLBear5630 said:
That is where we differ, i believe the scriptures were written, compiled and edited by man. Each part and version for different audiences. The Church Councils, Luther, and all the rest had man driven motives. So, to say this is the absolute truth, no interpretation or analysis allowed 2000 years later? Seen too.many Boards, councils and man made certification groups operate. Just like Paul and James/Peter, people don't give up power without a fight and Paul strikes me as a political operator in with Fishermen...
As for Holy Spirit inspired, the fact the basic message has not changed is a true miracle. Details, not so much. I view God as a big picture sort, spin the top and let man figure out the rest through free will
I appreciate your perspective, FLBear, and especially your courtesy in how you present them. But I take a different view on Scripture, specifically because I believe God is real and takes an active role in how His Word is presented.
I believe that Satan would be delighted to mislead believers, and nothing would do that quite so well as Satan getting false teachings accepted as Scripture. Certainly we have seen this with the Quran, the Book of Mormon, Scientology, the Talmud, many attempts to change the Gospel or malign Christ. I believe that where Holy Scripture is concerned, the Holy Spirit has protected Scripture so that we will have a clear source for God's words for us, and a trustworthy tool to test human claims.
I also do not see Paul in the way you describe. Consider, after all, that the Gospel accounts show Peter as impulsive and prone to argue, even with Jesus. Do you think Peter was suddenly passive when speaking to believers after Christ ascended to the Father? I believe Peter had a number of arguments with Paul and others, in good faith of course but Peter was still in character the same zealot.
Of course they did, they were human. This is an issue I have struggled with since childhood. How much is literal and how much is symbolic? I do envy you guys that have the faith of a child, that is the highest calling.
The trick is to have the faith of a little child, without also showing the temper of a spoiled toddler.
Doc HollidayChoosing grace every day and every hour is worNobody's saying the choosing itself is a merit you bank. That's not the argument. said:Quote:Quote:Quote:Quote:
Paul already settled this in Gal 5:6, the only faith that counts is faith working through love. It's not faith plus works as two separate transactions you're stacking together. It's that living faith is inherently active. James says the same thing in 2:17, faith without works is dead. Dead faith isn't a weaker version of real faith, it's not faith at all, it's just intellectual assent. You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence. Paul and James are describing one organic reality. You're the one who has to split it into two categories to make sola fide work.
You're having the same problems Luther had and why he wanted to remove James. He was so committed to sola fide that James 2 became a huge threat to his whole system. That's why he called it an epistle of straw and floated dropping it from the canon. He didn't do that because he found some obscure manuscript problem. He did it because James flatly contradicts the version of faith alone he needed to be true.
Honestly this whole framework you're defending is downstream of a specific philosophical inheritance: Late medieval nominalism, Ockham's voluntarism, the shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones. That's the actual root of the system you're arguing from.
You: "You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence."
Your arms must be getting really tired punching that Calvinist straw man over and over. Let me know when you'll actually engage what's being argued. NO ONE is saying faith is a "static" thing. Or that it merely gets "bestowed" on you. At this point to give you a doll and ask you to point to where the Calvinist hurt you.
We're saying the same thing about faith - true faith will be manifested in works (but not all works is the manifestation of true faith). This is perfectlly in line with James 2 and Paul's "faith working through love". We are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone (except for the caveats mentioned already). The real difference between our views is that I'm saying a person is saved by their faith in their heart (what Scripture says). Their works are a manifestation of that faith, and they are rewarded for their works. Your view, however, is that even though someone has true belief in their heart, their salvation is still contingent on their performance, i.e. their ability to "cooperate". In your view, you can't ever know if you've cooperated enough, and thus you can never know if you're saved. This is a direct contradiction to Scripture. It also falsifies Jesus' own declaration that "whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life", because in your view you can be a true believer, but not "cooperate" enough through your own effort, and thus you won't have eternal life. So it is impossible for your view to be correct. You still haven't, and never will escape this fatal flaw in your view. I just wonder if you'll ever have the honesty and humility to acknowledge this.
No, it's not "late medieval nominalism" or "Ockham's voluntarism" or a "shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones". You're getting lost in Orthodox apologist pseudo-intellectualism and punching at straw men. You just don't know what you're taking about.
You are relying on a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy to keep your system from collapsing under the weight of real life. Your argument assumes that if a person has 'initial faith,' it can never go away. And if they do fall away, your system forces you to say, 'Well, they never had true faith in the first place.'
The flaw in your argument is the unbiblical assumption that genuine faith, once possessed, can never be lost. I think you can legit have faith and then you can abandon it, and the way that happens has to do with works: if you are not praying, if you are not fighting sin, if you are not actively striving to be like Christ (synergy), your faith will starve. It will wither. You will apostatize, guaranteed. That faith that was once in the heart, won't be there. That behavior is a cooperation with Christ and your own free will. That's synergy.
Proof: Hebrews 10:26 "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". The "willful sin" in Hebrews 10:26 is apostasy: a deliberate, total, and continuous turning of one's back on Jesus Christ and that was told to believers and the text explicitly says they no longer remain, which means they belonged at one point. Verse 29 warns of the apostate who has 'profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.'
You absolutely should abandon your reformed view of sola fide. You claim you have 'assurance' because of the belief in your heart. But by your own theology, you cannot possibly know if your current faith is 'true saving faith' or just 'temporary faith' (evanescent grace). This is why you should, at the very least, hold to the Arminian view that lots of protestants adhere to.
There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. Just because I don't completely agree with the whole Calvinist view of faith and free will, doesn't mean I'm saying they aren't true Christians. And Calvinism isn't all of Protestantism. You're misusing logical concepts, which only speaks to the general problem with logical thinking that you seem to be having - which puts the soundness of your views under serious question, imo.
Once again, you're not reading the Bible correctly. Look closely at the verse you cited: "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." - note that the verse says knowledge of, NOT belief or faith in the truth.
Look closely also at your other citation, verse 29: "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified," - note it's punishment that is deserved, NOT actually administered. Also notice that the "punishment" is never said to be loss of salvation.
These once again demonstrate that your view is built upon your (and your church's) flawed reading of Scripture.
You serious?
You can't say a sacrifice "no longer remains" for someone it was never applied to in the first place. That phrasing only makes sense if the sacrifice for their sins WAS there, covering them, and then stopped being available to them. Mere head knowledge was never "covered" by a sacrifice to begin with, so there'd be nothing to say "no longer remains."
Your answer has always been that if someone abandoned the faith, then it proves the faith wasn't true to begin with. You've defined "true faith" so it can never be falsified by an actual case. Every apparent counterexample gets reclassified as fake by definition, not by evidence. That's the no true Scotsman fallacy you hold to. That's exactly what you're doing with Hebrews 6:4-6. The text describes people enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, sharing in the Holy Spirit, and then falling away. Instead of taking that at face value, you're using "true faith always perseveres" to declare, without any exegetical basis in the passage itself, that these people must not have had true faith. The passage becomes unfalsifiable evidence for your view no matter what it actually says. That's the fallacy.
When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?
I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?
That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ." That's not humility, that's the opposite. Paul didn't talk about himself that way. He said he disciplined his body and kept it under control so that after preaching to others he himself wouldn't be disqualified (1 Cor 9:27).
What the author (who's writing to the Jews) means when he says that there "no longer remains" a sacrfice, is that if a Jew rejects the once-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus, then there isn't an old system of temple sacrifices to go back to, because that was made obsolete. It means, then, that there is no sacrifice at all available to a Jew who has rejected Jesus for the removal their sins. It does not mean that Jesus' sacrifice had been applied to that Jew and then revoked because they willfully sinned. That's reading into the verse, and incorrectly so. In other words, if a Jew rejects the sacrifice of Jesus, then there is "no longer remains any sacrifice" for them to go to.
Think carefully about what you're saying - after someone becomes a Christian, if they continue to sin deliberately (that's ALL OF US if we're honest) then it means that Jesus' sacrifice is now void for us and can't ever save them? Obviously that can't be the meaning. Otherwise, NONE of us would be saved. Even the apostle Paul admts to a continuous struggling with sin. I'm sure ALL the apostles continued to sin. If you really believe this to be the meaning of that verse, then you don't really understand the Gospel at all.
Regarding the "no true Scotsman" fallacy - it's not a fallacy at all to define a true believer as someone who perseveres in the faith, and so when someone doesn't persevere, to conclude that they, since they didn't meet the definition, was not a true believer. Scripture fully supports this definition of a true believer. Consider - "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us." - was the apostle John committing a no true Scotsman fallacy here?
The question "When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?" doesn't really have an answer that moves the needle. In my mind, the Holy Spirit within us moves us to pray... but then we still have to choose to act on it. But, we may have not prayed at all if not for the Holy Spirit within us. So, it's both really. But the point is this: this has nothing to do with gaining salvation. You don't have to pray to gain salvation, or to keep your salvation. You pray as a result of being saved, i.e. it's what happens with sanctification.
You: "I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?" - this is the prime illustration of the unregenerate hearts of Roman Catholics and Orthodox - your view that the only motivation to live righteously is to gain or keep your salvation. This is precisely what I mean by thinking and acting like a slave, not a son. A son lives righteously for God, because he wants to please him, not because he's afraid God will rescind his sonship.
You: "That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ."- it's not "arrogance" at all. It's called assurance. It's called believing what God is telling you in Scripture: Jesus - "Whosoever believes in me HAS eternal life". "I shall lose NONE of those people God has given me". A believer has the Holy Spirit, which is the "GUARANTEE" and "SEAL" of the promise of eternal life. All of a believer's sins are paid for, in full. If you doubt this, then you are rejecting Jesus' sacrifice and his promises.
When Jesus assured the thief on the cross that he is saved - did that mean that it was possible for the thief to commit a sin and to lose that promise? If not, then did God take away the thief's free will?
The "back to the temple system" reading can't survive verse 29. It's not just "no longer remains a sacrifice," it's "has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified." That's the person described as sanctified by that blood, past tense, real. You don't profane a sanctification you never received. If this were just a Jew who never accepted Christ in the first place, there'd be nothing of his to profane, he'd never been sanctified by that blood to begin with. The text requires prior real participation for the warning to even make grammatical sense.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc HollidayChoosing grace every day and every hour is worNobody's saying the choosing itself is a merit you bank. That's not the argument. said:Quote:Quote:Quote:Quote:
Paul already settled this in Gal 5:6, the only faith that counts is faith working through love. It's not faith plus works as two separate transactions you're stacking together. It's that living faith is inherently active. James says the same thing in 2:17, faith without works is dead. Dead faith isn't a weaker version of real faith, it's not faith at all, it's just intellectual assent. You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence. Paul and James are describing one organic reality. You're the one who has to split it into two categories to make sola fide work.
You're having the same problems Luther had and why he wanted to remove James. He was so committed to sola fide that James 2 became a huge threat to his whole system. That's why he called it an epistle of straw and floated dropping it from the canon. He didn't do that because he found some obscure manuscript problem. He did it because James flatly contradicts the version of faith alone he needed to be true.
Honestly this whole framework you're defending is downstream of a specific philosophical inheritance: Late medieval nominalism, Ockham's voluntarism, the shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones. That's the actual root of the system you're arguing from.
You: "You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence."
Your arms must be getting really tired punching that Calvinist straw man over and over. Let me know when you'll actually engage what's being argued. NO ONE is saying faith is a "static" thing. Or that it merely gets "bestowed" on you. At this point to give you a doll and ask you to point to where the Calvinist hurt you.
We're saying the same thing about faith - true faith will be manifested in works (but not all works is the manifestation of true faith). This is perfectlly in line with James 2 and Paul's "faith working through love". We are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone (except for the caveats mentioned already). The real difference between our views is that I'm saying a person is saved by their faith in their heart (what Scripture says). Their works are a manifestation of that faith, and they are rewarded for their works. Your view, however, is that even though someone has true belief in their heart, their salvation is still contingent on their performance, i.e. their ability to "cooperate". In your view, you can't ever know if you've cooperated enough, and thus you can never know if you're saved. This is a direct contradiction to Scripture. It also falsifies Jesus' own declaration that "whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life", because in your view you can be a true believer, but not "cooperate" enough through your own effort, and thus you won't have eternal life. So it is impossible for your view to be correct. You still haven't, and never will escape this fatal flaw in your view. I just wonder if you'll ever have the honesty and humility to acknowledge this.
No, it's not "late medieval nominalism" or "Ockham's voluntarism" or a "shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones". You're getting lost in Orthodox apologist pseudo-intellectualism and punching at straw men. You just don't know what you're taking about.
You are relying on a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy to keep your system from collapsing under the weight of real life. Your argument assumes that if a person has 'initial faith,' it can never go away. And if they do fall away, your system forces you to say, 'Well, they never had true faith in the first place.'
The flaw in your argument is the unbiblical assumption that genuine faith, once possessed, can never be lost. I think you can legit have faith and then you can abandon it, and the way that happens has to do with works: if you are not praying, if you are not fighting sin, if you are not actively striving to be like Christ (synergy), your faith will starve. It will wither. You will apostatize, guaranteed. That faith that was once in the heart, won't be there. That behavior is a cooperation with Christ and your own free will. That's synergy.
Proof: Hebrews 10:26 "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". The "willful sin" in Hebrews 10:26 is apostasy: a deliberate, total, and continuous turning of one's back on Jesus Christ and that was told to believers and the text explicitly says they no longer remain, which means they belonged at one point. Verse 29 warns of the apostate who has 'profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.'
You absolutely should abandon your reformed view of sola fide. You claim you have 'assurance' because of the belief in your heart. But by your own theology, you cannot possibly know if your current faith is 'true saving faith' or just 'temporary faith' (evanescent grace). This is why you should, at the very least, hold to the Arminian view that lots of protestants adhere to.
There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. Just because I don't completely agree with the whole Calvinist view of faith and free will, doesn't mean I'm saying they aren't true Christians. And Calvinism isn't all of Protestantism. You're misusing logical concepts, which only speaks to the general problem with logical thinking that you seem to be having - which puts the soundness of your views under serious question, imo.
Once again, you're not reading the Bible correctly. Look closely at the verse you cited: "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." - note that the verse says knowledge of, NOT belief or faith in the truth.
Look closely also at your other citation, verse 29: "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified," - note it's punishment that is deserved, NOT actually administered. Also notice that the "punishment" is never said to be loss of salvation.
These once again demonstrate that your view is built upon your (and your church's) flawed reading of Scripture.
You serious?
You can't say a sacrifice "no longer remains" for someone it was never applied to in the first place. That phrasing only makes sense if the sacrifice for their sins WAS there, covering them, and then stopped being available to them. Mere head knowledge was never "covered" by a sacrifice to begin with, so there'd be nothing to say "no longer remains."
Your answer has always been that if someone abandoned the faith, then it proves the faith wasn't true to begin with. You've defined "true faith" so it can never be falsified by an actual case. Every apparent counterexample gets reclassified as fake by definition, not by evidence. That's the no true Scotsman fallacy you hold to. That's exactly what you're doing with Hebrews 6:4-6. The text describes people enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, sharing in the Holy Spirit, and then falling away. Instead of taking that at face value, you're using "true faith always perseveres" to declare, without any exegetical basis in the passage itself, that these people must not have had true faith. The passage becomes unfalsifiable evidence for your view no matter what it actually says. That's the fallacy.
When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?
I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?
That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ." That's not humility, that's the opposite. Paul didn't talk about himself that way. He said he disciplined his body and kept it under control so that after preaching to others he himself wouldn't be disqualified (1 Cor 9:27).
What the author (who's writing to the Jews) means when he says that there "no longer remains" a sacrfice, is that if a Jew rejects the once-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus, then there isn't an old system of temple sacrifices to go back to, because that was made obsolete. It means, then, that there is no sacrifice at all available to a Jew who has rejected Jesus for the removal their sins. It does not mean that Jesus' sacrifice had been applied to that Jew and then revoked because they willfully sinned. That's reading into the verse, and incorrectly so. In other words, if a Jew rejects the sacrifice of Jesus, then there is "no longer remains any sacrifice" for them to go to.
Think carefully about what you're saying - after someone becomes a Christian, if they continue to sin deliberately (that's ALL OF US if we're honest) then it means that Jesus' sacrifice is now void for us and can't ever save them? Obviously that can't be the meaning. Otherwise, NONE of us would be saved. Even the apostle Paul admts to a continuous struggling with sin. I'm sure ALL the apostles continued to sin. If you really believe this to be the meaning of that verse, then you don't really understand the Gospel at all.
Regarding the "no true Scotsman" fallacy - it's not a fallacy at all to define a true believer as someone who perseveres in the faith, and so when someone doesn't persevere, to conclude that they, since they didn't meet the definition, was not a true believer. Scripture fully supports this definition of a true believer. Consider - "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us." - was the apostle John committing a no true Scotsman fallacy here?
The question "When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?" doesn't really have an answer that moves the needle. In my mind, the Holy Spirit within us moves us to pray... but then we still have to choose to act on it. But, we may have not prayed at all if not for the Holy Spirit within us. So, it's both really. But the point is this: this has nothing to do with gaining salvation. You don't have to pray to gain salvation, or to keep your salvation. You pray as a result of being saved, i.e. it's what happens with sanctification.
You: "I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?" - this is the prime illustration of the unregenerate hearts of Roman Catholics and Orthodox - your view that the only motivation to live righteously is to gain or keep your salvation. This is precisely what I mean by thinking and acting like a slave, not a son. A son lives righteously for God, because he wants to please him, not because he's afraid God will rescind his sonship.
You: "That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ."- it's not "arrogance" at all. It's called assurance. It's called believing what God is telling you in Scripture: Jesus - "Whosoever believes in me HAS eternal life". "I shall lose NONE of those people God has given me". A believer has the Holy Spirit, which is the "GUARANTEE" and "SEAL" of the promise of eternal life. All of a believer's sins are paid for, in full. If you doubt this, then you are rejecting Jesus' sacrifice and his promises.
When Jesus assured the thief on the cross that he is saved - did that mean that it was possible for the thief to commit a sin and to lose that promise? If not, then did God take away the thief's free will?
Hebrews 10:26 doesn't describe ordinary struggle with sin, it describes deliberate, willful apostasy, trampling the Son of God underfoot. I already went over that. That's categorically different from Paul's Romans 7 wrestling with indwelling sin. Nobody's arguing normal Christian struggle voids your standing. The passage is about renouncing Christ entirely, not about failing perfectly.
On 1 John 2:19, that's John making a specific, inspired judgment about specific individuals he actually knew, based on revelation, not asserting a universal, unfalsifiable rule that gets applied retroactively to explain away every apparent counterexample anywhere in Scripture. The fallacy isn't "defining true faith as enduring faith," it's using that definition as an interpretive grid that no text can ever penetrate. So ask yourself the same question I asked before: what would real apostasy from a real believer look like in the text, that you'd accept as such? If Hebrews 6 doesn't count, what would?
On prayer, you just conceded the whole point. You said it's "both," the Spirit moves you and you still choose. That's synergy, real free will cooperating with real grace. You're just insisting that synergy is quarantined to sanctification and can't touch salvation. But Philippians 2:12 doesn't say "work out your sanctification with fear and trembling," it says salvation
On slave vs. son, Paul's the one who wrote "fear and trembling," not me. If that's slave language, it's Paul's slave language. Nobody's saying the primary motive is fear of losing status, the point is that fear and trembling still describe something genuinely at stake, which is different from your view where the outcome was locked before you were born and current behavior is downstream of nothing.
On assurance vs. certainty, there's a real difference between trusting Christ's promises (assurance) and asserting metaphysical certainty that no future free choice of yours could ever sever you from him. That second claim isn't in "whoever believes has eternal life," you're importing it.
On the thief on the cross, that doesn't prove what you think it proves. He was dying within hours. There was no future window in which he could commit apostasy, because he had no future left. That's not evidence of a permanent, unconditional seal that survives any future choice, it's evidence of a man who ran out of time to make one. Different question entirely.
Oh, come on. The Lord forgives your tantrums... : )
FLBear5630 said:
Oh, come on. The Lord forgives your tantrums... : )
Yes He does. He also discusses them with me, which is uncomfortable.
I was on the phone with a relative this morning. We were talking about things and the Holy Spirit took over.. we were both in tears at the end of the conversation. His presence was amazing.Oldbear83 said:FLBear5630 said:
Oh, come on. The Lord forgives your tantrums... : )
Yes He does. He also discusses them with me, which is uncomfortable.
Alas, not all of them are as enjoyable as today.
Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc HollidayChoosing grace every day and every hour is worNobody's saying the choosing itself is a merit you bank. That's not the argument. said:Quote:Quote:Quote:Quote:
Paul already settled this in Gal 5:6, the only faith that counts is faith working through love. It's not faith plus works as two separate transactions you're stacking together. It's that living faith is inherently active. James says the same thing in 2:17, faith without works is dead. Dead faith isn't a weaker version of real faith, it's not faith at all, it's just intellectual assent. You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence. Paul and James are describing one organic reality. You're the one who has to split it into two categories to make sola fide work.
You're having the same problems Luther had and why he wanted to remove James. He was so committed to sola fide that James 2 became a huge threat to his whole system. That's why he called it an epistle of straw and floated dropping it from the canon. He didn't do that because he found some obscure manuscript problem. He did it because James flatly contradicts the version of faith alone he needed to be true.
Honestly this whole framework you're defending is downstream of a specific philosophical inheritance: Late medieval nominalism, Ockham's voluntarism, the shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones. That's the actual root of the system you're arguing from.
You: "You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence."
Your arms must be getting really tired punching that Calvinist straw man over and over. Let me know when you'll actually engage what's being argued. NO ONE is saying faith is a "static" thing. Or that it merely gets "bestowed" on you. At this point to give you a doll and ask you to point to where the Calvinist hurt you.
We're saying the same thing about faith - true faith will be manifested in works (but not all works is the manifestation of true faith). This is perfectlly in line with James 2 and Paul's "faith working through love". We are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone (except for the caveats mentioned already). The real difference between our views is that I'm saying a person is saved by their faith in their heart (what Scripture says). Their works are a manifestation of that faith, and they are rewarded for their works. Your view, however, is that even though someone has true belief in their heart, their salvation is still contingent on their performance, i.e. their ability to "cooperate". In your view, you can't ever know if you've cooperated enough, and thus you can never know if you're saved. This is a direct contradiction to Scripture. It also falsifies Jesus' own declaration that "whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life", because in your view you can be a true believer, but not "cooperate" enough through your own effort, and thus you won't have eternal life. So it is impossible for your view to be correct. You still haven't, and never will escape this fatal flaw in your view. I just wonder if you'll ever have the honesty and humility to acknowledge this.
No, it's not "late medieval nominalism" or "Ockham's voluntarism" or a "shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones". You're getting lost in Orthodox apologist pseudo-intellectualism and punching at straw men. You just don't know what you're taking about.
You are relying on a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy to keep your system from collapsing under the weight of real life. Your argument assumes that if a person has 'initial faith,' it can never go away. And if they do fall away, your system forces you to say, 'Well, they never had true faith in the first place.'
The flaw in your argument is the unbiblical assumption that genuine faith, once possessed, can never be lost. I think you can legit have faith and then you can abandon it, and the way that happens has to do with works: if you are not praying, if you are not fighting sin, if you are not actively striving to be like Christ (synergy), your faith will starve. It will wither. You will apostatize, guaranteed. That faith that was once in the heart, won't be there. That behavior is a cooperation with Christ and your own free will. That's synergy.
Proof: Hebrews 10:26 "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". The "willful sin" in Hebrews 10:26 is apostasy: a deliberate, total, and continuous turning of one's back on Jesus Christ and that was told to believers and the text explicitly says they no longer remain, which means they belonged at one point. Verse 29 warns of the apostate who has 'profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.'
You absolutely should abandon your reformed view of sola fide. You claim you have 'assurance' because of the belief in your heart. But by your own theology, you cannot possibly know if your current faith is 'true saving faith' or just 'temporary faith' (evanescent grace). This is why you should, at the very least, hold to the Arminian view that lots of protestants adhere to.
There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. Just because I don't completely agree with the whole Calvinist view of faith and free will, doesn't mean I'm saying they aren't true Christians. And Calvinism isn't all of Protestantism. You're misusing logical concepts, which only speaks to the general problem with logical thinking that you seem to be having - which puts the soundness of your views under serious question, imo.
Once again, you're not reading the Bible correctly. Look closely at the verse you cited: "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." - note that the verse says knowledge of, NOT belief or faith in the truth.
Look closely also at your other citation, verse 29: "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified," - note it's punishment that is deserved, NOT actually administered. Also notice that the "punishment" is never said to be loss of salvation.
These once again demonstrate that your view is built upon your (and your church's) flawed reading of Scripture.
You serious?
You can't say a sacrifice "no longer remains" for someone it was never applied to in the first place. That phrasing only makes sense if the sacrifice for their sins WAS there, covering them, and then stopped being available to them. Mere head knowledge was never "covered" by a sacrifice to begin with, so there'd be nothing to say "no longer remains."
Your answer has always been that if someone abandoned the faith, then it proves the faith wasn't true to begin with. You've defined "true faith" so it can never be falsified by an actual case. Every apparent counterexample gets reclassified as fake by definition, not by evidence. That's the no true Scotsman fallacy you hold to. That's exactly what you're doing with Hebrews 6:4-6. The text describes people enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, sharing in the Holy Spirit, and then falling away. Instead of taking that at face value, you're using "true faith always perseveres" to declare, without any exegetical basis in the passage itself, that these people must not have had true faith. The passage becomes unfalsifiable evidence for your view no matter what it actually says. That's the fallacy.
When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?
I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?
That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ." That's not humility, that's the opposite. Paul didn't talk about himself that way. He said he disciplined his body and kept it under control so that after preaching to others he himself wouldn't be disqualified (1 Cor 9:27).
What the author (who's writing to the Jews) means when he says that there "no longer remains" a sacrfice, is that if a Jew rejects the once-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus, then there isn't an old system of temple sacrifices to go back to, because that was made obsolete. It means, then, that there is no sacrifice at all available to a Jew who has rejected Jesus for the removal their sins. It does not mean that Jesus' sacrifice had been applied to that Jew and then revoked because they willfully sinned. That's reading into the verse, and incorrectly so. In other words, if a Jew rejects the sacrifice of Jesus, then there is "no longer remains any sacrifice" for them to go to.
Think carefully about what you're saying - after someone becomes a Christian, if they continue to sin deliberately (that's ALL OF US if we're honest) then it means that Jesus' sacrifice is now void for us and can't ever save them? Obviously that can't be the meaning. Otherwise, NONE of us would be saved. Even the apostle Paul admts to a continuous struggling with sin. I'm sure ALL the apostles continued to sin. If you really believe this to be the meaning of that verse, then you don't really understand the Gospel at all.
Regarding the "no true Scotsman" fallacy - it's not a fallacy at all to define a true believer as someone who perseveres in the faith, and so when someone doesn't persevere, to conclude that they, since they didn't meet the definition, was not a true believer. Scripture fully supports this definition of a true believer. Consider - "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us." - was the apostle John committing a no true Scotsman fallacy here?
The question "When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?" doesn't really have an answer that moves the needle. In my mind, the Holy Spirit within us moves us to pray... but then we still have to choose to act on it. But, we may have not prayed at all if not for the Holy Spirit within us. So, it's both really. But the point is this: this has nothing to do with gaining salvation. You don't have to pray to gain salvation, or to keep your salvation. You pray as a result of being saved, i.e. it's what happens with sanctification.
You: "I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?" - this is the prime illustration of the unregenerate hearts of Roman Catholics and Orthodox - your view that the only motivation to live righteously is to gain or keep your salvation. This is precisely what I mean by thinking and acting like a slave, not a son. A son lives righteously for God, because he wants to please him, not because he's afraid God will rescind his sonship.
You: "That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ."- it's not "arrogance" at all. It's called assurance. It's called believing what God is telling you in Scripture: Jesus - "Whosoever believes in me HAS eternal life". "I shall lose NONE of those people God has given me". A believer has the Holy Spirit, which is the "GUARANTEE" and "SEAL" of the promise of eternal life. All of a believer's sins are paid for, in full. If you doubt this, then you are rejecting Jesus' sacrifice and his promises.
When Jesus assured the thief on the cross that he is saved - did that mean that it was possible for the thief to commit a sin and to lose that promise? If not, then did God take away the thief's free will?
The "back to the temple system" reading can't survive verse 29. It's not just "no longer remains a sacrifice," it's "has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified." That's the person described as sanctified by that blood, past tense, real. You don't profane a sanctification you never received. If this were just a Jew who never accepted Christ in the first place, there'd be nothing of his to profane, he'd never been sanctified by that blood to begin with. The text requires prior real participation for the warning to even make grammatical sense.
Hebrews 10:26 doesn't describe ordinary struggle with sin, it describes deliberate, willful apostasy, trampling the Son of God underfoot. I already went over that. That's categorically different from Paul's Romans 7 wrestling with indwelling sin. Nobody's arguing normal Christian struggle voids your standing. The passage is about renouncing Christ entirely, not about failing perfectly.
Verse 29 is the explanation of what the "deliberate sinning" is. It is the willful turning away from Jesus being the once-for-all-time sacrifice and returning to the old, temple sacrifice system. This is the "apostasy" that you're referring to. If a Jewish Christian were to do that, then they've rejected the only sacrifice (Jesus) that exists, and are going to a sacrifice system that has been made obsolete, therefore "no sacrifice remains", i.e. is available for their sins.
The author of Hebrews is giving a warning to (saved) Jewish Christians who have not yet apostasized by returning to the old system, but who are leaning that way or who are starting to buy into it. They would be trampling underfoot and profaning the blood of Christ they were sanctified by if they were to return to it, the author admonishes. This isn't a passage about saved Jewish Christians actually having left their faith. The author is creating the fear of judgement in them so as to prevent them from doing so, as well as encouraging them to persevere by recalling back to their perseverance and confidence in their faith they had shown up to that point. The author believes that true Christians will persevere. Look how the author concludes his address to these people in this passage:
"But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
The author is confident that those Jewish Christians who are truly saved will heed the warning and not apostasize and lose their souls. In other words, true Christians, once saved, will stay saved.
Really? That really happen?
FLBear5630 said:
Really? That really happen?
You never had that experience?
Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc HollidayChoosing grace every day and every hour is worNobody's saying the choosing itself is a merit you bank. That's not the argument. said:Quote:Quote:Quote:Quote:
Paul already settled this in Gal 5:6, the only faith that counts is faith working through love. It's not faith plus works as two separate transactions you're stacking together. It's that living faith is inherently active. James says the same thing in 2:17, faith without works is dead. Dead faith isn't a weaker version of real faith, it's not faith at all, it's just intellectual assent. You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence. Paul and James are describing one organic reality. You're the one who has to split it into two categories to make sola fide work.
You're having the same problems Luther had and why he wanted to remove James. He was so committed to sola fide that James 2 became a huge threat to his whole system. That's why he called it an epistle of straw and floated dropping it from the canon. He didn't do that because he found some obscure manuscript problem. He did it because James flatly contradicts the version of faith alone he needed to be true.
Honestly this whole framework you're defending is downstream of a specific philosophical inheritance: Late medieval nominalism, Ockham's voluntarism, the shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones. That's the actual root of the system you're arguing from.
You: "You've built a system where faith is a static thing bestowed on you and then works get tacked on afterward as optional evidence."
Your arms must be getting really tired punching that Calvinist straw man over and over. Let me know when you'll actually engage what's being argued. NO ONE is saying faith is a "static" thing. Or that it merely gets "bestowed" on you. At this point to give you a doll and ask you to point to where the Calvinist hurt you.
We're saying the same thing about faith - true faith will be manifested in works (but not all works is the manifestation of true faith). This is perfectlly in line with James 2 and Paul's "faith working through love". We are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone (except for the caveats mentioned already). The real difference between our views is that I'm saying a person is saved by their faith in their heart (what Scripture says). Their works are a manifestation of that faith, and they are rewarded for their works. Your view, however, is that even though someone has true belief in their heart, their salvation is still contingent on their performance, i.e. their ability to "cooperate". In your view, you can't ever know if you've cooperated enough, and thus you can never know if you're saved. This is a direct contradiction to Scripture. It also falsifies Jesus' own declaration that "whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life", because in your view you can be a true believer, but not "cooperate" enough through your own effort, and thus you won't have eternal life. So it is impossible for your view to be correct. You still haven't, and never will escape this fatal flaw in your view. I just wonder if you'll ever have the honesty and humility to acknowledge this.
No, it's not "late medieval nominalism" or "Ockham's voluntarism" or a "shift from realist categories to legal/relational ones". You're getting lost in Orthodox apologist pseudo-intellectualism and punching at straw men. You just don't know what you're taking about.
You are relying on a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy to keep your system from collapsing under the weight of real life. Your argument assumes that if a person has 'initial faith,' it can never go away. And if they do fall away, your system forces you to say, 'Well, they never had true faith in the first place.'
The flaw in your argument is the unbiblical assumption that genuine faith, once possessed, can never be lost. I think you can legit have faith and then you can abandon it, and the way that happens has to do with works: if you are not praying, if you are not fighting sin, if you are not actively striving to be like Christ (synergy), your faith will starve. It will wither. You will apostatize, guaranteed. That faith that was once in the heart, won't be there. That behavior is a cooperation with Christ and your own free will. That's synergy.
Proof: Hebrews 10:26 "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". The "willful sin" in Hebrews 10:26 is apostasy: a deliberate, total, and continuous turning of one's back on Jesus Christ and that was told to believers and the text explicitly says they no longer remain, which means they belonged at one point. Verse 29 warns of the apostate who has 'profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.'
You absolutely should abandon your reformed view of sola fide. You claim you have 'assurance' because of the belief in your heart. But by your own theology, you cannot possibly know if your current faith is 'true saving faith' or just 'temporary faith' (evanescent grace). This is why you should, at the very least, hold to the Arminian view that lots of protestants adhere to.
There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. Just because I don't completely agree with the whole Calvinist view of faith and free will, doesn't mean I'm saying they aren't true Christians. And Calvinism isn't all of Protestantism. You're misusing logical concepts, which only speaks to the general problem with logical thinking that you seem to be having - which puts the soundness of your views under serious question, imo.
Once again, you're not reading the Bible correctly. Look closely at the verse you cited: "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." - note that the verse says knowledge of, NOT belief or faith in the truth.
Look closely also at your other citation, verse 29: "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified," - note it's punishment that is deserved, NOT actually administered. Also notice that the "punishment" is never said to be loss of salvation.
These once again demonstrate that your view is built upon your (and your church's) flawed reading of Scripture.
You serious?
You can't say a sacrifice "no longer remains" for someone it was never applied to in the first place. That phrasing only makes sense if the sacrifice for their sins WAS there, covering them, and then stopped being available to them. Mere head knowledge was never "covered" by a sacrifice to begin with, so there'd be nothing to say "no longer remains."
Your answer has always been that if someone abandoned the faith, then it proves the faith wasn't true to begin with. You've defined "true faith" so it can never be falsified by an actual case. Every apparent counterexample gets reclassified as fake by definition, not by evidence. That's the no true Scotsman fallacy you hold to. That's exactly what you're doing with Hebrews 6:4-6. The text describes people enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, sharing in the Holy Spirit, and then falling away. Instead of taking that at face value, you're using "true faith always perseveres" to declare, without any exegetical basis in the passage itself, that these people must not have had true faith. The passage becomes unfalsifiable evidence for your view no matter what it actually says. That's the fallacy.
When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?
I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?
That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ." That's not humility, that's the opposite. Paul didn't talk about himself that way. He said he disciplined his body and kept it under control so that after preaching to others he himself wouldn't be disqualified (1 Cor 9:27).
What the author (who's writing to the Jews) means when he says that there "no longer remains" a sacrfice, is that if a Jew rejects the once-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus, then there isn't an old system of temple sacrifices to go back to, because that was made obsolete. It means, then, that there is no sacrifice at all available to a Jew who has rejected Jesus for the removal their sins. It does not mean that Jesus' sacrifice had been applied to that Jew and then revoked because they willfully sinned. That's reading into the verse, and incorrectly so. In other words, if a Jew rejects the sacrifice of Jesus, then there is "no longer remains any sacrifice" for them to go to.
Think carefully about what you're saying - after someone becomes a Christian, if they continue to sin deliberately (that's ALL OF US if we're honest) then it means that Jesus' sacrifice is now void for us and can't ever save them? Obviously that can't be the meaning. Otherwise, NONE of us would be saved. Even the apostle Paul admts to a continuous struggling with sin. I'm sure ALL the apostles continued to sin. If you really believe this to be the meaning of that verse, then you don't really understand the Gospel at all.
Regarding the "no true Scotsman" fallacy - it's not a fallacy at all to define a true believer as someone who perseveres in the faith, and so when someone doesn't persevere, to conclude that they, since they didn't meet the definition, was not a true believer. Scripture fully supports this definition of a true believer. Consider - "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us." - was the apostle John committing a no true Scotsman fallacy here?
The question "When you pray, did God cause you to pray, or did you decide to pray?" doesn't really have an answer that moves the needle. In my mind, the Holy Spirit within us moves us to pray... but then we still have to choose to act on it. But, we may have not prayed at all if not for the Holy Spirit within us. So, it's both really. But the point is this: this has nothing to do with gaining salvation. You don't have to pray to gain salvation, or to keep your salvation. You pray as a result of being saved, i.e. it's what happens with sanctification.
You: "I don't even know how you function practically. How are you fighting sin day to day? Do you actually believe there was a single moment in the past where your faith was sealed, permanently, such that your free will is no longer a threat to it going forward? Because if so, what's actually motivating your behavior?" - this is the prime illustration of the unregenerate hearts of Roman Catholics and Orthodox - your view that the only motivation to live righteously is to gain or keep your salvation. This is precisely what I mean by thinking and acting like a slave, not a son. A son lives righteously for God, because he wants to please him, not because he's afraid God will rescind his sonship.
You: "That kind of posture is crazy to me. It's always felt like arrogance and pride, with no humility. It's saying "I know, with certainty, that no future choice of mine, no matter how bad, can ever separate me from Christ."- it's not "arrogance" at all. It's called assurance. It's called believing what God is telling you in Scripture: Jesus - "Whosoever believes in me HAS eternal life". "I shall lose NONE of those people God has given me". A believer has the Holy Spirit, which is the "GUARANTEE" and "SEAL" of the promise of eternal life. All of a believer's sins are paid for, in full. If you doubt this, then you are rejecting Jesus' sacrifice and his promises.
When Jesus assured the thief on the cross that he is saved - did that mean that it was possible for the thief to commit a sin and to lose that promise? If not, then did God take away the thief's
On 1 John 2:19, that's John making a specific, inspired judgment about specific individuals he actually knew, based on revelation, not asserting a universal, unfalsifiable rule that gets applied retroactively to explain away every apparent counterexample anywhere in Scripture. The fallacy isn't "defining true faith as enduring faith," it's using that definition as an interpretive grid that no text can ever penetrate. So ask yourself the same question I asked before: what would real apostasy from a real believer look like in the text, that you'd accept as such? If Hebrews 6 doesn't count, what would?
1 John 2:19 is addressing the same principle: if those people didn't remain, it was because they weren't one of them. Likewise, if a person doesn't remain in their faith in Jesus, then they really didn't have faith. The principle is this: true believers remain, and therefore if you don't remain, by definition you aren't a true believer. Therefore, this isn't a fallacy.
My view, which is supported by Scripture, is that true believers won't apostatize. So your question is invalid. An "apostate" is a someone who has rejected their stated belief. We actually can't know if someone's stated belief is their true belief because we can't know people's hearts (but God does). What we can know, however, is that if they leave their stated belief, then it was never really a true belief.
Here is an illustration of this: in John chapter 6, Jesus states that he already knew that Judas Iscariot did not believe, even though on the outside he was a disciple like all the others. To the others, for Judas to betray Jesus would be an "apostasy", or a rejection of his belief that the others thought he had. But since Jesus knew he wasn't really a believer to begin with, it wasn't an apostasy to him, but rather someone just revealing their true colors. In this same vein, when a professed "believer" leaves the faith, from our human perspective, we call him an "apostate" for leaving his faith. But the view that he was never really a true believer to begin with comes from looking at it through Jesus' perspective, who knows beforehand who really are his own, of whom he says he "will lose NONE". So it isn't a fallacy, it's merely a recognition of what God already knew, but which was made evident to us.
yes really, He called me to invite me to a mens bible boot camp in September. We chatted about work and then jumped back into the Word and our interaction with the Holy Spirit culminated on this verseFLBear5630 said:
Really? That really happen?
"And he said: 'Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'" Matthew 18:3
He wants us to seek him like a child seeks his father. When its good, you want to tell your father, when its bad you seek his advice and comfort/protection, when your father is not around, you miss him with an ache in your heart. It was beautiful.
4th and Inches said:yes really, He called me to invite me to a mens bible boot camp in September. We chatted about work and then jumped back into the Word and our interaction with the Holy Spirit culminated on this verseFLBear5630 said:
Really? That really happen?
"And he said: 'Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'" Matthew 18:3
He wants us to seek him like a child seeks his father. When its good, you want to tell your father, when its bad you seek his advice and comfort/protection, when your father is not around, you miss him with an ache in your heart. It was beautiful.
Not a negative, just not used to those types of encounters.
FLBear5630 said:4th and Inches said:FLBear5630 said:
Really? That really happen?
yes really, He called me to invite me to a mens bible boot camp in September. We chatted about work and then jumped back into the Word and our interaction with the Holy Spirit culminated on this verse
"And he said: 'Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'" Matthew 18:3
He wants us to seek him like a child seeks his father. When its good, you want to tell your father, when its bad you seek his advice and comfort/protection, when your father is not around, you miss him with an ache in your heart. It was beautiful.
Not a negative, just not used to those types of encounters.
Interesting. I have had several such.
Too personal to discuss most of them, though. Not on a forum.
But I always thought every believer had such occasions.
Mysticism occurs at different levels for different people. It is a blessing as far as i am concerned
FLBear5630 said:
Mysticism occurs at different levels for different people. It is a blessing as far as i am concerned
Oh it is. It also adds a personal dimension to reading accounts like Moses and the bush, Gideon and the Angel of the Lord, and many other people in Scripture who experienced visitations.
Quote:
We were talking about things and the Holy Spirit took over
What precisely do you mean to convey with this statement? It's rather vague.
if you've ever been speaking with someone and you give a message with authority, with conviction and with emotion that's not normal for how you talk to someone.Realitybites said:Quote:
We were talking about things and the Holy Spirit took over
What precisely do you mean to convey with this statement? It's rather vague.
Think of it like you're sitting in church and your preacher is speaking and it's really connecting with you except you're the one who's doing the speaking. There's a bit of a duality because even though you're the one doing the speaking, it feels like you're listening to somebody else speak
For me it is also combined with a physical sensation that is hard to describe. Jewish people call it Shekhinah
"Glory belongs to God in the highest, and peace to men on whom His favor rests." (Luke 2:14) - a concise illustration of the Shekinah principle: an exalted, holy God who graciously chooses to dwell with humanity.
Fre3dombear said:FLBear5630 said:
You guys really get into the minutia.
Do you really think Jesus wanted us to overthink like we have? Does that seem like the son of a Carpenter?
One thing he was very clear on is theres one church
Martin Luther may be rotting in hell as we speak
You should read E.R. Chamberlain's book "The Bad Popes". It will give you some background on exactly what was going on in Roman Catholicism mostly from just before the schism through the reformation.
The churches you should be going to, in descending order
Eastern Orthodox
Confessional LCMS/WELS Lutheran
Nonchalcedonian Oriental Churches
Probably an SPXX Parish
Maybe GAFCON Affiliated Anglican
then things get really thin.
Maybe an instrument free Church of Christ that isn't woke.
Maybe a Latin Mass Roman Catholic parish.
Not really sure who to recommend out of the Calvin/Knox/Wesley tradition as most of their denominational structures (PCUSA/PCA/RCA/UMC/etc) are woke to one degree or another.
Realitybites said:Fre3dombear said:FLBear5630 said:
You guys really get into the minutia.
Do you really think Jesus wanted us to overthink like we have? Does that seem like the son of a Carpenter?
One thing he was very clear on is theres one church
Martin Luther may be rotting in hell as we speak
You should read E.R. Chamberlain's book "The Bad Popes". It will give you some background on exactly what was going on in Roman Catholicism mostly from just before the schism through the reformation.
The churches you should be going to, in descending order
Eastern Orthodox
Confessional LCMS/WELS Lutheran
Nonchalcedonian Oriental Churches
Probably an SPXX Parish
Maybe GAFCON Affiliated Anglican
then things get really thin.
Maybe an instrument free Church of Christ that isn't woke.
Maybe a Latin Mass Roman Catholic parish.
Not really sure who to recommend out of the Calvin/Knox/Wesley tradition as most of their denominational structures (PCUSA/PCA/RCA/UMC/etc) are woke to one degree or another.
I understand your bias and am well versed in what was going on at the time of Luther.
1 cor 10
Jews and pagans agreed that the way you shared in the sacrifice was by eating it.
Never been to one of the vast numbers of protestant denominations and eaten anything. They are very much missing out and it's unbiblical.
Catholics have been doing it for 2000 yesrs
Jews and pagans agreed that the way you shared in the sacrifice was by eating it.
Never been to one of the vast numbers of protestant denominations and eaten anything. They are very much missing out and it's unbiblical.
Catholics have been doing it for 2000 yesrs
Fre3dombear said:
1 cor 10
Jews and pagans agreed that the way you shared in the sacrifice was by eating it.
Never been to one of the vast numbers of protestant denominations and eaten anything. They are very much missing out and it's unbiblical.
Catholics have been doing it for 2000 yesrs
Not sure what you are going for, there.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier
Me either. I don't think Christians are to focus on creating more division between themselves. Despite there being one book, somehow we have managed to create hundreds of denominations. Too much nitpicking.
my old church did communion every sunday at 8:30 service and once a month at 10:30 serviceFre3dombear said:
1 cor 10
Jews and pagans agreed that the way you shared in the sacrifice was by eating it.
Never been to one of the vast numbers of protestant denominations and eaten anything. They are very much missing out and it's unbiblical.
Catholics have been doing it for 2000 yesrs
The following eucharistic liturgy is commended for use in presbytery
celebrations of the Lord's Supper.
INVITATION TO THE LORD'S TABLE
Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God!
They will come from east and west,
and from north and south,
and sit at table in the kingdom of God.
According to Luke,
when our risen Lord was at table with his disciples,
he took the bread, and blessed and broke it,
and gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened
and they recognized him.
This is the Lord's table.
Our Savior invites those who trust him
to share the feast which he has prepared.
GREAT THANKSGIVING
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
It is truly right and our greatest joy to give you thanks and praise,
eternal God, our creator.
You have given us life and second birth in your Spirit.
Once we were no people, but now we are your people.
You claimed Israel as your chosen nation
and raised up the church as a witness to the resurrection,
breathing into it your life and power.
From worlds apart, you gathered us together.
When we go astray, you welcome us home.
Always, your love has been steadfast.
Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with the choirs of heaven
and with all the faithful of every time and place
who forever sing to the glory of your name:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.
You are holy, O God of majesty,
and blessed is Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.
In love with you and in compassion for all,
Jesus healed and taught, challenged and comforted, welcomed and
saved.
He formed a community,
promising to be with his disciples wherever two or three were gathered,
and sending them on his mission of hope and healing in the world.
Jesus trusted his life to you, and went freely to his death,
so the world might be set free from suffering and sin.
You raised him from death and raise us also to live a new life with him.
In the power of the Holy Spirit,
you send us out to make disciples as he commanded.
Remembering all your mighty and merciful acts,
we take this bread and this wine from the gifts you have given us
and celebrate with joy the redemption won for us in Jesus Christ.
Accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving
as a living and holy offering of ourselves,
that our lives may proclaim the One crucified and risen.
Great is the mystery of faith.
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
Gracious God, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us
and upon these your gifts of bread and wine,
that the bread we break and the cup we bless
may be the communion of the body and blood of Christ.
By your Spirit unite us with the living Christ
and with all who are baptized in his name,
that we may be one in ministry in every place.
As this bread is Christ's body for us,
send us out to be the body of Christ in the world.
It is appropriate to offer intercessions for the church and the world,
including prayers for the presbytery, its leaders, pastors, and
congregations, and its mission and ministry. It is also appropriate to
give thanks for the life and witness of those who have died.
O God, today you have called us together to be the church.
Unite us now at your table, and in one loaf and a common cup, make us
one in Christ Jesus.
Let your Spirit empower the life we share and ignite our witness in the
world.
With all who have gone before us, keep us faithful to the gospel
teachings and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Give us strength to serve you
until the promised day of the resurrection,
when with the redeemed of all the ages
we will feast with you at your table in glory.
Through Christ, all glory and honor are yours, almighty God,
with the Holy Spirit in the holy church, now and forever.
Amen.
THE LORD'S PRAYER
As Christ our Savior taught us, we are bold to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors;
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.
Amen.
BREAKING OF THE BREAD
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread,
and after giving thanks to God,
he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take, eat.
This is my body, given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way he took the cup, saying:
This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood,
shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Whenever you drink it,
do this in remembrance of me.
Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup
you proclaim the saving death of the risen Lord,
until he comes.
PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
Gracious God,
may we who have received this sacrament
live in the unity of your Holy Spirit,
that we may show forth your gifts to all the world.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Many of non roman catholic churches offer the bread and cup regularly
4th and Inches said:Fre3dombear said:
1 cor 10
Jews and pagans agreed that the way you shared in the sacrifice was by eating it.
Never been to one of the vast numbers of protestant denominations and eaten anything. They are very much missing out and it's unbiblical.
Catholics have been doing it for 2000 yesrs
my old church did communion every sunday at 8:30 service and once a month at 10:30 service
Gracious God, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us
and upon these your gifts of bread and wine,
that the bread we break and the cup we bless
may be the communion of the body and blood of Christ.
As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I obviously view the Eucharist differently, we believe it truly becomes the real Body and Blood of Christ. But as someone who gets frustrated when Communion is downplayed as just a human memory exercise, I have respect for this liturgy. Invoking the Holy Spirit (the Epiclesis) to make the meal effective creates a real emphasis on divine action rather than just human recollection.
If the bread and juice are just crackers and grape juice with zero real spiritual reality attached to them (Baptists/Non Denom), it becomes very difficult to explain why disrespecting them carries such severe, supernatural consequences. Downplaying the sacrament obviously leads to an irreverent attitude toward something Scripture frames with extreme gravity. If physical bread and wine can't convey real spiritual grace, then they've stumbled right into Gnosticism by disconnecting the physical world from divine reality. In their minds, they think that emphasizing a physical sacrament takes away from faith in Jesus. They don't realize that connecting God's grace to physical matter is the very heart of the Incarnation.