Why did Jesus stop reading?

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steve
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by steve » Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:34 pm

Don't you think this kind of response is inappropriate when directed toward a person who has been seeking truth and reality for his entire adult life? It seems to me that your sentiments border on hate. I guess you didn't find it a waste of time to express these negative emotions.
Paidion,

You do not believe in the trinity. Most Christians, including those who have been seeking God all their lives (like myself) do believe in the trinity. This means that seeking God for decades can still leave someone bewildered or in error. Either trinitarians or you must be wrong—though it does not reflect on how long either side has been seeking God. I am sure there are Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists who could say they have been seeking God all their lives. What does this prove? Only that, when one dislodges himself from God's revelation in scripture, his seeking of God is a search in the dark (Isa.8:20; Psalm 119:105, 130). You say that you accept the revelation of God given in Christ. However, the Christ in scripture is the only Christ known to humanity, and that Christ contradicted your view (and Murray's) repeatedly.

I don't think that plain speech warrants the accusation of "hate" speech, as you suggest. Those who unashamedly reject the words of every biblical writer should not think it strange to be called heretical when they make up new and unbiblical doctrines. Since I don't believe in burning heretics, you are out of line in suggesting that these words are hateful. Perhaps we could have the forum moderator set up a "safe space" and "trigger warnings" to avoid offending people who do not like to be told they are in error. I will talk to him about that possibility, if you promise to confine your contributions to that space.

Are negative emotions bad ones? I grieve over the lost. Grief is a negative emotion. I am angry at oppression of the innocent. Anger is also a negative emotion, though Jesus was not always free from it. I am disgusted by dishonesty—another negative, but entirely appropriate, emotion. I do feel negative emotions toward the disingenuousness of your handling of the present topic, your unwillingness to honestly and rationally address the challenges, or to put forward an argument disciplined by loyalty to scripture. Can you think of any "positive" emotions toward these things which would be more appropriate?

You quoted: "And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me," though you omitted, "Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36). What was your purpose? To show that nothing is impossible for God to do? If so, do you think it IS possible for God to lie, and therefore do not accept Hebrews 6:18 which indicates that it is impossible for God to lie? Also how do you harmonize Mark 14:36 with Matthew 26:39, since you seem to claim that all of the Bible is true and consistent when rightly interpreted in the way that you do.
Jesus knew (and affirmed) that God can do all things, with reference to the thing for which He was praying—namely, His own deliverance from His enemies. But Jesus only desired that God would grant His request if it was in accordance with His will. We may pray similarly for deliverance from our enemies, knowing very well that God may wish for us to suffer at their hands, but also knowing that God can deliver us from that fate, if He wishes. This is what Jesus affirmed.
Since the Father didn't remove the cup of suffering, isn't there a sense in which it was impossible for Him to do so?—the sense in which it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die for the salvation of humanity?
It was not impossible for God to take the cup from Christ—that is, to deliver Him from His captors. Jesus said He could call 12 legions of angels to do that (another scriptural challenge from my last post, which you characteristically ignored), and Jesus Himself could knock the bad guys over backward simply by saying "I AM." There was no lack of ability there. It was a question of will—God's will.

What was impossible was for God to save Jesus while still carrying out the plan of salvation—a very different thing. It is a logical impossibility to carry out two mutually-exclusive plans. If I have $50, I am quite able to spend it on myself—unless I have already determined to buy my wife a $50 gift. The same money cannot be spent twice (by me), so my decision to go one way limits my ability to go the other. Choices are like that. You choose one thing at the expense of all mutually-exclusive alternatives. God had decided that Jesus would save the world, and this rendered it impossible to spare Jesus. However, there were other occasions, when God did not wish for Jesus to be taken, and so God delivered Him from their hands.

For God to grant free will to evil men is not mutually exclusive of His capability of protecting us from their actions. There are few things plainer in scripture.

You have ignored 90% of the points I made to you—and for an obvious enough reason: You cannot answer them in favor of your position without denying God's promises and Christ's affirmations.

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steve
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by steve » Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:43 pm

Paidion wrote:
Do you really think God would cause a person to be born blind so that His work could be displayed in the man's life? God is LOVE; But to do that—to make that man live in blindness all those years in order that He might heal him later on in order to display His work is not LOVE.
I do. So did the God who spoke from the burning bush (who, apparently is not your God, given the things He said to Moses that contradict your theology). "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?" (Ex.4:11).

Paul believed that God could and would cause blindness, and was proved correct (Acts 13:11).

Far worse than physical blindness is spiritual blindness—which has far worse consequences! Yet, both Isaiah and Paul affirmed that God would even inflict this blindness on some (Isa.28:10, 13; Rom.11:8).

Yet, all of God's acts are done in love, which means that doing such things is consistent with the kind of love that we find God expressing throughout the entire Bible. Your God is love—but not the kind of love that the biblical God is. I suspect, from the way you argue, that your own sentimentality creates your definition of "love"—and for you, "Love is God."

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Paidion
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by Paidion » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:34 pm

Steve, you wrote:Paul believed that God could and would cause blindness, and was proved correct (Acts 13:11).
Surely you can see that that is quite a different matter:

But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.” Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.

Elymas the magician was an evil man, who opposed the works of the Lord through Barnabas and Paul. Even so, he was made blind only for "a time." But the man born blind had done nothing wrong, and his blindness continued for perhaps 20 years or more.
You also wrote:You do not believe in the trinity. Most Christians, including those who have been seeking God all their lives (like myself) do believe in the trinity. This means that seeking God for decades can still leave someone bewildered or in error.
"Most Christians" believe in a Trinity because they have been taught it by others.

There is no evidence that anyone believed in the Trinity theory until the fourth century. There may have been some that did, but it was not generally believed prior to that. The early Christian view was not that Jesus was eternally co-existent with the Father but that He was "begotten before all ages" (as Justin Martyr described).

Justin in his "Dialogue with Trypho" explains the begetting of the Son in chapter 61 as follows:
Justin Martyr wrote:“I shall give you another testimony, my friends,” said I, “from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave(Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father’s will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the word [which remains] in us, when we give it out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled [another], but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom, who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the Begetter, will bear evidence to me, when He speaks by Solomon the following: ‘If I shall declare to you what happens daily, I shall call to mind events from of old, and review them. The Lord made me the beginning of His ways for His works. From of old He established me in the beginning, before He had made the earth, and before He had made the deeps, before the springs of the waters had issued forth, before the mountains had been established. Before all the hills He begets me. God made the country, and the desert, and the highest inhabited places under the sky. When He made ready the heavens, I was along with Him, and when He set up His throne on the winds: when He made the high clouds strong, and the springs of the deep safe, when He made the foundations of the earth, I was with Him arranging. I was that in which He rejoiced; daily and at all times I delighted in His countenance, because He delighted in the finishing of the habitable world, and delighted in the sons of men. Now, therefore, O son, hear me. Blessed is the man who shall listen to me, and the mortal who shall keep my ways, watching daily at my doors, observing the posts of my ingoings. For my outgoings are the outgoings of life, and [my] will has been prepared by the Lord. But they who sin against me, trespass against their own souls; and they who hate me love death.' ”
Even the original Nicene Creed in 325 A.D. contained the statement that the Son was begotten before all ages:
We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, only begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father; God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made; both things in heaven and things on earth; who for us people, and for our salvation, came down, and was incarnate, and was made man; He suffered, and was raised again the third day, and ascended into heaven and he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and we believe in the Holy Spirit, and in one baptism of repentance for deliverance from sins, and in one holy universal Church, and in the resurrection of the flesh, and in everlasting life.
Also the Trinitarians of the time accepted the original Nicene Creed including the statement that the Son was begotten before all ages. But later Trinitarians saw that it didn't harmonize with their Trinitarian thought and so they changed the phrase "begotten before all ages" to "eternally begotten."

So how am I a heretic in not believing in the Trinity that was invented in the fourth century? Especially when my belief in the begetting of the Son before all ages coincides with the general belief of virtually all Christians prior to the fourth century? It seems to me that the heresy lies in Trinitarianism.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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Jepne
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by Jepne » Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:41 am

I have read some of Richard Murray's book and found in it deliverance from an inappropriate fear of God.

I have also read most of the posts on this thread and appreciate some of the points you all bring up which demand examination.

However, because I see in Paidion's ways a man who is truly seeking to know God, which, Jesus says, is eternal life, it has been difficult to read the sarcasm, put downs, foolish accusations of thinking with his emotions, and labeling of Paidion as a heretic. This does no service to the cause of Christ.

I never hear him talk about or to others in the manner in which he has been treated on this forum. It has been a real disappointment to see this blatant disrespect as I see him, day by day, 'breaking his head' over these important issues of the faith, and laboring to give you his best.
"Anything you think you know about God that you can't find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question.” - anonymous

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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by willowtree » Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:58 am

The biggest issue for me about the problem of evil is that it is just that: not only a problem of evil in respect of finding satisfactory answers for the calamities of life, but it Is a problem for evil in that those who have no respect or knowledge of God also do not have the resources or capacity to resolve it. The answer to the problem lies beyond the mortality of man, beyond his sense of justice and fairness, and contrary to the perceived contentments of life.

This is what I take away from Jesus response to his disciples. I did not find that punctuation adds any clarification to the question - 'who sinned?' Jesus answer was that it was the wrong question. The right question should have been Who is glorified by this condition, and in a more general way, who will ultimately be glorified at the end of all sin and evil. The answer to this is beyond mortal life, beyond time, beyond reason, and only found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is in the realm of evil that grace abounds, in the darkness light shines. In that sense, evil itself is not immoral, it's what we do with it that becomes the moral issue. The thorn in the flesh was not the problem for Paul. Whether he would allow the grace of God to cover it was.

Graeme
If you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, always head for the rock. Ps 62..

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steve
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by steve » Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:29 pm

Paidion,

I wrote:
Paul believed that God could and would cause blindness, and was proved correct (Acts 13:11).
You replied:
Elymas the magician was an evil man, who opposed the works of the Lord through Barnabas and Paul. Even so, he was made blind only for "a time." But the man born blind had done nothing wrong, and his blindness continued for perhaps 20 years or more.
The inconsistency of your answer is stunning.

First, because you are admitting that God struck a man blind because he was sinful (while arguing that this would be a cruel thing to do to an innocent man). Yet, you have argued consistently that God does not stoop to such acts of physical judgment, even on sinners.

Second, the other scriptural cases I provided do not all involve blindness as a judgment upon the wicked. In one case I did not give, which I might have, Saul of Tarsus was struck blind by Christ on the road to Damascus—not because of his evil, since he had just repented of that. If God only strikes evil men blind, then why not blind him while he was a persecutor, rather than after he had repented?

Third, your assumption that 20 years of blindness is too cruel to suit God's character, but a blindness of a short time is not, invites the question of limit. If God may be loving, while striking a man blind for three days, is it beyond the limits of His kindness to do so for six days, a month, a year, a lifetime? Where do you draw the line—and upon what basis? If Jesus said that it is more profitable for a man to blind or cripple himself to enter into life, than to retain his faculties at the expense of eternity, does this not suggest that the scale, in God's mind, is not the contrast between days and decades, but between this lifetime and eternity? All of your arguments are based upon sentimentality—and a sentimentality that is entirely earthbound in its perspective. Christ taught us to weigh things in the light of eternity (Matt.16:25-26; 19:29; Luke 6:20-26; 14:12-14; 16:9, 25). When you begin to do so, you will talk and think more like He did.


I wrote:
You do not believe in the trinity. Most Christians, including those who have been seeking God all their lives (like myself) do believe in the trinity. This means that seeking God for decades can still leave someone bewildered or in error.
You responded (in part):
Most Christians" believe in a Trinity because they have been taught it by others...
You went on from there arguing how wrong the trinity doctrine is—demonstrating once again that you are not capable of discerning the difference between a relevant answer and an irrelevant one. I was not defending the trinity, nor challenging you to defend your rejection of it. Your rejection of the trinity is not alarming to me.

My point (which would have been obvious, had you read it with any intention other than that of finding fault with it) was that both you and I can say we have sought God all our lives—yet we have significant disagreement in our conclusions about certain doctrines...the point being that sincere seeking of God for decades is no firewall against heresy, if we are not seeking God in a total dependency on and submission to the scriptures.

That the trinity doctrine may prove to be flawed, in certain points, is a possibility—but irrelevant to my point. Your entire answer, in fact, proved my point. You could not deny that many trinitarians are people who love and seek God, yet you were very adamant that they are wrong in their conclusions. This is your accidental affirmation of the point I was making. If (on your view) the majority of God-seekers in the church have been trinitarian, and wrong, then you cannot insist that you, as a God-seeker might not also be wrong, whether on this or on another point, concerning God.

You asked how I could use the word heresy in describing the beliefs of one (like yourself) who has sought God all his life. The question is naive in the extreme. I obviously believe both in the trinity and in a God who does everything that the Bible claims He does (most of which things, you deny). Thus, you would also think my views to be heretical. Is this a denial, on your part, that I am a God-seeker? Of course not! You know I am a God-seeker as you are—yet you believe my views (though they are based upon the acceptance of every word of scripture) to be heretical, while I believe yours (because you abandon scripture for sentimentality in forming your novel doctrines about God) are heretical.
So how am I a heretic in not believing in the Trinity that was invented in the fourth century? Especially when my belief in the begetting of the Son before all ages coincides with the general belief of virtually all Christians prior to the fourth century? It seems to me that the heresy lies in Trinitarianism.
Again, you display your inability either to process a straightforward argument or to answer it honestly. I did not say that your denial of the trinity was heretical (though it certainly would be regarded as such in terms of historic Christianity). It should be obvious that I have not made the slightest move toward defending the trinity doctrine in this thread. At least your denial of the trinity keeps you in the same camp as the Jews of pre-Christian times—a saving grace of your position. They did not know about the trinity, but they still worshipped the God revealed in their scriptures.

Your heresy, on the other hand, is the promotion of a God never accepted by either Jews or Christians—a God who cannot (though promising to do so) save a believer from harm, if the free will of a sinner wishes to do him harm, and a God who never brings physically harmful or fatal consequences upon humans (perhaps not on animals, either?). A non-trinitarian at least has the Old Testament scriptures to which he may appeal. Your theology must deny both the Old and the New Testaments. You reject the God of trinitarians, but also the God of Bible-believing non-trinitarians. I have no reluctance to call such rejection of the words of the prophets, of Christ, and of the apostles as "heresy." If this is not heresy, what doctrines of God could possibly warrant such a term?

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steve
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by steve » Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:08 pm

Hi Jepne,
However, because I see in Paidion's ways a man who is truly seeking to know God, which, Jesus says, is eternal life, it has been difficult to read the sarcasm, put downs, foolish accusations of thinking with his emotions, and labeling of Paidion as a heretic. This does no service to the cause of Christ.
I know that Paidion is your husband, and it is proper that a wife sympathize with her husband. However, very sincere heretics—no doubt, some of them very likable—have done harm to the body of Christ and the lives of Christians. Paul delivered two men over to Satan for the (seemingly) much less severe error of teaching the resurrection is past. Paidion is a sweet guy. I know, because I have spent time with him. Joseph Smith may also have had his virtues, but this does not cancel his obligation to preach faithfully, or else stand public criticism for his harmful errors. There is no way that you could view your own husband as another Joseph Smith (nor do I), but his responsibility is no less than was his to stand for the truth or face correction.

There is no more sarcasm in my statements to or about Paidion than what can be found in his own posts—nor, for that matter, in the prophets, Jesus and Paul. Sarcasm is a rhetorical device. We all face it from our detractors, and, case-by-case, we ought to recognize its validity or invalidity as a form of argumentation. To say that Paidion thinks with his emotions may sound unkind, if he thinks that this is not what he is doing. However, one needs only to read his frequent responses to see that, where a rational rejoinder is called for, his argument only amounts to, "I don't feel that a God who does that would be loving." Emotions may be instructive, or misleading, but no one should have any difficulty recognizing when they are making up the entirety of an argument.

Those who know me know that I shun the word "heresy" as often as I can. I have not called dispensationalism, Calvinism, full-preterism, or even non-trinitarianism "heresy"—though my disagreement with them is near total. This ought to make one curious when I break my habit and actually call something a heresy. Why do I do so in this case? Simply, because these other false views are held by persons who feel constrained to discipline their beliefs by conformity to scripture. That a man may honestly misunderstand scripture is understandable—and, to my mind, excusable.

The false doctrine of God taught by Paidion, by contrast, is not disciplined by scripture, but by sentiment. Anyone who doubts this may simply notice the vast amount of scriptures that directly contradict him, and which have been pointed out to him. He has not attempted to answer one in twenty of the challenges, and simply argues that those biblical writers would have thought differently, had they understood Jesus as well as Paidion does. This dislodges his theology from any foundation other than his emotions—and does not shrink from denying the majority of what God has spoken through His prophets, apostles and Christ.
I never hear him talk about or to others in the manner in which he has been treated on this forum. It has been a real disappointment to see this blatant disrespect as I see him, day by day, 'breaking his head' over these important issues of the faith, and laboring to give you his best.
Once, several years ago, I got pretty hard on him on this very subject, because of his refusal to engage honestly and rationally with the points raised against his view. At that time (I think that was the time, when unbeknown to any of us) he was facing a legal crisis and must have been very distracted. He posted saying that his mind had been muddled lately and that he was going to have to withdraw from the dialogue. As I recall, he also appealed to the infirmity of his age. Upon hearing these things, I was sympathetic toward him, and regretted having held his feet so much to the fire.

However, he came back, months later, without any such excuses, ignoring the previously unanswered challenges, and lodged his attack against biblical Christianity in the very same arguments, and with the very same disdain for truthful interaction. Of late, he has taken up the promotion of this heresy as his primary campaign here. When pressed too hard at one thread to answer challenges, he eventually has left that thread, and shortly afterward, has opened a brand new one, on the same subject, making the same points. He argues at one thread until he becomes embarrassed by his own inability to face the scriptures and Christ's words honestly, so he repeats the ploy. In this manner, he has either started or dominated at least six to ten threads for the dissemination of his errors—and demonstrates no greater honesty at any one than at another. This is a matter of extreme dishonesty on his part—though he may not be admitting this to himself.

If you wish to plead that he is distracted, or losing his grip on reason, due to age or infirmity, then I will certainly temper my remarks, and lower my expectations. However, if he is of sound mind, then he is responsible to defend his statements against challenges, or not make them. He should not complain that he is not allowed to make plainly heretical assertions and be allowed to skate by, without reproof from those charged with maintaining the integrity of the forum.

If any new threads are started by him on this forum, before he has honestly faced his challengers here, they will be deleted. We seldom ban anyone from this forum. My reluctance to do so should be obvious by my toleration of Paidion's hijinx at this and other threads, despite the disingenuousness of his behavior. Paidion has been a participant here for many years, and I have often supported him when he was wrongly attacked or misunderstood on other points. It is only on this hobby horse of his that I have seen the dishonesty to which I refer.

When we have banned people from this forum in the past (I can remember three or four cases only), it was never because I disagreed with them. If Paidion should find himself banned, it will not be because we do not tolerate extreme disagreement (for example, I would not delete his former posts, no matter how much I disagree with them), but because his behavior in playing fast and loose with honesty (the same offense that has gotten others banned) has become intolerable.

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Paidion
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by Paidion » Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:08 pm

Steve, you wrote:First, because you are admitting that God struck a man blind because he was sinful (while arguing that this would be a cruel thing to do to an innocent man). Yet, you have argued consistently that God does not stoop to such acts of physical judgment, even on sinners.
Using your own terminology, I would say that your presumptions are stunning. First you presume that I disbelieve that God would ever cause pain, blindness, etc. under any circumstances. Second, you presume that I think it is all right for God to punish retributively the magician. And so I prove myself inconsistent. Both presumptions are incorrect. For decades I have believed that God administers whatever it takes to set a person right. In this life, the person may respond positively to God's treatment and repent, or he may not. It is not recorded whether Elymas repented or not. But I bet he learned to no longer oppose the servants of God.

This is a totally different situation from that of the man who was born blind. Jesus Himself said that the man was born blind not because he sinned, and not because his parents sinned. I am surprised that you cannot see that this is an entirely different case, and that for God to cause him to be born blind would be unjust, and totally contrary to God's character. It doesn't make sense to say that God caused him to be born blind in order that many years later (perhaps when he was 20 years old or more) God might heal him. Clearly God could display his works of restoring blind people without making anyone blind at birth. There are countless people born blind that God could display his works of healing without causing someone to be born blind for this purpose.

I am surprised that you cannot accept the possibility that my reading of the passage through changing the punctuation might be correct.

That the works of God might be displayed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

Using the royal "we" here, Jesus says that He must do the works of the Father who sent Him while He is still able to do so. Then Jesus goes ahead carrying out the Father's works by anointing the man's eyes with mud, and then telling him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The man comes back seeing. God has healed him. Jesus does this that the healing work of God might be displayed in the blind man.

As for the Trinity, you affirm that you believe in it; at the same time claiming to believe only the things that are found in the Bible. The Trinity is not found in the Bible—except in 1John 5:7 of Textus Receptus and the translations of it. It was added to the text in the ninth century. See the Bible Researcher's article below:

http://www.bible-researcher.com/comma.html

If you have a personal relationship with God, I suggest you get down on your knees and ask Him whether you are dealing with your opposition to my beliefs in a manner that is pleasing to Him.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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steve
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Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by steve » Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:46 pm

I am surprised that you cannot see that this is an entirely different case, and that for God to cause him to be born blind would be unjust, and totally contrary to God's character.
The only way an act can be unjust is if it violates the rights of some person. Justice is the upholding of the rights of others. If you can show me where it says (or make an argument why we should believe) that humans have a basic right to see, then I will agree that to deprive a man of sight is unjust. Of course, I would have to then call God unjust, since, by your own admission, he took away Elymas' sight, Saul's sight, and (according to God's words in the burning bush) the sight of all blind people. God owes no man sight. That is why I do not think it an injustice that I have to wear glasses—and could go blind entirely.

Sight is a special blessing. Like many special blessings, when they are widely distributed, and taken for granted, we tend to believe that we deserve them. The same is true of western prosperity, good health and even the knowledge of God. There is no injustice in God's depriving one man of sight, while giving sight to others, just as there is no injustice in God's depriving me of large muscles or a beard, while giving them to many others. Your view of justice, like the rest of your theology is based upon sentiment, not reality.

It seems strange that you believe a man's evil actions provide a worthy justification for God's inflicting blindness, but you do not think the glory of God to be an equal justification for anything. This is because your arguments are humanistic, not God-centered. Man was made for God's glory (Isa.43:7). Whether we eat or drink, it is to be for the glory of God (1 Cor.10:31). The reason we are to bring forth good fruit and do good works is so that we and others may glorify God (John 15:8; Matt.5:16). Everything in the universe exists to declare the glory of God. Yet, you do not think that the interests of the glory of God are sufficient to justify a man enduring inconvenience, pain, imprisonment or disability. Fortunately, there are disabled Christians who think about things more scripturally, and see their hardships as occasions to glorify God—and rejoice in them—Acts 5:41; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10; Phil.1:20; James 1:2; 1 Peter 4:12-14 (I don't know why I provide the scriptures for you, since you invariably ignore them).
As for the Trinity, you affirm that you believe in it; at the same time claiming to believe only the things that are found in the Bible.


If you really think my view of the trinity is not based upon scripture, I recommend to you my lecture on the subject. Whether you agree with the arguments or not (you won't) you will be in no position to question whether my belief is or is not based in scripture. By the way, I do not appeal to 1 John 5:7. http://www.thenarrowpath.com/mp3s/kno/kno05.mp3

Singalphile
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Joined: Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:46 pm

Re: Why did Jesus stop reading?

Post by Singalphile » Sat Jan 14, 2017 1:33 pm

Biblically, a "heresy" (hairesis) is a sect, division, faction, and a "heretic" (hairetikos) is one disposed to such, a schismatic. Debating and disagreement is fine, as far as I know, as long as those involved won't get all heretical (i.e., divisive and factious) about it.

I created a thread about that a while ago: "Doctrine", "Heresy", and "Truth".
... that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. John 5:23

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