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Well, Judy, I am sorry you could not see you were
sinking. I threw you a rope, hoping to pull you ashore. What did you do? You
used it to hang yourself. The good news is, there is resurrection. I'm thankful
for the opportunity you have given me to help you, though. Maybe others will not
be so brazen to miss Augustine.
Til next time,
Bill
P.S. I will reply to one of your comments and then
let it go.
Judy wrote> In Christ Jews have no advantage because all must come by faith and we (Gentiles) are adopted, being wild we are grafted into the tree with Jesus the root. How do you reconcile being adopted with this doctrine of "natural generation"? I reply > I don't remember calling it "natural generation." Are you putting words in my mouth again? Jews and Gentiles alike are included in Abraham by way of their inclusion in Christ (and this goes back to the go'el discussion), because he is the true Jew, the only Jew. All others are counted in him, and it is not just Isaac's descendents who are included (i.e. the jews) but gentiles as well. This inclusion is adoption. The adoption is in Christ to the Father. The Gospel makes us aware of our adoption, and faith is the means by which we participate in our adoption, and eternal life is the inheritance of our adoption, and on and on; but the adoption itself is in Christ. I think maybe part of the disconnect you are going through may have something to do with the way in which you are dichotomizing the idea of personhood. It's not like spirit and body are segregated, the spirit being completely separate and set away from the body, and the body from the spirit. The human body is an integrated whole. There is spirit, yes; and there is body. The two make a whole -- it's kind of like there is mind and body, distinct but interrelated. When Christ defeated the spiritual aspects of fallenness, he defeated the physical aspects, as well. He rose in the body, too, remember. Salvation saved the whole man and not just his spirit. The resurrection will include some sort of physicality -- restored, recreated, glorified, however one might say it, but always physical, always spiritual, always the whole man.
Judy, if you haven't already read my first message like this one, please read this one instead. I have corrected some typos in this one. The content remains intact. jt: No problem Mr. Bill but I hope you don't mind if I respond mainly to your newer points for the sake of brevity.Judy, If you will bear with me through a short anecdote, I will try to spin it into something that explains my fears regarding the direction in which I see this discussion taking us. After Augustine the Church went in a decidedly different direction from where it had been heading prior to the Pelagian v. Augustinian controversy. <big snip> I can see the damage it did to the Church. Because after Augustine, to say anything that may have gotten the church back on track, was to say something that might just get you labeled a Pelagian. Hence the Church, and I mean all the Church, is now influenced wrongly by these two men. jt: How so? And why does that need be? I've not spent a lot of time studying the "Church Fathers" they are OK when I need some historical information but not for doctrine. We have the scriptures same as Israel did and this is where we should go for doctrine, for reproof, and for instruction in righteousness. If men want to follow the errors of other men then everyone is going to wind up in the ditch. bt: Where Augustine ended on his positions about sin, humanity, the grace of God, predestination, and free will, cemented and thereby cursed the entire Church ever after him. jt: I don't know if I would paint with as wide a brush Mr. Bill; I don't see the RCC as "the entire Church" in fact during the 4th and 5th centuries and from then on they were into the dark ages which some today attempt to deny. bt: I do think we should be asking ourselves a question that Augustine may have missed: How can I be right and at the same time be wise about it? jt: For a start we can refuse to allow the RCC to elevate either of us to doctor of the Church and/or part of their magisterium.:>) jt: I wrote and continue to believe that "It is impossible to understand spiritual concepts using natural reasoning - the apostle Paul taught that "we should use words that the Holy Ghost teaches comparing spiritual things with spiritual (1 Corinthians 2:13); so it may help to take a look and see if when God is speaking of natural or spiritual generation when he uses the word "seed" (because I keep hearing on TT that the reason Jesus had to have sinful flesh going all the way back to the first Adam is because he was the seed of the "woman" (Mary). bt: I think Mary assumed a fallen nature from Adam, this is sure, but the promise in the proto-evangel was given to Eve. She is the one who received the promise of the Seed who would crush the Serpent's head. Immediately following the account of Adam and "Woman’s" disobedience (Gen 3.8-15), and in their first post-fall encounter with God, rather than smiting them dead, God blessed Woman for her honest confession (v. 13); this He did in two ways: (1) by putting hostility (v. 15) between her and the serpent, whom she had trusted; and (2) by placing the same hostility between her “Seed” (masculine singular) and the serpent’s “seed” (feminine singular; by the way, this is the only time in the Scriptures where the Hebrew word “zera” is used with a feminine ending). God then predicts that “He”—the Seed of Woman—will crush the serpent. (Assuming I did slip up when talking about Eve by calling her Mary, I hope this was helpful.)jt: I don't know who slipped up but I understand what you are saying. I see the scenario in the garden a little differently. By the time God came calling them both A&E had been invaded by "another kingdom" a dishonest one and immediately they began to show it's fruit by avoiding taking responsibility for their actions and accusing others (both traits of unregenerated fallen man); the woman blamed the serpent, the man blamed both the woman and God (for giving her to him). I had never heard of the Hebrew gender thing but it doesn't change anything. Satan is only a female in Mel Gibsons movie. wt: <snip> If you will follow the genealogy of Jesus through the unfolding of the OT, you will also see a concerted effort on behalf of the evil one to cut-off, i.e., to destroy, the bloodline leading to the birth of the Holy One of Israel. I think this is so because we can also see that the serpent of old took the promise of pending judgment to heart. jt: This may be how it appears in retrospect - however Satan does nothing without permission from God and even then only when we (mortals)open a door or give him ground to become involved (Proverbs 26:5). Because of the cross he has lost the authority given him by the first Adam. bt: After the "curse" and the promise of a Seed to come, Eve gave birth to a son. Look at her words, "I have been given a Man from the Lord" (Gen 4.1). That "man" was Cain. Now look what happened in the drama of the Cain / Abel event. Evil caused Cain to rebel against the Lord, and Abel was then murdered by the evil brother. jt: Cain chose the sin that was lying at the door even after being given a warning; more evidence of mankinds fallenness. bt: But had the evil one destroyed the bloodline? No, he had not; moreover, neither had Eve lost faith in God's faithfulness to fulfill his promise. We can see this in the birth of her next son, Seth. "Seth" means "Name." Look what Eve said when she gave birth to him: "God has appointed another Seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed" (Gen 4.25). You see, Judy, Eve may have thought that she had been confused during the time of believing that Cain was going to be the human fulfillment of God's promise rather than Abel; but she had not given up hope that there would come a human Seed through her blood, nor had she changed her mind to think that the Seed-promise was strictly a spiritual one and not physical. Instead, she gave her new son the Name which identified him as the Seed bearer. jt: You sure read a lot into the text Mr. Bill. We don't know that this is what Eve was thinking just because she referred to her sons as seed. bt: Now let's jump ahead a few thousand years and pick up the Line again, and this time let's also see what happens when the Church fails to take seriously the genealogy of Jesus. I am thinking here of the story of Tamar and Onan and Judah (Gen 38.6-26, I won't include it here, but it might be helpful to read it now). The RCC uses this story as the basis of and warrant for its teachings against birth control. jt: I don't pay any mind to the teachings of the RCC, do you? Neither do I believe Judah, his sons and Tamar were all taken up with this seed of the woman; back then they had a difficult enough time surviving as twelve tribes and the custom of a brother giving his seed to his brothers wife was to preserve their tribe and hold onto their inheritance. Onan was in rebellion. bt: Tamar, refusing to be unfaithful to the promise of the Lord, tricks Judah into impregnating her. Thus the Seed is preserved and the Serpent fails once again to thwart the judgment. How do we know that this is the correct way to interpret this story, and thereby conclude that the RCC was off-base in its conclusion, the reason being that they failed to take into account the human lineage of Jesus? Look what Judah says when he discovers that he is the one who impregnated Tamar. He says she has been more faithful than he. More faithful? How can that be? She sinned too, didn't she? more faithful than Judah, because Tamar remembered the promise of the Seed, knowing that it must past through Judah and herself, but Judah had disregarded it. Finally he comes to his senses and realizes what a devastating effect the withholding of his last son from Tamar would have had, had she not done what she did. Hence he says, "She has been more righteous than I, because I did not give her to Shelah my son" (38.26). jt: Judah finally realized that Tamar did what she did because of his unwillingness to do the right thing by her. This business about the generational seed seems obsessive to me. Abraham and Sarah had been given a promise also but did they understand how God would do it? When they tried to fulfill it by doing the fleshly generational thing it was to their own hurt and that of future generations... so how were Eve, Judah and Tamar so all knowing and all wise?... bt: Allow me to address a couple of other things in light of what I have just said. <snip Rom 9:6-8)> Judy, I think that you have maybe kind of missed it here. The "seed" (pl.) of Abraham were two: Ishmael and Isaac. jt: Abraham had more children with the woman he married after Sarah. He had six more with that one, so Abraham had lots of seed out there. bt: "But in Isaac the Seed (sg.) shall be called." (The Seed is singular here, I believe -- and this is because there is an interpretive task involved any time we see this word, because sperma in the Greek is the same word whether singular or plural) Hence the "children of the flesh" here are the descendents of Ishmael, and "the children of the promise" are counted "in the Seed (sg)" because the Seed is the descendent of Isaac, who was the child of promise, who came through Sarah in fulfillment of God's covenant faithfulness to Abraham. This passage has spiritual connotations, no doubt, but it is about the flesh and blood of Jesus, before it is anything else. jt: I don't see the distinction Mr. Bill - Romans 9 spells it out. Not only there but when the Jews were hanging on to natural generation saying they were Abraham's seed Jesus told them in no uncertain terms that this (natural generation) was not good enough - and that if they would not repent that God could raise up rocks to praise Him. Also remember when His mother and brothers came to take him home and he told the crowd he was teaching that his mother and brothers are those who do the will of the Father? Does Jesus say one thing and mean something else. bt: <snip Galatians 3:16) Paul is saying that Jews and Gentiles alike are included in Abraham by way of their inclusion in Christ (and this goes back to the go'el discussion), and it is not just Isaac's descendents who are included (i.e. the Jews) but gentiles as well. jt: In Christ Jews have no advantage because all must come by faith and we (Gentiles) are adopted, being wild we are grafted into the tree with Jesus the root. How do you reconcile being adopted with this doctrine of "natural generation"? judyt God allows the devil to raise up heretics |
- [TruthTalk] Please Hear Me Out Before Ousting Me Judy Taylor
