[TruthTalk] Bible vs "Community"

[ShieldsFamily]

Hi Debbie,   Thanks for sharing! I have no disagreement with any of what you have written below.  No one has said that we have ONLY scripture.  We DO, however, “arrive at relationship with Christ by the act of reading the Bible”.  The Holy Spirit actually indwells God’s written Word and illuminates our understanding and enhances our relationship with Christ.  Haven’t you ever felt your spirit burn with joyful understanding and the Presence of God within you as you read the Bible???  His Spirit and His written Word work hand in hand to do His work within us.    THEN we are ready to be the Church to each other; speaking oracles and correcting, exhorting, encouraging, edifying each other as the Spirit directs.  Our relationship with each other, on human terms, is simply an outgrowth of first having a relationship with Him. Relationship with God is the horse, relationship with each other is the cart.  Humanistic liberalism gets the cart before the horse.  Community is not our God, nor is it the vehicle by which we find Him.  It is just one of the consequences of walking in the Spirit.                “Within the spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any immediate relationship of one to another, whereas human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for immediate contact with other human souls, just as in the flesh there is the urge for physical merger with other flesh.             Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself…It desires to be irresistible, to rule. Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.”                                                                         Dietrich Bonhoeffer ~ Life Together   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Debbie Sawczak Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 8:27 AM To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Subject: Re: [Bulk] Re: [TruthTalk] Re [Truth Talk] Saved -- Salvation -- and th...   Regarding the below...yes, their relationship with Jesus (which, Izzy, involves his "indwelling presence"), shared as members of a community.   The original point, if I recall the distant beginning of this thread correctly, is not that we have less than Scripture, but that we have more than Scripture: we have Scripture and we have a vital relationship with Christ, who lives in us by his Spirit. Do we arrive at the relationship with Christ by the act of reading the Bible, or is it the relationship/indwelling that empowers and illuminates the Bible to us? The Word is before the word.   We've talked about oral tradition elsewhere in this thread; the Good News was no doubt being repeated over and over in those earliest days of the church, and part of the ministry and inspiration of the Holy Spirit was some believers correcting other believers, whether orally or in writing. God did not need people to "decide" which writings (or utterances) were inspired in order for those writings/utterances to have power and be used by the Spirit through the relationship people had with Christ. (In fact, that will have been part of the set of criteria used to identify the canon.) In any case, the decisions that established the canon (whether OT or NT), in the absence of one, must have been themselves inspired as the result of a relationship; that's part of what we are saying when we say we believe the Bible, is it not? Now that we have the canon, the Spirit still enlivens the Scripture to our hearts in the same way he did before the decision--and graciously makes use of all our faculties in doing so.   Am I making any sense to anybody?   Debbie      The Old Testament scriptures were accessed by the Jews.   They were Jewish scripture, Linda, not Gentile scriptures.  You would not find a Gentile Christian walking around the countryside with the "Bible" under arm in those early years.      I made it clear that I was speaking of the Gentile Church and I will add -  the Gentile Church of the first century and early second century  --  after the fall of Jerusalem and it's associated impact on the Early Church.   And, the "Bible" is a  specific book  containing N.T. scriptures ...............  what did these folks do until the books of the "Bible" were decided upon by the Church?  Relationship !!!   Their relationship with Jesus.  I am not fostering some false teaching here.   If you don't believe in a "relationship" with Jesus that is something other than Bible study, then we do have a disagreement.    My reading of your posts show a "relatioship" that is valued (by you) and as distinct a circumstance as prayer or fellowship or the breaking of bread. Jd __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com