Christians--Do Evangelicals Believe Everyone Else Going to Hell? (Jesus Christ, gospel)

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

Don't forget CS Lewis.

Yeah, I forgot about him. Too bad the missionaries didn't find him before he died. He'd have made a great Mormon.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

Yeah, I forgot about him. Too bad the missionaries didn't find him before he died. He'd have made a great Mormon.

Ha ha!

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

Yeah, I forgot about him. Too bad the missionaries didn't find him before he died. He'd have made a great Mormon.

And you'd make a great Episcopalian.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

And you'd make a great Episcopalian.

I'm flattered! Thank you!

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

I'm flattered! Thank you!

It's not too late...

[Ratiocinative]

Originally Posted by budhabee

I asked you about what your inner feelings were telling you. What your heart was telling you. Are you a compassionate being or not. Their is something evil with that concept the way people interpret it. That is my thought. When I first moved to the reservation as a pre teen. I made many friends. I became interested in their religion and in their holy outlook on life. They already have the holy spirit in their lives which was a gift from Jesus. What do you want? Where have I "made stuff up?"

I would like as many people to be saved as possible, which is why I say only what is the truth concerning salvation. Lying won't help save anyone. As far as feelings go, they don't have any effect on reality, but if you want to talk feelings then I feel the need to tell the truth rather than make up lies. God has told us, through the Bible, that the only way to be saved is to believe in Christ, so I am sticking to that. If your friends do believe in Jesus then that is great, but if they do not then they do not have the Holy Spirit because it is only given to those who believe.

[Orontes]

Originally Posted by Dunemeister

Yes, you're absolutely right on this point. The Christian sect retained continuity with the Judaism that preceded it, but certainly trinitarian thinking was a development and variation on Jewish monotheism. Trinitarianism retains the singularity of God but puts a novel twist in the tail, no doubt. But it's still a recognizably monotheistic idea.



Yes, I agree. The trinitarian conception is an innovation. It was demanded because of the peculiar ways Christians talked about Jesus. For instance, Jesus was consistently included with God as the bestower of blessings rather than with the rest of humanity as the receiver of blessings. This occurred a great deal in the epistles: "Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." In revelation, Jesus is called "Lord God Almighty," is depicted as sharing God's throne, and receives the same worship as the Father. If a human is going to receive the dignities that Judaism had traditionally reserved for God alone yet retain monotheism, Christians had some explaining to do. Eventually, the church settled on trinitarianism. So certainly Christians must concede that trinitarianism is a theological novelty.

Hi Dunemeister,

It sounds like we're agreed that the metaphysics of positing a strict Jewish monotheism is distinct from any trinitarian schema and that the latter is indeed a novelty and/or innovation. I think that positioning presents a problem for any who claim Jesus as Divine. On conceptual grounds it entails introducing a different God, as a God with some component of three is not the same as a God that is simply one i.e. indivisible. On historical grounds the view fails to explain or account for the fact of the Jesus Movement being a Jewish phenomenon. I think the view therefore creates unnecessary problems for a Christian perspective. I think you would be interested in the work of Margaret Barker* (herself an Anglican Biblical Scholar) who addresses the topic of why a movement, with the ideas of Jesus as Divine but not the Father, would have been able to develop or have any truck within Jewry.

The problem with textual criticism with respect to the OT is the impossibility of reconstructing what biblical texts were written first, second, third, and so forth. It's really not possible to reconstruct how developments have taken place. Even if we accept the idea that the Jewish notion evolved over time (perfectly reasonable), it's not possible to demonstrate with confidence (that is, without employing extraordinarily questionable assumptions) how it evolved. In short, in this sort of "scholarship", the ruling assumptions tend to be one author's theory of religion, which is generally unsupported by evidence. Based on that theory, a development scheme is proposed. Hence we get billions of theories about what developed first, last, and in between, with each theory's theoretical underpinning consisting only of the imagination of its proponent. It's far better, I think, to simply treat the text as a whole. So we must interpret Genesis in light of the panoply of Old Testament revelation and vice versa. And when we handle the text that way, there's no question that the Jewish conception of God is creational convenantal monotheism. And there can be no question that this was the Jewish conception in Jesus' day.

I think you paint too stark a picture. While any historical analysis suffers due to the necessary gap in time, there is still quite a lot that can be said about the historicity of a text or compilation. Moreover, there is a vast amount of extra-Tanakh material that allows context and dating. Even restricting things to simply looking to the content of the text demonstrates tensions and multiple views are evident. As things may relate to any strict monotheistic claims: the fact remains that "Elohim" is commonly used. The word is a plural. In Hebrew, one can speak of God in a completely singular form: "El" for example. Therefore, one must assume either the authors who repeatedly used the plural were confused, or there is something else a'foot: any something else undercuts claims of a strict monotheism.



*Barker is the author of the work I already referenced earlier: "The Great Angel"

[Izdaari]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

Yeah, I forgot about him. Too bad the missionaries didn't find him before he died. He'd have made a great Mormon.

Lewis came very near to being Catholic, but he was not willing to consent in advance to whatever new doctrines the Vatican might think up. That's the same reason I couldn't be Catholic. Well, Roman Catholic anyway... Liberal Catholic and Old Catholic are possible, but those are much smaller.