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Do differences in practices of faith mean we follow the same Jesus Christ?

Scott1

Well-Known Member
If we do not act by authority of Christ, we cannot be the Body of Christ.
It's interesting that you look to restrict who can be in the body of Christ, but then object when the RCC attempts to do the same thing to you with Communion..... :confused:
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
It's interesting that you look to restrict who can be in the body of Christ, but then object when the RCC attempts to do the same thing to you with Communion..... :confused:
How can this post be interpreted as being restrictive??? I didn't say anything about who can be in the Body of Christ. I simply said that the Body of Christ acts upon Christ's authority, or it's not the Body of Christ. Are you saying that the Body of Christ does not act upon Christ's authority?
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Uh... that's the Spirit's job. That WAS my point.
so...even though you want me to use the Bible to prove a point, and, even though you use the bible to prove a point, we don't really need the Bible, because we can all just sit around and magically dream up what the Spirit wants us to know? The Bible has no place in informing us of what God is doing in humanity? If that was your point, I wouldn't put it on the end of a sword.
 

Scott1

Well-Known Member
How can this post be interpreted as being restrictive???
I'm just wondering what the point of your posts are such as "And yet, you do not know the Church, nor do you abide in community, nor do you recognize the Spirit at work within that community. Interesting."....

Shouldn't we have unity/communion no matter what?
 

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
so...even though you want me to use the Bible to prove a point, and, even though you use the bible to prove a point, we don't really need the Bible, because we can all just sit around and magically dream up what the Spirit wants us to know? The Bible has no place in informing us of what God is doing in humanity? If that was your point, I wouldn't put it on the end of a sword.
So, you want us to DISMISS the role of the Spirit? Would you like to crucify it as well?

I can see how men have destroyed so much that is supposed to be God's. I guess if you don't trust the Spirit, you are in a sad shape indeed.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
I'm just wondering what the point of your posts are such as "And yet, you do not know the Church, nor do you abide in community, nor do you recognize the Spirit at work within that community. Interesting."....

Shouldn't we have unity/communion no matter what?
that was exactly my point. The writer commented that he knew the Spirit by its fruits (part of which is the Church, itself), yet he does not recognize the Spirit in the Church. I found that interesting. The Spirit serves to bring us into community, not separate us from community.
 

doppelganger

Through the Looking Glass
In fact, you are communicating through words when you tell me about your experience of Spirit.
I'm not telling you about my experience of the Spirit. And I'd be the first to tell you that words aren't going to communicate it anyway, unless you already know.

Words can and do inform us of Spirit. In fact, it was probably words by which you came to know that the still, small voice you were hearing was the Spirit, and not dimentia.
Be careful not to presume to know what I am referring to as the voice of the Spirit. Words convey an illusion of 'truth.' They are not the truth. What they signify might be the truth, but it depends on what the person using them does with them. :rainbow1:

If we do not act by authority of Christ, we cannot be the Body of Christ.
Nonsense. Christ does not work through the institutions of human social power.

And yet, you do not know the Church, nor do you abide in community, nor do you recognize the Spirit at work within that community. Interesting.
Wrong on all three counts. If you consider the "Church" to be a social institution governed and defined by humans, their egos and their economics, then you would be the one doesn't know the Church, abide in community with those in Christ, nor recognize the Spirit at work.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
So, you want us to DISMISS the role of the Spirit? Would you like to crucify it as well?

I can see how men have destroyed so much that is supposed to be God's. I guess if you don't trust the Spirit, you are in a sad shape indeed.
No, I don't want us to dismiss the Spirit. To dismiss the Spirit would be to dismiss God. It would be to dismiss the Church. It would be to dismiss my own soul. But I think it behooves us, if we're going to read the Bible as part of the Spirit's witness to us, to understand how the Spirit impacted the writers -- to understand just what it is they're saying. Use your intellect. Then the Spirit will help you integrate that information to make it part of you.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
QUOTE]I'm not telling you about my experience of the Spirit. And I'd be the first to tell you that words aren't going to communicate it anyway, unless you already know.
[/QUOTE]
You said you know the Spirit. That would be...an experience. And you did use words to try to convey that.
Words convey an illusion of 'truth.' They are not the truth. What they signify might be the truth, but it depends on what the person using them does with them.
Ok. But they're all we've got, because we are verbal people. Verbage is what binds us together as community. God spoke the universe into existent order. Christ is the Word. God began with the word. it must be a pretty good starting point. Then we decide how to dispose of it.
Nonsense. Christ does not work through the institutions of human social power.
Nonsense, yourself. Christ does work through human institution.
Wrong on all three counts. If you consider the "Church" to be a social institution governed and defined by humans, their egos and their economics, then you would be the one doesn't know the Church, abide in community with those in Christ, nor recognize the Spirit at work.
I don't consider the Church to be primarily a "social institution." I consider the Church to be primarily the Body of Christ. Plus, I didn't know my being cognizant of the Spirit was conditional upon your definition of "Church."
 

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
Use your intellect.
Not on your life. That is the way to ego. Use your HEART. Let God write all over it!

Ephesians 1:15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. NIV

Note how any reference to "intellect" is absent in this passage? I would suggest it's absent in MOST passages.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Not on your life. That is the way to ego. Use your HEART. Let God write all over it!

Ephesians 1:15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. NIV

Note how any reference to "intellect" is absent in this passage? I would suggest it's absent in MOST passages.
Did you know that, in the view of the early writers, "heart" was where you did your thinking -- not your feeling. when we hear of "stiff-necked people," it referred to those whose necks were stiff -- in other words, those who could not let what they saw and heard pass into their understanding. When God hardened Pharaoh's heart, it means that God prevented him from knowing -- made him stupid.

Your Biblical passage here, as well as your use of it, both prove the point that we really need to understand what the writer is saying, before we can determine what the Spirit might have been prompting him with. "Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened" is a hope for intellectual understanding.
 

Scott1

Well-Known Member
"Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened" is a hope for intellectual understanding.
Opinions vary....

The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.
CCC
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Opinions vary....

The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.
CCC
the heart is the place of understanding. In ancient Semitic thought, the thinking was done in the heart -- not the brain.
 

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
kardias, or understanding is quite different from gnosis or knowledge. You are indeed confusing the two here.
 

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
In fact, it is kardias which turns simple gnosis into a deep pistis. It has little to do with an intellectual assent.
 

doppelganger

Through the Looking Glass
In fact, it is kardias which turns simple gnosis into a deep pistis. It has little to do with an intellectual assent.
Precisely. It has to do with feeling: compassion that transcends the distinctions we make in words and other symbols that divide the world up into useful, albeit arbitrary, pieces.

Perhaps "black magic" is the casting of words into "reality" without an awareness of the processes of language to create illusions, deceive, and interfere with the work of the Spirit.
 

Jeremy Mason

Well-Known Member
Did you know that, in the view of the early writers, "heart" was where you did your thinking -- not your feeling. when we hear of "stiff-necked people," it referred to those whose necks were stiff -- in other words, those who could not let what they saw and heard pass into their understanding. When God hardened Pharaoh's heart, it means that God prevented him from knowing -- made him stupid.

Your Biblical passage here, as well as your use of it, both prove the point that we really need to understand what the writer is saying, before we can determine what the Spirit might have been prompting him with. "Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened" is a hope for intellectual understanding.

side note: pharaoh hardened his own heart in the beginning of that story
 

doppelganger

Through the Looking Glass
You said you know the Spirit. That would be...an experience. And you did use words to try to convey that.
That's not a description of an experience. It's a metaphor.

Ok. But they're all we've got, because we are verbal people.
We have much more. We have imagery, we have feeling, we have passion, we have aesthetics, we have mathematics.
Verbage is what binds us together as community.
No they aren't. Verbage divides. That's it's purpose - to fragment reality into categories.

God spoke the universe into existent order. Christ is the Word. God began with the word. it must be a pretty good starting point.
Are you God? Are you ready to take up God's tools and speak your own universe into existent order - and to take responsibility for what you've wrought? Do you have the wisdom to know good and evil and thereby become like God? If not, I suggest you put down your faith in grammar and step away before you hurt someone. :)

Christ does work through human institution.
Which one? I find this highly ironic coming from a follower of a "Protestant" denomination spun-off from the Roman Catholic Church. :rolleyes:

I don't consider the Church to be primarily a "social institution."
Yes you do. You are talking about the athority of human beings to speak on behalf of God according to certain rules that you recognize. That's a social institution.

Plus, I didn't know my being cognizant of the Spirit was conditional upon your definition of "Church."
Yes, it's quite pompous to tell someone what is and is not the "Church" isn't it? ;)
 
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