Milesius wrote:You are full of it. Take the Apostles' Creed and append to it the following anathema:
But those who say God the Father has one or more wives, is "a man like one of you," that He "dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did," "work[ed] out his kingdom with fear and trembling," or that "the mind of man is as immortal as God himself," let him be anathema.
cksalmon wrote:Using the creeds as foundational criteria unilaterally excludes the authors of New Testament?
Yes. The Apostle's Creed is close (after all, it is based on the New Testament), but there's nothing about any Holy Catholic Church anywhere in the New Testament. The Nicene Creed thoroughly excludes the authors of the New Testament.
cksalmon wrote:(I don't rely on the creeds as foundational criteria, myself, but what you've written, mak, just is what begging the question looks like in practice.)
I disagree. The creeds incorporate doctrinal and ecclesiastical developments that date to after the New Testament. To insist that they constitute the fundamental definition of Christianity is to insist that those Christians who existed prior to those doctrinal and ecclesiastical developments do not qualify.
Makelan you said, "This raises additional questions. If God chooses people to be a light to the rest of the world, do those who decide to follow that light later get chosen? If so, doesn't their decision effect their own salvation? If they are not chosen, what's the point of giving them a light?
I believe it all comes down to a simple dichotomy. If there are criteria that determine who is saved and who is not (whether or not we are aware of them) then our works and beliefs, etc., influence our salvation. If there are no criteria, then as far as we are concerned it is arbitrary. I've not seen anyone directly address this issue."
To me mind to have salvation without works would be like going to an excellent resturant watching people eat, discuss what to order but then get up and then leave hungry instead of actually participating.
For your question do those who respond to the light effect their salvation. Of course people locate and comeinto possession of their salvation through their choices, their desire for light truth and love. However these choices are not a surprise to God in Calvinist thought. Instead God is seen as enabling the choices, helping them find their true self.
So our choice certainly are critical to our salvation. But they may not determine God initial choices made before you were started. God is soveriegn to choose according to his own council.
I suspect if you try to fit Calvinist ideas into a picture of humans as having no beginning it will make no sense. In a view where people are created by Gods decision some decisions of God must preceed our decisions.
madeleine wrote:...and...Mormons are the only ones I know stuck on naming a church. Catholic means universal, which is the unity of faith.
You're equivocating. "Catholic" has multiple uses. Protestants often specify that they're not referring to the Catholic Church by the phrase "the Church catholic," but from about the third century on the word is usually clearly being used in the sense of the proper name of a specific organization. For instance, Cyril of Jerusalem urges travelling Catholics not to ask in a new town where the Lord's House or the Church is, but specifically where "the Catholic Church" is. Theodosius I, at the end of the fourth century, officially reserved the name "Catholic Christians" for members of "that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria." Augustine also clearly defines the "Catholic Church" as the proper name of the Roman Catholic Church. The practice of using the generic sense of the term "catholic" has grown in popularity in modern times.
madeleine wrote:One faith, one baptism. The Eucharist is found since the beginning. The description of our liturgy, is found since the beginning. Baptism, holy orders, Jesus Christ being defended as both human and divine.
Mormonism is not of this faith, so it is not possible to speak of Christian unity with Mormonism.
You need to undertake a more objective study of your church's origins.
madeleine wrote:Doctrines did not develop, practices have and still do.
maklelan wrote:The Nicene Creed thoroughly excludes the authors of the New Testament.
Okay, but that's where the real argument is, isn't it? Again: You'd need to argue for and demonstrate this before you assume it in your conclusion. Merely asserting it isn't particularly helpful or insightful.
If it's as "thoroughly exclusive" as you've assumed, your point is easily demonstrable, no?
huckelberry wrote:To me mind to have salvation without works would be like going to an excellent resturant watching people eat, discuss what to order but then get up and then leave hungry instead of actually participating.
For your question do those who respond to the light effect their salvation. Of course people locate and comeinto possession of their salvation through their choices, their desire for light truth and love. However these choices are not a surprise to God in Calvinist thought. Instead God is seen as enabling the choices, helping them find their true self. So our choice certainly are critical to our salvation. But they may not determine God initial choices made before you were started. God is soveriegn to choose according to his own council.
So can someone resist God's grace in your soteriology? In other words, if God chooses someone, can that person choose not to accept him, or is God's decision the only one that matters?
huckelberry wrote:I suspect if you try to fit Calvinist ideas into a picture of humans as having no beginning it will make no sense. In a view where people are created by Gods decision some decisions of God must preceed our decisions.
It's one thing for God's decision to precede our own, but it's another if God's decision precedes our own and overrules our own. If our decisions don't effect anything unless they just happen to agree with the decision God made before us, then our decisions don't really effect anything.
cksalmon wrote:Okay, but that's where the real argument is, isn't it? Again: You'd need to argue for and demonstrate this before you assume it in your conclusion. Merely asserting it isn't particularly helpful or insightful.
If it's as "thoroughly exclusive" as you've assumed, your point is easily demonstrable, no?
So, let's see that before we delve further.
The notion that Jesus is merely functionally subordinate to God but absolutely equal in essence conflicts with the the New Testament. The notion that Jesus and God are two persons within one being conflicts with the New Testament. The notion that Jesus was "very God of very God" conflicts with the New Testament.
Kishkumen wrote:Mak, I sincerely hope you don't believe your own BS. The funny thing is, I knew you would go with this diversionary quibble over the differences between political parties and religions.
I hardly call fundamental differences in form and function a "quibble" when it comes to using one as an analogy for the other.
Kishkumen wrote:I don't see how, absent your theological beliefs, we should expect the kind of continuity you seem to contend exists in religious identity. Since I don't accept your theological beliefs as real historical data (nor do I see why anyone other than your fellow believers should), I am afraid we are at an impasse.
The historicity of Christianity's religious truth claims is utterly immaterial here. All we need is a claim to be a Christian, and that demonstrably goes back to the mid-first century CE.
Kishkumen wrote:Thanks again, however, for illustrating what a complete waste of time it is to engage an apologist on practically anything. It is truly an exercise in futility.
I'm not an apologist, and religious identity in antiquity is actually a part of my formal training and a field in which I actively work. I don't see any indication that you're capable of engaging this topic on an adequate level of discourse. Your analogy was horrible and your comments above constitute little more than "Nu-uh!"
Kishkumen wrote:Mak, I sincerely hope you don't believe your own BS. The funny thing is, I knew you would go with this diversionary quibble over the differences between political parties and religions. I don't see how, absent your theological beliefs, we should expect the kind of continuity you seem to contend exists in religious identity. Since I don't accept your theological beliefs as real historical data (nor do I see why anyone other than your fellow believers should), I am afraid we are at an impasse. Thanks again, however, for illustrating what a complete waste of time it is to engage an apologist on practically anything. It is truly an exercise in futility.
Wow, bitter much?
maklelan has very nearly been consistently kind to almost everyone here, including you, and you act like this?