The arithmetic is straightforward and simple: If I do not believe what the Bible says about the date of Jesus’ death, then I must not believe that Christ is risen or that Christ is Lord. If I don’t accept the simple, straightforward fact of what the Bible teaches about the dates of Jesus’ birth and death, then I must not really be a Christian at all — just one of those liberal impostors your pastor warned you about.Conservative Christians obsessed with "inerrancy" do so to gloss over the fact that the Bible is not a textbook - it is not in total a statement of facts ("God created the earth 4000 years before he enfleshed his son. Here is the name of every head of household between Adam and Jesus. Jesus was born on December 25, 1 C.E. and he died on a day that has a complicated relationship with the full moon and the spring equinox.") The rejection of metaphor as "lies" or "errors" leads to the curious insistence that Jesus was a liar.
Funny thing, though: the Bible doesn’t actually say what year Jesus was born or what year he died. Any guess as to those dates is nothing more than that — a guess.
The Book of Daniel, he told Leggett, predicts that increased earthly devastation will mark the “End Time” and return of Christ. Paradoxically, Leggett notes, many fundamentalists see dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction not as an urgent call to action, but as God’s will. Within the religious right worldview, the wreck of the Earth can be seen as Good News!They have wagered the entire fate of the planet that their beliefs are true and accurate, and that prophesy will happen exactly as they have foretold. And if it (the rapture) doesn't happen, then in their minds it is just too early, or they didn't pray hard enough. Truly terrifying.
The humans have besmirched everything bestowed on them. They were given Paradise, they threw it away. They were given this planet, they destroyed it. They were favored best among all His endeavors, and some of them don't even believe He exists. And in spite of it all, He's shown them infinite fucking patience at every turn.--Bartleby, from Dogma
Neither may we compare any writings of men, though ever so holy, with those divine Scriptures; nor ought we to compare custom, or the great multitude, or antiquity, or succession of times or persons, or councils, decrees, or statutes, with the truth of God, for the truth is above all: for all men are of themselves liars, and more vain than vanity itself.Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would've been a decidedly minority view within Christendom prior to Luther's theses-nailing.
I called this an alien story from another world because it illustrates just how vastly different our view of the world and of God has become from the view that Nathan and David shared. David was guilty of adultery and murder. He knew himself to be guilty of those things. And Nathan didn’t walk in and point his finger at the king and say, “You are an adulterer and a murderer!” Instead, Nathan told a story to help David understand that he was guilty of something even worse. He told a story to help the king understand that he had become a rich man who had stolen from a poor man."In this view, all people are entirely at the mercy of God, who would be just in condemning all people for their sins, but who has chosen to be merciful to some. Thus, one person is saved while another is condemned, not because of a foreseen willingness, faith, or any other virtue in the first person, but because God sovereignly chose to have mercy on him. Although the person must believe the gospel and respond to be saved, this obedience of faith is God's gift, and thus God completely and sovereignly accomplishes the salvation of sinners. Views of predestination to damnation (the doctrine of reprobation) are less uniform than is the view of predestination to salvation (the doctrine of election) among self-described Calvinists."The idea of God's Grace is mainly about one's own nomination for being saved. The idea is that "God hasn't hand-picked you because you're prettier or smarter or worthier or whatever, He's just hand-picked you to offer you a hall pass because He felt like it." The idea was supposed to be an alternative to people who tried to do good deeds to "earn" their way into God's grace. But we still have to accept this hall pass, and if we say "nah, no thanks," that'd piss God off. It's kind of like the Oscars: Price Waterhouse already knows who's gonna win the Academy Award ahead of time. But the person still has to go up on the podium and accept the award, and it looks bad if they send up Sacheen Littlefeather instead to make a public statement about how they're refusing it.
This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it.So yeah, there's that.
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He's basically essential reading for people interested in the Evangelical worldview.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:09 AM on December 20, 2011 [3 favorites]