Today people think they have to ask God to forgive them for the sins that God is no longer charging to their account in the first place. Ministers of righteousness would have people believe God is not totally reconciled in his mind. The great usurper and his fellow usurpers want to keep sin on the table of God’s justice today, as much in the age of grace as he has in the other ages.
Forgiven
- Thread starter newnature
- Start date
Ephesians 1:6, the word glory here is not an adjective, Paul is not describing grace. The word glory is a noun here, it means there is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and the glory that belongs to God’s grace is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
Most people think of sainthood as something reserved for only a select few, but that is not the case. Paul certainly taught separation from the world, but never as the prerequisite to sainthood. Paul taught separation so that a believer might make their experience compatible with the exalted position God had already given them in Christ.
To be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because you have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to your account. The Corinthian believers were not so different than the saints today, but saints none the less, because sainthood is not determined by an external list of rules by what we do or how we live, that is GRACE.
The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. Sin is not the question anymore, reconciliation is the link that connects Grace and Peace. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.
Circumcision, or the setting aside of the flesh was simply the sign, according to the apostle Paul, that God gave to Abraham to point out that Abraham had placed his faith in God and in God alone, and not in himself.
Abraham was given the picture of the setting aside of his own flesh, in that Abraham had already placed his dependence entirely upon God. God counted Abraham to be righteous for doing so. God counted Abraham to be righteous solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief in what God told him, God would do.
Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh.
What Paul wants us to see here in Romans chapter 4, is that God justified Abraham (declared Abraham to be righteous) solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief. Paul wants to make it crystal clear that Abraham was not justified according to a ritual, a ceremonial observance, even the ritual of circumcision that Abraham was given to perform.
Most people think of sainthood as something reserved for only a select few, but that is not the case. Paul certainly taught separation from the world, but never as the prerequisite to sainthood. Paul taught separation so that a believer might make their experience compatible with the exalted position God had already given them in Christ.
To be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because you have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to your account. The Corinthian believers were not so different than the saints today, but saints none the less, because sainthood is not determined by an external list of rules by what we do or how we live, that is GRACE.
The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. Sin is not the question anymore, reconciliation is the link that connects Grace and Peace. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.
Circumcision, or the setting aside of the flesh was simply the sign, according to the apostle Paul, that God gave to Abraham to point out that Abraham had placed his faith in God and in God alone, and not in himself.
Abraham was given the picture of the setting aside of his own flesh, in that Abraham had already placed his dependence entirely upon God. God counted Abraham to be righteous for doing so. God counted Abraham to be righteous solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief in what God told him, God would do.
Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh.
What Paul wants us to see here in Romans chapter 4, is that God justified Abraham (declared Abraham to be righteous) solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief. Paul wants to make it crystal clear that Abraham was not justified according to a ritual, a ceremonial observance, even the ritual of circumcision that Abraham was given to perform.
b23hqb
Well-Known Member
Agreed, but the resident Catholics will have some severe problems with para 2, 3, 7, and 8. You will immediately be labeled a heretic, chuckt reincarnated, or anyone else like me who is biblically saved, and believe that popes, sacred church traditions, giving of alms, paying penance, sailing HM's, purgatory, etc., are not required for salvation.
Stand by for heavy seas.
Stand by for heavy seas.
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Agreed, but the resident Catholics will have some severe problems with para 2, 3, 7, and 8. You will immediately be labeled a heretic, chuckt reincarnated, or anyone else like me who is biblically saved, and believe that popes, sacred church traditions, giving of alms, paying penance, sailing HM's, purgatory, etc., are not required for salvation.
Stand by for heavy seas.
So-called Christendom today fails to rightly divide the word of truth, because they have mixed God’s program with Israel and his program with the Body of Christ and mixed dispensations together; dispensations that do not mix together, and as a result, they think they have taken on Israel’s role from the point where Israel left off.
The programs have simply been intertwined in the minds of the religious world. Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in a our minds, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation, or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, and even for the purpose of proving our salvation is a slap in the face of God, who had to provide the gift of salvation, because our righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it.
Cafeteria Christianity, each group placing on their plate the portion, or portions of Scripture that appeal most to them. “We want this, but we will ignore that.” “We will take one of these, but we will leave the others off our plate.” But we can not pick and choose whatever doctrine suits our appetites, as though it is left up to us to sere ourselves.
We have to allow God to tell us in the Word, the portions of that Word that are specifically written about and directly apply to us. If you read the words “ye men of Israel,” “ye men of Judaea” do not take from the table of that nation and put that instruction on your plate. You are not the nation Israel. You are not under the law, they were. You are under grace! Thanks for the heads up.
Reconciliation and sanctification are not one and the same, they are two different truths. A sanctified identity in Christ comes not as a result of behavior, it comes as a result of belief. What an identification God has given you, every believer’s sanctification comes by way of your union-identification with Christ Jesus. We find the amazing and comforting truth that God’s love for those who are joined to his son, is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son.
The judicial decree of rightness God grants to those who believe is called justification, God alters your identity by removing you judicially in God’s mind from an identification with the first Adam and now you are judicially identified with the last Adam (Christ Jesus). That joining itself is where sanctification comes into play; sanctification is not a process, it is a past tense accomplishment that can never be revised, reduced, or retracted.
You have also been sanctified or set apart in that you were identified with Christ by God’s resurrection power, baptized into Christ at the point of your belief. You need to look at sanctification from the standpoint of who is doing the setting apart. It is entirely a work of God for the believer, not a work of the believer for God. No effort of the flesh could accomplish it, no effort of the saint can add to it.
The judicial decree of rightness God grants to those who believe is called justification, God alters your identity by removing you judicially in God’s mind from an identification with the first Adam and now you are judicially identified with the last Adam (Christ Jesus). That joining itself is where sanctification comes into play; sanctification is not a process, it is a past tense accomplishment that can never be revised, reduced, or retracted.
You have also been sanctified or set apart in that you were identified with Christ by God’s resurrection power, baptized into Christ at the point of your belief. You need to look at sanctification from the standpoint of who is doing the setting apart. It is entirely a work of God for the believer, not a work of the believer for God. No effort of the flesh could accomplish it, no effort of the saint can add to it.
When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is an expression denoting the point when God began to judicially join believers to his son, the Body of Christ is not about program, but about judicial identity.
God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Christ what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Christ believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead.
What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person. Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, exist in a completely new relationship with God. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness.
Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness.
God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Christ what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Christ believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead.
What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person. Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, exist in a completely new relationship with God. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness.
Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness.
Agreed, but the resident Catholics will have some severe problems with para 2, 3, 7, and 8. You will immediately be labeled a heretic, chuckt reincarnated, or anyone else like me who is biblically saved, and believe that popes, sacred church traditions, giving of alms, paying penance, sailing HM's, purgatory, etc., are not required for salvation.
Stand by for heavy seas.
There will never be a shortage of people climbing out of the gutter, finding Jesus, getting "Born again" and then start bashing Catholicism. He's just proselytizing now. Give him a chance to warm up. He'll bring it out soon enough. Then he will crash and burn like all the others.
Did you know that God wants believers to all think the same way when it comes to what’s happening in this Age of Grace, what God is doing today and how’s he doing it. Every sin we have or ever will commit was put on Jesus Christ, but how many people in the world miss it, because they think God is still looking at them and judging them and evaluating them on the bases of their performance.
Ephesians 1:6, the word glory here is not an adjective, Paul is not describing grace. The word glory is a noun here, it means there is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and the glory that belongs to God’s grace is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
Most people think of sainthood as something reserved for only a select few, but that is not the case. Paul certainly taught separation from the world, but never as the prerequisite to sainthood. Paul taught separation so that a believer might make their experience compatible with the exalted position God had already given them in Christ.
To be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because you have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to your account. The Corinthian believers were not so different than the saints today, but saints none the less, because sainthood is not determined by an external list of rules by what we do or how we live, that is GRACE.
The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. Sin is not the question anymore, reconciliation is the link that connects Grace and Peace.
Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.
Salvation, justification unto eternal life is a gift of God, it is not something we attain by our works in the first place. We have also been sanctified or set apart in that we were identified with Christ by God’s power from on high baptism into Christ at the point of our belief.
It is entirely a work of God for the believer, not a work of the believer for God. No effort of the flesh could accomplish it, no effort of the saint can add to it.
This in itself is the motivation for a believer to bring the body into subjection to what God had done freely for the ungodly as we place our faith in what Christ accomplished for our sins. Paul’s desire was about beating the flesh back, not about making the flesh better, it is about holding it down, bringing it into submission.
One has to do with elevation, the other has to do with submission, Paul was talking about making the flesh subject to him.
Everywhere Paul went, the people who had known the law did not just reject Paul, they wanted to do away with Paul for preaching that people were not under the law. What does that tell us about those in our day who continue to hang on to the notion that God is continuing to deal with people on the basis of their performance?
We can see the connection between the religious crowd of Paul’s day and the religious crowd of today. The pride nature is the root cause of that rejection, pride insists upon attributing success to self.
Human righteousness comes from self-interest-motivation, it is self-glorifying and while it may be of earthly benefit, that will not cut it when it comes to meeting the demands of God’s perfect justice.
When ungodly people are willing to simply take God at his word, abandoning any notion that they can merit a righteous standing with God through their performance, and trust solely in what Jesus Christ accomplished for them, having resolved that issue of their sin debt, God’s power from on high performs a miracle in those people’s lives by uniting those believers with Christ himself.
That is what sanctification, our set-apartness is all about. As we travel through Paul’s handbook on faith, we learn the necessity of a total abandonment of any notion that no one can merit righteousness before God through the performance of the flesh, and that we must place our trust solely in the fact that God accomplished our salvation for us through his son’s death when he judged his son for our sins.
Paul was not talking about Christianizing the flesh, making it better flesh, capable of doing more things, he was talking about holding the flesh back, keeping it down.
Paul was motivated to keep his desires of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, to keep it at bay and not let that reign supreme when it came to his activities and his actions.
Paul was being honest with himself and with us, when it came to the capacity of his flesh to merit righteousness before God through performance, if God was going to righteousify ungodly people, it would have to be freely by his grace, it could come no other way.
People’s performance could not be allowed to enter the picture. God would have to use belief rather than behavior as the criterion whereby to join believers to his son. Could there have been a sin or two, or maybe a few left over when Christ died for the sin debt of the world, for which God’s justice was not satisfied, a sin in the future?
God’s justice was satisfied where the sins of the world are concerned, God reconciled the world unto himself, as Paul tells us.
God was satisfying his own justice where the sins of the world are concerned through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but God recognizes those who take him at his word concerning the price Christ became on their behalf to resolve God’s justice for their sins.
Taking God at his word is called faith, God’s intent was to join believers to his son, from God’s perspective the two become one flesh. Justification is a recognition of righteousness that comes from God to those who believe God and the moment we believe, God’s power from on high joins us to Christ and from that point on we have a brand new identification.
Does God’s call go out selectively or does he call all today, and does his call come by way of circumstance or does he call today to believe the message given through the apostle Paul.
Jesus Christ was made a curse for our sins by taking our place and suffering the judgment of God for the sin debts he died for, was his death not pictured in the scapegoat sacrifice of the Israelite program?
If a person believes Christ died for their sin debt, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sin debt according to the scriptures.
To continue to insist that God’s justice has not been resolved where all the sins Christ died for are concerned, is to deny the truth sitting in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.
It is entirely a work of God for the believer, not a work of the believer for God. No effort of the flesh could accomplish it, no effort of the saint can add to it.
This in itself is the motivation for a believer to bring the body into subjection to what God had done freely for the ungodly as we place our faith in what Christ accomplished for our sins. Paul’s desire was about beating the flesh back, not about making the flesh better, it is about holding it down, bringing it into submission.
One has to do with elevation, the other has to do with submission, Paul was talking about making the flesh subject to him.
Everywhere Paul went, the people who had known the law did not just reject Paul, they wanted to do away with Paul for preaching that people were not under the law. What does that tell us about those in our day who continue to hang on to the notion that God is continuing to deal with people on the basis of their performance?
We can see the connection between the religious crowd of Paul’s day and the religious crowd of today. The pride nature is the root cause of that rejection, pride insists upon attributing success to self.
Human righteousness comes from self-interest-motivation, it is self-glorifying and while it may be of earthly benefit, that will not cut it when it comes to meeting the demands of God’s perfect justice.
When ungodly people are willing to simply take God at his word, abandoning any notion that they can merit a righteous standing with God through their performance, and trust solely in what Jesus Christ accomplished for them, having resolved that issue of their sin debt, God’s power from on high performs a miracle in those people’s lives by uniting those believers with Christ himself.
That is what sanctification, our set-apartness is all about. As we travel through Paul’s handbook on faith, we learn the necessity of a total abandonment of any notion that no one can merit righteousness before God through the performance of the flesh, and that we must place our trust solely in the fact that God accomplished our salvation for us through his son’s death when he judged his son for our sins.
Paul was not talking about Christianizing the flesh, making it better flesh, capable of doing more things, he was talking about holding the flesh back, keeping it down.
Paul was motivated to keep his desires of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, to keep it at bay and not let that reign supreme when it came to his activities and his actions.
Paul was being honest with himself and with us, when it came to the capacity of his flesh to merit righteousness before God through performance, if God was going to righteousify ungodly people, it would have to be freely by his grace, it could come no other way.
People’s performance could not be allowed to enter the picture. God would have to use belief rather than behavior as the criterion whereby to join believers to his son. Could there have been a sin or two, or maybe a few left over when Christ died for the sin debt of the world, for which God’s justice was not satisfied, a sin in the future?
God’s justice was satisfied where the sins of the world are concerned, God reconciled the world unto himself, as Paul tells us.
God was satisfying his own justice where the sins of the world are concerned through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but God recognizes those who take him at his word concerning the price Christ became on their behalf to resolve God’s justice for their sins.
Taking God at his word is called faith, God’s intent was to join believers to his son, from God’s perspective the two become one flesh. Justification is a recognition of righteousness that comes from God to those who believe God and the moment we believe, God’s power from on high joins us to Christ and from that point on we have a brand new identification.
Does God’s call go out selectively or does he call all today, and does his call come by way of circumstance or does he call today to believe the message given through the apostle Paul.
Jesus Christ was made a curse for our sins by taking our place and suffering the judgment of God for the sin debts he died for, was his death not pictured in the scapegoat sacrifice of the Israelite program?
If a person believes Christ died for their sin debt, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sin debt according to the scriptures.
To continue to insist that God’s justice has not been resolved where all the sins Christ died for are concerned, is to deny the truth sitting in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.
Radiant1
Soul Probe
Agreed, but the resident Catholics will have some severe problems with para 2, 3, 7, and 8. You will immediately be labeled a heretic, chuckt reincarnated, or anyone else like me who is biblically saved, and believe that popes, sacred church traditions, giving of alms, paying penance, sailing HM's, purgatory, etc., are not required for salvation.
Stand by for heavy seas.
Are you not capable of discussing your own theology without bringing Catholicism into it? For what purpose are you so dependent upon Catholicism that you can't just be the choir the OP is preaching to, applaud, say amen, and go your merry way?
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TheLibertonian
New Member
Are you saying original sin isn't a thing in Christendom? Because I'm pretty sure it's a main thing in Christendom.
Christianity developed the notion of original sin.
So extreme are the psalmist’s guilt feeling that he sees himself as sinful even before birth.
Evil is a product of human behavior, not a principal inherent in the cosmos. It is the power of moral choice alone, that is Yahweh like and having that good and bad knowledge is no guarantee that one will choose or incline towards the good. The very action that brought Adam and Eve a Yahweh like awareness of their mortal autonomy, was an action that was taken in opposition to Yahweh.
Yahweh knows that, that human beings will become like Yahweh, knowing good and bad; it’s one of the things about Yahweh, he knows good and bad, and has chosen the good. Human beings, and only human beings are the potential source of evil, responsibility for evil will lie in the hands of human beings. Evil is represented not as a physical reality, it’s not built into the structure of Eden, evil is a condition of human existence, and to assert that evil stems from human behavior.
b23hqb
Well-Known Member
Oh, yeah. BD was the first in post #4, and I was waiting for an indignant self-righteous retort from either you or onel. New dude lays it out really well and in depth, don't ya think?
Here is the roots of Catholicism. Basic structures are part of any kind of Greek city in the Ancient World. And what Alexander the Great and his successors did was they took that basic Greek structure, and they transplanted it all over the Eastern Mediterranean, whether they were in Egypt or Syria or Asia Minor or anyplace else.
One can travel right now to Turkey or Syria or Israel or Jordan or Egypt, and one can see excavations of towns, and it’s remarkable how they all look so much alike, because they’re all inspired by this originally Greek model of the city.
Alexander the Great and his successors Hellenized the entire eastern Mediterranean, and that meant, every major city would have a certain commonality to it. It would have a certain koine to it; that is, a Greek overlay, over what may be also be there, the original indigenous kind of cultures and languages.
Alexander the Great also used what is called ‘religious syncretism,’ Alexander took this tendency of syncretism, of mixing together different religious traditions from different places, and he used it as a self-conscious propaganda technique. Alexander even started claiming divine status for himself. Alexander went around passing out rumors that his mother had actually been impregnated by the god Apollo, when he appeared as a snake in her bed. So, Alexander is putting himself forward as divine. Why? This is not a Greek tradition, but it’s very much a tradition in the East for kings to be considered by their people to be gods.
Alexander says, “Well, if they can be gods, I can be a god.” So Alexander starts spreading rumors that he is divine himself. Alexander probably even believed it; and so he had a god father, he had a human mother, and so then he would identify himself with whoever was a god in the different places. So Alexander would identify himself as a Greek god with a Persian god. Alexander would identify the goddess Isis with some Greek goddess; and so all the time these different gods from different places were basically all said to be simply different cultural representations, different names, for what were generally the same gods all over the place.
Also, though, what they would do is sometimes they wouldn’t try to simply say these gods are the same. What they would just do is add on more gods. They’d get to Syria, “Look at all these god that the Syrians worship. Well, we’ll just add those into our pantheon of gods too.” And this is part of what ancient religion was like, is that people were not exclusive.
You didn’t have to worry. Just because you worshiped one god, doesn’t mean you couldn’t worship another god or several gods or five gods or a hundred gods. Gods knew who everybody was-they weren’t particularly jealous, in that sense. So this is the way people did it. But what Alexander and his successors did, was they made sort of a conscious, propagandistic decision to use religious syncretism to bind together their kingdoms.
The Romans, when they came on the scene, in the East, and they gradually became more and more powerful, they destroyed Corinth in a big battle in 144BC. Pompey was the Roman general who took over Jerusalem in 63BC. So the Romans were in charge of Judah from 63BC on. And this is very important, because the Romans, as their power grew in the East, they simply moved increasingly into the eastern Mediterranean and they adopted the whole Greek system, the Greek world, and they didn’t even try to make it non-Greek.
So Romans didn’t go around trying to get people in the East to speak Latin. They might put up an official inscription in an Eastern City in Latin, but they’d almost always, if it was an official inscription, it would also be listed in Greek, So Romans who ruled in the East were expected to speak Greek. And by this time all educated Roman men were expected to be able to speak Greek, well if possible.
So the Romans didn’t try to make the East Roman, in that sense, culturally, nor did they try to change the language. Greek language, culture, and religions, different religions and the syncretism, Greek education, the polis structure-all of these things remained in the East throughout the Roman rule of the East, all the way up until the time you had a Christian emperor with Constantine and later.
The early Christians who chose the human and divine route, though they had to spilt this up. Some believed Jesus was always divine; others believed Jesus became divine.
If Jesus became divine, then when did he become divine, at his birth, at his baptism, or at his resurrection? Other Christians say, no, he always was divine, but even they believed in different choices too, because some believed Jesus was divine but also fully human.
Other Christians believed Jesus was fully divine but not fully human. They believed Jesus was so divine he was God, so that when Jesus walked along on wet sand on the beach, his feet did not leave footprints, that is how divine he was, but this belief became declared as a heresy.
Out of all these choices, only one of them is considered Orthodox by the later church, so that what Christians end up with is the Nicene Creed, or the Creed of Chalcedon, which is what Christians came to believe? There were lots of complexities in early Christianity that finally got whittled down into a more united consensus view on Christology.
One can travel right now to Turkey or Syria or Israel or Jordan or Egypt, and one can see excavations of towns, and it’s remarkable how they all look so much alike, because they’re all inspired by this originally Greek model of the city.
Alexander the Great and his successors Hellenized the entire eastern Mediterranean, and that meant, every major city would have a certain commonality to it. It would have a certain koine to it; that is, a Greek overlay, over what may be also be there, the original indigenous kind of cultures and languages.
Alexander the Great also used what is called ‘religious syncretism,’ Alexander took this tendency of syncretism, of mixing together different religious traditions from different places, and he used it as a self-conscious propaganda technique. Alexander even started claiming divine status for himself. Alexander went around passing out rumors that his mother had actually been impregnated by the god Apollo, when he appeared as a snake in her bed. So, Alexander is putting himself forward as divine. Why? This is not a Greek tradition, but it’s very much a tradition in the East for kings to be considered by their people to be gods.
Alexander says, “Well, if they can be gods, I can be a god.” So Alexander starts spreading rumors that he is divine himself. Alexander probably even believed it; and so he had a god father, he had a human mother, and so then he would identify himself with whoever was a god in the different places. So Alexander would identify himself as a Greek god with a Persian god. Alexander would identify the goddess Isis with some Greek goddess; and so all the time these different gods from different places were basically all said to be simply different cultural representations, different names, for what were generally the same gods all over the place.
Also, though, what they would do is sometimes they wouldn’t try to simply say these gods are the same. What they would just do is add on more gods. They’d get to Syria, “Look at all these god that the Syrians worship. Well, we’ll just add those into our pantheon of gods too.” And this is part of what ancient religion was like, is that people were not exclusive.
You didn’t have to worry. Just because you worshiped one god, doesn’t mean you couldn’t worship another god or several gods or five gods or a hundred gods. Gods knew who everybody was-they weren’t particularly jealous, in that sense. So this is the way people did it. But what Alexander and his successors did, was they made sort of a conscious, propagandistic decision to use religious syncretism to bind together their kingdoms.
The Romans, when they came on the scene, in the East, and they gradually became more and more powerful, they destroyed Corinth in a big battle in 144BC. Pompey was the Roman general who took over Jerusalem in 63BC. So the Romans were in charge of Judah from 63BC on. And this is very important, because the Romans, as their power grew in the East, they simply moved increasingly into the eastern Mediterranean and they adopted the whole Greek system, the Greek world, and they didn’t even try to make it non-Greek.
So Romans didn’t go around trying to get people in the East to speak Latin. They might put up an official inscription in an Eastern City in Latin, but they’d almost always, if it was an official inscription, it would also be listed in Greek, So Romans who ruled in the East were expected to speak Greek. And by this time all educated Roman men were expected to be able to speak Greek, well if possible.
So the Romans didn’t try to make the East Roman, in that sense, culturally, nor did they try to change the language. Greek language, culture, and religions, different religions and the syncretism, Greek education, the polis structure-all of these things remained in the East throughout the Roman rule of the East, all the way up until the time you had a Christian emperor with Constantine and later.
The early Christians who chose the human and divine route, though they had to spilt this up. Some believed Jesus was always divine; others believed Jesus became divine.
If Jesus became divine, then when did he become divine, at his birth, at his baptism, or at his resurrection? Other Christians say, no, he always was divine, but even they believed in different choices too, because some believed Jesus was divine but also fully human.
Other Christians believed Jesus was fully divine but not fully human. They believed Jesus was so divine he was God, so that when Jesus walked along on wet sand on the beach, his feet did not leave footprints, that is how divine he was, but this belief became declared as a heresy.
Out of all these choices, only one of them is considered Orthodox by the later church, so that what Christians end up with is the Nicene Creed, or the Creed of Chalcedon, which is what Christians came to believe? There were lots of complexities in early Christianity that finally got whittled down into a more united consensus view on Christology.
Radiant1
Soul Probe
I don't know what reality you're living in, but in mine I was quoting you from post #3 and BD didn't comment until post #7.
You aren't waiting for it, you're begging for it, but why? Again, are you not capable of discussing your own theology without bringing Catholicism into it?
No, I don't, and it would appear that their new nature is one of bloviating, but as long as they stick to their own theology I have no reason to care one way or the other.
Here is the roots of Catholicism.
:fixed:
Israel’s promised kingdom was right at their doorstep, right within their grasp, but that promised program was put on hold. The very blood that was to initiate Israel’s New Covenant, the body of Christ have a fellowship in that, we have a communion with that blood, it’s the blood that redeemed us as well.
There is one object on this earth, and this one object was made on this earth. Now what good would the second Adam’s blood do, falling on a piece of wood? The Greek word used for “the cross” on which Jesus was put to death is “stauros,” which denotes an upright pale or stake. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always of one piece alone. There is nothing in the Greek of the New Testament even to imply two pieces of timber.
In Matt. 27:51, the earthquake that fractured the rock opened a fissure that ran down through 20 foot of solid rock into a cave and cracked the stone lid on top of a black stone volt where the Ark of the Covenant lie hidden inside, pushing the lid aside. John 19:34, the blood that poured from the side of Jesus, ran down through that crevice and dripped onto the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant that was hidden by Yahweh and the prophet Jeremiah, right under where they crucified Jesus, 620 years earlier when the Babylonians destroyed Salomon’s temple.
Thank you!