Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Predestination and Judgement Message-ID: Date: 15 Jul 89 08:52:01 GMT Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 134 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu writes: >Certainly there's nothing unexpected or surprising about his >responses. What irritates me is not so much the substance as the >manner. There is no sign of any uncertainty at all. Perhaps you have not noted comments I have made in other postings pertaining to the fact that no one of us can ever claim to have even a near perfect understanding of the Scriptures. I am just as fallable as anyone else when it comes to being able to correctly interpret every portion of the Word of God because I, too, suffer from a sin infested body and mind which can cause all sorts of false illusions. Each and every one of us, and that does most definitely include myself, must be very, very careful not to decide that God must have meant something or other just because it is what we were hoping He would say, it is something that makes us a bit happier, it is a conclusion that we could arrive at easily, it seems so obvious, it is something that we couldn't conceive of being any different, it is something that we don't think God would or would not do, or it is something that has any other characteristic other than that it is in complete agreement with everything else that God has told us. We must never place our own ability to think above God's ability to have an intention and explain it to us using whatever terms that He, in HIs infinite wisdom, felt was the most appropriate. I am indeed very sorry if my writing style has offended you, or anyone else for that matter, as my main intention was to be informative. I, personally, find it fairly difficult to be anything other than emphatic when I am trying to explain something that I have been overwhealmingly convinced of because of the total consistency that I observe throughout the entire Bible. I can feel no less than completely joyous when I have finally arrived at a scenario that cannot be contradicted by any verse that I am aware of. I would be very greatful if anyone were to point out to me even one verse that shows that anything I have said cannot possibly be true. You seem to object to the way in which I ascribe meaning to certain verses. Permit me to take a few moments to explain my rationale. Jesus has instructed us to enter the Kingdom of God as little children. I am prepared to believe that He was really referring to babies and not merely to children who are fairly young. Assuming the attitude of a baby must mean that we should find ourselves assuming a number of attributes which, being a parent of six, I have had plenty of time to boserve. We must, above all, realize that we are completely helpless on our own, and absolutely incapable of achieving anything of value through our own efforts. This tells me that I must never say that a Scripture says either what I think it says or what I would like it to say. I must, rather, determine exactly what God has meant by it, just as a baby must learn to determine exactly what his parents are saying when they begin to speak to him in what is at first a completely unknown language. The baby must learn to associate words with meanings, actions, objects, etc. The Bible is a document that has been written by God Himself; He may have used imperfect people to do the physical work of putting the Scriptures together, but I can believe no less than that God would have insured that His message to us which we are to live by would say no more and no less than exactly what He intended to say to us. Surely a God who is capable of putting together this whole universe is capable of insuring that what He has told us is what He meant. For this reason I am most certainly one of those believers in the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Since God is spiritual in nature, and since He tells us that He is really primarily concerned with spiritual matters, I must believe with my whole heart that although the Bible is written in physical language it must really be telling us spiritual truths. I must therefore conclude that each physical word, full of all the various limitations that physical things have, may well be being used in a different way from that which I, as a physical being, am used to. If this were not true than God would be unable to even attempt to explain matters of infinite depth with finite methods. I, therefore, assume the attitude of a baby even more when reading the Scriptures. An adult might ask "what does this say", but a baby asks "what are you saying to me" and doesn't even expect to fully understand the answer to that question. Each time I come across a word I must not jump to the conclusion that I know what God meant by it; this approach would limit me to only knowing the various physical truths which may be behind it. I must do exactly what a baby does and find out precisely how my Father used that word in every other instance to insure that I am correctly interpreting Him. An earthly example of this might be if I, speaking English, heard a French person say the word "oui". With my English ear I would hear the word "we" and interpret what he said as a first person plural subjective pronoun when in fact he meant a word equivalent to the English word "yes". An English baby eventually learns that the word whose sound is "we" means "we" whereas a French baby eventually learns that the word whose sound is "we" means "yes". This is only done through endless reverifications of what he thinks might be the true meaning of the word. I was only able to find total consistency throughout the whole Bible when I started using this approach. You have objected to my sounding rather emphatic and probably feel that the preceeding paragraphs have displayed the same attribute. Permit me to explain that although I have used the word I as though I have some magic ability to do this sort of thing, that is really not what I meant. The Scriptures are God's Word and can only be understood by those whom He has chosen to reveal them to. He also chooses to reveal only certain Scriptures to certain people at certain times. Each of us must be immensely thankful to Him for that which he has been granted the ability to understand. God despises arrogance and any of us who finds himself displaying this attitude really ought to seriously question his perceived salvation. My use of the word I was merely a convenient abbreviation to what would otherwise be a rather long preamble to every sentence. Although it may be what I do, it is really what God recommends; I did not make up this approach on my own. It is also impossible to accurately find spiritual truths in the Scriptures without constantly praying God for the wisdom and understanding to do so. Failure to do so would be an attempt to claim the glory for the acquired understanding for oneself. If this were the attitude of the Bible reader then he can be assured that God will likely prevent him from figuring anything out. He may even permit him to become grossly mislead. Please permit me to give you another angle with which you can see consistency within a couple of the verses under discussion. John 5:28-29 speaks of all, both the saved and the unsaved, being raised from the dead. Luke 20:35 speaks of those who are raised and end up in heaven. I would like to suggest that John 5:28-29 is speaking of physical resurrection (it speaks of those who are in the grave), whereas Luke 20:35 speaks of spiritual resurrection (it speaks of those who have been counted worthy). God does teach that both types of death and subsequent resurrection are a reality and we must be careful not to jump to any conclusions as to how to qualify the terms "death" and "resurrection" before we are sure that our conclusions are entirely consistent with the rest of the Scriptures. Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3 [I didn't mean to accuse you of arrogance. Just of having a no doubt unconscious tendency to bend the meaning of texts to produce consistency. I can live with it. --clh]