This question is of personal interest to me, since I am only a few points away from gaining open/close vote privileges myself.
I notice that many questions are put on hold or closed while their vote counts are still positive, or with no down votes or only one or two down votes, which means that ...
@DoesElishaspeak? I've been looking for a definite "Process of closing a Question" somewhere but can't seem to find it. Is it somewhere I have missed (before I ask it myself) I'm not even sure what the difference is between a Hold and a Close now that I think about it. I always assumed the Hold was just the period before the Close in the process.
@LeeWoofenden Hey Lee. I have been thinking That Revelation 21:23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. ..... Is saying that as is in genesis 1,14 That the sun and moon are created for seasons days and so on,for directions,we do not need that anymore because we have the source ,the glory.And the lamp is the lamb off course,but I have heard that the rabbis did teach the The Torah is the lamp for the eye
So the lamp is the Torah and the revelation of the Torah is Jesus and that is the glory of God and the glory is the bride.And sin leads us away from revelation and the coming of Jesus and the new jerusalem is the revelation of all things. What do you think about that?
@Eagel Sorry to butt in, but the Torah is not the Lamp. The Lamb is the Lamp. The Scriptures say, "The Lamb is the Lamp". The Torah will be forgotten and will pass away. Jesus said, "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished."
@Eagel Yahweh spoke through Prophet Isaiah spoke by the Spirit saying, “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind."
Stop looking to the Law. Look to the Lamb, for the Law is fulfilled in the Lamb, and the Law will pass away, but the Lamb will never pass away.
@Eagel Also, the glory is not the bride. The assembly of the elect, the holy ones, this is the bride. The Scriptures say, "Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God... And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb."
Open your eyes and read the words before you that have been passed down to you. Everything has been made clear, and you are without excuse. Stop looking to the Torah. Look to the lamb. If you are child or a slave in exile, if you wander in the wilderness, then by all means look to the Torah. If you are a Son of God, and an heir with Messiah, then look to him.
@Joshua I think (this is unconfirmed) that "Closed" and "On Hold" are the same... but that we show "On Hold" for the first few days, to make it clear that it's not a permanent state. (Technically, "closed" isn't either)
@LeeWoofenden Science can certainly study miracles.
@LeeWoofenden It helps to recall that nearly all educated western thought was done with Alchemy, and not modern science, in mind. Attempting to understand a Christian metaphysical framework in the context of modern scientific thought is folly. Attempting to understand the same in the context of Alchemy is golden. We have abandoned the foundation on which all western thought was built, and have expected its walls to keep standing.
@bruisedreed What is the community wiki?
@curiousdannii There is no conservation of mass/energy. Your physics is about 100 years behind.
@Andrew They can be investigated historically... And in a loose sense, history is a science, I suppose.
But unless you have an artifact that can be put under a microscope, it's pretty hard to do a scientific study on something in the past.
So a scientific study of one of Jesus' healings would be impossible. As would a scientific study of turning water to wine, or the feeding of the multitude.
@Flimzy An example is a source for this answer, that presents a scientific inquiry into hypothetical biological processes for virgin birth in humans, which was mentioned previously by Lee. Does this constitute "scientific study" of that miracle?
@Flimzy Doctors today would have you think they know everything, but there are many stories, even today, where doctors are confused by sudden healings. they certainly do "investigate" it, doing follow up tests and so on, only to still not understand how or what happened. But they don't exactly publish to journals about how "this person's cancer disappeared with no natural explanation" cause, well that wouldn't fit and it would be admitting they don't know.
@Andrew I would consider that a scientific study of a phenomenon which might explain the miracle. But a study of the miracle itself? No.
@Joshua Of course. But once the subject of the unexplained healing is dead, and their body decomposed for 2000 years, it's pretty difficult to continue doing clinical research.
@Eagel We (Swedenborgians) interpret the sun as a symbol of God, and the moon, which shines by reflected light from the sun, as a symbol of faith in God.
When the sun and moon are created on the fourth day, we interpret that as the conscious realization and awareness of God as the center and source of all life--especially spiritual life--and the moon as the attainment of a clear faith in God. The heat of the sun is God's love, and the light of the sun is God's truth, as also reflected in the "moon" of faith.
@Flimzy No, but just as scientists make observations and experiments now and apply the findings to what was possible 2000 years ago, such healings are precedence for what God could have done then. How do Geologists know what sediment layers and rock formations and chemical makeup means what thousands even millions of years ago? Maybe I'm just missing what you guys are talking about, sorry.
The Torah--or Law (nomos), as it's translated in the New Testament--is another expression of the Word of God, which is the expression of divine truth as it reaches out to human minds. And the Lord God Jesus Christ is "the Word made flesh," meaning the divine truth taking physical form and living among us, both teaching and showing us the light of truth as it comes from God.
So we link in the concept of the Torah as the light with the idea of the Word, in both written form (the Scriptures) and in the form of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, with the light of divine truth, which provides light for our spiritual eyes just as the sun and moon provide light for our physical eyes.
This is how the Lamb (who is Jesus Christ) is the light of the New Jerusalem, which is not a physical city descending from the physical sky, but a spiritual city of divine truth descending into the spiritual life of humanity here on earth, in which the Lord God Jesus Christ provides the light by which all of its residents walk.
@Andrew John described everything in his vision as being seen "in the spirit" and when "heaven was opened" to him. There's no reason whatsoever even based on the text itself to believe that these things will happen physically. They're described as happening in the spiritual realms.
Even "the heavens and the earth" is not a very good translation. It should be "the sky and the land." That's what John saw. And it was the sky and the land of the spiritual world.
@LeeWoofenden Yes, I read the heavens and the earth as the heavens- the abode of the stars, as opposed to the abode of the Father-, and the planet earth. But John is not the only one who speaks of a new heavens and new earth.
@Andrew Regardless of what was the reigning concept of the nature of the physical world--mythical, alchemical, or scientific--the Scriptures merely use human concepts of the material world as metaphors for deeper, spiritual concepts and truth. Understanding the conception of the world that reigned at various points of biblical and post-biblical culture is useful mostly so we can understand the metaphors being used to convey deeper spiritual and divine truth.
@LeeWoofenden So what do you do with the two men in white telling the apostles "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”? Acts 1:11
@Andrew John probably did not think of the earth as a planet. Rather, he was most likely thinking of "the land," meaning the expanse of ground upon which the various cultures of the world lived. In the Hebrew Bible, "the land" refers especially to the Holy Land, or the land of Israel, and that is probably John's primary reference in using the word "the land." He's simply not talking about a planet. He's talking about the land as the habitation of the various nations.
@Joshua I think the angels were speaking metaphorically, not literally. It is a general error of our era to think "scientifically," meaning materially, about statements in the scripture that are not about material events at all, but are about spiritual events.
When Jesus was "taken up to heaven," I don't think the people saw him ascending up to the literal sky of this world. I think they saw, with their spiritual eyes, Jesus ascending into the spiritual realms that are the abode of God and the angels.
@Joshua Yes. I believe in individual judgment. The general judgment, I believe, is a spiritual event that takes place at the end of each "church," or spiritual era, that reigns for a time on this earth. When Jesus said, "now is the judgment of this world, now is the prince of darkness cast out" (quoting from memory), he was speaking of the end of the spiritual era in which (ancient) Judaism had been the primary representative and expression of God's truth in this world.
After that "last judgment," Judaism lost its place as God's primary church on earth, and it passed to Christianity instead. And Judaism itself was soon transformed into almost an entirely new religion, which was no longer focused on animal sacrifice at the Temple, but rather on learning, studying, and obeying the Torah as a guide for ethical and moral life.
And we believe that the "last judgment" on the first Christian era, too, has already taken place. As a result of that, the existing institutions of Christianity, like Judaism before it, have lost their place as the leading spiritual light in this world--a process that has been going on for two or three centuries now.
@LeeWoofenden Seems odd since the gospel has spread farther and wider and reached more in that time than quite possibly any before it since the first 2-3 centuries (maybe even more in numbers than then)
@Joshua That, in our view, is part of the new Christian era that has now begun. It is the era represented by the descent of the Holy City, New Jerusalem, out of heaven from God.
That is why our church's traditional name is "The Church of the New Jerusalem."
@Joshua Yes. But to be clear, we believe in individual resurrection immediately after death, and individual judgment at that time for each person who has died. We do not believe in a general future resurrection.
@Joshua One of the reasons miracles can't be studied by science is that they are not repeatable. Science as practiced on ongoing events requires experiments to be replicated and repeated by other scientists, so that different scientists can study the same type of phenomena and either confirm or disprove the theories put forward to explain them. But miracles are by nature individual and idiosyncratic events. They are not repeatable in the way scientific study requires.
@Joshua Yes. General judgment is on "churches," or reigning religious paradigms, not on individual human beings.
@Joshua And yes, we do not believe people will ever be physically resurrected, but rather are resurrected immediately after death in the spiritual world, where they will live to eternity.
@LeeWoofenden On the contrary, observation can be made of events outside of scientists control. Thus why they pay close attention to catastrophic events like Volcanos, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, etc. For example, they learned a lot about Pompeii from Mt. St. Helens. It is not repeatable, but they can learn from it and apply that knowledge to past specific events.
@Joshua Volcanic eruptions are repeatable events, even if they can't be repeated at will by scientists. That's why scientists travel to places where particular geological or celestial events are happening, visible, etc.
The results of miracles could theoretically be studied by science. But as for the (believed) supernatural causation of those miracles, that can't be studied by science.
At any rate, to my knowledge there has never yet been a successful scientific study of miracles.
In a related type of phenomena, there are some scientific types who are now attempting to study near-death experiences on a scientific basis. But so far, they're not having much luck.
@LeeWoofenden And if doctors were given advance notice of who was going to be healed and when, I'm sure they would do likewise. The fact they don't know until afterward is hardly a strike against it. My position stands.
@Andrew Your "appalling" is my truth. And I believe it is the Bible's truth as well. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "This day you will be with me in paradise."
Jesus also spoke of the rich man and Lazarus as already living in the spiritual world.
If nobody goes to heaven until after the Last Judgment, apparently Jesus never got that memo.
@LeeWoofenden Matthew 27 "And behold, the [z]veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the [aa]saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many."
@LeeWoofenden Were they only spiritually raised also?
@Andrew 2 Tim 2:16-18 " 16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, 17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, 18 who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened...
@Andrew Yes. They were seen with people's spiritual eyes, not their physical eyes. That's why there's no further account of what happened to these resurrected people. They were not actually physically resurrected. This, too, was a spiritual event that has primarily a spiritual significance.
@Andrew And I at times do use fairly strong language for those materialistically minded "Christians" who read everything in the Bible according to the flesh, and nothing according to the spirit. Jesus was weeding out such people in his dialog about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in John 6. The ones who stopped following him were precisely the ones who could think only physically (cannibalism) and not spiritually.
Today the physically minded "Christian" churches and preachers fill people's minds full of useless physical-minded babble, completely missing the spirit that gives life, and going instead for the flesh that brings death.
This church is truly "Christian in name only, and not in reality and essence," just as Swedenborg said 250 years ago.
@Joshua Paul himself clearly believed that the Last Judgment and the Second Coming were going to happen in his lifetime. Unfortunately for him, he was wrong. It still hasn't happened. And it's never going to happen the way materialistically-minded Christians think it is.
Not half an hour ago my wife was reading to me a news clip about a group that's predicting that the world will end the day after tomorrow. They'll be just as wrong as every other whacked-out materialistic "Christian" preacher has been for the last 2,000 years.
@Andrew Unfortunately, most of the early Christians, including Jesus' own disciples, did not fully understand what he was saying to him. That's why he said to them, "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." They were continually misunderstanding his teachings. They simply did not have the capacity to understand the full meaning of what he was teaching them.
Still, enough got through their thick skulls that they were able to start an entirely new religion--the Christian religion.
Unfortunately, that church quickly got off track, and reverted back to much of the physical-minded thinking that had characterized ancient Judaism.
@LeeWoofenden Let's finish that verse, " But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. 14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. 15 All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you."
The Christian Church resurrected something like the Jewish priesthood, which Jesus had replaced with apostles and disciples, and soon Christianity was hardly Christian at all.
I do not believe there has been any real Christian church since a century or two after Jesus finished his ministry on earth and returned to heaven. Humanity simply wasn't ready for the new, spiritual understanding that he was attempting to communicate to us.
He had to come at the time he did, or we would have all been lost. But he came at humanity's lowest spiritual ebb. And it took many more centuries before we moved forward enough to be able to more fully understand what Jesus taught. I believe we are living in that era now, when we can finally understand the true, spiritual message that Jesus brought to the world.
@Andrew "The church" did not write the Gospels. They existed before anything like our present-day institutional church existed.
And as far as the canonization, yes, I believe there was divine providence involved in that. But many of the books that the church canonized should not actually be in the Bible. They should be seen, rather, as writings of the earliest Christian theologians. I include in that the Acts and the Epistles. I believe the church made a mistake in canonizing those books.
@Andrew Swedenborg called himself "servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." He did not believe that anything he wrote was his own. He said that everything of the doctrine of the church that he wrote about was revealed to him "by the Lord alone, while I was reading the Word."
Swedenborg was a mere human being. Jesus Christ is God.
@LeeWoofenden But he seemed to have the idea that he was the first person in 1500 years capable of properly reading the very same word that everyone else had been reading for all that time
@Andrew Their ears were dull and their hearts heavy. Jesus could only reveal so much to the people of his day. But it was enough for any sincere-hearted person to find salvation.
@Andrew In fact, he said that anyone with a humble heart and a sincere desire to follow God's will could find everything necessary for salvation right in the plain words of the Bible. He generally thought that ordinary rank-and-file Christians understood the Bible better than the Christian theologians and preachers who set themselves up as authorities.
@LeeWoofenden Jesus says that the Spirit will teach them. The issue is language he couldn't teach them the truth of the Kingdom in human words, and he had to leave anyway do the Spirit could come. cf 1 Cor 2:13
And he said that one of the reasons the Lord called him to write of spiritual truth was so that the simple in heart and faith wouldn't totally lose their faith due to the rank falsity that had taken over the institutional Christian church.
@Andrew He said that once the Christian Church adopted the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons, it was simply impossible for them to have any true understanding of God, the Bible, and spiritual life. That doctrine, which is taught nowhere in the Bible, began the corruption of Christian doctrine that snowballed from there on, leading to the Dark Ages when Christianity should have brought light to the world.
@LeeWoofenden So not only did he say that he was the first person to understand the Bible in 1500 years, but that he is the first humble and sincere person to read the bible in 1500 years. Come on now, Lee.
It wasn't until the Age of Enlightenment, which began in Swedenborg's day, began throwing off the shackles of all those old falsities that humanity finally began to rise up from that long, dark time and moved upward again toward understanding, rationality, and a real grasp of what God and spirit are all about.
Yes, it's long!
Yes, I know this is a long answer. Sorry about that!
However, given the huge amount of ink (and pixels) that has been expended on the doctrine of the Trinity for almost two thousand years now, I do not see how justice can be done to the subject in the brief answers that are pref...
@LeeWoofenden There are multiple answers to your question. First, things can be inferred that aren't explicitly stated. Whether it is right to infer the Trinity is its own question.
But regardless of that, I don't think the Trinity is "the" foundation of pre-enlightenment Christianity.
However, more to the point, even if pre-enlightenment Christians thought that the Trinity was the foundation of their belief, I don't think that precludes God from working through their misunderstanding, such that true Christianity can shine through the error.
@Flimzy Isn't the Bible able to clearly teach what's necessary for our salvation? Was God so incompetent in writing the Bible that it simply didn't state what is (supposedly) the foundational belief of Christianity? It's a terrible smear on God and the Bible to say that a human council was necessary to "fix" things and make sure people believe the right thing, because the Bible failed to do so.
@LeeWoofenden So that substantiates the claim that no person with a humble and contrite spirit read and understood what was plainly available to them in the Bible for 1500 years?
@Flimzy All of the theories of atonement that reigned in the church by the time the Age of Enlightenment began depended completely on the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons. Without that doctrine, Catholic and Protestant atonement doctrine crumbles to the ground. Especially Protestant sola fide doctrine, which absolutely requires distinct "persons" of the Father and the Son.
The Trinity is the foundation upon which all the rest of traditional Christian doctrine is built. Without it, none of that doctrine works.
@LeeWoofenden wait isn't that exactly what you are saying? That the Bible wasn't enough and you needed Swedenborg to reveal that it was actually all just talking about spiriual things, not physical?
Christus Victor did not require the Trinity. Ransom Theory could also work without it. But by Swedenborg's day, those had long since been abandoned as the primary atonement theories in favor of Anselm's Satisfaction Theory (in Catholicism) and Luther and Calvin's Penal Substitution theory, which itself was a "development" of Satisfaction Theory, and both of which depend entirely on God being a Trinity of Persons.
@LeeWoofenden That may or may not be true... lets grant that it is. I still don't see that as justification for abandoning the church as apostate (my word, so maybe I'm overstating what I thought you were saying)
@Joshua No, that's not what I'm saying. Swedenborg was required because Christianity had so corrupted the Bible through false doctrines and interpretations that it was getting to the point where no one could actually read and understand what the Bible itself said.
The institutional Christian Church had so filled people's minds with false, non-Biblical doctrines that it was necessary for God to reveal new truth simply to clear away that huge edifice of falsity so that people could read what the Bible actually says.
All of the foundational doctrines of traditional Christianity--especially the Protestant version--simply aren't stated in the Bible. They're just not there. And in my experience, Protestants, especially, can't even read what the plain words of the Bible say.
@LeeWoofenden Historically, I see this primarily as a function of laity not being able to read the Bible at all (by virtue of illiteracy, as well as the church's monopoly on Bible translations). Which are bad, no doubt, and lead to corrupted teaching.
I can read them James 2:24 till I'm blue in the face, and they'll still come back and say that we're justified by faith alone. Even though I've just read where the Bible itself says that's simply not true.
And then they start quoting me all sorts of passages that don't say that we're justified by faith alone. But all they see there is "faith alone." So they can't even read what the Bible says. They read it through thick lenses of the doctrines that Luther and Calvin invented 1,500 years after the Bible was written.
@LeeWoofenden On an academic level, perhaps there's truth to this. But do you think most people look at Christianity academically, at least to a depth sufficient to be mislead in this way? To most people, Christianity is about "Love the Lord your God," "love your neighbor", and the beattitudes. The trinity, atonement theory, etc, are not understood, or even interesting, to most Christians.
@Flimzy Whether or not I think people should abandon the church as apostate, that's exactly what more and more of the population is doing. You live in Europe. How many people attend church there? Last I heard, the percentage was in the single digits. The fact of the matter is that people are abandoning the traditional Christian church, no matter what you or I think about it.
@LeeWoofenden You see that as a function of apostasy?
@Andrew Well, my Catholic friends (of which I have many, having spent years living in Mexico) kinda see it that way. Of course, that is an over-simplification.
@Flimzy Which is precisely why Swedenborg said that the laity understands the Bible better than the clergy does. For the most part, the laity simply haven't learned all the false, non-Biblical dogmas that the clergy learn in their seminaries. And for the most part, the clergy doesn't try to teach those doctrines to the laity because they recognize that the laity will think of them as crazy--which, in fact, those dogmas are.
@Flimzy Yes. I believe the institutional Christian church has taught people so many false, irrational, and downright horrible things that people are simply abandoning the church. What thoughtful, caring person can really believe that God would damn the majority of the earth's population to hell just for believing the wrong thing?
And as for the Trinity, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. When people do hear about it, they think it's nuts. And though they may give lip service to it because that's what they're supposed to do, it makes no sense to them.
Most of those old doctrines are either irrational or odious or both.
And people today are getting too educated to accept that old, irrational stuff.
1. The Trinity of Persons is taught nowhere in the Bible. 2. The Bible nowhere says that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. 3. The Bible nowhere says that we are justified by faith alone. In fact, it specifically denies it.
I could keep going. All of the foundational doctrines of traditional Christianity, and especially of Protestantism, simply aren't taught in the Bible.
I don't expect you'd learn much from it, but you'd enjoy reading a like-minded individual... and maybe it would be a good resource, when others ask for books about these things :)
This answer is from the perspective of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), and of the various denominations that accept his theology, commonly called "New Church" or "Swedenborgian" denominations.
Swedenborg taught that there are no angels pre-created as a separate race, nor did any ...
The Bible nowhere says that angels are a separately created race. Such statements are made in some old extra-Biblical books. But not in the Bible itself.
@Flimzy I don't go to church anymore. And incidentally, Swedenborg also stopped going to church in his later years. He said it was too distracting, because the angels who were with him would continually say that everything the preacher was preaching was wrong. ;-)
@Flimzy Catholic. At least Catholics believe that our deeds are important to salvation. Protestantism completed the doctrinal destruction of Christianity. Catholicism still had some truth to it. Protestantism ripped away that remaining truth. Which, I believe, is why it was necessary for the Lord to begin a new spiritual era in Swedenborg's day.
@Flimzy The blog post I'm currently working on will be titled, "The Faulty Foundations of Faith Alone." It will go through many of these beliefs, pointing out that the Bible doesn't teach them, and that they're all necessary as foundations for the false doctrine of justification by faith alone.
@LeeWoofenden That's interesting. I might choose a Catholic church, too, but it would depend on where. The Catholic church is incredibly diverse... In Latin America, it's very difficult to see the difference between Catholicism and pagan idolatry, in many cases... "Virgin worship" permeates the Latin American Catholic culture too much, too...
The fact of the matter is that traditional Christianity has long since abandoned the Bible as its primary source of doctrine, and instead looks to human creeds and theologians. Protestants believe their beliefs are "straight from the Bible." But none of them actually are. In my experience, Protestants are far more blind that Catholics in their ability to read what the Bible actually says.
Also, it would work a lot better if we used an ordinary word for "justification." Even "making righteous" would be better. "Justification" makes it sound as if it's a legal proceeding, which it's not. It's a process of turning us from sinners into righteous people. That doesn't happen by judicial pronouncement. It happens by a process of reformation and rebirth.
@Flimzy Really? I don't see the word "substitution" there. Do you?
@Andrew Being handed over to death for our trespasses, understood simply, says that his death was our fault. Because we were evil, he had to die. And in fact, it was not God who killed Jesus. It was evil human beings who killed Jesus. So he suffered for our sins in the very pragmatic sense that we heaped upon him all our evil and destructive attitudes and desires, and because of them, killed a completely innocent man.
@Joshua "Propitiation" is another million dollar word that should be booted from the religious vocabulary. It's really talking about bridging the gap between humans and Gods by bringing humans into harmony with God's will. Even the ancient Jewish sacrifices were done for than purpose. Not to "pay" for sins, but rather to bring people into harmony with God's will through recognizing and repenting from their sins.
The sacrifices were a physical reminder of their duty and devotion to God, and their need to set aside their sins and live according to the Law of God.
Protestants today totally misunderstand the nature of the Old Testament sacrifices. And some of the translations (notably the NIV) get it completely and utterly wrong in speaking of some of the sacrifices as "penalties." That's not how they functioned at all. The functioned as a way to bring people back into line with God's will by honoring God's commandments, one of which was to offer sacrifices to recognize their sinfulness and their need to re-align themselves with God's will.
> and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2)
If you read that in some sort of substitutionary way, then as I explained above, you have completely misunderstood the nature of the ancient Jewish sacrifices.
"Atonement" is a process of bringing humans into harmony with the will of God. Jesus did not reconcile God to man, but man to God. And doing that requires changing us from sinners into righteous persons. That happens through faith, but by living according to the commandments of God.
Faith tells us we must believe in and obey God. And the message of John the Baptist, Jesus, and Jesus' disciples was "repentance for the forgiveness of sins."
@LeeWoofenden I belong to the Body of Christ. I attend the same local church i have since i was in my mother's womb, and i wont leave it, even if they arent right on all accounts, because ignorance and error connot be bested by absence.
"Repentance" means no longer sinning. Jesus came to take away, not the penalty for our sins, but the sins themselves. And that happens through repentance and beginning a new life of living according to God's commandments.
@Andrew Is it a Protestant church? Does it believe in justification by faith alone? Does it believe in penal substitution? Does it believe that God is a Trinity of Persons?
@Andrew I'm not saying anyone has to leave their church if they don't want to. But you still have to decide what's true and what's not. And the foundational doctrines of Protestantism simply aren't taught in the Bible, plainly or otherwise.
@LeeWoofenden It is a body of people that i live in community with, and learn with. You can't claim any authority in teaching if you have abandoned your sheep, Lee
@Andrew Why, in particular, are you referring to John 10:18? Jesus did not commit suicide. He allowed himself to be killed by evil men. And he did that because it was part of what he came here to do. "If I am raised up, I will draw all people to me."
@Andrew I have far more sheep now than I ever did as a pastor. At its peak, my congregation numbered about 60 active members, and averaged about 35 on a Sunday. Now I reach out to thousands of people via my blog. I am reaching far more sheep now than I ever did when I was the pastor of a Swedenborgian church.
@LeeWoofenden: I just saw the title of your latest blog post... I haven't read it yet. But it makes me curious your take on Niel DeGrasse Tyson's recent statement that we are almost certainly living in a "simulation."
@Andrew I ceased active service to the denomination in which I grew up primarily because they have no real drive or desire to spread the good news to the wider public. That's what I wanted to do. And I was frustrated at every turn by the ingrown, institutional nature of my own church.
@Flimzy Swedenborg said 250 years ago that this earth is a rather pale reflection of the greater reality of the spiritual world. And Paul said the same thing somewhat more poetically 2,000 years ago ("shadows," etc.) So it's nice that science is finally catching up. ;-)
@Flimzy Yes, I've read some of those articles, including, I'm pretty sure, one by or about Neil DeGrasse Tyson's take on it. Fascinating stuff. And those atheists think this material universe is so solid and real. Little do they know!
@Flimzy It should. But even if the universe is actually a 3D projection of a 2D reality, atheists can still think of it as being a material 2D reality, and of God and spirit as being non-existent.
@Flimzy There's really no rational reason not to believe in God. I think most atheists got that way because Christianity had become utterly corrupt and irrational doctrinally, and educated people simply could no longer swallow all that horse manure.
@LeeWoofenden I guess to me the point is, if there's a reality beyond our observable universe, as Tyson now appears to believe, how is that any different than acknowledging the existence of a god, or god-like being/civilization, which put us here in what we observe as the universe?
Swedenborg predicted 250 years ago that Protestant doctrine would lead to atheism. And he was right. So many of the New Atheists are former fundamentalists.
Or grew up in fundamentalist households.
Fundamentalist / evangelical.
@Flimzy I really think the greatest objection to God is not to the philosophical concept of God. It's to the horrible God that traditional Christianity teaches. That's the God that the atheists rail against. And unfortunately, that horrible, irrational concept of God has so tainted God in the minds of so many people that the idea of God simply isn't salvageable for many of them. They will remain atheists to their dying day.
Then, after they die, they'll discover that God is nothing at all like what the Catholics and Protestants told 'em God was like.
It is really very sad. Most atheists are good, moral, thoughtful people. But they'll never believe in God because traditional Christianity has destroyed God for them.
@Flimzy One of my nephews is in the same boat. My own youngest son considered himself an atheist for a while, but I think he's softening on that. For some, it's a phase they go through. And the irrational ideas of God are pervasive in this society.
I did my best to inculcate better ideas of God into them. But it's fighting against the tide. And they pick up stuff from their friends, and from society generally. It was painful to hear my own kids occasionally echoing ideas about God that I certainly never taught them.
My sister has become a hippie. She was probably an atheist for a while, but now she believes in "inter-dimensional spirit beings", and that she's a re-incarnated extra-terrestrial, just like Jesus was, here to help us get our shakras aligned, or whatever.
@Flimzy Haha! Well, whatever floats her boat. At least she has some concept of spirit and greater meaning.
I have a lot of sympathy for those who went the hippie, Eastern religion, reincarnation route. They want some sort of spirituality, but traditional Christianity just doesn't do it for them.
@Andrew Setting a post as a community wiki forgoes any reputation effects from voting with the intention of inviting collaboration from the community of users in developing the content of the post to a higher standard
Some of my siblings (of which I have seven) are not especially religious. But I'm pretty sure that if you asked any one of them what their religion was, they'd say "Swedenborgian." My parents never rammed anything down our throats. And our beliefs really aren't crazy, irrational, bigoted, etc. So to my knowledge, none of us has felt the need to abandon the church of our youth, even if not all of us are super active and dedicated to it.
@Flimzy Hmm. Well. I guess intolerance and self-righteousness comes in all shapes and sizes. With any luck she'll eventually grow out of it, and realize better.
My father spent a lot of time training my sister and I (the two oldest in my family). We were home-schooled, and we'd have at least a weekly Bible lesson. Through that, I learned to be skeptical of fundamentalism, and a lot of the "status quo" christianity.
By the time my 3 younger siblings were that age, my parents were going through a rough spot (which ended eventually in divorce), so my father didn't have the chance to invest that same time with them.
If he had, I'm quite certain they'd all three have a different view of Christianity now.
@Flimzy One of my cousins (whose father is also a Swedenborgian minister) once dated the daughter of an evangelical minister. When she heard that my cousin's father was also a minister, her reaction was, "Oh, so you know all about hypocrisy too?"
@LeeWoofenden We attended a Mennonite church at the time. My parents both grew up Nazarene, though. He left the Nazarene church over their doctrine of entire sanctification... and was drawn to the Mennonite church because of their emphasis on social justice, pacifism, etc.
I come from a "long line" of pastors. My dad's father was a Nazarene pastor his entire life. His father before him... and one or two generations earlier, they were leading big tent revivals throughout the midwest US.
@Flimzy Well, I come from five or six generations of Swedenborgians on the patrilinear side of both my parents. (Both their mothers were converts.) On my mother's side, the ministerial line goes back several generations.
@Flimzy As you know, my wife also grew up in Mennonite country from the time she was quite young. And of course, they went to church. But she was an independent thinker, and never really accepted all those rather fundamentalist doctrines. She became a Swedenborgian in her late 20s, when she was living in San Francisco.
@Flimzy In small-town Kansas, I believe it still leans pretty heavily to the fundamentalist side. And it certainly did when my wife was growing up there.
@Flimzy Well, there are even conservative Swedenborgian churches that used to have pretty strict rules about unmarried males and females sitting together in church--though not in my branch of the church.
@Flimzy We have a couple of small Swedenborgian churches in Kansas--one in Pretty Prairie and one in Pawnee Rock. They're on the conservative side in our denomination, but probably on the liberal fringe in their towns. Ironically, our first ordination of an openly gay minister took place in Kansas. And some of the locals were very worried that it might hit the news and they might get blow-back in their communities. Others from the Kansas churches were 100% for it.
@Flimzy Right. I'm not sure any of our churches ever went that far.
@Flimzy Apparently one of the early Swedenborgian ministers somewhere back in the early 1900s scandalized the local population when "he put his Bible in his back pocket and danced with a woman" at a public event.
Although my father was willing to challenge "traditional" theological thinking, I still grew up in a fairly conservative home.
but much of it was unspoken... it was just attitudes about things.
I attended a movie theater the first time at the age of 13... neither of my parents, up to that point, had never gone, because they grew up believing it was "of the devil"
Similarly, I wasn't permitted to go to school dances (even though I was far too shy to talk to a girl, let alone dance with one) because they moved "seductively." Then I asked my father, "So do you think if I go to a dance, I'll have sex?" and he pondered a moment then said, "Okay, you can go."
@Flimzy My parents were pretty tolerant. We had some house rules. But my older siblings were teens during the 60s with all the long hair, and my parents pretty well took it in stride. When we moved from Missouri and my father took a new pastorate in a conservative-ish church in suburban Boston, I think the people were a bit taken aback when his kids turned out to be long-haired hippie types! ;-)
I attended one (count 'em!) school dance in my entire school career. Had nothing to do with any family strictures. I just had no interest in such things.
@LeeWoofenden Yes, we did. With a lot of photoshop effects to blur them.
They were horendous by today's standards
But the yearbook instructor had the idea that digital tech is where it's at... we should be learning PhotoShop and Adobe Page Maker instead of developing film
and on that point, he was absolutely right
the skills I learned from that class still pay off
if I had been doing film development and doing literal cut-and-paste of photos (which we did for sports pages, because digital photo wasn't good enough yet), I'd never use that.