2:22 PM
@fredsbend Inspired Word of God, yes, though as you know,
our canon of inspired scripture is considerably smaller than either the Catholic or Protestant canons. Still, as I've also said here numerous times, I'm happy to use Protestant canon for the purpose of doctrinal debate. (I'm not as familiar with the additional books of the Catholic canon.)
"Infallible," however, I find to be more misleading than useful. It's as if those who believe in infallible scripture have the eyes of God, so that they can see inerrantly what the Scriptures mean. But human minds are fallible and errant. In practice, "inerrant" means, "Whatever I think the Bible says, that's God's own truth."
But more technically, the Bible, as a medium of communication between God and humanity, necessarily has a human side to it, taken from the cultures and minds of the human authors. Otherwise we couldn't understand it. So it necessarily has human attitudes and even human errors in the human side, which is the literal text and narrative of the Bible. Once again, otherwise we couldn't understand it, because it would go right over our head.
@fredsbend No, penal substitution is not just metaphorical. It posits a God whose "wrath" or "justice" requires horrible, eternal punishment even for the smallest of human sins. It posits a God who is an insane tyrant, and who must send his own son to die in order to satisfy his "wrath" or "justice." It posits a God who has mercy on others from seeing his son horribly executed, and seeing his son's blood dripping from his beaten body.
It is a horrible blasphemy against God's real love and justice.
It is also completely non-biblical. As I've said over and over here, the Bible never says that Christ paid the penalty for our sins. But most people here seem not to care one iota what the Bible actually says or doesn't say. They're too busy making it say whatever their particular guy (in this case, Melanchthon or Calvin) thinks it says.
And that makes a mockery of the supposedly "infallible, inerrant" nature of the Bible. What does that even matter if you totally ignore what the Bible says in favor of human dogma?
And . . . back to my definition of "infallible": "Whatever I think the Bible says, that's God's own truth." Even if the Bible doesn't actually say it.
@fredsbend References to actual, non-Christian scientific sources?
@fredsbend What forms of Christianity "reject soteriology altogether"?
@fredsbend Yes, the early Jewish Christians were observant Jews, and many believed that Christians must be, also. Once again,
Acts 15.
@fredsbend But the Jews saw that death as literal, physical death, not some eschatological condition. And they saw salvation as being literally, physically saved from death and other undesirable physical, earthly conditions, such as slavery to foreign nations. See:
7
Throughout the narrative parts of the Old Testament, there is very little mention of any afterlife. That idea arises mostly later on, in the books of the Prophets.
During the bulk of Old Testament times, salvation had little or nothing to do with:
Heaven or the afterlife, since there was littl...
People who remained in the Jewish paradigm generally didn't feel the need for the type of salvation that Christ and the Christians were offering. Even the early Jewish Christians quickly died out, and were replaced by new generations of Christians that had no connection to Judaism and its concept of salvation.
Something that I have very much enjoyed (besides the Winter Bash) that has become somewhat of an Advent tradition on this site are the annual Advent Bounty challenges, with bounties offered in 2013, 2015, and 2016. In order to continue this tradition, I will be offering a bounty for each week of ...
