Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
It's still prolly better than sitting at the bar every night slurping up cold ones and cracking one liners to the ladies ...
aron's way is to look at the scriptures afresh. Much better than systematizing trinitarian doctrines for our consumption or posting wiki articles. Gag!
If God didn't want us to explore each and every verse, then why would He even write them?
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Not sure how to answer this one.
Your first comment is meaningless because the activity you give is worse than a false dichotomy. The alternatives are not "dissect the Spirit or go to a bar to pick up women." While they are alternatives, the other alternatives aren't even a rational "undistributed middle." They are just a universe of alternatives.
All I can see in this "looking at the scriptures afresh" is an alternative systematizing of doctrines that look different from trinitarian doctrines. I agree that the systematizing of doctrines is nowhere near as important as many do. But the reason is not that there is nothing to them, but that most of them do not actually relate to our living. And whether we are right or not about three persons and one essence, or whether the Son or the Spirit has to be present at the throne of God (the Father) does not change one iota of the reality (or lack thereof) about our position before God. And whether our living has been in accordance with what we have been charged to do. It is (IMO) a better sounding discussion of angels on the head of a pin. Same for the trinitarian discussion. And for a significant portion of the Calvinist v Arminian controversies. If they do not affect my connection to God, and do no direct me along the path that I am to take, then knowing it is, at some level, a waste of brain cells.
Now whatever is the truth surely does affect my relationship with God. But it is not true because I know it is true. Neither does it affect my relationship because I know it correctly. Rather it affects my relationship because that is what it is — without reference to my understanding of it.
So why did God write what he did? To tell us what he actually told us. Otherwise this is just a variant on the Cahn theories. Looking for secret messages by making assertions beyond what is actually there.
And too often we try to make hay out of the minutia when it was simply part of the overall text. "I went to the market" becomes a study in the kind of market. We create systems that go beyond the actual text, then based on the systems, extend beyond that because of our inquisitiveness.
For example, several years ago we discussed the oneness of God, and there were some serious discussions about whether God the Father was actually present on the cross with Jesus. The question arises because we create a particular system of what is the trinity based on statements like "I and the Father are one" and we extrapolate. If they are one, what is one? I must mean that they are the same "person." And if they are the same person, then if Jesus was crucified, then the Father must have been there on the cross and experienced it. (Then who turned his back?)
The problem is not that there is a question to ask. It is that there is no answer and it was not suggested as a meaningful question. God didn't talk about that. He talked about other things. The goal is not to figure out where we can take the things said beyond their context and see what might pop out. It is to take and understand them in their context.
What is the purpose of any particular passage. Is is to provide a mine of buried treasures, or to provide details of the "story" that it is part of.
I note that there are at least a couple of things brought up in this thread that come from sources for which I do not have familiarity. The thing about angels of children constantly beholding the face of God (or something like that). Assuming it actually is in scripture, what is it talking about? Probably not the angels, but the children and their importance to God. But we turn it into a study of angels. That is what dissecting so many verses gets you.
But lately it seems that I run into verses that we (not just in the LRC) are taught one thing or another about, but when you just read it in its context, you suddenly wonder where that came from. And the answer probably is "someone mining for nuggets in the fortune cookies that you get when verses are ripped from their context."
Like "there can be only one life-giving spirit, and that is the Holy Spirit, and therefore the last Adam (Christ) must have become the Holy Spirit." You would never even go there if you just read the whole passage straight through. But by parsing through the words, looking for something about "spirit" or "Spirit" you find it in that verse, and by ignoring the context, make it into a study on the oneness of God.
And, if God's oneness is simply that they are literally one person, then you and I must be one person (in this life) because we are to be one as the Father and Son are one.