Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
OBW says: ...Belief in both is required for salvation. Just believing in Jesus as the good master is not enough. You must believe in him as God. And not just some god. But of the God that is Three.
But they are not able to produce any verse which says or implies that belief in the "God that is Three" is necessary for the salvation experience.
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I never said that. I never made any reference to what is required for salvation. I will accept this as a mistake on your part. But if you persist in it, I will have to dismiss you as a liar.
I did respond to a particular thing you said in response to Unto's quotation of Jesus in
John 17:3 "this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." This verse says what it says. But it does not say anything about belief. It only speaks of knowing. And while we can be saved with little knowing, there is much to come to know after that.
And I do not recall that anyone has ever said that belief in the Trinity as espoused by the mainstream of Christians is required for salvation. I know some people who will start to question what it is that you may have put your faith in if you don't believe in the "right" God. But they usually are sort of tentative about it. As they should be.
I honestly think that you and Drake are following one of the "soft" "heresies" surrounding the unclear and vaguely defined Trinity. And that is why I call it "soft." I don't think your version is the better synthesizer of the totality of the available material. Instead, yours latches onto one side, needs to understand the other side and can't, so you marginalize it or reject it.
And I put "heresy" in quotes because it is not a damnable heresy worthy of being expelled from the body of faith. It is simply a difference of opinion concerning undefined aspects of our God. It is all conjecture.
While I reject your version, I do not suppose that you are not saved as a result of the "error." But the more serious error in it is the decision to declare those who are in the mainstream as heretics because they don't hold to your version. It is just too much in keeping with the separatist (the opposite of unity or unifying or being one) positions of the man who claimed his followers were the most "one" among all Christians.
History is bearing out that there is no unity, even within your group. Only conformity or rejection.