The Problem With All That Being Forgiven For One's Sins

You are certainly welcome to your own opinion...but I do not share it. And, should you decide to inflict it upon me I will react. The reaction may very well be detrimental to your health, as you will be delving into aspects of my life I find extremely personal and important.

You freakin' God has no place in my bedroom...and neither do you.

 

God doesn't forgive without punishment for wrongdoing. There is purgatory in the afterlife and penance includes making as much restitution as you can in this one. (If you believe in that sort of thing). And God does reward works, it's just that worship makes good works not only easier but allows one to see them as a positive joy in themselves.

 

Thanks, Incorporeal. Well, when I grew up as one of the very few Protestants in a vastly Catholic region of Germany, I had religious classes in my Catholic Primary School and went to a Protestant Sunday School. So an interest in ecumenical issues came quite naturally to me, along with the realization of how important religious tolerance and mutual respect is.

 

So you are a proponent of “Sola Scriptura” now? Well, being a notorious free thinker myself, so am I. But in all fairness I’ve got to say that Catholic have some very good arguments against that doctrine. That you can’t really find a base in scripture for it is just the most poignant one.



And - if I remember correctly - you yourself once complained about a problem arising from “Sola Scriptura”, that is just as evident in this forum as it was when Erasmus of Rotterdam first pointed it out to Luther: contrary to what Luther proclaimed, the Bible is anything but clear and self-explanatory. Protestants constantly disagree with each other on how to interpret it. And more often than not we tend to view it through the goggles of our own preconceived theological (or atheist) convictions.



P.S.: just on a side note: Apart from in 2 Maccabees 12 (which is not part of the Protestant Canon) those who believe in purgatory see scriptural evidence for it in Matthew 5:26 and 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.

 

Well the MS, and most protestants are proponents. So, not now, it is all I've known.

Maybe, I don't remember that.

OK. Never read maccabees.

 

Right,...

No one else should have anything to say about what goes on in your private bedroom.

The issues arise when people start telling us trhat they are hot liberal sexually willing gyas or Straights in how they talk and act OUTSIDE of their bedrooms.

These people need be criticized by the effect such behavior has on the young people who act the same way and start having social problems for us all, like welfare, abortions, Child Abuse problems with fatherless kids, and high crime rates.

As long as you keep your sex life private, you will hear no criticism from me.
But as soon as your sex life is announced and modeled around us all, criticism should be expected as a reaction to that.

 

When you say, "religious tolerance and mutual respect," I assume you mean in regard to other sexually prudent religions, excluding the religions of Eros, paganism, or sexually promiscuous people who behave as though their goddess was Istar, tho' unrecognized by them???

You are not silent about social proposals that would increase improper sexual behaviors, like a Go Go club opening in your neighborhood or a wild Bar and such things?

 

Mac is a great religious writing but was never included in the Hebrew Bible.
It seems to have conflicting testimony too, in that it adds to what Daniel has told us on important issues and makes it seem Daniel was wrong about the abomination that was to come.

It also changes the number of Old Testament books in the Hebrew canon to more that the ancient number, 24, which the Jews and Jesus have both spoken about.

 

It’s well possible that I confuse you with somebody else. The complaint about Christians disagreeing with each other is uttered quite often in this forum. Nothing seems to vex some of the atheists here more than the fact that Christianity isn’t one uniform block, let alone a block that equals the caricature picture they have in mind when thinking about Christianity. Or else – in a weird logic of their own – they think that the existence of a vast variety of Christian denominations/ the vast variety of religions somehow proves all belief in God to be false.

Well, I suppose you just never got hold of a Catholic Bible.

The reason that our Protestant Canon doesn’t contain 2 Maccabees, is that Luther decided to go with the Jewish Hebrew Bible canon for what to us Protestants is the Old Testament. On the council of Trent the Catholic Church on the other hand decided to base its Canon on the Latin Vulgate. The Vulgate’s OT-part is based on the Greek Septuagint, which also contains the “Deuterocanonical Books” of which 2 Maccabees is one.

(Next time you see AboveAlpha going on about the silly Reed Sea/Red sea obsession of his, tell him that your Protestant Bible said Reed Sea all along. By translating directly from the Masoretic text Luther avoided taking the Septuagint’s mistranslation of that word on board.)

Some Catholics suspect that Luther not only wanted to stay as close as possible to the original text, but that he deliberately wanted an excuse to rid his canon of 2 Maccabbees. I certainly would not put it past him: In his eyes it may well have been too supportive for the Catholic Churches belief in purgatory/ practice of indulgences. He certainly had less reverence for scripture than the average modern evangelical fundamentalist pretends to have. Unfortunately his contempt for the Book of Revelation did not stop him from putting it into his canon. That would have spared the US many of its mad end-timers.

 

Spare me, cupid! Unlike you I’m not obsessed with sex. Actually I find your constant closet-pervert rambling about it more sickening than any form of temple prostitution could be. As it happens I live quite close to a GoGo-Bar. While I’m no fan of prostitution, my main worry concerning it is that the women working in there do this on their own free will and have access to proper health care and social security.

- - - Updated - - -

If those who compiled the Hebrew Bible Canon had been worried about texts contradicting each other, this Canon would look very different. Same goes for our New Testament Canon.

 

As I have NEVER met anyone that displays their sexuality in such a way (except perhaps a few young ladies in a bar setting), I suggest you stop frequenting Gay bars and underground sex clubs. In this way you can avoid the folks you are referring to and will have no need for the criticism in the first place.

 

Sounds so good...

And clearly avoids any responsibility on your part, as a Christian.
You can just pretend to Christian principles and ignore the enormous Child Abuse suffered by half the kids, today, who are now born fatherless.

Their single mothers raise them on expensive Welfare, unless they get abortions, which they do, in 1/3rd of all pregnancies.

What good is your Christianity if you act blind to Satan here?

 

You MUST be kidding me, or you do not even see TV and magazines everywhere with half naked women on them.

 

I see you have presented a posting in which I can concur with you about.

 

Ah...I see. You are complaining about the sexualisation of media rather than actual reality. This is also quite easy to avoid with a remote control device for the TV, and a simple decision not to read smut....it seems as if you have a problem with society that you create for yourself.

Perhaps a convent setting might help....I would recommend a Church but, they can be worse than a brothel.

 

No, you must be kidding all of us. A long time ago, when I was in my twenties, I studied art and human anatomy as a joint consideration and compliment to one another. During that time and even now, IMHO, there is nothing more beautiful in Gods creation than the beauty of a nude woman. I am not speaking of the Porn that is so prominent in this day and age, but just the form itself. Absolutely magnificent creation. In that regard woman is a blessing to the eyes of a man (laying aside personalities that may taint the beauty of a particular individual woman).

 

Many don't claim belief in God false, a few real atheists yes, but most just say I don't believe your(not you specifically) version of God or christianity. As christians do the same.

I have not. I'm sure they're available on line if I was really interested.

I also think staying with the original hebrew would be the correct way to go.
Yes, revleations. Quite the controversial book.

 

I must beg to differ, Incorporeal. there is nothing more beautiful in 'gods creation' than a nude man

 

From your perspective, it would/could seem probable. Just be careful of the indulgence however that might be postured.

 

postured? you mean with tackle badly arranged?

(I went to life drawing classes, too)

 

Chuckle.... I was primarily referencing posturing as demonstrated in the kama sutra....

 

If you are afraid of Satan, I suggest you stop violating the eighth commandment by slandering single mothers.

If you want to know about Christian principles, I’d like to draw your attention to Lecture 20 of the series “Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature“ in the “Open Yale Courses”. From the transcript:

“If you were listening to most modern American Christians, modern American people generally, what are the two most important teachings about Christianity in the minds of most Americans? The family, the importance of the family, and by that they mean the heterosexual nuclear family, but even the liberal churches which are willing to recognize gay relationships, they still construe that as gay marriage or just gay versions of the nuclear family. The family is the most important thing about Christianity in the minds of a lot of Americans. The second thing is nationalism, patriotism. If you took away patriotism and nationalism, and the family out of Christianity, most people in modern America wouldn't recognize it as such. What's odd is that, when you read these ancient documents, that's precisely the two things that Christianity attacks. This form of early Christianity was anti-family, for the most part, and it was anti-patriotic. The people who say, but this is traditional Christianity, those people don't know their history before 1950, because the church, the overall Christian churches were never pro-family for the first 1500 years of its existence.”
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152/lecture-20#transcript

 

And that’s perfectly fine.

Of course.

Translation-wise: yes

Canon-wise: I’m not so sure. We must not forget that the New Testament mostly quotes from the Septuagint and in places also refers back to the OT’s deuterocanonical scriptures, including 2 Maccabees.

Stop me, if I’m getting too nerdy here. Most people probably aren’t that interested in this kind of stuff. The point I’m trying to make is: it’s very much in the eye of the beholder whether certain theological doctrines, including that of purgatory, are scriptural or not.

Yes, the canonicity of the Book of Revelation was very controversial right from the beginning of Christians canonizing scripture. However, in the end it got in. And I must say it’s grown on me recently. Richard Bauckham wrote quite an interesting book about it, in which he presents one of the sane interpretations: http://www.cambridge.org/de/academi...tudies-new-testament/theology-book-revelation

 

smut book!

back on topic ....

 

Then don't go trekking into the off topic discussions.