The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Post by a UR concerned about Mysticism....

Theology Biblical Theology
#26

:laughing: True, good point. As I recall, he actually tried to claim that someone had to be a born-again Christian first before being able to understand what the Bible says about salvation!! i.e., to keep from having to pay any attention to whatever Jeff might be saying. That’s such a purely mystical position it practically disavows any point to evangelism at all! Since after all, one might suppose that any evangelist is supposed to be presenting the gospel as found in scriptures; but if that’s so, then (on this plan) the intended receiver has no hope of understanding and accepting the gospel from any evangelist, whether from the NT writers or from anyone afterward, until the intended receiver is a born-again Christian.

…hey, who was complaining earlier about universalism being ‘not true’ because (he thought) it totally disavowed evangelism? hmmm… :mrgreen:

Anyway, good comment Craig. :slight_smile:

And of course the ‘immunity’ to cross-examination is a big appeal to being a ‘mystic’. I mean it’s a big appeal to a certain class of people, because it offers a shield from behind which they can toss whatever grenades they feel like without being called to account for it. How dare they be questioned?–they’re mystics! They have dreams prophetically revealing The Truth!

Which of course is why the term is now brought into such low esteem in some circles: a ‘mystic’ must be someone who is (basically) cheating in order to sound like they’re talking profoundly about something.

I’m not kidding when I say, I have prophetic dreams, too, which even come true (although, as it happens, never in any way which has benefitted me in some fashion I’d naturally prefer. Very much the contrary. :frowning: ) They have been of unspeakably huge importance to me personally. But I don’t appeal to those when trying to make a public witness.

And as to writing in mystical forms: first, I do the dry boring logical math. Then I get to play with the results. That way I can answer people who want to know what the heck it is I’m doing and why.

(Pushups first. Lovemaking afterward. :smiley: )

#27

Some of us combine the 2 :smiling_imp:

#28

Except that you only called this Mysticism (period–with a capital M, even, like in your title for the thread!) You didn’t distinguish between true and false mysticism.

In any case, mysticism in the Bible is even simpler than a genre form (though it often takes a poetic genre form.) The 1 Cor verses you just quoted directly references mysticism–except your translation probably doesn’t use that word. But in Greek, the term is found in verse 7 (of chapter 2).

And what it mainly means is a truth that was once kept secret but is now being revealed: a mysterion.

Nor is St. Paul talking about topics of salvation when referencing “the wisdom of the mature”. Though really, if push comes to shove, I can go further than you on this: no person can understand anything on any topic at all, without the Spirit of God. But the Spirit witnesses first to truth in the heart; which is why and how someone can come to rightly understand spiritual topics like salvation without having first become Christian in any formal sense (including professed belief). Otherwise they would have to be Christian first in order to understand enough to become Christian–which would be ridiculous.

(However, if all you mean is that someone has to be saved by God first before they can understand enough to accept salvation themselves, then I have no disagreement. :slight_smile: )

#29

Ah, but I wasn’t excluding the first from the second. :smiley: (See prior context, yo? :sunglasses: )

#30

Jason.

I do not recall ever saying that a person has to be born again to understand the bible about salvation. Please show me where I said that. What I did say…an unbeliever is not capable of understanding spiritual things and since the bible is a spiritual book they are spiritually discerned.( 1Cor 2:10-14). Verse 14 speaks for itself. The only thing your preach to an unbeliever is Christ and Him crucified.

2:10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

2:11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

#31

You’re saying it right here!–unless you’re denying P2 or P3 below, perhaps. (But as will be shown below, you do consider salvation to be a “spiritual” topic; and you do consider the Bible to witness concerning salvation.)

P1.) an unbeliever is not capable of understanding spiritual things.
P2.) salvation is a spiritual thing.
P3.) the Bible is an evangelical witness concerning salvation.
C1.) an unbeliever is not capable of understanding the Bible’s evangelical witness concerning salvation. (from P1, P2, P3)

You practically made this same argument yourself (though not in formal process as above) when you were dismissing what Jeff was trying to talk to you about, concerning what the Bible has to say about salvation.

First at this comment.

The topic was salvation and what the Bible has to say about it, and your whole point is that the topic (and the Bible) is “spiritual”. There’s P2 and P3. You’re blatantly claiming P1 to be true. The conclusion follows deductively. You just weren’t thinking out all the implications when you said it. :wink:

Next (in another thread) here:

And not long after this comment (same thread as before) Jeff gave up trying to talk to you at all about salvation. Why? Because it’s a spiritual matter and, as you simply repeated to him again:

So much for any possible evangelization to him from you. You can’t help him understand and accept salvation from Christ, because salvation is a spiritual matter which (as you insist) he cannot understand because he isn’t saved yet.

Sure, you can preach “only Christ and Him crucified” to Jeff or any unbeliever. But so what? By your own logic you cannot do so in any spiritual way, only in some merely fleshly way (I guess) as a mere historical fact of zero spiritual importance. (Incidentally, even most hypersceptics believe Jesus existed and was crucified. So in most cases you don’t even have to preach that.) Even if you tried to preach it with some spiritual value, it would do no good because Jeff hasn’t accepted God’s salvation yet, therefore isn’t born again yet, and so couldn’t understand and receive the spiritual value even if you did try to preach Christ and Him crucified for some spiritual purpose.

So your own evangelical (according to your position) is completely useless; and the scripture is completely useless for evangelism, too. Much less (according to this logic) could the Holy Spirit Himself witness to the person!! A person has to be a “born again” believer, and so have already accepted salvation, before he can understand anything about spiritual matters, including enough to accept salvation.

You can quote 1 Cor until your fingers turn blue from copy-pasting it, but that doesn’t change the logic of your position.

It also won’t change the fact that Jesus almost never preached His crucifixion when He was evangelizing about Himself–in fact, He mostly preached that to His own disciples!–and when He sent out evangelization teams He didn’t instruct them to preach His crucifixion. Yet they had great success nevertheless. Nor will it change the fact that in all preaching scenes in Acts, while the crucifixion of Christ is certainly prominent, so is the topic of salvation, trust in God including as Christ, and numerous other ‘spiritual’ matters. Indeed, it’s literally impossible to preach the identity of Jesus as “Christ” in any way without including a spiritual meaning to be accepted or rejected.

The fact is that you’ve misunderstood the proper meaning and application of what Paul was saying in that chapter of 1 Cor. And while I agree that Craig was (arguably) libeling you previously in other regards, he wasn’t in this one.

#32

Might I also refer to you this thread I posted a while ago concerning salvation as presented in the Gospels? You’ll see how diverse the message of salvation is conveyed.

#33

Quite so, Dondi; good point!

#34

Jason.

1 Cor 2:10-14 is very clear and I’m confident of my understanding of them. Lol. :wink:

#35

Since the things you claim to understand did not come from human faculty but a supernatural influence, this is a definition of a mystic and therefore you are a Mystic.

Either you accept what Scripture says, or you don’t. If you do not, then posting Scripture to support a position you do not believe in, is rather self-defeating and one of the main arguments against you.

[size=200]Which is it, BA, do you believe what the Scriptures says?[/size] YES or NO?

#36

Let me throw this curve ball at you, BA.

According to this passage, ‘Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual’, points to the folly of man’s wisdom. And that Paul speaks that which the Holy Spirit teaches.

Well, what does the Holy Spirit teach? What is it that is spiritual?

Jesus said in John 6:63:

“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: **the words **that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Therefore, if anyone hears the Jesus’ words, they are ‘spirit’. And that ‘spirit’ quickens. Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." and Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

So when someone like Jeff (who we are using as an example of someone who a natural man), hears the Word of God, that Word is going to have some kind of effect on Jeff. God’s Word will not return void. The ‘natural man’ (in I Cor 2:14) is accustomed to ***man’s wisdom *** (tying back into I Cor 2:13), which simply means the humanistic philosophy of the day. It’s not that he can’t understand spiritual things, it’s that the wisdom of man is opposed to the Word of God. See, this is a contract between humanistic philosophy and the Word of God.

But in Jeff’s case (sorry, Jeff for using you as an illustration), he HAS the spirit of God, the mind of Christ, THROUGH THE WORD OF GOD, which is right in front of him on his desktop. His exposure to the Word of God is what makes him spiritual. Though he may not be a believer, or a doubter, he at the very least is open to the Word, and by that virtue, the Word is part of him.

Someone who is guided by the wisdom of this world, let’s say Sigmond Freud, Aristotle, or Nietzsche, are living by a worldly, natural philosophy, not geared to the the things of God. These are the one’s who are spiritually discerned. The don’t know God because they don’t have the knowledge of God, which one gains through the Word of God.

Now I don’t know what Jeff’s philosophy in life is. But even if he is agnostic, he may find that the wisdom of the Word is profitable. He may see value in the teachings of Christ, or the other prophets. He certainly has demonstrated an understanding of the Word of God even if he doesn’t quite buy into it.

Basically I’m boiling it down to this:

Natural Man = man’s wisdom as a guiding force without the influence of the Word of God. (Word of God is spirit)

Spiritual man = Word of God activated in the soil of man’s heart that will not return void but will accomplish God’s will. I.E, EXPOSURE to the Word of God.

#37

Dondi.

I agree with most of your post. I disagree with what natural man can understand. The Amplified bible really opens up this passage of 1 Cor 2:14 " But the natural, non-spiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly ( meaningless, non sense) to him; and is INCAPABLE OF KNOWING THEM [OF PROGRESSIVELY RECOGNIZING, UNDERSTANDING, AND BECOMING BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THEM] BECAUSE THEY ARE SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED AND ESTIMATED AND APPRECIATED."

Defenition of discerned= To recognize or comprehend mentally. So, Paul says they are spiritually discerned…meaning they are incapable of recognizing or to comprehend spiritual things.

#38

So Craig wasn’t slandering you then. (Or libeling, to be more precise.) :wink:

Aren’t you glad I reminded you, with quotes (as you asked), where you had said those things then, which you had apparently forgotten you said?

You’re welcome, by the way. :mrgreen:

The more interesting question at the moment is why you forgot what you had said before, and then thought you never had said it. After all, if you have no problem with the idea that evangelization by anyone or anything (up to and including the Holy Spirit) is effectively impossible (except in some merely and worthlessly non-spiritual sense) until people are already born-again Christians–which is exactly what your statements clearly add up to when the implications are tallied up–then you shouldn’t have had any problem affirming “a person has to be born again to understand the bible about salvation” (as you yourself phrased it, though not remembering this is what you yourself had been teaching) and “the need of being born-again to understand, or the Spirit of God to understand what the Gospel is” (as Craig put what you had been teaching, meaning being taught by the Spirit of God after being born again) and “someone had to be a born-again Christian first before being able to understand what the Bible says about salvation” (as I put what you had been teaching) and “they would have to be a Christian first in order to understand enough to become Christian” (as I also put what you had been teaching).

For goodness’ sake, BA: I can literally quote you from this thread!

"you need to be born again to understand the bible and spiritual things.

Not 48 hours later (was it even as much as one whole day), you’re writing back to me, in this very same thread:

Please show me where I said that.a person has to be born again to understand the bible about salvation.

Let’s compare:

BA on Wed Jan 20, 2010, 8:14 pm: “I said you need to be born again to understand the bible and spiritual things”
BA on Thu Jan 21, 2010, 9:12 am: “I do not recall ever saying that a person has to be born again to understand the bible about salvation.”

The only way this could possibly make coherent sense is if you strenuously and consistently thought that salvation wasn’t spiritual. Except that you do (as quoted already last time). Or if you thought that the Bible had nothing to say about salvation. Except that you do (as quoted already last time). Or if you thought that what the Bible had to say about salvation was only non-spiritual. Except that you think it does teach spiritually about salvation because “it’s a spiritual book” (as quoted already last time. And could quote you more extensively on that, if you wanted.)

I don’t doubt that you’re confident about your own understanding of what 1 Cor 2:10-14 means. But your own understanding about what you mean totally reverses itself in less than 13 hours on the same exact topic, without you realizing it.

You don’t even understand what you yourself are writing, when opposing people. It might be time to be a little less confident about what you understand the scriptures to mean (especially when you’re opposing other people by appeal to them).

#39

Your emphasis, by the way.

You couldn’t have stated it any plainer: those who are unsaved cannot accept or welcome or admit into his heart any gifts and teachings and revelations even by the Holy Spirit Himself, because such things can only be spiritually discerned. Anyone or anything at all trying to evangelize is doomed to utter failure (unless they are evangelizing someone who has already accepted the Spirit and so become a spiritual man thereby): because all proper objects of evangelization must (by the explanation of the “Amplified Bible” anyway) be incapable of recognizing, understanding and becoming acquainted with them.

May I suggest you spend your time writing the editors of the AmpBible, to tell them that if Christianity is true then Christianity is not true, because Christianity teaches that evangelization is impossible? :unamused:

Good comment, btw, Dondi. :slight_smile:

#40

Which is why I have not been guilty of liable by saying what he had been saying from almost the beginning although there may have no been enough physical evidence to make such accusation, I have been vindicated by his later declaration. Which is what I said at the first time he accused me of slandering him, it is not slander, it is liable and it is only liable if there is no truth behind it. Which is why I changed my communication style with BA, it was done so that he would vindicate me by his carelessness.

As for being confident…there has been a lot of zeal but a lack of any knowledge of what he believes.

Proverbs 19:2
It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.

I knew what I was doing. :wink:

#41

What it is saying here, even in the Amplified version, is that they don’t understand because they are unwilling to understand, not because they are not capable. It is the same phenonemon in Romans 1:19:

“Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.”

Everyone has the capability to know God, for ‘their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.’ (Romans 10:18). The toughness of the soil depends on their willingness to listen and retain the things they heard.

#42

Jason.

Lol. It is obvious that we do not agree on the understanding of 1 Cor 2:10-14 the same way. No problem, Jason. Are you going to join Tom by reducing your responses to sarcastic remarks? I hope not. Hey, I would like your response to my topic ’ “How many UR’s are baptized in the Spirit.” I know you like responding by writing novels…do you think you can keep it under a few paragraphs? Thanks Jason. :wink:

#43

Dondi.

It does say incapable.

#44

But only as long as they are foolishness to them.

#45

Dondi.

Yes. Many believe that God opened Lydia’s heart to hear Paul. We have shown that notion to be incorrect; God opened her heart “to heed.” However, those in error on the point typically have another erroneous concept – that God opened Lydia’s heart by a direct and immediate operation of the Holy Spirit – that He supernaturally altered Lydia’s emotional processes to compel her to hear and obey.

Of course the God of heaven has many instruments at His disposal. We can imagine that He could choose to accomplish His will by many different means. The question is, what means has He chosen? How does He open the hearts of men and women to the obedience of faith? How did He open Lydia’s heart to respond to the gospel? Was it through a supernatural means not mentioned in the text or was it through the word of God spoken by Paul?

It is a plain fact that there is no mention in Acts 16:13-15 of the direct working of the Spirit of God. To assert that God used that means to prompt obedience from Lydia is to inject something into the scriptures that just isn’t there. What is there, plainly, is the gospel message “spoken by Paul.”

God used the preaching of Paul and his fellow evangelists as the instrument to open hearts to the obedience of faith. On one occasion, Paul and Barnabas recounted to the church in Antioch “all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27). In 2 Corinthians 5:20a Paul wrote, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us.”. The message of the gospel, proclaimed by God’s people, is His tool in the hearts of men.

Today, as it was with Lydia so long ago, the gospel is “the power of God to salvation” (Romans 1:16). Only when people hear it can their hearts be opened to faith and obedience (cf. Romans 10:17; 6:17).