Well, let me throw in - my two cents here. I found this article, via a Google search:
And let’s look at the last point - point 5:
The heart of the gospel message shifts from sin and redemption to social justice
Now I’m not one, who embraces progressive theology. I’m old fashioned…with me embracing EC / EO theology. And I found this EC video interesting:
But hypothetically…if I did embrace progressive theology…I would say God was concerned with social justice, in the OT…just as I’m concerned and identify with social justice, via this Country and Western song…as they call in, the social justice “experts”.
And here’s an interesting article, I found today - via the Patheos newsletter:
Davo, forgive me, but it sounds here like you’re hair-splitting, and side-stepping the bigger argument about what God’s true nature is like.
For myself, I openly acknowledge that I assign more weight to some Bible verses than others. I make my own judgments—hopefully as influenced by the Holy Spirit—in order to defend and preserve my personal concept of a loving Father God. I freely admit this, and concede that I sometimes find it necessary to disagree with prophets in both the OT and the NT.
Death has always been an enemy, not an instrument, of God, which will eventually be completely eradicated (1 Cor. 15:26).
I commend to everyone my subjective filter of choice for the study of the Scriptures–what I term my John 10:10 hermeneutic tool. (Please consider it, as I think a bipolar God produces bipolar followers.) So, when I read passages like—
–Isaiah 63:3– “I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.
[Sounds to me like a drunken orgy of violence.]
–Deuteronomy 28:63– Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
[Specifically in Deut. 28, it will please the “LORD” to curse the fruit of his own people’s wombs, send them confusion, plague them with diseases “which cannot be cured,” have mens’ wives raped, have people’s children kidnapped, and cause starving parents to eat their own children?? With friends like that, who needs enemies?]
–Proverbs 1:26-27– I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you—when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
[Ha ha! Makes us laugh every time we read it, right? ]
—I contend they misrepresent God, and that the prophet in that instance mistakenly confused the “god of this age” (Satan) with the LORD God (Jehovah).
Hence, I can rightfully assert that I do not pretend ‘to have my cake and it, too’; that I do not try ‘to play both sides against the middle.’ I contend God is unipolar, not bipolar—in the very face of certain Scriptures which, on their face, contradict this assertion.
When considering the widely held position that God sometimes kills, steals, and destroys people, I don’t have to try and defend it anymore, by saying,
-“That was then, and this is now.”
-Or, “I serve the new, improved NT God, who got all that violent OT gunk out of His system against Jesus on the cross–well, except for what He’s gonna do in Revelation."
-Or, “Love is a many-splendored thing, which, when it is God Almighty showing it, may include (ouch) slaughter, disease, and starvation.”)
I agree with you when you say that “Jesus did indeed come to remove that old covenant of death because that’s what it wrought… death.” Praise Jesus for redeeming us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13)!
But I don’t agree that “dogma” was ever from God to begin with!
DOGMA: “…2. The rules and requirements of the law of Moses; carrying a suggestion of severity and of threatened judgment.” (Thayer’s)
Satanically inspired dogma—the legalistic embellishments and threats added to God’s communications by Moses—creeped into man’s relationship with God. Dogma was then used by the legalistic devil as a weapon, to bludgeon people with evil consequences—supposedly from God—for their sins. But God nailed that weapon to the cross:
Col 2:14-15 “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances [Gr. DOGMA]that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having disarmedthe powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Jesus indeed came to fulfill the Law of Moses on our behalf:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill [plēroō] them.” Matthew 5:17.
But consider that the idea of “fulfill” is not the same as “popularize”; rather:
plēroō:
“after, be complete, end, expire, fill up” (Strong’s), “so that nothing shall be wanting” (Thayer’s).
During His earthly ministry Jesus functioned under the Old Covenant of the Law. But Jesus “expired” the Law.
The New Covenant—initiated by the death of Jesus on the cross—liberated us from the obstacle of the law by abrogating it. And thus, by his blood, Jesus brought us back to the original free blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant (Gal. 3:16-17)—blessings received by faith, not by works.
Also, regarding the Christus Victor position on the Atonement, as it relates to the law and Satan,we read,
By contrast, Christus Victor depicts Christ’s sacrifice, not as a legal offering to God in order to placate his justice, but as the decisive moment in a war against the powers of darkness; the law included. [My emphases]
Whoa! That is a good insight. No, it’s a great insight!
I ran across this following paragraph today from GMac.
Is this the ‘lens’ through which we can weigh various contradictory passages in the Bible? I myself find it difficult to consider all biblical passages of equal ‘weight’ when it comes to the most important thing of all - the character of the true God.
quote
“What Jesus did, was what the Father is always doing; the suffering he endured was that of the Father from the foundation of the world, reaching its climax in the person of his Son. God provides the sacrifice; the sacrifice is himself. He is always, and has ever been, sacrificing himself to and for his creatures. It lies in the very essence of his creation of them. The worst heresy, next to that of dividing religion and righteousness, is to divide the Father from the Son–in thought or feeling or action or intent; to represent the Son as doing that which the Father does not himself do. Jesus did nothing but what the Father did and does. If Jesus suffered for men, it was because his Father suffers for men; only he came close to men through his body and their senses, that he might bring their spirits close to his Father and their Father, so giving them life, and losing what could be lost of his own. He is God our Saviour: it is because God is our Saviour that Jesus is our Saviour. The God and Father of Jesus Christ could never possibly be satisfied with less than giving himself to his own!”
from Unspoken Sermons, “Life”
So Dave let’s go with what I don’t know… My understanding of the trinity is most of Christianity says that God (Yahweh) Jesus (Yeshua) and the Holy Ghost (spirit) are all one and the same, and so I would like a crib notes version of why they are not.
My point is about dividing, I’m sure you can explain…
I think folks are pretty tired of my opining on this, Chad, so I’ll not pursue it much. Christ is the exact representation of the Father’s will; in that perspective, to split their purposes and intentions apart is heretical from a certain point of view. ‘I and the Father are one’ - of course that doesn’t mean they are the same Person, one being God and the other a man, his son; but still, Jesus emptied himself of all human ambitions and privileges, and became one with his (and our) Father as to will and intention, love, and like that.
So I think GMac is really onto something.
I’m not sure how you see that as somehow… “hair-splitting, and side-stepping” when that’s my quite open and honest appraisal — and so I try NOT to read the bible with rose-coloured glasses, and those things I maybe at any given point not quite get my head rationally around I put back on my agnostic shelf — I do thatas opposed to editing or excising scripture just to suit my own dogmatic needs.
Davo, do you contend that there are absolutely no contradictions in Scripture regarding the nature of God? That what each and every prophet wrote in Scripture concerning God’s nature was always true, without exception?
Differing aspects DON’T constitute contradiction — you might care about your child and in the course of parenting feeling you need to give some stern discipline… to the child or ill-informed observer you may be assessed as being the worst cad around — is your behaviour as a caring parent contradictory, or a painful necessity?
So Hermano your turn… who do you contend declared the surety of death to Adam if he ate some fruit, saying… “you will surely die” — was it God or the serpent typically seen as Satan, who said this?
God: "…You will certainly die.” Gen. 2:17.
Satan: “You surely will not die!” Gen. 3:4.
God warned, He did not threaten, concerning death. God does not hold the power of death; the devil, who legalistically brings in evil consequences, does (Heb. 2:14).
I agree. But then, as davo pointed out (somewhere), there is this apparently incongruous verse in Revelation.
“I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.” (Revelation 2:23)
This was apparently written by John also. And the person he speaks of, who will strike her, i.e., Jezebel’s, children dead, is Jesus as appearing to John in a vision. Why in the world would John think this particular vision should be included in his message when it goes against so much he wrote in his earlier sections of the New Testament when he speaks repeatedly of the God of love? It can’t be discipline or judgment because why should the children suffer so mightily for the sins of the mother and father? As you said above, “‘stern discipline’ would not include killing."
I know you said you don’t depend on visions as a basis for your beliefs (or something like that) but how can you explain this apparent incoherence? Essentially I guess I am asking an impossible question: what was John’s thinking here?
