ex-xian

Ok, let's see. Jesus said that no one can come to father except by him. Revelation says that unbelievers burn forever in the lake of fire while the smoke of their torment acends to the throne of god forever. So basically, if my totally subjective (do you really mean that's it's utterly devoid of an objective basis) experience is one that doesn't match xianity, then I'll spend eternity burning up for something that, being subjective, is totally out of my control?

Badfish

Only if the experiences are demonstratable or shown to contain a preponderance of evidence. Anyone can verbally claim and/or be dilluded into believing they have a had a personal experience with anything.

Like my experience with the Unicorns and the 7 legged demigod.

Demigawd

Such as one particular mythology has credence above all others?

Badfish

No, I don't think so. God is omnipotent, sometime in your life if you live within range of the word of Christ, then God will show himself to be the prevailing God, over any type of false God's.

You just have to keep an open mind and be on the lookout.

Sorry, this was directed at seebs, forget it.

seebs

I don't know that I buy the "totally out of control" thing... but beyond that, I am unconvinced of the popular mainstream interpretation of this. As a friend of mine pointed out, the thing Jesus said is just as true if read as "whenever someone comes to the father, it's through Jesus". If you read through the Gospels, or even the OT Prophets, we find time and time again heroic efforts to remind us that any idiot can follow a few rules, but *actually caring about people* is hard, and maybe we should be working on that.

I don't believe salvation to be a question of epistomology; believing that Jesus is God the way you believe that Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska won't help you. (James comments on the irrelevance of merely holding a thing to be true, saying the demons *know* Jesus is Lord, and tremble.) There are many people who follow Jesus without recognizing the name, as there were in the years before He showed up.

In the end, I don't know, but the impression I've gotten has been that Heaven is full of people who don't particularly believe in the concept, but who have been filled with the spirit of compassion that we've been told about.

Note that the Bible does address the question of how what you know affects what happens to you; we are told explicitly that the punishment of a person who knew what was right, and didn't do it, will be greater than the punishment of someone who acted wrongly out of mere ignorance. Ignorance of the law *is* a defense, in Christianity.

seebs

Sort of. There's a sort of hierarchy among my axioms; some may not follow from others, but wouldn't be useful without them, so they're second-class citizens, so to speak. The Christianity axiom is one of the least direct, but it seems to be working, so I'm keeping it. It will go away if I ever drop the existance-of-God axiom, which seems unlikely. I can sort of make things work without it, but the result is a whole lot of weak "well, it *could* be a coincidence/hallucination/etc.", more than I'm normally willing to accept.

Demigawd

And what is this hierarchy based upon? Proximity in time between yourself and the conception of the supposed axiom? Current societal acceptance of said axiom? Whichever axiom gives you a warmest fuzzy?

seebs

Dependancies. The Christianity axiom wouldn't make any *sense* without the God axiom. Both of them are in a category of more-negotiable axioms than the core axioms, which are:

1. Logic, given valid inputs, produces valid outputs.
2. My experience is at least somewhat reflective of a world external to me.

I haven't been able to find ANYTHING I can do without the first one, and I haven't been able to find any *reason* to do anything without the second one.

Everything else comes after those. Curiously, chronologically, I adopted the idea that "moral" had useful meaning before I adopted the God axiom, although I now understand morality at least partially in *terms* of God. Still, the idea that morality is "real" came first in my gradual development of a set of beliefs.

ex-xian

Ok we'll deal with these one at a time. I don't have a bible handy, so I'll quote w/o references. If you wish, I could look them up and post them later.

If a person's belief isn't based on some type of objective standard, then there is no way that they can be held responsible for what they do or do not believe.

Oh I agree with you last point. However, Jesus did say "No one come to the father" not "whenever someone comes to the father." Furthermore, when he criticized the pharisees for tithing their spices, but not being merciful he said that they should "Do the former and not neglect the latter." Jesus said, "I come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it." The new testament is full of do's and don'ts.

"You must be born again." It is not enough to have a spirit of compassion or to be a good person. "There is none righteouss, no not one." "All our righteoness are as filthy rags." Paul wrote that "It is by grace, thru faith" that a person is saved. "Not of works, lest any man should boast."


Nope, the New Testament says that "God once winked at ignorance, but now calls all men to repentence." So unless a person cognitavely acknowledges jesus as lord, repents of their sins, and gives up all rights over their own bodies and minds ("we are bought with a price", "we are his bondservents"), then that person cannot be saved.

seebs

Fine by me.

Sure they can - but the scale has to be a sliding scale, similar to the one Jesus referred to. The question isn't what your inputs were, but what you decided to do with them.

The thing is, "no one comes to the father except through me" and "everyone who comes to the father, comes through me" are semantically equivalent.

The question of what it means to "fulfill" the law is a very fuzzy one, and I've seen many mutually-exclusive answers proposed. I have no real idea, myself.

Yes. Paul's position on this is often somewhat different from Christ's. Note that Paul was writing from the perspective of a Jew - someone used to understanding righteousness in terms of following 613 specific laws.

In the Gospels, Jesus talks about recognizing the righteous by their actions. My reconcilliation of these points is to infer that Paul was talking more about the formal works of the law, or perhaps about people doing things by rote, not out of genuine compassion. When Jesus talks about the righteous clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, they profess ignorance of having done these things to Him; they did them, not because they sought a reward, but because the things were right in themselves.

I am unconvinced. There's so many passages with different contexts that I am unable to entirely sort it out, but it seems to me that such a model is inconsistent with other claims made about God.

There are some very interesting stories one hears occasionally about people who, never having met a Christian, had weird dreams or visions leading them to believe something very similar to Christianity. I have no idea what to make of such claims, and mostly I don't worry about it.