Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 27, 2009 13:07:23 GMT -4
Yes. Paul was very sorry. But not until after he was saved on the road to Damascus. I don't view Paul as being saved all at once by his vision on the road. Yes it was a life changing experience for him, but it was what he did after that experience, when he became a faithful and tireless servant of Jesus, that saved him. If Paul had been granted that vision and gone right back to persecuting the Church he would not have been saved. I didn't say he was speaking to hypocrites, I'm saying that for the people he spoke to, their last and most prominent example of religious piety - the pharisees - were hypocrites who gloried in works. Paul had to work hard to break his congregations from that bad example. But here's the scriptural refrence that Paul's writings are sometimes difficult to understand, and have been twisted by some to their detriment: 2 Peter 3: 15-16 "And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction."
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 27, 2009 13:33:02 GMT -4
Would you mind telling me a little bit about your background? Like, were you raised in the Mormon faith or are you a convert? Do you have any formal theological training? Are you a teacher in your church? I was raised LDS. My family on my mother's side have been Church members since the 1840s when the Church was in Nauvoo, Illinois, and they personally knew Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. On my father's side my family joined the Church in the early 1900s in the Netherlands and immigrated to Utah. As far as formal theological training goes, I attended LDS Seminary classes in High School and Jr. High and LDS Religious Institute classes in college. I don't have any sort of formal degree dealing with religion (those programs do not grant them and do not count as school credit - they are viewed as extra-curricular). I also attended the Church's missionary training center for two months before my mission (much of which was spent in a crash-course in the Dutch language). The Missionary Training center is also where I first read the Book of Mormon all the way through and gained my testimony of it. As far as being a teacher: At 19 I served a mission for two years (minus the two months of training) in the Netherlands. Much of that time was spent going door-to-door and approaching people on the street to see if I could interest them in reading het Boek van Mormon, with not a whole lot of success, rather than teaching, but some teaching was involved. I have served as a teacher in the Church to the 14-year old class for about a year just after my mission, and more recently to the Elder's Quorum (younger male adults) also for about a year. My current calling is as a Ward Clerk, which is mostly administrative. Your turn.
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Post by Dead Hoosiers on Jan 27, 2009 19:02:23 GMT -4
This is where we keep butting heads. Agreed that the answering person does something. If you want to define answering the call and repenting as a work, provided you don't want to throw in any other "work," I can go along with that for the sake of moving this discussion along and just chalk it up to your scrupulousness. So will you agree that God will not save those who do not repent, and that the choice to repent or not is ours? Uh uh. All those who are saved are repentant and God is the cause of their repentance. Interesting(!) and true that it's a separate incident which I hadn't noticed before. In Luke Jesus is eating with pharisees and in Matthew He's eating with His disciples. In Luke Mary anoints His feet, in Matthew the unnamed woman anoints His head. Since John 11:2 says the woman anointed His feet, I still think it's referring to Mary of Bethany. Even so, there's nothing in the Matthew verses to bolster a belief that the woman's good work was the cause of her salvation. She was anointing Him prior to His crucifixion--because she already believed. It doesn't precisely say, true, but it's clear Christ had already done some great thing for her which explains why she loved Him. Her love proves she wasn't petitioning to receive something--she had already received it. Gratitude fits. An offering for forgiveness doesn't fit. Same response as above I guess. Repentance vs. penitence. Yet another topic for the future.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 27, 2009 19:48:41 GMT -4
It doesn't precisely say, true, but it's clear Christ had already done some great thing for her which explains why she loved Him. I don't think you can draw that conclusion. It seems entirely possible to me that they had never met face to face and he had never done anything for her in the flesh, yet she still loved him because of what she had heard about him and hoped for forgiveness.
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 27, 2009 19:59:17 GMT -4
Would you mind telling me a little bit about your background? Like, were you raised in the Mormon faith or are you a convert? Do you have any formal theological training? Are you a teacher in your church? This just made me wonder what you think is the worse of two evils - me being a Roman Catholic, (like I used to be) or an Agnostic (like I am now). ;D ;D
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Post by bazbear on Jan 29, 2009 11:36:46 GMT -4
I can't argue the points of the Bible, or any other religion's scripture. I mean no offense, but THESE ARE THE WORK OF MEN, NOT A SUPREME BEING! Maybe parts are divinely inspired, but which parts?
I certainly don't have the grand answers those of "faith"...and those such as myself not of any one "faith"... are seeking.
Maybe there is a supreme being, a supreme force, or whatever. We humans, building myths for our own purposes is my issue with religion.
To my mind, religion is a vestige of our pre-scientific reasoning period, before we could explain or quantify anything to any reasonable standard or logic, while at the same time our social and political "skills" were relatively robust. Can you say spin doctor? It's probably as old as human language.
*edited for a redundancy*
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Jason
Pluto
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 29, 2009 12:22:17 GMT -4
I can't argue the points of the Bible, or any other religion's scripture. I mean no offense, but THESE ARE THE WORK OF MEN, NOT A SUPREME BEING! How do you know? No doubt men wrote the actual texts, but what inspired the men to write these things? The inspired parts. To my mind, religion is revealed truths from God given to the earliest human family and corrupted or forgotten through time and the desire of man to go his own way. Occasionally God reveals more light and truth when it is sincerely asked for and some significant portion of the human family is ready again to obey it, and then He allows it to be forgotten and fade again as the new generations refuse the wisdom of their fathers. This process continued througout human history until it finally was revealed again to be no more removed until the end of this world, when the current step in God's plan will be finished and His creation will move on to the next step, and our world will become completely different from the one we have known. All the old rules will change, and what has gone before will be seen as merely the prelude to the real story, though a very important prelude.
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Post by Dead Hoosiers on Jan 30, 2009 15:19:45 GMT -4
Would you mind telling me a little bit about your background? Like, were you raised in the Mormon faith or are you a convert? Do you have any formal theological training? Are you a teacher in your church? I was raised LDS. My family on my mother's side have been Church members since the 1840s when the Church was in Nauvoo, Illinois, and they personally knew Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. On my father's side my family joined the Church in the early 1900s in the Netherlands and immigrated to Utah. As far as formal theological training goes, I attended LDS Seminary classes in High School and Jr. High and LDS Religious Institute classes in college. I don't have any sort of formal degree dealing with religion (those programs do not grant them and do not count as school credit - they are viewed as extra-curricular). I also attended the Church's missionary training center for two months before my mission (much of which was spent in a crash-course in the Dutch language). The Missionary Training center is also where I first read the Book of Mormon all the way through and gained my testimony of it. As far as being a teacher: At 19 I served a mission for two years (minus the two months of training) in the Netherlands. Much of that time was spent going door-to-door and approaching people on the street to see if I could interest them in reading het Boek van Mormon, with not a whole lot of success, rather than teaching, but some teaching was involved. I have served as a teacher in the Church to the 14-year old class for about a year just after my mission, and more recently to the Elder's Quorum (younger male adults) also for about a year. My current calling is as a Ward Clerk, which is mostly administrative. Your turn. No religious upbriging to speak of except for one summer of vacation bible school when I was in grade school. I didn't remember any of it and went on to become a great pompous ass and comitted many sins. Regeneration occured in a single instant while reading the Bible as Literature (or something like that) while in a friend's library, there being nothing else to read but philosophy. I wasn't seeking God. He was seeking me and found me. The Holy Spirit descended on me in that library, the scales fell from my eyes and I could comprehend what the Word was telling me. The words were burned into my heart. More on that later if you're interested. I'm a layperson. No formal religious training. Never taught anything either. I think I've had some very good teachers throughout the years. You are the first LDS I have discussed the faith with.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 30, 2009 16:05:52 GMT -4
I can't argue the points of the Bible, or any other religion's scripture. I mean no offense, but THESE ARE THE WORK OF MEN, NOT A SUPREME BEING! Maybe parts are divinely inspired, but which parts? What gets me even more is the belief that one translation, made more than fifteen hundred years after the books were written in the first place, is the infallible version. Not every Christian subscribes to this belief, of course, but I've met more than a few King James literalists. You point out the differences between the King James Bible and other, often earlier translations, and they'll tell you that it was King James's men who were divinely inspired. As opposed to the truth, which is "pressured by the king." It's a beautiful book, full of great poetry. But, if you know what you're looking for, there are obvious changes in translation made to appease a man conflicted about his own bisexuality (yes, there's documentation) and deathly afraid of witches.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 30, 2009 16:20:36 GMT -4
I love the King James translation, but I wouldn't call it infallible. Still, emphasis on removing bisexuality and killing witches? I think you might be viewing it through your own lens there.
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Post by Dead Hoosiers on Jan 30, 2009 21:09:34 GMT -4
When educated people talk about the infallibility/inspiration of scripture they're referring to the original manuscripts. Educated KJV fans believe (and I think they're right) that it's the most accurate English translation in existence.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 30, 2009 22:04:37 GMT -4
Actual people who can actually read the original texts think you're wrong, you know. You can do research on the fact.
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 30, 2009 22:58:25 GMT -4
Actual people who can actually read the original texts think you're wrong, you know. You can do research on the fact. I was sort of surprised too...I always thought that the KJV was considered brilliant as poetry and language but very inferior as a translation. The translators used the Textus Receptus Greek text, written by Erasmus, who used manuscripts dating from the tenth to thirteenth centuries. There were many superior earlier texts - Codex Vaticanus (for Old and New testaments) and the Codex Sinaiticus (New Testament only, written around 350 A.D.). I don't profess to know a lot about this stuff so... ****DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A BIBLICAL EXPERT******
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 31, 2009 0:12:01 GMT -4
I generally agree with Gillian that the KJV is not the most accurate translation. I still consider it the best translation, however.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 31, 2009 0:39:33 GMT -4
I always thought that the KJV was considered brilliant as poetry and language but very inferior as a translation. Basically, yes. I'll read bits of the King James version--though I was raised Catholic, so it's Douay for us when it comes to the liturgy--just for the beauty of the language. However, it is a very flawed translation, and quite a lot of others--both before and after--are better.
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