" . . .Pwns atheist on genetic fallacy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS5TguR7Sfo

To rebuke death with harsh condemnation is not to offer life, or even show that we who would preach are even alive in the first place

When I saw this link on youtube I was expecting to see a calm, cool,  polite  and respectful demolition of said genetic fallacy. What I saw in stead was a blistering piece of self righteous rage from the apologist aimed at a boy who made a careless assumption.

And we dare call this apologetics and contending for the faith?

How any of us are so lost in logic, apologetic, debate and propositional truth  that our consciences have atrophied to the point that we think our retaliation, and this is what this is, is righteous and godly?

Truth is more, much more, than proposition. Truth is a Person, and though we may witness to proposition by reasoned debate, even reasoned debate done with ill  temper  as I have seen time and time again, to witness to the Man Who is truth  is done with and shown by our fruit. That is to say if we do not have the gentleness and respect that St Peter's letter enjoins upon us we do not know the Person we testify to, and in fact, in reducing the gospel to mere ideology we are thinking and acting according to the principles of the world

The mere fact that the video was entitled  "Cliff pwns atheist on genetic fallacy" when nothing of the sort was done  shows how mission can and does become idolatrous obsession.  Even the word "pwn" which comes from computer gaming, shows this. It speaks of arrogant bragging by a boy who has won an ego context

I'll say it again. If such anger as this is all we have to offer to unbelievers even when they make a foolish comment, then we have nothing to offer and ourselves are in need of the Gospel we show by our fruit to have forsken

Rome and I - in brief

This may be a preliminary post to the issue of Catholicism. It is from a facebook post of mine from some time age

Looking at a video by a notorious catholic baiter. John MacArthur on youtube I replied with this.
Catholics, who believe in the trinity, atonement, resurrection and second coming of Christ, while denying sola fide and sola scriptura are about as saved as we protestants, who believe in, well, yes, the trinity, atonement, resurrection and second coming of Christ but who show by our lives that we do not believe in sola fide (we would not be so legalistic if we did) and sola  scriptura (well, we would not chase preachers and christian writers so much if we did)

So what is the difference?

Catholics are a little more honest about what they really believe whereas we like to hide behind parroted utterances of sound doctrine which our lives show we do not believe.

And of course Protestants like MacArthur need something to hate, and Rome has been the lightning rod for that for centuries.

Given the great commonality between Rome and us of the protestant sects if they are not Christians neither are we, but if we Protestants are Christians so are they. We cannot have it both ways, as bigots of both camps insist, that the other set is not Christian

We are as Christian as each other, but that is not much

Subverted Scriptures 3

He became sin, the Word of God says or so it is paraphrased. 2 Cor 5 :21. says that God made Him (Christ), who knew no sin,   to be sin for us that we may become  the righteousness of God 

But what does the phrase made sin mean?

Naïve literalism is always the bane of the evangelical.

In this instance I submit that literalism subverts the meaning of the passage.

Joyce Meyer and others, chiefly as far as I know of the Word of Faith stable of preachers, have offered the fantastic and in my serious opinion blasphemous scenario that Jesus literally became sin. Like the medieval Catholics who they despise but so closely resemble, they need to over do the suffering, to turn the dying Christ into something hideous. In the late Middle Ages we see great tortured crucifixes covered with blood both in carving and painting. We Protestants affect to condemn such things but when our mental pictures are the same it make no difference.  Of course these preachers go further and ignoring that Jesus said "It is finished:"  John 19:30, have him being tortured in Hell, as if the cross really were not enough. Meyer speaks passionately of "My Jesus"  in regard to the fantasy character being so treated  Yes, that is her Jesus. I will concede this, but it is not the Jesus of Holy scripture.

The logic of the matter is that if Christ became sin then he became a sinner, for sin cannot be reified. It is a relationship, not a  thing. It cannot be separated out into some kind of black scum as in the episode of Star Trek the Next Generation  in which Tasha Yar was killed by such a black scum consisting of all the hate fear and rage of those  people it had encountered it. But reification is itself another bane of the naïvely  literalistic.

For if Jesus literally became sin He literally became a sinner,

If He became sin He rebelled against God,  so clearly was not God, so his death not only did not save Himself it did not save us.

What then does the term mean?

The NIV which I use as part of my Greek Interlinear quietly adds a footnote  to the word sin in this passage. This note is or "sin offering."

This is totally correct. Whatever the faults of the NIV this is not one of them.

Of course the term could be interpreted as "took the place of sin to bear its punishment."  But that is the same thing as "sin offering" when it comes to simple practicality.

Jesus the sinless lamb of God suffered in our place AS a sinless Lamb of God and not, dare I say it, as a filthy pox ridden goat.

So. A scripture is subverted. Some run with then and confirm the computing dictum GIGO (garbage in- garbage out)  by producing blasphemous nonsense which, as a reductio ad absurdam of the passage clearly shows not that the passage is in error but their  reading of it is  when it leads to such nonsense.

But alas, that is how most heresies arise. And as the ego of the heretic is usually invested in heresy, that is why heresies stay with us

My View on the Reformation - brief

This is from a comment of mine on you tube, expanded here somewhat

The depravity and foul tempers of the so called Reformers is why I reject the Reformation outright. Oh, the Catholics had the worse doctrine  but the foul fruit of the reformers show that they had their fair share of the spirit of antichrist.

There is more to a living and Biblical Christianity than doctrine. Doctrine is necessary but it is not enough. If it were sufficient then there would be no need for the fruit of the Spirit nor even the Spirit Himself  and as such God would owe an apology to the Pharisees who were, as a matter of historical fact, the one Jewish sect that were closest to Jesus when it came to doctrine. But as we all know they were the most strongly rebuked by the Messiah

I also find it a most bitter indictment of that whore which calls itself the Church of Christ that when religious liberty came to the West it came from the Enlightenment, Deists et al, who decided after seeing the blasphemous disgrace of the hate of the Christians for one another that the questions they murdered one another for were really quite stupid.

These questions were not stupid, of course, but that the Enlightenment men thought so is an example of the name of God being blasphemed by the Gentiles because of us who profess to believe

Of course all of us who are  so bent on defending our idols  will never dream for a moment that the Reformation led, by its very essence of hatred and rage, to the Enlightenment.

Strait is the gate and narrow the way, Jesus said. And looking at the fruit of these Reformation bigots I cannot see that any of them ever found it, or, if they did - and Luther may have -  ever stayed in it

There was no glory of God seen in the Reformation, just the most brutal religious quarrel in history; and I seriously contend that to honour these hate filled men, whose hate can be seen when looking at their pamphlets, full of both violent and obscene language, as well as can be seen in their deeds, to honour these is to honour a past that never was and is therefore  idolatry