The Naked Isaiah

@writeontheedg3 @Strangeland_Elf Fundamentalists are exhausting. I usually ignore them. Von Balthasar teaches that the form (gestalt) of Jesus is the apex of beauty. I wonder how this iconoclast feels about Gibson’s The Passion or Makato Fujimora’s Walking on Water

@Strangeland_Elf Yes, there’s nothing more beautiful than Van Gough in person. Except maybe Monet ✨

Megha should just be disregarded in general. She’s a very nasty, prideful person. I see people who turn their nose up at stylised art as the same types who turn their nose up at fiction, or at least the genres of fiction they deem “unrealistic” such as fantasy. They seem to detest human creativity when it imagines anything to be different than it is plainly visible in reality. For something to be “beautiful” to them it must perfectly reflect the outward appearance of a thing. But there is beauty hidden in the way someone experiences a thing as well. Vincent van Gogh’s art does several things. It gives us a glimpse into the way another person sees the world, in the most literal sense, but also in what artist chose to highlight, how he chose to paint a scene, that tells you what he noticed and thought worth painting. But his art also captures movement and emotion and how a thing feels. It captures the experience of seeing a starry night or being in a wheat field better than a more realistic painting of a starry night or wheat field would. You can look at a realistic landscape and marvel at the details but to make something feel like they are experiencing that landscape is truly a beautiful skill.

@ChristandGuitar There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors. You depend on translators to glean understanding. Aren’t they interpreters?

Requiring an infallible interpreter of God’s Word is an insult to God Himself. He gave us His Word, the Holy Spirit, and minds to understand it. Handing over our responsibility to a third party for interpretation is ridiculous. How do we even know we’re understanding that interpreter correctly? Should we get an interpreter for the interpreter? That leads to an infinite regress.

@___TheGOOdWitch Carl Sagan is dead.

@Askwhyisit He desires mankind to be perfected by process.

God is able to create a perfect life in the hereafter without sin and still with free will. Why didn’t He do it here on Earth?

@Curi_Christian Nope. Not one of the people Paul warned churches about was called an unbeliever or heretic. He said they were in error, and turned some over to Satan (excommunicated) in the hope they would repent. But not once did he call them “unbeliever.”

Is it okay to say if somebody is truly a Christian or not?

@banks_neche Your morality is based on what? An arbitrary millions of years process of mutation? Your morality is likely based on a culture whose origins are Christian. If not completely, it is filled with death, believing abortion and euthanasia are good. Your morality is circumstantial.

Atheists don't need Religion for morality

@RandalRauser Guns don’t kill people. They are tools for protection. God uses war to effect his will for history.

War kills people. Guns kill people. Jesus saves people. Christians can't support war or guns.

@patristicpill There is always a remnant, and the invisible church was preserved at Pentecost and those who adhere to its principles as Holy Spirit baptized disciples dedicated to expanding the Kingdom of God. No institution is necessary. In the 7 churches of Revelation, how many were pure? 2?

If the visible Church fell into corruption immediately after the apostles, then Christ failed to preserve His Church If He preserved it, Protestantism is unnecessary …that is the dilemma

@___TheGOOdWitch What if those children carry a genetic mutation guaranteed to wipe out the human race?

@DrFrankTurek @SavvyTamz_57 Better than arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; a mocking question directed at Aquinas and other scholastics by early Protestants. There’s a debate in John 9 between the disciples common in the 1st c. Jesus answered it with both words and action. So should we.

The essential doctrines of the faith remain solid, even if we're arguing over did someone make an error as to how many angels there were at the tomb.

@ConceptualJames The true body of Christ.

The United States of America is the greatest force for good on the planet. If you don't think so, name a better one.

@bumperdelmar In the resurrection, they will be; which for them is the “here and now.” “I know that my redeemer lives”—Job

No one in the Old Testament was born again.

@SawtelleAn5682 He was resurrected. P3 is a false statement. If you desire to practice model logic, go to school and learn it, though most philosophers have abandoned it. Rationalism is a poor judge of reality.

Many Christians are seething and many are sputtering jibberish since my post. And it demonstrates the fine tuning of designed Christianity. So I'm gonna post it again. Please repost as much as possible. P1: If Christianity is true, Jesus cannot lie. P2: Jesus stated he would return before his contemporaries died. P3: Jesus did not return before his contemporaries died. C: Christianity is not true. P1: A biblical prediction is either a literal prophecy or a metaphor. P2: If it is a literal prophecy, it failed (which makes Jesus mistaken). P3: If it is a metaphor, it is not an actual prophecy (which invalidates the prophetic claim). P4: Jesus cannot be mistaken, and his prophetic claims cannot be invalid. C: The Christian theological position is self-contradictory.

@CherylSchatz According to Jesus, when she listened to the Devil and desire to the point of action was born.

When did Eve sin? Before or after she ate the fruit?

@kylenabecker Western Civilization survived because when it fell to barbarism, a faithful remnant dedicated to the God of the Hebrew Messiah, pledged their lives to preserving it. No other reason.

Western Civilization didn't flourish because "white males" stopped other groups from succeeding. The West thrived because of rational thought, individual rights, and free enterprise. "White males" that invented the steam engine, electric generation, the combustion engine, flight, and space exploration did not do so because they "stole" the ideas of minorities. These inventions helped lift mankind out of ignorance and hardship, improving the quality of life for all of humanity. "White males" didn't oppress the entire world, they helped make it a better place. "White males" didn't oppress everyone's rights, they invented the idea of rights and paid in blood to liberate tens of millions of people. "White males" didn't invent slavery, they ended it. "White males" didn't invent tyranny, they devised a form of government to end it. Destroying Western Civilization isn't about empowering groups that were "oppressed." It is about tearing down civilization itself so that globalist parasites can rule over all of us.

@TheMuppetPastor Cessationists are mind Christians who treat the person of the Holy Spirit as a concept. If He’s not speaking to us, if we cannot recognize He teaches us, can we say He is even in us? If we don’t walk with Him, fellowship with Him, our faith is an illusion.

The sad God of cessationism lacks power, and binds Himself only to a Bible , which itself testifies of God frequently speaking to others audibly and without record in scripture. We don’t know exactly what God said to Deborah, Nathan, Hilda’s, Anna, Huldah, yet we know He did even if the exact words aren’t in the bible. I understand many people lie, but this is tossing out the baby with the bath water. 1 John tells us to test every spirit against scripture, not outright deny it. Who are we to disregard this?

@DareSayAgain @Be_Like_JChrist So, being “born again” isn’t salvation? Nor being a new creation in Christ? Are you implying we can be either of these, and not saved?

"If regeneration happens before faith, then salvation happens before faith" - this is a common misunderstanding. Reformed theology does not teach that salvation happens before faith. We teach the exact opposite: > We are justified (declared righteous) by faith alone. > But we are made alive (regenerated) so that we can believe. The Biblical Order: 1. Dead people don’t believe (Ephesians 2:1 — “you were dead in your trespasses and sins”). 2. God must first give new life (regeneration) before a dead sinner can respond in faith. 3. Then, the newly regenerated person believes and is justified. Faith is the instrument of salvation, not the cause. Regeneration is the cause that enables faith. This is why Jesus said in John 3:31 “Unless one is BORN AGAIN he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And also, in 1 John 5:1 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” (Note the perfect tense: the new birth produces faith.) Addressing Your Verses: - Romans 3:28 (“justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law”). We fully affirm this. Justification is by faith alone. Regeneration doesn’t replace faith, it produces it. - Romans 10:13 (“whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”). We also fully affirm this. Whoever calls will be saved. The question is this: Who will call? Only those whose hearts have been changed by God. The unregenerate heart won’t call because it doesn’t want to (Romans 8:7-8; 1 Corinthians 2:14). God must first open the heart (Acts 16:14) so that the person wants to call. The Gospel Is Even Better This Way. Salvation is not ultimately “by faith” in the sense that faith is the decisive thing we contribute. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. Even our faith is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9; Philippians 1:29). This doesn’t make salvation “by election instead of faith.” Election is the ultimate reason we are saved. Faith is the means by which we receive it. Both are true. This is the same gospel Paul preached. It magnifies God’s grace instead of man’s ability.

If regeneration happens before faith, like Calvinist say, then salvation happens before faith, and salvation is not by faith. Now salvation is by election. This is not the gospel. Romans 3:28 NKJV Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. But they also reject that this verse is available to everyone: Romans 10:13 NKJV For "whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved." Because they claim the unregenerate heart is not able to call. Again making salvation before the calling.

@MessianicAge10 @TruthSynod One need only read Isaiah, as the Ethiopian Eunuch did. The Law separates, but the Prophets and Psalms breath into the Law life. The Gospels depend on that order. The Pharisees failed to recognize the connection, and failed to recognize Messiah in their midst. The Bereans didn’t.

@TruthSynod They searched the OT scriptures based on what most likely the Pharisees accepted. No one says the Bereans were reading NT completed epistles lol

How did the Bereans have Scripture if it wasn't compiled by "church tradition" yet? 🤔 Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. — Acts 17:11

@ud_chris @writeontheedg3 Are you a child playing Socrates? “Why is the sky blue?” Read Wittgenstein and then get back to us.

@writeontheedg3 If God was wiping them out solely because they were evil, what about the Israelites, why didn't he wipe them out? According to the bible they were evil as well

Unrelated: does God have freewill? If yes, can God sin? If Lucifer a spirit could sin and be cast out of heaven, can God sin? If not, how exactly are we created in the image of God?

@ud_chris You are confusing Being with action. His free will has a boundary. He cannot deny himself. “Can he create a rock so big, he can’t lift it himself?”—George Carlin. Our being is derivative and dependent on a singular preeminent free choice, whom shall we serve