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I think you need to love thy neighbor as thyself.
What do you think Paul says to us in Corinthians chapter 13.
For the longest time, i thought "perfect" meant the cannon at first. Then later on i waned between a partial preterist to full preterist viewpoint to justify the cessation of "Apostolic gifts".
What is your oppinion?
2cents
Travis
Jochejam
i also would love to hear your response.
I think you need to love thy neighbor as thyself.
thats easy to do. my neighboor is a hottie!
I'm much better at exegesis than I am at loving my neighbor as myself, which according to 1 Corinthians 13 means that what I am about to say is worthless:
I think after relaying to the Corinthians in Chapter 12 that fighting over who has the better spiritual gifts is pointless, since they all come from the same Spirit, and all are part of the same Body with different functions, (and then points out, "oh by the way," that speaking in tongues is really not all that important of a gift), he ties it all up by saying that the most important gift is love.
He says that without love, all the other gifts are worthless. Furthermore, love is eternal. All these gifts that the Corinthians are so concerned about won't matter one bit when this world ends and the new heaven and earth are created. Right now we have a partial knowledge and prophecy of God; in the age to come we will be totally united with him and have perfect noesis; we will know fully just as God already fully knows us. There will be no need for prophecies, for tongues, for (rational) knowledge. The difference between how we think now and how we will think is like the difference between a child and a man. How we see now versus how we will see then is like the difference between a dim mirror and seeing face-to-face.
So rather than obsessing about speaking in tongues and healings, the Corinthians should focus on gifts of eternal significance, namely, faith, hope, and love, among which love is the most important.
He then goes in Chapter 14 to lay down guidelines about the proper use of ecstatic tongues, and on proper order in the liturgy, so that the gathering does not devolve into an unseemly chaotic cacophony.
I do not agree with the interpretation here that Paul is speaking of a coming cessation of these gifts. The point of Paul talking about prophecies, tongues, and knowledge ceasing is not to say, "For your information, in the next few decades, you may notice that as we apostles die off, you won't be speaking in tongues anymore. Also, you're going to lose knowledge and fall into gross error until the sixteenth century." Rather, he is exhorting the Corinthians to focus on loving one another instead of fighting about their gifts.
so do tongues exist today under the guidance of GOd, as in guidance rather than guidance out of sovereignty.
also why do you think tongues died off?
By "tongues," we must distinguish between ecstatic utterances and communication in unlearned langauges.
Ecstatic utterances are not unique to Christianity, whether in its primeval or contemporary Pentecostal forms. They are what the term says they are, utterances made while in the throes of spiritual ecstasy. I see no reason to claim that they have ceased. People who have very flamboyantly emotional spiritual experiences seem to have a tendency to go into ecstatic utterance. I will note, half-jokingly, that the churches which teach cessation tend not to have a very large number of flamboyantly emotional adherents.
Within this category, there is the "personal prayer language" where the ecstatic utterance is done is private, and the public utterance. The latter is what Paul is primarily concerned about in the Corinthian church. If in response to your post, I were to write, "Xdvajksrgaisdfv sdvjashkldfblsD SDFbaoe," I doubt you would get a lot out of it. So he insists upon somebody following up with a message in a comprehensible language.
Communication in unlearned languages is what is do ented on the day of Pentecost, where the Apostles somehow were speaking the gospel in Latin and Cappadocian and Persian and Syro-Phoenician. This is a totally different matter from ecstatic utterance.
My personal experience is that when I was back in college, I fell into thinking that I needed big emotional experiences of God, and experienced the "personal prayer language." When I moved away from seeking those emotional experiences because I did a poor job of discerning emotion from biblical truth, the prayer language stopped. I do not belittle people who can handle their emotions properly and do experience that gift.
I've also had the experience of proficiently speaking a language I did not know nearly well enough to do so, in order to do exegesis on a Biblical passage.
Though I have experienced those things, I do not regard such experiences as central to my faith, so I do not run around trying to experience them over and over again. I do not think that is healthy.
OK, my experiences with this is that i feel that tongues or ecstatic tongues are a tool of confession. i feel that when i have experienced this i feel like i am expressing my inner most darkest desires and sins, that i feel i would be too blushed to describe.
But in all my life growing up in the pentecostal church i have never witnessed a case where someone gave a specific prophecy as to it not being too broad like " God says, Repent Children, For my coming is soon." type of deal. I've never seen anything specific just a lot of general God is near stuff.
But, when i did hear about judgement coming from those professing to speak in tongues, it was almost at time always a negative message or extortion to not anyone specifically.
One time this Preacher tried to interpret a "tongues" speaker and all he said was stuff that would scare the Jman out of you rather than edify.
So therefore whenever i visit a pentecostal gathering, i always feel a sort of anxiety because i just don't feel at ease with this practice. I feel like judgement is near, almost like impending doom.
It's a much different feeling than when i hear a John Macarthur Sermon, inwhich he does speak about sin and judgement, but i feel those type of sermons edify the believer and pass wisdom.
i don't know what to say, but that's my viewpoint.
I just feel that tongues and glossalia can be a tool of manipulation and rather complicate the gospel for me.
There are some who insist that people who don't speak in tongues are somehow deficient or even un-Christian. This is an aberrant view, one which Paul has an eye toward rejecting in 1 Cor 12. If tongues are being used as a tool of manipulation and control rather than edification, then they are useless. Also remember that Christians believe in a spiritual realm in which the Holy Spirit is not the only spirit, so if people are using visible signs like tongues to spread lies and discord, well, like I said before, non-Christians can speak in tongues too. John mentioned in his first epistle the necessity of discernment.
The UP's insist upon tongues as a matter of "salvation," but they reject the Trinity, and so aren't even Christian in any orthodox sense.
The A/G's I think are more evenhanded about it than any of the others.
But if it makes you stumble, then it is better just to stay away from it.
Yeah, my parents being pentecostal, i hate it when theologians from the Church of Christ, or Reform Theologians like MacArthur lump Pentecostals with Charasmatics.
My parents don't believe in WOF, well atleast my father can describe the gospel orthodoxly, [Because man is a slave to sin through Adam, The WOrd of GOd came to become incarnate to become the Son oF Man, and Son of GOd to die on the cross so to justify us against GOD's righteous Wrath.]
I mean, he doesn't believe in the trinity, but he believes that God is Jesus and Jesus is the Father, and The Holy Ghost.
I think he's wrong on this, but i still see UP's as orthodox in the sense that they can still preach an effective gospel.
Now my Dad doesn't speak in tongues, never did, but he believes he's justified by faith, and he's a card carrying member of the Apostolic Assembly.
He never says tongues are necessary, and i hear nowadays alot of these UPC guys saying the same thing.
I admire the UPC's stance on Holiness but hate the fact that they still honor experience over exegesis, even though they might deny it.
When Reformation Theoligians and Calvinist make assumptions that UP's are like Charisamtics, it's faulty.
Charismatics are the ultraliberal movement of Pentecostals. If there's been rot it's the Charasmatic Movement to blame in my oppinion.
If there are denominations that will remain vigilant against Same sex marriage in the church, and women pastors in 50 years. It will be the UPC, a half remnant of Southern Baptist, some independent Presbys and Calvinist Reformed churches, and the Mormons to boot.
although Mormons are hyper arminians and they believe that works save and not grace, which is heresy.
I know i'm just ranting.
edit, the son of God pre existed before the incarnation, not the son of Man.
So will the Catholics.
so long as they keep electing Western europeans as pope.
Ratzinger is da bomb!
I thought charismatics were just people who expressed the charismatic gifts but were in Catholic and Protestant churches rather than the Pentecostal ones.
That view is called Modalism or Sabellianism. It was declared an excommunicable heresy in AD 220, while the orthodox church was still underground (i.e. before Constantine "corrupted" it, as many Anabaptists/Restorationists claim). A heretical group in the third century called the Montanists espoused Modalism and also emphasized glossalia, healing, prophecies, and the other charismatic gifts. They are eerily similar to modern UP's.
In the early days of the church, the key point of theological contention was the nature of Jesus Christ. That was what was at stake at Nicaea, where Arius was denounced for claiming the Son was a creation of the Father, like what Jehovah's Witnesses claim. But by then, Modalism had long since been cast aside.
So many of the Restorationist sects that emerged in the 19th century and early 20th espouse the same Christological heresies as the splinter groups from the early church.
I wonder how many even understand why those things are not permissible, by which I mean why the Bible says what it says about these things. Egalitarianism is a very subtle error that seems right to the mind of one who does not understand Christian anthropology. And if insists upon cleaving to bad anthropology, it leads to bad Christology, and pretty soon you have the Episcopal organization, which Peter nailed in 2 Peter 2 almost to a T.
I rather think in 50 years the Protestant/Evangelical church will be down to less than 10 million, and half of those will be Latino. To the extent America remains a nation where Christianity persists, it will be so through Hispanics, primarily as Catholics.
Meanwhile, there will be 200 million new Christians in China.
Mormon deviation from orthodoxy goes far past Pelagianism. Arminianism is a Reformation theological system which Calvinists like to label "Pelagian" as a polemic. Mormons believe:
1) That Jehovah God once lived as a man from the planet Kolob
2) That he became God of Earth by living a faithful Mormon life on Kolob
3) That Jehovah had sexual intercourse with Mary, who then conceived Jesus
And so on.
have you read some of your posts, Gtown? you blush?
, no, trust me i love der females.
ah modalism...
God is the father then becomes the son then the HG. Yeah.
As far as the official statement of the UP's they do proclaim that exact thing. Yet when you conversate with them, the modal figure is actually proselytized version of
"God is ONe God with three manifestations, and many to count, but three primary manifestations that do communicate for the sake of it."
To me it doesn't make sense since calling The F/S/HG a manifestation, you would have a hard time explaining why there is a chain of authority in the Godhead.
I think UP's don't actually believe that Jesus is now only the Holy Ghost in Church age, but they believe that ONe GOd is all three. There issue is with personhood, Since they fear that seperating the Godhead into person's makes one a polytheist.
Alot of the their objections and biases towards Trinitarian doctrines are based on ignorance and fear of becoming heretic themsleves.
Now, as far as Montanus, the UP's don't have female apostoles who prophecy. Their heirarchy is male, and they don't proclame to bring extra biblical revelation like Montanus did. Their view on glossalia is that of it being is that it is a personal phropetic tool, and not one of JOhn the baptist or even the Apostoles.
I don't think you understand my point. I'm not questioning your manhood. My point is that I find it strange to see you writing about your faith (and being ashamed of your sins) b/c I've read your posts. They are typically the most vile, hateful, perverse, and generally un-Christian posts in these forums.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=2542
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=9405
Last edited by Oh, Gee!!; 08-15-2008 at 09:14 AM.
Oh, Gee does have a point. A man claiming to be a Christian should have a posting history more closely resembling, say, Solid D, travis2, or jochhejaam.
smoking is bad for you
hey iggy, why don't you ask your shrink for panacea?
or, at the very least not have one resembling a Satan worshiper
perverse, i grant it to you.. i do attack other peoples manhood, and i'm refraining from that.
as to hateful...
THe things i'm ashamed of here is the name calling, gay jokes i say here as a christian. Other than that, i don't have a problem calling someone a fool.
So yeah, you win Oh Gee.
I'm a bad bad bad christian.
Turning a new leaf, Gtown? That's a good thing.
As far as talking foul.. yeah
but being a pest.
ahhh...
we'll see.
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