Do not read your Bible with Scissors in hand.
It is a sad fact but many Christians try to harmonize differing Bible verses by gettting rid of one of them.
This is not honest study of the Bible and we must stop it!
An example of this is the debate in Christian circles about God's sovereignty and man's free will.
You will have one side throwing out many verses showing the one side and the other side is furiously shoveling out their verses.
Each side needs to take all Scripture and give an answer for it.
Instead of having the camp that holds to "sovereignty" taking the other sides verses and discounting them from the start because we all know that man is not free.
Or the other side that so strongly wants to defend man's free will that he discounts, from the get go, any verse that may even smack of the truth that God has predestined "all things" [including mans choices].
Another example of this is the debate on "Eternal Security". One side has its verses on "never perishing", and the other side has its verses about "branches being broken off" and "being severed from Christ". On top of just dishing out verses that explain your side, you need to Biblical show how your "side" explains [not explains away] the other sides verses.
We need to put our scissors away, and begin to diligently answer the other guys objections.
posted by Dale Callahan at 4:48 AM
1 Comments:
Another example of this is the debate on "Eternal Security". One side has its verses on "never perishing", and the other side has its verses about "branches being broken off" and "being severed from Christ". On top of just dishing out verses that explain your side, you need to Biblical show how your "side" explains [not explains away] the other sides verses.
OK. I would say that "never perishing" and "branches being broken off" can never be a real debate...they argue past each other because they are speaking of different groups. Never perishing, a point within Calvinism on the eternal security of the (true) believer, that Christ will lose none of THEM. "Dead branches" are those whom Christ was never in, never had his word within them. Closely read the parable of the branches and I think everyone can see the point that what differs them from the true branch is that Christ is not in them; he's only in the true branch. The dead are stuck on the side of the vine alright. They're hanging around, but the alive? They are also in the vine but they "ABIDE in me AND I IN THEM" is a point subtlety missed so often. The true branch abides (sticks with) because the "root" is in him and therefore is an entirely different group of branches(John 15:1-11). And the reason for Christ to so totally differentiate between the dead branches (unbelieving, non-Christians) and the living branches? Joy in certainty. Certainty that the faithful know who they are, and that dead branches are not like the living, "but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away (Psalm 1) so that "..my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Intellectual assent without faith, baptism without faith, any work without faith, is a dead branch mentality that cannot reproduce this joy.
What think ye?
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