TheEvan

Praise the Lord, then.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us..." "God with us..."

One problem is that Wierwille drew wrong conclusions about what trinitarians believe after defining it. Difining terms was a good start. Going back and immediately obfuscating was not a healthy way to build his argument.

Mark makes an excellent point about the meanings of salvation. Allan has appealed to the "we all know what it means" card, so I'll start there. The most basic meaning is to be saved 'from', as in drowning, your own foolishness, a mistake, our sins, etc. is that what you meant? If so, I'll agree. If you meant saved means you were a "two part being" and now have become a "three part being" i'd have to disagree. I'll also say that saved & "born again" do not mean the same thing. Particularly in the Old Testament, it often means "saved from our enemies". I Sam 11:13, Ex. 1:17; 14:30, Judges 7:2, Luke 1:71. Salvation is often personified as Christ, the Messiah. Ps. 14:7, 40:16, 53:6, Is 45:8, 62:11, Lk 1:69, 2:30, Acts 4:12, Tit 2:11, etc. Being saved is often related to righteousness or righeous deeds. Read the scriptures and see if you agree. This isn't as direct a relationship, but I'm drawing the connection. II Chron 6:41, Ps 24:5, 37:39, 50:23, 65:5, 71:15, 79:9, 98:2, Is 46:13, 56:1, 61:10 Salvation now means to be saved from our sins. Lk 1:77, Acts 13:38, Rom 10:9&10, II Cor 7:10, Mk 13:13, Jn 3:16&17, Rom 5:10, I Cor 1:18, Tit 3:5, I Pet 4:18 Salvation is received by faith alone. Rom 1:16&17, Eph 1:13, II Thes 2:13, I Pet 1:9, Mk 16:16, Lk 7:50, 8:12, Acts 16:31, Rom 10:9, I Cor 15:2, Eph 2:8, Ps 34:18, Heb 10:39, 11:7 In some cases, confession is also mentioned (but I'll maintain it's not part of a formula) Rom 10:9, Acts 2:21, Rom 10:13, Ps 107:19 Saved from future wrath. I Thes 5:9, Jn 3:17, Rom 5:9, I cor3:15 So, what were you talking about Allan? On or more of these? Or perhaps another?

Quite right, Mark. And with each differing shades of meaning are attached to the practice. BTW, Christian usually fight most bitterly about their smallest differences, or so it has gone in history. Personally, I feel quite united with the Universal church. And to me, orthodoxy is summed up in the briefer versions of the Apostle's Creed. Differences beyond that are tolerable. For me. Oh, by Univerasl, I mean the invisible church, natch.

Allan, like many Protestants, I disavow infant baptism. I was making a comment on its role in Catholic doctrine as a means of grace for salvation. So, for them, the rite becomes imbued with more significance. But you understood that, right? Allan, would you say "born again" and "saved" mean the same thing? Why or why not?

Based on the raw meaning of the word, Mike, I'd agree with you. However, simply reading through all the instances of 'saved', 'salvation', etc leads me to go beyond this and state that salvation means: -saved from wrath to come -saved from our sins...ie, made righteous.

Correct, Oakspear. And the belief/confession formula is only mentioned this once. Salvation is mentioned repeatedly in the New Testament and it is consistently equated with receiving God's righteousness. In all other cases it is received by faith alone. Allan, an elementary principle in interpretation is to establish your proposed interpretation with supporting scripture. "In the mouth of two or three witnesses..." I find ludicrous the idea that if one agrees that Jesus was raised and manages once to squeak out "Jesus is Lord" he is magically saved on the spot, glory hallelujah. Even Wierwille said (from I Cor) no man can really say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit. Must be a deeper meaning, nay? (Which brings us back on topic). FYI, yes, the Catholics practice infant baptism. Presenting it as a means of grace imbues the practice with added importance, don't you think?

Look, I'm not digging a hole as I have no position to defend. You are demonstrating your inability or inwillingness to arry on a civil conversation. Your "part God" comment is borne of ignorance. You show no inclination to be instructed so I think I'll save my breath. But I'll repeat that you're arguing against a thing you've not bothered to read even the most basic explanation of. Until you have even the slightest knowlege of what you're talking about, further conversation is useless.

Allan, the bible has no formula for receiving salvation. If you have one (and I suspect you do and I know it well, havin sat through piffle more times than I can count), I will suggest that your formula, as taught by Wierwille, is misunderstood. Without going into a big thing on it, with some Bible study I think you'll find Luther's "faith alone" to describe things quite well. You'll find "faith plus confession" to be unnecessary, biblically. Mark might disagree. What I'm describing is simplified mainstream protestant theology.

jet, put simlply, recognizing Jesus as God in the flesh is not at all the same as calling the Son the Father. You're taking shots at a doctrine you've not educated yourself on. BTW, I'm not particularly trinitarian, but I think it's a more reasonable explanation of the Godhead than Wierwille's.

You are correct, Mark. Again, so typical of TWI emphasis. Proving one is saved by SIT, when on can do it all day and still be a sounding brass & tinkling cymbal. I hear lots of clanging & tinkling going on around here. I prove it to myself and others by my changed life, a thing I was powerless to do without Christ. I spoke in tongues plenty when in TWI, but I question that I had a new birth...

dmiller, Oneness doctrine is not a subset of Trinitarian doctrine. I'm not sure who Cynic was quoting (call me lazy) but Trinitarians do not believe the Son is the Father. Shheesh. How many times I've heard this crazy misconception stated as fact by ex wayers that still bu their unique version of the Godhead.

It's always been something of a closed society. I think when VP staged his coup on the Way East & West then it became a completely closed society. Dissenters disappeared & were never mentioned again after first having their character defamed in the ugliest fashion. LCM didn't invent those tactics...

templelady, I think you touched on what I believe is the heart of the matter with unregenerate man vs. one who is "born again". To rephrase what you said, man became 'mortal' (born to die). The problem with DerVeg's teaching is that, spiritually, unregenerate man is equivalent to animals. I have a problem with that, biblically & every other way. God clearly distinguished man from from the rest of the animal kingdom. Adam was made like God in more ways than in simply being immortal. Anyway, when one is "born again", I believe the result is immortality (I Cor 15), not now of course, but when we are raised incorruptible. The whole 'man had spirit and then lost it and regainde it' makes sense when you hear it in Piffle. But, honestly, how well supported is in the Bible? I do believe that God does send the spirit of His Son into our hearts. But this itself does not constitute a "new birth". Paul never spoke of a new birth. Jesus did once and Peter did once. The main way Paul speaks of such things is as "salvation" or "being saved". He consistently equated salvation with having our sins paid for and receiving the righteousness of God...legally and spiritually. To lump that in with terms like "born again" tends to muddy the waters in my book.

That's not an answer, Allan. You instead attack Mark's religion. Totally unrelated to the challenge at hand. Can't we have a meaningful dialog? George, even Wierwille's interpretation of "rightly divided" was wrongly divided. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

And I'll say this. In a certain way, I've observed others & myself walking in the realm of the supernatural much more by accident than by trying to. Submitted people, yielded to the Spirit (opposite of self-willed), motivated by love, are doing and saying all manner of inspired things without even realizing .

A very hearty 'amen', socks. Allan, you did miss the point. Wierwill uses 'manifest' as a verb. v7 is a noun. Doesn't that bother you? I don't really need to add to what LG said, which covers the nuts & bolts clearly. And to get this out of the way, gramatically you cannot 'operate a manifestation'. When you 'operate the gift', if you will, a manifestation is produced. You don't don't operate the thing produced. You operate that thing which produces. I would like to touch on the implications, however. Wierwille's phraeology does damage even beyond the pinheaded breaking down into unnecessary bits, as soks points out. It takes the emphasis off the gift, and puts it on the 'operator', on whom the onus is to be real spurchal and bring forth manifestations by his 'believing'. The emphasis is clearly in the Spirit who does the giving & distributing of gifts, not on the heavy-revvy hotshot who thinks he's doing the work. Words mean something. Wierwille's failure to stick to the very Bible to which he claimed adherence led him & others quite astray. With very rare exceptions you can't read in the Bible anything like a person determine to 'manifest' this and that. What you read of, even in Jesus' case, is extreme submission and obedience in following God. Read Moses, Joshua, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, etc. What they did looked nothing NOTHING like what we heard in DerVeg.

Okay, I'll go first. 1. Can you justify the extrabiblical phraseology of "manifest" as a verb, "manifesting" or "operating manifestations"? 2. If those phrases don't occur in the Bible (they don't) do you have Biblical justification to show that the phrases are consistent with the Bible? 3. If you don't have that Biblical justification (you won't), do you really know what the gifts and their use are all about? (You don't).

The shallow thinking on the topic is best exemplified by the grammatically nonsensical & extrabiblical phrase "operate the manifestions". Think about it. If it was so right, then why were the supoosed messages from the Omniscient Creator of the Universe so boring, repetitive & predictable?

Allan, I'm not sure how to respond to your post. Forgive me, but your answers seem "flip" and lacking in substance. If I have time, I'll post a few thoughts with scriptural proofs that validates the practice for today. (It'll take time as it's not a strong subject for me.) Then, if you have a counterargument with some substance perhaps you'll want to respond. Later.

Long, low whistle. You really 'came out of the closet' there, Mark. Thanks for sharing.

But how can you justify Maryology or the communion of the saints (prayer to saints), for instance, without doing violence to the clear intent of accepted scripture? This, to me, goes to the heart of this topic. And I don't mean this in a pugilistic way. I'm just interested in how one can justify such apparently disparate conclusions.

Wow, a bit like watching a train wreck. (Pssst, don't insult our intelligence by claiming that the real problem is we don't know what's in those pages. I know what's in them all to well, thank you)

Interesting. I was just listening to something on this earlier this morning. Though the RC church has steadfastly rejected sols scriptura, it has, with some 20th Century exceptions, steadfastly affirmed scriptural inerrancy. In layman's terms, the church maintains that scripture plus "the tradition of the fathers" (in so many words) constitute the church's , and by extension man's, rule for faith and practice. (As you said above in so many words, Mark). But there's a rub. When church tradition, or papal encyclical, et. al, does violence to the principle of inerrancy, who wins? In many cases, such as Maryology, the "communion of the saints", etc., it seems that tradition has won. The only way those things can be harmonized is at the expense of scriptural inerrancy. By this I mean, the resultant interpretations seem to do violence to the clear meaning of the text. ----------------------------------- A few points regarding the reformers. I think it is unfair to call Tyndale a reformer very much in the Lutheran mold. My reading tells me he met Luther but once. He never clearly deliniated a doctrinal stance, whereas Luther went on to publish many books of theology. Luther was a firebrand, publishing many leaflets & tracts with incendiary & scathing condemnations of the Pope and of the church. Tyndale did nothing of the kind that I'm aware of. By contrast, he was an academic and focused on Bible translation. His work still stands, in my opinion, as the single greatest accomplishment in Bible translation by a single person. Calling him a heretic, by the definitions you gave, hardly seems a cause for concern. It simply means that the group to which you subscribe found disagreement in what he says. Which makes us all, I suppose, heretics to somebody. So be it.