Cynic

Oh, forget about adults in regards to question 3. My qualification about the absence of deceit and insincerity weakens the force of the question.

Question 3 is intended primarily to concern baptized infants. It also is intended to concern adults, but is certainly not intended to concern adults who, through self-conscious deceit or insincerity, might obtain or accept baptism.

I found the following two-part piece on circumcision and baptism from a redemptive-historical perspective by Meredith Kline notably (at some points almost amazingly) illuminating concerning the biblical history and nature of baptism. Kline maintains that baptism was and is an “ordeal sign” of “judgment.” Oath and Ordeal Signs, Part 1 Oath and Ordeal Signs, Second Article ***** The following page at www.monergism.com has links to a number of articles on baptism: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/arti...ic/babtism.html

I think it likely Mark’s “issue” with the word regenerated in the WCF statement is tied to some notions about "baptismal regeneration" -- a doctrine held by RCs and some others. To get a clear indication on this forum from an ostensibly informed Romanist concerning the RC position on the connectedness of baptism and regeneration, I ask Mark the following questions: 1. Is it the normative case that regeneration is administered by the sacrament of (water) baptism? 2. Is it possible for one to be regenerated without the sacrament of baptism? 3. Does the sacrament of baptism invariably confer regeneration? (i.e. are all baptized persons infallibly regenerated?)

Garth, I figure your enjoyment of the Calvinus site wasn’t diminished any when you saw Calvin get waylaid by a beer bottle to the head.

I think the following statements from the Westminster Confession of Faith, constituting the historical Presbyterian view of baptism, might prove interesting to this discussion: Especially relevant to this discussion is the statement of Chapter XXVIII, paragraph 5: "Although it is a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it: or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated."

Among other things, Romanists and Unitarian miscreants need to change their beers: www.calvinus.com

If it ain’t broke, don’t go fixing it. It appears that names have lost the password-protected feature.

A Baptist church I attended in my post-TWI experience used a hymnal called Hymns for the Living Church. Two Presbyterian (PCA and OPC) churches used the Trinity Hymnal. I recently purchased a CD titled “Psalms of the Trinity Psalter, Volume 2,” which, I think, consists more or less of an extraction of Psalter pieces from the Trinity Hymnal. Sample clip of "The Lord's my Shepherd" from “Psalms of the Trinity Psaler, Volume 2,” from www.oldchristianmusic.com . (See the entry at www.cyberhymnal.org for the words to the piece.) Click here for a page at www.oldchristianmusic.com having links to samples of all the Psalter pieces on that CD: With a bit of unfulfilled longing, I’m rather taken with some stuff attributed to Ambrose of Milan (Augustin's mentor) at www.cyberhymnal.org . (I haven’t heard anyone, anywhere, sing any of it.) A figure in hymnody I find intriguing is John Mason Neale, whose significance largely arises from translating a number of pieces from Latin to English.

Word for the day: Aseity.

From a little reading I’ve done today about LDS doctrine, it seems that assertion was inaccurate. A dependent being, as I am using the phrase, is a being whose existence is caused by another. It seems that Joseph Smith maintained, however, that God and men (at least as “the intelligence of [human] spirits”) were without beginning. Here’s a quote from Joseph Smith, as it appears at http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=422 (italicization is mine): “We say that God himself is a self-existent being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles. God made a tabernacle and put a spirit into it, and it became a living soul. (Refers to the old Bible.) How does it read in the Hebrew? It does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says God made man out of the earth and put into him Adams spirit, and so became a living body. The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself. . . . I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it had a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had not beginning, neither will it have anend. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven. . . . But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.” It seems that in LDS doctrine there is actually quite a shortage of dependent beings.

Garth, My example did not strengthen your argument. Whatever significant differences exist among Democratic factions, all members of all Democratic factions are members of the set of all Democrats. If language is meaningful, the phrase "a different kind of Unitarianism" classifies whatever the phrase refers to as Unitarian. The problem is that you are too smugly ignorant, unprincipled and manipulative to grasp and admit the point.

As a theologically meaningful term, Unitarianism is characterized by dogma, not by a chain of ecclesiastical succession. Similarly, Trinitarianism involves doctrine rather than denominational lineage. For instance, a number of Baptist congregations which are Trinitarian reject any historical connection to the denominational bodies where formulated statements about the Trinity arose and were stated in church councils, creeds and confessions. As a theologically meaningful term, Unitarianism is characterized by the position that God is uni-personal (i.e. that God exists as a single person). Among Unitarians (who are, as a set, all people who hold that God is uni-personal), there are various Christologies—though there is not a single Unitarian who has an orthodox view of Christ. Unitarians include Jews, Muslims, Arians (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses), Socinians (e.g. Wayfers) and Oneness adherents, each of which maintains that God is uni-personal. (There actually might be a legitimate objection, different from the one raised by Garth, that could be made against deeming Jehovah's Witnesses Unitarian, since the JW explanation of John 1:1 portrays Christ as “a [created and ontologically inferior] god.”) Are Oneness adherents Unitarian? Oneness adherents purport to hold that Jesus is God, but they certainly are not Trinitarian. They deny the distinct identities of the Father, his eternal Son and the Holy Spirit. They hold that God is a single person. That is the view that characterizes Unitarianism. Here is another quote from UPCI figure David Bernard (from http://christiandefense.com/one_JesusFather.htm ): ”There is one God with no essential divisions in His nature. He is not a plurality of persons, but He does have a plurality of manifestations, roles, titles, attributes. . . . Jesus Christ is the Son of God [not God the Son]. He is the incarnation of the fullness of God [the Father] in His deity, Jesus is the Father and the Holy Spirit. . . . Jesus is the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Notwithstanding the contortions of Oneness advocates such as Bernard, Oneness theology entails a two-persons Christology. The Son of God is portrayed as the human nature of Jesus, and is emphatically denied by Oneness advocates to be eternal and divine. The divine nature of Jesus Christ is identified as the uni-personal deity who is the Son's Father. Oneness advocates deny the deity of Jesus Christ by denying his distinct divine identity. Because Oneness theology entails subordinationism, while its advocates dance around it, I used rather careful wording in asserting “Oneness advocates try, rather incoherently, to juggle Unitarianism with some purportedly positive confession concerning the deity of Jesus Christ.” [bolding now added.] It is a mistake to attribute the Oneness beliefs of sects such as the United Pentecostal Church International to Pentecostals in general. Some Pentecostals are not Oneness adherents. Vintage Garth: Smugly ignorant, shamelessly hypocritical. E tu. Garth's above assertion decimates his own objection to my statement that Oneness theology is a subset of Unitarianism. The distinction between “a subset of Unitarianism” and “a different kind of Unitarianism” is one of those distinctions without a difference. A politician promoting himself as “a different kind of Democrat,” for example, would be distinguishing himself from other Democrats, while also identifying himself as a member of the set of all Democrats. Mormonism teaches that the God of the Bible is a dependent being who was preceded by other gods, and that humans can become gods. LDS teaching is unbiblical, errant and weird, but it is not some "different kind of Unitarianism."

Oneness theology is a subset of Unitarianism. All Oneness adherents are Unitarians, but not all Unitarians are Oneness adherents. Oneness theology is characterized by a set of peculiar dogmas. While Arians (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses) and Christological Socinians (e.g. TWI-types) are Unitarians who deny the deity of Jesus Christ, Oneness advocates try, rather incoherently, to juggle Unitarianism with some purportedly positive confession concerning the deity of Jesus Christ. You don’t seem to have understood the statement about the eternal identity and existence of the Son of God in my previous post, read and understood a significant amount of material at the http://www.christiandefense.org site, or come to appreciate the significance of the issue of whether the Son of God is an eternal figure. Following are a few quotes from Oneness adherent and UPCI figure David K. Bernard appearing at http://christiandefense.org/one_rejctTrin.htm#bernardOb that should help us begin to unpack things: ”How can there be an eternal Son when the Bible says that He was begotten, clearly indicting that the Son had a beginning? (John 3:16; Hebrews 1:5-6). “ “If the Son is eternal and existed at creation, who was His mother at that time? We know that Son was made of a woman (Galatians 4:4).” “If the Son is eternal and immutable (unchangeable), how can the reign of the Son have an ending? (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).” Asserting that the Son of God had a beginning certainly entails denial that the Son of God has an identity and existence that are eternal (but see Hebrews 7: 1-3). Let's continue: Please provide quotes from and links to whatever material there is at http://www.christiandefense.org you think represents Jehovah’s Witnesses as teaching “that Jesus 'collectively' is GOD.” Actually, while holding on one hand the Son is Jesus’ human nature, Oneness adherents assert the divine nature of Jesus is the Father. Again, quoting Bernard (this time from http://www.aomin.org/CHALC.html ): “In this connection, let me make this point crystal clear - the doctrine enunciated in this booklet emphasizes the very real humanity of Christ; it is not at all the same as teaching that the Father IS the Son, or that the Son IS the Father. Such teaching is confused, illogical, and unscriptural - but when we say that Jesus is BOTH Father and Son, BOTH God and Man, that is a vastly different matter.” Thus Bernard rejects the notion that the Son is the Father, but asserts that “Jesus is BOTH Father and Son.” In Bernard’s Oneness Christology, the Son is a temporally beginning human figure that is Jesus’ human nature, while the Father is the eternal figure who is Jesus’ divine nature (or, perhaps, deity dwelling in Jesus). James White, in his critique of Bernard’s theology appearing at http://www.aomin.org/CHALC.html , rather aptly notes that, despite Bernard’s emphatic assertions to the contrary, statements by Bernard entail a Christology which divides Jesus into two distinct persons. Although Trinity is not a biblical word, the Trinitarian view of God held by orthodox Christians is made necessary by various things Scripture says about God, the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity, alone amidst all its Unitarian (e.g. Sabellian, Arian, Socinian) and henotheistic (e.g. Mormon) competitors, affords any meaningful recognition of the scriptural testimony concerning the three divine persons and the emphatic oneness of God.

jetc57, I doubt even a significant number of bead-rubbing, to-Mary-appealing Roman Catholics deem Mary to “have mothered GOD” in the way you suggest. Following is a copy of a post I made previously on the subject of Mary’s being referred to by RCs as the “mother of God.” ***** I never have been inside a Roman Catholic Church, and I hold Catholics’ Marian religious fetish in utter contempt, but the Christology involved in Mary being referred to as the theotokos (i.e. God-bearer or Mother of God)--at least as it surfaced during the Nestorian controversy--seems sound. Although there is disagreement concerning what Nestorius himself actually believed, Nestorianism was a heresy characterized by a notion that Jesus Christ was two separate (divine and human) persons. The orthodox position is that Jesus Christ is a single divine person within whom the divine and a human nature were forever joined—without any composition of those natures—at his incarnation. According to what I remember of a piece I read a while ago (I wish I could find it and post a link to it), Nestorius might have or might not have held a full blown version of two-persons Nestorianism. Nestorius objected, nonetheless, to Mary being referred to as “theotokos,” and maintained something to the effect that Mary was the mother of the human nature of Christ. If Nestorius did not hold that Jesus Christ was two persons, he nonetheless began speaking of the divine and human natures in Christ as if they were persons or quasi-persons. His chief opponent was Cyril of Alexandria. I think Cyril’s position basically was that what is said of Christ is said of a person rather than of one of two natures in him. It is wrong to say that the human nature of Christ died. It is proper to say that Christ died in his human nature. Jesus Christ is a divine person. He is the eternal Son. He is the eternal Word. At Christ’s incarnation, Mary became the bearer of that divine person, though she contributed towards that incarnating person only his temporally beginning human nature. The theological term involved with the idea that Jesus Christ is referred to personally whether what is said about him concerns his divine or human nature is the communicatio idiomatum (i.e. communication of idioms). It is a sound theological notion. Scripture itself does not separate what is proper to Christ's divine and what is proper to Christ's human nature from Christ himself. It declares that he was crucified, that he died, that he rose from the dead, and it also declares that he is the same yesterday, today and forever. ***** See: communicatio idiomatum

The United Pentecostal Church International is NOT Trinitarian. It is a Oneness group. Oneness types characteristically deny the eternal identity and existence of the Son of God. For a critique of Oneness dogmas, see: http://christiandefense.org/oneness.htm

The fact that the RCC authorized an English version of the Bible preceding the KJV does not establish that the RCC had not been at times opposed to keeping Bibles from being published in various vernaculars. In getting behind Douay-Rheims, for instance, a question of whether or not the English people were going to have access to an English-language Bible was not a question the RCC would have had to consider. Through the efforts of others, there already were English Bible versions (e.g. the Geneva Bible) that had reached the hands and minds of English-speaking people. It seems a necessary exercise in triviality to point out that if the RCC could not prevent religious opponents from publishing Bibles in various vernaculars, perhaps a pragmatic response was to tolerate or pony up some more-or-less in-house versions produced by RCs. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc02.bi...ictions_on.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douai_Bible ***** Mark, It is likely that you and I, at minimum, share Chalcedon Christology and a Trinitarian view of God. So, before we get to the point where you’re deriding me as some bigoted, anti-Catholic, Protestant heretic, and I you as hypocritically whining papist swine, I bid you a tentatively warm Hello!

Cynic thinks a Bob Dole analogy is on the right track.

In my opinion, Wierwille's "law of believing" was, more than anything else, an attempted theodicy purporting to account for why tragedy, sickness and suffering exist under a good, just and omnipotent God. Biblical writers did not, of course, offer any neatly packaged explanations of how God's purposes relate to the existence of natural and moral evil.

Although the target of this blogger’s piece is Joel Osteen, the fellow points to what would remain a central problem with Wierwille’s “Law of Believing,” even after one prunes away Wierwille’s suggestions that there is some impersonal metaphysical “law” that “works for saint and sinner alike” bringing events to pass independently of God’s providential oversight: http://dulciusexasperis.com/2005/02/07/osteentatious

Raf, Did these folks baptize using the Matthew 28:19 formula?

I called, and came on-air somewhere around 35-40 minutes into the broadcast. I hope to elaborate on my statement to John and examine his response over the next few days.

The broadcast can be downloaded. Go to http://www.unchainedradio.com/nuke/index.php and scroll down. Look under "Free Download / This Week's MP3's." I think you will have to register with the site in order to download the broadcast, but registration is free.

Okay. Since I apparently provoked the idea, I want a primetime slot, accompanied by a corresponding few hours a week of despotic on-air authority.

Lynn, Schoenheit, Graeser.